Muscle Memory

by William G. Tapply

  “What do you mean, using me?”

  “Look, Coyne,” said Horowitz. “You did good, okay? You reported all this to the cops. You’re a good citizen. Now you can forget it. Go back to your wills and divorces. We’re looking for Fallon. Already got arrest warrants out for him all over the Commonwealth. State cops in contiguous states have been alerted, blah blah. So listen. If you hear from him again, for Christ’s sake find out where he is, and the only person you call is me.”

  “Well, I know that. I’m an officer of the court. Jesus.”

  “Don’t forget it, pal.”

  “What about that other officer of the court?” I said.

  “Which one is that?”

  “Cooper. Barbara Cooper. You subpoenaed Mick’s deposition from her.”

  “Yeah, we talked to her.”

  “Learn anything from her?”

  “Not much. Mrs. Fallon did not confide in Attorney Cooper. She seemed to think that the woman was afraid of her husband, but she offered nothing more substantial than her subjective impressions.”

  “Based on her observations at the deposition?”

  “I guess so. And based on things her client said. Mainly, Cooper was just trying to get a good settlement for her client. The way you would’ve.”

  “Her way’s not my way,” I said. I paused. “Look. Can you fill me in a little here? You seem to know things about my client that I don’t know.”

  “Specifically?”

  “Specifically Mick’s gambling.”

  “Here’s what we know for facts,” said Horowitz. “Mick Fallon was in deep with Jimmy Capezza down in East Providence. You know Capezza, right?”

  “Heard of him,” I said. “Small-timer.”

  “Not so small anymore. Anyway, Fallon’s been a sick gambler for twenty-five years. Rumor has it he shaved a point or two when he was playing college ball for Providence, and Cappy’s probably been holding that over his head all this time. Capezza’s as dumb as Fallon. Kept bookin’ his bets, and Fallon kept losing. Paid Cappy just enough to keep him off his back and taking his bets. Finally, oh a little more than a year ago, Russo bought Fallon’s paper off Capezza. Gave him about two bits on the buck for it, from what we hear, then started squeezing Fallon pretty tight.” Horowitz let out a long breath. “You didn’t know about this, huh?”

  “I know Mick had a big gambling debt. I didn’t know it was to Russo. Not until last night.”

  Horowitz was silent for a minute. Then he said, “Listen to me, Coyne. I’m talking to you as a friend here, believe it or not. I know Fallon’s your client, and I know you think he’s a good guy, just some poor slob who got in too deep and now everything’s crashing down on him. You feel sorry for him. That’s admirable. But the man whacked his wife, and you gotta come to grips with it.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I value your friendship.”

  He chuckled. “Think about it, Coyne.”

  I thought about it for the rest of the morning. I couldn’t square it with the Mick Fallon I knew. But objectively, I could understand Horowitz’s thinking. Mick was a desperate man. If Russo would hint to me that he’d hurt Mick’s kids, he would’ve undoubtedly suggested the same possibility to Mick. Get rid of your wife, pal, before she divorces you and cleans you out. Get control of your money so you can pay what you owe, or your kids’ve had it.

  It explained what Patsy and Paulie were doing at Skeeter’s back in February, the night Mick threw them out. They had showed up there to get Mick’s attention, to remind him that Russo would never leave him alone until he got his money.

  I could only hope Horowitz nailed Mick before Russo did.

  Julie dumped the morning’s mail on my desk a little before noontime. She always kept the bills and checks and most of the legal documents and other business-related stuff for herself and left the junk and the occasional personal letter for me.

  Today’s delivery contained several fly-fishing catalogs and the office copy of the new American Angler, all of which I set aside for careful study later.

  There was just one piece of first-class mail—a plain business-sized envelope with my name and address scrawled on it with a black felt-tip pen. The word Personal was printed across the bottom and underlined twice. It was postmarked Boston. There was no return address.

  I stuck my finger under the flap and tore it open.

