The Wabash Factor

by Howard Fast

  As Fran and I walked home, she told me of the conversation between Shelly and Deborah Alan. “He looks healthy enough,” Fran said. “I do hope it’s nothing serious.”

  “You were impressed with him?”

  “I’m not easily impressed with politicians, but yes, I think he is something. I certainly do.”

  Chapter 3

  THE FOLLOWING EVENING, Fran and I went to the movies to see Woody Allen’s new film, Broadway Danny Rose. We found ourselves doubled up with laughter and wet-eyed with nostalgia. Fran and I are both New York City products, street smart and at home nowhere else than among the dirty shadowed canyons that go to make up this most remarkable of all cities; and to journey back to the Carnegie Delicatessen, not as it is now but as it was twenty years ago, made for an evening of sheer joy. We were still talking about the film when I unlocked the door to our apartment and heard the telephone ringing. It was then about twenty minutes to eleven.

  The voice on the telephone was Oscar’s. “Harry, something terrible has happened.”

  “What? It’s not Shelly, is it?”

  “Harry, Asher Alan is dead.”

  “What!”

  At my elbow, Fran cried, “For God’s sake, Harry, what happened?”

  “Is this some damn dumb joke?” I asked Oscar.

  “No, no, Harry. No.”

  “What happened?”

  “This evening, Harry, Asher, Deborah, and two men from the Israeli Consulate were having dinner at La Revier, and Asher fell ill. They called an ambulance and took him to Bellevue. Deborah went with him. He died in the ambulance. It was a massive stroke. Deborah telephoned me. I’m at the hospital, and I’ll bring her back to my apartment.”

  “How is she taking this?”

  “You can imagine. God Almighty, what a tragedy—what a rotten tragedy! Harry, will you meet me there, at my apartment?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now. We’ll leave here in a few minutes.”

  “All right. Sure. But there isn’t anything that makes you feel this is a police matter, is there, Oscar?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Because if it is, I can get Joe McCarthy to meet us. His squad covers that area. The restaurant is on Sixty-third, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but there’s no reason for police. The poor man died of a stroke. I want you at the apartment because Fran will be good with Deborah and because you keep your cool. You can control the press. I can’t.”

  Fran had picked up the telephone in the bedroom. She was shaking after she put it down. Then she began to cry.

  “Darling, we hardly knew him.”

  “Did I know Jesus any better?” she whispered through her tears.

  Ah, well! You can take a Catholic out of the Church, but you can’t take the Church out of the Catholic. I had no notion of how one might relate Asher Alan to Jesus and I considered Fran’s question farfetched at best, but shared her sense of loss, not only for his tiny country but for the whole world. I put an arm around her and held her close, and then I helped her on with her coat and we started downtown toward Oscar’s apartment at 78th and Park. After we had walked a block or two, Fran dabbing at her eyes, she turned to me and said, “Of course. There’s the connection.”

  “What connection?”

  “Don’t you see? Damn it, Harry, nothing stinks to you unless there’re two men knifing each other, or some hit man rubbing out dopers or some moron torching buildings.” She had stopped walking and now stood facing me, bristling. “Well, this stinks to me!”

  “What?” I almost shouted.

  “I will tell you what. Stanley Curtis dies of a stroke. Asher Alan dies of a stroke. Two beautiful human beings. Curtis was having dinner at La Siene. Alan was eating at the Revier—two of the classiest restaurants in New York. Harry, did you ever study statistics?”

  “Fran, you know damn well I did. Where is all this going? Oscar begged us to get over to his place as soon as possible, and instead we’re standing here on the street, yelling at each other.”

  “Is it statistically possible that two of the most well-known, well-loved, open-minded men on earth should die the same way in two New York restaurants within a few weeks of each other? Come on, Harry, you remember that kid at NYU as well as I do, and you’re a cop.”

  I drew a deep breath and said, “All right, I’ll think about it. Now let’s go on to Oscar’s.”

  “I’m not letting you off the hook. You can talk me out of anything. You don’t talk me out of this.”

