Miracle Cure

by Michael Palmer

“Thank you. Perhaps I could stop by and speak with you, rather than ask you questions over the phone.”

  “If you want to stop by, that would be fine. But I think you should be talking to Sid.”

  “Sid?”

  “Sid Mastrangelo. He owns the market where Bill was … was shot.”

  “And he was there when it happened?”

  “Oh, yes. They shot Sid, too.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  SID’S MARKET OCCUPIED THE FIRST FLOOR OF A REDBRICK tenement in a gritty section of Charlestown, not far from the berth of the USS Constitution. Devorah Elovitz’s directions were reasonably good, but they weren’t needed.

  “After I got back from Nam,” Freeman explained, “I spent a good deal of time engaged in commerce on these streets. I actually remember Sid’s Market from way back then.”

  “And do you remember Sid?”

  “It’s been about twenty years, but if he’s as wide as he is tall, I remember. I think he threw me out of his place more than once.”

  On the ride to Charlestown from Reading, they kept the radio tuned to the all-news station. Although there were two items related to Vasclear and the President’s impending visit to Boston, there was nothing about an anonymous call to the Reading police, followed by the discovery of a bludgeoned body in the home of a physician who, until recently, had lost his license because of drug use.

  “Too soon,” Freeman said. “Besides, I don’t think your crack police force believed me. How’re you doing there?”

  “Shaken but no longer shaking would about describe it. I can’t believe that bastard was waiting inside my house.”

  “They had your key. Hiding someone inside meant that the dude outside could drive away from time to time. You were just lucky Mr. Inside was heeding nature’s call.”

  “I have the feeling my luck may be running out.”

  “That’s the old recovery spirit.”

  Sid Mastrangelo was indeed as Freeman remembered him. He was egg-bald except for a graying monk’s fringe, and would have gotten consideration in any casting call for Friar Tuck. He wore a canvas apron, untied at the waist, and had his right arm in a sling. Brian introduced himself and Freeman.

  “Bill Elovitz’s wife called a little while ago and told me you were coming,” Mastrangelo said.

  “Did she say what we wanted?”

  “She said something about the shooting. She also said you were Bill’s doctor.”

  “I was. One of his cardiologists at Boston Heart.”

  “And what are you?” he asked Freeman.

  “Just a friend.”

  “Yeah? Well, you look like a punk from a long time ago who used to hang around this corner too much.”

  “I look after a couple of apartment buildings in Boston,” Freeman replied calmly. “Married, member in good standing of the Elks, buddies with doctors like this guy. Couldn’t be me you’re thinking of.”

  “Good,” the grocer said, his eyes sparkling. “Because the punk I remember had Hard Luck tattooed on his knuckles just like you.”

  “Mr. Mastrangelo,” Brian cut in, “would you be willing to talk to us about what happened?”

  “Bill’s wife asked me to, so I will.”

  An elderly woman came in for milk and cigarettes. Mastrangelo rang her charges up on an ancient register, handed over her change, and then warned her about the danger of her continuing to smoke.

  “Before we begin,” Brian said, “do you have a phone I could use? I need to call the hospital.”

  Mastrangelo reached beneath the counter and passed over a portable handset.

  Praying silently, Brian called the ward. Still no word from Phil, he was told.

  “Do you know if Dr. Pickard is aware that Phil hasn’t shown up?” he asked Jen, the unit secretary.

  “Oh yes. In fact, Dr. Pickard was here asking questions just a little while ago. Wait a minute, he’s still here. He’s just going down the hall.”

  “Can I speak to him?”

  “Hang on, Dr. Holbrook. I’ll see if I can get him.”

  Brian glanced to his right where Freeman was paying for some mints, a Coke, and a pouch of pipe tobacco.

  “I don’t inhale,” he heard his sponsor say just as Ernest Pickard came on the line.

  “Brian,” he said. “We’ve been terribly worried about you and Phil. Are you okay?”

  “Yes, sir, I am. I was up half the night with a GI bug and I forgot to set the alarm. But I’m much better now, so I was planning on being at work within the hour.”

