Kurtz glumly nodded. “Okay, so we’re idiots.”
“It could be anybody,” O’Brien said. “I’m having cameras placed in the tunnels, but the horses are already out of the barn.”
“Maybe they’ll come back,” Kurtz said.
O’Brien shrugged. “Oh, sure,” he said. “If they do, they’ll probably be disguised.”
Two days later, they got a break. A teenager named DeMarcus Landry walked down an aisle of the hospital gift shop, casually picked up two CD’s, slipped them into his pocket, proceeded to the checkout counter and paid for a package of mints. As he was leaving the gift shop, a bored security guard in plainclothes named Luis Rodriguez walked up to him. “Forget something?” Luis Rodriguez asked.
The teenager gave him a cool look. “No,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
Rodriguez smiled at him. “You better come with me,” he said.
“Wait a minute.” Suddenly, the teenager looked concerned.
Rodriguez shook his head. “You’re not too bright, are you?”
For a moment, the kid tensed up and looked like he was about to bolt, then he noticed the three other security guards in uniforms standing nearby. His shoulders seemed to slump. “Shit,” he said sadly.
“Where did you get this?” Patrick O’Brien said.
When asked if he would object to being searched, DeMarcus Landry had appeared for a moment to be contemplating rebellion. Then he shrugged, and said in a bored voice, “Why should I?”
A note, written in crayon, neatly folded in two, inside an institutional mailing envelope, was found in the inside pocket of DeMarcus Landry’s black leather jacket. When Luis Rodriguez saw the note, he gave DeMarcus a sharp look, sat down at his desk, picked up the phone and dialed Patrick O’Brien’s number. “I think you better come up here,” Patrick said. “Bring the kid.” Then he dialed Harry Moran.
DeMarcus Landry looked at the note in Patrick O’Brien’s hand without particular interest. “A guy gave it to me,” he said.
“A guy,” Patrick O’Brien said. He grinned and raised an eyebrow at Moran, who was standing in a corner with his arms crossed and a bored look on his face. Moran shrugged.
“A white guy,” De Marcus said.
“Well, that’s helpful. What did he look like, this white guy? Aside from being white, I mean.”
“Hard to say. You white guys all look alike.” DeMarcus smiled.
Patrick did not smile back. “In a way, DeMarcus, you’re a very lucky young man. Shoplifting is not considered a major crime in this city and if we choose to press charges, you would in the normal course of things most likely get off with a warning, maybe a little community service.” Now Patrick smiled. “Unless, of course, you have a record, in which case, it may go worse for you, particularly since you have—all unwittingly, I have no doubt—gotten involved in a major crime spree. You don’t have a record, do you, DeMarcus?”
“Huh?” DeMarcus said.
“A major crime spree,” Patrick said again.
“What you talking about?” DeMarcus said in an aggrieved voice.
“Let me be blunt, DeMarcus. Let me lay my cards right out on the table. Tell us everything you know about that letter, that envelope, and the guy who gave it to you, and you may get to walk out of here. No harm, no foul, no further questions asked.”
DeMarcus looked from O’Brien’s smiling face to Rodriguez’ impassive one to Moran’s bored one. “No reward?” he said.
O’Brien smiled wider. “Now you’re playing with me.” He turned toward Moran. “What does the NYPD think about this situation?”
Moran shrugged. “A little jail time might help him remember.”
“No, no,” DeMarcus said. “Let’s not be hasty. Hmm…” His face screwed up in thought. “I met him in Riverside Park, near the Church…”
Chapter 14
You’re going to get exactly what you deserve. It’s fate. You’re going to die a miserable coward’s death, just as you deserve
He liked that one. It had just the right touch, a nice, all around non-specific threat, enough to inspire fear but not enough to let the bitch prepare for anything in particular. I’m coming for you, he thought. Oh, yes, I am. Happy with his work, he folded it up and popped it an envelope. Soon.
“You’re leaving?”
