First, Do No Harm

by Larry Karp

  Harmony’s chest rose and fell slowly in rhythm with puffs from the pulmotor. Samuel scanned her body, head to feet. He listened to her lungs, heart, abdomen, tapped joints with his rubber hammer. Then he straightened, looked at the nurse. “Get a spinal tray.”

  The nurse ran from the room. Samuel rolled up his sleeves, took a step toward the sink. “Called a neurosurgeon?” he asked DeNooyer.

  “Bentley. He’s on his way.”

  Mid-scrub, Samuel half-turned, gave me a hard look. “Go on home, Leo,” he said. “We left Ramona pretty upset.”

  I figured my mother had already calmed herself with a syringe and needle, but I couldn’t say that to Samuel, certainly not in front of a room full of people. As I walked toward the door, Mrs. Belmont motioned me over, gave me a quick hug, then a pat on the arm. “Say a prayer, dear,” she twittered.

  I spat “Say a prayer!” all over the six blocks back home, threw the front door open, stamped into the empty living room, ran upstairs. Ramona’s door was closed. I edged it ajar. My mother lay across the bed, syringe and needle still in her outstretched right hand. Now I understood—Samuel hadn’t dismissed me. Stuck in the Steinberg E.R., he’d put me in charge of a second emergency. I ran to the bedside, put fingers to Ramona’s wrist. Pulse slow, only fifty-two, but strong. She was breathing eight times a minute, half-normal. Call an ambulance? Not yet. Keep her airway clear, monitor vital signs. Might not have to hang out our dirty laundry for all Hobart to see.

  About six o’clock, Samuel pulled into the room. He looked ravaged. “Pulse’s up from fifty-two to sixty-eight,” I said. “Respiratory rate, fourteen, up from eight. She’s…all right.” I choked on the last two words.

  Samuel brightened just a bit. “Good man!” He motioned toward the door. “Let’s get out of here before she wakes up.”

  Over breakfast he told me bad news. “Somebody just beat hell out of Harmony—fractured skull, massive intracranial hemorrhage, broken ribs, punctured lung, fractured left femur. They found her under the railroad trestle where it goes over the river near Fourth Avenue. What was she doing there after one o’clock in the morning?”

  I decided to treat the question as rhetorical, shrugged casually.

  Samuel struck like a snake. Hand zipped across the table, grabbed my shirt at the throat, yanked me to my feet. “That riverbank’s just a few blocks away from Fleischmann Scrap! You were supposed to be there too, weren’t you? But you were with me, so you couldn’t make it. What were the two of you up to?” For punctuation he gave a nasty twist at my shirt collar.

  Set a thief to catch a thief. Samuel knew a liar when he faced one. But after sixteen years as his son, I was pretty good myself. I stared at him for a couple of seconds, then said, very calmly, “Samuel, I’ve got no idea why she was down there. Please let go of my shirt.”

  He released his hold slowly, as if ratcheting down tension in his fingers. Then, just as slowly, he settled back into his chair. “I’m sorry, Leo. Been a long night.” I could barely hear him. “I want to find out who beat up that poor girl, and I thought, close as the two of you are, you might know something.”

  Where intimidation fails, try stealth. But this was going to be my investigation, not his. Just as quietly as he’d spoken, I said, “I’m sorry. I don’t.”

  Whether or not he believed me, I think he knew that was as far as he could take matters right then. He shook his head, pushed away his half-eaten bowl of cereal. “We drained intracranial blood, relieved pressure on her brain, then decompressed her chest, and set fractures. All we can do for now. Go get some sleep, Leo; I’m going to grab a couple of hours myself. We’re in for a long haul.”

  When I woke out of one nightmare into a worse one, the clock on the table next to my bed said ten minutes after twelve. Five hours in the sack. I felt as if my muscles had been pounded with mallets. I got up, stood a while under a warm shower, then shaved and went downstairs. Ramona sat at the kitchen table, staring out the window. She looked composed, probably had just fortified herself again. “Any news?” I asked.

  She started as if I’d shouted boo. “Oh—Leo. No, dear, nothing. Samuel called about an hour ago and said there’s been no change. I just can’t understand, neither can the Belmonts. What on earth was Harmony doing down there by the river in the middle of the night?”

