Notorious Nineteen (3 page)

“Geoffrey Cubbin.”

“Yep. The night nurse checked him at two
A.M.
and reported him sleeping. The next entry on his chart was at six
A.M.
and he was gone, along with his clothes and personal effects.”

“Is that what his chart says?” I asked Briggs.

“No. That’s what the paper said. Jesus, don’t you read the paper?”

“So how’s this dude manage to walk out of here if he just had his appendix yanked out?” Lula asked. “That gotta hurt. Maybe it was that he died and got rolled down to the meat locker and no one thought to look there. Oh no, wait a minute, he wouldn’t have gotten dressed to die.”

“Cubbin was looking at about ten years of eating prison food and stamping out license plates,” Briggs said. “You could get past a little pain to walk away from that.”

“I’d like to talk to his doctor and the night nurse,” I said to Briggs. “Do you have their names?”

“No. And I’m not getting them for you either. I’m here to uphold hospital confidentiality. I’m the top cop.”

“Looks to me like you’re the bottom half of the top cop,” Lula said.

Briggs cut his eyes to Lula. “Looks to me like you’re fat enough to be a whole police force.”

“You watch your mouth,” Lula said. “I could sit on you and squash you like a bug. Be nothing left of you but a grease spot on the floor.”

“There’ll be no squashing,” I said to Lula. “And
you
,” I said to Briggs, pointing my finger at him. “You need to get a grip.”

I whirled around and swished out of Briggs’s office with Lula close on my heels. I returned to the lobby and called Connie.

“Do we know who operated on Cubbin?” I asked her. “I want to talk to the doctor.”

“Hang tight. I’ll make some phone calls.”

Lula and I browsed through the gift shop, took a turn around the lobby, and Connie called back.

“The doctor’s name is Craig Fish,” Connie said. “I got his name from your grandmother. She’s plugged into the Metamucil Medicare Gossip Hotline. He’s a general surgeon in private practice, with privileges at St. Francis and Central. His office is in the Medical Arts Building two blocks from Central. He’s married with two kids in college. One in California and the other in Texas. No litigation against him. No derogatory information on file.”

We drove to the Medical Arts Building, and Lula dropped me off at the door.

“There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts shop in that gas station on the corner,” she said. “I might have to get some donuts on account of I feel weak after being in the hospital and getting the cooties and all.”

“I thought you were trying to lose weight.”

“Yeah, but this could be an emergency situation. The cooties might have eaten up all my sugar, and I need to shovel some more in.”

“That’s so lame,” I said to her. “Why don’t you just admit you want donuts and you have no willpower?”

“Yeah, but that don’t sound as good. You want any donuts?”

“Get me a Boston Kreme.”

I took the elevator to the fourth floor and found Fish’s office. There were two people in the waiting room. A man and a woman. Neither of them looked happy. Probably contemplating having something essential removed from their bodies in the near future. I flashed my credentials at the receptionist and told her I’d like to have a moment with the doctor.

“Of course,” she said. “He’s with a patient right now, but I’ll let him know you’re here.”

Ten minutes and three dog-eared magazines later I was ushered into Fish’s small, cluttered office.

“I only have a few minutes,” he said. “How can I help you?”

Craig Fish was a bland man in his mid-fifties. He had steel gray hair, a round cherubic face, and his blue and white striped dress shirt was stretched tight across his belly. He wasn’t fat, but he wasn’t fit either. He had some family photos on his desk. His two kids on a beach somewhere, smiling at the camera. And a picture of himself getting cozy with a blond woman who looked on the short side of thirty. She was spilling out of her slinky dress, and she had a diamond the size of Rhode Island on her finger. I assumed this was his latest wife.

“Did Geoffrey Cubbin give any indication he intended to leave early?” I asked him.

“No. He didn’t seem unusually anxious. The operation was routine, and his post-op was normal.”

“Do you have any idea where he might be?”

“Usually when patients leave prior to discharge they go home.”

“Apparently that wasn’t the case this time. Does this happen a lot?”

“Not a lot, but more often than you’d think. People get homesick, dissatisfied with care, worried about expenses, and sometimes it’s the result of a drug reaction and the patient isn’t thinking clearly.”

“Has Cubbin made an appointment for a recheck?”

