by Leslie Glass
Clara nodded solemnly. “I’ve always thought so,” she said.
thirty-one
Mike Sanchez and April Woo were due at work at four P.M. on Saturday. At exactly nine A.M. Mike took a calculated risk. He pulled his red Camaro into an empty spot in front of the neat brick house in Astoria where April lived with her parents. The house had green fiberglass awnings in the shape of fans over each window. April had once told him the awnings made every raindrop sound like thunder.
“What are they good for?” he’d asked.
“For show.”
She told him the decoration had been installed by the previous owners and the Woos had decided not to waste the cost of the improvement by removing it, even though they themselves did not like them. Mike had pondered their reasoning for a long time. He was beginning to understand how he might solve his problem.
His problem was the porcupine living inside him in the soft, vulnerable parts of his body. The porcupine was April Woo. He wasn’t exactly sure how she had moved from the outside of him to the inside of him. But there she was. When he wasn’t with her, he thought about her. When he was with her, he couldn’t stop looking at her. Sometimes he wanted to touch her so badly that holding back felt like too much steam in a turned-off radiator. This was one of the many kinds of Chinese torture.
April had told him in old China the death sentence was never only death. Sometimes the guilty party was pulled apart by four horses, then hacked into pieces, the cut-off head paraded around on a stick. Sometimes the condemned man was skinned alive. And people thought the violence in New York was bad. Mike had no doubt April was capable of a similar lack of forgiveness if he dared to touch her where she didn’t want to be touched. Which was everywhere.
Sometimes his desire for her took his breath away. It occurred to him that she was rendering him brain-dead and helpless by extracting his oxygen from the air. He’d had many women in his thirty-four years. Not one of them, not even the girl he’d married, had ever taken his breath away. Well, certainly not on a regular basis with no physical contact. And now he was too preoccupied with April to get relief from other women. He was concerned that her scorn was powerful enough to cause his dick to wither away and die. He worked out a lot, smelled other women’s perfume and their sweat, and was not interested. He figured this was the way homos felt about women and worried that April was making him gay.
From Mike’s point of view, wanting April Woo was stupid, wasteful, irritating, and dangerous. Dangerous because whenever he let her know, she raised the spines on her back and tore at his gut. But he was beginning to see a way out. April was a person of quality, of character. To get her he was going to have to get the approval of her mother, her father, and quite possibly her entire community. When he got that, he’d have her.
He got out of the car and stretched. Busy by the front door was a thin man of indeterminate age with his very little hair cut so short his head looked like an unadorned skull. The man wore a white shirt much too large for him and black trousers, black Chinese canvas shoes—the newest version with rubber soles. At the moment he was carefully trimming a dense, prickly bush with shiny dark green leaves and red berries on it, attaching the shoots to a trellis that curved up and over the front door, and peering at his work through black frames with thick lenses. There was a similar untamed bush on the other side he hadn’t gotten to yet. It would be a while before the two bushes met above the door.
Mike guessed the man was April’s father, Ja Fo Woo, making his own improvements to the house. The trellis had not been there the last time Mike had seen the house. Neither had the tiny apricot poodle sitting at attention at the top of the three steps that led to the front door, watching the thin man’s every move.
For a few seconds, Mike, too, watched the man’s every move. The man continued snipping and tying, but the dog jumped up and began barking excitedly. The sudden racket of yips and yaps brought two faces to the windows. Upstairs, between a parting of white curtains, April’s face appeared. At precisely the same position in the window below it, her mother’s head came into view.
The man spoke in Chinese to the dog, but he didn’t turn his head as Mike advanced up the path toward the house. This ignoring of him forced Mike to speak first.
“Morning, sir,” he said. “I’m Mike Sanchez.”
“Know who you are.” Now the man turned his head to look at him. On display between big teeth was suspended a slender gold toothpick. “Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.” Mike was wearing cowboy boots and the leather jacket that made him look like a drug dealer. He’d combed his hair four or five times, trimmed his mustache, splashed his body with cologne, and gargled with Scope. “Very nice to meet you,” he offered.
