The Conspiracy Club

by Jonathan Kellerman

“I mean it. I’m serious.”

  Jeremy returned to his office remembering boarding school bunks hard and flat as slate, the crispness of early-morning reveille, institutional food, the knowing smiles of those who fit in.

  Back to the computer. There’d been nothing on Norbert Levy in the Clarion archive so it was time to expand to the Internet.

  The first few citations Jeremy found for the retired professor had to do with his scientific work. Levy had been instrumental in the development of ultrahigh-reliability capacitors for use in spacecraft, ship gyroscopes, and weapons systems.

  But the hit that held Jeremy’s attention longest was something else completely: an account of an East Coast symposium on the Holocaust, convened by a survivors’ group.

  The rubric of the gathering was the complicity of non-German Europe: Swiss bankers hoarding stolen billions, Spanish and Italian and Scandinavian diplomats purchasing plundered artwork on the cheap, French politicians claiming to have resisted the Nazis when the facts revealed them to have been easy collaborators.

  Levy, a holder of two doctorates—in physics and engineering—had become involved because of personal history. His father, Oscar Levy, a prominent German-born physicist, had left the Fatherland in 1937, when anti-Semitism at his university department led him to seek, and receive, a teaching post at Oxford. The following year, Levy, his mother, and two sisters were spirited to England and avoided the deportations that resulted in the deaths of their entire extended family. The family home in Berlin and its contents were confiscated by the Nazis. Gone were generations of personal effects as well as a collection of Egon Schieles, Gustav Klimts, and other expressionist masterpieces.

  Those paintings, now valued in the tens of millions, had never been recovered, most probably hoarded by some private collector. Norbert Levy had chosen to address the symposium about morality.

  The old professor hadn’t been victimized by any single homicide. His focus was on the worst of crimes.

  Jeremy found no full-text account of the remarks, but after considerable web-surfing, he managed to find a summary in a site called JewishWorldnet.com.

  Noted Scientist Says Intelligence Has

  Nothing to Do with Morality

  Renowned physicist Professor Norbert Levy delivered an address to the members of the Committee on Plundered Art (COPA) in which he criticized the continuing inertia of European governments and museums in owning up to complicity with Nazi war crimes. Despite continued evidence that a substantial number of current European art holdings consist of treasures confiscated by Hitler’s SS, very little has been done to locate stolen art or to compensate the original owners.

  Levy’s speech drew from a wide range of sources as he illustrated how some of the brightest minds of the most civilized nations in the world had stooped to barbarity with relative ease. The award-winning scientist, in the past mentioned as a potential Nobel nominee, quoted the psychiatrist/novelist Walker Percy to that effect: “You can get straight A’s but still flunk life.”

  “Intelligence is like fire,” Levy went on to say. “You can burn down the house, learn to cook, or forge beautiful works of art in a kiln. It comes down to personal morality, and that quality is sorely lacking in a good deal of what passes for intelligent society. The key to personal and national growth is combining moral training with intellectual rigor. The thirst for justice trumps everything else.”

  Though emphasizing that he was not a religious man, Levy stressed the influence Jewish humanistic values had played in his upbringing and he drew upon scriptural texts, citing calls for justice in the Bible and in the Talmudic tract, Ethics of the Fathers.

  Jeremy searched for more on Levy’s extracurricular activities but found nothing.

  He plugged in “Edgar Marquis” minus the “homicide” limitation, and came up empty, again. Against all hope, he tried “Harrison Maynard.” The writer had hidden behind a pen name, no reason to assume he’d go public about anything.

  But Maynard’s name appeared on the tribute committee of an East Coast dinner honoring the memory of Martin Luther King. Just a list with no links, one of those isolated cyberscraps floating around the cosmos, bereft of context.

  “Martin Luther King memorial dinner” produced a single reference, a recent affair in California, and Maynard’s name was nowhere to be found. Jeremy broadened the search to “Martin Luther King memorial” and came up with nearly three thousand hits. He downloaded for nearly two hours before finding what he was looking for.

