North of Montana ag-1 Page 12

  “Thought we’d get something to eat,” he says.

  The street is deserted and pitch black. Not an open liquor store. Not a lighted coffee shop.

  After the long flight and the insane drive through the butt end of Boston, I am thoroughly disoriented except for one thing: I am here to nail Randall Eberhardt.

  “I don’t have time for sight-seeing.”

  But Lester is already striding ahead. He opens a door. Now I notice a smoky storefront window with people moving behind it. We enter warmth and cigarette smoke and a noise level equal to a commodities exchange.

  It is a large bare room with a big old mahogany bar, dusty brass fans, a wall of mirrors that reflects the downtown crowd. Briefcases are lined up beneath laden coatracks. Everybody — male and female — is wearing a suit. I take off my raincoat and hang it on a peg. In my navy blues with the skirt primly brushing the top of the knee I look like every other female attorney and stockbroker there. I like the feeling. The convivial talk, the good, clean smell of whiskey make me feel very present, ironically more present than in my usual life in Los Angeles, where it takes all your energy just to stay on the grid. But there is another difference: in Los Angeles I live with the feeling of constantly being judged. Here nobody is watching. The relief is so profound that after five minutes of standing among this crowd of friendly strangers, my neck starts to relax all by itself, miraculously as loose and easy as a newborn babe’s.

  Lester buys us Bloody Marys and we shout at each other until an overweight woman with pocked cheeks and teased yellow hair takes him by the arm, kisses him on the lips, and leads us to a table, upon which are a pair of plain salt and pepper shakers, an ashtray, and a bottle of Tabasco sauce. We both switch to vodka martinis and are immediately presented with a platter of freshly shucked clams. I decide to forget about jet lag.

  Lester is an old warhorse who’s been around since Hoover, which is why they assigned him to this case. He’s through chasing gangsters. A background check on a Harvard doctor is just his speed. On an assignment like that you can stay loaded all afternoon. I realize when he’s on to a second vodka martini before we have seen menus that the reason he likes this place is not the authentic pressed tin ceiling but that it is far enough from Government Center so no agents are likely to come here and he can self-destruct in peace.

  Red faced, it seems an effort for him to reach across his beefy chest to an inner pocket of a moss green plaid wool jacket and remove two sheets of folded paper.

  “Think I’ve got what you need here.…” Smoothing them with shaky hands. “This Van Hoven gal.”

  He pauses to lick his lips and take a kiss of vodka; yes, they are close friends.

  “Everybody else says the same thing about Eberhardt — nice guy, smart, good athlete, good doc, that sort of crap. But this Van Hoven gal really has a hard-on for him. Says he ruined her life.”

  “Is she good?”

  “She’s a music student, plays the violin for chrissake.”

  He gives me a strained smile: “Come on, Ana. I wouldn’t have drug you all the way to Boston if I didn’t think she was good.”

  “I’ve got a lot riding, that’s all.”

  “I’ve been doing this for a number of years, Ana. Don’t worry. I won’t let you down.”

  I think of his big hand rescuing me from the freezing night.

  “Anything on your computer about Eberhardt?”

  “Criminal checks negative. No malpractice suits. A regular boy scout. In fact in 1985 the guy flew on a mercy mission to some damn famine in Africa.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Doesn’t mean he didn’t turn into an asshole,” Walker suggests encouragingly.

  “Any background on his wife? Could she be tied up in this? Pushing drugs, spending his money?”

  “What I got on his wife is that she’s a nurse. That’s how they got together, over at the New England Deaconess Hospital. Both local kids, grew up here. Except he’s Cambridge upper-crust WASP and she’s shanty Irish, no offense.”

  “Why should I be offended?”

  “Sometimes I put my foot in it. Thought you might be Irish.”

  “No … but a lot of people think so.”

  “Armenian?”

  “Spanish, actually.” I feel myself blush. “Half and half.”

  “A Spanish señorita. Or,” continuing at his courtliest, “shall I call you señora?”

  “Señorita.”

  He nods. For no reason at all, we toast.

