If a Tree Falls

by Robert I. Katz

  “How?” Barent asked.

  “By being unique in the degree and number of world class amenities on offer. For instance, have you heard of Heston Farms or Kirkwood Winery.”

  “No,” Barent said. Lerner shook his head.

  “They’re fairly well-known wineries in West Virginia. The Napa Valley is unique, in North America, at least, but we believe that northern West Virginia can be made attractive to fans of food and wine. People love touring vineyards and discovering wines that nobody else has had a chance to taste. It will take a while, but the potential is there.

  “I mentioned hunting and fishing. There are hunting and fishing lodges in Wyoming and Utah and Montana that attract sportsmen from all over the world. Will we be able to offer the same level of experience? Probably not quite, but both will be much, much better than anything in the Catskills or the Poconos.

  “Snowshoe, Ghent, Timberline and Davis are notable and successful ski resorts in West Virginia. Is it the Alps or the Rockies? No, but it’s pretty damn good.

  “Two more things: the legislature of West Virginia is considering a bill that would legalize casino gambling. Gambling has been proven to be a lucrative investment.”

  “Atlantic City isn’t doing so great,” Barent said doubtfully.

  Doyle sneered. “Atlantic City made a deliberate decision to market itself to low lives. We do not intend to make the same mistake.”

  “Okay, gambling. What else?”

  Doyle leaned forward. “There are a number of small hospitals in the area. We intend to purchase at least one of them.”

  “Huh?”

  “Many, many members of the wealthy elite—and this is entirely separate from the world of Hollywood royalty and aspiring super-models—spend a lot of money trying to make themselves look better. Such people prefer not to advertise their activities. They check into Massachusetts General or Yale New-Haven or Columbia Presbyterian through the side door and are whisked up to a private suite. They emerge a few days later with their breasts plumped up or the wrinkles around their eyes eliminated.”

  Would that work? Barent thought.

  “You look doubtful,” Doyle said.

  “I guess I am.”

  “Private plastic surgery clinics offering an assortment of high-level amenities in out of the way locations—particularly locations where other activities offer a convenient excuse for the presence of their guests—tend to do well.”

  “You seem to have thought this all out,” Lerner said.

  Doyle shrugged. “We try.”

  “What is your relationship to Riverside Asset Management?” Barent asked.

  Doyle appeared startled by the question. “We’ve had a long and fruitful relationship with Riverside. They’ve partnered with us on six previous projects over the past ten years.”

  “They loan you money.”

  Doyle nodded. “Yes.”

  “One last question: do you have any competition for this project?”

  “No, not that we’re aware of.” Doyle smiled. “So far as I know, we’re the only ones, and I think we would know.”

  Barent thought about this for a long moment. “Thanks,” he finally said.

  Doyle nodded. “Anything to help.”

  Ken Lerner’s office, in a precinct house on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, looked much like Barent’s. A little smaller, maybe, but just as disheveled. Barent peered down at the cup of coffee Lerner had offered him. “Your coffee is better than ours.”

  Lerner blinked. “That’s hard to believe.”

  Barent shrugged.

  “This thing in West Virginia has been in the news,” Lerner said. “It’s a stretch to figure that the same guy is operating in New York.”

  “May be operating in New York.”

  “Steven Kyle jumps off a balcony and a fourteen-year-old hooker gets strangled? These are fairly tenuous associations.”

  Tenuous, Barent thought. Huh… “The association,” he said, “if it’s real and not a coincidence, is whatever is going on in West Virginia.”

  “Probably bullshit,” Lerner said.

  Barent lifted his coffee cup in salute. “I won’t argue.”

  Lerner sighed. “I’ll talk to the guys up in Brooklyn.” He rolled his eyes. “I’m sure they’ll be thrilled.”

  Barent grinned. “I would be.”

  Leroy Evans looked skeptical. Barent didn’t blame him.

