“Hello, Captain Edward X. Delaney there,” the voice laughed. “What the hell’s wrong with you-got a dose of clap from a fifteen-year-old bimbo?”
“No. It’s about my wife. Barbara.”
The tone changed immediately.
“Oh. What’s the problem, Edward?”
“Doctor, would it be possible to see you tonight?”
“Both of you or just you?”
“Just me. She’s in the hospital.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Edward, you caught me on the way out. They’ve dragged me into an emergency cut-’em-up.”
“No. I can be at your home at midnight. Will that be all right?”
“Sure. What’s this all about?”
“I’d rather tell you in person. And there are papers. Documents. Some X-rays.”
“I see. All right, Edward. Be here at twelve.”
“Thank you, doctor.”
He went back into the kitchen to eat his cold lamb and potato salad. It all tasted like straw. He put on his heavy, black-rimmed glasses, and as he ate slowly, he methodically read every paper in Barbara’s medical file, and even held the X-rays up to the overhead light, although they meant nothing to him. There she was, in shadows: the woman who meant everything to him.
He finished eating and reading at the same time. All the doctors seemed to agree. He decided to skip the apple tart and black coffee. But he mixed another rye highball and, in his skivvie shirt, went wandering through the empty house.
It was the first time since World War II he and his wife slept under separate roofs. He was bereft, and in all those darkened rooms he felt her presence and wanted her: sight, voice, smell, laugh, slap of slippered feet, touch…
The children were there, too, in the echoing rooms. Cries and shouts, quarrels and stumblings. Eager questions. Wailing tears. Their life had soaked into the old walls. Holiday meals. Triumphs and defeats. The fabric of a family. All silent now, and dark as the shadows on an X-ray film.
He climbed stairs slowly to vacant bedrooms and attic. The house was too big for the two of them: no doubt about it. But still…There was the door jamb where Liza’s growth had been marked with pencil ticks. There was the flight of stairs Eddie had tumbled down and cut his chin and never cried. There was the very spot where one of their many dogs had coughed up his life in bright blood, and Barbara had become hysterical.
It wasn’t much, he supposed. It was neither high tragedy nor low comedy. No great heights or depths. But a steady wearing away of the years. Time evened whatever drama there may have been. Time dimmed the colors; the shouting died. But the golden monochrome, the soft tarnish that was left had meaning for him. He wandered through the dim corridors of his life, thinking deep thoughts and making foolish wishes.
Dr. Sanford Ferguson, a bachelor, was a big man, made bigger by creaseless tweed suits worn with chain- looped vests. He was broad through the shoulders and broad through the chest. He was not corpulent but his thighs were as big around as another man’s waist, and his arms were meaty and strong.
No one doubted his cleverness. At parties he could relate endless jokes that had the company helpless with laughter. He knew many dialects perfectly and, in his cups, could do an admirable soft-shoe clog. He was much in demand as an after-dinner speaker at meetings of professional associations. He was an ineffectual but enthusiastic golfer. He sang a sweet baritone. He could make a souffle. And, unknown to everyone (including his older spinster sister), he kept a mistress: a middle-aged colored lady he loved and by whom he had fathered three sons.
He was also, Delaney knew, an experienced and cynical police surgeon. Violent death did not dismay him, and he was not often fooled by the obvious. In “natural deaths” he sniffed out arsenic. In “accidental deaths” he would pry out the fatal wound in a corpus of splinters.
“Here’s your rye,” he said, handing the highball to Delaney. “Now sit there and keep your mouth shut, and let me read and digest.”
It was after midnight. They were in the living room of Ferguson’s apartment on Murray Hill. The spinster sister had greeted Delaney and then disappeared, presumably to bed. The doctor had mixed a rye highball for his guest and poured a hefty brandy for himself in a water tumbler.
Delaney sat quietly in an armchair pinned with an antimacassar. Dr. Ferguson sat on a spindly chair at a fine Queen Anne lowboy. His bulk threatened to crush chair and table. His wool tie was pulled wide, shirt collar open: wiry hair sprang free.
“That was a nice cut-’em-up tonight,” he remarked, peering at the documents in the file Delaney had handed over. “A truck driver comes home from work. Greenwich Village. He finds his wife, he says, on the kitchen floor. Her head’s in the oven. The room’s full of gas. He opens the window. She’s dead. I can attest to that. She was depressed, the truck driver says. She often threatened suicide, he says. Well…maybe. We’ll see. We’ll see.”
“Who’s handling it?” Delaney asked.
“Sam Rosoff. Assault and Homicide South. You know him?”
“Yes. An old-timer. Good man.”
“He surely is, Edward. He spotted the cigar stub in the ashtray on the kitchen table. A cold butt, but the saliva still wet. What would you have done?”
“Ask you to search for a skull contusion beneath the dead woman’s hair and start looking for the truck driver’s girl friend.”
Dr. Ferguson laughed. “Edward, you’re wonderful. That’s exactly what Rosoff suggested. I found the contusion. Right now he’s out looking for the girlfriend. Do you miss detective work?”
“Yes.”
“You were the best,” Ferguson said, “until you decided to become Commissioner. Now shut up, lad, and let me read.” Silence.
“Oh-ho,” Ferguson said. “My old friend Bernardi.”
“You know him?” Delaney asked, surprised.
“I do indeed.”
“What do you think of him?”
“As a physician? Excellent. As a man? A prick. No more talk.”
Silence.
“Do you know any of the others?” Delaney asked finally. “The specialists he brought in?”
“I know two of the five-the neurologist and the radiologist. They’re among the best in the city. This must be costing you a fortune. If the other three are as talented, your wife is in good hands. I can check. Now be quiet.”
Silence.
“Oh well,” Ferguson shrugged, still reading, “kidney stones. That’s not so bad.”
“You’ve had cases?”
“All the time. Mostly men, of course. You know who get ’em? Cab drivers. They’re bouncing around on their ass all day.”
“What about my wife?”
“Well, listen, Edward, it could be diet, it could be stress. There’s so much we don’t know.”
“My wife eats sensibly, rarely takes a drink, and she’s the most-most serene woman I’ve ever met.”
“Is she? Let me finish reading.”
He went through all the reports intently, going back occasionally to check reports he had already finished. He didn’t even glance at the X-rays. Finally he shoved back from the table, poured himself another huge brandy, freshed the Captain’s highball.
“Well?” Delaney asked.
“Edward,” Ferguson said, frowning, “don’t bring me in. Or anyone else. Bernardi is a bombastic, opinionated, egotistical shit. But as I said, he’s a good sawbones. On your wife’s case he’s done everything exactly right. He’s tried everything except surgery-correct?”
“Well, he tried antibiotics. They didn’t work.”
