'Hi, Lieutenant,' he said. 'I ran into Doc at the corner. I was just finishing up with the desk-clerk at the Pendleton when the Sergeant's call come in. I got all the dope you wanted on this Rossi character, Lieutenant. He was -'
'Later,' Clancy said shortly. He turned to the stocky doctor a bit apologetically. 'Hello, Doc. I keep dragging you into these damn things all the time ...'
'Don't blame yourself,' Doc Freeman said, if I'm stupid enough to let you do it, don't blame yourself.' His bag dangled from one hand; he switched it to the other, looking at his wrist- watch. 'Well, let's get going and get this over with. I want to eat sometime tonight. The hospital's on the next corner, isn't it?'
Clancy also glanced at his watch. 'Let's wait a few minutes,' he said. 'Stanton may still show up.'
‘In that case let me tell you about the Rossi character,' Kaproski began, but Clancy cut him off with a wave of his hand. Kaproski stared at him. 'Well, Jeez, Lieutenant ...'
'Later,' Clancy said. 'Maybe Stan left the hotel on his way back before the Sergeant could reach him.'
A cab drew up as he was speaking, directed by its passenger to the corner where the three men were standing. Stanton dropped from it, passing money to the driver. He slammed the cab-door shut and came over.
'Hi, Lieutenant,' he said. 'Hi, Kap. Hi, Doc. Say, what is this? A reunion?' His eyes swung around and then returned to Clancy, his hand reaching for an inner pocket. 'Lieutenant, I got all that dope you wanted at the New Yorker ...'
'Later,' Clancy said. His eyes were bright. 'One thing at a time. Let's clean this up first. All right; we're going into the hospital, but not through the front door. We'll go in by the boiler-room.' He turned to Kaproski. 'You know where it is?'
'Sure,' Kaproski said, it's around the back; lets out onto the concrete areaway there a couple of yards past the ambulance entrance.' He hesitated. 'Lieutenant, what are we going to do there?'
'Clear away some of the fog,' Clancy said. 'After we get in, where's the storeroom where you put the body?'
‘In the basement,' Kaproski said. 'The first floor, I mean. The same floor as the boiler-room and the locker-room. When you come out of the boiler-room you turn right; the first door is the locker-room where the doctors change clothes. The second door is the storeroom.' He frowned, recalling. 'Then after that they got the restaurant - kitchen, that is - where they cook ...'
'Hold it,' Clancy said. 'All right. It's on the same floor two doors down from the boiler-room. That's all I wanted to know. We're going in there. I want Doc to look at the body.'
'Why?' Stanton asked. 'Something open up?'
'Yeah,' Clancy said. 'My brain. Let's go.'
They started down the street side by side; Clancy drew back.
'Two and two,' he said. 'Kaproski, you and Doc in front. We don't want to look like some chorus line, or a bunch of college kids from Columbia out on a drunk…’
'I should live so long,' Doc Freeman said. 'I didn't even look like a college kid from Columbia when I was a college kid from Columbia.' But he fell in step beside the heavy-set Kaproski, while Clancy and Stanton brought up the rear.
They crossed 97th Street; the hospital front was before them, distinguished from the adjoining apartment buildings only by a small electric sign already lit in the growing shadows. An arrow, neatly mounted on a white stanchion posted at the curb, pointed to the ambulance driveway. Kaproski and Doc Freeman marched past the front entrance evenly, Doc's bag swinging at his side. Clancy and a puzzled Stanton followed, turning into the driveway without pause.
The ambulance was in place, nosed into the curbing at the rear of the paved area, but without driver or attendant. Kaproski led the others past it without a backward glance, walked to a door set in the building wall a few yards beyond, and pressed it open. He entered, followed closely by the other three. The door swung shut behind them.
A wave of humid heat met them as they entered; a wave of heat and the bright glare of white bulbs overhead reflecting from tile walls. A small man in clean coveralls was sitting at a small desk in one corner, a pipe between his teeth and a newspaper spread across his lap. He looked up at them over his glasses as they came into the room, and then came to his feet, surprised and indignant at this intrusion.
'Say…!’
Clancy pushed to the front, reaching into his pocket, bringing out his wallet.
'Police,' he said quietly. 'We want to look around.'