  “To sum it all up,” Ken Lerner said, “Steven Kyle, an upper level executive with Riverside Asset Management, falls off a balcony. He leaves a suicide note but the note sounds like total bullshit. There is suspicion, but no real evidence, that he was pushed. Riverside has worked in partnership with a firm called Premier Projects Development. Premier Projects Development is currently planning on building a luxury resort in Clark County, West Virginia, where fifteen young girls, none of them local, were recently found to have been murdered. The girls’ bodies were largely decomposed but according to the West Virginia Forensics Lab, the most likely cause of death was strangulation, possibly with a leather belt, possibly while being forcibly raped.

  “A day after Steven Kyle takes his header from the balcony, the body of an underage hooker is found in a dumpster in Brooklyn, strangled by what appears to be a leather belt. She also, had been forcibly raped.”

  Barent nodded. Leroy Evans stared off into space, his brow wrinkling.

  “A private corporation is not required to list officers, shareholders or even assets. They file articles of incorporation and list a business address, and depending on the state, the corporate officers. I’ve done a little research on Riverside Asset Management.” Lerner grinned. “It didn’t take long. There’s nothing on them.”

  “Not quite nothing,” Barent said. “All corporations, public and private, are required to file tax returns. Riverside Asset Management reports yearly net income in the seven-billion-dollar range, from a variety of private equity sales and payment on loans.”

  Lerner smiled. “And Riverside Asset Management has been loaning Premier Projects Development money for years.”

  Leroy Evans frowned. “So, the theory is that some serial killer travels from West Virginia to New York, and does what? Throws Steven Kyle off a balcony? Then gets his jollies off by strangling a teenage hooker, and then heads back home?”

  “Pretty much,” Barent said.

  “Why?” Leroy Evans said.

  “No idea.”

  “And where do Premier Projects Development and Riverside Asset Management come in.”

  “Haven’t a clue.”

  “Oh, man,” Leroy Evans muttered.

  “I’ve already talked to Drew Hastings and Bill Harris,” Ken Lerner said, “the cops in West Virginia. They’re looking for the van.”

  Leroy Evans squinted down into his coffee cup. “Good luck.”

  Chapter 22

  Kurtz had finished a routine gallbladder and was sitting at the front desk in the Recovery Room, dictating the case, when the patient’s ECG went flatline. The patient, comfortably snoozing only a minute before, stopped breathing and the monitor alarm began to sound. One of the Nurses grabbed an Ambu bag and began squeezing oxygen into the patient’s lungs while a second nurse starting pumping on his chest.

  A moment of disbelief swept over Kurtz and then he ran. The ECG showed nothing. Nothing at all. The patient was unresponsive, his sightless eyes staring into space. “Give me an amp of epi,” Kurtz said.

  The two OR nurses, who had given their report to the Recovery Room nurses only a few moments before, stood a few feet away, their faces white, their eyes wide and staring. One of the housekeepers, a thin middle-aged woman who had been mopping the floor in a currently empty cubicle, also stood and stared, her mop forgotten.

  A third Recovery Room nurse, who had already wheeled over the code cart, broke the seal on the top drawer and handed Kurtz an amp of epinephrine. He injected it into a port on the IV line and turned the flow up to maximum.

  Quickly, Kurtz checke
d the position of the ECG leads. They hadn’t come loose.

  “Keep pumping,” Kurtz said, “and give me another amp of epi.”

  Before he could inject the second amp of epinephrine, a single, abnormally wide QRS complex wandered across the monitor screen, then another. A third complex was narrower than the first two, almost normal. The T wave was high and peaked. “What the fuck?” Kurtz muttered.

  “Give me two amps of bicarb,” he said.

  The nurse frowned but did as requested. Kurtz injected both amps. A few seconds later, a normal rhythm marched across the screen. The patient drew a deep, ragged breath and groaned. The nurse at the head of the bed stopped squeezing the Ambu bag. The nurse pumping on the chest took a step back. “Well,” she said brightly, “that was fun.”

  Code notes are a pain in the ass to write. For one thing, they’re always retrospective. You took care of the patient first and then, after it was all over, while your head was still spinning, your body charged up with adrenaline, you sat down, tried to remember exactly what you had done, what drugs you had given, in what sequence and exactly when, and wrote it all down. It was as accurate a note as you could make but how accurate was that, exactly?

