The Chairmen

by Robert I. Katz

  The neighborhood, again. “Nothing I can do about it,” Kurtz said.

  “It seems you like to beat up Nazis. She approves of beating up Nazis.”

  In the course of the three murder investigations that Kurtz had been dragged into, he had indeed beaten up a few career criminals and one rogue martial artist. “They weren’t Nazis,” Kurtz said.

  Lenore sighed. “Can we get back to the point?”

  “Sure,” the Rabbi said. “What’s the point?”

  “You’re supposed to counsel us. Isn’t that so?”

  “Oh.” The Rabbi scratched his head. “Here goes…” He smiled. “The secret to a good marriage is communication.”

  Would never have guessed that, Kurtz thought.

  Lenore looked doubtful. “You think that’s obvious?” the Rabbi said. “It’s not. You two, for instance, you both listen when the other one talks. You treat each other with respect. You communicate. I’m not worried about you two. Trust me, I’ve married thousands of couples. You can always tell the ones that are going to make it.”

  “That’s it?” Kurtz said.

  “Pretty much. Be thankful that we’re past the days when a wise, elderly lady of the congregation was appointed to inform a tremulous young bride all about the birds and the bees, just in case her mother had neglected to do so.”

  Lenore shuddered. “Yes, let’s be thankful.”

  The Rabbi smiled. “And I imagine you won’t be needing any information on the Family Purity Laws?”

  “Huh?” Kurtz said.

  Lenore frowned at him. “The times of the month when we are allowed, or rather, not allowed, to do certain things, according to traditional Jewish law.”

  “Oh,” Kurtz said.

  “No,” Lenore said to the Rabbi, “we won’t.”

  “Excellent,” the Rabbi said. “I wouldn’t think so, this being the Twenty-First Century, but a conscientious rabbi should never make assumptions.”

  Lenore shrugged. Kurtz pretended to look around the room. The Rabbi grinned. “So, I’ll see you in a few months. Call me if you have any questions and don’t let your mother get you down. She means well.”

  “The road to hell,” Lenore said.

  The rabbi smiled again and they left…

  “Yes,” Lenore said. “I do like the rabbi.”

  “So, when are you going to get a dress?” Kurtz said.

  “I have an appointment next Tuesday. I’m not expecting it to be a problem.”

  “And this pattern stuff? You want to do that?”

  “Frankly? I couldn’t care less, but the guests will expect it.”

  “So, everything is taken care of,” Kurtz said.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Then what’s bothering her?”

  “Nothing, really. She just wants to feel involved.” Lenore smiled. “I’ll take her with me when I shop for the dress. She actually has good taste and it’ll make her happy.” Lenore gave a small laugh.

  “What?”

  “Among the Orthodox, it’s a tradition that a mother accompany her daughter to purchase lingerie for the wedding night.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope.”

  “That might be awkward,” Kurtz said.

  “Yep. Luckily, I already have all the lingerie that I need.”

  “Is there such a thing as ‘enough lingerie?’ Maybe you should get some more.”

  Lenore smiled. “Maybe. But I’ll leave my mother at home.”

  Eight o’clock the next morning found Kurtz sitting in Christina Pirelli’s office, a large room, brightly lit, with colorful abstract art hanging on the walls, a plush, blue carpet on the floor, bleached oak furniture and wide picture windows giving a view of the Hudson River and New Jersey off in the distance. “Coffee?” she asked Kurtz. “Tea?”

  “No, thanks,” Kurtz said. “I’ve got surgery in an hour but I needed to talk to you.” He leaned forward. “Tell me about the phone calls.”

  She gave him a quizzical look. “The Dean told me that you knew about them.”

  “Apparently, not enough. Give me the details.”

  Christina picked up her tea, took a sip and then carefully placed the mug back down on her desk. “They started a couple of months ago. Only a few, at first. Lately, there have been more.”

  “Mostly here, or at home?”

