He was just as defensive about the bones, Jake thought. I wonder if he gets a kickback on the mall deal? He told Manny about his conversation as they got in the car. “He’s right about the hard evidence,” Jake said. “There’s no proof anybody was murdered.” He stretched. “You sure you’re okay to drive?”
“Unless you’ve learned to use a stick in the past eight hours, what choice do I have?” She started the car. She was so tired she envied his shabby loafers.
They drove in silence for a while. Jake dozed against the window, a contented Mycroft curled on his lap. His eyelids are twitching, she noticed. I’ll bet he saws people in half when he sleeps. She wanted to touch him, to ease his tension and her own. She wanted to feel the warmth of his hand on her face. She wanted to- “Manny!” He sat bolt upright.
“What’s the matter?”
“Fisk told both of us to get back to the city. But I never mentioned you. How the hell did he know you were with me?”
JAKE STOPPED at his apartment only long enough to shower and change clothes before heading to his office next to Bellevue Hospital, his mind not tired even if his body was. Was Fisk the man who had followed them, terrified Mycroft, and stolen the Johnnie Walker bottle? Did he know who the murderer was? Was he the murderer himself? A murder investigation would halt construction of the mall, even if the unidentified bones didn’t. Did Fisk have a financial interest in the mall? Did Mayor Stevenson? Was there a conspiracy with Reynolds Construction to bilk Baxter County and the State of New York out of millions?
These were the questions that obsessed him, and he found it difficult to concentrate on the paperwork that lay before him. How much time can I afford to give to the case when my duty is to this ME’s office? What responsibility do I have to solve it? Would I involve Manny again? If not, should I ask her to go out with me?
He shook his head to clear it-What in God’s name are you thinking about?- and decided his allegiance was to Pete Harrigan. Long as it takes. Don’t let his murderer go free.
A knock on the door brought his mind back to his office. “Come in, Wally.”
Dr. Walter Winnick always knocked, though Jake had told him a hundred times he didn’t have to; the office was as much his as Jake’s. The man was excessively shy, probably because of his clubfoot, but his education was superb- Harrigan, after all, had been his mentor at Columbia. Wally had taken Pete’s death hard, and he took over much of Jake’s paperwork uncomplainingly. The two often ate lunch together, usually at a cheap health-food restaurant close to the office that Wally liked more than Jake did. Their talk avoided the personal, though Jake knew that Wally had worked for years near Santa Fe, New Mexico, in a school for autistic and schizophrenic children: an ideal place, Jake thought, for a man uncomfortable in normal society. Still, Wally had matured enough to survive in the city, and Jake had been happy to hire him on Pete’s recommendation. When he once asked Wally if he could look at his foot in the hope of finding some treatment, Wally had bridled like a wild horse under a saddle. Actually, once a man reached Wally’s age- about forty, Jake guessed, though he seemed much younger- there was little one could do. Clubfoot is a congenital condition. The tendons in the foot and ankle are too short at birth to produce a normal foot, and the best time for surgery is when the patient is still an infant. Jake never learned why Wally’s parents had not opted for surgery, but then again, the sixties were another time. Jake never brought up the subject again.
Wally lived in a tiny apartment (Jake had visited once; his impression was of wall-to-wall books and mutual unease), liked Harrison Ford movies and medical thrillers, and dated a girl built like a minaret who occasionally picked Wally up at the office. Wally always seemed happy for what he had, not angry about what he didn’t have.
“Reporting for duty,” Wally said, as he had every morning in the three years he’d worked for Jake. He was wearing his signature blue button-down shirt under his white coat. Early on, Jake had wondered if he owned any other kind. The answer seemed to be no. “What’s on the agenda?”
“How would you like some fresh air?”
“A vacation? Dr. Rosen, you know I never-”
“I’m not suggesting one. I need someone to do a little snooping for me upstate.”
“Snooping. Sounds great.” His slow, careful gait brought him to Jake’s desk. “Details?”
