Stunned, I wandered out of the ICU and into the waiting room. I felt flushed, not faint, as I dropped into a chair. My eyes blurred, sweat beaded on my brow, and a nauseating watering filled my mouth. There was a ringing in my ears, an echo of the flat line alarm, and everything slowed to an unreal pause.
I deconstructed the events I’d just witnessed. How could the respirator tube have come undone? And when? Then, in horror, I recalled how I had dallied at my father’s apartment, enjoying a few extra moments with Gigi before making my way to the hospital. Would five or ten minutes have made a difference? Might I have been there to hear the tube fall to the floor? How much difference might five or ten minutes of oxygen have made to my stricken father? Why was I such a wretch? He was going to die, damn it! And all because I’d wanted Gigi to show me how to make Italian coffee. I hadn’t even paid attention to his lesson, captivated instead by the beauty of his face and not even watching his hands.
It seemed I’d been there for hours, though it was only forty-five minutes, when Nurse Tielman, the slim woman who had heard my cries an hour earlier, entered the waiting room. She touched my shoulder to get my attention.
“Your father’s heart is beating again,” she said. “He’s critical, but stabilized for the moment. The doctor had to perform a tracheotomy to facilitate the ventilation. It looks worse than it is. It really is more comfortable for the patient in cases like this.”
I breathed, and the ringing in my ears stopped. The world came back into sharp focus, and my heart was racing. I tried to speak, had to clear my throat before any words came out, then asked, “What happened in there?”
“There are three of us at this hour: Phyllis, Charleen, and me,” she began. “Phyllis, the girl you saw in there, was treating an emergency on the other end of the ward. Char got a phone call about two hours ago. Really strange. A man mumbled something about her daughter, then hung up. Well, Charleen panicked and thought the guy had taken her daughter. She told Phyllis what had happened and ran home. She’s going to catch hell for this.”
“And?” I asked, sure I knew the punch line.
“And it turned out to be a prank,” said Nurse Tielman with a shrug of her shoulders. “Her kid was in bed sleeping.”
Feeling my legs beneath me again, though still flushed and agitated, I set out to find Charleen. The nurses’ station was a circular fort that dominated the ICU from the middle of the ward. Inside the ring, as many as ten nurses could sit comfortably at one time. There was a stainless steel coffee percolator, a blood drive sign-up sheet, March of Dimes donation board, and a duty roster with fifteen names and phone numbers. I leaned over the counter and asked for Charleen.
“That’s me,” said the pretty Negro woman who looked up at me.
“My name is Ellie Stone,” I said. “Abraham Stone’s daughter.”
The nurse blushed. “I’m so sorry, Miss Stone. I feel responsible for what happened, but that phone call . . .”
“I understand. But I was wondering if you could tell me about it.”
“It was very spooky,” she said. “I had just finished a round of the ward when the phone rang—this one right here,” and she indicated the house phone on top of the counter, not the one on the nurses’ side. “I picked it up,” she continued, “and a man asked for me, then said something about my daughter. I couldn’t exactly make it out.”
“Did you recognize the voice?”
She shook her head. “It was rather faint, like he had a hand over the mouthpiece.”
“Did he say he had her or that he was going to get her?”
“I don’t know. It all happened so fast. He just asked for me, said something like ‘I know,’ or ‘I can see your pretty little girl,’ then he hung up. I was crazy with fear, Miss Stone.”
“Is that her?” I asked, motioning to a curling black-and-white snapshot thumbtacked to a cork bulletin board inside the station. As I looked, I could make out the names on the duty roster next to the photograph.
She nodded. “She’s in the seventh grade. Honors student.”
“Very pretty. I understand your worry.” I straightened up, surveyed the ward from my position then leaned forward again. “You said he asked for you. Did he know your name?”
“Yes. He asked for Nurse Lionel. That’s me.”
“He didn’t say your first name?” She shook her head again. “Do you remember what time he called?”
