Likely to Die (27 page)

 “I’m packed,” Chapman said enthusiastically.

 “Alex’ll love it,” Battaglia went on. “They’re holding it at one of those Stately Homes, about an hour out of London. Cliveden. Heard of it?”

 “Lady Astor?” I knew the American heiress Nancy Astor had become the first woman in Parliament to be seated in the House of Commons at the end of World War I, and that a decade later the “Cliveden Set” was notorious for its pro-Nazi sentiments.

 Chapman had a different recollection. “John Profumo, Christine Keeler, skinny-dipping and Russian spies?”

 Battaglia responded to Chapman’s reference. “I thought you were too young to know about that?”

 “Profumo was Secretary of State for War. I’m a history buff, Mr. B. Some people use mnemonic devices to remember things. Me, throw a little scandal in and I’ll never forget it.”

 “I think this is going to work out fine. My wife will be thrilled. Gets the board off her back and gives her time to finish the painting she’s working on.” Amy Battaglia was a talented artist whose works were in several American museums.

 Battaglia shuffled through the topmost pile of papers on his desk and came up with the program for the meeting, which he passed over to me.

 “You’ve met Commander Creavey, haven’t you?” he asked.

 “Yes, Paul, we’ve both worked with him.” Commander John Creavey was Director of Intelligence at New Scotland Yard. A large, bearlike man with a bushy mustache, wire-rimmed glasses, a cockney accent, and an encyclopedic knowledge of the Jack the Ripper murders, Creavey had spent two weeks studying the methods of the NYPD’s Homicide Squad a year ago.

 “Well, he’s leading the British contingent at the conference. The meeting will be chaired by Lord Windlethorne, an Oxford law professor. I don’t know him. He’s presenting a long paper, but the rest of it is just a series of panels and debates.”

 “Creavey’s an absolutely brilliant investigator, Paul. Might even be a help to us brainstorming on this.”

 “You’re on the six-fifteen American Airlines flight tomorrow evening. See if you can keep Chapman out of those pubs, Alex. Make this trip worthwhile for the case. Rose will confirm all the arrangements for you.”

 Mike left the room to discuss the travel plans with Rose while I stayed behind to tell Battaglia about yesterday’s interviews on the Dogen murder and Patti’s new case.

 I told Laura to go through my book and move around any appointments that were scheduled for the end of the week. “Those interviews I’ve got penciled in for Thursday and Friday need to be pushed back a few days. Neither one of them is pressing. Tell Gayle I’ll certainly be at her sentencing tomorrow morning. And would you call my friend Natalie—give her my ballet tickets for Thursday night? Tell her Kathleen Moore and Gil Boggs are dancing inManon. She’ll grab ‘em.

 “If a man named Drew Renaud calls, interrupt whatever I’m doing. It’s urgent that I speak with him.”

 The last thing I had expected was an expedition out of the country. The Bronx, Brooklyn, and sometimes a ride up the Hudson to Albany were as exciting as business trips usually got in a local prosecutor’s office. Mike and I were flying out Wednesday night for the two-day conference and would return home on Saturday afternoon. Between Drew’s schedule and my own, it was obvious that ours was going to be a long, slow courtship.

 Laura passed a call through to Mike. It was David Mitchell calling from Maureen’s hospital room to let us know he was back and to see if we had any information for him.

 “See if you can schmooze with anyone in the Medical College, Doc. One of Dogen’s pals claims she was on the warpath about some problems they were having—either about credentials or letting some underqualified students into the program. Called her a whistle-blower, which nobody at Mid-Manhattan had mentioned to us. Maybe they’ll tell you something they wouldn’t tell us.”

 David assured us he’d give it a try and signed off for himself and Mo.

 Mike stayed on the phone to set up our reinterview sessions at Minuit Medical College. Bill Dietrich had agreed to let us use his office and, after we questioned him, to set up meetings with the physicians, nurses, fellows, and students that we needed to see.

 “Holding out on me?” Mickey Diamond asked, standing over Laura’s shoulder as she tried to shield my diary from his glance. “My editor liked today’s story. Wanna give me a quote?”

 “I can’t believe you got it already. The ink’s barely dry on the complaint. Was it us or headquarters?”

