Dear Old Dead(37)

“Ida says they meant to sit down and talk about the will change,” Augie said. “They couldn’t know there was going to be a gang war. And Victor never listens to anything on the radio except the all-music stations and he never reads the newspapers at all, so—” Augie shrugged.

“No matter what Augie here says, I don’t think Martha could have done it.” Michael was firm. “Martha’s an extremely unpleasant young woman in many ways, but she’s one of those people who writes angry letters to the president of the United States because she thinks the air force training exercises are disturbing the sleep of the spotted owl. I know animal rights activists have been known to resort to violence more than occasionally, but Martha—” Michael Pride shrugged.

“I think this is exactly Martha’s kind of murder,” Augie argued. “Put the strychnine in the coffee. Hand the coffee to grandfather. Get the hell out of there before he takes a sip of it. That’s the way Martha would go about it. So that she didn’t have to look.”

“Augie, I think in the old days, when they still had chapter of faults, you must have spent your time declaring faults against charity.”

“Oh, charity,” Augie said.

The red light over the top of the door to the hall went on and a low bonging sound began to come through the loudspeakers.

“That’s a delivery.” Augie straightened up a little. “Who’s on call this afternoon, Michael? Jenny or Ben?”

“I am,” Michael told her. “Jenny needed the afternoon off. It’s the only time they could give her to go in for her mammogram. Go on out. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Don’t you let him hand you any romantic nonsense,” Augie told Gregor. “He’s much too trusting.”

“I’m going to ask him if he knows anybody who would be willing to donate us a mammogram machine. We sure as hell could use one.”

“Don’t use the word hell like that, Michael. It doesn’t shock me.”

The two men watched the small, round woman leave. Gregor caught an expression of honest affection on Michael Pride’s face. It was—endearing, somehow. It made Michael Pride more human than Gregor had found him to be so far.

“Look,” Michael Pride said, when Augie was gone. “I’ve got work here to do for the rest of the afternoon, but Jenny will be back at six. I’ll have at least a couple of hours then. Why don’t you meet me downstairs in the cafeteria and we’ll have dinner? There are some things you ought to know nobody else is going to tell you.”

“Does everybody around here keep secrets as a matter of course?”

“About me they do. Cafeteria at six?”

“How about the Four Seasons at seven?” Gregor asked.

Michael Pride laughed. “The Four Seasons. For God’s sake. Not only can’t I afford it, I can’t even afford to think about it.”

“I can. I’ll buy.”

“That’ll come to three or four hundred dollars. Why don’t you just donate that money to the center?”

“The center doesn’t take credit cards.”

Michael Pride laughed again. “You’re right. We don’t. All right, Mr. Demarkian. The Four Seasons. Seven o’clock. I’ll be there. But now I’ve got to go.”

Michael Pride went.





2


LATE AFTERNOON IS NOT a busy time in big-city emergency rooms, except for unexpected infant deliveries and household accidents. When Gregor left the office in which he had spent so much time with Michael Pride and Sister Augustine, he found the corridors mostly clear and the atmosphere quiet. Whatever emergency the doctor and nurse had been called to was evidently under control. Gregor stopped a young black girl in a candystriper’s uniform and asked for directions to the cafeteria. She gave them in a clear sharp voice with no trace of a New York City accent in it. Gregor introduced himself and thanked her.

“Tell me a couple of more things,” he said. “Do you have a minute?”

“I have a minute, yes.”

“There are elevators here, aren’t there?”

“One at the front and one at the back.”

“Where do they go? I take it I can’t use one to get to the basement, for instance. Otherwise you would have told me to take one to get to the cafeteria.”

The girl had been looking confused. Now her face cleared. “Oh, these aren’t ordinary elevators, Mr. Demarkian. They’re extra wide ones, for stretchers. They only go from here to the second floor, where the wards are. We don’t have much in the way of wards. We’re very small.”