“I do?”
“Well, let me back up: you had one, until about a week or so ago. Fellow named Ezra Diamant. Fifty-three years old. Loud. Heavyset. Smoker. That ring a bell?”
“Diamant? The rabbi?” Now she’s on high alert. The smile is gone, and suddenly, I see there’s hardly any time left on the clock to make my case.
“His family, and the members of his congregation feel like his death wasn’t accidental. They’re hurting. You must know what that’s like for them. And they’ve asked me to look into it.” I hand her my business card, just to show that I’m for real, but she barely gives it a glance before dropping it into her pocket.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Parisman. Even if I knew anything that could help you, this a matter of confidentiality.”
“Sure, sure, you’ve already talked to the police, though.”
“I can’t even discuss that.”
“That’s okay. Jason and Remo dropped by to see you, I’ve heard. Lieutenant Malloy, he’s the guy they work for, he told me as much.”
“Then maybe you should discuss this with Lieutenant Malloy.” She opens the door to the consulting room. “I think it’s time for you to leave now.”
I’m still hunkered down on her padded table. Through the open doorway, Magnolia’s pink sweater comes into view.
“I’m interested in his medications,” I say. “They said he had a heart attack, so if, for example, you changed his prescriptions or the dosages recently—well, that could tell us a lot.”
“Get out, Mr. Parisman. Now.”
“Because his people deserve to know, doctor. His wife and daughters, the whole synagogue, they’re all in the dark. They’re in shock. They’re grieving. At the moment, this is being treated as a terrible tragedy, which I’m sure you’ll agree it is, but your whole career could be on the line if it turns out—”
Her tone grows a little more shrill. “I’m through talking with you, Mr. Parisman. And if you don’t leave right away, I’m calling the police.”
“Okay, okay.” I hold up my hands. “I can take a hint.” I shuffle past her into the pastel waiting room, where Magnolia, who has heard virtually every word, is tapping her fingernails on the desk, glaring at me. Two other ladies who must have just arrived, are sitting there, side by side, fashion magazines propped on their laps. They both look up, openmouthed. If it were Charles Manson instead of me, they’d be just as horrified. Malloy was right. I shoulda listened. This was a fiasco. And by the time I’m in my car and the key is in the ignition, I realize I’ve made an even worse mistake: I forgot to validate the goddamn parking stub.
Later that night, after I pay Carmen for her time and we have dinner and watch the six o’clock news, I’m rinsing the dishes and talking things out with Loretta. Her latest doctor, a guy named Ali, says she may be in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s, or whatever-the-hell they’re calling it. Not that I care about medical terms. They’re just words, right? And anyway, depending on who you’re talking to, the diagnosis seems to change every few months. Could be a form of dementia. Could be something to do with nerves. For me, of course, things have also shifted over the last couple years. It’s no longer equal between us. I still pay the bills. I do the grocery shopping. I cook a lot more now than I ever did, and I drag out the vacuum cleaner once a week, though once in a while I forget. Every night I thank the God I don’t believe in for Carmen. All I know is what I have to do to keep things on an even keel, which, let me tell you, is plenty.
I met Loretta just after I got out of the Marines. That was in 1973. I was letting my hair grow down to around my shoulders, partly as a statement about how I’d been used and abused by the military, and also because everyone in my neighborhood was doing the same thing. That was when I had lotsa hair, mind you. I was going back to school in Berkeley and Loretta was in my psychology class. Brown eyes, a tiny bounce in her step. I think she fell in love with me because I seemed so serious compared with the other men on campus. They were nice enough kids, I thought, but all they really wanted was to stay alive and smoke as much dope as humanly possible. Basically, they wanted to steer clear of Vietnam. That was their major, and I couldn’t blame them for that. I was glad to be done with it, too.
