Silent Treatment

Chapter22

Harry had dealt with enough activelydrinking alcoholics to know that no promise — especially the one not to drinkanymore — meant much. He took a cab across town expecting the worst. As far ashe was concerned, Maura had to bear some responsibility for starting up again.But he also believed that she had been discharged prematurely following heroperation at MMC — not necessarily prematurely for her surgery, or even for theDTs, but certainly for her alcoholism. She needed more time in the hospital — someone to develop a workable treatment plan. She would have benefited fromsocial services intervention, some psychotherapy, perhaps a visit or two frompeople from AA, and quite possibly an inpatient stay at an alcoholism unit aswell. Once upon a time, that was the way it had been done. But now, even if herphysician knew this approach would give her the best shot at recovery, herinsurance carrier dictated otherwise.

There were codes in the company's databasefor each and every disease, injury, and condition that anyone might be likelyto have, everything from leprosy to blackwater fever. There were codes that setlimits for hospital stays, procedures, and allowable payments. But there was nocode that took into account the complexity of any individual or his or herreaction to illness — no code named 'Maura Hughes,' or 'Harry Corbett.' Bravenew medical world.

Harry paid off the cabby, thought aboutpicking up another box of candy — she might crave the sugar — then simplyshrugged and crossed the street to his building. He felt beaten and sore. Whatfight remained within him was fueled by rage and frustration. Andy Barlowhadn't wanted to die. In the time he had left he had wanted to design buildingsand go to concerts and be with his friends. If Maura Hughes wanted toself-destruct, to drink until her liver or her stomach or her brain gave out,there really wasn't a damn thing Harry Corbett — or anyone else, for thatmatter — could do about it. No candy.

Maura was waiting just inside the door tothe apartment. There was an overnight bag at her feet.

'I've decided to go home,' she said.

Harry felt a spark of anger.

'Why?' he asked. 'Because you drank? Orbecause you want to drink some more?'

'Both, probably. Harry, let's not debateit, okay? I'm just not any good to either of us, and I don't see where a fewmore drinks is going to make a bit of difference.'

'Well, it will.'

Harry wanted to shout at her. To remindher in the harshest terms that she had control of things. Andy Barlow did not.Instead, he took a calming breath and held her by the arms. Her eyes were stillclear and focused. She had almost certainly not had any more to drink sincethey spoke on the phone. There was still a slim chance to stop it right there.

'Let's go in and talk,' he said. 'Just fora while.'

'Harry, please. I'm not playing any headgames with you. I'm not wallowing in self-pity, and I'm not trying to get youto beg me not to drink.'

'I didn't think you were. Listen, we'rejust having a lousy time of it — both of us. I know you feel bad about notremembering what that bastard looked like. I wish you could remember, too. Butif you can't, you can't. It really isn't that important. What is important isthat you're the only one who absolutely knows the truth about me and Evie. I'mcounting on you to help keep me from coming unglued. And I think I can do thesame for you. Now please, just come on back inside.'

For a few silent seconds, she stared up athim.

'Anybody ever tell you that you look likeGene Hackman?' she said finally.

Harry was shaken. Then he noticed themischief in her eyes.

'Well,' he said, 'now that you mention it. .'

They sat on the sofa in the den, drinkingcoffee and trying to make sense of the events that were battering their lives.They had made very little when, an hour later, Harry's pager summoned him tocall his answering service. Maura had agreed that she was not handling heralcoholism very effectively, but did not agree that she needed a couple ofweeks or more as an inpatient at a rehab — especially not with Harry footingthe bill, as he had offered to do.

'Anything else,' she said. 'Anything butthe lockup.'

Harry suggested she might speak withMurphy Oates, the piano player in the house band at C.C.'s Cellar. Oates, oncea serious drunk and heroin addict, had been clean and sober for over a decade,though he rarely spoke about it.

'I'll be happy to speak with your friend,'Maura bargained. 'And whatever he tells me to do, I'll do … except get putaway in some nut ward.'

'He's probably at the club,' Harry said.

'Now?'

'It doesn't open for another couple ofhours, but there'll be some musicians there, playing or just hanging out. Thisis actually the time I like it there the most. It's dark and quiet and. .well, sort of like a womb. You know, I just remembered that Andy Barlow oncecame in there to hear me play. .'

Harry's thoughts again entered thedarkened hospital room on Alexander 5 and locked on the thin face staringlifelessly at the ceiling. From the moment he had heard Maura's thick speech onthe phone, he had been holding on by the thinnest of threads. Now, he felt thatthread snap, and himself begin to slide down a sheer glass wall.

'. . The lunatic admitted it, Maura,' hesaid, pacing across the room and back. 'He just called up and admitted killingAndy like. . like he was admitting he stole the morning paper off my frontstoop. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. Not one goddamnthing. What am I supposed to do? I'm like a toy for him. Jump, Harry. Rollover. Play dead. How am I ever going to stop this? Who's next?'