“There’s a mall being built in a town called Turner in Baxter County.”
“Where Dr. Harrigan lived! I’ve visited him there.”
“Then you know it. Good. I think the mall’s a boondoggle, a scam to enrich town officials at citizens’ expense. The developer is R. Seward Reynolds, out of Albany, and if my guess is right, there’s a payoff coming to the sheriff- his name’s Fisk- and maybe to Mayor Stevenson and to a woman named Crespy who runs the historical society.” He paused. Wally’s homely face was staring at him with the intensity of an acolyte.
“Anyway,” Jake went on, “at least for the moment, my interest is in Fisk, not the others. I want you go up there, study the public records, see what you can find. Competitive bids if any, kickbacks, the sheriff’s handprints on a project he has no business being linked to. That sort of thing.”
Wally was taking notes. “This is outside an ME’s usual jurisdiction,” he said. “Does it have anything to do with Dr. Harrigan?”
“Only indirectly.” Jake had decided to tell Wally nothing about his suspicions. He didn’t want to upset his assistant before he was sure. “When I saw him last, Pete told me he was positive there was fraud going on, and it really rankled. I told him I’d look into it.” He smiled. “You are my eyes and ears.”
Wally blushed. “One more question: How does a man with a clubfoot go about snooping inconspicuously?”
The question troubled Jake; he had thought about it. “Make up an excuse for your being there. A research paper on the area. A study of mental hospitals. Whatever. If there’s a hint of trouble, beat it back here.”
Wally stood. “When do I leave?”
Jake looked at his watch. “How about half an hour ago?”
***
It was nearly six o’clock in the morning when Manny finally pulled her Murphy bed out of the wall. Fully clothed, she lay down on top of her rose silk quilt to take a nap before she washed and dried her hair. For the first time, she appreciated the cocoonlike nature of her tiny studio. It felt protective. The tops of her white beech modular units were stacked with shoe boxes, lots of shoe boxes. Her kitchen- a perfect size for take-out containers- was behind a shoji screen. Manny had decided to live in the best building on Central Park South. The outside world, her adversaries, would see success in her address. And she would feel successful every time she walked through the lobby.
The rest of the apartment was impeccably decorated. “No matter how small the project, do it right,” her mother had told her. Her fax, printer, notebook, and flat-screen TV, in a neat row on the marble table across from her bed, composed her working area. Framed historical legal documents dotted the walls above the contemporary Italian-design sofa.
Still, nothing made her comfortable now; visions of Mrs. Alessis filled her head. At last, with Mycroft cuddled tightly in her arms, she drifted off.
After two hours of haunted sleep, Manny leaped out of bed. Eight o’clock. No time for her hair; she had to walk Mycroft. She threw on her black Donna Karan microfiber dress and matching black boots with rubber soles so she could sprint the four blocks to her breakfast appointment. She was cold when she went outside with Mycroft, so back at her apartment she put on her black TSE cashmere swing coat and at the last moment, for color, added a hunter-green Etro fox-fur collar. To look at me you’d never know I spent last night with a corpse.
She reached Le Parker Meridien hotel only ten minutes late. A woman who had to be Patrice Lyons Perez was waiting in the lobby. Oops. Wrong clothes. I should have dressed appropriately.
She had wanted to cheer her new client by taking her to a fancy breakfast at the Meridien, but now t
hat she saw her perched on the edge of a squarish modern chair, she realized she hadn’t done her a favor. Hollow-eyed and gaunt, clad in a long yellow polyester dress covered with pink roses, she seemed miserable and out of place. An old blue parka lay on the arm of the chair, and she looked around the lobby as though wanting to flee.
Manny put on a smile and extended her hand. “Patrice. I’m Philomena Manfreda. It’s nice to meet you in person.”
Patrice stood. The small hand she put in Manny’s was limp and soft. Like Play-Doh.
“Hi,” she said.
“Thanks for coming all this way. I’m so sorry I’m late. Did you have any trouble getting to midtown from Queens?”
