Barent grunted. “We already knew that, too. We’re not exactly narrowing things down here.”
“We’ll just have to try harder,” Kurtz said.
Barent gave him a cold look. “Right,” he said.
He wasn’t enjoying a cold one. He was sipping Cardinal Mendoza Carta Real from a brandy snifter, about two hundred bucks a bottle, but a successful urban terrorist deserved to celebrate with the best.
God, that had been fun. He could just imagine the looks on the little shits’ faces. He hadn’t intended to kill them. There wasn’t enough ether in the bottle for that, just scare them a little, and by extension, the school administration.
Let them know who they were dealing with. Be afraid, he thought. Be very afraid.
It was going well. So far, he was satisfied, but he knew that the forces of justice were mobilizing against him.
Kurtz, he thought. Richard Kurtz had a certain reputation. Macho. A bull in a china shop, but a bull who managed to get things done. Kurtz was peripheral to his own campaign but Kurtz, at the request of the Dean, had managed to turn himself into an impediment.
Kurtz would serve as an excellent distraction, and besides, Kurtz wasn’t the only one with a macho reputation. Far from it. He sipped his brandy as he pondered. Yes…he nodded to himself. He would enjoy taking Richard Kurtz down a peg.
He smiled at the lights of the city as he plotted his next move.
Chapter 17
Stewart Serkin frowned at the paper on his desk. It was a resignation letter from a junior but highly regarded attending.
Serkin was of two minds about resignations. On the one hand, the department was clearly overstaffed. He had three full professors with tenure who spent two days a week in the OR but who hadn’t had a grant in ten years or more. He had five associate professors who worked in the OR three days per week and spent two days in the lab. Each of them had a couple of grants but the grants didn’t come close to paying two days-worth of salary. He had a residency director and an assistant residency director, each of whom had three non-clinical days per week, supposedly required for the endless administrative burdens of running the program. He had a director of preoperative services whose job was marginally necessary but whose position brought in no money, preoperative evaluation being considered part of the anesthesia and bundled into the global fee for each case. On top of that, every junior attending felt that they deserved a non-clinical day each week, even if they weren’t doing any non-clinical work. And on top of that, every dollar the department collected was shaved a cool seventeen percent, seven for the billing service, five for the Dean’s tax, three for the President’s fund and two for the reserve fund. They got some of that back in salaries for nurse anesthetists and anesthesia techs but not all of it. For accounting purposes, each department was considered an independent entity with an independent budget, and his department was losing money, only one of the things he had been hired to fix.
On the other hand, he could find it in himself to resent a physician so ungrateful as not to appreciate all that Serkin was doing here. A prophet was without honor in his own country, that was for damned sure. By the time his plans came to fruition, this department would be a well-oiled machine, efficient and responsive. Staunton would be a Mecca for modern operational simplicity, a model for the academic department in the brave new world of health care reform.
And if they didn’t want to be a part of that, then fuck ‘em.
Still annoyed, he opened the next letter in the stack. It was a single sheet of white paper. Written with blue crayon, in block letters, it read:
Your department is a running joke. Your attendings despise you. The other chairmen are laughing at you and the administration thinks you’re a fool. Enjoy it while it lasts. It won’t last long.
“I’ve been told that Serkin is not very popular,” Kurtz said.
The Dean frowned. “He’s still new. He’ll come around.”
“Any truth to this?” Kurtz waved the letter at the Dean.
“The administration does not regard Dr. Serkin as a fool.”
Kurtz raised his eyebrows. “Misguided perhaps? Maybe even deluded? His attendings, from what I’ve been told, do, in fact, despise him.”
The Dean looked away. After a moment, he said, “He has some issues.”
“You know,” Kurtz said, “you can’t do surgery without anesthesia. If this guy drives away half of his department, we’re not going to be doing a lot of cases around here.”
The Dean gave a glum smile. “That point has been made prior to this conversation, by more than one individual. I am aware of the problem.”