The little man hesitated in face of the badge. 'You ought to come in the front,' he said grudgingly. 'Through the lobby ...'
'We wanted to come in this way.' Clancy slid his wallet back into his pocket, looking around the room, disregarding the small man. 'Stan, you better stay here with him. We don't want to be disturbed, and we don't want him to disturb anyone else. Do you understand?'
‘I get you, Lieutenant.' Stanton bulked over the startled little man in the coveralls. 'All right, friend. Sit down. Read your paper. Out loud, if you want, but not too out loud.'
The man paused and then plopped back into his chair, his mouth open; Stanton settled himself comfortably on one corner of the desk. Clancy opened the door, peered into the corridor, and then nodded. He stepped into the deserted hallway, followed by Doc Freeman and Kaproski, and walked quickly down the corridor to the second door. It was locked. The keys came out of his pocket; a few seconds' manipulation and he had it open and had entered. The others followed; Kaproski clicked on the lights and then closed the door softly behind them.
The room was chilly from the air-conditioning, which hummed quietly from a duct in the ceiling; chilly and faintly damp, with the smell of aging death in the room. The body had been stretched out on a stainless-steel cart, pushed at an angle against the floor-to-ceiling shelves that lined one wall; the sheet that covered it was bunched untidily at the knife. Doc Freeman's forehead puckered at the sharp odor; his eyes sought those of Clancy, but the slim Lieutenant was already moving toward the body. He flicked the sheet from the corpse and stood back; his eyes came up in barely-concealed anticipation.
'There he is, Doc.'
Doc Freeman set his bag carefully on the floor and moved over beside Clancy. He pressed the back of his hand against the waxen cheek, and then pinched the cold flesh between his fingers. His nose wrinkled in distaste.
'How long has this man been dead, Clancy?'
'Approximately twelve hours.'
Doc Freeman raised his eyes from the corpse to stare at the other. 'You mean he died shortly after he was admitted to the hospital?'
'That's right.'
'And you're just reporting it now?'
'You don't understand, Doc,' Clancy said impatiently. 'I'm still not reporting it. Not officially.' He stood back, shoved his hands into his pockets and continued to stare at the gruesome sight on the cart with growing tension. When he began to speak again he seemed to be talking more to himself than to the others. 'Every time I begin to get an idea about this affair, Buster here keeps screwing up all my pretty theories. So I want to clear him out of the way once and for all.'
'So what do you want me to do?' Doc Freeman asked with heavy sarcasm. 'Make out a death certificate for coronary thrombosis?'
Clancy looked at him. 'I want you to give me your opinion as to what killed him.'
Doc Freeman's eyes dropped to the knife stabbed so fiercely into the fleshy chest, and then came up sharply to meet Clancy's. Kaproski, standing to one side, stared at the Lieutenant as if his superior had suddenly gone out of his mind.
'Oh,' Doc said. 'I see.'
His pouchy eyes came back to the corpse. He bent down with a sigh, bringing his heavy bag up and placing it on one of the shelves at his side. He opened it, withdrew a pair of rubber gloves, and then paused in the act of slipping them on.
'How about fingerprints on the knife?'
'There won't be any,' Clancy said positively. 'He used surgical gloves. But if you want to, try easing it out without touching the handle.' 'Right.'
Doc Freeman nodde
d again. He pulled on his rubber gloves, stepped forward, and slowly withdrew the kitchen knife from the wound, pinching it by the small bit of exposed blade between the handle and the body. He studied the weapon a moment and then laid it carefully aside; his eyes narrowed as he examined the exit mark of the weapon. His two hands returned to the body and he compressed the chest on both sides of the wound with steady pressure. A lip of blood slowly appeared along the edges of the wound. Doc Freeman nodded and then spanned his fingers from the corner of the collar-bone, accurately locating the knife-cut in relation to the other anatomy of the dead body. A final steady pressure against the abdomen completed his examination; he straightened up. His eyes moved across solemnly to those of the Lieutenant waiting patiently at his side.
'I see what you mean,' he said slowly. 'One thing is fairly sure - his heart had stopped pumping blood before that knife went into him. Whoever stabbed him was stabbing a dead man.'
Clancy let out his breath.