  “A few here, but mostly at home.”

  “I assume your phone number is unlisted?”

  “Yes, but the hospital switchboard has it and it’s posted on the OB floor. You never know when a patient is going to get into trouble. They may need to reach me in a hurry.”

  “Tell me,” Kurtz said, “do you have any enemies?”

  “Enemies?”

  “Somebody has a reason for doing this,” he said.

  Christina shrugged. “I suppose, but ‘enemies’ sounds so melodramatic.” She leaned back in her chair and stared off into space. “I’m successful,” she said finally. “I’m a chairman. There are always issues and you can’t make everybody happy. It’s just the way it is. Enemies…? I suppose the people I beat out for the job might be enemies, but most of them aren’t in New York and none of them are at Staunton.”

  “Why assume that it’s business? It’s just as likely to be personal.”

  “I have a daughter in her freshman year at Swarthmore and two ex-husbands.” She shrugged. “The first one died from alcoholic liver disease five years after we divorced. The second happily married his former secretary, less than a year after the breakup.” She gave a wry smile. “Life goes on.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Were these divorces amicable?”

  Christina raised an eyebrow. “Are they ever? The first one was an adolescent mistake. I was in college and thought I was in love. Then I got pregnant.” She leaned back in her chair and stared into space. “Maybe I was in love, for awhile. The second was a disaster from the beginning. He was a neurosurgeon who worked long hours. When he came home, he wanted his dinner and his blow job.” Christina shrugged and smiled wanly. Kurtz, who also worked long hours and appreciated his dinner and his blow job, tried not to wince. “Basically, his idea of marriage consisted of me waiting on him hand and foot. Since I was an OB resident when we met, and I also had a daughter to raise, he was obviously deluding himself. It lasted three years and we were both happy to call it quits.”

  “Any other family?”

  Christina smiled with genuine fondness. “I have one sister, Elizabeth. She and her husband are biogenetic farmers. They have three kids. They’re coming next week for a visit. Lydia is looking forward to it. She and my sister are old friends. They’re both theater buffs. We’re going to see Les Mis and then Macbeth.”

  “Lydia?”

  “Lydia Cho: my research associate. I’ve known her since High School. She came with me from Wake Forest.”

  Kurtz nodded. “What exactly is a biogenetic farmer?”

  “Elizabeth and her husband raise aquaponic food. They also manufacture and sell the equipment.”

  Kurtz scratched his head. “What is aquaponic food?”

  Christina rolled her eyes. “You sure you want to hear this?” Kurtz wasn’t, but you never knew what might turn out to be relevant. He pasted an interested look on his face and said nothing. Christina shrugged and went on. “Most hydroponic systems are not considered organic because the nutrient solutions that they use to feed the plants aren’t organically derived. In order to be classified as organic, living things like fungi, micro-organisms and actual manure are required.” Christina smiled. “Or so my sister tells me. I’ll admit, it sounds like BS to me. With aquaponics, they also grow fish and re-circulate the fish water through the tanks where the plants are growing. The fish supply all the natural fertilizer that the system needs. Then it’s organic.”

  Probably more information than he needed, Kurtz thought. “They make money this way?”

  “Amazing, isn’t it? It seems that a lot of people are interested in growing th
eir own food. With aquaponics, the yields are higher, the insects are fewer and it takes up a lot less space than growing crops in soil. And in cities, if there’s no room for an actual fish pond, you can set up a tank, and if you don’t care about making it “organic,” a simple hydroponic system is even easier. They’re getting rich.”

  Good for them, Kurtz reflected, but nope, hard to see how any of this might be relevant.

  “Have you ever fired anybody?”

  “No,” Christina shook her head. “It’s a good, solid staff. I made sure of that before I came here.”

  “How about before you came here?”

  “No. I never had to.”

  “Have you cut any salaries?”