  Most hospitals have a “Code Committee,” whose job it is to review every cardiac arrest. Every hospital has a Risk Management Office and a Quality Assurance Committee, who identify adverse outcomes, review what went wrong, what was done about the problem or issue and what might have been done better. You tried really hard to make that note as accurate as possible.

  And of course, if it came down to it, a plaintiff’s attorney was going to wave that note in your face, give you a superior smirk, and in a loud, ringing voice, point out to the judge and jury that you were an absolute idiot who should never have been allowed to practice medicine in the first place.

  Kurtz had never enjoyed being in the belly of the beast. In this case, the cardiac arrest had occurred while Kurtz was at least twenty feet away and after the surgery had been completed. The code had been handled in a routine manner, not that any code could ever be described as routine. Hard to point to anything Kurtz had done wrong, which would not necessarily prevent a plaintiff’s attorney from trying.

  But this patient, thank God, had lived. He had woken up a few minutes later and was now sitting in the ICU, eating his dinner and wondering what all the fuss was about.

  Still, while this case was not likely to result in a lawsuit, it was one more nail in Clinton Memorial’s coffin.

  An hour later, Kurtz was sitting in the cafeteria, nursing a cinnamon roll and a cup of coffee, his head still pounding, when Joe Partledge slid into the seat across from him.

  “Tell me about it,” Partledge said.

  “The patient arrested,” Kurtz said. “He was successfully resuscitated.” He shrugged.

  “Why did he arrest?”

  Kurtz didn’t answer for a long moment. “The ECG never looked ischemic. The patient has no history of any cardiac problems. His heart just stopped. He didn’t fibrillate. He went asystolic.”

  Joe Partledge, like every surgeon, was required to be certified in both basic and advanced cardiac life support. He winced. “And this means?” he said.

  Partledge, Kurtz noted, had a wary expression on his face. Partledge knew just as well as Kurtz what this meant. “The only thing I know of that can do that is a very high dose of potassium chloride.”

  Partledge stared at him. “You’re saying somebody tried to kill your patient.”

  “No,” Kurtz said. “I’m saying that the only thing I know of that can cause these particular symptoms is a very high dose of potassium chloride. Does this mean that somebody did try to kill my patient?” He squinted down into his coffee. “This headache is killing me,” he muttered. He looked up at Joe Partledge. “Potassium chloride is quickly resorbed into the cells. We sent blood off to the lab, just to see where we stand at the moment, but his potassium is going to be normal, unless he has some underlying condition we’re not aware of.” He shook his head. “If somebody injected him with potassium chloride, whether accidentally or on purpose, we can’t prove it.”

  “No,” Partledge said. “No, we can’t.”

  “Too much is going on,” Bill Harris muttered.

  George Rodriguez looked at him, shrugged and went back to his computer screen.

  “I,” Drew Hastings declared, “am the Sheriff of Clark County. While I have some disinterested interest in crimes committed in Charleston and New York City, the solving of such crimes is, I am thankful to say, not my job.” He smiled.

  “But it is mine,” Bill Harris said. He grinned at George Rodriguez, who studiedly ignored him. “And it certainly is George’s.”

  George Rodriguez sighed. “It seems, now that I’ve looked into it, that questions have swirled around Premier Projects Development for some time.”

  Bill Harris blinked. “Like what?”

  “Gil Laimbeer is a Senior Special Agent assigned to the Los Angeles office. He’ll be here tomorrow morning to give us a little briefing.”

  Gil Laimbeer turned out to be a tall, thin guy, with a narrow face and thinning brown hair, wearing khakis and a polo shirt. He had sharp eyes. He scanned the office as soon as he opened the door. He nodded at George Rodriguez, came in and sat down.

  George introduced them. Gil Laimbeer opened a briefcase, pulled out a folder and spread a series of papers out on a desk.

  “George has filled me in on the situation here.” He opened a paper bag, removed a styrofoam cup of coffee and grinned. “I picked this up at the airport. I figured it was smarter to bring my own.”

  Drew Hastings nodded. “Did you bring enough for the rest of us?”

  “No,” Gil Laimbeer said.

  Drew Hastings shrugged.

  “So,” Gil Laimbeer said. “Premier Projects Development.” He sipped his coffee and nodded. Drew, Bill and George watched him. Drew wished he would stop with the pseudo-dramatic bullshit and get to the point. “Have you ever heard of Bugsy Siegel?”

