Murder Ward td-15

by Warren Murphy

  "Hi, Dan. This is Kathy. How are you, sweetie?"

  "No," said Dr. Demmet.

  "No is the way you are?"

  "Whatever you want, the answer is negative."

  "I don't want anything from you, Dan, except your money."

  "You're not getting me into a three stroke a side game in winter golf."

  "A half stroke a hole, Dan. That's four and a half a side."

  "You'd never give me that."

  "I'm giving it to you, Dan. You're just a bad golfer, Dan. You choke. You're a loser, Dan. Haven't you realized that by now?" Her voice was silky contempt.

  "I'm not taking these insults for a hundred dollars a side."

  "You name your price, Danny Boy. The bigger it is, the faster you'll choke."

  "What are you up to, Kathy? What do you want?"

  "I'm coming right out to the club."

  Kathy Hahl hung up the phone mid-chatter. She told her secretary she would not be back that day and drove out to the Fair Oaks Country Club, making note of the weather. The snow had yet to stick so they would not have to use the red balls. The ground was probably ice hard from the snow that melted in the Maryland sun and then froze again in the Maryland night. They hadn't had much sun for the last three days. With an ice-hard course, the whole game was control. Demmet had one advantage. His man's strength. But if he tried to use it, Kathy Hahl knew she could give him a stroke a hole, maybe even one and a half, and win handily.

  She had spent a young lifetime beating men. She had to. They were the only ones around worth beating. They had the money. Like fund raising. If there was one last reluctant vestige of medieval male chauvinism, it was fund raising. Women just weren't allowed. Oh, there were the usual excuses, how people didn't trust women, especially young women with large sums of money, how the corporate world would not respond to a woman running a fund-raising operation, how, well, it just wasn't done.

  Because of Robler's reputation as a socially progressive institution, she had applied for a job there and been hired as an associate director of program development. There were articles and pictures and questions about how it felt to be the first female. It was all very impressive except that associate director in fund raising really meant only one thing. They gave you a title so that people wouldn't think they were being insulted speaking to a nobody. This held true for the men, too. For a woman, though, it meant additionally that she typed, filed, counted numbers and made sure that the male associate directors got their coffee.

  This, for one of the first female graduates of Yale. She could always have taken woman's traditional route to wealth, travelling on her back. There were those marriage offers. Good ones. But the men were lousy lovers and besides she liked an occasional girl also. Anyway, why should she, because of a backward social system, in essence have to peddle her ass for a living?

  Like most people who engage in multiple murder, she could claim some justice on her side. All it needed was a vehicle. She had played golf regularly with Dr. Demmet to supplement her associate director's salary, which was, naturally, lower than that of a male associate director. Demmet told her about the operating room. Tales of surgeons coming in so depressed by Quaalude that they had to be helped from the operating table. The special nurse who had to make sure the tools of the trade weren't left inside the patient. She learned a new word: iatrogenics. It referred to the patients killed by the usual mess and mistake in a hospital, rather than by any individual case of malpractice.

  Oh, but it was hard to pin down. Doctors were not stupid. Gross incompetence would get them outside review boards. And so hospitals always tidied their own houses and this gave those in the profession moral support in never testifying against another doctor. It occurred to her that a doctor could safely kill anyone he chose and, short of spitting into a surgical incision, never be criticized.

  Then came that first bequest. It was accidental. No one else was in the office. She responded on the telephone. A leading member of the community wanted to leave her fortune to the Robler Clinic where she knew her money would do some good.

  Kathy Hahl went to visit the woman, an aging bore whom the world would little miss and never remember. The woman had decided that the grandson who was now named in her will was a wastrel. He shouldn't get more than sustenance. Kathy Hahl told the old biddy just what she wanted to hear. That she was absolutely right.

