Pulse

by Edna Buchanan

  Others nodded. “There was a family we were told about,” one woman said. “When the recipient visited to thank them, they asked for money, said they were behind in their house payments.”

  “That’s wrong,” chimed in the woman in the red stretch pants and T-shirt. “It’s like putting a price on human life.”

  “But don’t you think,” Frank asked, unable to resist, “that it’s a small price to pay for life? That if there is a need, and you might be able to help them somehow, that it’s the right thing to do?”

  “Anonymity is best,” the woman said flatly, as the others agreed. “Better to send an unsigned thank-you note through the program.”

  “Some people find it impossible to accept a gift without reciprocating.” The social worker smiled sweetly at Frank. “We all have to learn how to take.”

  “And what about sleep disorders and psychological problems?” Kathleen tried to sound casual but fooled no one, he was sure.

  “Commonly encountered by transplant patients.” Audrey nodded.

  The room murmured acquiescence. “We’ve all been through it,” a kidney recipient said.

  “The trauma of life-threatening illness, the stress, then finally going home. I cried every time I saw a face I knew,” Andrew confessed.

  “It’s the medication, the steroids,” said the soft-spoken middle-aged wife of a kidney recipient. “There was a gentle, mild-mannered little man in our first group. He loved his wife dearly, she was an absolute angel, nursed him through everything. Three days after she brought him home from the hospital, he chased her through the house with a butcher knife. She had to call nine one one.”

  “But,” Frank said, “that all ends when the patient is weaned away from the initial high dosage.”

  “Medically, that should be the case, and that’s a matter that every individual should discuss with his or her own physician,” Audrey said, “but many patients indicate that psychological upsets often continue beyond that period.”

  Frank was uncomfortably aware of Kathleen leaning forward in her seat. “In what form?” she asked solemnly.

  “Uncharacteristic mood swings, personality changes.”

  He felt humiliated and conscious of their stares. Kathleen had embarrassed him in front of strangers. “Maybe,” he said, “those patients always had problems but were too sick to act on them. Maybe that fellow never really liked his wife.”

  Negative murmurs swept the room. Hell, he thought, what kind of support group is this?

  “What about children?” he asked mildly. “Do recovered recipients often feel shut out of the family unit because their authority and parenting styles have been undermined by a spouse? Isn’t it singularly important for parents to maintain a united front, instead of one conspiring with the children, keeping secrets from a spouse now eager to resume his, or her, role as a parent?”

  The majority agreed this time.

  Kathleen’s face was brick red as Audrey cheerfully announced a break for refreshments. His wife avoided him, mingling with others, so Frank joined a small group of recipients at the back of the room. Turning away when two men unbuttoned their shirts to compare scars, he came face-to-face with Audrey.

  “You must hear everything,” he said, twisting the cap off a chilled bottle of Evian water. “Do you ever meet recipients who believe they experience a spiritual link to the donor or feel as though they have taken on some of the donor’s memory or personality?”

  “Ah, the metaphysical.” She raised a skeptical eyebrow and smiled easily. “Patients do report all sorts of side effects while their medications are still being adjusted.”

  “But what if it has nothing to do with the medication? What if the mood swings actually are emotions and characteristics transferred from the donor?”

  She chuckled. “In other words, if your transplant took place in Paris, you’d wake up with a taste for escargots? Or if your donor was a concert pianist, you’d suddenly play Chopin? I don’t think so.”

  Kathleen remained silent until inside the car. “You know I’m the only full-time parent our girls have had for years,” she said, her voice tight.

  He turned the key in the ignition.

  “First you were always at work, then you were always sick. Now you have the colossal gall to talk about parenting styles and embarrass me in front of all these people.”

  “I only brought it up,” he said, backing the car out, “because you were embarrassing me. You know I don’t like airing our private lives with strangers. For a minute there I thought you were going to ask their advice about our sex life.”

  “Maybe I should have.”

