“No,” he said.
Chapter
T
he carpet layers took up much of Stone’s time on the afternoon of Cary Hilliard’s wedding, but his mind was not on the work. He walked through the house looking for the thrill that usually came when he thought about its completion, but it did not come.
He mustered his defenses and thrust the thought of Cary into a corner of his mind from which he was determined not to let it escape. Instead, he thought about Barron Harkness, of his every contact with the man, their every conversation, trying to remember something that would help connect him with Sasha’s fall.
He told himself that his desire to nail Harkness had nothing to do with the loss of Cary, but, when he looked at his watch and saw that it was a little after three, he fantasized that he was interrupting the ceremony at the point
where the minister asks for reasons why the marriage should not take place. “Reverend,” he would say loudly from the back of the congregation, “I am here to arrest the groom for murder. I should think that sufficient cause for the wedding not to take place.” For some reason, in his fantasy, he spoke these words with an English accent.
He used an old technique for when he was stumped on a case—go back to the beginning and review possible suspects. But in his attempt to incriminate Barron Harkness, he came up dry. There was only one other conceivable suspect, now that Hank Morgan had removed herself from the scene: Herbert Van Fleet. But, in spite of his obsession with Sasha, Van Fleet had come up clean. Dino didn’t think so, he remembered, and Dino’s instincts were often good; but, for that matter, so were his own, and he could not bring himself even to dislike Van Fleet, strange as he was.
Then, he remembered something else odd about Van Fleet, though it did not seem connected to Sasha. Van Fleet had finished medical school but had been rejected during his internship as “unsuited for a medical career.” That was the statement Dino had read to him, something one of the investigative teams had turned up, a statement from somebody at Physicians & Surgeons Hospital, where Van Fleet had served his abortive internship.
When the carpet layers had finished, Stone retrieved his badge from a dresser drawer and caught a cab uptown. Dino was still on his honeymoon, he reasoned, and there was nobody he could turn to for the original record of the investigation, so he would have to do this himself. Anyway, it kept his mind off Cary.
The hospital was the most prestigious of its kind in the city, having treated the great and near great for more than a century. There was as much cachet attached to checking into Physicians & Surgeons as there was to moving into a Fifth Avenue apartment.
“Can you tell me who is in charge of interns?” he asked at the front desk.
“The chief resident,” a young woman replied.
No good. The chief resident would not have been at the hospital long enough. “And who does he report to, ultimately?”
“The chief of medicine,” the young woman replied. “His name is Garfield. Did you wish to see an intern, sir?”
“No, I just need some information, and I think the chief of medicine is the person I should see.”
“Well, his office is on the fifth floor, but I shouldn’t think he’d see you without an appointment.”
“Thanks, I’ll just have a word with his secretary. By the way, how long has Dr. Garfield been chief of medicine?”
The woman shrugged. “I’ve been here for twelve years, and he had the job when I arrived. Since Adam, I guess.”
Stone took the elevator to the fifth floor and followed the signs. The chief of medicine occupied a spacious corner suite, and two secretaries guarded his door. Stone showed the badge to one of them. “My name is Barrington. I’d like to see Dr. Garfield.”
“I’m afraid he’s in a staff meeting at the moment, and he has another appointment immediately after that,” the woman replied, unimpressed.
“Would you please take him a note saying that I’m here and that I would like to see him? This is a serious matter.”
The woman seemed uncertain, but she disappeared through a door for a minute, then returned. “Dr. Garfield will be finished with his staff meeting in just a few minutes. He asked that you wait.”
Stone took a seat and picked up a magazine.
Shortly, a tall, elderly man dressed in a long white coat appeared in the reception room. “I’m Garfield. What can I do for you?”
“I wonder if we could talk privately?” Stone asked, glancing at the two secretaries.
“I suppose so,” Garfield said, striding toward his office door, “but I haven’t got a hell of a lot of time.”
“This won’t take long,” Stone said, following him.
