This time, Jeremy followed Dirgrove. The surgeon headed straight for his luxury condo on Hale. He stayed home all night.
Family man.
When would he make his move?
44
Doug Vilardi looked bad. Some of the skin on his face and arms had sloughed—an unexpected, allergic reaction to chemo—his white count remained way too high, his spleen was engorged, and his liver function had worsened. In no shape to talk, he remained awake and seemed to react well to Jeremy’s presence. Jeremy sat there, talked a bit, found something on TV that caused the young man to smile—recap of a week-old college football game.
Once again, Jeremy took Doug’s slumber as his cue to leave, and, once again, he encountered the family on the way out.
Mrs. Vilardi and Marika. Doug, Sr. was at work. They sat down in an empty waiting area. The previous occupants had left behind a stack of interior design magazines, and Jeremy swept them aside.
This time, Marika talked. About everything other than Doug’s illness. What he liked to eat, the dishes she’d learned to cook from her mother-in-law. How she was thinking of getting a puppy, and did Jeremy think that would be a good or a bad idea with a new baby coming.
The two women appeared close, literally leaned against each other for support.
When Jeremy asked about Marika’s family, Mrs. Vilardi answered for her. “They both passed on. Her poor mama was very young. Rosanna was one of my best friends, a wonderful, wonderful person. When she got sick, I used to take Mari in, to give her a quiet place to play, because Joe—her dad—was working and all she had was this aunt who was . . . you know.”
She smiled uneasily.
Marika said, “I had a crazy aunt.”
“That’s how Doug came to know Mari, from my taking her in all the time. Then Joe passed and it was convent boarding school but she came to visit all the time. Back then Dougie wasn’t interested in girls, right, honey?”
She nudged Marika.
The young woman said, “I was a skinny little stick with funny teeth, and Doug was into sports.”
Mrs. Vilardi said, “Oh, you were always a cutie.” To Jeremy: “I always loved this one, a real good girl. Tell the truth, I thought she’d be perfect for my other boy, Andy. But you never know, right, baby?”
“You sure don’t, Mom.” Marika’s eyes misted up.
“Dr. Carrier, do you come from a big family—excuse my getting personal and all, but you just seem to have that warm heart.”
“Pretty large,” said Jeremy.
“Nice people, I bet.”
“Very nice—I’ll come by later to see how he’s doing.” He squeezed her hand, then Marika’s, and stood.
“Thanks as always, Doctor—I didn’t offend you, did I? By asking about your family?”
“Not at all.” Jeremy patted her shoulder for punctuation.
“Good,” she said. “Because just for a second I thought you looked . . . like I offended you. I’m sure it’s me, I’m probably seeing everything screwy. Going out of my head with all that’s going on, you know.”
“You need to rest,” said Jeremy.
“You’re important to Dougie, Doctor. Back—the other time, he always said you were the only one treated him like a human being.”
“He did,” agreed Marika. “He told me that, too.”
Jeremy smiled. “That’s what he is. A human being.”
“He’s gonna be okay,” said Mrs. Vilardi. “I can feel it.”
As evening approached, with just over an hour to go before he trailed Ted Dirgrove, Jeremy located Angela through the House Staff office. She’d rotated to Endocrinology. He went there, and the charge nurse pointed to an examining room.
“Diabetic admitted for wound management, she shouldn’t be too long.”
Angela came out ten minutes later, looking flustered. “Hi. I’m kind of tired.”
“Take a break. Let’s get some coffee.”
“I’ve already had my caffeine quotient. It didn’t help.”
“Then have more.” He took her arm. “Come on, let’s get you on a serious caf jag.”
“Then what?”
“Then I study you, write it up, publish a paper.”
She tried not to smile. Failed. “Okay, but just for a few minutes.”
Instead of heading for the cafeteria, he steered her to some vending machines on the next floor up, the far end of the Rehab Ward, inserted a dollar bill, got both of them coffee.
“That stuff?” she said. “It’s putrid.”
“Don’t think of it as a beverage. It’s dope.”
He guided her to a couple of hard, orange chairs. Rehab was mostly a daytime thing, and the ward was quiet.
