by Larry Karp
I nodded.
“Is your wife what she was twenty years ago?”
“None of us is what we were twenty years ago.”
“You know what I mean. Women get to that age, they lose interest. Then someone like Alma Wanego comes along. Can’t you understand?”
I could have told him yeah, I liked to check out merchandise in store windows, but that Irma, at fifty-one, never gave me a reason to do my shopping elsewhere, not even when she was pitching goulash at me. But it was none of his business.
Camnitz made a face that would’ve torn at my heart if I hadn’t been so disgusted with him. “I felt as though my blood was circulating again. Christ, I had no illusions. I knew it wasn’t my gray hair or my flabby muscles she was interested in. But I like to think I didn’t exactly bore her in bed.” His eyes fell, then he looked up at me. “I miss her.”
“Maybe you do. But I still have to wonder whether she might have gotten greedy and figured she’d be better off with a big payday than with a trip, a ring, and a roll in the hay every now and then. Or did she try to hold you up because of the work Dr. Hearn and Dr. Sanford were doing behind your back? If that came out, you probably wouldn’t have been chairman much longer. Most people don’t keep ten K conveniently on hand, Doctor. I can check your bank and investment records.”
“Go ahead, check them all you want. You won’t find anything because I never took it out. I never paid Alma a cent of blackmail. I had no reason at all to suspect she wasn’t satisfied with our arrangement. Yes, I did wonder about Giselle Hearn doing human work on the sly, but I had nothing concrete to proceed from. And I had no idea at all that Sanford was involved until that Kennett man went crazy.”
He stopped talking, but he wasn’t finished. His mouth opened, then closed.
“What?”
“I’m not sure I want to open another can of worms for myself. I don’t think it relates to your case.”
“Let me decide. You might do better opening the can than making me find it and open it myself.”
He punched his right fist into his left palm, then looked back to me. “All right. As I said, Alma never did try anything funny, but someone else got greedy, and made a clumsy attempt to blackmail me.”
I waited.
“That idiot roommate of Alma’s. The Corrigan woman. About a month after Alma left, she made an appointment, came in here, sat where you’re sitting, and told me she was sorry to do it, but she needed money, and she’d keep her mouth shut about Alma and me for a thousand dollars a month for two years, which she said she was sure I could afford.”
Katie the Onion. Every layer peeled off smelled stronger and stronger. “Nervy,” I said. “What did you tell her?”
“To get out, that’s what. She obviously didn’t have any information remotely resembling what you’ve got. She was either making a good guess, or Alma had said something to her. I told her if she was going to make accusations like that, she’d better have proof, or she’d end up in court, being sued for slander. Then she could really worry about not having money.”
I checked my watch, got to my feet. “Go talk to the Dean,” I said. “You’re only ten minutes late.”
He stood, then started toward the door. “It won’t come out, will it?”
“Not if you behave yourself. Don’t forget, unlike Ms. Corrigan, I do have the goods on you. If your wife’s old man says one word to the mayor or the chief of police, you’ll spend the rest of your career doing pelvic exams at charity clinics.”
He swallowed, hard. “I understand.”
***
Katie Corrigan never said anything to me about an affair between Camnitz and Wanego. What had made her think Camnitz was ripe for blackmail? She worked as a secretary, Psych Department, didn’t she? That’d be on the main University campus, up at the other end of Emerald Boulevard.
Inside twenty minutes, I was there and parked. The first student I saw, a blond kid with hair over his eyes like an Old English Sheepdog, pointed me the way to the Psych Building.
The woman behind the reception desk in Administration was everyone’s grandmother. She smiled as I approached her, but the congeniality went south in a hurry when I flashed badge and card, and told her I was looking for Katie Corrigan. Hand to throat, she asked was anything wrong.
“Routine investigation,” I said. “She was a witness. I need to ask her a few questions.”
“Oh, good.” Grandma was relieved no end. “She’s such a nice girl. I wouldn’t want to see her in any trouble.”
She’s up to her lying mouth in trouble, I thought, but said, “Don’t be concerned.”
