Vadim raises up the pistol, aims it at Schroder.
“Five thousand,” he says. “Do we have deal, brain surgeon?”
I can see Schroder’s face go pale. Even in the dim light.
“I’d prefer not to take a bullet over a stupid bag of pain relievers. Five it is and five it will have to be. I can have another bag for you next week. You’re going to need it judging by the way your friend is eating them up.”
Vadim reaches inside his sweat suit jacket, pulls out a roll of bills that, even from where I’m positioned, appears heavier than his pistol. He unsnaps the thick rubber band that holds the wad in place, peels off a bunch of notes that don’t make a dent in the stack, and hands them to Schroder. The doc grabs them up like a starving dog just handed a Meaty Bone.
“Awfully money hungry for a brain surgeon you ask me,” Elvis whispers in my ear.
I shush him and stay focused.
Vadim slips into the shotgun seat while returning his hunk of cash to the breast pocket on his track suit.
“You like us to give you lift home?” he asks Schroder.
Schroder shakes his head like No fucking way I’m getting into that car.
“Allow me to ask you something, Doctor,” says Vadim. “Why does rich brain surgeon like you need to sell stupid drug to us?”
“Business is slow lately,” the doc says.
Vadim laughs.
“Not enough sick brains to go around, da?” he poses.
“Something like that,” Schroder says.
Vadim slams the door shut. The Caddy’s engine roars to life. Hector gives it the gas and peels out, causing Schroder to jump backward.
“Watch out!” the surgeon shouts.
But the Russians are already speeding across the parking lot in their giant Cadillac, the man behind the wheel higher than a kite on OxyContin.
Chapter 26
We wait in the shadows until Schroder is long gone from the St. Pious Church parking lot. Only then do we start walking back towards the hearse.
“So why do you think the brain surgeon has stooped to selling Oxy to some Russian goons?” Elvis asks as we walk.
“I’m not sure it has anything to do with business being slow. I think business has come to a dead stop.”
“Meaning what?”
“As in Doc Schroder’s license to operate has either been revoked by the AMA or is in the process of being revoked. I couldn’t help but notice the stack of lawsuits he’s dealing with when I was in his office today. They cover his desk. My guess is old Doc Schroder has got himself in some professional hot water, and he’s drowning.”
We reach the hearse. Elvis grabs us another couple of beers before taking his place back behind the wheel. I crack my beer, take a swig, then fire up another cigarette.
“So what’s the attraction to Oxy anyway?” Elvis asks.
“It’s the new street drug of choice,” I explain, exhaling the smoke out the half open window. “You ingest it in capsule form, it becomes a mild, time release pain reliever. But crack the capsule open and sniff the white powder, the high is said to be better than heroin, only shorter in duration. Thus, that big goon behind the wheel of the Caddy snorting his Russian brains out.”
“Think the cops are onto Schroder’s little arrangement with the Russians?”
“It’s possible. That could be one more reason why they seem to be picking on him and his kid.”
“Besides the fact that they’re douche bags.”
“Besides that, too.”
Elvis steals a sip of beer, stuffs the can back between his thighs, pulls up to the main road.
“Where to now?”
“Go left and into the city,” I say, tossing the remnants of my cig out the window. “Head to the Albany Medical Center where Georgie will give us the true scoop behind the downfall of the Schroder clan.”
Chapter 27
At my instruction, Elvis pulls on past the visitor lot to the service entrance where we’re required to stop and sign in at the guard shack. After informing the uniformed guard that Doctor Phillips is expecting us, he checks his list and confirms our arrival. Handing us a clipboard we both signs-in and then drive on into the beating heart of the medical center facility.
We pull up to the morgue’s sliding glass door entrance where the old black Moonlight Funeral Home hearse looks right at home. Heading through the doors and into the dimly lit corridor, we’re immediately hit with an acrid odor of disinfectant combined with alcohol and formaldehyde.
Elvis raises his right hand and plugs his nose.
