“Hell no, it’s against the rules.”
“Ain’t that the truth. Against the rules. Boy, it’s just damn lucky you’re a friend, Amos. That’s all I gotta say.”
“You’re right. And what’re friends for?”
“Beats me,” he says.
Chapter 4
I STRIP DOWN to my shorts and undershirt and drop into bed around midnight. It’s still too hot, impossible to sleep. We’ve rolled the windows open slightly to catch whatever breezes exist. From nine floors up you can hear some teenagers down in the parking lot, laughing and talking, way too loud if you ask me, all the time saying nothing. What kids do.
Meanwhile, I’m lying here sweating in the dark. And the voice in my head is still hard at work, chewing me out. You rusty old sonofabitch. You should never have gone to see that doctor. How stupid could you be? What did you expect she’d say? That’s not how it’s done.
I glance to my right. Loretta is lying flat on her back, already down and out. Her mouth is open and she’s half-snoring—small, ladylike snorts that will probably keep me awake if I pay any attention, but not forever. I close my eyes, another long fruitless day over, and just as I’m giving up, just as I’m nodding off for good, the phone rings. I bolt upright and grab it in the dark. It’s not me, it’s Loretta I’m concerned about. I don’t ever want to wake her up. “Yeah, what the hell—”
A muffled woman’s voice. “Mr. Parisman. I’m sorry to call you so late, but I’ve been having second thoughts. I went back to my office a few minutes ago and checked through my files. It’s the most peculiar thing, but—” She pauses. All at once, I hear her take a short startled breath. Then nothing. Then thump, thump, thump, like a heavy parlor chair is being dragged across the floor. And right after that, the line goes dead.
I hang up, still groggy, think about it for a minute or two more. Except I’m not thinking. Not at that hour. Maybe she’ll call back, whoever she was. It didn’t sound much like Dr. Ewing, but what do I know. A woman, that’s all. Maybe she’ll have the decency next time to wait till morning.
I claw at my pillow and try to drift back to sleep. My dreams, the few I can remember, concern jelly doughnuts. But an hour or two later it’s no use. I’m wide awake. I settle down in my office chair, flick on the overhead lamp, and pick up the book I’ve been reading for the last three weeks. I bought it at a yard sale for two bits. It’s all about Napoleon and the life he constructed for himself in his last days on St. Helena, which is just a dumb rock, smack dab in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know why this kind of thing fascinates me, but it does. How he turned a chicken coop into a palace. Depression, followed by the triumph of the human spirit? Hey, that’s me in a nutshell.
At eight in the morning, there’s a sharp, insistent knock on my door. “I’m here about the doctor, Amos,” someone says, and as I open up, Lieutenant Malloy walks right in, followed by Jason and Remo.
He’s all business now. The tie is loose around his neck, and he hasn’t had time yet to shave. He nods hello to Loretta, who is startled by this sudden home invasion. She’s sitting on the couch with her oatmeal, still in her nightgown, waiting patiently for me to turn on the television.
“The doctor?” I ask. My brain starts to race. I point toward the kitchen and lead him that way. Jason and Remo stay tight-lipped and where they are at the door. “What about the doctor?”
“She’s dead,” Malloy says, almost matter-of-factly. “Someone bonked her real hard last night with a blunt instrument. Receptionist found her when she came in this morning. Place was a mess.”
“No kidding,” I say. Then, because it’s still early and I’ve only had one cup of coffee, “so how exactly does that bring you to my apartment?”
He shrugs, accepts my silent offer of hospitality, pulls up a chair at our kitchen table, clasps his big meaty hands together, and stares at me for the longest time with those Irish blue eyes. “You were probably the last person she talked to, Amos.”
“I was?”
“We traced her phone calls. She—or someone—dialed your number just after midnight from her office.”
“I’m an old guy, Bill. I go to bed early. By midnight I’m already a pumpkin.”
“Granted. But you still picked up the receiver. So my question is, what’d she have to say?”
I rub a small knot at the back of my neck. “She said something was strange, if I remember correctly. That’s all.”
“What was strange?”
“Hell if I know. Anyway, she didn’t say.”
“Uh-huh.” Now it’s Malloy’s turn to be silent. The wheels are turning in his head. His hands are still cupped together.
“You don’t think it could just be a coincidence, do you? The rabbi, then the rabbi’s doctor?”
“Could be,” he says. He has a fat, even tone to his voice. He’s a fair man, a thoughtful man. He could have been a priest. He could have been an umpire. Instead he ended up a cop. “The lab guys are still going over the place. There are lots of prints, but it’s a doctor’s office, people come and go. Whoever killed her broke in through a side door, they said. Used some kind of pry bar. So maybe she interrupted a burglar. It happens, I guess.”
“That what you think?”
“Nah,” he says after a while. “That’s not what I think.” He scratches the sleepy dirt out of one eye. “You wanna know why? Because the burglar didn’t take much of anything.”
“Really?”
“Well, he cleaned all the Schedule II drug samples out of a locked cabinet. But that’s pretty small potatoes for that kind of effort. Oh yeah, and he took one other thing, I suppose.”
“Let me guess: Ezra Diamant’s medical file?”
Malloy nods. “It’s curious, you can’t find a single scrap of paper there with Diamant’s name on it. Like he never existed.”
“What about her computer? He wasn’t on that, either?”
“Her computer is missing, too.”
“It doesn’t add up, Bill. What about that receptionist, Magnolia. Did you show her a picture of the rabbi?”
“We did, actually. She said she recognized him from the newspaper, but claims she doesn’t remember seeing him in the flesh. He’s not in her files. Never sent him a bill, she says. Now what does that mean?”
“Could mean a lot of things. Could mean Dr. Ewing never treated the real rabbi. Could mean that someone else pretended to be Diamant, and she dished out lethal samples to that guy. Or it could mean the rabbi only came by to see her after hours. Either way, what Magnolia said would be true.”
Malloy fusses with his tie, tightens it up around his throat, plays with the knot. It’s an old green silk tie with a little Japanese bamboo pattern. Most folks at his level don’t wear ties anymore, but Bill is old school. “That’s a lot of ambiguity to deal with, Amos.”
“You’re telling me.”
He pushes himself away from the table. “Right now, I’m going to treat these cases as related. We’re making some inquiries into the doctor’s past. And I’m going to check with the forensic pathology people downtown. See if we can dig up the rabbi and do an autopsy.”
“So it’s not an accident anymore.”
“One person dies, maybe it’s an accident. Two in a row? Between you and me, I’d call that murder. One murder for sure. Also time for an