“Thank you, Officer. You had me worried there for a minute. Katie works for Dr. Smithton and Dr. Chester. When you go out of here, turn right, then go up the stairs at the end of the corridor, and turn left at the second-floor landing. She’ll be three doors down on your right.”
I thanked the old lady, took the stairs two at a stride, and sailed into the third office on the right. Katie glanced up from her typewriter, and let out a screech like a peacock in mating season. “Oh my God, Detective Baumgartner. You scared the hell out of me.”
“Only the evil flee where no one pursueth, Katie.”
She started to smile, but put a quick kibosh on it. “You look like you’re mad at me, or something.”
“I’m sure not happy with you right now. Where’s the nearest empty classroom?”
“But I can’t leave my desk till lunchtime. Please don’t make me lose my job.”
I pointed to the closed door on my right, then to the one on the left. “Either of your bosses in?”
She shook her head. “They’re both in class.”
“Good. If you’re lucky, you’ll be back before they are.” I jerked my head toward the door. “Let’s go.”
Katie grabbed her fringed leather purse, sidestepped around the edge of the desk, then skittered past me and into the hall. “Classrooms are around the corner.”
I followed her past the professors’ offices and around the corner, into a corridor of classrooms. She opened a glass-paneled door, went inside, then stood, waiting for instructions. I shut the door, locked it, and motioned her to the front of the room. “Up there by the blackboard,” I said. “Where nobody’ll see us from the hall.”
She trotted up to the front row, and in one quick motion, slid into a chair. I leaned over to talk into her face. “I’m going to start with the fact that any time I want, I can take you in and book you for a serious crime. Attempted blackmail will buy you a nice chunk of your life in the slammer.”
She stopped breathing. One hand gripped the writing platform on the chair so hard her fingers went bloodless.
“You didn’t bother to tell me you tried to shake down Dr. Camnitz for a little annuity.”
No answer. Then, a very small voice. “Are you going to arrest me?”
“That depends on you. Tell me one more lie or leave out one more detail, and you can bet on it. Now. You told me your roommate hinted about a big payoff in the works, but nothing specific, no idea where the payoff was coming from. Start filling in the blanks.”
Katie nodded like a robot. “Oh, I…I was so crazy. I told you about how I was hoping maybe Alma would cut me in, right? Well, when she disappeared, I told myself forget about it now, forget all about it. But I couldn’t forget. And the more I thought about it, the more it got under my skin. I couldn’t sleep, I was so wound up. Then I got to thinking, maybe that sugar daddy doctor of hers might figure it’d be better to kick in for me than have his wife find out he was having an affair. A thousand bucks a month for two years would get me through school, so I could get a decent job. But the bastard threw me out.”
“You didn’t talk to his wife, though.”
Wan smile. “I was going to, but I couldn’t.”
“All right to blackmail someone, but not snitch?”
“That’s about it.”
“Okay. Now, when you say, ‘that sugar daddy doctor,’ who are you talking about?”
She wiped at her eyes. “Dr. Camnitz, Alma’s boss. The guy she was having an affair with.”
“How’d you know that? Were you and Ms. Wanego friendlier than you let on?”
“No. It was just like I said. Alma only gave me enough to keep me on a string. What happened was, a couple of nights after she got back from that last trip, I was sitting in the front room, reading, and I saw her and Mansell coming down the sidewalk. That was a little weird. They usually did their thing right at the end of the month, I don’t know why. Well, I was feeling kind of mean, so I ran into the bedroom, hid myself in the closet, and waited.”
“You weren’t afraid they’d find you?”
“Uh-uh. I didn’t think they’d be going into the closet for anything, and if they did, so what? What were they going to do to me? Anyway, they came straight through the living room and into the bedroom, and Alma was talking about Dr. Camnitz, how Norway was a blast, and how much she figured she could get for a ruby ring he’d bought her there. And then she told Mansell she was ready to spring the trap.”
“You heard all that from in the closet?”
