“And,” I added, “she was one of Quentin’s paramours.”
“Yeah, well, she’s gotta take a number to be part of that crowd, from what I understand,” said Calvin, giving me an arch look.
“Oh, please,” I said, “I believe I’ve taken enough grief for that. The next time I stray, well, there won’t be a next time.”
“Not married to old Mikey there won’t be,” observed Calvin. “Italian guy like that, he’s probably got sixteen uncles in the Mob.”
“I believe the Italian Anti-Defamation League breaks your legs if you make jokes in that vein,” I said. “However, as I was saying, not that I’d ever make this mistake again, but I assure you if I did, I’d pick somebody who isn’t quite so visible or so catholic in his tastes.”
“Right,” said Calvin, “we already know you have your eye on teenage box-boys. That’s going to be a juicy little scandal right there.”
I flipped through the pages of my notebook. “There’s something else,” I said.
“Cough it up,” said Calvin.
“Well, there’s this art teacher at Josh’s school, Joe Connolly.”
“Uh huh, and?”
“And, I think he’s the guy who called that day we were having lunch at Cock of the Walk and made up the story about Josh being sick.”
“I’m not following.”
“Well,” I said impatiently, “look, someone wanted to get to me before I got to the file that Moon was holding for me. And that someone knew the quickest, most foolproof thing to do was to distract me with one of the kids.”
“And why do you think it was Connolly?”
“It’s all too much of a coincidence. He knows Glen and that Skunkworks gang, he knows Josh, and he knew how to find me. And he probably knew what I had on that day, because he could have seen me when I dropped Josh off at school.” I put my hand on the receiver.
Calvin glanced at his watch, unfolded his elegant legs and got to his feet. “Look, Maggie, I hope you’re twitching over that receiver because you’re going to call Inspector Moon.”
“I’m thinking about it,” I said.
Calvin reached across the desk and patted me on the head. “Good girl.”
And with that, he disappeared out the door. I picked up the phone and dialed The Webster School again. The student who answered the phone reassured me that she’d just seen Josh and, in answer to my request, said she’d have Joe Connolly give me a call. I thanked her and was about to hang up when she said, “But Mrs. Fiori, it might be a while before he calls you back.”
“Is he on vacation?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “He’s really, really sick again. His doctor put him in the hospital late last night.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said, and then, on an impulse, “Is Mrs. Schwab around?” In a minute, the principal was on the line.
“Mrs. Fiori? Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Oh, no, Mrs. Schwab,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you again. I was trying to reach Joe Connolly, but the student who answered the phone said that he’s in the hospital. I didn’t even know he was sick.”
“We’re all pretty upset about it,” said Mrs. Schwab. She sounded as if she wanted to say something more, and then stopped.
“I just saw him yesterday,” I said. “Outside St. Peter’s and Paul’s, in the city.”
“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Schwab.
“Well,” I pried gently, “I hope it isn’t serious. He’s been a real favorite of my son’s, ever since he let him do his papier-mâché sculpture on the Warriors.”
“Yes,” mused Mrs. Schwab, “Joe is very creative with the kids.”
“So,” I said briskly, “I’d really like to go see him, bring him a plant or something. Where is he? Is he up to visitors?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Schwab replied doubtfully. “I don’t know about company. But you could call Alta Bates and see what the nurse says.”
“I’ll do that,” I said.
29
Treasure in the Trash
Alta Bates is one of those something old, something new hospitals, squatting on a particularly unlovely corner in Berkeley. That is, you can feel the presence of the dehumanized and dehumanizing HMO mentality: fewer RNs, physicians who frown a lot and look at their watches as they calculate if it’s worth the hassle to order expensive tests, and chirpy patient-quality slogans that propagandize about the benefits of managed care.
Named for a nurse, part of Berkeley’s culture for generations, still populated by sweet-faced blue hairs and slightly-less-sullen-than-usual teenagers as volunteers, Alta Bates carries the weight of new age, bureaucratic medicine relatively lightly. Best of all, the Bay Area obsession with coffee has led to an espresso vendor in the cafeteria, so there’s always a way to get a cappuccino fix on the way in or out of the hospital.