  “If I knew what this was.”

  I knew, of course. I knew what she was driving at, but it was not my discipline, as Fran and other academics say. It was a writer’s discipline, a particular point of view that flourished apart from the real world, in a world of books where the traditions were different, where the schematic was different and where life was shaped as a puzzle and where crime was an intelligent process. I read the books myself; I loved them because they had absolutely no connection with the filthy, unspeakable criminal world of a New York City cop. Fran was wrong. Homicide was stupid, senseless murders, mob executions, knife fights in bars, crazed lunatics who raped and killed little children and old women, killers who robbed stores and wiped out the men behind the counters, degenerates, morons. Smart? I never met a criminal who wasn’t stupid and most that I met were morons, but I’ve only been a cop for seventeen years.

  The one evening they had spent together had created something between Fran and Deborah Alan that I was wholly unaware of; but I had been too absorbed with Alan himself and Bessington and Glenn to have paid much attention to what the women were saying to each other. I spend my days with the police department, where the woman’s roll is a little less than it might be. Now Deborah and Fran fell into each other’s arms. Shelly was fussing with food and wiping her eyes. Having opened the door for us, she tried to speak, but burst into tears and fled back into the kitchen. Fran led Deborah to a couch and eased her into it. Oscar pulled away from three men he had been speaking to, and took me aside to whisper into my ear.

  “That one, the tall one, he’s the consul-general. His name is Hashim. The other one is the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Bleckhem. They wanted to take her to the consul-general’s home, but she wouldn’t go with them. They’re both Begin appointees. The third feller—”

  “I know him, Frank Levy, one of Koch’s assistants.”

  “Koch tried to get here. Evidently, he’s the final speaker at some important function that’s running late. He may be here later. I don’t know why she wouldn’t go with the consulate people. They’re nice enough.”

  Oscar took me over to the men and introduced me. Levy remembered meeting me. The two Israelis were glad to find a Jewish police officer present. They were going over the details of what had happened, when the doorbell rang again. This time it was two of the top men from the United Jewish Appeal. Anyone who has witnessed the process of news spreading knows how mysteriously it happens and how hard it is to explain. The reporters began to show up and then the media cameramen. I blocked them at the door, and said, “There will be no statement from Mrs. Deborah Alan. She will answer no questions. Tomorrow perhaps, but not tonight.”

  “How did he die? At Bellevue they said a stroke.”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Where did it happen?”

  “I can’t say now.”

  “Come on, come on.”

  “The Israeli consul-general is preparing a statement. Perhaps in an hour.”

  “And what are you doing here, Lieutenant? What’s your connection?”

  “This is my brother’s apartment, Professor Oscar Golding.”

  “Then how is your brother connected? Is he related to Alan?”

  “Is he the same Oscar Golding who was with President Ford?”

  Two more Israelis pushed through the media crowd. The apartment was filling up, and I had to call the Israeli UN delegate to identify the newcomers.

  “They’re from the consul
ate,” he told me. “They’ll take care of the door if you wish, Lieutenant.”

  I thanked him. I pushed through to the living room couch, where Deborah Alan still sat, Fran on one side of her, Shelly on the other; even in that very bitter moment I couldn’t help noticing how beautiful this woman was. People came over to mention condolences, but then they drew away. The bereaved frighten people. I bent over Fran and whispered, “I’m going to slip away. They don’t need me here.” The mayor had just come in, his tall figure looming over everyone else. “They keep wondering what a cop is doing here.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Bellevue.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I respect your brains as well as your body. Do you remember what he said his name was?”

  “The kid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oshun, I think. James Oshun. Thank you, Harry. Be careful.”

  I rose now, and Deborah Alan looked up at me. I took her hand, thinking, What do you say? What can you say? Then I left.

  Downstairs at the curb, a line of chauffeur-cars were parked, and one of the drivers, recognizing me, said, “Want a lift, Lieutenant? I got twenty minutes to kill.”