“Well, I can’t say I got every single word. They were taking off their clothes and getting into it. But I know Alma said there’d been some kind of accident in the lab the month before, where Dr. Hearn had called Dr. Camnitz, and he came running over there. Then, Alma followed Dr. Hearn to Dr. Camnitz’s office, and found out they were doing some kind of procedure on a patient. Alma was sure the accident had something to do with that procedure, and Dr. Camnitz and Dr. Hearn were trying to cover it up. And a few hours before Alma and Mansell came over, Alma had called Dr. Camnitz’s office, pretended to be an insurance agent checking on a claim for pregnancy care, and found out the patient did have a positive pregnancy test. So with what she knew, she was sure Dr. Camnitz would pay big-time for her to keep quiet.”
“That’s what she said? Dr. Camnitz would pay big-time? And after the accident in the lab, it was Dr. Camnitz who Dr. Hearn called to come over? Are you absolutely certain?”
Katie looked like she was studying graffiti on the far wall. “Well…I guess I’m not a thousand percent positive, but Alma was talking about Dr. Camnitz and the Norway trip and the ruby ring when she and Mansell came into the room. After that, I think what she actually said was ‘the doctor.’ What other doctor could she have meant?”
***
I didn’t answer Katie’s question. She took my card, and promised she’d call my beeper if something she thought I might want to hear occurred to her. Then I drove back down to Pill Hill, hoofed it into the Anatomy Department at the Med School, and caught Charles Rapp, the janitor, as he was mopping a hallway. It took him a moment to remember me. “You’re the detective.”
“Right.”
Rapp waggled fingers toward the wet floor. “You think you seen it all, but you never do. They’re dissecting dicks and balls today, and one of the med students went green, and ran out here to pitch his cookies all over the damn place. He’s gonna be a doctor? Christ Almighty, he ever saw what I did in the Pacific, he probably woulda just laid down and died.” The janitor gave the mop a savage thrust. “I figure you ain’t here to be social. You got more questions?”
“Yes, but no big hurry. You can get done here first.”
He swished the mop around the floor, then put the business end back into the bucket, pulled the squeezer handle a couple of times, and gave the site of his work a final disgusted look. “Okay, what’s up?”
“I want to get more specific about Ms. Wanego and the clogged washbasin. When exactly did that happen?”
“No trouble remembering that. First week last August, when we were havin’ that goddamn awful heat wave.”
“Good. Tell me all about it, every detail.”
“Okay. I’m hangin’ a fire extinguisher in the hall when I hear shouting inside one of the labs, swearing, the works. Then Dr. Hearn goes runnin’ across the hall, into her office, slams the door shut. None a my business, I keep on workin’. I’m almost done when here comes Wanego, movin’ sixteen to the dozen, and says I gotta get down to the men’s room and fix the sink, it’s clogged up. I tell her I’ll go soon’s I’m through with what I’m doing, but she says no, I got to go fix that clog now, right this minute, it’s makin’ a real mess. So I grab my toolbox, go on down in the men’s room, and yeah, sure enough, there’s a washbasin, water comin’ over the top onto the floor. Damn fools couldn’t figure out the sink was clogged till they ran enough water to make it spill over.
“So I go get the mop and pail, clean up the floor, and bail out the sink. I’m just bending over to take off the trap when this doctor charges in, bat outa hell, takes one look at me and says would I please get out of the room. I try tellin’ him the sink’s blocked, but he tells me it can wait ten minutes, I should come back and finish then. So I toss my wrench in my toolbox, and go back to finish up with the fire extinguisher.
“Not two minutes, Wanego’s in my face again, did I fix the sink that fast? I tell her what happened and what am I supposed to do when a doctor orders me to get out of a bathroom? She wants to know what doctor told me that, and I tell her his name tag says Dr. Colin Sanford.”