“Afraid so.” Jeremy Wang was young, only two years out of his residency and a good, solid anesthesiologist. He shook his head sadly. “Serkin is cutting the vacation reimbursement, also the expense account money. Fuck him.”
“Fuck him,” Kurtz muttered. His hands moved almost automatically as he sewed up an umbilical hernia, an operation he had performed so many times before that he could almost do it in his sleep. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“Roosevelt and St. Luke’s. The Chairman there doesn’t screw with his staff.”
“How can he cut vacations? Don’t you have a contract?”
“Sure, we do. He isn’t cutting the vacation time. He’s cutting the amount that the Department reimburses for vacation time that isn’t used. We get twenty days per year. If you don’t take them all, they rollover into the following year. The contract says you can only accumulate twenty extra days but they’ve always paid the equivalent amount of money if you happen to go over. Serkin has decided not to pay. Some of the old-timers have accumulated fifty or sixty days extra. They’re royally pissed.”
“Anyone else thinking of leaving?” Kurtz asked.
Wang gave a thin, feral smile. “Almost everyone,” he said.
“Riverside Park,” Patrick O’Brien said. “Near the Church.”
Riverside Church lies at 120th Street and Riverside Drive, on the upper West Side of Manhattan. A neo-gothic cathedral, Riverside is the tallest house of worship in the United States and one of the largest in the world. In most cities, it would be a major tourist attraction, but in New York City, it tends to be overshadowed by other, more famous landmarks. “When?” Kurtz asked.
“That’s the problem. We don’t know when. DeMarcus is obviously not the only mule that this guy is using. He made his initial contact on the street and since then, he contacts him by cell phone whenever he has a message that he wants delivered. DeMarcus has delivered five messages. He comes into the school, looking like a student, comes through the tunnels into the hospital, finds an empty office and places the envelope in the out-bin. No fuss, no muss.”
“And is DeMarcus going to let us know when the guy gets in touch?”
O’Brien smiled. “Oh, yeah. He knows what will happen to him if he doesn’t.”
“What happens if the guy never calls him?”
O’Brien shrugged. “Too bad for DeMarcus. A little time at Rikers should teach him the error of his ways.”
“So, we wait,” Kurtz said.
“Not much else to do.”
“I hate waiting.”
O’Brien looked at him. “Tough,” he said.
As Harry Moran had said, DeMarcus Landry knew enough to know when to cooperate. Moran had a police artist drop by O’Brien’s office, where DeMarcus did his best. The result may have been better than nothing, but may also have been worse. “That moustache looks fake,” Kurtz said.
“No way to tell,” O’Brien said.
The shape of the face was probably accurate, thin, with hollow cheekbones. The eyes were sunken, a vivid green, but the color could have been due to contact lenses.
“We’ll give them out to Security,” O’Brien said. “Maybe they’ll help.”
Patrick O’Brien had no authority whatsoever outside the confines of the Medical Center. Harry Moran did. Five cops in plainclothes wandered the streets around Riverside Church as they waited for the perp to show up.
DeMarcus Landry had called only a few hours before. The next delivery was set for this evening, near sundown. DeMarcus was leaning against the side of the Church, looking, Kurtz thought, nervous.
“Jackass,” he muttered to himself.
Kurtz had finished with his la
st patient in the office nearly an hour before. He and Patrick O’Brien had been invited along as a courtesy but had been told to stay out of the way. That was fine with both of them. They were looking out through the window of a grocery store across the street from the Church.
O’Brien smiled. “Yeah, but he’s our jackass.”
“For the moment.”
“Look.” O’Brien pointed. Across the street, a tall, thin white guy strolled up to DeMarcus. He had dark brown hair, a thin face and a brown moustache. He wore a baseball cap and a jacket with a Mets logo over the pocket. He stopped, said something to DeMarcus and handed him what looked like a manila envelope. DeMarcus glanced down at it, nodded and took a step back. At that instant, three large cops converged on DeMarcus and the white guy. The white guy looked up, seemed startled, but against Kurtz’ expectations, remained completely calm. He frowned once, shrugged, and went along without protest as he was arrested.
