The Whale's Footprints - Rick Boyer (40 page)

"I know that's serious," said Keegan.

"Yes, serious. And often fatal. As it happened,
Joe and Jessica were visiting us at the time. So we rushed young
Peter to Children's Hospital, where I, along with two other doctors,
decided to administer a fairly new and quite successful antibiotic
called chloramphenicol."

My hands had begun, ever so slightly, to tremble. I
gripped the steering wheel tighter, but it didn't help.

"Results were what we expected; Peter shook off
the meningitis and recovered. It wasn't until six weeks later, back
in Schenectady, that Joe and Jessica noticed his declining health."

"So the meningitis came back?"

"No. That wasn't the problem. What happened was
a phenomenon that eventually led to the recall of chloramphenicol
from the market. It seems that in isolated cases—and the odds are
figured at maybe one in fifty thousand—this antibiotic works
against the recipient's bone marrow. The result is a condition called
aplastic anemia, in which the patient's bone marrow shuts down
completely. Both red and white blood counts plummet. The patient
becomes progressively weaker, unable to fend off infection . . . and
eventually dies. The progress and symptomology closely resemble
leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's . . . any of the catastrophic blood
disorders . . ."

"Oh my God. Ohhhh, my God . . ."

"
So what the two families had to do then was to
rush young Peter, recently turned eight, back to Boston to Children's
Hospital and watch him die."

"Jesus."

"And there wasn't a single, solitary, goddamned
thing any of us could do about it. He just sank lower and lower. And
all the latest medical advances, all the best care, all the best
intentions, all the hours of prayers and oceans of tears, were of no
avail, you see . . ."

I was having trouble holding the wheel now. I slowed
down a bit.

"You okay, Doc?"

"
No. No, I am not. I haven't been totally okay
since it happened, which was, let's see, almost fourteen years ago.
Anyway, that year was one I'd never be able to get through again.
Little Jackie kept asking when his cousin was going to get well.
Finally, on a cold fall day in October, we had to pull the sheet up
over him. Joe and Jessica went back to Schenectady, and I was left
with the knowledge that I had taken part in recommending the drug
that set the whole ghastly thing in motion."

"But hell, Doc, you didn't know. It was an
accident."

"I keep saying that. Mary keeps saying that.
Even Joe keeps saying it. Sometimes it even helps. Anyway, the upshot
was, I quit medicine. Now perhaps, if I'd had several years of
successful practice under my belt, or if the kid was not a beloved,
blood relative, or something . . . then maybe I'd have weathered it.
But the fact that it was Joe's boy . . . Joe's and Jessica's, and
that it happened at the very beginning of my practice, made it just
too much."

"So you became a dentist."

"Right. I became a dentist for less than a year,
then I quit that."

"But aren't you a dentist now?"

"No, I'm an oral surgeon, a doctor who works on
people's mouths and jaws, and who removes teeth that are difficult. I
quit being a dentist because it was boring and unpleasant. I couldn't
stand being the guy nobody wants to see."

"So how's your current job better?"

"The teeth-pulling part isn't any better; that's
why I hate that part of it. Too bad it's maybe eighty percent of what
I do. But the remaining part is challenging, rewarding, fulfilling .
. . all that good stuff. And also, I'm good at it. But back to Joe
and Jessica. They had a real rough time, but then Jessica got
pregnant again, business was booming, and it seemed they were off to
a fresh start."

"And?"

"And then, seven months later, just before
Christmas time, while she was waiting on a busy intersection on Pearl
Street in downtown Albany doing her Christmas shopping, Jessica
Brindelli was run down by a speeding car. She and the baby were
killed instantly."

There was no sound from Keegan. I turned to see his
jaw slack, his hands clasping the sides of his head.

"
Well, as you can imagine, Joe went off the
rails awhile. Always religious, he suffered a deep schism inside
himself. Rather than denying God and religion, he came to believe
that it was somehow his fault, that he was cursed . . . that everyone
he reached out to was doomed . . ."

