Silent Treatment

Chapter16

At midnight, when he officially turnedfifty, Harry celebrated with a glass of champagne and a bag of Famous Amoschocolate chip cookies. He hadn't gotten cancer or been run over by a busduring the past three hundred and sixty-five days, but all things considered,his fiftieth year had been a pretty lousy one. And his fifty-first was notbeginning with a great deal of promise. He indulged his self-pity for a time byflipping through his and Evie's wedding album, and then read himself to sleepwith half a page of his most dependable soporific, Moby-Dick. Ahabwasn't having such a great year either.

At 5:45, when his clock radio kicked in,he had already been awake for nearly an hour and was finishing the set of MarineCorps calisthenics he did on the days when he didn't run. He had always been anathlete of sorts — Little League baseball, cross-country, and some organizedbasketball in college. He lacked the natural ability to be a star in any sport,but his competitive fire had made him a fairly consistent winner. For the pastdecade, though, what intensity he still possessed was focused on holding hisground against the passing years. Now, as he grunted past sixty bent-kneesit-ups on the way to seventy-five, he found he was drawing strength from hisconsuming dislike for Albert Dickinson.

The previous evening, Harry had arrived athome to find the detective there, along with a new uniformed policeman. He wasquestioning Armand Rojas, the day-shift doorman, but stopped as soon as Harryappeared at the door, and produced a warrant to search the apartment. Following the Chinese-food deliveryman fiasco with Rocky, Harry had tippedboth doormen handsomely and implored them to be on their toes. Still, hewondered, as the two policemen followed him into the apartment to begin theirsearch, if the mystery physician had somehow gotten in there again to plant afew vials of Aramine. His other concern was that Dickinson himself might find away to do it.

To Harry's profound relief, theone-and-a-half-hour inspection unearthed nothing. But with each fruitlessminute, Dickinson became more annoyed — and more determined. By the time he andthe other cop had left, he had reiterated in a variety of colorful and profaneways his threat to put the screws to Harry.

There was a small, enclosed terrace offthe master bedroom. It had a view of the midsection of another apartmentbuilding, and might have been considered a solarium if it ever receivedanything more than token sunlight. Evie had had many plans for the room whenthey first moved into the apartment, but soon lost interest in them. There weresimilar terraces all the way up the building. Those on the upper floors hadexpansive views and hours of direct sunlight. Over time, the room came tosymbolize those things she felt were second-rate in their life, and sheabsolutely never went out there.

Eventually, Harry had replaced the table,chairs, and small sofa with his exercise mat, stationary bicycle, weights, anda twelve-inch TV. Now, he turned on the early morning news and began a sequenceof lifts with ten-pound barbells, aimed at maintaining strength in the musclesin his back — muscles that had been surgically repaired after being shredded atNha-trang. The lead story this morning was about the cascading rumors of sexualimpropriety that continued to plague the president and undermine hiseffectiveness. The second story dealt with the Republican filibuster that hadall but damned the strict caps on health-insurance premiums demanded by theadministration's health-care package. The third story was about Evie's murder.

'Evelyn DellaRosa, consumer editor at Manhattan Woman magazine and wife of prominent Manhattan physician Dr.Harry Corbett, died of a brain hemorrhage last week at the Manhattan MedicalCenter.' Evie's stock photo appeared behind the anchorwoman with the word MURDEREDscrolled across it in crimson. 'Now, according to reliable police sources,the death of the former beauty queen and television reporter is being treatedas a homicide. .'

Harry set the weights aside and sank toone knee as the details of the medical examiner's findings were presented in TVshorthand. Behind the reporter flashed first a photo of MMC, then a close-up ofa vial labeled Aramine with a syringe protruding from the top, andfinally, one of Harry himself- a twenty-year-old shot of him in dress uniformthat someone had resurrected from the photo morgue at the Times.

'According to police sources, the onlysuspect currently under investigation in DellaRosa's murder is her husband, ageneral practitioner on the staff of the hospital in which she was slain.Reportedly, Dr. Corbett, who was awarded the silver star for bravery inVietnam, was his wife's last visitor before her fatal hemorrhage. Police claimthe couple was having marital difficulties. No other details are available atthis time

Harry buried his face in his hands.Weariness and perspiration burned in his eyes. As promised, Dickinson was offand running. And aside from remaining as composed as possible before theeruption that was about to occur, there wasn't a goddamn thing Harry could doabout it. At that moment, the phone began ringing. It was Rocky Martino, thenight doorman. A film crew from Channel 11 had just shown up in the lobby, andthe reporter was demanding to see Harry about the murder of his wife.

Tell them to go fuckthemselves, Harrythought.