  Pages from a banquet journal. Photos of celebrated guests and benefactors. And there was Harrison Maynard, a trifle thinner, his hair and mustache a bit less gray, but otherwise the same man Jeremy had supped with.

  Smiling and well fed and natty in a tuxedo. Next to him stood Norbert Levy, also in formal wear. The white-bearded physicist remained unidentified in the caption. Maynard was described as a former associate of Dr. King, among the first to rush to the slain civil rights leader’s side as he lay dying in a motel parking lot. Harrison Maynard was now “a major benefactor of humanitarian causes.” No mention was made of how he’d made his money.

  From the civil rights struggle to bodice rippers. Maynard’s philanthropy said he’d maintained a focus on morality, just like Norbert Levy.

  Now Jeremy believed he was beginning to understand the old eccentrics.

  Maynard had fought for equality and watched his idol die violently. Levy’s extended family had been exterminated, and his inheritance plundered. Tina Balleron had lost her husband to violent crime.

  Victims, all. What about Arthur? And Edgar Marquis? The ancient diplomat had alluded to witnessing too much duplicity in the foreign service—his reason for ending a career rise by requesting transfer to obscure posts in Micronesia and Indonesia.

  Places he could do some good.

  Idealists, all of them.

  Good food and wine notwithstanding, they were all about justice—their vision of justice.

  And now he was being courted.

  Because of Jocelyn.

  He wanted to think it out more, but evening had fallen, and he was due to meet Angela for a quick bite in the dining room in ten minutes.

  Before he left, he looked up Theodore Dirgrove’s office in the Attending Staff roster.

  The penthouse floor of the Medical Office Building. The space occupied by Psychiatry until the cutters had deemed it theirs.

  When Psychiatry had occupied the premises it was just an upper floor, dingily walled and floored. Now, the carpeting was fresh and clean, the walls, wainscoted. Polished mahogany doors replaced white slabs.

  Dirgrove’s door was closed. The surgeon’s name was mounted in confident gold letters.

  Jeremy stood in the hallway for several moments, finally approached, and knocked.

  No answer.

  He left to meet Angela and encountered Dirgrove as he got off the elevator.

  Dirgrove wore a well-cut black suit over a black turtleneck. His nails were impeccable. His lips compressed when he saw Jeremy.

  The two of them locked eyes. Dirgrove smiled but kept his distance. Jeremy smiled back and took a step forward. Putting so much intensity into the smile that his eyes burned.

  Dirgrove held his ground, then he shrugged and laughed, as if to say, “This is trivial.”

  Jeremy said, “Lose any other patients, recently, Ted?”

  Dirgrove’s lips dropped suddenly, as if yanked down by fishhooks. His long, pale face turned deathly white. As he walked away, Jeremy stayed and watched. Dirgrove’s hands kept clenching and unclenching, spidery fingers fluttering wildly, as if sparked by random synapses.

  Jumpy. Not good for a surgeon.

  38

  Angela worked hard at finishing a third of her turkey sandwich. There wasn’t much time till she went back on-call. Jeremy picked at his meat loaf, watched her push wilted lettuce around her plate.

  She said, “I’m not very good company. Maybe I should just go.”

  “Stay a while.�
�� His beeper went off.

  Angela laughed, and said, “There’s an omen for you.”

  He took the call in the doctors’ dining room, now empty. An oncologist named Bill Ramirez was phoning with an emergency. A patient they’d both seen seven years ago, a young man named Doug Vilardi, with Stage III Ewing’s sarcoma of the knee, was back.

  Jeremy had counseled Doug and the entire family shortly after diagnosis. Between the bad news, debilitating treatment, and losing a leg, there was plenty to cry about. But Jeremy finally figured out that what really bothered the seventeen-year-old was the prospect of sterility caused by radiotherapy.

  Touching optimism, he’d thought, at the time. The survival statistics for advanced Ewing’s weren’t encouraging. But he’d gone along with the fantasy, talked to Ramirez about sperm donation prior to treatment, learned it was feasible, and helped set things up.

  Doug had lost his left leg but survived his cancer—one of those bright spots that energize you. No phantom pain, no tortured aftermath. He’d started with crutches, progressed to a cane, adjusted beautifully to his prosthesis. Jeremy had heard from him last, four years ago. The kid was playing basketball with his plastic leg and learning to lay brick.

