On the wall just outside the sub-basement stairwell was a map with one of those red YOU ARE HERE arrows in the lower left-hand corner. The rest was an aerial view of a grid of corridors. The actual hallways were walled with white tile and floored with gray linoleum patterned with black-and-pink triangles. Gray doors, red plaques. The hallway was fluorescent-lit and had the vinegary smell of a chem lab.
SPI was in the center of the webwork. Small box. Hard to extrapolate from two dimensions to the long stretch of corridor before me.
I began walking and reading door signs. BOILER ROOM. FURNITURE STORAGE. A series of several doors marked SUPPLIES. Lots of others that said nothing at all.
The hallway angled to the right.
CHEMICAL SPECTROGRAPHY. X-RAY ARCHIVES. SPECIMEN FILES. A double-width slab that said: MORGUE: NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE.
I stopped. No smell of formalin, not a hint of what existed on the other side. Just silence and the acetic bite, and a chill that could have been due to a low thermostat setting.
I pictured the map in my head. If my memory was functioning properly, SPI was another right turn, a left, then a short jog. I started walking again, realized I hadn’t seen another person since I’d been down here. The air got colder.
I picked up my pace, had managed to slip into a thought-free speed-walk when a door on the right wall swung open so suddenly I had to dodge to avoid getting hit.
No sign on this one. Two maintenance men in gray work clothes emerged from behind it carrying something. Computer. PC, but a big one—black and expensive-looking. As they huffed away, two more workers came out. Another computer. Then a single man, sleeves rolled up, biceps bunched, carrying a laser printer. A five-by-eight index card taped to the printer’s console read L. ASHMORE, M.D.
I stepped past the door and saw Presley Huenengarth standing in the doorway, holding an armful of printout. Behind him were blank beige walls, charcoal-colored metal furniture, several more computers in various states of disconnection.
A white coat on a hook was the sole hint that anything more organic than differential equations had been contemplated here.
Huenengarth stared at me.
I said, “I’m Dr. Delaware. We met a couple of days ago. Over at General Pediatrics.”
He gave a very small nod.
“Terrible thing about Dr. Ashmore,” I said.
He nodded again, stepped back into the room, and closed the door.
I looked down the hall, watching the maintenance men carry off Ashmore’s hardware and thinking of grave robbers. Suddenly a room full of post-mortem files seemed a warm and inviting prospect.
11
Status permanently inactive was a long narrow room lined with metal floor-to-ceiling shelves and human-width aisles. The shelves were filled with medical charts. Each chart bore a black tab. Hundreds of consecutive tabs created wavy, inch-thick black lines that seemed to cut the files in half.
Access was blocked by a waist-high counter. Behind it sat an Asian woman in her forties, reading a tabloid-sized Asian-language newspaper. Rounded characters—Thai or Laotian, I guessed. When she saw me she put it down and smiled as if I were delivering good news.
I asked to see the chart for Charles Lyman Jones IV. The name didn’t appear to mean anything to her. She reached under the counter and produced a three-by-five card titled SPI REQUISITION. I filled it out, she took it, said “Jones,” smiled again, and went into the files.
She looked for a while, walking up and down the aisles, pulling out charts, lifting tabs, consulting the slip. When she returned she was empty-handed.
“Not here, Doctor.”
“Any idea where it might be?”
She shrugged. “Someone take.”
“Someone’s already checked it out?”
“Must be, Doctor.”
“Hmm,” I said, wondering who’d be interested in a two-year-old death file. “This is pretty important—for research. Is there any way I could talk to that someone?”
She thought for a moment, smiled, and pulled something else out from under the counter. El Producto cigar box. Inside were stacks of SPI requisition forms held together with spring clasps. Five stacks. She spread them on the counter. The top slips all bore the signature of pathologists. I read the patients’ names, saw no evidence of alphabetization or any other system of classification.
She smiled again, said “Please,” and returned to her newspaper.
I removed the clasp from the first pile and sifted through the forms. It soon became obvious that a system did exist. The slips had been classified by date of request, each stack representing a month, each piece of paper placed in daily chronological order. Five stacks because this was May.
No shortcuts—every slip had to be examined. And if Chad Jones’s chart had been checked out before January 1, the form wouldn’t be here at all.
I began reading the names of dead children. Pretending they were just random assemblages of letters.
A moment later I found what I was looking for, in the February stack. A slip dated February 14 and signed by someone with very poor penmanship. I studied the cramped scrawl, finally deciphered the last name as Herbert. D. Kent Herbert, or maybe it was Dr. Kent Herbert.
Other than the signature, the date, and a hospital phone extension, the slip was blank; POSITION/TITLE, DEPARTMENT, REASON FOR REQUEST hadn’t been filled out. I copied the extension and thanked the woman behind the counter.
“Everything okay?” she said.
“Do you have any idea who this is?”
She came over and peered at the form.
“Habert … no. I just work here one month.” Another smile. “Good hospital,” she said cheerfully.
I began to wonder if she had any idea what she was filing.
“Do you have a hospital directory?”
She looked confused.
“A hospital phone book—the little orange ones?”