  And then Kathy Hahl saw the grandson. She had seen people spaced out before, but this boy with the flaming orange Afro hair would need a good month of detoxification to be spaced out. He had a checking account into which Grandma put $150 a week. Grandma also paid the rent, gas and electricity, and made sure food was delivered daily. About midweek, when he had gone through his allowance, he would sell the food for drugs. Kathy said she thought the culture was oppressing him. Drugs were really so cheap. Why, she could bring them to him for nothing. She did. She also got him to sign an undated statement and a little check. He said he didn't mind. All the check could be good for was $150 a week anyhow, so any check bigger than that would just bounce.

  Kathy knew it was a peculiarity of the fund-raising business that someone getting a $500,000 bequest was less respected that someone bringing in $10,000 cash, the assumption being that bequests came by themselves but cash had to be promoted.

  By then, Dr. Demmet was heavily in her debt, and, as she found out, heavily in debt to many of the Baltimore bookies. Kathy had just the way he could clear those debts. Demmet first called the plan absurd. Kathy said it wasn't a plan, it was a wild idea that she didn't really believe in herself.

  She wondered out loud how long the old biddy might live without any external harm coming to her. Then she noted out loud how awful the old woman was. Then she got Demmet into a side bet with a bookie known to have an affinity for breaking arms when hands did not hold the cash he thought was due him.

  The old lady went on the operating table at the first heavy sniffle, leaving her money not to Robler—the new will had been delayed—but to her grandson, who was told by his own lawyers that they were surprised he had made such a large contribution to the Robler Clinic. He didn't remember doing so. They showed him the statement with a current date and the huge check with a current date and his response was:

  "Heavy, man."

  With one more large grant, the directors of Robler Clinic saw in Ms. Hahl their new director of program development. Another Robler first. The first woman to head a fund-raising department. With judicious use of Demmet and more and more money coming in under her control, Kathy Hahl became the real power at the hospital. The next step was assistant administrator as well as chief fund-raiser.

  She was on her way up and she was still able to go to bed with anyone she wanted to.

  And then came the decision that seemed so clear and simple she wondered why she had not made it much easier. If people could die and leave money to Robler, they could also die and make money for her.

  She suspected that she might have to recruit more doctors, but it turned out that just Demmet was enough. He was by far the best anaesthesiologist in the area, and could work on any operation he chose. Step by step, he became the medical button man for Kathy Hahl's contract-killing service.

  The whole life-and-death idea gave her a feeling of power. And then she discovered something about power that very few know, because they are not in a position to feel it. Power is a narcotic. You start out liking it and then you need it.

  That was when Kathy Hahl realized that all the government officials who used the Robler Clinic might somehow be used to help build Kathy's power and wealth. And then that scruffy old lesbian researcher on the fifth floor had made a strange discovery, and while it was still being tested, if it held true, it could wind up giving Kathy greater power than she had ever even dreamed of.

  Today Demmet would have to give that discovery another test.

  Demmet was waiting in the club bar sipping a light wine. He wore a loose-fitting but warm beige jacket, red cashmere slacks and tartan g
olf shoes.

  "You decided the stakes yet, Dan?" asked Kathy. But she already knew. If Demmet were drinking only light wine, it was going to be a heavy bet. He only drank liquor before unimportant matches.

  "Four and a half strokes a side?"

  "I said it."

  "Why don't we make the match for everything I owe you. Everything. Double or nothing."

  "That would mean you'd owe me double what you already can't pay."

  "I can do more specials for you."

  "There's a limit to those, Dan. Even for the Robler Clinic. It's not like we're running a supermarket for murder."

  "Sometimes you act like you are," Demmet said. "For instance, Wilberforce. What was that all about? I understand the man who wanted him removed refused to pay the price?"

  "That's right," said Kathy Hahl. "But the man who wanted Wilberforce removed is dead. I didn't want the authorities to look too closely at his death, and they would have if Wilberforce had continued his tax investigation. So Wilberforce had to go, too."

  "You mean, we're not getting paid for Wilberforce?"

  Kathy nodded.

  "Well, I did my job. I'm getting paid," Demmet said.

  "All right, fine. Now you only owe me half of what you can't pay."

  "Why are you hustling me? I know you're hustling me," Demmet said.