  “I have two people whose research productivity didn’t warrant the amount of academic time they were receiving. I cut their academic time.” She shrugged. “They’ve had to see more patients but their salaries have gone up, since they now participate in the clinical bonus.”

  “But they wanted an academic career, and you’ve disappointed them.”

  “They can still have an academic career. All they have to do is get off their butts, do some solid research and publish some papers. If they do that, they’ll get the academic time back. In the meantime, they can take care of patients.”

  “Are they angry about this?”

  “Frankly, they both seem relieved. Neither of them really liked research. They like teaching and they like clinical care. Research turned out not to be for them.”

  Kurtz understood that, completely. “Why don’t they leave? They can take care of patients in private practice and make more money.”

  “They probably will, sooner or later. Most do.”

  True, Kurtz thought. Sooner or later, well over eighty per-cent of ‘academic’ physicians left for private practice, when they realized that they had no interest in research, were doing exactly the same job as their friends in private practice and were making half the money. “Did you bring anyone else with you when you came here?”

  “Aside from Lydia, just Jenny Suarez. Jenny was the Chief Resident at Pritzker and then a junior attending at Wake Forest.” Christina smiled. “She always wanted to live in New York.”

  “She still feel that way?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  He smiled wanly. “I guess I will. I’ll have to talk to both of them.”

  “Why do men like oral sex so much?”

  “Huh?” Kurtz said.

  “I was reading an article in Cosmo. It said that thirty-eight per-cent of all men prefer oral sex to the regular way. Why is that?”

  Kurtz and Lenore were sitting on the couch, sipping Chardonnay and watching the sun set over the river. Copland’s Third Symphony was playing on the stereo. Kurtz had the results of his computer search open on his lap.

  Crank calls and anonymous notes rarely left a lot of clues behind, not if the perp was careful, and the motive, more often than not, was simply boredom. Most crank calls were committed by young males, usually teenagers. Most of the victims were picked at random. Actual threats were rare. More often, they were hang-up calls in the middle of the night, or simple heavy breathing, which teenage nitwits tended to think humorous.

  These crank calls, quite obviously, did not fit the pattern.

  They had begun over two months ago, as the information given to him by the Dean had indicated, and as Christina Pirelli had confirmed, only a few at first but swiftly increasing in frequency. The targets were mostly, but not all, women. Five of these calls, so far, had been received by the Dean, threatening nameless destruction unless the school stopped its ungodly ways. Exactly which activities might qualify as ungodly were not specified. And of course, the threats just might be for real. The women getting them were scared. They had reason to be, Kurtz thought. So far, it was all talk, but the talk was escalating. Sooner or later, talk might not be enough to satisfy whatever perverse urges were driving the guy.

  And let’s not forget the dead infant so humorously removed from the morgue.

  The exact times of nearly half the calls had been pinpointed, not so for the notes, which could have been sitting in an inbox for days before being noticed. While the majority of people could slip away for a few minutes and make a phone call, many could not. OR personnel, in particular, once scrubbed, were stuck there. Somebody involved in surgery at the time of a phone call could not have made it. The OR records were exact. They had been able to eliminate nearly half of the nurses, scrub techs and anesthesiologists, as well as many of the surgeons.

  The timing of the calls might be revealing. Most of them were at night, between the hours of seven and ten. Only five had come during the day. Most likely, the guy waited until he was off work and had eaten his dinner before comfortably sitting down for a pleasant evening of harassment. On the other hand, maybe he worked the night shift and just didn’t want to leave a record from his own phone.

  It was hard to make crank phone calls when people were around. Wives tend to notice when hubby is on the phone a lot, and they tend to get upset when hubby does naughty things. Most likely, the perp was unmarried. But then again, maybe he was married. A wife wouldn’t be around if he was calling from the job. Still, probably not. The odds said not. The guy had a grudge against women, or at least he had a grudge against Christina Pirelli, that was for sure. Of course, maybe he was married and just didn’t like his wife.

