Due Diligence

by Michael A. Kahn

  “One of our finest nurses,” Mark said. “But more important for you, Matilda used to work at Beth Shalom.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what my secretary just told me. She said that when Beth Shalom merged into the JCA, three of the nurses came over. Matilda is the last one still here.”

  “Would she be willing to talk to me?”

  “I don’t see why not. She’s on her lunch break now. Come on back. I’ll introduce you before I leave.”

  ***

  Matilda Jackson leaned back in her chair and smiled at the memory.

  “Oh, Mr. Mordecai Jacobs was a fine figure of a man,” she said. “Carried a pearl-handled cane and wore rattlesnake cowboy boots.” She stared at me solemnly, as if bearing witness. “He knew Dr. King, praise God. That’s the truth. Mr. Mordecai Jacobs went to Washington in 1963 to march with Dr. King. He carried a picture of the march in his wallet. He showed it to me on many an occasion.” She gave me a proud look. “Mordecai hired me, you know. I was the first black nurse to ever work at Beth Shalom. Mordecai hired me in 1972 and told me that I had an equal opportunity to excel. I believed the man, and the man was true to his word, praise God. In 1981, he promoted me to the position of head nurse.” She smiled again, her eyes far away. “Oh, yes. Mr. Mordecai Jacobs was a fine figure of a man.”

  “Is his family still in St. Louis?” I asked, taking notes.

  “I believe Mrs. Jacobs is still alive, bless her soul. They never had any children, though.”

  “Do you remember her first name?”

  “I most certainly do. Clara. Mrs. Clara Jacobs.”

  I jotted down the name and looked up at her. “I have a list, Mrs. Jackson, and it appears to include residents of Beth Shalom.” I handed her a copy. “I wonder if you recognize any of the names in those first two columns.”

  She put on her reading glasses and studied the document. “Oh, yes,” she said with a smile. “Mrs. Caplan, Mrs. Friedman. Oh, Mrs. Gutterman, what a darling she was. And Shirley Lieberman, my, my. She used to love to play poker.” As her eyes moved down the list, she cooed and chuckled at her memories of the people.

  “Were they all women?” I asked.

  She looked down both columns. “I can’t say they all were. There was a Mr. Mittelman and a Mr. Schecter, but their wives were there, too. Oh, and Wexler—that must be Rabbi Wexler. What a sweetheart he was. But wait a minute, his wife was there, too. Lenore Wexler.” Her happy expression shifted to sorrow. “Oh, poor Mrs. Wexler. She was one of them.”

  “One of who?”

  “Oh, it was that terrible summer.”

  “What terrible summer?”

  She shook her head sadly and heaved a sigh. “When they all died.”

  I felt a shiver down my spine. “Tell me about it,” I said quietly.

  “It was so tragic.” She sighed. “The first two died on Friday around sundown.” She paused. “Are you Jewish, honey?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, then you know that the Jewish sabbath starts at sundown on Friday. Beth Shalom was strictly orthodox, which meant that we couldn’t transport these two bodies to the funeral home until Sunday. That was a real problem, because it was so hot and humid that weekend. We had to move the bodies to the coolest place in the building.” She shook her head at the memory.

  “Where was that?” I asked.

  “The barber shop. It was on the basement level and there were two window air conditioners. We moved the first two bodies down there on Friday night. There were two barber chairs, and that’s where we put them, each covered with a sheet.”

  I waited silently, caught up in the tale.

  “Later that night, the third one died. Another woman. We moved her down there, too. There were no empty barber chairs left, so we sat her up on one of the three waiting chairs. The fourth died the next morning, and then the fifth died Saturday night. Five deaths over one Sabbath.” She raised her eyebrows and sighed heavily. “When the men from the funeral home arrived on Sunday afternoon, there was a corpse on every single chair in that barber shop. I’ll tell you, honey, it’s a sight my eyes will never forget.”

  The eerie image of the shrouded barbershop quintet held us both rapt. After a moment, I asked, “What did they die of?”