I inquired about Joe Connolly at the front desk and was directed upstairs to the east wing nursing station. Vintage Motown was pouring out of a tabletop portable stereo behind the waist-high counter, and two middle-aged women, one white and one black, with pink stethoscopes draped around their necks. were gently rocking out. Both dressed in white leggings and flowered overblouses, both a little overweight, they looked like slightly updated versions of plump flowers from Fantasia.
A young volunteer clutching a stack of newspapers was leaning against the counter, giggling. “Kick it, you guys,” she said and then caught sight of me. She rolled her eyes a little, gave me a “grown-ups, who can understand them?” look, and took off down the corridor.
Aretha wound down in her quest for respect on the radio, and one of the women, a blonde with dark roots and stylish spikes, turned the sound down and smiled at me. “Can I help you?”
“Nice moves,” I said. “I’m looking for Joe Connolly.”
The two women exchanged glances.
“Are you a family member?” the other woman asked.
“No.” I said, “My son is one of his students.”
“Well,” the blonde said doubtfully, “he’s pretty out of it right now. He’s already got a friend in there visiting with him. We don’t want to tire him out.”
She smiled at my potted azalea, wrapped in tissue paper. “You’re shedding a little,” she said, gesturing at the floor. I looked down. There was a small, steady flood of glitter falling from the tissue onto the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, attempting to hold the pot closer. That seemed to compound the problem, and another multicolored, sparkly shower fell to the floor.
“My kids decorated the paper,” I apologized. “I know there’s lots of glue on here, but I’m not sure it’s actually coming in contact with all the glitter.”
The blonde smiled good-naturedly. “That’s okay, maybe it will perk him up. After all, he is an art teacher.”
Her rock ‘n’ roll colleague chuckled. “I’ve got kids,” she said. “No matter how bad our floor looks, I bet yours looks worse. More glitter, I mean.”
I laughed. “No doubt. So can I see Joe? Just for a minute?”
“Sure,” the blonde said. “Make it a short visit, though.”
I headed down the hall to Joe’s room. The door was partly closed, so I tapped on it. “Joe?” I called softly, and stepped into the room.
Though it was late afternoon, the winter sunshine had still been shining bravely outside. But Joe’s room was in dusk. His bed was cranked to a half-sitting position, and he lay against the white pillows, his dark hair a smudge of contrast. Another man sat in the visitor’s chair in the corner, silent, vigilant, his face obscured in shadow. I approached the bed, glitter drifting behind me. “Hey, Joe.”
He wiggled to a more upright position and raised his hand in a wave. “Mrs. Fiori.”
I put the plant on the nightstand. He reached to his chest and gestured a brushing motion. He grinned at me. “You’re wearing a little glitter.”
I smiled at him. “I know. The boys wanted to add a little do-it-yourself art to the p
lant when I said I was coming to see you. See what an influence you’ve had.”
He nodded. “Thanks, I guess.”
I regarded him closely. He was wan and fragile looking, but he certainly didn’t seem out of it to me. “Gee, Joe, you seem a little better than your nurses think,” I blurted.
He smiled. “Yeah, you know I’m just faking it here.” A cough crept up on him, he turned away till it passed. “Really, I’m lots better,” he said. “Gregory’s a great tonic.”
And then the man in the chair spoke. “Hello, Mrs. Fiori.”
I turned and saw Gregory Bender, Skunkworks executive director, sitting in the chair. His wholesome young face looked strained, tired.
“Mr. Bender,” I said, “how nice to see you again.”
I pulled the second visitor chair up to the side of Joe’s bed and settled down.
“Okay, guys,” I said. “For starters, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong with our friend here?”
Silence.
“Okay, why don’t I tell you?” I said. “I think Joe’s HIV-positive, and some nasty opportunistic infection has gotten hold of him.”
More silence.