  “Good. Excellent. Do you have any idea where Phil might be? He missed the rounds he was scheduled to conduct this morning, and didn’t call.”

  “That’s certainly not like him. Have you sent someone over to his place?”

  “I believe the police are on their way now. Brian, two of our fellows are on vacation. Phil was actually scheduled to cover the ward in-house tonight. Is there any way you could do that?”

  “I’ll be in by two,” Brian said, thinking about using the night on duty to get back to the record room and continue down his list of Phase One patients, “and I’ll be happy to cover if you want me to.”

  “No news?” Freeman asked.

  “None. I’m going to cover for Phil tonight.”

  “You think that’s wise?”

  “You’re the one who thought I’d be making a mistake to vanish.”

  “That’s true. Go in to work, but stay in the main corridors, away from the nooks and crannies. And Brian? Think of some reason why you look like you’ve been thrown in the briar patch.”

  “Sorry for talking around you like that, Mr. Mastrangelo,” Brian said. “There’s been a lot of turmoil at the hospital, and I seem to be right in the middle of it.”

  “Does it have anything to do with the shooting?” he asked.

  Freeman and Brian exchanged glances. The truth, they decided.

  “It might,” Brian said. “That’s why we wanted to see you. I was hoping you might go over exactly what happened when Bill Elovitz was killed.”

  “I can do better than that,” Mastrangelo replied. “I can show you.”

  “Show me?”

  “I have a copy of the video my security system took that night. My place is just upstairs if you want to see it.”

  ———

  Sid Mastrangelo set a Closed sign in the window and led Brian and Freeman up the back stairs to the full-floor apartment he shared with his wife.

  “I have a friend in the security business,” he explained. “Triple A Security right here in Charlestown. I was being shoplifted to death and got broken into a couple of times. Manny set up a system for me. After the holdup, before he turned the tape over to the police, he made me a copy. The two guys who did it had ski masks on. I’ve watched the tape three or four times, trying to see if there was anything about them I could connect with someone I knew.”

  “And did you?” Brian asked.

  Mastrangelo shook his head.

  “Not a thing.”

  As they settled down before a large-screen TV in the comfortable, slightly musty apartment, Mastrangelo’s wife—a feminine version of the grocer—waved cheerfully to them from the kitchen.

  Sid turned on the set then cued the VCR and handed the remote to Brian.

  “Stop it anyplace you want,” he said. “Ask any questions that come to mind.”

  A few seconds of electronic static were followed by a grainy black-and-white view of the interior of Sid’s Market.

  The camera, located above, behind, and to the left of Mastrangelo, had a fish-eye lens that distorted the scene somewhat, but enabled the camera to pick up a wider field. Seen from above, the figures in the drama appeared compressed. And without sound, the ghastliness of what was being recorded seemed strangely muted.

  Empty store except for the back of Sid’s head as he moves back and forth behind the low counter … 2048 hrs, a time stamp in the lower-right corner says. 8:48 P.M.…

  “I close at nine o
n Fridays,” Mastrangelo commented.

  Front door opens and Bill Elovitz enters, wearing a beltless trench coat … His left wrist is in a cast … His rich silver hair glows in the grayish recording.… His puffy ankles are actually visible over the tops of his Top-Sider–type shoes.… He waves familiarly to Mastrangelo and smiles in the bittersweet way that had first drawn Brian to him.… He heads to the back of the store and vanishes from the screen.… Moments later the door opens and two men come in.… Both are wearing dark windbreakers and ski masks.… One is carrying a handgun, the other a sawed-off shotgun.…

  Brian hit the pause button. Although the physiques of the gunmen were distorted, one of them—the one carrying the shotgun—was clearly much taller and more broad-shouldered than the other. Freeman looked over at him quizzically and Brian nodded. He would bet the ranch that the face beneath that mask was deeply scarred. Leon. Whether the other gunman was the man he had possibly killed just a short time ago, Brian could not be certain. He hit the play button.