Woo’s father shifted the toothpick to one side of his mouth and elaborately sniffed at Mike’s collection of strong odors. He himself smelled of shirt starch, garlic, and cigarettes. “Not here, went out.”
“Ahh … April?”
No, she hadn’t. She was in the house, now on the first floor conversing with her mother in Chinese, probably caught on the way out. It sounded as if the two women were in something of a dispute. In fact, if Mike had to interpret their noises, he’d have to conclude they were screaming at each other.
The dog became more excited, jumped up on him. Mike leaned over to pet it. “Hi, guy, uh, girl.”
“Dmsm!” Woo’s father barked.
“Ah, excuse me?”
“Dog name Dmsm.”
“Yes, April told me that. She’s very cute. The dog, that is.” Mike patted the dog, then straightened up as the front door swung open.
April came out in jeans and a sweatshirt. She didn’t look happy to see him.
He gave her a big smile. “April, you came back.”
She clashed eyes with her father. Ja Fo Woo coughed and spit into a patch of lilies. After a brief, awkward silence, April mumbled, “This is my father … Sergeant Sanchez.” End of introduction.
“We’ve already met,” Mike replied.
Two seconds later, April’s mother appeared at the door. Sai Woo wore a brown Chinese dress and a blue padded jacket. Her hair was black as shoe polish, tightly curled all over her head. Her body was as thin as the toothpick still on steady exhibit in her husband’s mouth.
She glanced at April and snapped out something in Chinese.
“And this is my mother,” April said dutifully. “Sergeant Sanchez.”
Sai Woo looked him over, frowned a little at the leather jacket. “Why Sergeant? Why not Captain?” she demanded. She, too, sniffed the air around him, trying to get the hang of it.
“Mom!” April protested.
“You not pass test?” Sai demanded.
Mike scuffed a boot on the sidewalk sheepishly, like a kid confronted by an important teacher who was hoping to stick him with a D. “Ahh, I didn’t take the test,” he admitted.
“Mebbe next time take test. Betta for you.”
“Maybe I will. Thank you for thinking of it,” Mike muttered.
“Think of everything.”
“Good. That’s good.” He nodded at how good thinking was.
“Well, thanks for dropping by.” April jerked her head at Mike and headed down the walk toward his car.
“Where go?”
“Just over there to the car, Mom. Mike has to go.”
“Dmsm!” Sai said sharply.
“What?”
Sai pointed at the dog.
“Oh, and this is Dim Sum,” April said, enunciating carefully. “Remember Dim Sum, Mike?”
“Yes, I do. She seems very happy here.” He was breathing a little easier now that his rank in the Department was no longer an issue, patted the dog that jumped up on his leg again.
“Velly rucky dog.” Sai made a strange noise. Instantly the little dog let go of Mike’s leg and sat, cocking its head to one side for praise.
“Wow, it sat. I’m impressed. Good girl, Dim Sum.”
“Say good-bye, Mike.”
Figuring he’d accomplished his goal, Mike took a few seconds to say his good-byes and admire the tiny yard.
“They talked to me,” he said triumphantly when he joined her. “I was kind of worried, but it went great. What do you think?”
“Well, they may have talked to you,” April conceded. “But don’t get any ideas that they like you. They don’t like you. What’s up?”
“They have someone better in mind? Huh?”
“What’s up, Mike?” April tapped her foot irritably, one eye on her parents, both dead silent by the front door, watching them.
Mike waved at them. “Next time they’ll ask me in.”
“Trust me, they will never ask you in.”
“What makes you so sure, querida?”
“You smell too sweet for a man.”
He stared at them, smiling affably. They did not smile back. “That’s pretty bigoted.”
“Well, they have their own ideas about things. What are you doing here anyway?”