 “THE RANDY RABBI.That’s what we’re going with. Page four in the late edition. I never give up my sources, you know that.”

 “What is it with tabloids and alliteration? No, I don’t have a quote for you. Anddon’t make one up for me this time. Got it? I don’t care how eloquent you try to make me sound, I do not want to be quoted on an open case.”

 Chapman and I put on our coats.

 “Where’re you off to?” Diamond persisted. “Gonna round up a few more homeless old men and break their balls, Alex? Or have you got anything new on the case—any real leads?”

 “Shoot him, Chapman, would you please? Would you get lost already, Mickey? Don’t you have a deadline to meet?”

 “Nah. After you guys leave, I’ll just hang around Laura’s desk and see what I can pump out of her.”

 It was impossible to insult Mickey Diamond or do anything to rattle his mood. He was good-natured and unflappable and wallowed in the curiosities of the criminal court.

 Mike and I had planned to meet Mercer in Bill Dietrich’s office in the administrative wing of the hospital complex. Dietrich was providing lunch in the boardroom so that we could work through the afternoon without a break.

 We drove uptown in Chapman’s car, slushing along the city streets as the unseasonably warm and sunny day melted the blackened remains of the last storm. “Dietrich asked if we’d mind if someone from Risk Management sits in on the interviews. I told him it was your call.”

 “Negative.”

 “Is that what I think it is, Coop?”

 “Yeah. Translation: lawsuit control. Pain in the ass. Since the murder, they must be getting hit right and left with inquiries about civil suits from every patient who’s made a beef about something that happened to them in the medical center. Last thing we need is some lawyer for the hospital reporting back on everything anybody wants to tell us. A slight chilling effect on candor, don’t you think?”

 “Fine with me. I’ll tell him no.”

 We parked in front of the complex and Mike stuck his Police Department parking plate on the dashboard. The square badges at the front desk for the afternoon shift seemed to be awake enough to recognize the two of us by this time and they waved us through without demanding our identification.

 Mercer was waiting for us in Dietrich’s reception area. His secretary led the three of us down the hallway into the boardroom and I told her to give Dietrich the message that we would prefer to conduct our interviews without his attorneys present. That must have had him backpedaling for a while since he kept us waiting another half an hour before making his appearance.

 Chapman eyed the spread of food that had been laid out on the sideboard for us. He grabbed a plate, slathered two pieces of rye bread with mustard, then loaded his sandwich with ham, cheese, and tomatoes, eating his lunch while we waited. Mercer and I picked on plates of salad greens as he told us about the seemingly endless series of patient interviews he had conducted the past two mornings at Stuyvesant Psychiatric Center.

 The room was paneled in rich mahogany and furnished with a long, sturdy conference table and twenty green leather chairs. Oil paintings of five or six distinguished-looking gentlemen with white hair and starched collars were displayed on the side walls. A period portrait of Peter Minuit, namesake of the medical college, with his knee breeches and walking stick, dominated the far end of the room. He looked rather smug, perhaps still gloating over the purchase of the island of Manhattan from the Indians for his twenty-four-dollar bag of trinkets.

 Bill Dietrich looked even more self-satisfied than Minuit when he finally deigned to join us at one-thirty.

 “Sorry to keep you so long,” he said, although I didn’t believe for a minute that he really was.

 “So, what can you tell me about where you stand in all this? Frankly, we were quite relieved when you made such an early apprehension of that fellow with all the blood on him. Has he been ruled out completely?” Every couple of minutes, Dietrich reached his left hand to his temple and smoothed back his already slick hair. Each time he lifted his hand, I expected to see a stain on his palm. His head looked like it had been greased with shoe polish or diesel oil.

 Chapman wasn’t going to give Dietrich much, not that we had very much to give anyone at this point. “Nobody’s been ruled out completely, Mr. Dietrich. That’s why we’re turning over every rock in the place.”

 “We’re trying to be cooperative, detective. The sooner you do your job and we get you out of here, the happier all of us are going to be.”

 “Then let’s cut right through some of this, okay? Was Gemma Dogen’s contract going to be renewed next month, or was this her swan song at Mid-Manhattan?”

 Dietrich pfumphed around for a few sentences, repeating the respect with which Dogen was viewed by everyone and outlining her accomplishments. Chapman’s irritation was obvious. He stood up, hands in his pockets, turned his back to Dietrich, and started to pace around the table.