  “Can you make it to Bellevue in that time?”

  “Lead-pipe cinch—with a cop in the car.”

  “Just drive easy. I can’t fix tickets. This is Honest City, America.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “As long as you say so.”

  He dropped me off at Bellevue and turned back uptown. The small perks of being a cop. The lady sitting at night reception was an old acquaintance, a black woman, Lil Dutton by name. I had done her a small favor years ago, and she remembered. I asked her if she’d seen James Oshun.

  “Maybe you come to the wrong place, Lieutenant. He’d be at the school. And right now he’d be sound asleep, if he was a good boy, and maybe even if he wasn’t, because two things a medical student don’t get enough of is food and sleep. But what did you say his name was?”

  “I think James Oshun.”

  “Fourth-year student?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hey, what about this? Is he a tall, skinny kid, maybe almost six and a half feet, pasty white skin, and great big horn-rim glasses?”

  “Good description.”

  “Jimmy O. That’s what they call him. You are in luck, Lieutenant. Absolutely. I know this kid because he come in one day and he hands me a bag of gumdrops. Sweets for the sweet, he says. Now ain’t that nice or not? He comes from a place in Ohio called Findley. He say, we going to be friends, we got to know origins. I tell him I’m from One Hundred Seventeenth Street and St. Nicholas Avenue and he tells me he’s from Findley, Ohio.”

  “Lil—please, how can I find him?”

  “I said you were in luck. He’s working this shift in the trauma section.”

  For Bellevue, it was a very quiet night in the emergency section. The admitting nurse sent me down the corridor where the small treatment rooms open off each side. Oshun was sitting in a swivel chair at one of the plastic desks, his feet up, his eyes closed, snoring lightly. His long, dirty blond hair had drifted over his face, where it swayed back and forth in time with his breathing.

  “Oshun?”

  He awoke with a start from his guilt-ridden sleep, mumbling, “Sorry. I must have dozed off.” Then he took a closer look at me. “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “Lieutenant Harry Golding. I spoke to Professor Golding’s class at NYU. Remember—about Stanley Curtis?”

  “Yeah—oh, yes. Sure. The cop.”

  “Can we talk somewhere? About Curtis.”

  “Sure. I can get away for half an hour. I’ll get someone to cover for me. But wait a minute—I don’t want you to think I’m crapping out. It’s a light night, so I caught a few winks. You get awfully tired. They take seven years of your young life and beat the shit out of you, and then you’re a doctor. Maybe that’s why we get so greedy.”

  In the cafeteria, Oshun sat opposite me, two pieces of apple pie and two balls of vanilla in front of him. His attack on his food was direct and determined, and he talked while he ate.

  “How come?” he wanted to know.

  “How come what?”

  “How come the other night you figured I was something the chipmunks overlooked and tonight you pay me a midnight call—except”—looking at his watch—“that now it’s almost one in the morning. That’s got to be big stuff. You figure I know something after all?”

  “I want to know why you think Stanley Curtis was murdered.”

  “The word’s around the hospital that they brought in a DOA who was pretty hot stuff. They put their best team on him, but it was no good. He was DOA absolutely. An Israeli or something of like nature. Does that figure?”

  “Maybe. Back to my question.”

  He was finishing off his first wedge of pie and ice cream. He swallowed and said, “Why do I think Curtis was murdered? Because I’m smart and I’m a damn good doctor. Yes. Already. Now, in my final year. I spent four years working after school, high school, in Doc Kennedy’s office in Findley. I watched, I listened, I helped, I learned. All I ever wanted to do was to be a doctor.” He was into his second piece of pie now, and he paused to jab at me with his fork. “Why wouldn’t they give him an autopsy? There are more stinking closed doors in this profession than you can shake a stick at. Who was I to ask for an autopsy? Well, I watched Curtis and listened to him on the telly plenty of times. He was a healthy man. His color was good. His movements were well controlled. I can watch someone on the telly and tell you a hell of a lot about his physical condition. Not only that. I spoke to his wife after he died, made up some cock-and-bull story, but it got me into her apartment. Curtis was in good health. A little high blood pressure, but nothing to account for a stroke—”

  “Wait a minute, Oshun, hold it. Suppose you tell me why you lied your way into her apartment.”