He shrugged and turned to her. She sounded annoyed but was leaning against his car with a smile that lit up her face and cut right through him.
“I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by and—” He shrugged. “You know, meet the family.”
“Well, you met the family. Happy now?”
He nodded. “Now maybe you’d like to come with me to check out this place I’m supposed to look at.”
The smile vanished. “Oh, come on, Mike. I can’t go looking at apartments with you.” April shook her head. “I already told you. You know I can’t do that.”
“It’s a house.”
“Oh, yeah? Aren’t you in the wrong borough?”
“It’s nice in Queens. I like it here. Come on, get in. It’ll only take a few minutes.” He opened the passenger door for her. “I need some expert advice. Come on, you know I’d do the same for you.”
April glanced at her parents, then down at her jeans and sneakers. It was about 9:20. They didn’t have to be at work until four. Mike smiled and tried to keep his mustache from quivering.
“Damn you,” she muttered. Then, after a second, she screamed something out in Chinese, shattering his eardrums.
“What did you say?” He banged the side of his head to stop the ringing.
“I told them there’s been a triple homicide and I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Good thinking, querida. But a triple homicide will take a lot more time to clean up than an hour.”
“True. I better get my bag.” April ran up the walk and into the house. The dog and her mother followed her, slamming the door. Two minutes later April was back with red lipstick on her lips and the handbag slung over her shoulder. By then her father had resumed his pruning.
thirty-two
Harold Dickey had until Monday morning to clear up this problem of Clara’s, and not a second longer. That meant he had two days—Saturday and Sunday—to sort through the hospital dirt. Dickey had been surprised that little Gunn Tram, who had always been so eager to be helpful whenever he needed information, suddenly got quiet when he asked about dissatisfied employees. After three decades of knowing every kink, every whisper of discontent from everyone on the payroll, Gunn suddenly could think of no one who had a problem of any kind with the Centre.
“Why are you asking?” she wanted to know.
“Because there’s some mischief going on, and I intend to find out who’s behind it. Have any ideas, Gunn?”
She shook her head so hard her double chins wobbled. “No, no idea. I haven’t heard a thing.”
Later, she actually claimed not to remember the tragic case the year before when a male nurse had given the wrong medication to a new inpatient and the patient had jumped off a terrace, impaling himself on the fence around a terrace several floors below. Harold remembered how angry the nurse had been when he was fired. His name was Bobbie something, and he’d been working at the Centre for many years. He claimed he’d been framed.
When Harold asked Gunn whatever happened to Bobbie, Gunn was almost hostile. “How should I know?” she replied angrily.
How indeed? The same way Gunn knew everything else. She was constantly asking questions and following up. She claimed it was her job to know things. She certainly must have known that Harold had had more than one run-in with Bobbie before the tragedy, when the Centre had had no choice but to terminate the man’s employment. Bobbie had a problem with authority, and probably with women, too. It was easy to imagine Bobbie harassing Clara. And Gunn didn’t want to hand over Bobbie’s file. To Harold, that was significant.
“Why won’t you leave him alone? He’s not even here anymore,” Gunn told Dickey. “How could he be the one you’re looking for?”
“All the same, Gunn …” Harold gave her a sharp look, and she quickly produced what he wanted.
On Saturday, Harold left Westchester before nine and was in his office on the nineteenth floor of the Centre by 9:45. He was fueled by the need to spare Clara the tremendous damage to herself that would result in her trying to force him out. Clara had made many mistakes. Harold knew he was loved and revered at the Centre, and Clara was not. If she foolishly tried to create bad feelings about him, there’d be a backlash. Clara would be the one to fall down like a house of cards, like a sun-dried sand castle hit by a tiny wave on the beach. He could not allow his own protégée to make a fool of herself and polarize the Centre in this way.