Loretta liked that I was different, that I’d been to war, seen it with my own eyes. She was against the war, of course, but she wanted to hear about it, how we trained, what we did once we got over there. I told her some stuff, but I kept most of the grisly bits to myself. Even then, I felt a need to protect her, I suppose. She was so innocent. Also, I didn’t much want to see that movie all over again. Once I mentioned my buddy Sam, a black guy from Biloxi. I loved Sam. We went through Basic together. We ate together. We slept together. Even chased after the same Vietnamese girl in a bar in Saigon one time. Sam was my guiding star. I’d do anything for Sam. But then one day we were on patrol and he was walking point, and he got a little too far out in front of us. A runty, undernourished kid—all of them looked like that—rose up out of the brush and shot him in the back. He never saw it coming. We carried him all the way back to the helicopter, but it was too late. He just closed his eyes and bled out. I sobbed for three whole days. I wished it had been me instead of him. And that’s when I began to see how pointless it was. That’s when I stopped believing.
“Why did the rabbi die?” Loretta asks me now. She’s already asked me once.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Somebody hates him?”
“Maybe, sweetheart. Probably so. Every human being I’ve ever met hates somebody sometimes, right?”
“I don’t hate.”
“No, that’s true, you don’t. But you’re an angel, so you don’t count.”
She grins. “You married an angel.”
I nod, start dropping forks and knives and spoons back in the drawer one at a time. Clink, clink, clink. “Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was just a simple accident. He could have had a heart attack. That’s what the cops think.”
She points a finger at the side of her head, like it’s a loaded gun. “Cops don’t think,” she says. For some reason, this notion makes her very happy. She starts to giggle.
I give her a disappointed look. “I don’t know where on earth that came from,” I say.
Later, when the lights of Hollywood are twinkling in the distance and the apartment is finally still, I slip off my shoes and snuggle up next to her on the couch. “Shove over, Loretta. For an angel, you take up a helluva lot of room, you know.”
She starts to giggle again, then takes my arm and wraps it gently around her shoulder. “You love me,” she says, as much to herself as to me.
“You better believe it.”
“I want a cookie.”
“We don’t have any more.” This is a lie, but I’m worn-out and there’s no point getting up and rummaging around in the kitchen. “How about I get you a cookie tomorrow?”
She nods. “All right.”
“Hey wait. How about you pretend that I’m your cookie?”
She turns to me. “You’re not a cookie,” she says.
After I put her to bed, I go into the other bedroom, which I’ve sort of made into an office. Beyond my computer, there’s not all that much worth looking at on the desk. A picture of my parents on their wedding day in 1938. They’re standing arm in arm on some stone steps in front of the rabbi’s house where they were just married. August in the Bronx. Ain’t got a barrel of money, but who cares? This is their moment. They don’t know about the war that’s coming their way. There’s so much they don’t know. They’re so young and innocent it hurts to look at them.
Right beside the photo is another one of my late brother, Sy. He’s sitting bare-chested in his sailboat, a cigar nestled in his hand. He’s got a grin on his face as if he’s just heard the best joke ever. The sun is shining, and you can almost feel the wind in his hair and the sea bobbing all around him. That’s the sum total of my mementos. Oh, except for one other
thing. On the wall in front of me is a framed eight-by-ten photograph of a little boy.
His name is Enrique Avila. He disappeared while walking home from school. He was eight years old, and it was one of the first cases I ever took on. Also the most painful, because I never found him. He just vanished, it seemed, like smoke into the air. No clues, no witness, nothing. That was nearly forty years ago, and still, whenever I’m in his old neighborhood of Alhambra I can’t help myself. I’ll drive up and down the quiet, residential streets. I’ll stare at vacant buildings, at stores that weren’t even there back then. And I’ll wonder what the hell happened, what did I miss.
Enrique is kind of my son, I guess you’d say, since Loretta and I never had one of our own. Every so often I try to conjure him up. He’d be well into middle age by now if he were still alive. He’d have a beer belly, maybe a wife and a couple of kids and a mortgage. When I look at his picture, I don’t see him as a big achiever; he would probably never be the smartest kid in class, or the fastest sprinter. He wouldn’t win the spelling bee, and his project in the science fair would be routinely overshadowed by others. He might go to the prom, but he’d never be the homecoming king. You can tell he was destined to have a happy, normal life. An uneventful life even. And that would have suited him just fine, if he had lived.