The doctor did not sit, and he did not ask Stone to. “Well?” he said impatiently.
“I’m inquiring about a former intern at this hospital named Herbert Van Fleet,” Stone said.
Garfield didn’t reply immediately. “There was somebody here about him a few months ago,” he said finally.
“Well, somebody’s here again, Doctor, and it’s important.”
“Why is it important?”
“Let’s just say that it’s in connection with a serious crime.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Were you in charge when Van Fleet was interning here?”
“I was.”
“Why was he terminated from his internship?”
Garfield stared at him for a moment. “Am I going to end up testifying in a court of law about this?”
“That’s unlikely,” Stone said. “This is purely for background.”
“It’s about the Nijinsky woman, isn’t it?”
“I can’t say, sir.”
“Well, Mr. Barrington, you’d better say, if you want to get anything out of me. I read the tabloids, from time to time, and I’m aware that you are retired from the police department.”
Stone tried to keep from showing embarrassment. “That’s true, sir.”
“Then why are you flashing a badge around here?”
“Retired officers are allowed to keep their badges.”
“I don’t have to talk to a retired detective, you know.”
“I know that, sir, but I think the information I’m asking for could be important.”
“You don’t have the slightest notion of whether it’s important, do you? You’re just curious.”
“To tell you the truth, sir, I am. I couldn’t break this one when I was on the force, and it bothers me that it’s no longer being investigated.”
“The Morgan woman didn’t do it, then?”
“No, sir, she didn’t.”
Garfield sat down behind his desk and waved Stone to a chair. “Let me explain something to you, Mr. Barrington. This is a very highly regarded institution of healing, and we get some very well-known people in here as patients.”
“I’m aware of that, Doctor.”
“It’s conceivable that if the information you’re asking for got into the papers, there could be…repercussions for this hospital.”
“I assure you, Doctor, nothing you tell me will become a part of any public record, and I certainly won’t pass it on to the press.”
The doctor looked at Stone thoughtfully. “I’d like to know what happened to Sasha Nijinsky myself,” he said.
“So would I, Doctor; that’s why I’m here.”
“All right, but if it ever comes up, I will deny I ever told you any of this.”
Stone nodded. “I understand.”
Garfield took a deep breath and began. “This happened, what—twelve, thirteen years ago?”
“That sounds about right.”
“You have to understand that interns, like everybody else, have their own little…eccentricities. I have seen yearend pranks pulled that would stand your hair on end—cadavers in the cafeteria, you know? We try to be a little tolerant of these things—after all, these young people are
under a lot of pressure, and they don’t get much time off—but we keep a close eye on them, all the same. I’ve had alcoholics, drug addicts, nymphomaniacs—all sorts of problems exhibit themselves, and, usually, with a little counseling, we can keep the offender in the program, maybe make a fine physician out of him later on. We’re not out to wreck careers, here; these kids come to us with eight years of higher education, and they’ve worked hard. But we have to draw the line somewhere.”
“Where did you draw it with Herbert Van Fleet?”
“Van Fleet was one of our brighter interns,” Garfield said, placing his feet on his desk, unwilling to be hurried. “He finished, I don’t know, sixth or seventh in his med school class at Columbia, and he exhibited an inclination toward pathology. Might have been good at it, too; unfortunately, that was not the only inclination he exhibited.” He paused.
“Go on, Doctor,” Stone encouraged.
“Van Fleet appeared to be attracted to sick people.”
“That seems like a desirable quality in a physician.”
Garfield shook his head. “I’m not making myself clear,” he said. “I mean he exhibited a sexual attraction for the ill. Women, that is. He seemed very uncomfortable with male patients, didn’t like to touch them. One of his professors at Columbia told me that, as a med student, he had refused to work on a male cadaver, except when forced to study the genitalia. My guess is that he was suppressing homosexual, or at least bisexual, tendencies, and that he had difficulty accepting these tendencies or dealing with them.”
“How did this attraction to ill women manifest itself?”
