The newsreel went on to the surrender scene on the Missouri, but even the narrator, booming with victory, couldn’t lift the film from the streets of ashes. The voice wanted to celebrate, throw a hat in the air like the relieved sailors, but the words said one thing and the pictures showed another—this was the way it would be now, the way we would die. Kissing couples, the narrator announcing a world of hope. But it wasn’t, Ben thought. Not now. Just an endless dread.
Ben took the reel off and put it in its canister. Not frivolous. Maybe Partners wasn’t the whole of him, maybe the war had touched something deeper, just as Ben’s life had been upturned by the camps, both of them alike under the skin.
He turned off the light and went into the house. On the desk in the study, just as she’d said, he found the autopsy report. He glanced through it. Medical English, not English at all, nearly incomprehensible. He heard a sound from her room, a turning perhaps, something dropped, meaningless in itself except as a sign of life. Just behind the door. He smiled to himself. Schicklich. How do we decide what’s right? He looked down again at the sheet. Pulmonary—something to do with the lungs. But of course she was right. All it said was that Danny was dead.
• • •
“WAS THERE some problem?” Dr. Walters said, caught on the run in the hall, not sure why Ben had come.
“I don’t know the technical terms. I’m not sure what they actually mean.”
“Simple language? He stopped breathing.” He halted midstep. “I’m sorry. I know it sounds like a joke. All I mean is that there were no signs of stroke—that’s the usual cause after a head trauma, edemal bleeding flooding the brain.”
“But not in this case.”
“No. Or heart damage. There are only a few ways to die. Of course, these are all connected.” He paused, framing his hands, explaining to a classroom. “Think of the brain as a switchboard. The operator pulled a line connected to the lungs. Like being cut off on a call,” he said, looking up, waiting to see if Ben was following. “The board controls everything. The lungs don’t operate by themselves.”
“Is that common?”
“Yes. Mr. Kohler, with a head injury like this, the surprising thing is that he didn’t die instantly. I gather he was lucky in the response time— the ambulance got to him before he lost too much blood. So that bought him some time. I’m sorry.”
“But if he regained consciousness—”
“We don’t rule out miracles,” he said patiently. “But I’m a doctor, you know, not a priest. This is what we expected to happen.” He waited for Ben to reply.
“Was there anything—any sign that he may have been injured before he fell?”
“Before.”
“Knocked out, anything like that.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“By someone else. Before.”
Dr. Walters peered at him, disconcerted. “No. But I’m not a policeman, either. Is there any reason to think this happened?”
“I just wanted to look at everything. Every possibility.”
Dr. Walters nodded. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kohler. These things can be hard to accept.” He looked down at the paper in Ben’s hand. “Maybe that’s why we hide behind the language.”
He had stopped by the hospital on his way to lunch and now found himself running late, caught in the traffic west to Fairfax. Kelly had suggested the Farmers Market, somewhere away from the studio, a pointless Dick Tracy feint, but not worth arguing about.
The market had started as a collection of produce stalls for Depression farmers, but now had the look of a small studio—permanent buildings for the stalls and restaurants, table seating on patios and its own logo clock tower, looking over the parking lot like the RKO globe. Everything was painted cream and light green and maroon, what Ben thought of as leftover colors, the same ones Lasner had used at Continental, maybe even from the same cheap supply. Kelly was already at a table under the trees, nursing a beer.
“So what have we got?” he said as Ben sat down, his eyes darting over Ben’s shoulder.
“Not much. No matches from the building list.” He pulled out a paper. “These are the top contract players, the ones they might want to protect, but that doesn’t mean it’s one of them. And they’re not big names. Lasner doesn’t—”
“Yeah, I know, the loan-out king. Who’s he got borrowed, by the way. He’d want to take care of them, at least until the picture’s out. Listen,” he said abruptly. “You mention me to anyone? Tell them I’m looking at this?”