“You’d have to ask my receptionist about that. I only see my patient list for the current day.”

His intercom buzzed and his receptionist reminded him Mrs. Weinstein was in Examining Room 3.

I stopped at the desk on the way out and asked if Geoffrey Cubbin had scheduled a post-op appointment. I was told he had not.

Lula was idling at the curb when I left the medical building. I buckled myself in next to her and looked into the Dunkin’ Donuts box on the floor. It was empty.

“Where’s my donut?” I asked her.

“Oops. I guess I ate it.”

Lucky me. Better on Lula’s thighs than on mine. Especially since I was going to have to squeeze into a cocktail dress tomorrow night.

“Now what?” Lula asked. “Are we done for the day? I’m not feeling so good after all those donuts. I was only going to eat two, but then I lost track of what I was doing and next thing there weren’t any more donuts. It was like I blacked out and someone came and ate the donuts.”

“You have powdered sugar and jelly stains on your tank top.”

“Hunh,” Lula said, looking down at herself. “Guess I was the one ate them.”

“It would be great if you could drive me to my parents’ house so I can borrow Big Blue.”

Big Blue is a ’53 powder blue and white Buick that got deposited in my father’s garage when my Great Uncle Sandor checked himself in to Happy Hills Nursing Home. It drives like a refrigerator on wheels, and it does nothing for my image. Only Jay Leno could look good driving this car. In its favor, it’s free.

THREE

MY PARENTS LIVE
in a small mustard yellow and brown two-story house that shares a wall with an identical house that is painted lime green. I suppose the two-family house seemed like an economical idea forty years ago at the time of construction. And there are many of them in the Burg. Siamese twins conjoined at the living room downstairs and master bedroom upstairs, with separate brains. The house has a postage stamp front yard, a small front porch, and a long, narrow backyard. The floor plan is shotgun. Living room, dining room, kitchen. Three small bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.

My Grandma Mazur lives with my parents. She moved in when my Grandpa Mazur’s arteries totally clogged with pork fat and he got a one-way ticket to God’s big pig roast in the sky. Grandma was at the front door when Lula eased the Firebird to a stop at the curb. I used to think Grandma had a telepathic way of knowing when I approached, but I now realize Grandma just stands at the door watching the cars roll by, like the street is a reality show. Her face lit, and she waved as we drove up.

“I like your granny,” Lula said. “She always looks like she’s happy to see us. That’s not something happens every day. Half the time we knock on a door and people shoot at us.”

“Yes, but that’s only half the time. Sometimes they just run away. See you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, Kemo Sabe.”

“How’s business?” Grandma asked when I got to the door. “Did you catch anyone today? Where’s your car?”

“My car got blown up.”

“Again? How many does that make this month?”

“It’s the only one this month. I was hoping I could borrow Big Blue.”

“Sure, you can borrow it whenever you want. I don’t drive it on account of it don’t make me look hot.”

I suppose everything’s relative, but I thought it would take more than a fast car to make Grandma look hot. Gravity hasn’t been kind to Grandma. She also doesn’t have a license, due to a heavy foot on the accelerator. Still, I suspected lack of license wouldn’t stop her if she had access to a Ferrari.

I heard a car door slam and turned to see Lula coming toward us.

“I smell fried chicken,” Lula said.

Grandma waved her in. “Stephanie’s mother is frying some up for dinner. And we got a chocolate cake for dessert. We got plenty if you want to stay.”

A half hour later Lula and I were at the dining room table, eating the fried chicken with my mom, dad, and Grandma Mazur.

“Stephanie blew up another car,” Grandma Mazur announced, spooning out mashed potatoes.

“Technically some gang guy blew it up,” Lula said. “And the car wasn’t worth much. The battery was dead.”

My mother made the sign of the cross and belted back half a glass of what looked like ice tea but smelled a lot like Jim Beam. My father kept his head down and gnawed on a chicken leg.

“I wasn’t in it,” I said. “It was an accident.”

“I don’t understand how you have all these accidents,” my mother said. “I don’t know of a single other person who’s had his car blown up.” She looked down the table at my father. “Frank, do you know of anyone else who’s ever had their car blown up?
Frank! Are you listening to me?
”

My father picked his head up and a piece of chicken fell out of his mouth. “What?”