  Drew glanced at Bill Harris. “Who hasn’t?”

  Gil Laimbeer went on as if Drew had not spoken. “Bugsy Siegel was born in New York. One of his early friends was Meyer Lansky. Another was Charles “Lucky” Luciano. Together, Siegel and Lansky founded the Bugs and Meyer mob, an early version of Murder Incorporated. It’s not entirely clear where the nickname, “Bugsy” came from. One story says that he was described by an associate as ‘crazier than a bedbug.’ He hated the nickname.” Gil Laimbeer sipped his coffee and smiled. “You’re wondering what this has to do with anything? Don’t worry. I’ll get there.

  “So, anyway, Bugsy Siegel moved to Los Angeles and then took over the construction of the Flamingo Resort and Casino, in Las Vegas. The casino was a money pit. Siegel spared no expense in making it into the most upscale, luxurious place in Las Vegas. Seigel was assassinated in 1947, while sitting at the kitchen table in the home of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill. He was hit multiple times by machine gun fire from a passing car, including twice in the head.” Gil Laimbeer gave a ghoulish smile. “One of the shots blew his eye out. Ever since then, shooting somebody through the eye is supposed to be a mafia trademark.” Gil Laimbeer shrugged. “Nobody was ever convicted. The murder was never solved. Supposedly, and nobody really knows the truth, Siegel was assassinated because he had gotten himself too deeply in debt to his fellow mobsters and wasn’t paying it back. Another story says it was a hit arranged by a jealous husband.”

  Gil Laimbeer stopped. “You following this?”

  “So far,” Drew Hastings said.

  “Good.” Gil Laimbeer took a deep breath. “The public has a curious fascination for guys like Bugsy Siegel. It makes sense, in a way. He was good-looking. He was rich. He hobnobbed with Hollywood royalty. He was ruthless and violent and killed a lot of people but he also gave a lot of money to charity and was supposed to be generous to his friends.”

  “And kind to elderly women, dogs and little kids?” Drew said.
>
  “Yeah, that, too. You know the word, charisma?”

  Bill Harris looked bewildered. “You’re saying Bugsy Siegel had charisma.”

  “There is no doubt that Bugsy Siegel had charisma, but he was hardly the only one. Why did a guy like Frank Sinatra get such a kick out of hanging out with mobsters? What is it about these guys that people find so attractive?

  “It’s charisma, and you know what gives somebody charisma?” Gil Laimbeer blinked at them. “You know what people find so fascinating about mobsters? I’ll tell you: it’s the whiff of insanity. It’s the air of absolute confidence and conviction that such people give off combined with the knowledge that this guy, this charismatic guy, is totally unpredictable. People can’t take their eyes off people who have charisma. And at least part of the reason, somewhere deep down in their brains, is fear. I have to keep an eye on this guy, just in case…”

  Gil Laimbeer liked the sound of his own voice. Drew Hastings glanced at his watch. Laimbeer grinned. “Okay, enough with the preliminaries. Bottom line? The mob has a lot of money. The mob is always looking for places to stash money, to hide it away, to make it grow. Real estate always holds its value. They’re not making more real estate. It’s solid and it isn’t going anywhere. The mob has always invested in real estate.”

  “You’re saying that Premier Projects Development is controlled by the mob,” Bill Harris said.

  “We haven’t been able to prove it to the satisfaction of the prosecutors, and so they go on their merry way, doing whatever the hell it is that they’re doing. One hand washes the other in this business. It’s not just Premier Projects Development. You’ve heard of Herbert Development?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Drew Hastings said.

  Gil Laimbeer nodded. “Herbert Development was a mob front that succeeded in passing itself off as one of America’s most respected corporations for over seventy years. When the whole thing came tumbling down, it crashed the markets for a solid month. We still haven’t gotten to the bottom of the scam. Billions of dollars are still missing, or maybe those dollars never really existed. Maybe they were just phony entries on a ledger. When Meyer Lansky died, at the age of eighty, he was supposedly worth over three-hundred million, but only fifty-seven thousand in cash was ever found.