“I didn’t look at my watch, but I started my round at five thirty, and it usually takes me twenty or thirty minutes. I’d say he called at six. Maybe a few minutes before.”
I looked at Nurse Lionel’s left hand: no ring. “Why didn’t you call home to see if your daughter was all right?” I asked.
She was embarrassed by my question and looked away. “Trudy and I—Trudy’s my daughter—we live alone, just over in Jersey City. I’m not married.”
“Don’t you have a telephone?”
She shook her head.
“Do you remember anyone in particular hanging around the waiting room recently? Someone who might have seen the snapshot, maybe read your name tag?”
“There are lots of people trying to get in here,” she said. “Our patients are quite ill, and their families and friends figure there may not be another chance to see them before they pass.”
“But this is Intensive Care,” I said. “Surely you don’t let all of these patients have visitors.”
“Of course not. But that doesn’t keep them away. And between the permitted visitors and the people who wander around the hospital, there’s plenty of traffic on this floor. It’s a distraction for us, but we try to remember that these people are going through difficult times. We have to be firm but polite.”
“Tell me,” I said, retrieving a notepad and pencil from my purse, “do you remember any people wanting to see my father?”
“Well enough to give you a description? No. There was a man in his fifties with a young man—maybe his son; and there was another man, older, I think, who was very quiet; and there was a young man with glasses who’s been here a few times. There may have been a woman, or a girl, I don’t remember. Oh, and there was a very handsome young man, too. They may have been for Mr. Gelb, whose bed was right next to your father’s.” She lowered her voice again: “He died last night.”
I had some ideas of who might fit Nurse Lionel’s descriptions, but what did that prove? In essence, it meant that my father’s best and most loyal friends had made themselves suspects by showing their concern for him.
“May I ask a question, Miss Stone? Do you think one of your father’s visitors made that phone call?”
I told her I did.
“But I don’t know any of those people,” she said. “And why would they want to hurt my Trudy?”
“This has nothing to do with you or your daughter,” I said, jotting down a couple of numbers in my book. “Whoever called you was trying to get you off the ward for a few minutes.”
“But why?”
I flipped my pad shut and slipped it back into my purse. “To murder my father.”
Dr. Feldman, the doctor who’d saved my father’s life, believed the respirator failure was an accident, that the tubes hadn’t been secured properly. The oxygen pumping through the machine could easily have popped the tube off had the clamp been loose, he reasoned. I might have bought the good doctor’s theory, had it not been for the mysterious phone call to Charleen Lionel. I figured the caller was my father’s burglar. He had probably been hanging around the hospital for the past few days, looking for the opportunity to finish the job he had started in the study. Perhaps my father had seen him and would identify him as soon as he woke up. Or maybe my father never saw him, and the burglar hated him enough to risk a second attempt on his life.
I dialed the Sixth Precinct from the row of telephone booths Gigi Lucchesi had used the night before and asked for Sergeant McKeever. Thirty minutes later, in the lounge outside the ICU, I was in conference with the quiet, redheaded detective.
“I’ve spoken with Dr. Mortonson and Dr. Feldman,” he said, his eyes fixed somewhere over my right shoulder, “and they’re convinced this is merely a case of a loose clamp letting go of an oxygen hose.”
“Really?” I asked. “Don’t you think a technician performs a couple of checks when he hooks up a patient to one of those machines? Loose clamps on oxygen tubes? That’s like launching a Vanguard rocket and forgetting to close the door.”
“Well, Miss Stone, that’s one way of looking at it, but . . .”
“Did Mortonson tell you about the phone call to Nurse Lionel?” I asked.
McKeever nodded. “Yes, but I don’t see how that’s related. You see, the caller knew Mrs. Lionel by name and knew she had a daughter. I’d be more inclined to suspect some local pervert. Maybe a neighbor of hers.”
“I’ve been coming here for just a couple of days,” I said, “and you’d be surprised what I can tell you about Nurses Lionel, Riley Tielman, and Phyllis Corman.”