  When the waiter appears, Wild Bill tells him, “The señorita will have fish and chips,” which makes me cross my arms on the table, lay my head down, and laugh.

  • • •

  We are very drunk. The air is clear but a sheet of ice has formed on top of the sidewalk. We grip each other’s arms as we slide toward our cars. I am feeling a lot of affection for Wild Bill, dyed black hair and all. It takes me a while to maneuver out of the parking space, and when I do I discover that the road has glassed over as well. The green car is waiting for me at the corner of the deserted street, red taillights wreathed in white steamy exhaust. I smash right into it.

  Wild Bill climbs out. “This is a government vehicle!” His arms fly up and back down to his sides. Then he shakes his head and skates back inside, slams the door, and we begin our slide across Boston. It feels like I am going sideways. There are wrecks at every intersection. The AM radio blasts an old Rod Stewart song, “Maggie May,” out the open windows and the heater is turned up to broil. I am reckless. I know nothing about this city except that it is complex beyond imagining. There are millions of beds in this city like cocoons in a butterfly colony and inside each one is a unique individual with a unique history about to be born or replicate itself or die except for me: I don’t have a bed, I think with boozy self-pity, skidding to a lopsided stop at a light on a corner before a row of darkened redbrick town houses. Behind one drawn parchment shade there is a warm light. Maybe there, in a room I will never see, in a city I know nothing about, a mother is awake nursing a child and the child is at peace.

  Certainly not my mother, and not me. She was there, in the house, but vague. What the hell was she doing? I demand to know in the middle of Commonwealth Avenue. The question arises, righteous and crystal clear. Why don’t I remember being held by my mother or soothed by her, why was I always alone in my room, listening to her cry? Because she didn’t want to have me, comes the self-righteous response. She was a teenager and pregnant and her lowlife boyfriend split. She was weak and couldn’t cope with having a half-breed brat. Only Poppy was strong enough to love me.

  When we get to the Prudential Center, Walker waves his gloved fist out the window of the now battered and bruised government vehicle and heads off. I plunge into some mammoth underground garage and rise up again carrying my suitcase to a lobby like every other in America, then rise even further to a room with a stunning view of the city, hard white lights and provocative red ones; sitting down at a desk, inebriated, reaching for the phone instinctively, unreasonably, selfishly, from unutterable loneliness for the only one who loved me, dialing 8 for long distance and then the number where my grandfather lies asleep in the icy cold bedroom of the condominium in Desert Hot Springs, California, longing to wake him from his deep stillness and bring him back to me, but the phone rings emptily many times and I cannot.

  I force myself to drink three glasses of water and strip down to my underpants before sinking into the thick soft mattress where I pull the sheet, blanket, and heavy bedspread over my shoulders and dream about the helicopter.

  I am outside the Santa Monica police station holding my grandfather’s big warm hand. Everything is colored red by sunset light, like looking through the orange wrapper of a Charms lollypop. The President’s helicopter is landing in a storm of fine orange chalk, its huge belly pressing down on us — I am terrified that we are going to be crushed. The chopper touches down and JFK climbs out, floating along the steps, not waving, very sober, something is wrong. He is
wearing a dark suit. His face is dead white and his head is mangled by bloody gunshot wounds. He is a walking corpse.

  Beneath the heavy coverings I wake up frozen stiff, mummified by fear. The dream is not about JFK. It is about my father, bloodied and dead.

  • • •

  Wild Bill Walker and I are sharing a bench in a playground on the northwest corner of the Cambridge Commons. It is hard to tell which direction is northwest at nine in the morning with a hangover. I circled the park several times until sighting a big galoof sitting alone, looking like a bum with his big raincoat and cap, and realized that must be him. As we waited there under leaden overcast skies I began to envy that cap and the heavy black shoes with thick gum soles.

  Claudia Van Hoven had insisted on meeting here instead of her place or anywhere else. She told Wild Bill she has a tiny apartment and her husband, a graduate student, works at night, sleeps during the day. With the baby, she told him, it’s hard enough.