Moran, who was looking bored, said, “Can we get back to the issue?”
The Dean raised an eyebrow. “Which is?”
“You’ve got a lunatic running around loose, and that’s unfortunate, but what makes this letter different from any of the forty or so others that you’ve received?”
The Dean sniffed. Patrick O’Brien suppressed a smile.
Moran leaned forward and said, “Why am I here?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” the Dean said. “Possibly because you investigate crimes and this is a crime?”
“Actually, it probably isn’t. There is nothing criminal in informing Dr. Serkin that he’s a fool and that his department despises him. That bit about it ‘not lasting long’ might be construed as a threat but could just as easily be taken as an observation that he’s doing a lousy job and is likely to be fired. What this is, is a waste of my time. Most criminals are stupid, and most of them are caught, when they are caught, because they make mistakes. This guy is not stupid and so far, he hasn’t made any mistakes. The NYPD is happy to help in any way that we can but I could not care less about a chairman with a bruised ego. Tell Dr. Serkin that we sympathize with his feelings and will do everything we can to apprehend the perpetrator. And don’t bother me again with bullshit.”
Moran turned on his heel and walked out of the office.
“Hmm,” the Dean said. “Didn’t that go well?”
“I think he’s taking it personally,” O’Brien said.
Harry Moran’s wife was pregnant again. The baby was due in less than a month. Both of them, according to Barent, were getting grumpy.
“No matter what happens,” the Dean said, “Detective Moran will go home at the end of the day and sleep soundly. The future of his institution is not on the line. I wish that I could say the same for mine.”
Kurtz frowned. Patrick looked grim. The Dean sighed. “Go away, gentlemen. Do something useful.”
“Right,” Kurtz said. “You bet.”
“We’ve got him,” O’Brien said.
Kurtz stared at the phone. “Where?” he said. “How?”
“I’m looking at one of the surveillance screens. Our boy has just walked into the front entrance to the school. When he comes out, we’re going to grab him. You want to be there?”
Kurtz glanced at the clock. He had a patient scheduled in an hour but his office was twenty blocks away from Staunton. “Sure, but don’t wait for me. I’ll try to get there,” he said.
Twenty minutes later, Kurtz stood next to O’Brien in the Security Control Center, basically a room with monitors providing views of every corner of the school and every non-patient area of the medical center, now including the tunnels connecting the hospital to the school and all of the entrances to both.
“Look at him,” O’Brien said. “Cheeky as hell.”
He was tall and lean, with a moustache, a light brown beard and a high, arched nose. He wandered down the aisles of the medical school bookstore, stopping to peer at a coffee mug with the school’s logo on the side then examining a display of recent bestsellers along a far wall.
“What’s he doing?” Kurtz muttered.
“Shopping?” O’Brien said.
The guy stared into a display case containing gold pens, felt the material on a school sweatshirt, wandered down an aisle full of medical textbooks and finally stopped before
the section on medical oncology. He seemed to study them for a few moments, then pulled one from the shelf, tucked it under his arm and walked across the store to the checkout counter.
“Cash is anonymous,” Patrick muttered. “I’ll bet he pays cash.”
He didn’t pay cash. He placed the textbook down on the checkout counter, pulled a wallet out of his back pocket and took out a credit card, which he handed to the clerk. He hesitated for a second, selected a chocolate bar from a candy rack next to the cash register and placed it on top of the book. The transaction took only a few moments. He signed the credit card slip. The clerk placed the book and the candy into a plastic bag. The guy tucked the bag under his arm and wandered out the door.
“Here,” O’Brien said. He pointed to a different screen, this one focused on the hallway outside the bookstore entrance.
O’Brien wore a thin, wraparound microphone around his neck. He pressed a button on the console and said into the microphone, “Tail him. Let’s see where he goes.”