  Were she and my father working a tag team on me? “I don’t know, Ramona,” I said, and hoped the anguish in my voice came across to her as grief, not shame and guilt.

  “You and she were so close—”

  “Ramona, I don’t know.”

  She jumped to her feet. “Oh, Leo—I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m…we’re all so upset. Let me fix you an omelet.”

  She was cracking eggs before I could say yes or no. I wasn’t hungry, but watching her whip up an omelet was better than trying to parry questions. I ate in silence, then went outside, walked up Roosevelt to the Steinberg, checked at Information. They’d moved Harmony out of the E.R., to a room on the second floor.

  Dr. and Mrs. Belmont were there, talking to Samuel. Without her huge glasses, her eyes under tape, Harmony looked strange. Her only movements were still the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest in response to the pulmotor. Samuel looked surprisingly fresh but not pleased. “Touch and go, Leo,” he said. “Blood pressure’s low—I’m giving her ephedrine now, already tried coramine and pituitrin. Brain waves look flat, but the lung hasn’t collapsed again. Just have to keep her going long enough that she’s got a chance to come back.”

  “Thank you, Samuel.” Fielding Belmont’s voice was gruff. A tear rolled down his cheek. “I can’t tell you—”

  “You’d do the same for me,” Samuel said, and though every person in the room knew that wasn’t so, it seemed to settle the matter. Then Samuel went off to see a pre-op patient. He wasn’t two steps around the corner before Dr. Belmont asked me The Question. “Leo, I can’t for the life of me imagine what Harmony was doing down by the river at one o’clock in the morning. Do you know?”

  I shook my head.

  No longer a clear-cut lie. I’d begun to wonder whether Harmony really did go on her own after Oscar’s strongbox. To get to the yard she’d have gone down Roosevelt, across Madison or Twenty-second, then down Fifth and under the trestle, right to the front gate. Bums slept under that trestle at night, and if one or two of them were awake, they might’ve tried to rob or assault her. But if so, why did they drag her all the way past the junkyard to the Fourth Avenue riverbank?

  A little later, a couple of detectives took me into the hall to ask whether I could help find the person who did such a terrible thing to my friend. “Everyone says you and she were best pals,” the shorter, bald, blue-suited cop said, implying that if I hadn’t been with Samuel every minute the night before, I’d’ve been their prime suspect. I answered with a nod, then waited for what I knew was coming next.

  “You got any idea what your girlfriend was doing down there at one A.M.?” This from the taller detective, a man in a brown suit, fedora to match. Scar at the left side of his mouth. His tone implied I was going to lie and he knew it. Maybe that usually worked for him, but not this time. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t have any idea. And…”

  They both leaned forward.

  “She was…is my friend, my best friend. But she’s not my girlfriend.”

  They exchanged a glance. The tall detective shrugged. “You have a girlfriend?”

  “No girlfriend.”

  The shorter man laughed lightly. “That’s good. You’re not old enough to be having girlfriends. But your friend in there—”

  “Harmony,” I said.

  “Yeah. Harmony. Miss Belmont. She didn’t say anything to you, nothing at all? About why she might be going down by the river in the middle of the night?”

  “No, I’ve told you. Not a word.”

  “She ever do that before?”

  “Not that I know of. I don’t know why she would.”
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br />   “All right.” Tall cop again. “You don’t have a girlfriend, but maybe she had a boyfriend? Somebody she went out to meet when her parents were asleep?”

  The word “impossible” ripped through my mind, but slammed right into Number Two on the Samuel Firestone List of Certainties in Life, the entry directly behind Trust Only Yourself. Nothing Is Impossible. But Harmony and I told each other everything. She was my friend…no, goddamn it, not just my friend. She was my…

  Dad paused, looked away, squeezed his hands together, then turned back to me, face disfigured with torment.

  “My soulmate, Martin. She was the only person I could ever call my soulmate.”

  Dad’s face relaxed. For better or worse he’d finally gotten it out. No request for approval in his gaze, but I reached across the table, rested a hand on his. He jerked away, then pulled himself straight in his chair. Before he could go on, I asked, “Did you ever tell Mother about Harmony?”