  "All you owe against a favour, Dan."

  "I'm not going to gun down someone in the streets."

  "You won't have to kill a soul."

  "I don't like it."

  Kathy signalled the dozing bartender at the other end of the club bar.

  "Two martinis, very dry. One on the rocks and straight up for me," she said to the bartender.

  "What are you doing?" Demmet asked.

  "I'm ordering us drinks. We're going to play for fun, right?"

  "It's another hustle. I know it. I know you, Kathy. You're still hustling me."

  "He doesn't want a twist. He likes a green olive. That's right. Green olive in the dry martini on the rocks. Right. Good."

  "You're not suckering me into a blind bet, Kathy."

  The martinis came, glistening clear, their glasses perspiring their coolness on the outside. Kathy Hahl lifted hers and sipped. It was dry and shivery and sent that good feeling through her bloodstream.

  "To your health."

  Demmet held his without drinking.

  "You're afraid to give me that four and a half strokes a side and you're backing out."

  "No. Drink up. Go ahead."

  "You're a sly one, Kathy. A sly one. But do you know something, you're also stupid. You're very stupid, Kathy. You're a fool if you want to know the truth. You could have had the whole kit and kaboodle without…"

  "Shhhh."

  "I wasn't going to say anything wrong. You could have had everything with no risks. All you had to do was become Mrs. Daniel Demmet."

  Kathy Hahl laughed in her drink, spurting the drink up around the edges. She wiped the bar with a cocktail napkin. She was still laughing.

  "I'm sorry, Dan. I didn't mean to laugh."

  "All right. Four and a half strokes a side, bitch," said Demmet and he splashed his drink into her face. But she was still laughing on the first tee.

  "Your honour, Dan. I don't have the strength yet to tee off," she said, balancing herself on her driver, her face a cherry crimson, her eyes hysterical little slits. "Don't hit it too hard, this is not a day to blast it."

  Dr. Daniel Demmet teed his ball and planted his feet, a generator of rage connected to a driver. He would smack this ball down the gullet of the fairway, farther than any laughing woman could reach. He would destroy her on this first hole. He would break her on this first hole. He would tempt the danger of the hardened fairways and use it to his own power. He could eagle this hole with luck, with a great hardened running fairway.

  Back went the club slowly, his body coiling, down again through his left side, inside out, and pronate the wrists on contact and follow through. The ball streaked out, low at first, then soaring. At its apex it began to curve slightly right, a slice. It hit the fairway well, but the slice on the ball sent it skittering off through the rough into the leaf-laden woods. He would never find it.

  He teed up again quickly, and trying to bury the memory of the disastrous slice as quickly as possible, swung with a fast back stroke, a stroke to get the shot over with. He didn't slice into the trees this time; he hit the ball directly into them. He trotted back to the golf cart he was sharing with Kathy Hahl, took three balls from his bag, ran back up to the tee, concentrated on not pushing the ball to the right again, and shanked it, spinning to the right. Only his failure to hit the ball solidly kept it in play.

  "You're lying five," said Kathy and went up to the first tee. She wiggled her hips. She took a practice swing, then stepped away from the ball, breathed deeply and took another practice swing. Then she dug in, jiggled the club before the ball, and with a very slow backswing hit a small looping piddling drive one hundred and twenty yards up the fairway. It stayed on the fairway and gained a healthy eighty-five yards on the forward roll.

  "C'mon, c'mon. C'mon. You going to wait all day on the tee?" yelled Demmet. "What the hell did you use on that?"

  "I finessed a five wood."

  "You used a five wood off the damned tee on a four hundred and thirty-five-yard hole?"

  "I'll play my game, Dan."

  Four strokes behind, Demmet knew he had to do something dramatic. Since the rough was icy and since the ball was resting high up on a clump of frozen grass, he announced to Kathy he was going to use his driver and why didn't she watch? She did. So did Demmet. Playing dramatic catch-up golf, Demmet smacked the ball low and straight. It landed with stiff spit on it. The ball bounced and sped along toward the green. It was like driving on ice. It didn't stop until it had traveled three hundred and eighty yards. Demmet looked triumphantly at Kathy Hahl, her face reddening in the chill winter afternoon.