  She squinted, trying to remember. “I don’t recall the exact cause. There were respiratory problems, circulatory problems, muscle problems. It just sort of swept through the home. Several others came down with the disease that week. Some of them died, others recovered. I swear, I have never had a week like that in my life.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “In the summer. I know that, honey, because it was so hot.”

  “Which summer?”

  She scratched her chin as she mumbled under her breath, trying to place it in relation to other events. “Arthur was born that year…no, that was the year before…we had that picnic over at the Alton Locks…no, that was the next summer…” Finally, she looked up with a helpless shrug. “It was either the summer of 1973 or the summer of 1974. I can’t be sure which year, but it was one of those two for sure.”

  I referred back to the list. “And you think Mrs. Wexler was one of the people who died that weekend?”

  She nodded sadly.

  “Any others on the list?”

  She looked down the list again, shaking her head. “My memory just isn’t what it should be, honey. Maybe Mrs. Gutterman. Maybe Mrs. Silverman. I just can’t be sure.”

  I thanked Matilda Jackson for her help and walked back to the front of the building. From a pay phone in the lobby I called for a County Cab.

  “Destination?” the dispatcher asked.

  “The St. Louis County Library on Lindbergh,” I said.

  Matilda’s memory would serve as my compass to navigate through the official records.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  With the Post-Dispatch indexes for 1973 and 1974 on the table to my right and the rack of microfilm to my left, I looked down at my photocopy of the Beth Shalom/Labadie Gardens lists. I started alphabetically with the A’s. The first “A” was Abramawitz.

  Matilda vaguely recalled summer as the time of year. Specifically, she recalled hot and humid. In St. Louis, that narrowed it to May through September. I checked the obituaries for that period during 1973. None for Abramawitz. I checked the obituaries for 1974. None again.

  The next “A” was Abrams. I checked the obituaries for May through September of 1973. There were two Abrams—one on May 8 and one on July 3. I jotted down the dates. I checked the obituaries for 1974. There was one Abrams: August 26. I wrote the date on my pad.

  I reached over and sorted through the microfilm rack. I found the reels for the first half of May 1973, the first half of July 1973 and the second half of August 1974. Starting with May 1973, I threaded the microfilm and advanced the reel to the front page of the May 8 issue of the Post-Dispatch, pausing to check the weather forecast: a high of 82° with a chance of afternoon showers. Possible.

  I advanced the reel to the obituaries and funeral notices. I found my first Abrams under the funeral notices:

  ABRAMS, TYRONE R., Blessed with the Sacraments of Holy Mother Church, May 2, 1974, 89 years, beloved husband of the late Gertrude, loving father of Thomas and Catherine, grandfather, brother-in-law, father-in-law, uncle, relative and special friend.

  Funeral Tues., 9:30 a.m. from HOFFMEISTER COLONIAL Mortuary, 6464 Chippewa at Watson, Visitation Tues., 9:15 a.m. with Mass celebrated at the Church of Annunciation, 10 a.m., Internment Resurrection Cemetery.

  Whatever else he had been during his nine decades, Tyrone Abrams clearly had never been a resident of Beth Shalom.

  Nor had the second Abrams, whose obituary appeared in the July 3, 1973, issue of the Post-Dispatch. Randall Abrams, age 20, had died in an automobile crash on Highway 70 while home for su
mmer vacation from Drake University.

  The third Abrams obit was Monday, August 26, 1974. The front page of that day’s Post-Dispatch had an appropriate weather forecast: hot and humid, with a high of 101°. I advanced the reel to page 4 of Section B and found the funeral notice:

  ABRAMS, RUTH S., August 23, 1974, beloved wife of the late Milton, dear mother of Karen and Lee, beloved grandmother of Cory, Kelly, Lara, and Kyle, dear sister of Jack (Rose) Sanders and the late Ida Turner.

  Funeral service Tues., 2 p.m., at RINDSKOPF-ROTH Funeral Chapel, 5216 Delmar Blvd. VISITATION 1:30 p.m. Burial at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery. Contributions preferred to Beth Shalom or a charity of your choice.

  Bingo.