“I really am bushed,” she said. “And I’m nowhere near finished with my patients.”
Jeremy took her hand. Her skin was cool; she looked away, kept her fingers limp.
“You’re important to me,” he said. “I miss you, and I know I screwed up. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did. I’m willing to talk about anything.”
Angela chewed her lip and stared down at her lap. “None of that’s necessary.”
“Jocelyn’s murder was worse than anything I’d ever imagined. She was a big part of my life, and losing her—thinking about what she went through—ripped chunks out of my heart. I should’ve dealt with it sooner. Instead I let it fester. Cobblers’ kids going barefoot and all that.”
Angela raised her head. Tears flowed down her cheeks. “I should’ve understood. I shouldn’t have made demands.”
“No, it’s good someone’s finally making demands on me. I’ve been disconnected for a long time.”
She drank coffee, made a face. “It really is putrid.” Her fingers tightened around Jeremy’s. “I knew her. Not well, but I knew her. From when I rotated through Neuro. She was a sweet, sweet girl. One time, I was charting, and she was talking to another nurse about her boyfriend. How great he was, considerate, caring. How he always made her feel special. The other nurse tried to make a joke out of it. Something like, you know those shrinks, they learn to be sensitive in school. Jocelyn wouldn’t hear it, cut her off, said, ‘Don’t joke it away, I’m serious. I’m serious about him.’ I remember thinking, what kind of guy could inspire that? I didn’t know it was you. Even after we started going out, I had no idea. I just liked you because when you lectured to us, you were so intense. About what you did—about bringing out the humanity in everyone. That’s the message I wanted to hear when I started my internship but seldom did. It wasn’t until after we’d gone out a couple of times that someone—one of the other R-IIs—told me you were Jocelyn’s boyfriend. I remember thinking, ‘Uh-oh, this is going to be complicated.’ But I liked you, so . . . oh, Jeremy, I’m not good at this.”
She put her head on his shoulder.
He said, “Complicated, how?”
“This.”
“It won’t be a problem. No taboos, nothing off-limits. If you want me to talk about Jocelyn, I will—”
“That’s just it,” she said. “I’m not sure I want to—you obviously loved her very deeply, she’s still a part of you, and that’s good. If you could just dismiss her, I’d be repulsed. But the selfish part of me just doesn’t know if I can deal with . . . her memory. Hanging over us. It’s like having a chaperone—I know that sounds terrible, but—”
“It’s hanging over me, not us,” said Jeremy. “She’s gone. She’ll be more gone in a month, even more so in a year, and one day I won’t think about her much at all.” The backs of his eyes ached. Now his own tears had welled. “Intellectually I know all that, but my damn soul hasn’t adjusted.”
She dabbed at his eyes with her fingers. “I didn’t know psychology believed in the soul.”
It doesn’t.
Jeremy said, “It’ll take time, there’s no shortcut.” He looked at her.
Angela kissed his forehead.
Jeremy wrapped his arms around her. She felt small. He was about to lift her face for a
nother kiss when a gangly teenage boy, probably someone’s grandson, came out of a patient room, loped down toward the coffee machine, saw them, and grinned lewdly.
“Go, dude,” the kid muttered, plunking coins down the slot.
Angela laughed in Jeremy’s ear.
They moved to his office, spent another quarter hour there, sitting quietly, Angela in Jeremy’s lap, her head resting on his chest. The portable radio Jeremy rarely played was tuned to insipid stuff that billed itself as smooth jazz. Angela’s breathing slowed, and he wondered if she’d fallen asleep. When he lowered his head to look, her eyes fluttered open, and she said, “I really need to get back.”
When they returned to Endocrinology, a prune-faced nurse said, “There’s a catheter waiting for you, Dr. Rios,” and walked away.
Jeremy said, “Nothing like the old Welcome Wagon.”
Angela smiled, grew serious. “Time to do some plumbing—Jeremy, thank you. For taking the initiative. I know it wasn’t easy.”
“Like I said, you’re important to me.”
She played with her stethoscope, kicked one shoe against the other—a little-kid gesture that pinched Jeremy’s chest. “You’re important to me, I wish we could spend some real time together, but I’ll be on for the next two nights.”