“Actually, I’m not staying with my mom’s cousin. I’m staying here.”
Good grief. Does she know how much it costs? “At the Meridien?”
“Dr. Rosen fixed it up for me after I told him where we were meeting for breakfast. He paid for the room in advance.”
Patrice’s teeth were bad, but her smile was so genuine and childlike it made Manny catch her breath.
“He took care of everything,” Patrice continued.
“Nice of him,” Manny said. And not surprising. The man has his good qualities as well as his faults.
“He’s a wonderful man.”
I wouldn’t go that far. “Are you hungry?”
“Very. All I had for dinner was a slice of pizza. It was the only thing I could find in this neighborhood that seemed… affordable. And it was still expensive, at least compared to home.”
“You should’ve ordered room service.”
“Oh, no,” Patrice said gravely. “That wouldn’t be right. I’m not a freeloader, Ms. Manfreda.”
She followed Manny around the corner to a place that was classically Manhattan: counter stools, a pressed-tin ceiling, immigrant Greek owners. But the ambiance seemed lost on Patrice, who ordered a poached egg, plain white toast, and tea.
Manny had coffee. It was all she had ingested since dinner, and all she wanted. The smell of formaldehyde still lingered in her head.
Patrice retrieved a worn manila envelope from her bag and laid it down carefully, making sure the table was clear of spills. “I didn’t want to put these in the mail. They’re letters from my dad. I told Dr. Rosen about them, and he thought they might help.”
There’s an appealing eagerness here. Manny was beginning to like her. “When your father was at Turner, did he ever call you? Was he allowed to do that?”
“A few times,” she said, “but not very often. Not at all in the couple of months before he stopped writing.”
“When he did call, did he ever mention anything about friends he might’ve had there? People he spent time with?”
“He told me stories sometimes, fun stuff about people going on vacations. But I think he made most of it up.”
“Do you remember anything about a girl in her late teens or early twenties?”
Patrice bowed her head. “That’s why Mom died heartbroken. She believed he’d run off with another woman.” She sat up straighter. “But I don’t.”
Manny leaned forward. “Patrice, there were other skeletons found with your father’s. Two were men. One was female, a young female.”
She seems angry now. Why? “I want to find out about my father. I loved him and my mother. But he hurt us when he left.” She turned her wrists upward, displaying healed, thin parallel scars. A suicide attempt. Maybe more than one. “And I hurt Mom when I ran away from home…” She paused, evidently reliving the past. “Dr. Rosen said that since four bodies were found, maybe it was an old graveyard.”
“He doesn’t really think so. The bodies weren’t properly buried, just put in the ground. It’s one of the facts that makes us wonder if the four were mistreated.”
“What do their families say?”
“We don’t know. The other remains haven’t been identified yet.”
“How awful!” Please don’t cry. “Do you think somebody will find out who they are?”
“Dr. Rosen’s working on it. In the meantime, I’ll try to make sure that no remains are disposed of until they’re identified. The remains may be vital to our case, and I want to make sure to preserve them. Oh, and don’t worry about the cost. I won’t ask you to pay for anything unless we get a monetary award, in which case my firm gets one-third.”
Patrice squinted at her. Anger again, more overt. “I knew it,” she said. “I knew somebody like you wouldn’t just help me. I’m not after money. I just want to find out what happened to my dad.”
“I know. And I sympathize. But if we find out he was mistreated in the hospital, wouldn’t you want to make whoever’s responsible pay?”
She thought about it. “If somebody did something really wrong, could he still go to jail? That’d be the way to make him pay, not by getting money from him.”
“Maybe. But after all this time, criminal behavior would be hard to prove, and the perpetrator might be dead. The only way to get satisfaction is to sue the government. It doesn’t mean you’re greedy. It just means you want to hold the system accountable. And maybe it’ll keep another family from suffering the way you have. Your father was a hero; he fought for his country. The circumstances of his death are important. I want both for you to have the truth and for the person who did this to be punished. The way to get at that person, dead or alive, is through a lawsuit. But I won’t mislead you. It’s going to be a tough fight.”