  “Oh, what’s wrong with it?” Me and my big mouth, he thought. Now he’d stepped in it. What the hell did she mean by that? She refused to answer.

  “This is what you wanted, Kathleen. You wanted to go to the damn meeting. Happy now?”

  Weary as he was, he slept poorly again that night. Not only because they had quarreled, but because he felt a sense of urgency, time was running out. On whom? Or what? What the hell was happening? Someone, something, was there, waving a red flag just beyond his peripheral vision. What the hell was it?

  * * *

  He felt ready to burst out of the gate like a race horse by Monday afternoon. Tough and businesslike, that’s how he would play it with Harrington. Was the man’s initial reticence sinister, or was he merely protecting the reputation of a dead friend? He’d know when he looked the man in the eye. Frank had to convince him that Rory and Billy were the ones who needed protection now.

  He put his laptop in the trunk, just in case. A light rain fell, snarling rush-hour traffic. A drive that would normally take twenty minutes took thirty-five instead. Frank was still early. A car veered sharply away from the curb and sped off as he approached, leaving a space open in front of the restaurant. A “Closed Mondays” sign hung in the front door, no lights were visible inside.

  He pulled up his jacket collar against the chilly rain and turned in to the alley. The acrid smell of rotting vegetables in several Dumpsters made his stomach churn. Lights illuminated the Dumpsters and the side door. He pushed the button, heard the buzzer inside, but no one answered. The gloomy afternoon was about to segue unnoticed into night. He glanced toward the traffic sounds in the street. Standing alone in the alley, he realized, made him a sitting duck for any passing mugger. He hit the buzzer again, two sharp bursts.

  The rain fell harder. He had intended to make a crisp, forceful impression. Looking drowned wouldn’t do it. He leaned close to the door, a stubborn finger on the button. The only sound from inside was the buzzer’s long bleat. A derelict paused at the mouth of the alley to stare at him, matted hair streaming, his baggy trousers secured by a makeshift belt fashioned from a rope. Swell, Frank thought. He grimly avoided the man’s eyes, rapped his keys sharply on the metal door, and hit the buzzer again. They had an appointment, goddammit. He would not give up and leave. He glanced back at the derelict, who appeared about to approach him. Frank glared and shook his head. The man shuffled on. Maybe he should go to the front, Frank thought, and peer in through the plate glass windows. He rattled the doorknob in annoyance.

  It was unlocked.

  How stupid, he thought. He’d been standing in the rain all this time, and Harrington had left the place open for him. The interior was dark and he hesitated. “Harrington!” he called. “Frank Douglas here.” He stepped inside and shook the rain off his jacket. He was in a kitchen area, surrounded by grills, walk-in refrigerators and freezers, and huge sinks. Dim light filtered in from the plate glass windows in the front dining room. Tables were stripped of linen, the chairs stacked. A light glowed in the back.

  “Harrington?” The man had to be crazy, leaving the door unlocked. Anybody could walk in. He turned and twisted the dead bolt in the steel door behind him.

  He called again, making his way toward the light. The only sound was his own breathing. He thought he saw someone and was startled for a moment, but it was only a st
arched waiter’s jacket hanging empty on a clothes rack. The office door stood ajar, spilling light into a storage area stacked with crates.

  “Are you there?” he said. The phrase echoed oddly in his head. He had spoken those words before, in a similar setting. Was the memory his, or someone else’s? The wooden door creaked as he pushed it open.

  Desk drawers were pulled out, the contents scattered. A wall safe gaped open. A man lay on the floor sprawled at a grotesque angle. A small rug had been tossed over his face. He looked like a pile of crumpled and discarded clothes, except for the blood, exploded bone and brain matter.

  “Papa?” Frank’s knees buckled as the years fell away. He was eleven again. His briefcase dropped to the floor. “Papa?” Tears blinded him, but he had to see. He inched toward the body as he had done once before, the smell of blood making him tremble. He crouched to lift a corner of the small rug, twisting his head, straining to see the swollen features, the bulging eyes.