It’s after nine, but I’m sure the lieutenant will still be up. He never sleeps.
The phone barely rings before he answers. “Malloy,” I say, “it’s Amos Parisman.”
“I know. I’ve got caller ID.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t. I wanted to let you know though, I ignored your advice and went to see Dr. Ewing today.”
“And?”
“And everything you told me was right.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That she was beautiful, and that she wouldn’t tell me squat.”
“Why don’t you ever listen, Amos?”
“I’m stubborn that way, Bill. And I’m an old man and probably an embarrassment to every detective who ever walked the earth. Anyway, I forgot to ask you yesterday whether your boys found out what drugs the rabbi was on?”
“Oh, we got a list from the wife. Nothing to get too excited about: Blood pressure. High cholesterol. An anti-depressant, but he stopped taking that a while ago.”
“And they were all prescribed by Dr. Ewing?”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “I don’t recall. Might well have been some other guy. I’ll have to check the record and get back to you. You don’t think she—” Another pause. I could almost feel him getting business-like. “You know, I’m really not supposed to do this kind of thing.”
“I wouldn’t, if I were you.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“Hell no, it’s against the rules.”
“Ain’t that the truth. Against the rules. Boy, it’s just damn lucky you’re a friend, Amos. That’s all I gotta say.”
“You’re right. And what’re friends for?”
“Beats me,” he says.
Chapter 4
I STRIP DOWN to my shorts and undershirt and drop into bed around midnight. It’s still too hot, impossible to sleep. We’ve rolled the windows open slightly to catch whatever breezes exist. From nine floors up you can hear some teenagers down in the parking lot, laughing and talking, way too loud if you ask me, all the time saying nothing. What kids do.
Meanwhile, I’m lying here sweating in the dark. And the voice in my head is still hard at work, chewing me out. You rusty old sonofabitch. You should never have gone to see that doctor. How stupid could you be? What did you expect she’d say? That’s not how it’s done.
I glance to my right. Loretta is lying flat on her back, already down and out. Her mouth is open and she’s half-snoring—small, ladylike snorts that will probably keep me awake if I pay any attention, but not forever. I close my eyes, another long fruitless day over, and just as I’m giving up, just as I’m nodding off for good, the phone rings. I bolt upright and grab it in the dark. It’s not me, it’s Loretta I’m concerned about. I don’t ever want to wake her up. “Yeah, what the hell—”
A muffled woman’s voice. “Mr. Parisman. I’m sorry to call you so late, but I’ve been having second thoughts. I went back to my office a few minutes ago and checked through my files. It’s the most peculiar thing, but—” She pauses. All at once, I hear her take a short startled breath. Then nothing. Then thump, thump, thump, like a heavy parlor chair is being dragged across the floor. And right after that, the line goes dead.
I hang up, still groggy, think about it for a minute or two more. Except I’m not thinking. Not at that hour. Maybe she’ll call back, whoever she was. It didn’t sound much like Dr. Ewing, but what do I know. A woman, that’s all. Maybe she’ll have the decency next time to wait till morning.
I claw at my pillow and try to drift back to sleep. My dreams, the few I can remember, concern jelly doughnuts. But an hour or two later it’s no use. I’m wide awake. I settle down in my office chair, flick on the overhead lamp, and pick up the book I’ve been reading for the last three weeks. I bought it at a yard sale for two bits. It’s all about Napoleon and the life he constructed for himself in his last days on St. Helena, which is just a dumb rock, smack dab in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know why this kind of thing fascinates me, but it does. How he turned a chicken coop into a palace. Depression, followed by the triumph of the human spirit? Hey, that’s me in a nutshell.
At eight in the morning, there’s a sharp, insistent knock on my door. “I’m here about the doctor, Amos,” someone says, and as I open up, Lieutenant Malloy walks right in, followed by Jason and Remo.