The target walked down the hallway, followed at a reasonable distance by two large men who Kurtz assumed were O’Brien’s. One of them had black hair, a stocky build and an eager look on his face. The other was thin and blond and looked bored.
As he reached the end of the hallway, the target vanished from one screen and appeared on the screen next to it. He continued down the hallway as if he hadn’t a care. A double glass door leading out to the sidewalk stood at the end of the hallway. The target went out the door and turned left. “Now,” O’Brien said into the microphone.
The two big guys sped up. “Sir?” one of them said to the target.
The target turned around, took one look at their faces and began to run.
“Stop!” Both security guards began to run after him. A cop stood in the middle of the street, directing traffic. The target ran up to the cop, pointed behind himself at the security guards and said something to the cop. The cop drew his gun and pointed it at the guards. The target peered out from behind the cop’s shoulder and smiled at the security guards. “Down on the ground,” the cop said. The security guards hesitated. “Now!”
“Shit,” one of the guards said. They looked at the target’s smiling face and the cop’s grim one and did as they were told.
In the Security Office, Patrick O’Brien sighed. “Well,” he said, “a nice little clusterfuck all around.” He picked up the phone and dialed 911.
“His name is Ronald Sterling,” Moran said. “He’s an assistant professor of neuroanatomy.” Kurtz, Moran, O’Brien and Lew Barent sat in O’Brien’s office. They were all big guys and the office was crowded.
“Oh,” Kurtz said. O’Brien nodded. He looked glum.
“Aside from a superficial resemblance to the guy who threw the ether into the classroom, there is nothing to link him to any criminal behavior whatsoever. He got a parking ticket back in 1998; no other record.” Moran smiled at them. “He’s cooperated fully. He’s not the guy.”
“He looks like the guy,” O’Brien said.
“Presumably, the resemblance was deliberate,” Barent said. He put down his coffee and leaned back in his chair, which gave an ominous creak. “The real bad guy likes playing jokes. We already knew that.”
“Shit,” O’Brien said mournfully. Kurtz shook his head.
That afternoon, a letter arrived in the Security Office, addressed to Patrick O’Brien. It said:
You can’t find me. You can’t stop me. I know that you’re wondering what I’ll do next. Keep on wondering. You’ll find out soon.
The parking lot was well lit but deserted. Still a lot of cars, though, since hospitals never entirely went dormant. He parked on the ground floor, as close to the front entrance as he could get. Kurtz always felt just a bit uncomfortable walking through the place in the middle of the night but the neighborhood used to be worse. About twenty years before, a senior surgery resident had been stabbed while walking the half block between the garage and the ER entrance. Luckily, he had survived. Security had been increased after that but it was still spotty, a two man patrol that wandered through on an irregular schedule.
It was 2 AM. Kurtz was on call and a hot appendix was waiting for him in the OR. Levine had done the workup, then called him. The symptoms and the CAT scan findings were typical. The case probably could have waited until the morning but all the OR’s were full and he would have had to bump an elective case. Better to get it done.
He sighed…a surgeon’s life.
He was almost out of the lot when he heard it, a faint shuffle of feet. He stopped. The sound didn’t. Three of them, he thought, two ahead, one behind. After the events of the past couple of years, Kurtz had seriously thought about applying for a carry permit. So far, he had resisted the idea. That might have been a mistake.
He briefly considered wedging himself between two cars, where they would be forced to come at him one at a time, but no, that would deprive himself of the main advantage of his training and skill, which was mobility. Also, if they had guns, he would be a sitting duck.
Regardless, he thought, if they had guns, he wouldn’t have much chance.
The footsteps grew louder. Kurtz sighed and moved into an open area between two rows. He pulled out his cell phone and glanced at it but didn’t have much hope. The parking lot was five stories high, built of concrete and steel. Cell phones had never worked inside the lot. Sure enough, he had no connection.