“His name is John Glover,” Moran said. “A plumber’s assistant.” He smiled.
“Huh?” Kurtz said.
“Also, he has an IQ of about 70. This guy is not your criminal mastermind, to say the least.”
“Then what is he?” O’Brien asked.
“A go-between.”
“Oh, shit,” Kurtz said.
“How many are there?” O’Brien asked.
“Go-betweens?” Moran shrugged. “We don’t know that.”
“Ten? Twenty?”
Moran suppressed a grin. “Probably less.”
“And is John Glover going to cooperate?”
“Why not? In point of fact, he’s done nothing illegal. Some guy that he can’t identify paid him to get in contact with five kids from the neighborhood, give them some envelopes—none of which contain drugs or any illicit substance—and pay them to put them in the mail.”
“Threatening letters are definitely harassment,” Kurtz said. “Harassment is illegal.”
Moran shrugged. “So is opening an envelope that isn’t addressed to you. He claims he didn’t know what was in them. He’s probably telling the truth and we have no way of proving otherwise. If we try to press a case against John Glover, we’ll look like idiots. And anyway, he is willing to cooperate.”
Kurtz glanced at O’Brien. “Mind if we sit in?”
Moran grinned. “Not at all.”
John Glover sat at a table, drinking a cup of coffee. He had a placid expression on his face, as if wondering what all the fuss was about. Moran, Kurtz and Patrick O’Brien pulled up chairs and sat down. Glover gave them a vague smile. “So, John,” Moran said. “Run it all by me again.”
“I already told you,” Glover said.
“My friends would like to hear it, too. Tell us again.”
“Okay,” Glover sipped his coffee. “I got a phone call from some guy, asking me if I would like to earn some easy money. I said, ‘Sure. What do I have to do?’ The guy says to meet him at the corner of 110th and Broadway, he’ll give me a bunch of envelopes and all I have to do is pay some kids to take them into the school and drop them.”
Moran looked at Kurtz and O’Brien. He raised an eyebrow. Kurtz leaned forward. “What did the guy look like?”
“White, brown hair, nothing special.”
“Thin? Fat? Young? Old?”
Glover frowned, evidently mulling this over. “Sort of in the middle,” he said. “He was on the tall side.”
“How often did you meet this character?”
Glover hesitated. He stared into the distance. “Five times?” he said.
“Five times,” Kurtz said.
“Maybe six?”
Kurtz glanced at O’Brien and Moran. Moran shook his head and smiled. O’Brien looked glum. “When did it start?” Kurtz asked.
“Probably around the end of the summer…”
“Probably?”
Glover looked troubled. “I don’t really remember.”
“He called you.”
“Yeah.”
“How did he get your number?”
Glover looked puzzled. “I don’t know.”
“How does he pay you?”
“Are you kidding? Cash. What else?”
Kurtz looked at O’Brien and Moran. “I was hoping for a check, maybe a credit card.” Moran suppressed a laugh. Patrick O’Brien snorted.
“You think I’m an idiot? Cash.”
Idiot was just about right. Kurtz stifled the urge to say so.
“When does he call?” Moran asked.
“You mean what time of day? It’s always at night, not too late.”
“Did he ever say anything to lead you to believe that you’re not the only one?”
Glover frowned, seemed to think about the question. Then he shrugged. “No,” he said.
“Okay.” Moran leaned forward. “Now, the next time he calls you, you’re going to call us. Understand?”
Kurtz rolled his eyes.
“Sure, but I don’t think there’s going to be a next time.”
“Why not?”
“This last time? He gave me a little extra and told me that I had done a good job. I got the impression that maybe this was the end.”
“The end…” Moran sat back and shook his head. “Well, if he ever does call you again, get in touch.”
“Sure, man.” Glover shrugged again. “Why not?”
“Dr. Kushner?”