“Man, what is that smell?” he begs, his deep, Elvis voice having become high and nasally.
“It’s the smell of the dead,” I answer. “I grew up with this smell, just like I grew up with dead bodies laid out in my basement and our living room. I’m more used to this odor than I am fresh air.”
“Poor kid,” he says. “Your nightmares must have been something out of Dark Shadows. Living with all that death.”
“Not really. Death was a part of life for me then. It is now, too.”
I raise my right hand, make like a pistol, point it directly at the small dime-sized scar beside my right earlobe.
“I see,” Elvis says. “You’re alive now, though.”
“And appreciating every moment of it. Can’t you tell?”
We walk a corridor that’s silent yet, at the same time, filled with the sounds of a living hospital. There’s the clanking and hissing of steam pipe valves and the buzzing hum of electrical fixtures and the rush of air that flows through an overhead exposed metal flex duct system. But then we hook a quick left down an equally dim corridor and soon something begins to happen. The mechanical noise is replaced with music. Not loud at first, but just a whisper of a tune. A lush, almost romantic symphony by the great World War I era composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, that can only come from Dr. Georgie Phillips’ pathologist’s office stereo system.
The music is plainly audible as Elvis and I approach the double, opaque glass and wood doors, the words, Pathology Unit printed on them in black block letters. I push the door open and find a big room brightly illuminated by two overhead surgical lamps that descend from the high ceiling. Two of the four tables are occupied with a dead body a piece. Georgie’s back is to us, as the green scrubbed Vietnam vet and former Moonlight Funeral Home employee autopsies the black cadaver set on the table closest to us.
We walk in at the precise moment he decides to remove the entire brain of the elderly man, setting it on a supermarket-style weight scale that also hangs from the ceiling. Sensing us, he turns and lifts his translucent face shield.
“It’s a full Moon!” he barks at me with a smile. But then, with his ice blue eyes focusing on Elvis, “Can that really be the King, back from the dead?”
“The one and only,” I say, glancing at the juicy gray brain which is swaying on the hanging scale as if caught in a light breeze.
“Elvis doesn’t look too good,” the old pathologist says. “Kinda pale, you ask me. Here, Elvis, take a load off.” Georgie points to a folding chair positioned in the far corner of the lab, not far from where his stereo system is set up on the stainless steel counter. “Moon, I won’t be but a moment.” He records the brain’s weight by speaking into a microphone attached to his lab coat lapel, then pulls it back off the scale and returns it to the gaping hole in the black man’s head. That accomplished, he rips off his bloody Latex gloves, tosses them into a blue medical waste bin. Then he removes his lab coat, hanging it on a hook embedded in the white ceramic tile wall.
He approaches us with a smile, his long gray hair pulled back tight in a ponytail, his smile wide under a neatly trimmed, but equally gray, goatee and mustache.
“Shall we retire to my office, gentlemen?”
“Please,” Elvis whispers.
“Got some goodies, Georgie?” I inquire.
“Don’t I always, Moon?” he says, pressing stop on the Vaughan Williams CD, reducing the morgue to a quiet
resting place for the dead and soon to be autopsied.
“Party time,” I say, and together, all three of us pass through the wood door into Dr. Phillips’ basement hideaway.
Georgie’s office is made up of four concrete block walls which are devoid of windows. But due to the nature of his business, it also comes equipped with one hell of a ventilation system, making it a great place to enjoy a big fat bone of the medical marijuana he is able to legally enjoy thanks to the bout of skin cancer he underwent a number of years ago.
“Primo stuff,” Georgie comments while professionally rolling a thick joint, then firing it up with a long butane lighter that looks more at home on some suburban dad’s Weber Grill than it does in the basement of the AMC morgue. He hands the joint to Elvis.
“It’ll take away the nausea, King,” he says in a forced voice while holding the hit of smoke in his lungs for as long as he can.