'That's what I thought,' he said with deep satisfaction. 'That's exactly what I wanted to hear. Now how about taking a look at his gunshot wound, Doc?'
Doc Freeman nodded again. Still studying the corpse, his fingers sought and found a pair of scissors in his bag, and he slowly began to snip away the thick bandages that still covered the chest and neck. With patient fingers he clipped through the layers of surgical tape, and then slowly stripped the wadded bandage away from the congealed wound. Kaproski, peering over, turned away feeling slightly queasy.
'Not a bad job,' Doc said almost admiringly. 'The surgery, I mean. The shooting wasn't a bad job, either ...'
He bent over, staring at the wound, studying the evident passage marks of the shot, attempting to calculate their force and direction. He straightened up, shaking his head. 'Hopeless. Not a chance. It would have taken a miracle to save this man. If that.'
Clancy smiled triumphantly. 'Then you'd be willing to go on the witness stand and state that he died as a result of that gunshot wound?'
Doc Freeman stared at his companion. 'Clancy, you ought to know better than that. I wouldn't go on the stand and state that my mother kept kosher without a chance to check further than I did here.'
'You know what I mean, Doc.'
Doc Freeman frowned; his small eyes were thoughtful. 'I don't know what you have in mind, Clancy, but if it makes you feel any better I'll say - strictly off the record - that it certainly appears that he died of the gunshot wound. Of course, we'll have to do a complete autopsy to determine exactly what killed him.'
'But it wasn't the knife?'
'That's definite.' Doc Freeman said, it wasn't the knife.' He hesitated and then qualified his statement. 'Unless there's another wound somewhere.' His eyes came back to the body.
'There isn't,' Clancy said.
'I don't get it,' Kaproski said. He had managed to place himself so he could watch them obliquely without having to also see the bloody mess of twisted flesh revealed by the removal of the bandage. 'Who would stick a knife into a dead man?'
'The young intern, Dr. Willard, of course,' Clancy said quietly.
'But why? If he was dead?'
'Just because he was dead,' Clancy said, it took me awhile to get it, but I finally did. Come on - tuck him in and let's go. Let's have a heart-to-heart talk with Dr. Willard.'
Doc Freeman was stripping off his gloves. 'When do we get the body downtown for a complete post, Clancy? That's the only way we're really going to know what killed him.'
'Soon,' Clancy promised. 'Very soon. Come on.'
He waited until the Doc had closed his bag and then led the way back to the corridor. He shut the door after them, tried the knob to make sure the snap-lock had caught, and strode in the direction of the elevator. As he passed the boiler-room he suddenly remembered Stanton; he opened the door and looked in.
'Come on, Stan. You come with me.'
'A pleasure. It's hot in here.' Stanton cocked a thumb at the little maintenance man. 'How about Little John?'
'Let him read his paper.'
The four went down the hall in a cluster, seemed to recognize the silliness of this, and then spread needlessly far apart while waiting for the elevator to arrive. Clancy pressed a button after they entered, and they all stood silent as the soundless mechanism rose and came to a smooth halt at the fifth floor. Clancy looked at the worried face of Doc Freeman and despite himself grinned. He turned to Kaproski.
'How do you say "Take it easy" in Polish?'
Kaproski looked at him, amazed. 'You're asking me?'
'Excuse me,' Clancy said, and led the way to the row of doctors' offices that flanked the corridor. He opened the door, expecting to find the office empty, but Dr. Willard was sitting at the desk, a thermos bottle in one hand. He looked up, trying to control his features, and set the thermos back on the table. His eyes swung from one graven face to the other, finally settling on Clancy's.
'Hello, Lieutenant,' he said. He hesitated; his hand made a small motion as if to offer coffee to his visitors and then stopped and settled down again. When he spoke it was with a forced smile.
'Come to take your man away? I hope?'
Clancy sat on the edge of the desk; Kaproski and Stanton moved over unobtrusively to cover the door. The doctor noted the gesture; a sheen of sweat began to appear on his forehead. Clancy reached for a cigarette and then remembered he didn't have any. His hand came out of his pocket, stroking his thigh.
'Do you want to tell us about it, Doctor?' he asked softly.
The eyes of the doctor rose, ready for denial, and then fell hopelessly. He shook his head as if at his own foolishness. 'You knew, didn't you? All along ...'