'Harry, let's go,' Maura said suddenly,taking his hand. 'Let's get out of here right now. The club might do you somegood, too.'

'I don't know,' he said. 'Listen, let mefind out what this page is all about. Then we can decide what we want to do.'

Harry dialed his answering service. He wasn'ton for his coverage group, so the call had to be something they couldn't dealwith. The answering service operator, usually chatty and ebullient, soundedformal and cool. Apparently, she had joined the ranks of those certain thatHarry was guilty of murdering his wife. It seemed as if word about him wasspreading like toxic fog.

'Dr. Corbett, you got a call from a Mr.Walter Concepcion,' she said, making no effort to pronounce the name theSpanish way. 'He said that he's a patient of yours, but that this isn't amedical problem. He said that no one else but you can help.'

Harry scratched down the number, checkedthat it was the same as the one Mary had given him at the office, and dialed. Awoman answered on the fifth ring.

'- Diga?'

'Buenas tardes,' Harry said. '- Esta WalterConcepcion, por favor?'

Over his two decades of medical practiceon the fringe of Spanish Harlem, he had evolved about a second grader's fluencyin the language, although his accent was closer to preschool.

'Un momento.'

He heard her set the phone down andenvisioned a woman in a print house dress walking to the foot of a flight ofwell-worn oak stairs.

'Oye, Walter!' she called out as if on cue. 'WalterConcepcion! Telefono!' Harry's image this time was of his gaunt, twitchynew patient, slipping his feet into a pair of threadbare slippers, opening oneof several doors on the second floor of the dingy boarding house, and paddingdown the stairs.

'Hola,' he said, at almost the momentHarry expected him to.

'Mr. Concepcion, it's Dr. Corbett.'

'Oh, hey, thanks for calling back soquickly, Doc,' he said. 'Your office gal told me about what happened after thatcall came in. I'm sorry you're having so much trouble. I … I was calling tosee if there might be a time for me to speak with you about it.'

'Actually, I was going to call you.'

He glanced over at Maura and motioned thathe wouldn't be long. He wanted to get to know Walter Concepcion better beforeturning his phone number over to Albert Dickinson. He also wanted to preparethe man for the sort of degrading grilling he could expect from the detective.But another thought had occurred to him as well. Concepcion spoke proudly ofhaving kicked a drug and alcohol habit. On external appearances alone he wasn'texactly a ringing endorsement for abstinence. But he was intelligent in astreetwise sort of way, and did seem to take his recovery seriously. If MurphyOates wasn't at the club, Concepcion might be another voice of hope for Maura.

'Would you be free in, say, an hour?'Harry asked, guessing that the one-time detective would probably be free almostany hour.

'Just say where, Doc, and I'll get there.'

Harry hesitated a moment and then gave himthe address of the club.

C.C.'s Cellar was a 120-seathole-in-the-wall on Fifty-sixth Street west of Ninth Avenue. The scarred brickwalls were covered with signed, black-framed photos of jazz greats, many ofwhom had spent their entire lives in obscurity, enmeshed in a vicious cycle ofpoverty, addiction, and pain. C.C., Carl Cataldo, had died years before, andhad left the club to his niece, Jackie. As far as Harry could tell, except fora few more photos on the walls and a state-of-the-art speaker system, not muchhad changed in the place since Carl opened it decades ago.

There were four people in the dimly litmain room when he and Maura arrived. Jackie, expansive in a stained whiteapron, was getting ready behind the bar. A gnarled old janitor who had beenwith the place since day one was sweeping out the small private-party room. Twomusicians, both guitarists, were trading licks on the stage. One of them calledto Harry.

'Hey, Doc, how about comin' up an'knockin' out a little bass line for us.'

'Later, maybe, Billy.'

'Hey, whenever, my man.'

'Any idea where Murphy is?'

The man shook his head and then ran offseveral incredibly melodic bars of 'I Remember You.' Except for expressinggrief about Harry's loss, no one at the club had even hinted by word or mannerthat they were upset by the publicity surrounding him. They trusted his music,they trusted him. It was that simple. And in a city of eight million or so,this was the only spot where he felt truly safe and accepted.

'Go ahead and play if you want to,' Maurasaid, sipping soda water. 'I'll be fine.'

'Thanks, but I don't think so. I thought Imight want to when we left the apartment, but right now I just want to sit withyou and. . Maura, he simply walked past everyone on Alexander Five, intoAndy's room, and then out again. How could he have done that without a singleperson noticing? Not one.'

'How did he just walk into our room thenight he killed Evie? He knows how to move around hospitals. That's all thereis to it. If you were evil enough and set your mind to it, you could do it justas well. There's so much stress and tension in hospitals that I'll bet most peoplewho work there are totally focused on not making mistakes. There are probablytimes when you could march an elephant through the halls and no one wouldnotice. The guy just knows how to do it.'