McKeever cleared his throat and frowned nervously. “For instance?”
“For instance, Riley Tielman lives in Westchester County but occasionally spends the night on the Upper East Side.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No,” I said, retrieving the pad from my purse once again. “Her home phone number is (914) UNderhill 5-2091. That’s Westchester.”
“And the Upper East Side?”
“On Wednesday and Thursday nights, she can be reached at ATwater 4-3591. That’s somewhere in the east Seventies or Eighties.”
“Well, if she didn’t tell you these things, you must have asked someone else. But wouldn’t the other nurses remember someone asking for Mrs. Lionel’s number?”
“I didn’t need to ask anyone. There’s a duty roster tacked to the bulletin board in the nurses’ station. It lists the names and phone numbers of the nurses who work the various shifts; in case one’s sick, they call another on the list. The numbers are in plain view. I got them leaning over the counter as I spoke to Nurse Lionel. And I’d wager whoever disconnected the respirator got Nurse Lionel’s name the same way.”
“What about her daughter? How would a stranger know she had a daughter?”
“There’s a photograph of a pretty little colored girl, also in plain view, near the duty roster. And in the three days I’ve been coming here, Charleen Lionel is the only colored nurse on the ward.”
The police sergeant considered my presentation for a long moment.
“But who would want to kill your father?” he asked finally. “I don’t see any motive other than robbery, and your father has nothing to steal here.”
“Have you questioned any of his colleagues yet?” I asked.
McKeever looked down. “I didn’t think it was necessary, seeing as this looked like a routine burglary.”
“Did you know my brother’s gravestone was vandalized last Wednesday?” I asked. “Two days before the attack on my father.”
McKeever’s eyes grew before me. “No, um, I didn’t know that,” he stammered. “Where did this happen?”
“In Westchester.”
“And you believe the two crimes are connected?”
I shrugged. “It’s possible. But there’s another crime I’d like to ask you about.”
Now he looked frightened.
“Sergeant, when a body turns up dead, do the police automatically send a Homicide detective?”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “The preliminary fact-gathering may be done by the responding officer or a dispatched detective, but not Homicide unless things look fishy from the start.”
“Could you find out for me who investigated the electrocution death of a man named Ruggero Ercolano? It happened last Saturday night.”
McKeever seemed put out. “What’s this all about, Miss Stone? Are you planning to solve every crime in New York during your stay?”
I had to smile. This diffident man had somehow found some sarcasm buried beneath his timidity.
“No,” I said. “Just a case of vandalism on my brother’s grave last Wednesday, a curious burglary in my father’s house on Friday night, and . . . ,” I drew it out for effect, “the accidental death of one of his colleagues twenty-four hours later.”
The detective swallowed hard. “A colleague? This Ercolano guy?”
I nodded.
McKeever blushed, and I could tell he was stinging. He took a scrap of paper and a gnawed yellow pencil from his coat pocket. “OK, where did he live and how did he spell his name?”
After extracting guarantees that a police guard would stand watch over my father, at least until morning, I left the hospital and boarded an uptown train at Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenue. It was almost three o’clock when I emerged from the subway on Ninety-Sixth and Broadway and headed west to Riverside Drive.
“Eleonora, come in and tell me what happened,” said Saettano. “A heart attack, you say?”
“Something like that,” I said.
Saettano helped me off with my black tweed coat and took my purse. I smoothed my hair and skirt in the foyer mirror, then he led me to his den, a quiet room with two armchairs, a sofa, and a magnificent view of the Hudson some ten stories below. He indicated a silver tray on the credenza against the wall.
“Please, help yourself, Eleonora,” he said, motioning to the bar across the room. “I know you enjoy your drink.”
I would have liked something, but not after that invitation. I moistened my lips with my tongue and declined politely.
Saettano took a seat on the more worn of the brown leather chairs. The late afternoon sun splashed over him, and he closed his eyes as if to absorb the warmth.