It was a speech Manny had given many times before, and it had the virtue of being true. Justice, immediate or long delayed, had to be fought for, particularly if the victim was unable to fight for herself. The part of the settlement she received in Patrice’s case, assuming she won, would pay for the losing fights and broken hearts, including her own.
She watched relief flow into Patrice’s face. I’ve gotten through.
“Do you remember your father ever telling you he was being treated with electroshock therapy?”
Patrice gasped. “No. Is that what killed him?”
“Might have. Dr. Rosen says it’s a possibility.”
“He died during his treatment? And they put him in the ground so nobody would know they’d screwed up?”
Healthy anger now. We’re allies. “I don’t know,” Manny said, squeezing Patrice’s hand. “But together we’re going to find out.”
KENNETH BOYD was standing on the sidewalk in front of Manny’s office when she drove up. Dressed in his black velveteen jacket with a fuchsia and orange brocade silk lining, he looked ready to escort her to the opera rather than a day in court.
He slid into the passenger seat of the Porsche. “Who was sitting in this seat, or perhaps I should ask what you were doing in it? With this much legroom, you either had a date with a basketball player or you-”
Manny laughed. “Stop right there. Actually, the seat was occupied by Dr. Rosen.”
“The Dr. Rosen? The traitorous, lying, moneygrubbing, amoral son of a bitch?”
“The very one. Do you want to know what I was up to?”
“Of course I do, girlfriend! Spit it out. That is, if it’s suitable for my delicate ears.”
“I was with a naked body.”
“I knew it! Shocking, but about time.”
“A dead naked body. I assisted Dr. Rigor Mortis, as you call him, at an autopsy. I was with him when he sliced open-”
“No more!” Kenneth shouted. “Unsuitable!” He stared at her. “You gotta be careful who you consort with. I know you watch out for me, but remember, I watch out for you, too.” He handed her the papers he had prepared for her. “The petition.”
She glanced through it. “You’re a godsend. There isn’t another paralegal who could have drafted this so quickly.”
“I can be buttered up day or night. But a petition to stop the state from burying bones? That message you left for me before you met with Perez was wacko, even for you.”
“Not really. The Baxter County judge agreed to hear my application to preserve
the skeletons on an emergency basis. I called the lawyer for Baxter County and community hospital to tell him what I’m doing, and he’ll be in court, kicking and screaming, to try to stop me.” She started the car. “By the way, you’ll have to get the passenger window replaced. I’ll fill you in as we drive up to Turner.”
***
The old mahogany walls of the once-proud courtroom were patched with mismatched walnut pasteboard. The common man gets pasteboard, the rich corporation marble. Even worse, the client had to pay a filing fee before being permitted to seek justice. She had laid out the money, knowing her chances of ever seeing it again were slim to nonexistent.
She knew the attorney going up against her: good ol’ fat toupeed Chester Gruen, a member of the old boys’ club, whom she had met at her first Bar Association meeting in New York. There he had charmed her by pointing to his crotch. “You’ll never be a match for this in the courtroom,” he had said. Manny had squinted. “I’m sorry. I seem to have forgotten my magnifying glass.” He’ll remember me, she thought now, fidgeting as they waited at counsel tables for the judge to take the bench.
“What are you so impatient about, Ms. Manfreda? Your client ain’t going anyplace,” Gruen said, roaring at his own witticism.
Manny stifled the temptation to ask if it had gotten any bigger since she’d last seen him. Probably not, she decided, and comforted herself with the notion that it had shrunk.
Judge Melvin Bradford III, it turned out, was as fidgety as she. Manny made her case succinctly, stressing the need to identify all the people who had been buried with Lyons in case there was a connection between them that could add to her contention that Turner Psychiatric had been remiss, at the very least.
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