“Further,” I said, “I don’t think this is the first time. And I think when Joe said that Gregory was a good tonic for him, he meant that quite literally.”
“Mrs. Fiori,” Gregory began, a little warning creeping into his voice. “Why don’t you stop before you go prowling any further where you’re not invited.”
“Why don’t I?” I said. “Because there’s something ugly going on, and I’m absolutely, positively convinced it had something to do with Quentin’s murder.”
“Which,” Gregory interrupted,” the cops are hard at work solving.”
“And further,” I said, “I think somebody you guys know snatched my kid yesterday.”
Joe looked alarmed. “What?”
“Relax,” I said. “I think it was just a scare tactic. It was such a civilized and brief kidnapping, it had to be done by very nice people.” I looked directly at Bender. “It was you, I bet, using my kid to tell me to watch out. Kinda chickenshit, if you ask me.”
He flushed.
“And watch out for what exactly? Dangerous books in City Lights? Kidnappers in North Beach? Or investigating Quentin’s murder?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Gregory, “but I repeat, aren’t the cops working on Quentin’s murder?”
“Well, I think they’d be moving along a darn sight faster if everybody who knew something was just a little more forthcoming,” I pointed out.
The door edged open again, and one of the nurses from the front desk poked her head in. “Hey, how we doing?” she asked, and then she stopped and double-timed over to the bed.
She picked up Joe’s wrist, consulted her watch for a moment, and then popped one of those new wave thermometers in his mouth. We all fell silent. I felt Bender’s distinctly unfriendly gaze on me, as we waited together for the telltale beep.
“Mmm,” the nurse said, “your fever’s way down.”
She turned to Bender and me and smiled. “Well, you guys are clearly good for what ails him,” she said.
“I’m going to have Dr. Mazur take a look at you when he comes in for rounds. Maybe we can spring you from this joint tomorrow morning.”
“That would be great,” Joe responded.
The nurse checked the IV bag holding medication and shook her head. “Boy, you haven’t even had enough of these antibiotics to work this fast,” she said. She smoothed the hair back from his forehead “You’re a resilient guy, Joe Connolly, I’ve gotta hand it to you.”
After the nurse left, I dug in my pocket for a tissue. “Where’s the trash can in this place, guys?” I asked, looking around, gesturing I needed to toss something out.
Gregory caught Joe’s eye and gave a tiny shake of the head. “I think you need to throw it out in the bathroom,” Joe said hastily. “They keep this one sterile or something.”
“Uh huh,” I said, catching sight of the can near the sink. On the wall was a dispenser of latex gloves. I plucked one from the dispenser and tugged it on.
“What are you doing, Mrs. Fiori?” asked Joe.
I stirred in the trash with my gloved hand. “Even though I’m a mom, and I’ve certainly been up to my elbows in yucky stuff on a regular basis,” I said, “I don’t care to rummage around the garbage without some protection.” And then I spotted it, under some paper towels. I fished out a little plastic cylinder, just like the one I’d liberated from the handle of Quentin’s sauté pan. I held it up. “Found it.”
Joe and Gregory looked at each other in dismay and then back at me. I wrapped the cylinder in a clean paper towel, and tucked it into my purse.
“Okay, here’s my suggestion,” I said. “Talk to me or talk to the cops. I don’t much care which happens first.” The two men looked at each other once again. After a pause, Gregory nodded as if in assent.
“You’re right, Mrs. Fiori,” began Joe. “I’m beyond being HIV-positive. I’ve had a whole bunch of opportunistic infections, so I’ve got AIDS. But my doctor’s been keeping me fairly healthy—until recently. I’m just getting too exhausted to fight much more.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Yeah, well, everybody’s sorry,” said Joe. “Mrs. Schwab’s been great, fixing my schedule so I can work when I feel up to it. But I’ve been missing a lot of time, and I’m really getting worried. I mean, if I can’t work, can’t go to school and see the kids, I might as well flick it in.”
“Prayer isn’t enough, I take it?”
“Prayer?” he looked puzzled.