“Dr. Tolliver, what can I do for you?” The negotiations so far were going well. Henry Tolliver seemed satisfied with the current state of the department. His expectations were realistic. His demands made sense. The Dean had a good feeling about all of it.
“I just received a rather interesting letter in the mail. I thought you should be aware of it.”
The Dean stared at the phone. He cleared his throat. “A letter…” he said.
“A rather unpleasant letter. It’s written in crayon. It tells me that I’ll regret it if I accept a position at Staunton. Beyond that, it doesn’t go into a lot of details. The postmark is from Manhattan.”
“Oh,” the Dean said.
Chapter 15
A gallbladder: routine, boring and predictable. Kurtz had long since learned to enjoy mornings like this. One thing everybody who works in an operating room for any length of time comes to realize is that there’s a lot to be said for routine and boring. Boring means that everything is going smoothly. If you’re not bored, then you’re in trouble, and nobody wants trouble.
“Patient okay?” he asked.
“Yup.” Vinnie Steinberg sounded depressed.
Kurtz suppressed a smile. “You okay?”
Steinberg gave a small, disgusted snort. “You notice any new faces around here lately?”
“You mean anesthesiologists?” Kurtz’s hands moved with smooth precision as he manipulated the scope. The gallbladder had been peeled away from the liver and was dangling freely in the abdomen. Kurtz moved a plastic bag beneath it as he prepared to cut the gallbladder off at the base.
“Who else would I mean?”
“I don’t know. Nurses?”
“Hell,” Steinberg muttered. “Serkin is rotating the staff. If you haven’t noticed any difference, then that’s all to the good; but it hasn’t been easy on my end, I’ll tell you that.”
“Why is he rotating the staff?”
“The department covers three different hospitals. It’s more efficient if everybody can work at all three sites.”
Kurtz glanced up at Steinberg out of the corner of his eye. “Can’t argue with that. So, what’s the problem?”
“Look, surgeons are used to working at different places. You give the nurses your preference cards and they know what you want for every case. You stand there, hold out your hand and say ‘scalpel’ and the nurse gives you a scalpel. It’s different for us. If we want an endotracheal tube, we have to get it for ourselves. The problem is that all three sites are different. The start times are different. The surgeons are different. One surgeon takes an hour to do a case and he likes his
patient to have a spinal, another might take two hours to do the same case and he prefers general anesthesia. St. Agnes uses Siemens anesthesia machines. The school uses Dragers and we have Ohmedas. They all work a little differently. The carts have the same basic stuff but it’s in different places and some of it is made by different manufacturers and it doesn’t all work exactly the same. You have to orient the new guys or they’ll fumble around like morons.”
“Okay, so orient them.”
“I’ve been trying. Last week, I called a staff meeting to go over the basics. Two days later, Serkin calls me up and says, ‘I hear you held a meeting.’ I say, ‘Yeah, it was a staff meeting.’ He says, ‘But you don’t have a staff.’” Steinberg shook his head. “He doesn’t want me to have meetings.”
“I don’t get it,” Kurtz said. “Why not?”
Steinberg grinned wanly. “Because it’s not my staff. It’s his staff.”
“But you said you have to orient them.”
“Apparently having a meeting might lead some of them to think that I have some authority, that maybe I’m authorized to make a few decisions.”
“Aren’t you?”
Steinberg frowned. “Apparently not.”
Kurtz pulled the bag containing the gallbladder through the small hole in the abdominal wall, took a quick look around for any bleeders and proceeded to close. “Tough one,” he said.
Steinberg shook his head and didn’t answer.
“He’s got a method that’s been working. He’ll probably continue with it,” Moran said. He looked over at the coffee pot in the corner of the room and raised an eyebrow.
“Coffee?” O’Brien asked.
“Sure,” Moran said. He smiled. “Black.”
O’Brien looked at Kurtz. “You?”
“Cream,” Kurtz said. “Two sugars.”
O’Brien placed two mugs of coffee on the table then leaned back in his chair. “Do you think he knows we’re on to him?”
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