'I should have known all along,' Clancy said. 'But I was stupid -1 didn't. I should have known when Barnett told me the doctor went in twice and that both times he was wearing a mask and gloves, and a skullcap that hid the hair. I could understand a killer doing it the second time as a disguise, but why would you wear all that garbage the first time? Doctors don't visit their patients dressed up like they're ready for surgery.' He stared down at the bowed head before him.
'But even saying that you did go in looking like Ben Casey, there was the uniform you ducked under the boiler - the tennis-shoes had socks tucked into them. Well, if a man is changing clothes in a hurry, as a killer would have been forced to do, I doubt if he'll bother changing his socks as well. Not if the intention is simply disguise; it takes time and doesn't help. But even if he should carry reality to that point, I doubt if he'd bother to tuck them neatly into a pair of shoes when he was finished. So I figured those clothes hadn't been used by the killer - and that only left one other man with a doctor's outfit he was wearing ...'
The young intern looked up dully. 'I didn't know the shoes had socks in them. I didn't even look at the clothes. I just…’
'That's what I assumed. And then someone called the maintenance man to fix a faucet on an upper floor, just to leave the boiler-room empty for an apparent escape. It indicated just too much knowledge of the hospital and the routine for someone who was supposed to be there by pure accident.' He sighed. 'Do you want to tell us about it, Doctor?'
'What's there to tell?' The young intern shrugged bitterly. 'He died. I knew he was going to die when I was working on him in surgery.'
'You didn't sound like it when you met us downstairs in the lobby.'
The young intern smiled harshly, humorlessly. it's the bedside manner they teach us in school . ..'
'But even so .. .'
'Johnny Rossi,' the young doctor went on dully, staring at his hands. 'A big wheel in the Syndicate, and his brother Pete, a murderous hood ... I knew they'd blame me for his dying .. .'
'An autopsy would have proved you did everything possible,' Doc Freeman said gently.
'Proved? To whom? To Pete Rossi? To a gangster who only knows that his brother was alive when he went into the hospital, and dead when he came out? Anyway, that's what I thought at the time. I know now I was wrong. But at the time…espec
ially with that Mr. Chalmers ...'
He looked up broodingly. '"I'm holding you responsible, Doctor ...
“I couldn't take a chance…’
‘It strikes me you took more of a chance this way,' Clancy said.
'You don't understand,' the young intern said hopelessly. 'You don't know the story. I can't stand any investigation.' His eyes glazed, staring into the past.
'Why do you think I'm here, at this broken-down nursing home? Changing bedpans like an orderly? I was at Children's Hospital in Cleveland; I lost a patient, a young boy, through no fault of my own. But you couldn't convince the parents. And they were on the Board. I was kicked out ...' He stared at Clancy bitterly. 'Do you know what it is for an intern to be kicked out of a hospital? Can you imagine? I was lucky to get this post, and only because Cathy stands in with the Director.' He shrugged. 'I'm telling you this because you'd find out anyway .. .'
A sour grimace crossed his face. 'All I need was for Mr. Chalmers to dig that up when he found his precious witness dead ... I'm sorry. I had to take the chance. Otherwise I was finished anyway.' His eyes came up bitterly. 'Why did you have to send him here in the first place? Why didn't you send him to Bellevue where he belonged?'
Kaproski looked away in embarrassment; the young intern cut off the pointless thought and pushed himself dispiritedly to his feet.
'All right,' he said evenly. 'I'll come along. Let me just change my clothes and I'll be ready. One of your men can come with me to see that I don't run ...'
'I don't want you,' Clancy said quietly. 'Sit down.' He pushed the young man back into his chair. 'There's a law against what you did, but frankly I'd hate to try and make it stick, especially against a doctor. You'd be ruined professionally, but I doubt that the law would hurt you much. The thing I ought to charge you with is obstructing justice. You made me lose a lot of time and thought. But jailing you wouldn't help me right now; and frankly I can see how you must have felt.'
'You mean you don't want me?'
'That's what I mean.' Clancy nodded evenly. 'I just wanted to get one puzzle out of the way, to bring it back to just one attack on Rossi and not two. And in return, I want you to keep the body in the storeroom for the time being.'
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