  It contained a single sheet of paper, a computer-generated statement from Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Across the top was printed the legend: “Explanation of Benefits. This is not a bill.”

  Subscriber’s name: Michael S. Fallon

  Date of claim: February 14–18, 1998

  Patient’s name: Katherine M. Fallon

  Hospital: Emerson Hospital, Concord, Massachusetts

  A long list of services—surgery, anesthesia, medical and surgical care, interpretation of laboratory tests, diagnostic X rays, medication—were itemized, adding up to $15,746.72. The patient balance was zero.

  There were numerous codes and acronyms which I couldn’t decipher, so I could not figure out by whom Kaye had been treated, or for what complaint.

  But the statement did tell me where and when. I checked my desk calendar. February 14–18 were the Saturday through Wednesday that included the Washington’s birthday holiday—now known as President’s Day and always celebrated on a Monday. Vacation week for public schoolchildren—and teachers—in Massachusetts.

  Gretchen Conley had told me that Kaye Fallon went cross-country skiing in Vermont that week. Kaye had given Gretchen a key so she could feed the cat and water the plants.

  But Kaye had actually spent most of that week in the hospital. Either Gretchen had lied to me, or Kaye had lied to Gretchen.

  Mick had mailed it to me, of course. When he called, he’d told me to watch my mail. As the health insurance “subscriber,” this statement would’ve been mailed to him. I figured he’d just received it. It was typical that it would take about four months to get to him.

  I looked over the explanation of benefits again. It told me nothing.

  I thought about it for a couple of minutes. Then I picked up the phone and pecked out the Conleys’ number in Concord. After three or four rings, Gretchen answered.

  “It’s Brady Coyne,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said brightly. “Brady. How are you?”

  “Just fine. How about you?”

  She sighed. “Oh, better, I guess. It’s been hard, and having Danny and Erin here… well, I’m certainly not complaining… I mean, I’m really happy that we can be of some help to the poor kids… but it’s been, you know, stressful. And now… I don’t know if you heard, but Kaye’s body has been released.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I heard this morning.”

  “It looks like Lyn and I are the, um, surrogate parents here.” She blew out a breath. “Don’t get me wrong. We really love those kids, and I’m glad we can be here for them. And I guess it’s helped me get some perspective, if you know what I mean. I did spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Are the Fallon kids there now?”

  “No. They’re off with Lyn. He’s helping them make funeral arrangements for Kaye.”

  “How are they handling it?”

  “Well, of course, this business with the funeral isn’t easy for them. But they’ve seemed a little better since you talked with them the other day. Erin isn’t crying all the time, and the two of them are spending a lot of time together. Whatever you said to them helped.”

  “I’m glad.” I hesitated. “Gretchen, I have some business out your way, and I wondered if I stopped by, might I possibly prevail upon you for a glass of iced tea?”

  “Iced tea? Well, gee. Sure. That would be nice. I’m here. It’s just me and this big empty house and nothing but a pile of laundry. I’d love the company.”

  “I’ll be there sometime this afternoon. Will that be all right?”

  “I’m not going anywhere, that’s for sure. I don’t even have
a car.” She hesitated. “What is it, Brady? Has something hap­pened?”

  “Nothing new,” I said.

  It was a little after two o’clock when I pulled into the lot at Emerson Hospital in Concord.

  Hospital bureaucracies, in my experience, rival those of governments in evasiveness, unapproachability, and highhandedness. On the other hand, I knew that what medical people fear above all things are lawsuits.

  Hey, I was a lawyer.

  I entered the emergency area. From behind drawn curtains off to my right, in the subsonic electric hush of the place, I heard a soft moan. A matter-of-fact female intercom voice summoned Dr. Paulsen. The faint smell of Lysol mingled with rubbing alcohol and something sweet—cherry-flavored cough syrup, maybe—and something sour, like vomit.

  I could’ve closed my eyes and I would’ve known I was in a hospital.

  Behind a counter straight ahead of me a thirtyish man in a white jacket stood talking to a fortyish woman, also in a white jacket. Another woman, this one wearing a blue cardigan sweater over a white blouse, was seated behind the counter peering at a computer monitor.