  They were not his father’s. He fell into a sitting position, head between his knees. He had to think, take control. He felt nauseous. He struggled to his feet and managed to make it to the door before he threw up on the wooden floor outside the office. Still gagging, his handkerchief over his mouth, he turned to stare back into the room. He should have come sooner, now it was too late.

  He gasped, needed fresh air. Needed to call somebody. He lurched through the darkened restaurant and tried to wrench open the locked door. Hands shaking, he twisted the bolt and swung it open. A bright light from the alley blinded him for a moment. Someone stood there. A tall man, pointing a gun at his chest.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Stop right there, hands out to the side, and chill for a minute ‘til I sort this out.”

  “He’s dead,” Frank gasped.

  “Dead? Who’s dead?” The young cop’s voice changed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Inside. The man’s dead.”

  “Okay, put your hands flat against the wall.” When he obeyed, the officer holstered the gun and frisked him. “Got any knives or needles on you? Anything I can stick myself on?”

  Frank shook his head. The cop had jammed his foot against the inside of his instep, keeping him slightly off balance.

  His heart pounded, his mind reeling between images of what he had just seen and discovering his father the same way, thirty-three years earlier. Then, he had run blindly into the street trying to stop passing cars for help. Brakes had screeched, people had shouted. A policeman had come. But this cop was handcuffing him, speaking rapidly into a little microphone on his lapel, requesting backup “on the double.”

  A patrol car screeched up to the mouth of the alley moments later, then another. Two cops sprinting toward them amid a jangle of metal and keys. One wore a yellow rain slicker.

  “I’m checking for a possible break and this guy comes charging out, ranting about a body in there.” He turned to Frank. “Show me.” Wasn’t that what the cop said outside his father’s shop? he thought.

  One went around to check the front. Frank led the other two back through the shadowy kitchen, toward the office. His head swam and his legs were numb. What if they found nothing? he wondered. No blood. No body. Like the storm-tossed boat, the stranger lurking in his bedroom, in his driveway. Was Kathleen right? Was he crazy? They had all been just as real. Six feet from the door that stood half open, he stopped and shook his head.

  “I can’t.” His voice broke. The police must have thought him squeamish, but he was apprehensive about what might not be there.

  “Stay right there,” the first cop said. He stepped sideways and peered cautiously into the office without touching the door. “Oh, Christ. He’s right,” he said to the other one. He stepped into the room for a moment, then emerged. “The guy’s definitely dead.” He turned to Frank. “Anybody else in the building?”

  Frank shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  The cops drew their guns and flashlights.

  The first talked into his lapel again, asking for more backup, homicide, ID and a supervisor.

  A homicide detective responded on another frequency. “We’ve got a forty-five, an apparent thirty-one at the Tree Tavern on Coral Way,” the young cop told him. “Homeless guy flags me down, says he thinks there’s a ? and E in progress. I stop a guy flying out the alley door. Says somebody’s dead inside. Victim appears to have multiple gunshot wounds to the head. Four or five casings. Looks like evidence all over the place.” He paused to listen on the tiny earpiece.

  “No, it looks more like a twenty-nine than a thirty-two, but I haven’t notified robbery yet.”

  He glanced at Frank. “Yeah, he’s not going anywhere.”

  “Who’s the dead man?” a black detective asked him. Her inquisitive eyes roved over Frank’s clothes, his expensive watch, his silk tie. The alley was roped off now. Bright camera lights and people were gathered on the far side of the yellow tape.

  “I said, who’s the dead man?”

  Frank was startled into attention. “I don’t know. Probably Ron Harrington.”

  “What do you mean, probably?”

  “I never met the man.”

  “Kelly here says you appeared to be extremely upset. You were that worked up about it when you didn’t even know the man?”

  “My father. You see, my father …” After all these years, tears stung his eyes. “My father was murdered.”

  “Here in the city?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “Whose case is it?”