The creases around Rapp’s eyes and mouth deepened. He snickered. “I seen him before, he’d been comin’ around a lot to see Dr. Hearn. I figured they had something going, wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen that stuff around here. Anyways, when I tell Wanego, she gets this funny look on her face, her mouth slams shut like a mousetrap, and off she goes, down toward the men’s room. I finish up with the fire extinguisher, and then go fix the sink. Some idiot had tossed a paper towel down it. Next morning, I’m in Personnel, and poor old Miss Walker tells me they’re transferrin’ me to Anatomy. Which I already told you.”
“That’s one weird story, Mr. Rapp. What did you think when Dr. Sanford tossed you out of the men’s room?”
Rapp laughed. “They don’t pay me to think. What the hell was I supposed to do, ask him if he was gonna shoot some stuff in his arm or up his nose? Or if he was gonna meet Dr. Hearn for a quickie in the stall? Listen, you wouldn’t believe some of the crap that goes on here. Just a few months ago, a tech in one of the Anatomy labs got canned, so who gets called in to get rid of a bunch of marijuana plants he was growin’ on the window ledges…uh-oh.” Rapp’s voice faded. “Hey, Mr…”
I had to work hard not to laugh. “Baumgartner.”
“I hope you ain’t gonna tell anybody about that, ‘cause it’d get me in the soup for real. They wanted the stuff outa here before the papers or the cops got ahold of the story.”
I grinned. “It’s our secret, Mr. Rapp.”
“I guess I oughta watch my big mouth.”
“That’s always a good idea.”
***
That settled it for me. Wanego had nailed Sanford trying to cover up a disaster of a lab accident by doing something that could not only get his license yanked, but also might have meant a major lawsuit, even jail time. In any case, he’d never have practiced medicine again. Ten thousand dollars would’ve been a bargain.
And where would that money have been when Wanego made her demand? Not likely Sanford kept five-figure sums on hand. His condo and his office were only a few blocks apart, so he likely banked right in that neighborhood. I decided to see if I could find out where.
Took me a little more than a half-hour to cover the three blocks of Hill Street between Sanford’s office and his condo, and all the roads in a one-block perimeter around Hill. There were four banks, three on Hill, one on Charleston. I started with First Federal, but inside five minutes, I was out through the door, empty-handed. Next was Vancouver Mutual, wh
ere I did better. Without a warrant, no way I could have examined accounts, but the manager did tell me Sanford was a customer. First Bank of Emerald, next in line, also told me Sanford did business with them. The last bank, Western Savings, had no record of dealing with the good doctor.
Eleven-thirty. I went into a coffee shop, dawdled over my cup for twenty minutes, got my thoughts in line, then hoofed over to Sanford’s office. New York Sally told me the doctor was running a little late, I should have a seat, and she’d make sure he knew I was waiting for him.
***
The woman in the chair next to me must’ve been a stunner before she went to seed, but the smile in her eyes could still make a man take notice. “Is your wife in with the doctor?” she asked.
“Huh…oh, yeah. She was a little nervous, so I came in with her.”
“That’s nice of you. To take a day off from work like that.” She motioned with her hands for me to relax. “Well, you don’t have to worry, and I’m sure your wife doesn’t either. Dr. Sanford’s the best.”
Even if he says so himself.
“And nice? I first starting coming to him six years ago. I was forty, and pregnant with my fourth, and what with all the stuff you hear about birth defects, my husband and I were really nervous. Dr. Sanford didn’t have time to finish talking to us right then, so he told us to come back at five o’clock, and then he sat with us for almost an hour, didn’t charge us extra, and told us everything we wanted to know. He gave me that amniocentesis test, it was brand new then, and Dr. Sanford was the only doctor in Emerald who was good enough to do it. And the minute he had the results, he called me. He called me, not the nurse. How many doctors would have done that?”
“Not many.”
“You can say that again. Now, I’ve got these tumors on my uterus, and he’s told me all about them, made sure I knew they weren’t cancerous, and he can fix me up with a hysterectomy from down below, so I won’t have any scar. He says he’s had special training, and no one else in Emerald, not even anyone at the University, can do it exactly the way he does. I wouldn’t go anywhere else…well, look how I’m going on.” She patted my hand. “Anyway, your wife couldn’t be in better hands.”