  As I approached them, the white-coated pair wandered away. I stood in front of the seated woman. She was Asian and quite attractive, with straight black hair cut very short, black eyes, and beautiful smooth skin. The plaque pinned to her sweater read “B. Liu.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  She looked up. “May I help you, sir?”

  “I don’t know if you’re the one to help me or not,” I said. I removed the Blue Cross/Blue Shield form from my jacket pocket, unfolded it, and laid it on the counter in front of her. “I’m investigating this admission.”

  She glanced at the form, then cocked her head at me. A smile played around the corners of her mouth. “Investigating?”

  “I’m an attorney.”

  “Yes?”

  “I need to know the name of the doctor who handled this case.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but all hospital records are strictly confidential. I can’t give you that information,”

  “Who can?”

  She looked down at the form. “Is there a problem with the billing or something?”

  I leaned my elbows on the counter and bent close to her. “The patient died,” I whispered.

  She leaned back in her chair and looked up at me. “Oh, dear,” she said.

  “And I am the family lawyer.” I took a business card from my wallet and handed it to her. She glanced at it, then tucked it under the corner of her desk blotter.

  I pointed to Kaye’s name on the Blue Cross form. “Ring a bell?”

  She looked at it. “Fallon.” She frowned.

  “You might’ve read about her,” I said. “She died about a week ago.”

  “Did she die here? In the hospital?”

  “No. Suddenly. At home.”

  “Locally?”

  “In Lexington.”

  She shrugged. “You know,” she said, “most people who die around here were patients at this hospital at one time or another. You should probably talk to Banyon.”

  “Who’s Banyon?” I said.

  “Assistant director,” she said. “Her job is to worry about things like lawsuits.”

  “I didn’t say anything about a lawsuit.”

  B. Liu smiled and leaned across her desk toward me. “You want information out of Banyon,” she whispered, “you might want to try it.”

  “So how do I get to see this Banyon?”

  “I’ll page her for you. You can sit over there.” She waved to a row of plastic chairs against the wall.

  “Well, okay,” I said. “But just so you know, I hate hospitals, and I hate waiting.”

  “Who doesn’t?” she said.

  “If you can impress upon Ms. Banyon the, um, urgency of this situation…”

  “Everything in the emergency room is urgent, Mr. Coyne.” She smiled. “I will tell her you’re a lawyer. That should expedite things.”

  The molded plastic seats were bolted to the floor so that you had no choice but to stare at the television screen mounted on the opposite wall. It was playing some afternoon talk show.

  A television talk show, with the sound muted. That’s enter­tainment.

  I flipped through a couple of month-old Newsweek magazines, and when I glanced at my watch, I saw that I’d been sitting there for half an hour. I got up and went to the counter. B. Liu looked up at me and shrugged. “She knows you’re here,” she said, “and she knows you’re a lawyer.”

  “Perhaps you’ll tell her that I’m growing impatient,” I said.

  “I can do that. For what it might be worth.”

  “I’m stepping outside. I have not given up. I’m not going to give up.”

  She smiled. “Of course you’re not.”

  I went out into the afternoon sunshine, found a bench to sit on, and lit a cigarette. I felt vaguely criminal, sitting under the hospital Emergency sign, sucking carcinogens into my lungs. Dozens of smashed cigarette butts lay scattered under the bench. This was a popular place for worrying, I guessed.

  When I went back inside, I saw a tall slender woman in a blue business suit leaning both elbows on the counter talking with B. Liu. She had reddish brown hair that fell below her shoulders. Her skirt was very short. She had extraordinarily long legs. Long and quite shapely legs, one of which she had cocked up behind her. Her shoe was dangling from her toes.

  B. Liu glanced at me, then spoke to the woman, who turned, squinted at me, then smiled. She slipped her shoe back onto her foot, then came toward me with her hand extended. “Mr. Coyne,” she said. “I’m Evelyn Banyon. Assistant director of the hospital.” She smiled. “Public relations, community liaison, press secretary, all-round helpful person.”