  What, now?

  “Relapse?” he asked Ramirez.

  “Worse, goddammit,” said the oncologist. “Secondary cancer. AML or possibly a newly converted CML, I’m still waiting for Pathology to clear it up. Either way, it’s leukemia, no doubt from the radiotherapy we gave him seven years ago.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes. ‘The good news, kid, is we nuked your solid tumor to oblivion. The bad news is we nuked your hemopoietic system and gave you goddamn leukemia.’ ”

  “Jesus.”

  “Him I could use,” said Ramirez. “However, given the fact that Jesus didn’t answer his page, I’ll take you. Do me a favor, Jeremy. Make time to see him tonight. Soon as you can. They’re all here—him, his parents, his sister. And get this: to make matters even more pitiful, a wife. Kid got married two years ago. Used the sperm we stored for him and now she’s pregnant. Isn’t life grand? He’s up on Five West. When the hell can you make it over?”

  “Soon as I finish dinner.”

  “Hope I didn’t ruin your appetite.”

  He returned to the table. Angela hadn’t taken a bite in his absence.

  “Trouble?” she said.

  “Not our trouble.” He sat down heavily, ate a bit of meat loaf, washed it down with Coke, tightened his tie, and buttoned his white coat. Then he explained the situation to her.

  She said, “That is beyond tragic. Helps put things in perspective. My petty little issues.”

  “Being petty’s a constitutional right,” he said. “I can’t name the amendment, but believe me, it’s definitely right there in the Bill of Rights. I see families falling apart after a traumatic diagnosis, everyone working hard at concentrating on the Big Issues. In a crisis that’s fine, but you can’t live like that indefinitely. Eventually I get around to telling them, ‘When you start to be petty again, you’ll know you’re adjusting.’ ”

  She placed her hand on his. “Where is he, on Five?”

  “Five West. You still on Four?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Let’s ride up together.”

  He dropped her off and continued up to the cancer ward. Entertaining fantasies of bypassing the ward and taking the passageway that connected to the medical office wing. Then jogging the stairs up to the penthouse level.

  He had no idea what he’d say or do if he ran into Dirgrove again, but he had a feeling he’d pull it off well.

  When the elevator door opened on Five West, he walked out, looking to the most casual observer like a man with a mission.

  What the hell would he say to Doug Vilardi and his family?

  Most likely, he’d keep his mouth shut and listen.

  The virtue of silence. Ethics of the Fathers.

  At seventeen, Doug had been a tall, gawky, dark-haired kid, not much of a student, his best class, metal shop. Since then, he’d put on weight, lost some of the hair that had grown back after chemo, stuck a diamond chip in his left ear, grown a tea-colored goatee, and gotten a tattoo on his right forearm. “Marika” in blue script.

  He looked like any regular guy who worked for a living, except for the pallor—that certain pallor—that sheathed his skin, and the jaundiced eyes that lit up as Jeremy entered the room.

  No family, just Doug in bed. The prosthetic leg leaned in a corner. He wore a hospital gown, and bedsheets covered him from his waist down. An IV had already been hooked up, and every so often it clicked.

  “Doc! Long time, no see! Look what I did to myself.”

  “Being creative, huh?”

  “Yeah, life was getting too friggin’ boring.” Doug laughed. Held out his hand for a soul shake. Muscles flexed and “Marika” jumped as he held on to Jeremy’s fingers.

  “It’s good to see you, Doc.”

  “Good to see you, too.”

  Doug cried.

  Jeremy sat down by the bed, took hold of Doug’s hand again, and held it. Blue-collar guy like this, try it in any other situation and you’d be cruising for a bruising.

  Seven years ago, Jeremy had done a lot of hand-holding.

  Doug stopped sobbing, and said, “Fuck, that’s exactly what I didn’t wanna do.”

  “I think,” said Jeremy, “that you can be excused a little emotion.”

  “Yeah . . . oh, shit, Doc, this reeks! I got a baby coming; what the fuck am I gonna do?”