Harold carried up coffee from the cafeteria and began concentrating on the histories in the files Gunn had given him. There were so many incidents and problems with staff, every single one documented. The files he had collected contained case accidents of varying degrees of seriousness. And Harold’s committee had investigated every one.
Emily, a seventeen-year-old affective-schizophrenic girl on a locked ward with a special precaution re: sharps, had been confused with another female locked in for a food disorder. Emily asked for a razor to shave her legs, was allowed one by a nurse who thought she needed only arm’s-length supervision, then failed to provide that. The nurse went to the bathroom. Emily slashed her own arms and legs in a dozen places, started screaming, then attacked the orderly who heard her screams and tried to take the razor away.
Patrick, a thirty-eight-year-old paranoid epileptic male, had been put in restraints with the special precaution of checking vital signs every fifteen minutes. The man had a seizure and suffered brain damage during the twelve-hour period when no one had checked on him.
Martha, a sixty-five-year-old depressed woman on a weekend pass, was delivered by a nurse to the wrong house. The disoriented patient didn’t know where she lived and the nurse’s error was discovered only when the woman’s family called to find out why she was three hours late.
An adolescent male recovering from a psychotic episode was given an “arm’s-length” pass to buy a pair of shoes and get a Big Mac. The aide taking him out stopped at a newsstand to look at the sports headlines in the Daily News. Believing he was invisible, the boy walked out into oncoming traffic and was struck by a bus.
There were also cases of elopements—patients walking off locked wards and disappearing for days at a time, or forever. Patients getting off their floors and wandering around the hospital wreaking one kind of havoc or another. Nurses who didn’t show up, or who showed up and did the wrong thing. There were a lot of cases of screwups, many, many cases of poor judgment where self-destructive patients had opportunities to harm themselves or others.
As Harold reviewed case after case, the pain slowly receded from his head and chest. He could not allow Clara’s vicious attack of Friday morning to defeat him. He would not let it hurt him. He had no doubt that Clara would love him again, as she had loved him before—as soon as he uncovered the true culprit of everything she now blamed him for, all those evil pranks. He had no doubt of it.
All he had to do was find the rotten egg. Harold knew it could not be a member of the faculty or a senior administrator. At that level they were all too well
screened for this kind of disorder. If it was not one of them, it had to be somebody who had access to the keys, someone who could wander around on all of the floors without attracting notice. It was somebody from the inside, but not one of them. He would find the person, was in control again.
All Saturday he felt better. To further assert his control, he took the bottle of Johnnie Walker out of his desk drawer and set it out where he could see it. He would not drink a drop until he had solved his problem and restored order to his life. The bottle was half full. That perplexed him. He remembered a nearly full bottle, with maybe an ounce missing at most. He drank a bottle a week in his office. Not a drop more. He was certain he’d replaced a full bottle on Friday morning, had only the tiniest sip on Friday afternoon. Yes, he was certain of it. He hadn’t felt well on Friday, didn’t want to drink.
From time to time he glanced at the bottle. Was he kidding himself about his consumption? He badly wanted a drink, particularly by late afternoon, when he was used to having one. He put it off and put it off, telling himself he was in control. He didn’t find what he was looking for in the files.
By Sunday he’d thrust them aside and opened his own files in the computer. It was there in his computer that he found his graphic notes on Bobbie—Bobbie Boudreau—and remembered the kinds of stunts the male nurse had pulled before they were finally forced to fire him. There was no question in Harold’s mind. Bobbie was Clara’s harasser.
The first thing Harold did was to leave a message for Clara. The second thing he did was have a celebratory drink while he waited for Clara to return from wherever she was and call him back.
thirty-three
On Sunday Clara caught the nonstop noon flight from Sarasota to Newark. She was back in her apartment by four, clearheaded and confident. She hit the play button on her answering machine and heard Harold’s voice.
“Darling, it’s Sunday around two o’clock. I’m in my office. I’ve got the solution to your little problem, so please give me a call and let me know what time you’ll be here.”