“The chief resident noticed that he was spending a lot of extra time with young women patients, especially those recovering from injury or surgery, looking frequently into the rooms of these patients. If someone else was in attendance, he’d leave; he’d wait until they were alone before he
visited them. The nurses noticed him, and there were jokes about it. The patients always seemed to be those who had IV’s running. We started to keep a watch on him, surreptitiously.
“About that time, we had a very well-known actress in here as the result of an automobile accident. She had to have extensive reconstructive surgery done on a hand, and, as you can imagine, the reaction among the interns to the presence of this famous and beautiful woman was startling. A lot of them suddenly exhibited a keen interest in surgery of the hand. Van Fleet, in particular, was attentive.
“Then one night, only a few hours after a surgical procedure, a nursing supervisor walked into the woman’s room and found Van Fleet on top of her.”
“On top of her?” Stone asked, unbelieving.
“He’d taken a syringe of morphine from a drugs cabinet, injected it into her IV, which immediately put her to sleep; then he had removed his clothes, had removed
her
clothes, and he was…copulating with her.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Indeed. I was summoned from my bed and told the circumstances. The actress was still sleeping peacefully, and Van Fleet, as you might imagine, was distressed at having been caught in the act. While they were waiting for me to arrive, he threatened the nursing supervisor if she reported him. She did, of course, and I made short work of young Dr. Van Fleet.”
“I can imagine.”
“The nursing supervisor cleaned up the patient and put her clothing in order, and no more was said about it. I should have called the police, I suppose, and had him charged with rape, but you see the position I was in: the papers would have had an absolute field day, the actress would have sued us—and won—and this hospital would have been done irreparable harm as a result.”
“And the actress never knew?”
Garfield shook his head. “I lived in fear for months that she would turn up pregnant—she didn’t, thank God. I’m not sure what I would have done if that had happened.” Garfield sighed. “You see why I’m concerned that this go no further.”
“I do, and I promise you it won’t.”
Garfield stood up and slipped out of his white coat. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to run now.” He got into his suit jacket. “I hope this story might somehow help you.”
“It might, Dr. Garfield, and I thank you for confiding in me.” He shook the doctor’s hand and turned to go.
“Mr. Barrington,” Garfield said, “whatever became of Van Fleet? What’s he doing now?”
“He’s a mortician,” Stone said.
Garfield gave a little shudder. “How very appropriate,” he said.
Chapter
W
hen Stone woke on Thursday morning, his first thought was that only three days remained until Sasha’s dinner party. His second thought was that there was someone in his bathroom.
It could be only one person, he knew; she had a key, and she knew the code for the security system. He was flabbergasted and revolted that she should be in his house only days after her marriage, but his revulsion vanished when she came out of the bathroom.
She was naked, and the sight of her body had always had a powerful effect on him. It came to him at that moment that he was lost; that she could, if she wished, lead him around by the cock for the rest of his life. So this is obsession, he thought, as she silently slid under the sheets and drew close to him. He gave himself to it.
* * *
“You know this was a completely disgusting and immoral thing to do, don’t you?” he asked when they had finished and lay panting in each other’s arms. He was not joking.
“Of course, my darling,” she replied. “That’s why it’s so much fun.”
“Has anyone ever completely satisfied you?”
“You satisfy me, for a time, but to answer your question honestly, no. At least, no man ever has. I knew a girl in college who could satisfy me longer than anyone. She was only twenty, but she knew everything about pleasing a woman, because she was a woman, I suppose.”
“Do you still see her?”
“No. She committed suicide our senior year, shot herself with a pistol borrowed from a boy we knew. She left a note saying she had done it for me, because she knew she could never have me, and she wanted to prove she really loved me. The housemother in the dorm found the note and showed it to me, then destroyed it.”
“How did you react to that?”
“I was elated. It did wonders for my self-esteem, that someone could love me so much. I never loved her, of course, I just liked having her make love to me.”