  Jeremy stayed with him for two hours, mostly listening, occasionally commiserating. The parents stuck their heads in after the first hour, saw Jeremy, smiled weakly, and left.

  A nurse came in and asked Doug if he was experiencing pain.

  “A little, in the bones, nothing heavy.” He rubbed his ribs and his jaw. The chart said his spleen was already enlarged, maybe dangerously so.

  “Dr. Ramirez says you can have Percocet if you want.”

  “What do you think, Doc?”

  Jeremy said, “You know how you feel.”

  “It wouldn’t be chickenshit?”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Yeah, then. Shoot me up.” Doug smiled up at the nurse. “Can I have some rum, too? Or a beer.”

  She was a young one, and she winked. “On your own time, stud.”

  “Cool,” said Doug. “Maybe Doc here’ll get me something refreshing.”

  “Aiding and abetting?” said the nurse.

  Everyone chuckled. Filling the time. The nurse shot Percocet into the IV line. The drug had no clear effect for a while, then Doug said, “Yeah, it’s taking the edge off—Doc, mind if I sleep?”

  The parents and the wife were waiting right outside the door. Marika, short, pretty, with shaggy blond hair and stunned blue eyes. Her belly bore the swell of early pregnancy. She looked around sixteen.

  She didn’t talk and neither did Doug’s father, Doug, Senior. Mrs. Vilardi talked for all of them, and Jeremy stayed with the family for another hour, filled his ears with weeping, stuffed his soul full of misery.

  After that came the conference with Bill Ramirez, another twenty minutes answering the reasonable, caring questions of the night nurses, thinking out plans to be made for future psychological support, and, finally, charting.

  When he finally stepped out into the hallway, it was early morning, and he could barely keep his eyes open.

  He returned to his office to collect his raincoat and his briefcase, considered another go at the computer, thought better of it.

  He drove home on autopilot, passing the now-dark façade of the Excelsior, gliding through empty, sepia streets, unaware of the moon, head blessedly free of thoughts and pictures.

  Stumbling into his house, he managed to get out of his clothes before his feet gave way. He was deeply asleep before he hit the pillow.

  39

  He overslept, ate no breakfast, dressed as if donning a costume.
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br />   His first appointment was Doug Vilardi at eleven. The young man would be starting chemotherapy that afternoon. If that and more radiation didn’t bring about remission, the only option was a bone marrow transplant, and that meant transfer to another hospital, fifty miles away.

  The decision to opt for treatment could have been agonizing. Treatment had saved Doug’s life, but it had also poisoned his bone marrow.

  Doug hadn’t wavered. “What the fuck, Doc. What’m I supposed to do? Curl up and die? I got a baby coming.”

  Not a particularly smart kid, not sophisticated or articulate. The challenge for Jeremy had been helping him put his thoughts into words. But once he’d gotten there, Doug had sailed.

  Jeremy’s approach had been to ask about bricklaying.

  “You should see, I built some walls, man. Some serious walls.”

  Me too.

  “Know that cathedral—St. Urban’s, over on the south end? The rectory on the side—the smaller building, it’s all brick, not like the church, which is stone? We repaired that, my company and me. Had all these curves, you look at it, think how’d they do that.”

  Jeremy knew the cathedral, had never noticed the rectory. “And it came out good.”

  “Better than good, man, it was . . . beautiful. Everyone said so, the priests, all of ’em.”

  “Good for you.”

  “It wasn’t only me, it was the whole crew. I learned from those guys. Now we got newer guys, and I’m teaching them. I gotta get back to work. If I don’t work I feel . . .”

  Doug threw up his hands.

  Jeremy nodded.

  “My mom’s scared of them treating me. Says they caused my new problem. But what the fuck, Doc. What’m I supposed to do . . .”

  Jeremy drove to the hospital thinking about the young man’s optimism. Probably something constitutional; from what Jeremy had seen, a positive outlook had little to do with your actual life experiences. Some folks saw the donut, others the holes.

  That late-night supper said the old eccentrics were donut people. Survivors believing themselves worthy of linen and china and silver, three meats, foie gras, petits fours, the driest of champagnes.