  The shorter man gesticulates at Sid with his gun and seems to be doing most if not all of the talking.… Leon leaves the screen and returns seconds later, pushing Bill Elovitz ahead with his shotgun.… Elovitz is talking and does not seem overly frightened. He has experience with armed bullies.… The shorter man orders the cash register opened, takes what bills are there from Sid, and stuffs them into his pocket.… The gunmen back toward the door.… They have reached it.… They begin to turn away.… Suddenly, Leon whirls back.… He is no more than six or seven feet from Bill.… Without hesitating, he fires.… Elovitz appears to take the full force of the shot in the center of his chest.… He flies backward as if scooped up by a tornado, hits a set of shelves, and crumples to the floor.… The intruder with the handgun whirls on Mastrangelo and fires from seven or eight feet away, but Sid is diving for cover behind the counter when he is hit.… The two gunmen do not go to finish him. Instead, they flee.… Seconds later, Sid’s hand appears on the counter as he pulls himself up.… The time stamp reads 2052.… Four minutes.

  Brian clicked off the VCR and nodded grimly at Freeman. It’s them. He set the remote down.

  “Mr. Mastrangelo,” he asked, careful to avoid providing any clues to the answer he expected, “the man who shot you, was there anything unusual about him—anything at all?”

  “He spoke with some sort of accent,” Sid said without hesitating. “I don’t know what kind. German, maybe.”

  “And the other man?”

  “Godzilla? I don’t think he said a word. Did seeing that video help you?”

  “Maybe. There’s a lot I don’t understand yet.”

  “But you don’t seem like you think Bill was shot as part of a holdup.”

  Brian shrugged his shoulders, then stood and shook the store owner’s hand.

  “I don’t know for sure, Mr. Mastrangelo,” he said. “But I didn’t see anyone take Bill’s wallet.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  BRIAN LEFT HIS GYM BAG IN THE VAN AND HAD FREEMAN drop him off at White Memorial. He entered the hospital lobby on full alert, scanning the crowd for anyone who seemed to be scanning the crowd for him. He was clutching his briefcase, which, in addition to the usual papers, medical instruments, Kit Kat bars, and change of underwear, had a single white gym sock in which was concealed the snub-nosed revolver he had taken from the unconscious man bleeding on his living-room floor.

  Brian had never fired a gun except for a BB gun and once a .22 rifle. He hoped he wouldn’t ever have to. But two thugs from Newbury Pharmaceuticals had murdered one elderly Phase One patient, and had probably murdered a second. Now, the killers were after him, and Phil had disappeared.

  Was there anyone besides Teri he could trust? Would she be willing to go out on a limb with nothing more substantial than his word? How much time did he have before Pickard’s office called him to go for a sure-to-be-positive urine test? Perhaps Pickard was someone he could turn to.

  “Dr. Pickard, I don’t have any proof, but I want you to know that the company you’ve been working hand-in-glove with for the last five years or so is controlled by the Russian Mafia. My source? Oh, a Chinese mobster named Cedric who goes to NA meetings. Now, for some reason, even though the drug you’ve developed with Newbury will save tens of thousands of lives and make your institute millions of dollars, the pharmaceutical company’s hired killers to murder your patients.…”

  Would the story play any better with the police? With Carolyn Jessup?

  Brian took the wide corridor to the BHI lobby, flashed his ID at the guard, and headed up the stairs to the ward. What else was there to do except to keep on picking up scraps of data, piece them together, and hope that at some point they might suggest an explanation that made sense? Of course, he would have to do so while steering clear of the professionals who were trying to kill him.

  Pop, where are you when I need you?

  Brian trotted up the five flights of stairs, pausing at each landing to listen for footsteps. He changed into scrubs in the on-call room. Jen, the usually perky unit secretary, brightened considerably as he came on the ward.

  “Oh, Dr. Holbrook, I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “What an awful day this has been. What happened to you?”

  “Just a touch of the GI flu.”

  “No, I mean to your face and hands.”

  “Oh … ah … gardening. I really get into my gardening sometimes. Any word on Phil?”

  She shook her head grimly.

  “Nothing. Dr. Pickard just left for his office. He’s been caring for the patients on the floor. I never knew he was such a good doctor.”

  “One of the best anyplace.”