“It’s our job,” Lula said. “It’s one of them occupational hazards. Like another hazard is getting hospital cooties. We had to do some investigating in a hospital today, and I might have got the cooties.”

“I bet you were tracking down Geoffrey Cubbin,” Grandma said. “Connie called me asking about his doctor. I know something about it on account of Lorraine Moochy has a relative in Cranberry Manor, and Lorraine said Cubbin is gonna need a
lot
of doctors if those people get their hands on him.”

“What else did Lorraine say about him?” I asked Grandma.

“She said he seemed like a real nice man and then next thing he stole all the money. Cranberry Manor’s one of them places you buy into, and it isn’t cheap. Cranberry Manor’s top of the line considering it’s in Jersey. Lorraine says it could close down, and her relative would have her keester tossed out onto the street.”

“Sounds like she’s boned,” Lula said.

“Boned?” my mother asked.

Grandma selected another piece of chicken. “That’s a polite way of using the
f
word.”

My mother cut her eyes to the kitchen, and I knew she was thinking about refilling her “ice tea.” Grandma and I are a trial to her. My mother tries hard to be a good Christian woman and a model of decorum, but Grandma and I not so much. It isn’t that we don’t
want
to be decorous Christian women. It’s just that it doesn’t always go that way.

“Vinnie bonded Geoffrey Cubbin out,” Lula said. “And now we gotta find him.”

“It’s a real interesting case,” Grandma said. “He just up and got dressed in the middle of the night and walked out. If you ask me it’s fishy. And I know his doctor is named Fish, but I don’t mean that way. Cubbin had stitches and everything. You don’t go jogging down the hall and hailing a cab two days after you get your appendix cut out. You creep around hunched over, doing a lot of moaning and complaining.”

“So what do you think happened to him?” Lula asked.

“I don’t know, but seems to me he had to have help,” Grandma said.

“That’s what I think too. And why didn’t anyone see him standing waiting for the elevator?” Lula asked.

“Budget cuts,” Grandma said. “They hardly got any nurses working. And used to be they had cameras in the elevators, but I hear they go on the fritz all the time. I tell you, hospitals aren’t what they used to be. Myra and I go to Central for lunch once a week, but the food’s gotten terrible lately and people are turning surly.”

“You must know a lot of sick people,” Lula said.

“We don’t go to visit sick people,” Grandma said. “We just go for lunch. They always have a big buffet in the cafeteria, and it’s cheap because that’s where the people who work at the hospital eat. Everybody’s wearing those scrub clothes. It’s just like being in
Grey’s Anatomy
. All the seniors eat there, and sometimes you can score a date. I met a real hottie there last month, but he had an aneurysm and died before I could haul him in. And then after lunch we go to the Costco and get desserts from the free-sample ladies.”

“I love those ladies,” Lula said.

“At the end of the month if Myra and me run out of Social Security we skip the hospital and just have lunch from the free-sample ladies,” Grandma said.

“Honestly,” my mother said. “You make it sound like I don’t feed you. There’s always good food here for lunch.”

“I like to eat out once in a while,” Grandma said. “Gives me a reason to put lipstick on. And there’s always a lot of drama at the hospital. I got the dirt on all the nurses. You just gotta sit by the right people and keep your ears open.”

“We should put you on the case,” Lula said to Grandma. “We went to the hospital, and we couldn’t find out nothing.”

“You tell me what you’re looking for, and I’ll find it,” Grandma said. “I’m real nosy, and I’ve been thinking about turning professional.”

“That would be an excellent plan,” Lula said. “We wouldn’t have to go back to Central if you were there. We could spend our time doing other important stuff that’s not in a hospital.”

“It’s not an excellent plan,” my mother said. “It’s an awful plan. Isn’t it enough she causes havoc in every funeral home in a twenty-mile radius?”

“Not always,” Grandma said. “I just don’t like when they have a closed casket. I think it’s a gyp. How do you know if there’s anyone in there?”

My mother shook her fork at me. “I’m holding you responsible. If your grandmother gets arrested for disturbing the peace in that hospital you can kiss chocolate cake goodbye for the rest of your life. Pineapple upside-down cake too.”