  “Come off it, Lieutenant. Don’t go holy on me. I guessed that he was on some kind of medication and I had to find out what.”

  “Wouldn’t they publish that?”

  “A candidate’s illness? Are you kidding?” He paused in his eating. “I’m not trying to be some kind of smartass, Lieutenant. But you know that no candidate admits to illness, physical or otherwise.”

  “All right. What did you find?”

  “I found that his physician had put him on a drug called pargyline. When I say his physician, that’s stretching it. No, twisting it. I called his physician, a Dr. Stephan Hyde, and he wouldn’t even talk to me. He said it was none of my damn business.”

  “Then his wife told you, Curtis’s wife?”

  “No. She showed me the bottle. So there it was, pargyline. I’ll tell you something, Lieutenant, it is sure as hell nothing I’d prescribe for a modest high blood pressure. And maybe his blood pressure was not so modest. That’s something you can’t tell looking at someone. I don’t think I’d prescribe pargyline for any high blood pressure. Don’t tell me I’m not a doctor. I’m as smart as most. And the label on that bottle called for too high a dosage—double what it should have been.”

  “How high was his blood pressure?” I asked him.

  “Of course, I couldn’t be sure. I had to rely on her memory, and she thought it was like one ninety over one hundred. Well for a man under his strain, campaigning and all that, and loading his stomach with oversalted food in bad restaurants—well, I wouldn’t give him any drug. I’d take him off salt and slow him down and have him eat a lot of asparagus as a diuretic.”

  “But you can’t be sure of what his blood pressure was—not without speaking to his physician.”

  “No. That’s right. But let me tell you something about this stuff called pargyline. I don’t like it. I don’t like any drug that sets up the user to accidental disaster. It’s what we call a MAO inhibitor, or specifically a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. Aside from its use for high blood pressure, it functions as an antidepressa
nt. But in its side effects, it has just too damn many life-threatening possibilities. In terms of drugs, an amphetamine interacting with it could cause death, or tricyclic, or guanethidine, but those are other prescription drugs and they can be avoided. The tyramine foods are something else.”

  “What are they?” It was a strange jungle I had never set foot in before.

  “Not they. Tyramine is one of the chemical components of the body, perfectly normal, and in a healthy body tyramine helps to sustain blood pressure. They used to think of the body as a simple mechanical machine, Lieutenant. No way. The human body is complex beyond belief, and we are only beginning to scrape at some understanding of what it really is. Now you put a patient on pargyline, and this harmless tyramine can become a deadly killer, so the patient must avoid foods that have large amounts of tyramine. The combination of the food and pargyline can shoot up the blood pressure and induce stroke.”

  “What foods?”

  “A great many; cheese, yeast, red wine, beer, vermouth, avocados, liver, salami—I can’t call them all off from memory. But the point is, as far as Mrs. Curtis knew, Stanley Curtis ate whatever was put in front of him. He did try to avoid salty food and he didn’t use the saltshaker. I tried to find out what he ate the night he died, but at that point she clammed up. I guess she realized that she was talking to some kid she didn’t know from Adam, and she wouldn’t even let me look at the bottle again, so I couldn’t get the address of the druggist. All I can remember is that it was someplace on Madison Avenue.”

  I noted the words in my notebook, pargyline, tyramine, while Oshun went back to the counter for another piece of pie and ice cream.

  “Why all this interest?” he asked when he returned. “And don’t brush me off like you did before. I want to know why you’re here picking my brains.”

  “Why do you think they’d murder Stanley Curtis?”

  “You’re serious? He’s a good guy. The bad guys don’t go to church.” He finished chewing a mouthful of pie, and then shrugged. “The hell with it. You don’t believe a word I said. God help us if we can only look to the cops.”