He’s all business now. The tie is loose around his neck, and he hasn’t had time yet to shave. He nods hello to Loretta, who is startled by this sudden home invasion. She’s sitting on the couch with her oatmeal, still in her nightgown, waiting patiently for me to turn on the television.
“The doctor?” I ask. My brain starts to race. I point toward the kitchen and lead him that way. Jason and Remo stay tight-lipped and where they are at the door. “What about the doctor?”
“She’s dead,” Malloy says, almost matter-of-factly. “Someone bonked her real hard last night with a blunt instrument. Receptionist found her when she came in this morning. Place was a mess.”
“No kidding,” I say. Then, because it’s still early and I’ve only had one cup of coffee, “so how exactly does that bring you to my apartment?”
He shrugs, accepts my silent offer of hospitality, pulls up a chair at our kitchen table, clasps his big meaty hands together, and stares at me for the longest time with those Irish blue eyes. “You were probably the last person she talked to, Amos.”
“I was?”
“We traced her phone calls. She—or someone—dialed your number just after midnight from her office.”
“I’m an old guy, Bill. I go to bed early. By midnight I’m already a pumpkin.”
“Granted. But you still picked up the receiver. So my question is, what’d she have to say?”
I rub a small knot at the back of my neck. “She said something was strange, if I remember correctly. That’s all.”
“What was strange?”
“Hell if I know. Anyway, she didn’t say.”
“Uh-huh.” Now it’s Malloy’s turn to be silent. The wheels are turning in his head. His hands are still cupped together.
“You don’t think it could just be a coincidence, do you? The rabbi, then the rabbi’s doctor?”
“Could be,” he says. He has a fat, even tone to his voice. He’s a fair man, a thoughtful man. He could have been a priest. He could have been an umpire. Instead he ended up a cop. “The lab guys are still going over the place. There are lots of prints, but it’s a doctor’s office, people come and go. Whoever killed her broke in through a side door, they said. Used some kind of pry bar. So maybe she interrupted a burglar. It happens, I guess.”
“That what you think?”
“Nah,” he says after a while. “That’s not what I think.” He scratches the sleepy dirt out of one eye. “You wanna know why? Because the burglar didn’t take much of anything.”
“Really?”
“Well, he cleaned all the Schedule II drug samples out of a locked cabinet. But that’s pretty small potatoes for that kind of effort. Oh yeah, and he took one other thing, I suppose.”
“Let me guess: Ezra Diamant’s medical file?”
Malloy nods. “It’s curious, you can’t find a single scrap of paper there with Diamant’s name on it. Like he never existed.”
“What about her computer? He wasn’t on that, either?”
“Her computer is missing, too.”
“It doesn’t add up, Bill. What about that receptionist, Magnolia. Did you show her a picture of the rabbi?”
“We did, actually. She said she recognized him from the newspaper, but claims she doesn’t remember seeing him in the flesh. He’s not in her files. Never sent him a bill, she says. Now what does that mean?”
“Could mean a lot of things. Could mean Dr. Ewing never treated the real rabbi. Could mean that someone else pretended to be Diamant, and she dished out lethal samples to that guy. Or it could mean the rabbi only came by to see her after hours. Either way, what Magnolia said would be true.”
Malloy fusses with his tie, tightens it up around his throat, plays with the knot. It’s an old green silk tie with a little Japanese bamboo pattern. Most folks at his level don’t wear ties anymore, but Bill is old school. “That’s a lot of ambiguity to deal with, Amos.”
“You’re telling me.”
He pushes himself away from the table. “Right now, I’m going to treat these cases as related. We’re making some inquiries into the doctor’s past. And I’m going to check with the forensic pathology people downtown. See if we can dig up the rabbi and do an autopsy.”
“So it’s not an accident anymore.”
“One person dies, maybe it’s an accident. Two in a row? Between you and me, I’d call that murder. One murder for sure. Also time for an autopsy.”
An Old Man's Game Page 3