  He pursed his lips as he looked over the case notes from the cops who had responded, mostly to Christina Pirelli’s complaints. Not too much there. The responding officers had given the usual reassurances. The majority of such callers tend to get tired of it after awhile. Ignore him. Hang up as soon as you know it’s him. Jot down the times and anything distinctive about the voice, which she had done. Male, supposedly, not deep, no accent, which at least jibed with what Irene Garcia had told them. Almost undoubtedly the guy came from the Northeastern United States, because everybody on Earth has an accent and the only people who think you don’t are people who talk just like you. Aside from that, nothing. Up to this point, the cops hadn’t taken the whole thing seriously, but Kurtz, and also the Dean and Harry Moran, neither of whom were dummies, were concerned about the escalation. The notes and calls were coming more frequently. The dead baby in the surgical pack was grotesque and outrageous and a definite step up on the scale of harassment. He wants something, Kurtz thought, and sooner or later, he’s going to get what he wants or he’s going to crack.

  Over five-hundred physicians had privileges at the medical school. Over five-hundred nurses worked there. Ancillary personnel including technicians, clerks, administrators, support staff, etc. numbered another thousand or so.

  A preliminary attempt to narrow down a suspect list had proven marginally useful. Forget the phone calls. The phone calls could have been made from anywhere, and even people supposedly away on vacation might have hung around to commit some casual mayhem. About half of the two-thousand were female and could at least tentatively be eliminated. Ditto the African-Americans, about a fifth of the males. They had decided to keep all the Asians on the list, since a Chinese or Japanese could easily look Caucasian behind a surgical mask, and older guys with bald heads or graying hair were kept on, since the brown hair that Irene Garcia reported might have been a wig. That still left over five-hundred people in the suspect pool. He had been here for at least two months, assuming he was an employee of the medical center, which seemed likely but not certain. He had a legitimate ID or he had access to a fake one and at least knew enough to pass. None of this rested upon assumptions. None of it was firm, but tentatively, at least, they could cross out another three-hundred or so, just by the fact that they had started work too recently or their jobs were nowhere near OB, pathology or the OR.

  His specific grievance was unclear, but seemed to center around women, the medical school rather than the hospital per se, and the department of OB-GYN. Christina Pirelli, certainly, had been personally harassed.

  And he was sm
art, that much was clear. None of the notes had fingerprints on them. All had been written with children’s crayons in block letters. The spelling was perfect. No handwriting that could ever be identified. The phone calls, what the recipients could recall of them, revealed no pattern at all. No background sounds, no extraneous noises. The guy knew how to cover his tracks.

  A good scientist (and a good cop) was leery to indulge in too much speculation. A little speculation, that was okay. A little speculation, solidly extrapolated from what they actually knew, that was the way forward. Too much speculation was likely to lead them down blind alleys.

  Stick to what they knew, or at least stick to what they were reasonably certain was the truth. So, they had a few things to go on, and now that they did, how could they narrow it down further…?

  “I don’t know,” Kurtz said. “I guess men just like seeing a woman on her knees.”

  “Yeah?” A little smile played around Lenore’s lips.

  “You know, the old submissive, dominant thing.”

  “Ah,” Lenore said, “the old submissive, dominant thing. Of course.”

  “That’s my theory, at least.”

  “Well, you are a man. You ought to know.”

  Kurtz smiled modestly. “Also, a surgeon. Surgeons have special insight into these issues.”

  “I didn’t know that. Do they teach you all about oral sex during your residency?”

  “No. They teach us all about submission and dominance. Speaking of which, and now that you’ve brought the subject up…”

  Lenore smiled at him, a faint, speculative smile. “Cosmo says that fifty-seven per-cent of men like to switch roles now and then.”

  Kurtz raised an eyebrow.

  “You could say I’m a Cosmo girl,” Lenore said. “Modern, sophisticated…”

  “You must have inherited that from your mother.”

  Lenore frowned. “Leave my mother out of this.”