“Ah.” She bent and produced one from under the counter.
No Herberts in the medical roster. In the following section, listing nonmedical staff, I found a Ronald Herbert, tagged as Assistant Food Services Manager. But the extension didn’t match the one on the slip and I couldn’t see a catering specialist having an interest in sudden infant death.
I thanked her and left. Just before the door closed, I heard her say, “Come again, Doctor.”
I retraced my steps through the sub-basement, passing Laurence Ashmore’s office again. The door was still closed and when I stopped to listen, I thought I heard movement on the other side.
I kept going, looking for a phone, finally spotted a pay unit just past the elevators. Before I got to it the elevator door opened and Presley Huenengarth stood there, looking at me. He hesitated, then walked out of the lift. Standing with his back to me, he removed a pack of Winstons from his suit pocket and took a long time cracking the seal.
The elevator door started to shut. I checked it with the heel of my hand and got on. The last thing I saw before it closed was the security man’s placid stare behind a rising cloud of smoke.
After riding up to the first floor I used an in-house phone near Radiation Therapy to dial D. Kent Herbert’s extension. The hospital’s main switchboard answered.
“Western Pediatrics.”
“I was dialing extension two-five-oh-six.”
“One moment and I’ll connect you, sir.” A series of clicks and mechanical burps, then: “Sorry, sir, that extension’s been disconnected.”
“Since when?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Any idea whose extension it was?”
“No, sir. Who were you trying to reach?”
“D. Kent Herbert.”
“Is that a doctor?”
“I don’t know.”
Pause. “One moment … The only Herbert I have listed is Ronald, in Food Services. Would you like me to connect you?”
“Why not?”
Five rings.
“Ron Herbert.” Cr
isp voice.
“Mr. Herbert, this is Medical Records, calling about the chart you requisitioned?”
“Come again?”
“The medical chart you checked out in February? From SPI?”
“You must have the wrong guy, pal. This is the cafeteria.”
“You never requested an SPI chart on February 14 of this year?”
Laughter. “Now why the heck would I do that?”
“Thank you, sir.”
“No prob. Hope you find what you’re after.”
I hung up, took the stairs to the ground floor and entered the throng in the lobby. Easing my way through hard-packed bodies, I made it to the Information counter and, after spotting a hospital directory near the clerk’s hand, slid it toward me.
The clerk, a dyed-blond black woman, was answering a Spanish-speaking man’s question in English. Both of them looked tired and the acid of strife embittered the air. The clerk noticed the book in my hand and looked down her nose at me. The man’s gaze followed. The queue behind him swayed and rumbled like a giant serpent.
“You can’t have that,” said the clerk.
I smiled, pointed at my badge, and said, “Just want to borrow it for a minute.”
The clerk rolled her eyes and said, “Just for a minute, that’s all.”
I moved to the far end of the counter and flipped the book open to the first page, running my eyes and my index finger down the numbers column on the right side of each page, prepared to scan hundreds of extensions until I found 2506. But I hit the jackpot after only a couple of dozen.
ASHMORE, L.W. (TOX.) 2506
I replaced the book and thanked the clerk. She glared again, snatched it, and placed it out of reach.
“Half a minute,” I said. “Do I get a refund?”
Then I saw the faces of the people waiting in line and regretted being a wise-ass.
I went up to see Cassie, but there was a DO NOT DISTURB sign on her door and the nurse on duty told me both she and Cindy were sleeping.
On my way out of the hospital, my thoughts were intruded upon by someone calling my name. Looking up, I saw a tall, mustachioed man approaching from the main entrance. Late thirties, white coat, rimless glasses, Ivy League clothes. The mustache was an extravagant waxed black handlebar. The rest of him seemed arranged around it.
He waved.
I reached into the past and drew out a name.
Dan Kornblatt. Cardiologist. Former UC San Francisco chief resident. His first year at the hospital had been my last. Our relationship had been limited to case conferences and casual chats about the Bay Area—I’d done a fellowship at Langley Porter and Kornblatt delighted in pushing the proposition that no civilization existed south of Carmel. I remembered him as long on brains and short on tact with peers and parents, but tender with his young patients. Four other doctors were walking with him, two women, two men, all young. The five of them moved rapidly, accompanied by swinging arms—physical fitness or a strong sense of purpose. As they got closer I saw that Kornblatt’s hair had grayed at the temples and his hawk face had taken on a few seams.
“Alex Delaware. My, my.”
“Hi, Dan.”
“To what do we owe the honor?”
“Here on a consult.”
“Really? Gone private?”
“A few years ago.”
“Where?”
“The West Side.”
“But of course. Been back up to the real city lately?”
“Not lately.”
“Me neither. Not since two Christmases ago. Miss that Tadich Grill, all that real-city culture.”
He made introductions all around. Two of the other doctors were residents, one was a Cardiology fellow and one of the women—a short, dark, Mideastern woman—was an attending physician. Obligatory smiles and handshakes all around. Four names that passed right through me.
Kornblatt said, “Alex, here, was one of our star psychologists. Back when we had them.” To me: “Speaking of which, I thought you guys were verboten around here. Has something changed in that regard?”