“I saw you at Mass yesterday,” I reminded him.
“Oh, yeah, well, that’s more a chance to get together with friends. But sure, I’ve been praying. And it must have helped, because, along comes Skunkworks with this… stuff.”
“Stuff?” I asked.
“BZT,” said Gregory.
“You mean AZT?” I asked, naming one of the most commonly used AIDS drugs.
“No, this is new. It’s one of the drugs we’re very excited about.”
“Uh huh,” I said, “I can see why. The nurses kept telling me how sick Joe was, and here you are, looking pretty darn good. So your doctor is one of the people who’s tracking drugs for Skunkworks.”
Joe looked puzzled. “My doctor? He doesn’t know anything about this.”
Gregory hastily interjected, “I’d explained to Mrs. Fiori about the docs who work with us.” Joe’s puzzled look vanished.
“Oh, yes. That’s true.”
I looked at Joe and then back at Gregory. “Okay, this is truly a whole lot of horse manure,” I said. “You’re not working with any doc with this drug, or you wouldn’t be hiding the container in the trash.”
They both looked miserable. “Come on,” I said. “My kids lie better than this.”
The bedside phone rang, startling all of us.
Joe looked at it uneasily. “Go ahead and get it,” I said. “I’ll wait.”
“Hello?” he said, and looked beseechingly over at Gregory.
“Oh, hi. Can I call you back? I have company.”
He paused. “A surprise visit,” he said. “One of my students’ moms dropped by.” He listened. “Right. Okay, I’ll call you back in a while.”
Silence. We all looked at each other. The nurse rapped gently on the door again and came in. “I’m shooing you guys out of here,” she said. “Let’s let Joe get a little rest, and maybe he can go home tomorrow.”
Gregory practically fell over his feet disappearing. I lingered for a minute.
“Joe,” I said, “I don’t know what’s going on. But I’m sorry as hell you’re sick, and whatever’s helping to make you better, I’m all for it.”
He smiled and gestured at the tissue-wrapped azalea. “Thank Josh for the plant for me,” he said.
“Thank him yourself,” I retorted. “Looks to me like you’ll be back to work v
ery soon.”
The nursing station was deserted when I came out. I leaned on the counter and waited, and in a few minutes the African American rock ‘n’ roller came out of a room with a tray of medications. She put the tray on a cart behind the counter and smiled at me. “I hear your friend’s a lot better,” she said.
“He is,” I replied. “Can I ask you some questions about medications?”
She looked doubtful. “Well, unless you’re a family member, I can’t really talk to you about Joe’s meds.”
“I know,” I said. “I just meant AIDS drugs in general. It seems pretty confusing.”
“It is confusing,” she said. “That’s because we’re kind of making it up as we go along.”
“Okay, can you tell me the basics?” I asked.
She sighed. “Just the basics? Well, here’s how it works. There’s a whole group of drugs that we use to treat people before they get sick, or before they’re very sick—AZT and drugs like that. Plus, there are the relatively new protease inhibitors; maybe you’ve heard about those?” I nodded. She continued. “They’re all used as part of what we call combination therapies or cocktails—you combine different drugs in hopes that you’ll make the viral load count go down.”
“Viral load?”
She nodded. “That’s the measure that tells us how much of the virus you’ve got making trouble in your body.”
“And how about T-cells?”
“That’s a whole different count. We’re looking to keep that number up, because the T-cells indicate how much fight you’ve got left in the body.”
“And then once somebody gets sick?”
She sighed. “Well, there’s a whole other family of drugs—some conventional antibiotics for infections, and an aerosol drug called pentamidine we use to ward off a special kind of pneumonia.”
“I’m not asking you about Joe, specifically,” I said. “But how about somebody like him? Is it too late for all the combination therapies?”
“People in Joe’s situation are in a tough spot. Once you start getting really sick really often, you get into a cycle that’s hard to reverse. And, of course, some of these drugs have pretty crummy side effects, so if you’re already weakened, they can be tough to take.”
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