“The sun does my bones good,” he said.
I sat in the chair next to his and squinted through the brilliant rays of the January afternoon. The old man laid his cane over his lap as if he intended to stay.
“Tell me, Eleonora.”
“When I arrived at the hospital this morning,” I said, “I found my father’s ventilator disconnected. He couldn’t breathe, and his heart stopped just after I reattached it.”
Saettano mumbled something in Italian to himself. “Perhaps it was an accident?”
“The air tube had been pulled out of the ventilator. It was no accident.”
“Who would do such a thing? It’s monstrous.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But the burglary struck me as false from the start. I asked myself, why the random destruction of so many record albums? Why was the manuscript taken? How did the burglar get into the apartment? There was no sign of forced entry or struggle. And, if the thief had truly been after valuables, wouldn’t he have taken my father’s billfold or searched the bedroom? Any self-respecting burglar would have looked for jewelry, unless he knew there was no woman of the house.”
Saettano listened patiently. I watched him watching me, his face effulgently orange in the sun, his eyes nearly transparent except for the whitish fog of cataracts. I continued:
“My father must have known the burglar. Or, rather, the burglar knew my father.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I wasn’t until this morning. It was just a vague doubt in the back of my mind. But then I sifted through the broken records, and the music finally clued me in. I separated the destroyed records from the ones merely thrown about the room. Let me run the names past you and see if you come to the same conclusion as I did.”
Saettano nodded.
“Gustav Mahler,” I began. “Felix Mendelssohn, Ernest Bloch, Max Bruch, Meyerbeer, Gershwin, Rubinstein, Bruckner . . .”
“No other records were destroyed? Just these?”
I nodded.
The old man turned to face the window. He tapped his forehead a few times with the bony fingers of his right hand. Then he cleared his throat to speak.
“Dunque,” he said in Italian, his brow furrowed, “indeed, there appears to be a pattern. But one of those names spoils the pudding, as you say in English
.”
I knew what he said had something to do with the proverb about proof and the eating of the pudding, but to straighten it out would have distracted me from his point.
“All of the composers you named are Jewish,” he announced. “Except one, or two, actually: Anton Bruckner and Max Bruch. And of course Mendelssohn practiced Christianity, but if what you’re driving at is anti-Semitism, I suppose your burglar would consider him as Jewish as David Ben-Gurion.”
Swayed by the preponderance of evidence, I had assumed that Bruckner, who’d lost a 78 and an LP in the pogrom, was a Jew. Now, my theory seemed flawed. Still, the others were all Jews, Mendelssohn’s baptism notwithstanding.
“Your theory is an interesting one, Eleonora,” said the old man. “After all, if you mistook Bruckner for a Jew, then perhaps a burglar as cultured as you could have made the same mistake. In the main, your instincts are on target. Bruch was not a Jew himself, but his Kol Nidrei and Bloch’s Poèmes juifs are distinctly Jewish themes. Mahler was reviled by Nazi propagandists—and even Hitler himself—as a decadent Jewish composer. Rubinstein and Gershwin are easily recognizable as Jews by their famous names. And Meyerbeer, whose real name was Jakob Liebmann Beer, was obviously Jewish.”
We both considered the idea in silence.
Saettano nodded finally and said: “Yes, I accept your conclusion, Eleonora, even if we must assume imperfection in the burglar’s research. But what does it mean? How does this illuminate the crime?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “My mother’s jewels and my father’s cash were never part of the burglar’s plan. And if greed wasn’t the motivation, then violence was. My father knew his attacker, I’m sure of that now. Whoever attacked him knows he is Jewish and, obviously, hates him for it. This wasn’t a real robbery. The burglar was after my father and his manuscript. The knickknacks he stole were a smokescreen to make it look like a robbery gone wrong. I think the burglary and the vandalism of my brother’s grave were the work of one person.”
“Then your father is still in danger. What can you do to protect him?”
Styx & Stone Page 9