  The playing fields are bald stretches of half-frozen mud. I turn my face into a wet wind. We have now been waiting almost an hour and a half during which I have heard every detail of Wild Bill’s radiation treatments for prostate cancer five years ago.

  Finally I stand restlessly. “This is fucked.”

  “She’ll show.”

  “Let’s go to her house.”

  We are already through the iron gate of the park when I look back and see a slight woman in a long dark coat with a trailing red scarf wheel a stroller across the puddles and into the playground.

  “That’s the lady,” Walker says with relief. “Told you she was good.”

  We approach and shake hands all around. Claudia Van Hoven smiles brightly. She is younger than I am, early twenties, young enough to have smooth uncrinkled skin around the eyes.

  “Have you been waiting long?”

  I glance at Wild Bill, who I know would say nothing.

  “We got here at nine,” I tell her.

  Claudia looks worried. “What time is it now?” She checks her watch and makes a pained frown, as if just realizing she had lost something. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how that happened.”

  “My daughter has four kids, all boys,” Wild Bill says with a corn-ball wink. “Sometimes she loses entire days at a time.” He takes her elbow and eases her down on the bench, going on about his grandsons and getting her to talk about her baby. I’m starting to admire his style.

  “What will happen to Dr. Eberhardt?” Claudia wants to know.

  “He could lose his license to practice medicine,” Walker tells her gravely. “He could go to jail.”

  She closes her eyes for a moment then looks off into the distance through gold-rimmed glasses; small, old-fashioned oval frames like they wore to sign the Constitution. She is bareheaded. The wind blows her straight shiny brown hair. It must look pretty when she bends to play the violin.

  “Do you want to see him go to jail?” I ask.

  “The angry woman inside me does.” She gives us a reassuring smile. “Not to worry — I won’t let her interfere.”

  She has an artsy way of talking but seems sincere.

  “Tell us how you became a patient of Dr. Eberhardt.”

  She doesn’t balk at the tape recorder. She explains how three years ago last March she was crossing the street to go to a concert at the Gardner Museum when a kid in a Datsun Z nipped around the corner and bounced her off the windshield twenty feet into the air. She spent six weeks in the hospital in a body cast. Dr. Eberhardt was the senior orthopedist.

  “He talked to me a lot. I was trapped in this cast and he talked to me, for which I was grateful.”

  A tear forms and she wipes her eye. I am thrilled by the emotion. Save it for the witness stand, baby.

  “I was worried I would never play again. He sat with me … and he promised I would.…”

  Walker fishes out a pocket-sized pack of Kleenex and gives her one.

  “I don’t know how long I was on medication in the hospital, but it was all those months afterward that he kept giving me pills.”

  “What kind of pills, Claudia?”

  “Dilaudid. Valium. Halcion when I couldn’t sleep. I was so doped up I couldn’t even listen to music anymore.”

  “Were you able to go back to the violin?”

  Claudia shakes her head. “She died.”

  “Who died?”

  “The musician inside of me.” She is pushing the stroller back and forth in short strokes. “I kept telling Dr. Eberhardt she was dying.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me to be patient, that the healing process takes a long time, and gave me more pills.”

  The crown of her head and the nap of the brown wool coat along her shoulders glisten with the first tentative drops of rain. The stroller cover is all the way down over the baby, who I assume is asleep since I have not heard or seen it. I can’t feel my fingers or toes. Walker writes in a small spiral pad.

  “How long did this go on with Eberhardt?” he asks.

  “For a year after I got out of the hospital. Then Allan came along and told me I should stay away from him, that he wasn’t good for me, he wasn’t telling me the truth.”

  “Allan is your husband?”

  “My helper.” A dreamy smile invades the tears. “My dear friend.”

  “Did Dr. Eberhardt write prescriptions?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Where did you get the prescriptions filled?”

  “Bay Pharmacy on Mass Ave.”

  “Great.”

  Walker says, “I‘ll check it out,” and makes a note.

  “Were you addicted?” I ask. “Meaning that you couldn’t stop taking the pills if you wanted to?”