"
Oh God. That must've been awful."

"Awful's hardly the word. The family business
went to hell, and Joe quit his post before it went under and moved to
Boston. That was mostly Mary's idea, and I think it saved him. Then
Joe became a priest."

"You're kidding."

"Not kidding. And he was good at it, too, until
he got in trouble slamming young punks around in his parish. He was
in a rough neighborhood in East Boston and he knew that it would take
more than prayers and psalms to straighten these kids out. The
neighborhood loved him, but not the Catholic brass. So he quit,
drifted around a little, and became a cop. See, the car that ran his
wife down wasn't driven by a drunk or a teenage hot rodder, but by
two men who'd just pulled an armed robbery and were speeding away
from the scene.

"And so he's been trying to catch those guys
ever since."

"In a sense, yeah."

"Well holy shit. Now I see why I shouldn't
have—"

"The story's not over yet."

"Oh no. You gotta be kidding."

"Nope. Wish it were. Anyway, Joe was a great
cop. Seemed made for the job, as you can see for yourself. His rise
was fast; he became detective lieutenant quicker than anybody in the
state's history. About three years after he moved to Boston he met
Martha Higgins, who worked right in your headquarters building at Ten
Ten Comm. Ave. They started dating, and soon Joe was in love again,
and ready to begin his life all over."

"Ohhhhh, shit . . ."

"Oh shit is right, Paul. Four months into the
relationship, Martha developed a lump in her left breast. A biopsy
revealed a malignancy, and she had a mastectomy. It was all she could
do to handle it, since she was barely thirty. But she could've hung
in there, I think. But Joe came unglued and broke it off. He broke it
off because he was by this time convinced that he was the cause of
the cancer . . . that he was the world's greatest jinx."

"Christ almighty."

"And of course, Martha couldn't help but think
he dumped her because she was disfigured. Anyway, it was a sad,
pathetic thing. Martha was so crushed she left town, moved back to
Pittsfield to live with her parents. She's never married. They still
write now and then. Mary and I are convinced Joe still loves her. But
he won't get near her—afraid he'll make her sick again."

There was a long silence. I wanted a cigarette.

"And so he just keeps torturing himself with
this?"

"And so he just keeps torturing himself with it.
Right. Mary and I tried to fix him up a few times. He'd meet these
women, who always liked him a lot, but he'd manage to keep his
distance every time and let the thing die. Joe was thin then, and
very handsome. You can see his good looks in his face. Both he and
Mary have the classic Roman profile. Mary's face is strong and fine,
like the Statue of Liberty. Ever notice?"

"You kidding? A guy can't help but notice her,
Doc."

"Yeah. Well, they're both good looking, as only
Italians can be good looking. But then Joe began to gain weight. Of
course he loves to eat, and he drinks like a fish now and then—as
we can all understand, right?"

"
Right."

"But Mary and I also think he got fat so women
wouldn't be attracted to him. So he won't have to deal with it. And
it's a goddamn shame, Paul, because there's nothing in this world
that Joe Brindelli would like more than a wife and kids. Nothing in
the entire world.”

"Gee, if I'd have ever known that story . . ."

"Well, now you know it. And maybe you understand
my brother-in-law a little more. It explains, for one thing, why he
likes to visit us so much. And he loves his nephews. And boy, do they
love him. He's spoiled the shit out of 'em since they were babies."

"Uh-huh. And maybe it explains a bit about you,
too, Doc."

"How do you mean?" I asked. The question
made me uneasy.

"Well, you know. Maybe you still feel guilty
about Joe's kid. Even though there's no earthly, rational reason for
it, you still feel responsible. And that's maybe why you like to get
involved in these cases, especially when there's a kid like Andy
Cunningham mixed up in it. That's maybe why you forget you're a
doctor and go off—"

"Let's pull off a second, Paul. I gotta take a
leak."