'Tell them there will be no interviews,'he said, 'and don't say anything to them yourself. Nothing at all. Can I getout of the building through that metal door in the furnace room?. . Great.Rocky, believe me, I didn't do anything to hurt Evie. . Thank you. Thank youfor saying that. Now remember, no matter how much you want to help me, don'tsay anything at all to anyone.'

Seconds after he had hung up, the phonewas ringing again. This time it was his brother. Before Evie's funeral, Harryhad shared with Phil a good deal of what had transpired at the hospital withSidonis and Dickinson. Phil had offered then to put him in touch with atop-notch attorney, but Harry had decided to wait.

'You been watching TV?' Phil asked.

'Yeah.'

'You okay?'

'Would you be?'

'When did you know for sure about thatdrug being in Evie?'

'Yesterday afternoon. They came andsearched the office for it. Then last night they searched my apartment.'

'I take it they didn't find anything.Harry, you should have called me when the cops showed up at your office. Youhave rights. You should have let me call my friend Mel. He's an animal. Mostobnoxious son of a bitch I've ever known. I mean that as a compliment, ofcourse. You want me to call him now?'

'How do you know him, Phil?'

'How do you think? He's bought a newMercedes from me every year since I went into the business. This year it's a600 SEL — the big one. Black. That's the first thing you gotta check when youget a lawyer. Not his law school or his bar exam score. The car he drives.Course, he'd cost you. You're probably looking at a twenty — ortwenty-five-thousand-dollar retainer.'

Harry was shocked. 'Let me think about it,okay?'

'Don't take too long. Oh, and Harry — '

'Yes?'

'Happy birthday.'

Mary Tobin was the next to call. Harry hadmade the front page of two papers. He assured her he'd be in for a full day atthe office and told her not to argue with anyone who wanted to cancel anappointment or even change doctors. Rocky, then Phil, now Mary — and it wasjust half past six. He said a silent thanks to Evie for insisting their numberbe unlisted.

He stripped out of his sweats and waswaiting for the shower water to heat up when the phone again began ringing.This time, he decided, the machine could answer it. He hovered close enough tohear the caller.

'Hello, you have reached the phone of Evieand Harry. .'

The voice was Evie's. It was bothbittersweet and somewhat ghoulish to hear her speaking this way. Before he leftfor work, he told himself, he had to remember to record a new greeting.

'Dr. Corbett, Samuel Rennick speaking. I'mchief counsel for the hospital. If you're screening calls, could you pleasepick up …'

Harry leaned against the bathroom doorframe. Steam from the shower had begun to fill the small room. GoddamnDickinson, he was thinking.

'. . Okay, then. I guess I'll leave amessage and then try to reach you at the hospital. .' The lawyer pausedagain. It was as if he knew Harry was listening. '. . Dr. Erdman would liketo meet with you about the developments this morning. His office, ten o'clock.If there's a problem with that time, please call his secretary. Dr. Erdman hasasked that I be there, as well as Dr. Lord from the medical staff, Dr.Josephson, who is acting chief of your department, and Mr. Atwater fromManhattan Health. I'll be at Dr. Erdman's office beginning at eight. You canreach me there if need be. Thank you.'

Owen Erdman, a highly political,Harvard-educated-and-trained endocrinologist, had been president of MMC fornearly a decade, during which time he had overseen the physical transformationof a shabby institution and a turnaround of its shaky reputation. The jewel inthe crown of his reformation had been the affiliation with Manhattan Health.But Harry knew that with the new federal health policies, alliances between caregiverswere as fragile as spring ice, and an allegiance meant something only so longas it was profitable. Any piece of negative publicity for MMC had to beworrisome to the CEO.

Harry had heard via the hospital grapevinethat his minor victory against the edicts of the Sidonis committee did not sitwell with Erdman. Now he was responsible for more soot falling on the man'shouse. Harry showered quickly and then called his brother.

'Phil, I've decided to take you up on youroffer about that lawyer,' he said.

'Smart move, bro.'

'If so, it will be the first one I've madein a while.'

Attorney Mel Wetstone's retainer, 'markeddown twenty-five percent because Phil's such a good friend,' was indeed $20,000against an hourly rate of $350. And here the President was, Harry thought,knocking himself out and pitting brother against brother across the country toeffect health care reform. Perhaps a bit of attention was due the legalsystem as well.

Harry decided to borrow the $20,000against his pension plan, rather than wipe out a large portion of his savings.He met with his new lawyer in the family medicine conference room on theseventh floor of the Alexander Building at MMC. Wetstone was a prosperousfortyish, a dozen or so pounds overweight, with thinning dark hair that lookedas if it had been surgically augmented. There was a slight wheeze to hisbreathing. Hard-pressed at times to forget that the meter was running at $350an hour, Harry reviewed his complete story in detail for the first time,including the encounter in the Village with his apparent nemesis. Wetstone wasa sympathetic listener and only rarely interrupted the narrative with aquestion.