'I guess.'

'Harry, I wish I could say something tohelp. I really do.'

'You can, dammit. You can say you won'tpick up a drink again.'

Her eyes sparkled at his curtness. It wasthe first time he had spoken to her that sharply.

'I'll try my best,' she said. 'How'sthat?'

'It'll do for now.'

She stared into her glass.

'So,' she said, brightly, 'tell me aboutthis guy who's meeting us here. You said he's a private detective?'

'Was. He got into trouble with booze andcocaine. I don't know what he did to lose his license, but now he's trying toget it back.'

'Well, I think that may be him overthere.'

Walter Concepcion was getting a soda waterfrom Jackie, who nodded towards where they were sitting. He was wearing alightweight plaid sports jacket and looked more businesslike than he had in Harry'soffice. Harry studied him as he approached the table, wondering what sort ofimpression he might make on Albert Dickinson. He moved well enough, and carriedhimself like someone who had once had some athletic ability. But even dressedup, he still looked wasted and chronically ill. Dickinson would never believehis claim that he had been off crack for years. Harry introduced him to Maura.

'Three soda waters on the perfectpitcher-of-beer day,' Concepcion said, motioning to their three drinks. 'Could itbe that I'm not the only one on the wagon?'

Harry was impressed.

'I didn't say a thing,' he said to Maura.'You heard the whole conversation.'

'Harry's just patronizing us,' sheexplained. 'I'm the lush.'

'In that case, here's to us lushes.'

'I like this guy,' Maura said, joining inthe toast.

After five minutes of conversation, Harryknew that his office assessment of the man had been way off. Despite his sallowcomplexion and the persistent tic at the corner of his mouth, Concepcion wasengaging and intelligent. He was born and raised in New York, but had traveledextensively in the service, and then on his own.

He spoke easily and even humorously of hisdrinking days and his virulent addiction to crack cocaine. But the intensity inhis eyes left no doubt that this was serious business to him. At the height ofhis career, he was commanding thousand-dollar-a-day fees and was in continuousdemand. His professional downfall came when he traded his gun to an undercovercop for some crack. At the time, it didn't matter to him — nothing matteredexcept his next fix. But recovery had changed all that.

'I go mostly to NA,' Concepcion toldMaura, when bringing up the subject seemed right. 'You know, NarcoticsAnonymous. But I'll be happy to go with you to an AA meeting if you want. NA,AA, Hershey Bars Anonymous — they're all the same as far as I'm concerned.'

'The sooner the better, I guess,' Maurasaid.

Jackie brought over some pretzels andanother round of sodas. The two guitars had been joined by Hal Jewell, a full-timedrummer who reminded Harry of Buddy Rich, and a sax player named Brisby, whowas a partner in one of the most successful black law firms in the city. Theywere working through a classy ballad in D that Harry had never heard before.Three quarters of an hour had gone by, and between the music and the pleasantsurprise that was Walter Concepcion, he had managed to smooth off a bit of theragged pain he was feeling.

The ballad was captivating, especiallywith the acoustics of the near-empty room. They listened in silence untilBrisby's last, melancholy note had faded away. Then Concepcion cleared histhroat and turned to Harry.

'Dr. Corbett, I … um. . there'ssomething I need to tell you. I do have headaches like I told you in the office- bad ones that no one's been able to help me with. But that was only one ofthe reasons I came to see you.'

'Oh?'

'I hope you're not angry about this. Ifyou are, I guess I'd understand.'

'Go on.'

'I was going to tell you at the office,but you got that phone call and ran out before I could. Doc, I read about youin the papers. In fact, I've read absolutely everything I could get my hands onabout what happened to you and your wife at the hospital. I've been satisfiedby it. I even talked to a friend's sister who's a nurse there. She … ah …told me about the argument you had with that surgeon, what's his name?'

Harry momentarily debated ending theconversation right there. But over the past hour Concepcion had come across asanything but a head case. And there was nothing threatening or obsessive in histone or expression now.

'Sidonis,' he said. 'Caspar Sidonis.'

'Yeah, him. I — ' He looked down at hishands. 'I even know about you, Maura, assuming you're the Maura from Mrs.Corbett's room. Not that much, really. But enough to know that not too manypeople at the hospital believe you.'

'Walter, maybe you'd better get to thepoint,' Harry said.

'The point is, I need work. I know I don'tlook it, but I'm good at what I used to do. Damn good. You claim you didn't killyour wife. Maura claims someone else was in the room after you. I want to helpfigure out who that person was. If I help, you pay me. If I don't, you're onlyout expense money.'

Harry stared across at him. He hadn't oncethought about trying to hire someone to help him out. The idea certainly hadmerit, he acknowledged now. But Walter Concepcion hardly seemed the idealchoice. He felt a sympathetic pang as he pictured the man in his rooming house,rummaging through his small closet for his best clothes in hopes of landing ajob.

I don't know,' he said.

'Walter, tell me something,' Maura said.'From what you've read, what do you think about all this?'

Concepcion rubbed thoughtfully at thestubble on his chin.

'Well, we're not talking about a jealoushusband or even an amateur here,' he said. 'That's for sure. We're dealing witha psychopathic, sociopathic professional killer — a man without a conscience.So I guess the most important thing I could say is that I don't believe Dr.Corbett fits that profile at all. And therefore I don't believe he did it.'

'You're right there,' Harry said.

'I also don't believe you hired the manwho did.'

'Right again. Walter, I just don't know.'

Harry was drawn to a connection withConcepcion's experience and street smarts, to say nothing of the value ofhaving another hand on board who was committed to proving he wasn't a murderer.But he was reluctant to strike a deal with a man about whom he knew so little.Maura saved him the trouble.

'It's a deal,' she said.

'What?'

'Harry, you want to say yes and you knowit. We're dead in the water. We don't have even the glimmer of an idea of whatto do next. Walter can help us. I feel it in my bones.'

'I really think I can, Dr. Corbett.'

Harry took another fifteen seconds, purelyfor appearances.

'If you're going to be working for me, youmight as well call me Harry,' he said.

'You won't regret this,' Concepcion said.'I promise.'

He reached over and shook Harry's hand.His fingers were bony and gnarled, but his grip was surprisingly firm.

For the next half hour, Harry went overthe case in detail. Concepcion listened intently and interrupted from time totime to clarify a point.

'This technician who took thefingerprints, has he heard anything at all?'. . 'Did you suspect your wife washaving an affair at any time?'. . 'The two names you found in her addressbook, have you learned anything about them?'. . 'Do you have any idea whoyour wife worked for?'

By the time Harry finished, they had beenat the club for over two hours. The first few customers had started to stragglein.

'Well, what do you think?' he asked.

Concepcion twisted the small gold band hewore on the middle finger of his right hand.

'I think we've got to do what we can tofind out who this Desiree was working for. That's where I'm going to start.'

'Good luck,' Harry said, genuinelyimpressed with the logic of the idea. 'What can we do in the meantime?'

'We need to get at that face Maura haslocked away somewhere in her brain.'

'You mean by hypnosis?'

'It's a thought.'

Harry rubbed at his eyes.

'Maura, I feel really stupid for notsuggesting that.'

You've had a few things on your mind,' shesaid. 'Listen, Harry. I'll try anything. Maybe we can throw in a few extrabucks and whoever hypnotizes me can convince my subconscious that SouthernComfort tastes like borscht or Diet Dr Pepper or something. Do you know anyonewho might do it?'

'Actually, I do,' Harry said. 'I knowsomeone quite well. His name's Pavel Nemec. You may have heard of him as TheHungarian.'

'The court of last resort for smokers,' Mauraexclaimed. 'I've heard there's a waiting time of six months to see him.'

'I took care of his son once. I have hishome number back at the apartment. If it's humanly possible, he'll see ustomorrow.'

Concepcion whistled.

'You must have done something prettyspecial for his kid.'

'Not really,' Harry murmured. 'But Pavelthinks I did.' He turned to Concepcion. 'Okay then, Walter, we're in business.'

'Um, almost.' Concepcion looked at himwarily. 'I'm going to need some money for my expenses, and some more to buyinformation when I need to. Don't worry, I'll keep an accounting and receipts.'

'Just how much are we talking about here?'

'For expenses, maybe five hundred.'

'And for the other, the information?'

'I dunno. Maybe a thousand.'

'Fifteen hundred dollars!' Harryexclaimed. 'I thought you said no results, no pay.'

'I told you, Harry, I'm a professional. Iknow what it takes to get information. How much do you think that guy got paidto kill your wife?'

'Okay, okay. Point made. Stop by my officetomorrow morning and I'll have the cash for you.'

'Great. You won't regret this.'

'You said that fifteen hundred dollarsago.'

Concepcion stood and shook hands with eachof them.

'Maura, we'll hit a meeting tomorrow orthe next day. I promise.'

'Great. I'm ready for it.'

He turned to go, and then turned back.

'Oh, Harry?'

'What now?'

'If you've got it, I could really use asmall advance on that expense money.'

Harry handed over a twenty, then another.

'Why do I feel like I just swam into awhirlpool?' he said.

Concepcion just grinned in his engagingway and headed off.

'Have I been had?' Harry asked.

Maura shook her head.

'Hardly. You've been leading too sheltereda life,' she said. 'Everybody's got to eat. I trust him. Besides, he's alreadycome up with two good ideas we didn't.'

'I would have thought of the hypnotist,'Harry grumbled.