  I studied the funeral notice. Ruth Abrams had died on August 23. Her notice was in the August 26 edition of the Post-Dispatch. I glanced up to the top of the page. Monday, August 26, 1974. So Ruth had died on the prior Friday. Was she one of the three who had died that Friday? I skimmed through the rest of the funeral notices. Sure enough, I found the other two: Thelma Friedman and Anna Mittleman. I also found Lenore Wexler, who had died on Saturday, and Margaret Cohen, who had died on Sunday.

  Ruth, Thelma, Anna, Lenore, and Margaret. Five elderly women, who spent their last weekend together, covered with sheets and propped silently on the chairs as the Beth Shalom barber shop air conditioners rumbled.

  I glanced down the Beth Shalom/Labadie Gardens list and placed check marks by their names:

  I leaned back in my chair and stared blankly at the screen of the microfilm reader. There were four obituaries grouped above the funeral notices. One of the headlines caught my eye:

  LUCILLE WASHINGTON;

  LONGTIME TEACHER

  I glanced at the list. Sure enough, there was a “Washington, L” in one of the Labadie Gardens columns. I read the first paragraph of the obituary:

  Lucille (Henson) Washington, a former teacher and reading specialist in the St. Louis Public Schools system, died Sunday (Aug. 25, 1994) at the Labadie Gardens Nursing Home after a brief illness. She was 76.

  I carefully reviewed the rest of the funeral notices on the pages, looking for any other matches with the names on the two Labadie Gardens columns. There were none.

  I read through the Lucille Washington obituary again. It seemed an unusual coincidence—a name from one of the Labadie Gardens columns just happened to show up on the same page of funeral notices as a name from a Beth Shalom column. Slowly and methodically, I advanced the reel forward to the obituaries and funeral notices for each successive day in August and then for each day in September. The “coincidences” continued.

  Each time I found a match, I photocopied the page and checked off the name on the Beth Shalom/Labadie Gardens list. I located a total of fifteen, all of whom had died between August 23 and September 4, 1974. The pattern looked strange. To double-check the results, I expanded my search to include the entire year of 1974. To my surprise, the expanded search did not add a single name from the Beth Shalom/Labadie Gardens list. When I finished, I looked at my results:

  I stared at the list, trying to make sense of it. In a period of less than two weeks, fifteen people out of forty-eight on the list had died. At two separate institutions, the only people on the list who died were under the column headed “P/A.” Indeed, if you focused only on the “P/A” columns, fifteen out of a total of twenty-four had died—eight at Beth Shalom and seven at Labadie Gardens. More than half of the names on each column.

  And all fifteen were women.

  And all were listed on a document bearing the private watermark of Armstrong Bioproducts.

  Obviously, all fifteen women—eight Jews, seven blacks—had something in common. Something important. And fatal. Fatal to them and, for different reasons, fatal to at least two men: Bruce Rosenthal and David Marcus.

  I gathered my notes and photocopies, stuffed them in my briefcase, and went over to the pay phone. It was quarter after three. I dialed the number of the Jewish Center for the Aged.

  “Mark Levine,” I told the receptionist.

  “Hi,” he said cheerfully. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” I said in a businesslike tone. “What did you find?”

  “How about we meet somewhere to talk?”

  “How about we start by you telling me over the phone what you found?”

  There was a pause. “Okay. Well, there’s a problem.”

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “The Beth Shalom records don’t go back before 1981.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not sure. It merged into the JCA in November of 1984. Apparently, the older records weren’t among the files transferred in the merger.”

  “Were they destroyed?” I asked.

  “I honestly don’t know. We followed the paper trail back to 1981. That’s where it ends.”

  “Damn,” I said in frustration.

  “I thought Matilda might know the answer,” he said, “but she doesn’t. However, she did say that Mrs. Jacobs might know. In fact, she says that the records might be stored in the basement of the Jacobs’ home.”

  “Does Mrs. Jacobs still live in St. Louis?”

  “Matilda thinks so.”

  “Does she know where?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have her number?”

  “I don’t, and neither does Matilda. Apparently, it’s unlisted.”

  “One more question,” I said.

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  “Do you have physicians on your staff?”