Me too.
He said, “Let’s aim for lunch.”
“Let’s do that. Dude.”
45
Hand-holder by day, self-deluded voyeur by night?
For two evenings running, Theodore Gerd Dirgrove left the hospital, drove straight home, and stayed there. Both nights, Jeremy watched the cream-colored high-rise until 3 A.M., alternating between sitting in his car and walking around the glossy neighborhood. He no longer felt the cold; some sort of internal oven was raging.
A good place to be spying—the glut of cafés and high-end cocktail lounges ensured a constant sprinkle of pedestrians that made his appearance less conspicuous. The second night, he patronized one of the lounges, a place on Hale called the Pearl Onion, where martinis were the thing. He hazarded one, straight up, mixed with Boodles gin, the eponymous vegetable—a pair—floating in the silky liquid. Arthur’s mix.
One drink, only, chased by coffee. He sat at a window booth that afforded him a view, through lace curtains, of Dirgrove’s building.
Fitting in. Enjoying the soft music—real jazz—the clink of glasses, the eager conversation of good-looking, affluent singles at the bar.
He’d made sure to dress well—had taken to dressing better, in general, to meet the needs of the . . . job. Donning his best sport coat and slacks, and a lush, black merino-cashmere overcoat that he’d bought in a deep-discount sale years ago at Llewellyn’s department store and had never worn since—saving it for what?
He’d even brought a crisp shirt to his office so he could change before he set out on his—
Mission?
Find me a windmill, and I’ll tilt away.
That night, Dirgrove’s Buick never reappeared. The back of the building was an enclosed courtyard with only one way out of the subterranean parking lot, so even if the surgeon had chosen to retrieve the car himself, he’d have to drive around in front.
Ted was in for the night. Saving his energies?
Jeremy voided the quarts of liquid he’d ingested in the lounge’s minty-fresh men’s room and drove home. Tomorrow night, Angela would be off-call, and he’d have to find an excuse not to see her. Was feigning illness the tactful choice? No, that would boomerang, she’d want to be with him, dote on him. He’d think of something.
As he crawled into bed, he thought: Martinis; Arthur’s drink.
Where was the old man?
What had happened to his family?
Eight o’clock, he was back at his desk, logging on to the Clarion archive. He’d tried once before, plugging in “Chess homicide” but finding nothing. Wondering if he should dig deeper.
Now he was better educated; he set his parameters.
The Pathology Department secretary knew Arthur only as a confirmed bachelor, and she’d worked at Central for years. No one Jeremy had spoken to had ever talked of a marriage in the old man’s life.
So Arthur had been single for a long time; the tragedy that had shredded his life had taken place decades ago.
Someone besides the CCC people knew the truth—Arthur’s neighbor, Ramona Purveyance. She’d known him as a handsome young physician who’d delivered her children.
Before . . .
An open woman, prone to chatter, but when she’d talked about Arthur leaving his home in Queen’s Arms, she’d grown evasive.
Knowing the ordeal that had transformed Arthur from a liberator of squalling newborns to a surveyor of the dead.
Leading Arthur to a position at the Coroner’s. The remainder of his life nurtured by the cessation of life. Still, the old man had hung on to the bricks and the mortar and the baseboards of his memories.
Two children. The doting wife Jeremy had conjured.
That flip assessment seemed so cruel, now.
Arthur, living with ghosts.
And yet, he smiled and drank and enjoyed late-night suppers. Traveled and learned.
And taught.
Suddenly, Jeremy was suffused with admiration for Arthur; but at the same time, the thought of ending up like Arthur scared him out of his wits.
He wrenched himself away from all that, escaped to the cold comfort of calculation: Ramona Purveyance was at least in her midsixties, so her babies would most likely have been born anywhere between thirty and forty-five years ago.
Arthur was what—seventy? Med school and Army service would’ve made him close to thirty by the time he came to Central to deliver babies.
Jeremy chose forty years ago and plugged in “Chess homicides.”
Using the plural because that’s what had happened. The computer wasn’t smart enough to show discretion; perhaps that’s why it had spat back his first search.