  "Well?" he said.

  "Well, pretty good," said Kathy Hahl, whose next shot lay up fifty yards short of the green. She chipped on for her third shot. Demmet, off to the side, tried a high dramatic pitch shot, but golf balls do not bite on frozen greens. The ball bounced off the green. By the second tee, even with the handicap, he was done. By the third tee, he was down six strokes. By the fourth, seven. By the fifth, he gave up on the first nine and suggested they cut across the fairway to the tenth hole. They were alone on the golf course.

  As they drove their electric car down a tree-shrouded path, Kathy kicked his foot off the accelerator pedal. The cart stopped.

  "Dan, you know you're not going to beat me."

  "We'll see. We'll see. C'mon. It's cold out here."

  "The best you can do now is tie me and you're not even going to do that." She let her gloved hand rest on his slacks. "Now I want something from you, Dan, and I'll be willing to even out for it, okay? I don't want you to go unpaid. I don't want to take anything away from you." She kissed his earlobe. It was red with chill.

  "What do you want?" he asked.

  "I want you to get Mrs. Wilberforce off my back."

  "Okay. I'll do another special."

  "We can't. We've done too many already. And her coming on the heels of her son might be just too much. We've got a good thing going. We don't want to spoil it." Her voice was silky smooth. "Besides," she said.

  "Besides what?"

  "Besides. I want to try something new on Mrs. Wilberforce."

  "Like what?"

  "Well, it's a special drug."

  "Give it to her yourself. Put it in her prune juice."

  "I tried, Dan. But I can't get close to her. It's got to be injected during a period of high excitement, if it is to work effectively in a small dosage. If the blood isn't coursing through the veins, it takes too long, and she might be found too soon."

  "What kind of high excitement?" Demmet asked.

  Kathy moved a hand over the front of his trousers.

  "This kind of hi
gh excitement," she said.

  "Oh, I see. And you want me to deliver it?"

  "Yes."

  "How can I? You've seen Mrs. Wilberforce. It'd be like screwing a tank."

  "Don't think of her. Think of me while you're doing it. Think of this," said Kathy Hahl, unzipping his fly and lowering her head, leaning over in the golf cart as their warmed bodies sent little puffs of moisture up into the leaking pines above them.

  Later, Demmet asked Kathy what kind of "special drug" he was to use.

  "That's my price for winning today, Dan. You don't ask."

  He shrugged. It didn't really matter.

  He saw Mrs. Wilberforce that night at her motel room to discuss her son's operation again. He tried thinking of Kathy Hahl's warm mouth back on the golf course, but combining the thought of Kathy and Mrs. Wilberforce sent him retching to the bathroom. In the bathroom, he cleaned up his face, and withdrew from his pocket the special ring Kathy had given him to use. He slipped it on his finger, and turned to the door, beyond which Mrs. Wilberforce waited.

  Perhaps it might be easier to just throw her off a cliff.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The lobby of the Robler Clinic was three stories high. All three stories were filled with a Christmas tree, a massive thirty-foot-tall fir, decorated with multi-coloured lights and thin glass balls, and festooned with red felt stockings with white names on them.

  It was the first thing seen by the two men who entered the lobby through the heavy revolving doors. They paused just inside the doors.

  "Ptahhhh," spat the old man, a wizened tiny Oriental who, despite the late December cold, wore only a blue robe.

  "Stop it, Chain," said the man next to him. He was apparently a young man, but his face was obscured by almost black sunglasses. The collar of his overcoat was pulled up around his ears and the lower part of his face was obscured by a white silk scarf. The elderly Oriental held him by the right elbow as if to help support him.

  "Ptahhhh," Chiun spat again. "Look at it. You Westerners have a way of taking anything and turning it into garbage. How can a tree be ugly? Easy. Give it to a white man to beautify."