  “Dr. Holbrook, he said you were on-call for tonight, and he left you the code-call beeper.”

  She passed over the emergency pager and Brian hooked it to his belt. Then he handed her a slip of paper with the name ALLISON BROUGHAM printed on it—the next of the Phase One patients on his list.

  “Could you call down to the record room and have them send this woman’s chart up here, please? Better still, if you can leave your post long enough to go down and get it, that would really help.”

  “I shouldn’t leave the desk unattended, but Beverly is coming in at three to take over. I’ll go down then.”

  “Perfect.”

  The clinical-research ward was in reasonably good shape. Fifteen patients, all fairly ill, but none critical. By three-fifteen, when he was summoned to the front desk, he had been in to check on nine of them. Each had a meticulously written progress note from Ernest Pickard. Brian saw that he had described his boss well. Despite all the nonmedical responsibilities of his job as head of Boston Heart, Pickard was a truly outstanding cardiologist. With two of his junior staff missing, and the President’s visit just two days away, helping the cardiology fellows care for patients was probably the last thing the man wanted to be doing. But from what Brian could tell from his progress notes, the chief had been thoroughly briefed and had gotten involved with each case.

  “There’s a phone call for you from Jen,” the new ward secretary said, handing over the phone. “She’s calling from the record room.”

  “Jen, it’s Brian.”

  “Dr. Holbrook, I’m here in the record room. There’s no Allison Brougham, B-R-O-U-G-H-A-M, in their computers. No one by that name has ever been a patient here.”

  Oh, yes she has, Brian wanted to say. But there was no point. Loose ends were being tied up. No more missing pages of lab reports. The Phase One patients were being systematically eliminated from the hospital’s data banks.

  By the time Brian left Freeman, he had written down everything he had learned, along with what amounted to a few meager conclusions. Freeman was annoyed at Brian’s “If anything should happen to me” speech, but in the end, he took the papers and promised that one way or another, the powers at the FDA, the newspapers, and anyone else who might listen would get them.

  Before returning to make rounds on the last six patients, B
rian paged Phil and called his apartment. Nothing. Carrie Sherwood was out, too. Could she and Phil have married? Would Phil have gotten so swept up in the spontaneity, romance, and sex that he decided to abandon his workaholic, responsible persona for this one day? The explanation might have temporarily assuaged some of Brian’s fears, if only Phil hadn’t left that message on his answering machine about Angus MacLanahan.

  It was after four when Brian finished seeing the last of the patients. Just in case, he selected another name from his Phase One list, and asked the evening unit secretary, Beverly, to send down for the chart. Then, realizing that he hadn’t had a thing to eat since breakfast, he signed off the ward and headed for the cafeteria. He reached the stairway door, then stopped, returned to the on-call room, and withdrew his briefcase from under the bed. He was wearing a knee-length lab coat over his scrubs. The revolver, wrapped in his sock, felt awkward and a bit frightening in his coat pocket. Instead, he returned it to the briefcase, which he decided to carry with him.

  The cafeteria, the pride of White Memorial, had a number of small public and private dining rooms surrounding a vast, horseshoe-shaped central eating area. At the open end of the horseshoe was the serving area, with a salad bar, pizza kitchen, grill, full-meal section, and dessert bar. With a thousand or more employees working any number of shifts, the cafeteria was almost always busy.

  Clutching his briefcase and constantly vigilant, Brian joined the human stream entering the massive restaurant. There was no one in the line he even recognized, let alone anyone he knew well enough to sit and dine with. He flashed briefly on the Suburban Hospital days, when there was always an animated group in the physicians’ dining room and there was not a soul, from housekeeping to the CEO, with whom he didn’t have some sort of history. Now, he was virtually anonymous, and the one person he was close to had disappeared.

  After a brief feint toward the salad bar, he settled in the line headed toward the grill. He was just about to order a half-pound cheeseburger with fries, when he noticed a man some distance away, heading out of the cafeteria with a loaded tray. Brian’s vantage point was at a sharp angle from behind, but the height, thin waist, and powerful shoulders were a giveaway—especially since Brian had just watched a video of him murdering an old man in cold blood.