They rounded a corner, two big, white guys, dressed in jeans and leather jackets. One was blond, the other black haired. They stopped, smiled and kept on coming. Kurtz glanced behind him. The third guy was standing on the ramp leading up to the second floor. He was smaller than the others, also white and he was carrying something in his hands that Kurtz couldn’t make out.
The two in front didn’t say anything. They spread out a bit as they approached.
“Can I help you?” Kurtz asked. Might as well ask.
One of them smiled. The other frowned. Neither said a word. At least they didn’t have guns. Their hands were empty, no holsters under their arms or at their waists.
He had about two seconds left to size up the situation. On the off chance that this was an innocent encounter, he stepped to the side, but nope, they turned and kept on walking slowly toward him.
Kurtz sighed. “Just to be certain we’re on the same page, here, I’m going to give you boys a chance to back off. You have until I count to three to turn around and walk away.”
They looked at each other, smiled and stopped. The blond one said, “I figured you’d be smaller.” He chuckled softly. “It won’t do you any good.” The other one shook his head. They looked at each other, then looked at Kurtz and took one more step.
No time like the present.
Kurtz spun, hit the blond one in the abdomen with a roundhouse kick, completed the motion, dropped and went for the dark haired guys’ legs. The blond staggered and almost fell. The other one seemed to have had some training. He jumped over Kurtz’ kick and executed one of his own, a side kick that would have taken his head off if it had landed but Kurtz was able to move just enough for the guy’s foot to miss by an inch.
The blond guy staggered to his feet, made a sound midway between a roar and a groan and charged in, his arms spread wide. Kurtz turned, grabbed one outstretched arm, dropped and launched the stupid shit over his head. He went flying, landed hard and rolled, groaning and out of commission for at least a few moments.
By now, the other guy was almost on top of him. Desperately, Kurtz wrenched his body to the side and flipped back to his feet. The two circled. The dark haired guy came in with a left jab and followed it with a right cross. Kurtz slipped both punches. The guy was pretty good. He actually knew what he was doing.
Just then, two men in white coats turned the corner. They stopped and stared. “Shit,” one of them said. He turned to the other and said, “Go get help.” The second one didn’t wait. He shook his head, turned and ran. The first one took a tentative step forward,
then stopped, wide-eyed, obviously re-considering his first impulse. He cleared his throat. “Security will be here in less than a minute,” he said.
Kurtz’ attackers didn’t wait. By now, the blond guy had staggered to his feet. He ran off to the left. The dark haired one also turned and ran. Kurtz glanced behind. The little one on the ramp had vanished.
Kurtz drew a deep breath. “Thanks,” he said.
“Don’t mention it,” the guy said. He drew a deep, relieved breath. “Glad we could help.”
Kurtz reluctantly conceded that, considering the circumstances, perhaps he should not be operating on anybody right at the moment. David Chao, grumbling at being awakened on a night he was not on call, wound up doing the appendix and Kurtz went to the police station with Harry Moran, who had arrived twenty minutes after Security. Barent, also grumbling, met them there.
Both Barent and Moran went over the story but in the end, had little to offer besides the obvious.
“One thing I don’t understand,” Barent said. “The parking lot has surveillance cameras. We’ve got their faces. That is a really dumb place to attack somebody.”
Moran shook his head. “Not so dumb,” Moran said. “Look at them.”
Kurtz and Barent both stared at the computer screen, where the two attackers’ faces were highlighted. “Crap,” Barent said.
“What are we looking at?” Kurtz said.
“The shape of the nose,” Moran said. He reached out a finger and traced it across the screen. “The cheekbones, the tips of the ears.” He shook his head. “Nose putty and derma-wax. They’re disguised. Probably wigs and contact lenses.
“Attacking you there, at the hospital, was not an accident,” Moran said. “He’s sending another little message.”
“You can’t find me,” Kurtz said. “You can’t stop me.”
“Yeah. Hitting you on the street somewhere could have been random,” Barent said. “He doesn’t want that. He wants us to know that it’s him.”
The Chairmen Page 15