'So,' Wetstone said after Harry hadfinished, 'what it boils down to is that you didn't do anything wrong, andpeople think you did. In my business that's the norm. My job will be to keepanyone from hurting you. Now, what do you think this meeting at ten is allabout?'

'I don't know for certain. I've taken somestands on issues lately that haven't been too popular with the administration.Now I'm publicly giving them a black eye. I don't think they'd just boot me offthe staff at this point, although I guess they could. More likely they'll wantto ask me to take a voluntary leave from the hospital until the situation isironed out.'

'You want to do that?'

'No. Of course not.'

'Then that'll be our goal. You told me whothis Erdman is, and I know Sam Rennick. Who are the other guys?'

'Bob Lord is the chief of staff. He's anorthopedic surgeon. He resents that I led the fight to continue to allow GPs toput simple, nondisplaced fractures in casts without referring our patients to aspecialist. He's very much into who's got the power and who doesn't, and Ithink he's pretty tight with the surgeon Evie was involved with. I can'timagine him siding with me on anything. Josephson and Atwater are a differentstory. They're about the best friends I have around here. Steve — that'sJosephson — is the acting head of the family medicine department until GraceSegal gets back from a maternity leave. Atwater and I are both jazz nuts. We goto clubs together once in a while, and sometimes he comes to hear me play.'

Harry expected the usual questions, like 'Oh,what instrument do you play?' or You play professionally? Where?' Instead,Wetstone straightened his notes and stood up.

'I want to see if I can speak with SamRennick before we go in there,' he said. 'I left a message for him to call mypager, but he hasn't.'

'You said you knew him. Perhaps he'safraid of you.'

Wetstone grinned, but his small, dark eyeswere cold — all business.

'I don't know,' he said, 'but he shouldbe.'

There were fifteen floors in the AlexanderBuilding. The elevator down was nearly full when it reached the seventh floor.By the time it reached the lobby, it was packed. A sign on the wall of the carwarned passengers to guard their valuables against pickpockets. After thousandsof trips, Harry had already reflexively shifted his wallet from his hip pocketto the front. He thought about what it would be like to work in a scrubbedlittle rural hospital with no crushes of people and no pickpocket warnings. Hedoubted that there was a single scrubbed little rural hospital this side ofBora Bora that would take him, should he be removed from the MMC staff.

The conference room adjacent to OwenErdman's office featured a long, highly polished cherrywood table with roundedcorners and an inlay of the MMC crest at the center. The twelve matching,high-backed chairs each had an identical crest in miniature inlaid at the top.Harry had been in the room once some years before, but was certain the remarkableset had not been there. He tried briefly to guess its value, then gave up whenhe realized he had absolutely no reference point. Evie would have known, hethought. Possibly to the dollar.

Steve Josephson, Doug Atwater, and theorthopedist Bob Lord were there when Harry and Wetstone arrived.

'How're you doing?' Steve asked.

Harry answered with a How do you think?shrug.

'Do you have any idea who could have beenresponsible for doing this to Evie?' Doug asked.

'Not really,' Harry said, careful to stop there.

Wetstone had cautioned him against sharinghis theory with anyone, even his allies.

'Remember that party game of Telephone weused to play as kids?' the attorney had asked. 'Well, take it from the voice ofexperience. No matter how well-meaning people are, the moment words are out ofyour mouth and into their ears, the original version begins to change.'

Despite Wetstone's caveat, Harry would nothave hesitated to share the details of Evie's secret life with either Josephsonor Atwater had Bob Lord not been there. Instead, there was an uncomfortableminute and a half of silence before Erdman and the hospital counsel entered theroom. With them was a trim, businesslike woman introduced as Ms. Hinkle, thehospital's head of public relations. Harry shook her hand and felt as if he hadgrasped a Popsicle.

'Dr. Corbett,' Sam Rennick began, 'wewondered if you might start by reviewing the events — as you see them — fromthe night of your wife's death.'

'Now just a minute, Sam,' Wetstonerejoined immediately. 'I thought we decided on what the ground rules were goingto be here. .'

Feeling strangely distant and distracted,Harry listened as two attorneys whom he had not even known before today debatedhis situation. From time to time, one of the others at the table spoke up. Heeven heard himself once or twice. But the voices seemed distorted, the meaningof their words often lost. The whole situation was just too surreal. Instead ofbeing keen and focused, Harry's thoughts were drifting. He tried to imagine howmany hours — hundreds of hours, perhaps — he was now destined to spend in onetype of legal proceeding or another. He had been thrust through the lookingglass into a world where anything — however illogical or bizarre — waspossible.