  “Yes.”

  I fix her right in the eyes. “Then how did you stop?”

  “Allan helped me. That’s what he was there for.”

  “Claudia, why do you think Dr. Eberhardt prescribed these drugs if he knew they could be dangerous?”

  “I was depressed. My injuries weren’t healing. Maybe he thought I would make trouble for him.” She stands. “I’d better get the baby home.”

  “It’s getting cold,” Walker agrees, a Boston euphemism for the onset of hypothermia.

  “We’ll be coming back in a few weeks to take your deposition,” I tell her, walking toward the gate on numb wet stubs of feet. “And then we might ask you to fly to California at government expense to testify against Dr. Eberhardt. Would you agree to that?”

  “The angry woman inside me can’t wait to get on the airplane,” Claudia says with a smile.

  I turn off the tape recorder and smile back. “Bring her along.”

  • • •

  Walker and I are running for a phone booth in Harvard Square. Because they have made the Square a pedestrian mall and closed it to traffic, our cars are double-parked three blocks away. Hordes of students and homeless people seem intent on getting in our way. My plane leaves in a matter of hours and I still need to see Eberhardt’s former supervisor at the hospital.

  “Too risky,” Walker is huffing. “Why I ruled it out in the first place. He’ll just get on the horn and tell your boy you’re onto him.”

  “I’ll take the chance.”

  “It’s foolish when we’ve got that Van Hoven gal all sewn up.”

  “She’s not sewn up until we confirm her story.”

  “Let’s get out to the airport, get something to eat.” Walker is plainly ready to quit. After all, it is past noon and we haven’t had our first Bloody Mary of the day.

  A middle-aged woman has set down a canvas tote that says Save the Trees in front of a pay phone. I grab the receiver off the hook before she can remove her gloves, fiercely turning on Walker at the same time: “I’ve got to come back with something hard or they’ll skin me alive, do you understand?”

  Dr. Alfred Narayan, chief of staff of orthopedics, will be glad to speak with us but is scheduled for surgery in forty-five minutes. No problem. We dash ba
ck to our cars and Wild Bill ably demonstrates how he got his name, leading me with red bubble flashing on a wild charge down Memorial Drive, across the Boston University bridge to Longwood Avenue. I have noticed horseshoe tracks embedded in the sidewalks of Boston at various spots where Paul Revere passed on his famous ride; well, they should have tire tracks to commemorate ours.

  Dr. Narayan is waiting for us at the nurses’ station of the cardiac care unit: tall, aquiline, black curly hair cropped close, warm brown eyes, and pale brown skin. He is wearing a red silk tie beneath the starched white lab coat. The accent is not Indian but educated Oxford and he smells like lilacs during a wet English spring.

  “This must be a serious business to send federal agents,” he says over his shoulder, leading us past gurneys and IV stands to the end of a hall.

  There is no time for pleasantries.

  “When Dr. Eberhardt was on staff, did he prescribe a lot of drugs?”

  “Only what was called for.”

  “Did he ever overprescribe?”

  “Of course not.”

  Walker: “Did you notice any drugs missing during the time he was employed?”

  “No. We’ve never had a problem.”

  The doctor looks back and forth at us, astonished by this line of questioning. Walker gives me a lugubrious shrug and turns toward the window where an electric trolley is passing beneath empty trees.

  “Do you recall a patient named Claudia Van Hoven?” Dr. Narayan shakes his elegant head. “Three years ago,” I prompt anxiously, “she was hit by a car. Dr. Eberhardt took care of her.”

  “I can pull the record.”

  “That would be terrific.”

  “You seem distressed,” he says with kindness. “Why not just ask me what you really wish to know?”

  What I really wish to know is whether Dr. Narayan will leave his wife and fourteen children and live with me in South Kensington, but instead: “Was there anything in Randall Eberhardt’s behavior to lead you to believe he might have been exploiting patients?”

  “ ‘Exploiting’ them?”

  “Overprescribing drugs. Getting them hooked. Especially women. Making them dependent on him as a doctor.”