Natural Causes (25 page)

“You made all that happen?”

“Hell, no.
They
made it happen. I just let them know there was nothing uncool about beating up on a baseball instead of someone’s head. Next week will mark the end of Ricky’s probation. I got a couple of box seat tickets to a Sox-Baltimore game. I originally got them for me and Harry—that’s my son. But he had to go back home for some summer school. So I’m taking Ricky instead. It was supposed to be a surprise, but I’ve already told him. I’m not much good at surprises.”

“Where does Harry live?” Sarah asked.

A shadow of sadness darkened Matt’s face. “California,” he said.

His tone discouraged further questions on the subject.
After a few uncomfortably silent moments, he smiled thinly and nodded toward the far side of the Common. “My office is that way.”

Sarah was relieved to turn away from his pain and just walk.

Matt’s work clothes were in his office, which was on the fifth floor of a converted brownstone. The three-room suite was not nearly as dismal or disorganized as he had painted it to be, Sarah pointed out.

“Everything’s relative,” he said. “Unfortunately, in this law business, with more attorneys around here than scrod, image counts. Sometime, just for the hell of it, I’ll take you to visit Jeremy Mallon’s place.”

“Spare me,” Sarah said.

He introduced her to his secretary, a pleasant, motherly woman named Ruth. Sarah could tell she was eager for conversation even before a word between them was spoken.

“Mr. Daniels is a wonderful man,” Ruth began, moments after Matt had gone into the inner office to change.

“He seems that way.”

“A good lawyer, too. And a great father. He says you’re the most important client he’s ever had. He always works hard, but I’ve never seen him put in hours like he has on your case.”

“That’s reassuring.”

Sarah smiled a little uncomfortably and scanned the narrow coffee table for a magazine of any remote interest to her. She ended up with a dog-earred, four-month-old copy of
Consumer Reports
. The message she had hoped to deliver to Ruth went unreceived.

“He’s here when I leave at night,” she prattled on, “and he’s here when I arrive in the morning. That lady he was seeing just couldn’t understand how important building up this practice is to him, after what’s happened with Harry and all. I think that’s why she broke it off, because he wasn’t paying enough attention to her. I
never liked her much anyway. Too snobby, if you know what I mean. Mr. Daniels can do better.”

Suddenly Sarah felt torn between asking the woman to stop sharing such personal information about her boss and grilling her for every bit of data she could deliver. She settled on a middle-of-the-road approach.

“What’s happened with Harry?” she asked, reflecting on the sadness in Matt’s face and thinking the worst.

“Oh, it’s not Harry. It’s that ex of his. A few years ago, she as much as kidnapped the boy and up and moved to California. Los Angeles, no less. Mr. Daniels fought her in court, but he got no place—even though everybody knows that she drinks too much, and he’d be a much better parent for him.”

“That’s very sad.”

“You said it. And he cares too much about Harry to refuse anything that
woman
asks. Private school. Summer school. Extra money for clothes. Plus the cost of flying him here and back whenever she
permits
it. I write a lot of the checks, so I know how much
he
pays for those trips. I think that’s why this case of yours is so important to him. If he does well with it, the medical insurance company will probably send more business his way. Am … am I talking too much? Mr. Daniels keeps scolding me for talking too much to the clients. But the truth is, if there were more clients, I’d probably do less talking, if you know what I mean.”

Sarah wondered how long she would have to know her laconic attorney, and how well, before learning as much about him as she had in just two or three minutes with his secretary. At that moment, the ancient intercom on Ruth’s desk crackled.

“Sarah, I’m sorry to be taking so long,” Matt said. “I called a client about a small matter, and he’s had me on hold forever. I won’t be much longer. Ruth, take a break from whatever you’re doing and entertain her. We don’t want her to think we’re one of those stuffy, aloof firms.”

•  •  •

The Suffolk Superior Court Building, a granite relic, was a five-minute walk from Matt’s office.