  “No, never. By the time I met your mother, I was long gone from Hobart, living in New York. I left it behind, left all of Hobart behind. If I’d started telling your mother about Harmony… Your mother and I have made a good life together, Martin. She’s a great lady. All the shit she puts up with from me…”

  Dad picked up his glass, drained Drink Six. The waiter sidled up, censure on his face thick as hasty pudding. He picked up Dad’s empty glass as if it might be contaminated, then without moving his lips whispered, “Another Manhattan, sir?”

  I answered. “Enough.” Dad didn’t object. The waiter about-faced, marched away.

  Dad tapped fingers on the table. “I hoped time would let Harmony drift away, but…”

  He didn’t finish the thought, didn’t have to.

  That detective’s question about whether Harmony might’ve been going out to meet a boyfriend hit my stomach like a shot, but they didn’t seem to notice. “If she had a boyfriend I didn’t know about it,” I said. “If she went out at night I didn’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “That’s all right, son.” The short detective patted my back. “I’m sure if you knew anything that’d help us find whoever did that to your friend, you’d tell us.” He looked and sounded like a kindly uncle, but the tall detective watched me like a heron poised at water’s-edge. Just let that fish make one wrong move.

  “Yes,” I said. “I would.”

  Toward mid-afternoon, Dr. Belmont went home to take a nap, and that triggered an idea. I asked Mrs. Belmont’s permission to go to her house and get the music box. She said yes, of course, so back up Roosevelt I walked, into the Belmont house, past Laura sulking on a living room sofa, upstairs to Harmony’s room, back out with the music box, back to the hospital. I set the music box on the little night-table next to Harmony’s bed, pulled on the winding lever, started it playing. Not three notes into the tune, I realized—“Beautiful Dreamer.” No way to stop it before the end of the tune. That’s the way music boxes work. “Beautiful dreamer,” that damn box played, “wake unto me. Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee.”

  Mrs. Belmont’s face brightened. “Oh,” she said. “I know that,” and began to hum along. “Dee-duh-duh-dee-duh. Dee-duh-duh-duh—” Right there she choked, gave me a look I don’t ever want to see again, let out the most horrible scream, then flew out of the chair and out of the room. I heard her high-heeled shoes clack all the way down the hall.

  “Beautiful Dreamer” finished, then “Camptown Races” played, doo-dah, doo-dah, then “Gaudeamus Igitur.” Not a twitch from Harmony, not the slightest sign of recognition. Strips of tape over her eyes. My hand reached out, jumped back, inched forward again. I pulled off the tape, pushed up her eyelids…and just wanted to die. Harmony wasn’t there. Those dazzling green eyes were dead things now, uncoupled, drifting and jerking like fishermens’ bobbers on the surface of a lake, oblivious to the music, unconscious of me.

  Icy water poured through my skin, covered my arms. I managed to close Harmony’s eyelids and retape them, then pushed the stop lever on the music box. It finished playing “We Will Meet in the Sweet Bye and Bye,” and clicked to a halt. Thank God poor Lissa Belmont was spared that.

  I picked up the music box, walked into the hall. Mrs. Belmont was nowhere to be seen. I went home, left the music box in my room, took the sandwich Ramona forced on me, ate it on my way back to the Steinberg. When I got to Harmony’s room, Dr. Belmont was there. He didn’t say anything about Mrs. Belmont, and I didn’t ask. “No change,” he murmured. “Samuel’s doing a gall bladder. He’ll come check her when he’s done.”

  A few minutes later, a nurse marched into the room, pointed at me. “Someone to see you downstairs.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re Leo Firestone, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but who—”

  “Information Desk called up and said a man asked for Leo Firestone. He seemed to know you were here.” She pointed toward the doorway. “You can see him in the lobby.”

  I thanked her, took the elevator down to the lobby, walked up to Information. Mrs. Stetson, an elderly volunteer, sat behind the desk. Gray cap with a big red cross set squarely atop a mound of blue hair. She looked flustered, made little clucking sounds with her tongue before she could speak. “Oh, Leo, hello. This…gentleman wants to see you.”

  The gentleman standing there was Aldo, the man I’d seen the morning before, arguing with George over two radios and a sewing machine. He didn’t look any better, same red eyes, hollow unshaved cheeks, ragged shirt, filthy overalls. From three feet away I smelled booze, Samuel’s lesson learned. In his shaking left hand, he clutched a leather purse—Harmony’s. He motioned with his head toward the far corner of the room.