I shook my head. “It’s just an isolated consult.”
“Ah. So where you heading? Out?”
I nodded.
“If you’re not crunched for time, why don’t you come with us? Emergency staff meeting. Are you still on staff? Yeah, you must be if you’re doing a consult.” His brows creased. “How’d you manage to avoid the Psychiatry bloodbath?”
“Through a technicality. My affiliation was in Pediatrics, not Psychiatry.”
“Pediatrics—that’s interesting. Good loophole.” To the others: “You see, there’s always a loophole.”
Four knowing looks. None of them was over thirty.
Kornblatt said, “So, you wanna hang with us? The meeting’s an important one—that is, if you’re still feeling sufficiently affiliated to care what goes on around here.”
“Sure,” I said, and fell in alongside him. “What’s the topic?”
“The decline and fall of the Western Peds Empire. As evidenced by the murder of Larry Ashmore. Actually, it’s a memorial for him.” He frowned. “You heard about what happened, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “Terrible.”
“Symptomatic, Alex.”
“Of what?”
“What’s happened to this place. Look at the way the whole thing’s been handled by the administration. A physician gets murdered and no one even bothers to send around a memo. Not that they’re paper-shy when it comes to disseminating their directives.”
“I know,” I said. “I happened to read one. On the door of the library.”
He scowled and his mustache flared. “What library?”
“I saw that too.”
“Sucks,” he said. “Every time I have research to do I’ve got to drive over to the med school.”
We walked across the lobby and came up against the queues. One of the doctors noticed a patient waiting in line, said “I’ll join you in a moment,” and left the group to greet the child.
“Don’t miss the meeting,” Kornblatt called after her, without breaking step. When we were clear of the crowd, he said, “No library, no Psych department, no overhead for grants, total hiring freeze. Now, there’s talk about more cutbacks in all departments—straight across the board. Entropy. The bastards probably plan to tear the place down and sell the real estate.”
“Not in this market.”
“No, I’m serious, Alex. We don’t make money and these are bottom-line people. Pave it over, put in lots of parking lots.”
“Well,” I said, “they might start by paving the ones across the street.”
“Don’t hold your breath. We are peons to these guys. Just another form of service staff.”
“How’d they get control?”
“Jones—the new chairman—was managing the hospital’s investments. Supposedly did a really good job, so when hard times got harder the board claimed they needed a financial pro and voted him in. He, in turn, fired all the old administration and brought in his own army.”
Another crowd milled near the doors. Lots of tapping feet, weary head shakes, and needless punches of the buttons. Two of the lifts were stuck on upper floors. An OUT OF ORDER sign was taped across the door of the third.
“Onward, troops,” said Kornblatt, pointing to the stairwell and increasing his pace to a near-run. All of them vaulted the first flight with the zest of triathlon junkies. When we got to the top, Kornblatt was bouncing like a boxer.
“Go, team!” he said, pushing the door open.
The auditorium was a few paces down. A couple of doctors were lounging near the entrance, which was topped by a handwritten banner that said ASHMORE MEMORIAL.
I said, “Whatever happened to Kent Herbert?”
Kornblatt said, “Who?”
“Herbert. The toxicologist. Didn’t he work with Ashmore?”
“I didn’t know anyone worked with Ashmore. The guy was a loner, a real—” He stopped himself. “Herbert?
No, can’t say I remember him.”
We entered the big fan-shaped lecture hall; rows of gray cloth seats sloped sharply to a wooden lecture pit. A dusty green board on wheels stood at the rear of the pit. The upholstery on the seats was dingy and some of the cushions were tattered. The light, fluctuating hum of occasional conversation filled the room.
The auditorium held at least five hundred chairs but no more than seventy were occupied. The spotty attendance gave it the look of a pass-fail class. Kornblatt and his entourage headed down toward the front of the room, shaking hands and trading a few high-fives along the way. I hung back and sat by myself in the uppermost row.
Lots of white coats—full-time staffers. But where were the private practitioners? Unable to attend on short notice or choosing to stay away? Western Peds had always suffered from town-gown tension, but the full-timers and the physicians out in “the real world” had always managed to achieve a grudging symbiosis.
As I looked around some more, I was struck by another scarcity: gray heads. Where were all the senior people I’d known?
Before I could mull that, a man holding a cordless microphone stepped into the pit and called for quiet. Thirty-five; soft, pale baby face under a big blond Afro. His white coat was slightly yellowed and too big for him. Under it he wore a black shirt, and a brown knit tie.
He said, “Please,” and the hum died. A few beepers went off, then silence.
“Thanks to all of you for coming. Could someone get the door?”
Faces turned. I realized I was closest to the exit, got up and shut the door.
“Okay,” said Afro. “The first order of business is a moment of silence for our colleague Dr. Laurence Ashmore, so if you could all please rise.…”
Everyone stood. Heads drooped. A long minute passed.
Afro said, “Okay, please be seated.” Walking to the board, he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote:
AGENDA
1. ASHMORE MEMORIAL
2.
Four Classic Alex Delaware Thrillers 4-Book Bundle Page 61