“I want to be sure you’re not expecting something out of Perry Mason,” he said as they waited at a light to cross Washington Street. “Today Mallon gets to put on the gloves and hammer us as mercilessly as he wants—affidavits, letters from experts, the works. After he’s done, we get to regale the tribunal with arguments that are roughly equivalent to alleging that Mallon’s mother wears army boots. This is the first fire fight we’ll be in, only they get to have guns and we don’t. So it’s not going to be very pleasant. But just remember, it’s only a skirmish.”

“It sounds awful.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll have our chance. Just don’t get rattled by what you hear. As you were told that day in Mr. Kwong’s shop, these people are not your friends. I saw him yesterday, by the way.”

“Tian-Wen?”

“Yes. I’ve been over there a few times. I dropped him as a client because of conflict of interest with your case, but I got him Angela Cord. She’s an excellent attorney. I really like the old guy. By the way, he says you haven’t been by to see him since he got out of the hospital.”

“With all that’s happening to me I—I just haven’t wanted to go. He’s a sweet old man. I feel sorry about his getting sick, and then being charged for having that opium. But the truth is, I’m angry, too. That
was
his opium. He doesn’t deny it.”

“Yes,” Matt said. “But as I recall, you’re the one who reminded me that his smoking opium was cultural, not criminal. Besides, he keeps denying ever having opium in his shop. And he still maintains that even if he had smoked fifty times his customary pipeful, he could never have confused that noni herb with chamomile—”

“But he did. Denying responsibility doesn’t alter reality.
Matt, I’ve smoked opium. A number of times when I was in Thailand. I know what it can do. And it’s quite possible that because of carelessness, or old age, or opium, or some combination of the three, Tian-Wen screwed up. And because of his errors—his mistakes in preparing my supplement—people have died.”

“I don’t buy it.”

“Well, I certainly hope not. You’re my lawyer. But until you can prove someone set him up, including
who
, and
why
, I’ve got to believe that he might have been responsible for what happened to those women. And that makes me just as responsible for using him.”

They rounded the corner of the concrete and granite mall that fronted the Superior Court Building. Ahead of them, a small group of demonstrators—perhaps twenty—milled about. A single, uniformed policeman kept them back from the steps. Off to one side, a camera crew from Channel 7 was interviewing one of the demonstrators, a gaunt, bearded man who was wearing a full-length, hooded, crimson robe.

“I don’t like the looks of this,” Matt muttered, stopping some distance away to
assess
the situation.

“What’s it all about?”

“Unless I miss my guess, it’s about you. Did you see the
Herald
this morning?”

Sarah shook her head. “I was in the clinic working at seven. I barely had time for a cup of coffee. Don’t tell me I made it again.”

“You
and
your hospital, actually. On page four there’s an article about some grant that MCB has just received to build a huge new center to scientifically study certain areas of alternative healing. Is there a Charlton Building?”

“It’s the Chilton Building,” Sarah said. “It’s deserted and boarded up now. In a few months they’re going to demolish it to begin work on the center. But that’s old hat. Everyone at MCB’s known about that for weeks.”

“Well, it’s news to the
Herald
. And right across from
that item, on page five, is the announcement that you’re going before a malpractice tribunal today. Axel Devlin mentioned it as well. ‘The beginning of the end for Dr. Flake’ is the way I think he put it. Something like that. My office got several calls wanting to know details. I didn’t speak to anyone, but Ruth told me it sounded like somebody was organizing a demonstration on your behalf. And I think this must be it.”

“Oh, no,” she moaned.

“There’s no back way into this place unless prior arrangements are made. I don’t think we have any choice but to run the gauntlet. So, as your attorney, I’m suggesting you limit your vocabulary for the next minute to four words: ‘Thank you’ and ‘No comment.’ Okay?”

“No comment … thank you,” Sarah said.

The small demonstration was made up primarily of practitioners of various forms of alternative healing. Sarah recognized some of them, including a very talented chiropractor and an acupuncturist who was once a full professor in Beijing. There were also three women who had taken Sarah’s supplement, had normal labor, and delivered without incident. Two of them carried their infants with them in backpacks.

As Sarah and Matt approached, the group fell back and applauded.

“Hang in there,” one called out.

“Good luck, Doctor,” a woman said. “We’re behind you.”