  Mrs. Stetson’s lips went crooked and stony. I thanked her, then followed Aldo through the lobby. None of the people we passed so much as looked at us; they had their own problems. At the far wall, Aldo turned his back to the room, looked over his shoulder, thrust the purse at me. “Big niggerman at da junkyard say give you dis.”

  I dropped into a chair, pulled the drawstring, turned the leather bag upside-down. Pencils, a couple of notepads, keys on a ring, a hacksaw blade and a greasy white envelope fell into my lap. I looked at Aldo, couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe.

  “I go to da junkyard, got stuff to sell,” Aldo rasped. “And I hear hollerin’ inside da office. Young Jewman yell, ‘Dumb old fuck, you gotta get your ass outa here fast, else we’re all dead. Go to New York or something.’ Old Jewman yell back, ‘Not ’til I get done wit’ your friend Sammy, he’s a coming here at six o’clock, gonna buy.’ Young Jewman shout, ‘Okay, but if I see you here in da morning, I kill you.’ Then, young Jewman run outside an’ see me. ‘Hey, George,’ he yell, ‘Skinny guinea’s here wit’ some things.’ Then he jump in da truck, drive away. Nigger come on out from da office, look real scared. He say lotsa bad stuff happen at da junkyard, he’s a gonna scram wit’ his family, back down south. He take me over by da old-radio pile, pull out dis purse, say he finded it under da desk, and I should give you it.” Aldo plucked a fiver from his shirt pocket, waved it in my face. “Nigger gimme three bucks for my stuff and two more to come down here wit’ da purse. I go by your house, your mamma say you’re here.”

  I got out one word: “Aldo—”

  He shook his hand back and forth. “I say I bring, I bring. Now I done.” Through the lobby, zip, out the door.

  I picked up the grimy envelope, reached inside, pulled out four photographs. Four crisp shots, every face clearly identifiable. Did Oscar hire a detective with a telephoto camera? Or were these snapshots Lily took with that toy of hers, the Kodak flash camera, and Oscar somehow got hold of them? There was Samuel in the attic, six pregnant girls snuggling up to him, everyone all smiles. A second shot, the Fleischmanns’ labor room, Samuel talking to a girl in the bed, a well-dressed middle-aged couple standing over her. Number Three showed Murray, Samuel and Red Dexter sitting in Murray’s living room, drinks in hand, laughing li
ke the Three Musketeers. The last picture was worst. Samuel, a smile all over his face, was shaking hands with Red Dexter. Dexter was beaming. His free hand clapped Samuel’s shoulder, and in Samuel’s hand was a wad of bills that could’ve choked an elephant. “You’re my man,” said Dexter’s face and demeanor. Or better, “You’re my boy.”

  Everything hit me at once. Red Dexter, aluminum, what Aldo heard Murray yell at Oscar—how could I have been so witless? Samuel would’ve known Oscar Fleischmann’s mind, would never have been so stupid as to plan to sneak into the junkyard the night Oscar’d be sitting on a monster stash of highjacked black-market metal. Of course the filthy old thug would’ve been there, guarding his treasure. And when I didn’t show, Harmony went without me, must’ve taken a hacksaw because she knew she couldn’t get the strongbox out over the fence alone. She hacksawed the strongbox, got the pictures, then either slid her purse under the desk when she heard Oscar coming after her, or it flew underneath when he caught her. Oscar didn’t spot it, but George did, looked inside, wanted to get it to me because of the photos. But the negatives weren’t in the envelope, were they? Aldo said Oscar was waiting for Samuel to come and buy something he had for sale. Guess what.

  A red mist floated up from my chest, danced in front of my eyes. I crammed the photographs into my pocket, sprang out of the chair. Pencils flew every which way as I charged past poor bewildered Mrs. Stetson, up the stairwell, two flights to the surgical suite.

  Chapter 16

  I scorched into the doctors’ dressing room, danced past wooden benches separating rows of metal lockers. As I wheeled around the corner to Samuel’s locker, there was Samuel, getting dressed, talking to Charlie Harrison, another G.P. Samuel fastened his top shirt button, reached for his tie, then caught sight of me rushing up. “Leo, what’s the matter?” Concern in his voice but not anxiety. As always, he was in control.