  He paused, remembering. “A Detective Carpenter.” He could see the man again, in his mind’s eye, burly and balding.

  “Carpenter?” She looked disgusted, voice accusing. “We have no Detective Carpenter.” She turned impatiently to a patrolman. “Give this guy a seat in your car for safekeeping. We need to talk to him at the station.”

  “It was thirty-three years ago,” Frank explained.

  “Hey,” said a graying detective, “I knew a Carpenter in homicide, retired ‘bout twenty years ago when I was a rookie.” He looked curious.

  “You own a gun?” the woman asked. Her name was Constance Jewell, she said. Tall and broad-shouldered, she wore blue eye shadow and carefully applied tangerine lipstick. His driver’s license was in her hand. The dispatcher had just informed her that Franklin D. Douglas had no outstanding warrants, no history, no record, not even traffic.

  “Yes, I do, it’s, it’s in my car.”

  “Fired it recently?”

  “This week, at the range.”

  “Lemme ask you a question.” She gazed up at him with a heavy-lidded speculative look, as though about to proposition him. “Are you involved in this? Maybe you had a reason. Did you shoot that fellow in there?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Okay then. What do you think about this? I know it’s inconvenient, but how about cooperating with us? We have a test that will pick up nitrates, traces of gunpowder, on your skin, see if you fired a weapon today.”

  He agreed to submit to a gunshot-residue test and to allow them to examine his gun, and they removed his handcuffs. He signed a waiver. A lawyer would advise against it, he knew, but he had nothing to hide. A technician swabbed his fingers and palms, one by one, then sealed the swabs invials. They seemed disappointed that his gun was a .38-caliber revolver and not an automatic.

  “Call Detective DeVito or Jarrett from Miami Beach P.D. They know me,” Frank offered.

  “Call over there,” Jewell instructed another officer, never taking her eyes off Frank. “See if they’re working today and if they’re on the air.”

  Two cameramen were filming as he and a patrolman walked down the alley and he climbed into the backseat of a squad car. The homeless man stared from the crowd.

  “Am I under arrest?” Frank asked numbly.

  “They just want to talk to you,” the officer said reassuringly. He closed the door as a Channel Seven cameraman pressed his lens up to the window.

  “So we
meet again.” DeVito pulled up a chair in a small informal interview room in the fifth-floor homicide office. The door stood open, with Detective Jewell in and out of the room as they talked.

  “I’ve met people who were witnesses in more than one homicide in a week, but they’re usually part of our crack-head population or some six-year-old kid who lives in Germ City, at ground zero in a war zone. You don’t fit in, Frank. What’s the story here? What’s goin’ on?”

  He explained. He was helping Rory, a widow, to straighten out her husband’s estate, and made a business appointment with Harrington. He gave them Rory’s number to confirm his story. They called it several times, they said, but no one answered.

  “Her husband was Harrington’s partner.”

  “And what happened to him?” Jewell asked.

  “He committed suicide, shot himself last summer.”

  The detectives exchanged glances. “So let me get thisstraight,” DeVito said. “The partner of your second murder this week committed suicide? Lemme ask you, Frank, you got some kinda nickname, like the Angel of Death?”

  “You’re forgetting his father.” Detective Jewell leaned against the doorframe listening.

  “Maybe I oughta get my lotto numbers from you,” DeVito said.

  “Shit happens, huh?” Jewell said.

  They sent his gun off to the lab. The dead man, according to the wallet found in his back pocket with fourteen hundred dollars in cash, appeared to be Harrington, pending formal identification by the medical examiner.

  Frank’s name and the time of their appointment were noted on the dead man’s desk calendar. His story checked out, clearly disappointing the cops who had hoped for a quick arrest. Based on Harrington’s turned-out side pockets, the rifled drawers and the empty safe, they had called in a robbery detective and were discussing possibilities, known holdup men with violent tendencies.

  If they are known robbers, Frank thought, why are they on the street? The helplessness and hopelessness of the entire system seemed overwhelming.