 “You wanna play hardball, Mr. Dietrich? You wanna close up your offices and your medical school for a couple of days and come on down and answer these questions in front of the grand jury or you wanna do it the easy way, right here in your own backyard?”

 Dietrich looked over at me for relief, but I stared at the glossy top of the conference table and let Chapman apply the pressure.

 “Well—uh—Gemma was being quite obstinate, actually. She was refusing to tell the administration what her plans were, even up to the day of her death. We knew that she had other offers but she was making it very difficult for us to plan for the next year here.”

 “What were the issues for her, Mr. Dietrich?”

 “Oh, same kind of thing I imagine Dr. Spector told you about. Whether we wanted to go in the direction of expanding the department into a trauma center. She liked doing that work but didn’t want the responsibility for all the tedious fund-raising chores that go along with it.”

 He carried on in that vein, feigning puzzlement about the problems the administration had encountered with Gemma. It sounded almost as though he and Spector had rehearsed the script together.

 “Bottom line,” Chapman said, interrupting the rambling Dietrich. “Did you want Dr. Dogen to stay here or were the powers that be trying to get rid of her?”

 “That wouldn’t be my decision, Detective Chapman. I mean, that kind of situation would be resolved by the president of Minuit, who operates separately from—”

 His effort to distance himself from Gemma’s professional fate spoke volumes about her lack of support within the institution.

 “It wouldn’t be a very popular move, would it, to the medical community outside of Mid-Manhattan?”

 “To release Gemma from her contract here?”

 “To fire her? Can her? Bag her?”

 “Well, not the words I would have chosen, detective. I think that some of her colleagues were hoping she would select that course herself. Go back to London, which was something she often talked about doing. You make it sound a lot more sinister than it was. She was a fighter, Gemma, but she was a stunning asset to this hospital community. It’s a tragic loss for us, really.”

 Chapman had heard him waste enough of our time. “Then I guess you won’t mind turning over some records the grand jury wants to see. Alex, want to show Mr. Dietrich the subpoenas you brought with you?”

 “Sure.” I opened my folder and withdrew the long white sheets of subpoenas duces tecum that Laura had prepared at my request this morning.

 “We’d like to have the records of all the students in the neurosurgical program, Mr. Dietrich. I understand that’s a very small number—eight or ten. We’d like to have their applications and transcripts for—”

 Both hands were skimming over the top of Dietrich’s head. His brow was furrowed and he stammered as he tried to question us in return. “I—uh—I don’t understand what you’re looking for here. There’s nothing in these—”

 I continued on. “This one is for the personnel records of the other faculty members. The request, as you can see, is for all of the documentation of their credentials, information about their salary, any complaints made against them, any correspondence of theirs with the institution concerning Gemma Dogen. The list goes on but it’s quite clear.”

 Dietrich was scanning the papers as I handed them across to him. “Obviously, I’m going to have to turn these over to our lawyers. There’s a lot of information here that’s privileged and I won’t be—”

 “I expect that your lawyers will want to speak with me, Mr. Dietrich, but there’s nothing in these requests that gets into any area that’s covered by a medical privilege. These aren’t patient records. They only involve internal staff matters and I’m sure your attorneys will tell you that the faster you comply and get these materials down to us, the sooner we get out of your hair.” And one place I didn’t want to be was in Bill Dietrich’s greasy hair.

 Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead. Chapman had waited until the professional air was cleared before he turned to the personal side.

 He had circled the long table and come up behind Bill Dietrich, leaning over with one hand placed on the tall back of the green leather chair. “I know this is rough for a lot of people at the hospital, Mr. Dietrich, but it must be even worse for you.”

 The subpoenas were clutched in his hand as he picked his head up and looked around into Chapman’s face.

 “We know about your relationship with Dr. Dogen. We need to ask you some questions about that, too.”

 Dietrich’s head did a one-eighty as he swung it back to make sure the door was closed behind him. “Look, I don’t know what anyone’s told you about it but Gemma and I haven’t been together for months—six months at least. There’s nothing about it that needs to mix into this ugly matter about her death, nothing at all.” His face colored and his voice rose.