Elvis takes hold of the joint between his forefinger and thumb, brings it to his thick lips, sucks in a drag. He comes away in a coughing fit, little spurts of blue smoke shooting through his nostrils and open mouth.
“Easy there,” Georgie says, taking the joint away from him and handing it to me, “that’s powerful stuff.”
I take a slow drag, exhale gently through my nose. Immediately, I feel a soothing warmth envelope my body.
“I’m done,” I say, handing the joint back to Georgie. “I’m a one hit wonder when it comes to pot. Any more and I’ll get paranoid.”
“More paranoid than you already are?” Georgie says. “What’s this about Lola being alive?”
I feel my stomach sink at the mere mention of her name. Curiously, the young, attractive face of Amanda Bates also flashes through my head.
“Save that for later,” I say. “I need to know what you found out about Schroder.”
He takes another toke off the joint, then wets the pad of his thumb with his tongue before stamping out the fiery end. When it’s doused, he slips the unsmoked portion of the marijuana cigarette into the breast pocket of his green scrubs pullover.
“Here’s the deal on Schroder,” he says, taking a seat not behind his desk but on top of it, his long cowboy-booted legs dangling off the metal desk’s side. “Dude’s in big trouble, as you’ve no doubt already deduced.”
“Lawsuits.”
“That’s just the start of it,” Georgie says. “That detective you’re talking about? Miller? He’s got every right to be pissed off over what happened to his wife. Turns out she suffered an aneurysm while attending a New Year’s bash three years ago. She was rushed here, to the Albany Medical Center, where it looked like she’d surely die if she wasn’t operated on immediately to repair the broken blood vessel.”
“And let me guess, Schroder was on call that night,” I interject.
“And he was drunk as a hound dog on moonshine,” Elvis adds.
“Both correct,” Georgie says.
“He didn’t choose to opt out,” I say. “He knew he was drunk, and he went ahead and operated anyway.”
Georgie nods.
“He went in through the anterior of her skull, located the damaged blood vessel and in the process of clamping, severed it entirely. She fell into an instant coma, bled out, and then died minutes later on the table.”
We fall silent for a few seconds, digesting the weight of the pathologist’s news.
“Did she have a fighting chance to begin with?” I pose after a time.
Georgie nods.
“Yes,” he answers. “Had her surgeon been in the possession of one-hundred percent of his wits, not to mention full control of his motor skills, there’s no doubt she would have made it through without brain damage.”
“How can you be sure, Doc Phillips?” Elvis asks.
“Because I worked on what was left of her down in this basement not long after she turned cold. I’ve got the full report in the files on the cause and manner of her death if you want to see it, Moon.”
I shake my head.
“No reason to. What I’m looking for here is motivation on Miller’s part. I’m also looking for a reason why Dr. Schroder has taken to peddling Oxy to some Russian mobsters. Looks like I just found it.”
“You don’t say,” Georgie smiles. “Dangerous business.”
“Elvis and I just witnessed one of Schroder’s drops. It went down at a local Catholic church right under Jesus, Joseph, and Mary’s noses.”
“Classy guy,” Phillips says.
“When I was in the brain surgeon’s office late this afternoon, I saw a whole bunch of lawsuits sitting out on his desk.”
“Sure,” Georgie says. “Soon as it was announced that Schroder was being sued for malpractice, and might even face criminal charges in the negligent death of Mrs. Miller, the lawsuits started coming out of the woodwork.”
“Was he ever charged with anything?”
“Not that I know of. By the time there was talk of legal action, it was too late to test him for substance abuse. It became a case of one person’s opinion over another. The case was, however, overseen by the medical board at the hospital and only a couple of months ago, Schroder’s license to practice medicine in the State of New York or anywhere else for that matter, was finally revoked.”
I stand up.
“That explains that,” I say.
“But does all this give Miller the right to be picking on Schroder and his son, even though they suck?” Elvis asks, while getting up from his chair.