When I got back in the car, Paul suggested we just
change the subject. I said that was just fine with me. just
absolutely, goddamn fine. We got to Woods Hole before ten.
 

THIRTY-THREE

A FEW WEEKS slid by, the way they seem to do, faster
and faster with each passing year. Fall arrived. The leaves got
bright and the nights got cold and clear. Jack missed his court
appearance, of course. We could stand it. Paul Keegan was wrong; Boyd
Cunningham didn't walk. He got ten years reduced to two, which meant
he was eligible for parole in six months. Bill Henderson and his
partners from OEI took the fall for the two B and Es. But their
sentence was paltry. Joe said they'd be out and around within a year
or so. To make matters worse, the smart money was betting that they'd
be back in business then, hauling lengths of drilling pipe out to
Tuckernuck Island. Where it would end, nobody knew, but the Woods
Hole community wasn't exactly overjoyed.

As for Eddie Falcone, a.k.a. Slinky, he disappeared
shortly before his scheduled arraignment, Dropped out of sight like
an anvil in Lake Baikal. Joe was furious, thwarted at not putting
another mobster behind bars. He speculated that Slinky unloaded his
big white wagon, called in all his notes and markers and cashed them
in, maybe did some last-minute scrounging and gouging, and took the
loot and flew back to Sicily.

"Or else maybe he's gone undercover somewhere
here, like Vegas, doing some low-level shit work for the Wiseguys.
Who knows?”

Well wherever he is, I hope he's fine," said
Mary, unloading the dishwasher and putting things away. "He
wasn't violent, was he? I kinda liked him, if you want to know. And
are you guys forgetting that he was the one who saved our son's
life?"

"Says who?" said her brother. "I think
Boyd Cunningham saved Jackie's life."

"No, Mary's right. I think it was mostly Slinky.
We were damned lucky he came calling that night."

"And while we're on the subject of young men
gone bad, I hope you revise your soured opinion of Andy," said
Mary, turning around and looking me in the eye. "I mean, it's
easy as hell for you to condemn him for being money hungry, Charlie.
You, who never had to worry in the least about it. But I've seen
enough poor people to know this: poverty does not ennoble you. It
does not give you character. It does not make you strong. It robs
your self-respect and makes you scared as hell of every goddamn thing
that comes down the pike. And I just, well . . . I just feel sorry as
hell for both those kids."

She turned back to the sink and I saw her shoulders
shaking. I went up and put my arms around her. She leaned back into
me, wiped her eyes, and tried to smile.

"C'mon now," she said. "Hurry up you
two; the party's at five, and we've got to meet the boys."

We finished breakfast and went up to Wellfleet Harbor
in time to see
Ella Hatton
come storming around the breakwater. The sloop-rigged catboat came up
to the wharf wing and wing, dropped sail, and made fast, with Jack,
Tony, Tom McDonnough, Wayland Smith, and Art Hagstrom disembarking.
They'd come around the outside of the Cape on a four-day cruise from
Woods Hole, whale watching all the way. We drove them all back to the
Breakers in two cars, stopping only long enough to buy yet more food
and drink.

In early afternoon Moe showed up. He'd brought a
carton of live lobsters and five bottles of first-class wine as his
contribution. Jim and Janice DeGroot drove down from Concord, too,
bringing two beef tenderloins, two bushels of butter-and-sugar corn,
and a quarter-barrel of St. Pauli Girl.

A little later, Brady Coyne called to say he couldn't
make it, but that he'd just received the split-bamboo fly rod I'd
sent him from Orvis. This was a token of thanks for help he'd given
us in our darkest hour when Jack had needed the best legal help that
influence could buy.

"God, it's great, Doc. just great," he said
over the phone. "How can I ever repay you?"

"You can't possibly," I sniffed, and
informed him he'd have to live out the remainder of his lifetime
under obligation to me. His reply to this was unfitting, if not
downright rude, which only goes  to show that when you go out of
your way to be nice to people, they turn on you. Every time.