Wireman

CHAPTER 25

BY TEN 0’CLOCK the next morning Sam had received two phone calls from Jack asking if he had talked to Lieutenant Garbo yet. Sam assured Jack the Ringer house would be watched. He was not going to call Garbo about it. He was going downtown to the department, corner the lieutenant in his office, and get a promise from him personally. But first he wanted coffee and breakfast, and his advice to Jack was to sit on his hands and stay out of it. Sam doubted the advice would be taken seriously. He expected Jack at the door any minute.

Sam dunked a fourth of his second honey bun into his coffee and bit into it. Maggie’s house was silent, warm, homey. She had a lace tablecloth over the red Formica kitchen table, and a dime-store vase of red silk roses nodded at him every time he jiggled the cloth. A cardboard print of an American Indian in full headdress stared down solemnly from the wall.

Before Sam was finished with the second bun, the telephone in the hall rang shrilly for the third time that morning.

“Dammit, Jack!” Sam said, getting up.

He carried the breakfast roll with him to the phone, carried the phone back with him to the kitchen table, and did not lift the receiver until he took another swallow of black coffee. “I’m leaving in five minutes!” he shouted into the phone.

After a moment’s hesitation a man’s amused voice said, “Well, I’m sorry to interrupt your leave-taking, but I wanted to tell you something, Detective.”

Startled, Sam tried to place the voice and failed. “Who’s speaking, please?”

“Dr. Rubens, V.A. hospital.” The psychiatrist chuckled.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Doctor. I thought you were someone else.”

“No harm done,” Rubens assured Sam.

“What is it you wanted to tell me?”

“The patient we were discussing last evening, he called early this morning and he’s decided to come in for an eleven o’clock session. I have something he wants, and the only way he can get it is to see me, so I suppose he’s reconsidered. At least for this one last meeting.”

Sam hunched over the table and fingered the fake roses. “What are you telling me?” he asked.

“I can’t tell you his name, can I?” Rubens explained. “I was awake most of the night worrying about this man, pondering his innocence or guilt in the matter. I’ve never been in this position before and I’m not sure what to do. I shouldn’t be talking to you. I could get into a lot of trouble if anyone found out we had talked.

“But, dammit, I have to live with my conscience—whatever other people say.”

Sam already knew what the psychiatrist wanted him to do. It was the long way around and it bordered on the unethical in Dr. Rubens’s point of view. But with a little work Sam could discover the identity of Dr. Rubens’s patient. All he had to do was be at the V.A. hospital before eleven, watch the patients entering, and narrow it down to the eleven o’clock appointment going into the doctor’s office. If he didn’t recognize the person, he could run a DMV check on the man’s car, find a name that way.

“That was a clever move, Doctor, and I want you to know that I appreciate it. I’ll handle the rest.”

“That’s good, that’s what I wanted to hear. Now I know that I’ve done all that I can do without compromising my office beyond certain limits. I wish you luck.”

“Thanks for the help, Dr. Rubens.”

“We will never mention it,” Rubens said firmly, hanging up.

Fifteen minutes later when the hall phone rang again, Sam was gone.

Sam was at the V.A. hospital twenty minutes early. In the noisy corridor outside Rubens’s office he took a seat and watched the people. A young amputee shuffled past talking to himself. Behind him came a nurse who appeared to be all flat chest and big hair. She called, “You’re going the wrong way! Turn around, you’re not heading for the lab that way!”

During the next ten minutes, tiring of the wandering patients and staff, Sam counted fifty-seven squares of shining white tile down the center of the hall, beginning with the one beneath his feet. Beyond fifty-seven his vision blurred and the lines between tiles vanished. No one seemed to care what he was doing there and Sam decided they were all too busy or self-involved to question his presence.

He glanced at his watch. Eight minutes till eleven. What if Dr. Rubens’s patient did not show?

A beautiful black girl came from Rubens’s office and rushed down the corridor to the ladies’ room. She rushed back before three minutes were up. Sam thought her pit stop must be one of the fastest in history.

She nodded in his direction and disappeared into the office.

Sam turned his head to scan the corridor. At the far end double glass doors opened and a familiar figure stepped inside, paused, and proceeded toward Sidney Rubens’s office.

Sam jumped to his feet, turned away from the man, and made for the mens’ room as fast as he could. Even behind the protection of the restroom door, the shock of the patient’s identity caused Sam’s heart to race.

Have I got a surprise for you, Garbo, he thought. Jack’s instincts are right. Nick Ringer needs surveillance.

After what Sam thought was a reasonable amount of time, he left the men’s room, passed Rubens’s office without a glance, and left the building. He was on his way downtown. Finally he had something that would hold up under scrutiny.