“No, it doesn’t,” I say, going for the office door. “Which is exactly why I’m going to do my job and get to the bottom of what happened at that house party last weekend.”
“You think it’s possible Schroder Junior didn’t actually rape that poor girl?” Elvis poses. “That he’s being set up by the police?”
“Won’t know until I start lobbing some questions at the right people,” I say. “Beginning with Stephen himself.”
Georgie slides off his desk, follows me to the door, opens it.
“Be careful, Moon,” he says, stepping out into the autopsy room with us on his tail. “You of all people know the shit that can go down when Russian mobsters are involved.”
As if on cue, we all focus our gazes on the two dead stiffs laid out on the steel tables.
I nod.
“I’m not careful, I might be your next client,” I say.
Elvis goes pale again.
“You’d better get him out of here,” Georgie says, “before he loses his cookies.”
“Elvis is leaving the building,” Elvis announces, heading for the double doors.
Georgie grabs my coat sleeve.
“Lola,” he says.
“Not now,” I swallow. “I just can’t.”
“I checked the hospital records, Moon. There’s nothing here indicating she died within the past year. Of course, that doesn’t mean anything other than she didn’t pass through here on her way.”
I try and swallow once more. But my mouth has gone dry.
“If it turns out she’s alive,” he adds, “you’re going to have to face it one way or another, and do so soberly.”
“I’m aware of that, Georgie. I just can’t face it right now. Can’t face the possibility.”
“Tell you what, I’ll make some inquiries downstate, see what I can find out. I’ll call you.”
“Thanks . . . I think.”
I go to the doors, the faces of Lola Ross and Amanda Bates flashing on and off inside my brain.
Chapter 28
We get back in the hearse. Without uttering a single word, we both pop the tabs on a cold beer a piece. We take a moment to drink while I light up another cig.
“A lot of death in this business,” Elvis says after a time.
“Thought you were having fun?” I say, taking a deep drag on the Marlboro Light.
“I am, Moonlight. Except for the dead bodies’ part of the job.”
He backs out of the parking space, shifts the automatic transmission into drive, start
s heading back towards the road.
I snicker. “Just wait until you get to the part of the job where the bad guys try to turn you into one of those dead bodies? That’s when things really get interesting and fun.”
I can see his Adam’s apple rise up and down inside his thick neck.
“Listen, Elvis,” I go on, “if at any time you feel the need to call it a day with helping me out, just say the word. You can pay me back for my services a little bit at a time.”
“No way, man. I told you I can do this, and I’m damn well gonna stick it out. Now, where to?”
I glance at my watch. It’s almost ten at night.
“We’re going to head back to Schroder’s office. Do a little recon there. Then, in the morning, we’re going to visit Stephen at the Albany County Jail.”
“But Doc Schroder isn’t at his office to let us in.”
“That’s the point.”
“But wouldn’t that be like breaking and entering?”
“Did I fail to mention that PIs often break the law in order to get at the truth?”
He pulls out onto the road, turns, shoots me a glance.
“Must have slipped your mind.”
“But first, I want you to drive past someone’s house.”
“Who’s house?”
“An old girlfriend of mine.”
“The one you call Lola?”
“Yes,” I say, tossing the spent cigarette out the window, “the one I used to call Lola, my true love.”
Chapter 29
We turn onto Madison Avenue and enter into the center of Albany’s concrete jungle.
On our left is Washington Park. On our right, the long row of century-and-a-half-old brownstone townhouses that Lola once called home. I give the order for Elvis to slow down to a near crawling speed as we approach the one that belongs, or once belonged, to her. I don’t want to look over my right shoulder, but I can’t resist it either. My heart pounds and my stomach constricts. The adrenalin pumping through my brain sounds like an orchestra of strings, trumpets, and drums playing at full volume. I turn my head slowly and, like I’m looking through a telescope, focus on the windows that belonged to Lola’s first floor flat.
Moonlight Weeps: (A Dick Moonlight PI Thriller Book 8) Page 8