Inexplicably, with the discussion of hisprofessional future raging about him, he found himself thinking about a patientof his, a teenager named Melinda Olivera, whose severe mononucleosis he hadrecently diagnosed and treated so aggressively that within a day, she was ableto attend her junior prom. Doctoring had always seemed so straightforward tohim. A patient shows up sick and you do the best you can to fix them up. Now,suddenly, there were lawyers and administrators and public-relations directors.

'I absolutely disagree.' Doug Atwater'ssharp words pierced Harry's mental fog. Harry had no idea what was beingdiscussed. 'I have already reviewed matters with the CEO at Manhattan Health,and he has spoken with the medical director and several other key personnel. Therehas never been even one complaint about Dr. Corbett — his manner of practice,his fees, or his conduct. We see no reason why he shouldn't continue to be onManhattan Health's role of providers.'

'But what will the public think if-'

Doug cut Ms. Hinkle short.

'Please, I don't mean to be rude, Barbara,but what we need is some sort of strong statement from the hospital that Dr.Corbett has been formally charged with nothing as yet, and we at this hospital. .'

Harry heard little of what followed, butnot because his mind was wandering. He had reached inside the right-hand pocketof his sports jacket for a pen. There was none. What he felt instead were twoobjects he knew had not been there when he put the jacket on that morning. Infact, he knew they had not even been in his possession. Slowly, he clenched hisfist around them and brought them out on to his lap.

'It's agreed, then,' Mel Wetstone wassaying. 'The hospital's posture will be one of support for a respected staffmember who has not been convicted of or even charged with a crime. For hispart, Dr. Corbett will refrain from any public statements without clearing themwith Ms. Hinkle. And his admitting and treatment privileges at this hospitalwill remain intact. Does that sound okay with you, Dr. Corbett?. . Dr.Corbett?'

'Huh? Oh, yes. Thank you all. That'sexcellent.'

He barely managed to pull his attentionfrom his hand, now open on his lap. On his palm lay his watch and Evie'srabbit's-foot key chain and keys, gone when he awoke in, Desiree's apartment.At some point that morning, perhaps in the crowded elevator, Evie's murdererhad been standing behind him, or maybe even right next to him. The keys weremeant as a reminder of how vulnerable he was — a warning to be very carefulwhat he said and to whom. But there was also another possibility, heacknowledged, even more disturbing and chilling — the' possiblity that he wasnothing more to his wife's murderer than sport, a pawn in some macabre game.

'Pardon?' Wetstone asked.

'Excuse me?' Harry replied, againrealizing he had drifted.

'Harry, you just said something like,"I'm not going to be that easy." What did that mean?'

'Oh, nothing,' Harry said, slipping thewatch and keys back into his pocket. 'Nothing important.'

CoronerRules Manhattan

Reporter'sDeath a Homicide

Kevin Loomis stared at the headline in theTimes. The photo of Evelyn DellaRosa was the same as the one in herobituary. He tried, as he had for the past week, to convince himself that herresemblance to Desiree was coincidental. But deep inside, he knew the truth. Amonth and a half ago, wearing nothing but a bra and panties, she had kneltastride him, kneading the tightness from his back as she asked in a mostflattering, disarming way about him and his life.

Kevin read through the article. His handswere shaking so hard he had to keep the paper pressed to the table. At the lastmeeting, Desiree had been more or less dismissed as not a serious threat to TheRoundtable. Then, just a few days later, she had been murdered in her hospitalbed. Her doctor husband was a suspect, but no arrest had been made. Maybethat was because he hadn't killed her.

Kevin felt squeamish. Throughout the rideto the city, he tried to convince himself that he was reacting this way becauseof the intimacy, however artificial, that he had shared with the woman not solong ago. The newspapers — and by now he had read the account in all of them — toldof marital problems. The Daily News alluded to a lover. Evelyn DellaRosaor Desiree or whoever the hell she was had been murdered by her husband, andthat was that.

Kevin did not remember making even one ofthe turns that took him from his driveway to the Crown Building in midtownManhattan. He parked in the underground space with his name stenciled in blueon the wall and took the elevator up to his office on the thirty-first floor.Brenda Wallace was waiting for him, barely able to contain her enthusiasm asshe told him the news.

'Your wife called a few minutes ago, Mr.Loomis,' she said, breathless with excitement. 'She said the people buying yourhouse have gotten their mortgage and the bank has approved the deal for yournew house in Port Chester.'

Standing in the doorway behind her, BurtDreiser gave Kevin a wink and a thumbs up. His expression left no doubt that hehad played a role in expediting the sale.

'I'm pretty good at finding ways to solveproblems,' he had said that day on his boat.

'The closing's scheduled for Wednesday,'Brenda gushed on. 'Mrs. Loomis says you can call her at the office if you want.She'll be there until five. She also said to tell you that the house is reallyno big deal, and you don't have to go through with it, but that next to the dayyou two got married, this is the happiest day of her life.'