Nothing.
How about “Chess family homicides”?
Good call.
Thirty-seven years ago. A strangely dry July.
Three Bodies Found in Wreckage
of Summer Cabin
An early-morning arson fire in a cabin near Lake Oswagumi, in the Highland Park resort area, turned into a murder scene after three bodies were discovered in the charred ruins.
The remains have been identified as those of Mrs. Sally Chess, a young matron, and her two children, Susan, 9, and Arthur Chess, Jr., 7. Arthur Chess, Sr., 41, a physician at City Central Hospital, was not present at the rental cabin when the blaze overtook the three-room structure. Dr. Chess had been called to the hospital to perform an emergency Caesarean section and claims to have stopped at a local tavern for a beer before driving the sixty miles back to Highland Park.
Sheriff’s investigators have reason to believe that Mrs. Chess had been murdered and that the fire was set deliberately to conceal that crime. Both children likely perished in their sleep. The investigators further state that while Dr. Chess is being questioned, he is not considered a suspect at this time.
The last sentence reminded Jeremy of something else he’d read recently. The account of Robert Balleron’s murder. The judge had been questioned, but police had insisted she’d not been considered a suspect.
Did that mean just the opposite? Tina and Arthur knowing what it felt like to have your grief poisoned by suspicion?
Poor Tina. Poor Arthur.
The old man had reached out for him, and Jeremy had played hard-to-get.
No more. He belonged.
Still paying for archive time, he looked up “Kurau Village.” That produced only a single, wire-service snippet, dated fifty-one years ago.
Cannibals Rampant!
Kurau, an obscure island in the multithousand Indonesian chain, occupied by the Japanese before the Allied liberation, and now contested territory claimed by several native tribes, fell under the sway of yellow-primitivism as marauding gangs representing
various factions rampaged through opposing villages with machetes and confiscated Japanese army sabers, dismembering and disemboweling and parading through the jungle with human heads impaled on stakes. Reports of bonfires suggest that cannibalism, once a fixture in this part of the world, has made an ugly comeback. A smattering of American military and diplomatic personnel remains on the island in an attempt to administer the transition from occupation to local rule. The State Department has issued a travel advisory for all Americans to avoid the region until calm is restored.
The phone rang.
Bill Ramirez said, “Have any time to talk about Doug Vilardi?”
“Sure. How’s he doing?”
“How about we talk in person? Pretend I’m a patient or something.”
Ramirez was at his office door five minutes later, and out of breath. “Hard to find you—what, your fellow therapists exiled you?”
“Space problem. I volunteered.”
“Kind of gloomy,” said Ramirez. “Then again, you have your privacy . . . space problem—oh, yeah, the cutters got your suite, didn’t they?”
“Expediency trumps virtue.”
“Pardon?”
“Have a seat. How’s Doug?”
Ramirez pulled up a chair. “Not so great. If his spleen doesn’t get smaller, we’ll be taking it out. Could happen anytime, we’re watching it. The idiopathic reaction to chemo’s resolving—whatever it was.” The oncologist slid low in the seat and stretched his legs. His shirt was wrinkled. Sweat stains circled his armpits. “That’s the thing about cases like this. Keep you humble.”
“Always.”
“Usually,” Ramirez went on, “I’m able to tell myself I’m a hero. Cases like Doug—secondary disease, you start thinking of yourself as the villain.”
“If you hadn’t treated his Ewing’s, he’d be dead. No wife, no baby on the way.”
“Spoken like a true therapist . . . yeah, you’re right. I appreciate your saying so. Still, it would be nice to not fuck anyone up.”
“Become a poet.”
Ramirez smiled. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here. Pathology’s still struggling to come up with a fix on the leukemia. Now, they’re telling me it could be a mix of lymphatic and myelocytic, or maybe neither—something weird and undifferentiated. Could be acute and chronic at the same time—the kid’s bone marrow’s a mess. I’ve got the slides going out to L.A. and Boston because they see more than we do of these weird ones. The key is to see what protocol he fits into, but if he doesn’t and we just wing it, we’re lowering our chance of initial remission.”
The Conspiracy Club Page 23