She carried a handmade sign that read:

The specter in the red robe broke off his interview with Channel 7 and rushed over, extending a bony hand.

“Dr. Misha Korkopovitch, energy healing and shamanism,” he said. “We’re with you all the way, Dr. Baldwin. You’re bringing us all together like nothing else ever has.”

“Thank you,” Sarah managed, as Matt whisked her up the stairs. “Matt, this is very strange and a little hard to take. Some of those people I revere as healers. Some, like that Misha, are probably kooks.”

Matt glanced back as they entered the building. “Not much different than if they were a group of M.D.’s, right?” he said.

“…  Let’s look at what we have here, and how we intend to prove our case.…”

Jeremy Mallon consulted his notes briefly and then began a slow strut before the tribunal. He was closely observed from the plaintiff’s table by two other attorneys, one about his age and one quite a bit older.

“Grayson’s lawyers,” Matt whispered.

He nodded toward the courtroom, which had been nearly empty when they arrived. Several of the demonstrators had taken seats. And now Willis Grayson and an entourage of four were making their way down a row. Before Sarah could look away, Grayson’s cool gray eyes found hers. The power and anger in them made her shudder. As she returned her attention to Mallon, she wondered about Lisa—how she was doing, and whether she had been given the option of attending today.

The physician on the tribunal, an obstetrician from Harvard named Rita Dunleavy, and the attorney, a balding, rumpled man named Keefe, were squeezed in behind the bench beside Judge Judah Land, according to Matt an implacable veteran of twenty-five years or more on the bench.

Mallon’s opening remarks had included the words dangerous, reckless, irresponsible, negligent, arrogant, substandard, flawed, and fatal. Sarah, he alleged, had prescribed a potentially powerful set of drugs to patients who were at their most sensitive and vulnerable—those readying their bodies to give birth.

“Given the lack of control over herbal medicines,” Mallon went on, “there are any number of points between
the soil in Southeast Asia and the bloodstream of a woman in Boston where something can go awry. Our offer of proof today consists of letters from an obstetrician, Dr. Raymond Gorfinkle, and from a non-M.D. specialist in herbal medicine, Mr. Harold Ling. The letters from these two experts make it clear that Dr. Baldwin acted outside of standard medical practice in prescribing an herbal supplement for her patients in place of prenatal vitamins, and outside of standard holistic practice in the manner in which her supplement was prepared and dispensed. Specifically, Mr. Ling’s letter questions the competence of the herbal pharmacist who ordered the herbs and then compounded the medicinals prescribed by Dr. Baldwin.”

Mallon then proceeded to read the two condemning letters out loud. Gorfinkle, an obstetrician operating out of West Roxbury, stressed that in thirty plus years of practice, he had seen all manner of rites and rituals used by his patients. Some of those he felt were unhealthy, some innocuous. But never had he seen any broad deviation from the norm
at the request of a physician
. In his opinion, in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1990s, substituting herbs of any kind for FDA-approved prenatal vitamins constituted substandard medicine.

Ling, an herbalist from New York’s Chinatown, was no less damning. Herbal supplements had their place in maintaining health, he wrote, but only in small amounts, and only when provided by an established, responsible herbal pharmacist. It was his opinion that Kwong Tian-Wen, a well-known chronic opium abuser, was neither established nor responsible. He further felt that noni, the herb in the jar that Kwong believed contained chamomile, could well cause problems with blood clotting.

“Ling is one of Peter’s oldest friends,” Sarah whispered. “And Gorfinkle is just a hired gun. He makes a fortune testifying against other doctors.”

“I’m not surprised,” Matt said. “I’m sure my ex-wife
would love the chance to do to me what Ettinger is doing to you.”

“Mr. Daniels,” Judge Land said, with a weariness in his voice that suggested Matt might as well remain mute, “you have about five minutes to present your arguments. You know that no letters from experts or other evidence will be considered from your side at this time.”

“I do know that, your Honor, yes. Thank you.… Sarah, listen,” he whispered. “I don’t want to say anything now that will give Mallon a clue as to what part of his case we intend to home in on. As, things stand, I can’t see how we can win here. So we can only hurt ourselves.”