Meanwhile she went to her emergency supplies and found a prepackaged intravenous preparation that would combat shock. Pumping a dextrose solution through her constricted blood vessels would increase volume, keep the network going. It was so simple, yet so essential. Such a little thing. She found Iris’ vein and injected the syringe into her arm. Since she had no IV stand, Rebecca had to hold the bag of liquid above Iris until the paramedics came.
What had he wanted, she thought, looking around. There were files on the counter; had Iris taken those out? Or was he already here, looking for whatever, when Iris arrived? It was Goldie’s file, she thought with a start. Goldie had told her about a man who had followed her. No names had been mentioned, but he didn’t know that. He was looking for Rebecca’s notes to see if Goldie had given him away. How could he know that she hadn’t put Goldie’s file back after Wanless had returned it? It was still in her house.
She sat down on the floor and brought her face close to Iris’. The larger woman’s breathing was shallow and irregular, her colour grey. Rebecca knew that the brain could survive interruption of its blood supply for only a few minutes. A neuron, once destroyed, was lost forever. How much damage had there been? Was Iris going to be Iris when she awoke? If she awoke?
She stroked Iris’ exposed arm softly with her free hand. “Hold on, Iris,” she whispered in her ear. “Hold on.”
Rebecca rode in the ambulance with Iris. Once she had explained to the paramedic her treatment thus far, there was nothing further to say and they rode the rest of the way in silence. She hoped none of her patients had arrived with emergencies that morning. She had taped a note to her office door announcing that all appointments were cancelled.
Toronto General was the hospital of choice for trauma, though it didn’t look the part. Small dingy windows poked out of a dun-coloured brick facade that rambled along a city block. Compared to the modern Mount Sinai Hospital across the street, where she had admitting privileges, it might have been mistaken on the outside for a nineteenth-century factory. The surgical resident on call looked barely old enough to shave. None of the surgeons were available and the resident — he had to be over twenty-one, didn’t he? — assured her that he had handled head trauma in the O.R. and he would do everything he could for Iris. What he was more worried about was the extra bulk she was carrying.
“I don’t have to tell you that overweight patients are more at risk under the knife. How old is she? Fifty-one, fifty-two? Her heart should be okay. And this anaesthetist knows his business.”
The chairs in the surgical waiting room were dark green vinyl but roomy and not uncomfortable. Rebecca sat down in the empty room, suddenly numb. More at risk under the knife. She had always found surgical specialists cold. Maybe they had to make themselves aloof from patients who might die on the table. There was also the theory that they were sublimating their fierce aggression into the positive act of cutting up people. Whatever it was, this young pup resident hadn’t made her feel confident about his skill or Iris’ chances.
She was surprised at how little she wanted to know about what was happening to Iris on the operating table. She didn’t want to imagine her beautiful blonde hair shaved in a large shape around the wound. She didn’t want to picture any of it, the cleaning of fractured bone and debris, the drilling of burr-holes, maybe two centimetres in diameter, to locate the damage. The procedure was too frightening to consider when the brain inside that skull was Iris’.
All she could think of was the lovely blonde hair gone. She pushed from her mind all the various possibilities of brain damage. All the many ways things could go wrong. She sank further into the skin-warm vinyl chair and wondered if it was worth trying to sleep, considering the dreams she would have.
By 12:40 she wandered out of the room to stretch her legs. The kitchen staff, their hair in spidery nets, were collecting patients’ trays after lunch and stacking them in high-wheeled metal stands. They looked as if they wanted to be doing anything else.
The young resident, still in green gown, found her down the hall. “We’ve done everything we can for her. All we can do now is wait. She’ll be in recovery for a while before you can see her.”
“How much damage is there?” she asked.
“Hard to tell. We stopped the bleeding. Blood pressure’s still low, but I’m hoping she’ll stabilize.”
Rebecca used the phone at the nurses’ station to call her answering service. Two patients had called with pressing medical problems. Nesha had left several messages with a number where he could be reached. Her heart lifted a little.
She called the mother of a feverish little patient, told her to sponge her daughter with lukewarm water, give her Tylenol, and call Dr. Romanov. The second patient was suffering menstrual cramps and needed a renewal of a prescription for painkillers. Then she called Nesha.
He arrived at the nurses’ station in twenty minutes, wearing his antique leather jacket, a gym bag on his shoulder. His eyes softened when he caught sight of her. He presented such a mask to strangers but she had seen beneath it. “I’m so sorry about your friend,” he said, embracing her. He smelled of soap and leather.
He told her he had gone to Feldberg’s early in the morning in an attempt to catch him, but the door had been open just as they had left it and no one appeared to have visited in between. Then he’d gone to the hotel to shower and change and tried in vain to reach her.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he said lifting the bag. “Is there anywhere we can talk?”
The waiting-room was occupied by a family whose grandfather was being operated on. She led him down the hall to the doctor’s lounge. It was empty.
After they sat down on one of the brown leather couches, Nesha pulled Feldberg’s books from the gym bag. “The ledger seems straightforward, based on my limited knowledge,” he said. “But the bankbooks. I took these two, but he had at least four others with similar figures in them. Look at the numbers. He’s constantly depositing and withdrawing large sums of money, but each under $10,000. That’s the magic number the banks have to report. As long as he keeps moving sums of money under $10,000 — that’s why he’s got so many bank accounts — he won’t be investigated.”
“I don’t get it.”
“He’s got illicit money that he’s probably brought from out of the country.”
“Argentina,” she said. “It’s an Argentine club.”
“He’s operating some shady business. It could be anything.”
“Art,” she said, surprising herself.
“Art?”
“Those paintings we saw at his place. The photos of paintings in the catalogue. They’re real. They have to be. It’s the only explanation. I don’t know quite how, but I think Feldberg is dealing in stolen art.”
Nesha stared at her a moment, thinking, then continued. “They have to bring in the money without reporting it, maybe get it wired to different banks in relatively small amounts. But they can’t bring in a huge sum into any one bank, so Feldberg distributes it among six. Or eight. Then it’s invested in a legitimate business.”
“Let me see that ledger,” she said.
In an upper corner of the first page were written the initials E.D. El Dorado. Expenses starting January, 1979, listed tickets of admission, liquor receipts, and restaurant receipts. She flipped to the end for the latest entry, Thursday, April 5; two days before. The business had taken in one hundred and eighty tickets of admission, grossing $1,800, $3,800 worth of liquor from the bar, and $6,500 from the restaurant. Did Feldberg have another club? Thursday was the evening she had stopped in. There were maybe forty people