  I took her hand. She had pale blue eyes, almost silver, and a fine dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. In her heels, she was nearly as tall as I.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” I said. “Can we talk?”

  “Sure,” she said. “We can go back to my office, which is up two floors and down several corridors, or we can go outside so I can have a smoke.”

  “A no-brainer,” I said.

  We went outside and sat on the same bench I’d occupied a few minutes earlier. Evelyn Banyon took a pack of Merit Lites from a pocket and lit one with a slim gold lighter.

  “So,” she said, blowing out a long plume of smoke. “You planning to sue us?”

  “I don’t know,” I blustered. “My client’s next of kin was not properly notified when she was admitted, and—”

  She put her hand on my arm. “Mr. Coyne,” she said, “I have a suggestion.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t bullshit me, okay?”

  “What makes you think—?”

  “I checked out this case,” she said. “I know who Katherine Fallon is—was—and when she was here and how she died. You’re not here because of anything the hospital did wrong. You’re investigating her murder. Now, I talked with the director, and he said if that were in fact the case, there is no reason why I shouldn’t cooperate with you. So I’m willing to cooperate with you. So why don’t you just tell me how I can do that?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Good idea. See—”

  “Or,” she said quickly, “if you’d rather try to bullshit me, okay, that’s fine, too. Then I could use my training and experi­ence, deflect and cut through your bullshit, because that’s mostly what I do. Deal with bullshit. Give it and take it.”

  “No,” I said. “Let’s just—”

  “In fact,” she interrupted, “bullshit is my best thing, Mr. Coyne.” She grinned wickedly. She was obviously enjoying herself. “But the truth is, it would be refreshing not to do bullshit with someone for a change. So it’s up to you. It’s a pleasant day, nice to be outside, we can’t smoke in my office, and if you think it would be fun to bullshit for a while, okay by me.”

  I smiled. “No, that’s all right.”

  “Up to you.”<
br />
  “All I’m really after,” I said, “is a chance to talk to the doctor who treated her.”

  “Not that it matters,” she said, “but can I ask why?”

  “Kaye Fallon came in with an emergency, ended up staying in the hospital for five days, and I need to know what the problem was.”

  “And this is, um, relevant to your investigation, huh?”

  “It might be.”

  “So you can catch whoever murdered Mrs. Fallon.”

  I smiled. “Not really. I’m a lawyer, not a detective.”

  “Both of us deal with secrets and client privilege, huh? We’re both into the bullshit game.”

  “I really can’t tell you much more than that, Ms. Banyon,” I said.

  “Evie, please,” she said. “Okay?”

  I nodded. “Sure. Evie. I’m Brady.”

  She smiled quickly, dropped her cigarette butt onto the ground, and ground it out with the toe of her shoe. “Dr. Allison,” she said. “That’s the surgeon who was on call that night.”

  “How do I get a hold of him?”

  “Her,” she said. “Dr. Allison’s a woman. And there are several ways to get ahold of her. One is to call her office and make an appointment. She’d probably be able to squeeze you in toward the middle of September. Two, get a subpoena and deal with our team of crackerjack lawyers. Three, follow her when she leaves and waylay her in the parking lot. Four, ask me to expedite it for you.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “It’s my job.”

  “Gee,” I said. “I thought it was because I was charming and persuasive.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s my job.”

  “I can live with that. So what do we do?”

  “We head over to the next wing, the John Cummings Building, where Dr. Allison’s office is located. We enter her office, and I confer briefly with the receptionist, who will then usher us into Dr. Allison’s sanctum, where, I happen to know, she is seeing, as we speak, her last patient of the afternoon. The receptionist expects us, and by the time we get there, Dr. Allison should be ready to see us. I will introduce you to her, shake your hand, and depart, quite happy to have made your acquaintance and to have served the hospital’s public in a useful and constructive manner.”