  “No. We have a contract with Mt. Sinai Hospital. They provide our doctors.”

  “How long has that been the case?”

  “For a long time. Nursing homes don’t generally have their own physicians. They usually contract with a hospital.”

  “Would that be the same hospital where one of your residents would be taken if they needed hospitalization?”

  “That’s usually how it works.”

  I thanked him for his help, declined his invitation to “brainstorm” together over a drink after work, hung up the phone, and stepped back into the main area of the library. I surveyed the crowd, searching for someone who might seem out of place among the retirees leafing through magazines, the mommies on the carpet in the children’s section reading books to their children, the earnest young men in business suits hunched over thick books in the reference section. One or two looked up at me curiously, but none appeared sinister.

  I went over to the medical reference section. As long as I was in a library, I should try to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of Guillain-Barré syndrome. I found a listing in a medical encyclopedia and photocopied all three pages on the subject.

  I checked my watch: almost four o’clock. I might have enough time. There were two cabs at the taxi stand outside. I got into the backseat of the first one. The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror and then spun around with a leer.

  “Ah, hello to you, my dear lady. Again it is that we meet.”

  “Oh, no,” I groaned. It was the same swarthy man with the thick black mustache and all-consonant names. I yanked open the door. “Forget it, creep,” I said, slamming the door closed behind me.

  “But lovely lady,” he called after me.

  I walked back to the second cab, opened the front passenger door, and leaned in. The driver was an old black man reading the newspaper.

  “Do you know where the Bureau of Vital Statistics is?” I asked.

  He neatly folded his newspaper. “Would that be county or city, ma’am?”

  “City.”

  He nodded. “I certainly do. Hop in.” I got in back and he pulled away from the curb, swinging wide of the first cabbie, who was now standing outside his cab and shouting at me in some guttural language.

  Chapter Twenty-four

 
At three minutes to five, the clerk at the Bureau of Vital Statistics handed me a payment receipt and an envelope containing certified copies of two death certificates.

  “When will the other thirteen be ready?” I asked.

  “Check back tomorrow morning at eleven. They’ll be waiting up here.”

  I thanked her, put the receipt and the envelope in my briefcase, and walked out of the building onto Grand Avenue. The rush-hour traffic was in full force. I was meeting up with Flo at nine o’clock, which was four hours away. I turned and walked toward the Fox Theater, reviewing my list of things to do. It was too late to find someone to look through records at Mt. Sinai Hospital, but it could be a good time to make contact with Lee Fowler, the former CFO of Armstrong Bioproducts, who might be getting home from work soon.

  By the time I reached the Fox, I had concluded that today’s disguise had too many drawbacks. Although I might get past someone looking for Rachel Gold, I was hardly inconspicuous. Blondes may not have more fun, but they sure have more hassles. Especially blondes in miniskirts and pumps, to judge from the wolf whistles, stares, and lewd comments flung my way from passing cars or from bystanders across the street.

  The Fox Theater was open. I ducked into the women’s room to change. So long as I was lugging around my entire wardrobe, such as it was, I might as well get into something a little less flamboyant. A little less was about as far as I could get. I chose my sister’s skintight black jeans and red cotton turtleneck. My footwear selection was limited to the black pumps I had worn during the day or my Nikes. I stuck with the pumps. I paused to look in the mirror, surprised again by the sight of a blond, straight-haired Rachel Gold. The hair was starting to curl in the humidity, but the color and the length were enough to even throw me off.

  I hailed a cab in front of the Fox and gave him Lee Fowler’s address. I had debated whether to call in advance, but my paranoia was such that it seemed safer, albeit ruder, to show up without warning.

  Settling back in the seat, I tore open the envelope containing the two death certificates that the clerk had been able to locate and copy before closing time. The first was for Ruth Abrams. Date of death: August 23, 1994. Residence: Bath Shalom Retirement Home. Under the section CAUSE OF DEATH there were two lines, one for Immediate Cause and the second for Underlying Cause. On Ruth Abrams’ death certificate, the Immediate Cause was “Respiratory Failure” but the Underlying Cause apparently wasn’t certain. The physician had filled it out as follows: