Total Recall

XXXIV Road Rage, Hospital Rage, Any Old Rage

The hospital was on the city’s northwest side, far enough from the trendy neighborhoods that nearby traffic usually flowed fast. Today, though, when I was about a mile away, the main road got so heavy I tried the side streets. Five blocks from Beth Israel, I came to a total halt. I looked around frantically for an alley so I could escape to an alternate route, but as I was about to make a U-turn, it dawned on me that if the jam came from gapers rubbernecking at Posner’s demonstrators, traffic would be blocked on all sides of Beth Israel. I pulled over to an empty meter and sprinted the last half mile.

Sure enough, I found Posner and several dozen protesters in the middle of the kind of crowd he seemed to adore. Chicago cops were furiously directing traffic at the intersection; staff in green-and-gold hospital security blazers were trying to guide patients to side entrances; television crews were filming. The last had attracted a crowd of gawkers. It was just on one-anyone coming back from lunch had probably stopped to enjoy the show.

I was too far back to read the signs, but I could hear a chant that chilled my heart: Max and Lotty, have a heart! Don’t smash survivors’ lives apart!

I ran around to the back, to the service entrance, where I opened my wallet and flashed my PI license in the face of a security guard so fast he couldn’t tell whether it was an FBI badge or a credit card. By the time he’d figured that out, I had disappeared into the labyrinth of halls and stairwells that make security at any hospital a nightmare.

I tried to keep my bearings but still ended up in radiation oncology and file storage before finding the main lobby. I could hear shouting from the group outside, but I couldn’t see anything: Beth Israel is an old brick building, without a plate-glass front or even any windows low enough to see outside. Hospital guards, who were completely unused to this kind of chaos, were doing an ineffectual job of keeping gawkers from blocking the main entrance. An older woman sobbed helplessly to one side that she’d just had outpatient surgery, that she needed a taxi to get home, while a second woman with a newborn looked around anxiously for her husband.

I stared at the scene for an appalled moment, then told the guards to keep people away from the door. “Tell them that anyone who obstructs the entryway is facing a fine. The back exit is free and clear-get these patients out through there. Send an SOS to the cab companies to use the rear.”

I watched until the startled guard started giving orders through his walkie-talkie before I marched down the corridor to Max’s office. Cynthia Dowling, Max’s secretary, interrupted a heated telephone exchange when she saw me.

“Cynthia, why doesn’t Max get the cops to arrest that group of yahoos?”

She shook her head. “The board’s afraid of alienating major donors. Beth Israel is one of the big Jewish charities in town. Most of the calls we’ve been getting since Posner hit the news have agreed with you, but old Mrs. Felstein is one of Posner’s supporters-she survived the war in hiding in Moldavia, you know, but when she came here she made a fortune in gum balls. Lately she’s been active in lobbying Swiss banks to release Holocaust victims’ assets. And she’s pledged twenty million dollars for our new oncology wing.”

“So if she sees Posner carried off to a paddy wagon she’ll cancel? But if someone who’s having a heart attack dies because they can’t get here, you’d face a lawsuit that would more than offset any pledge she made.”

“That’s Max’s decision. His and the board’s, and of course they’re aware of the pitfalls.” Her phone console started to blink; she pressed a button. “Mr. Loewenthal’s office… No, I know you have a one-thirty deadline. As soon as Mr. Loewenthal is available I’ll let him have your message… Yes, I wish we weren’t in the business of saving lives here; it would make us better able to drop everything to respond to media deadlines. Mr. Loewenthal’s office, please hold… Mr. Loewenthal’s office, please hold.” She looked at me, distracted, with her hand over the phone. “This place is so inefficient. The stupid temp the clerical pool sent me went to lunch an hour ago. She’s probably out front enjoying the show, and even though I’m the executive director’s secretary, the clerical office won’t send me another backup.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll leave you to it. I have some questions for Posner-tell Max if you see him that I won’t implicate the hospital.”

When I got to the main lobby, I elbowed my way through to the front of the crowd, which was once again pushing against the revolving doors. As soon as I got outside I saw the reason for their avidity: the demonstrators had stopped marching and were clumped together behind Joseph Posner, who was shouting at a small woman in a hospital coat, “You’re the worst kind of anti-Semite, a traitor to your own people.”

“And you, Mr. Posner, are the worst kind of abuser of human emotion, exploiting the horrors of Treblinka for your own aggrandizement.”

I would have known that voice anywhere, anger making her clip off words like so many cigar ends. I pushed past two of Posner’s Maccabees to reach her side. “Lotty, what are you doing here? This is a losing battle-attention is this guy’s meat and drink.”

Posner, his nostrils flaring with anger, his mouth distorted in defiance, looked like a picture captioned The gladiator waiting for the lion in my childhood Illustrated History of Rome.

Lotty, a small but ferocious lion, shook me off. “Mind your own business for once, Victoria. This man is defaming the dead for his own glory. And he’s defaming me.”

“Then we’ll take it to a court of law,” I said. “There are television cameras catching every word on tape.”

“Go ahead, take me to court, if you dare.” Posner turned as he spoke, to make sure both his supporters and the reporters heard him. “I don’t care if I spend five years in jail, if that will make the world understand my people’s cause.”

“Your people?” I kept my voice light, scornful. “Are you Moses now?”

“Will it make you happier if I call them my ‘followers,’ or my ‘team’? Whatever you call them, they understand that it may be necessary to suffer or make sacrifices to get where we want to be. They understand that some of that suffering can take the form of ridicule from ignorant secularists like yourself, or this doctor here.”

“What about the suffering of patients?” I asked. “An elderly woman can’t get home after surgery because you’ve blocked the front door. If her family sues you for millions in damages, will ‘your people’ understand that?”

“ Victoria, I don’t need you to fight my battles for me,” Lotty said, her voice tight with anger. “Or to draw this imbecile’s fire.”

I ignored her. “By the way, Mr. Posner, you know that ‘your people’ have to keep moving-they can be arrested if they stand around gawking.”

“I hardly need a strange woman to instruct me in the law,” Posner said, but he gestured to his followers to start circling again.

Paul Radbuka was hovering near Posner’s elbow, his mobile clown’s face registering first delight at Posner’s rebuttal, derision as Lotty spoke-and anger as he suddenly recognized me. “Reb Joseph, this woman-she’s a detective, she’s my enemy, she’s the person who’s turning my family against me.”

The television crews, which had been focusing their cameras on Lotty and Posner, suddenly switched to Radbuka and me. Beyond the lights I heard someone say, “Is that Warshawski, the detective? What’s she doing here?” Beth Blacksin called excitedly, “Vic, has the hospital hired you to investigate Posner’s claims? Are you working for Max Loewenthal?”

I cupped my hands around my eyes so I could see past the glare of the camera lights. “I have a private question for Mr. Posner, Beth. It’s not anything to do with the hospital.”

I tapped Posner on the arm, telling him I’d like him to come with me away from the cameras. Posner said sternly that he couldn’t talk privately with a woman.

I smiled brightly. “Don’t worry: if your impulses get the better of you I can break one of your arms. Maybe both. But if you prefer, I can ask my question out loud on camera.”

“Everything I have to say about this Lotty Herschel and about you, too, can be on camera,” Radbuka butted in. “You think you can come up here to keep me away from my family, just like you hired that bully to stay with my little cousin over at Max’s, but you won’t get away with it. Rhea and Don are going to help me take my story to the world.”

Posner tried to get Radbuka to be quiet, telling him he’d take care of the detective. To me he added that he had nothing to hide.

“Bertrand Rossy,” I said softly, then looked toward the cameras and raised my voice. “Beth, I’m asking Mr. Posner about his meeting-”

With a rough gesture Posner turned his back to the cameras. “I don’t know what you think you know, but you’d be making a mistake to talk about him on television.”

“What meeting, Mr. Posner?” one of the reporters asked. “Is this anything to do with the defeat of the Asset Recovery bill on Tuesday?”

“You know I’m going to ask you about him, about why you pulled your demonstration away from Ajax,” I said softly to Posner. “It’s up to you whether it’s on- or off-mike. You like publicity, and they are using directional mikes, so if I raise my voice, they’ll pick up our conversation even if they’re not right on top of us.”

Posner couldn’t afford to look indecisive in front of his troops. “Just to keep you from defaming my movement on television, I will talk to you away from the hospital. But not alone.”

He called to another man to join him, ordering the rest of the group to wait in the group’s bus until he got back. The television crews watched in astonishment as the demonstrators drifted off toward the parking lot, then they plunged forward with a babble of excited questions for Posner and me: what had made him decide to cancel the demonstration?

“We achieved our goals this afternoon,” Posner said grandly. “We have made the hospital realize that Jewish-backed institutions are just as liable as secular ones to become complacent and indifferent to Jewish needs. We will be back, however: Max Loewenthal and Charlotte Herschel can feel assured of that.”

“What about you, Dr. Herschel? What do you think of their assertion that you’re keeping Paul Radbuka from his family?”

She curled her lip. “I’m a surgeon with a full-time practice: I don’t have time for comic books. In fact, this man has kept me from my patients for long enough.”

She turned on her heel and went back into the hospital. The reporters surged forward, wanting to know what I’d said to Posner. Who was my client? Did I suspect fraud in Posner’s group, or in the hospital? Who was financing the demonstrations?

I told Beth and the other reporters that as soon as I had interesting information I’d share it with them-but that for right now I didn’t know about any fraud involving Posner or the hospital.

“But, Beth,” I added, “what brought you up here?”

“We were tipped off, you know how that works, Warshawski.” She gave me an urchin’s grin. “Not by him, though-a woman called the station. Could have been anyone, though.”

Posner, annoyed that I’d stolen the limelight, snarled at me to come with him if I wanted to talk to him: he didn’t have all day to spend on foolish women with imaginary ideas. He moved rapidly down the drive with his chosen henchman; I lengthened my stride to catch up with him.

A couple of reporters kept up a halfhearted pursuit. Radbuka, who hadn’t followed the other demonstrators to the bus, began declaiming that Max was his cousin but wouldn’t admit it, and I was the beast of Babylon who was keeping Max from talking to him, but the reporters already had that story; they weren’t interested in the rerun. If I wasn’t going to give the cameras raw meat, there wasn’t anything to keep them around Beth Israel any longer. The crews wrapped up their equipment and headed to their vans.