“Indeed not. But if the first prescription doesn’t work, what does the physician do in ten days’ time?”
“He tries something else.”
“Exactly,” Trombley said, sounding indulgent. “So if that drug is actually nothing more than a little bit of sugar pressed into the shape of a tablet, well, cheer up. In ten days’ time, the doc will give you something else that might work.”
He glanced toward the front of the store as if someone might be leaning with their ear pressed against the door. “As I’m sure Louis Herrera would tell you, should you have this same conversation with him, that’s the problem with doing business with some of our pharmaceutical brethren south of the border, especially over the Internet, where you don’t know who you’re talking to.” The humorless smile lingered on his face, as if to say Do you understand what I’m saying?
Estelle took her elbow off the drug reference guide and opened it to page 332. “You’re not telling me that they make fake Deyldiol? Pregnancy is a little more serious than a head cold.”
Trombley chuckled. “My wife used to say something very similar to that, bless her soul.” He tapped the page thoughtfully and then stopped his finger at the head of the column. “Deyldiol is made by Peekskill Laboratories. And they do have a lab in Mexico. I happen to know that for a fact. We used to pass it every time we drove down to Chihuahua to visit our daughter.”
“The lab is in Chihuahua?”
“On the outskirts of town. In one of those new little industrial parks that Mexico is trying so hard to make work.”
“Do you do business with Peekskill?”
“No.” The answer was flat and unqualified.
“Any special reason?”
“I’m happy with the suppliers that I use now. Half a dozen companies make that particular birth-control formula. There’s nothing proprietary about it.”
“What if a customer comes in and has a prescription specifically for Deyldiol?”
“Then I call the doc and suggest that he make a change. Go generic, or at least go with something I have in stock. They’re usually pretty good about that.” He relaxed against the counter, leaning his weight on his elbows, hands loosely clasped. “What you do is not my business,” he said, “but it sounds like this is the sort of thing that might attract the state board of pharmacy…what you’re looking into.”
“It might.”
“Am I going to be sorry I talked to you?” He didn’t smile.
“I don’t think so, Mr. Trombley. At least I hope not.” She closed the book. “Can I ask you one more thing, not necessarily related?”
“Sure.”
“How well did you know George Enriquez?”
Trombley took a long time answering, first drawing little invisible circles on the shiny black counter top. “Old George,” he said finally, and lapsed into silence again. Estelle waited. Trombley sighed with resignation. “Connie is a good customer — #8212;too good sometimes. I manage to talk her out of about half of the junk that she wants to take.” He flashed a quick, conspiratorial smile. “George and I are…were…both in Lions Club. And Optimists. We’re in the chamber of commerce.” He straightened away from the counter. “He wasn’t the sort of man who impressed me as suicidal, Estelle. I didn’t need to see the headlines in the paper yesterday afternoon to know that.”
He looked at the undersheriff for a long time while his jaw worked. “For one thing-and I think I’m one of the few who are privy to this-you can’t imagine how much George truly loved his wife. He was so protective of her, of her faults, of her troubles, of her…her whatever.” He waved a hand helplessly. “I’m not so sure that any of that was reciprocated, which makes it all the more tragic, somehow. I can’t imagine him saying, in effect, ‘Well, I’m leaving you now, Connie, mess and all. Deal with it, sweetheart.’ I can’t see him doing that.”
“Maybe he just reached a point.”
“The paper implies that you don’t believe that, Mrs. Guzman. I know he had his legal troubles, but this is going to be a bigger mess than he ever imagined.”
She hefted the large volume and extended her hand. “Thank you, sir.”
“You bet. Any time. I hope things work out, whatever those things are.” As Estelle was turning to step down past the two water bottles, he added, “And by the way, under the not-necessarily — related category-and I hope I don’t regret telling you this-but I’ve always liked your honest face.” He approached and leaned on the stub wall partition that fronted the counter. For a long moment he stood silently, examining the paint job on the top edge.
“George approached me once a year or so ago. I think it was when I stopped by his office to have the insurance changed on the new car. He said a friend of his was getting into the prescription-drug distributor’s business, and he wondered if there was anything I needed that I was having trouble getting now. He said that he could guarantee prices that would beat anyone’s.”
“He asked you that?”
Trombley nodded. “Yes, he did. I said no. I’ve got enough pharmaceutical salesmen who call on me now. I didn’t need one more, especially a friend of a friend, if you follow what I mean. That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? George Enriquez?” He flashed the denture smile again. “The ‘not necessarily related’ part?”
“He didn’t happen to mention who this distributor friend was, did he?”
Trombley’s smile disappeared. “No, he didn’t. And I guess I should be wishing about now that he had?”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call if you recall anything else, sir,” Estelle said.
“About George Enriquez, or about the drugs?”
“Both, sir.”
He nodded with satisfaction. “That’s what I thought.” He ambled after Estelle as she walked toward the front door. She waited for him to snap the dead bolt. “Give your husband my regards,” he said. He smiled, an expression that was almost kindly. “Tell him that I’m proud of what he’s doing.”
“He’s working with a good crew,” Estelle said.
“For the most part,” Trombley said. “You take care, now.” He nodded and closed the door before she had an opportunity to respond. But she knew what he meant, and as she walked out to the car, her heart felt heavy, like an old cinder block tied on the end of a stretched and frayed cord.
Chapter Thirty-two
“You look exhausted,” Francis said. “For three months, nobody in town so much as double-parks, and then all of a sudden the whole town dips into the funny water.” He frowned at Estelle, taking her chin in his hand so that he could turn her head gently this way and that.
Estelle opened her mouth wide as if waiting for the tongue depressor. “Ah.”
Francis laughed softly. “That’s just the way it goes, I guess,” he said. Estelle watched his handsome face as his eyes read hers. Hours and hours ago, during the late-night walk home after arresting Perry Kenderman,Padrino had given her one of his rare bits of advice, and so far, she’d done a good job of ignoring it. But she knew that Bill Gastner was right.
“What’s aching to come out?” her husband asked. The index and middle fingers of each hand rested on her temples, a featherlight pressure that prompted her to close her eyes. For a long time, she didn’t say anything, as if satisfied that her thoughts could simply flow through barriers of bone and tissue, to be absorbed by her husband’s fingertips.
“I’m that transparent, Oso?”
“Si.”
She reached up, sliding a hand around each of his wrists, glad that they were alone in the hospital hallway. Behind her husband, the door to radiology stood open, and she heard the abruptly truncated swish and snap as one of the technicians stabbed an X-ray film up into the light board for viewing. Quiet voices drifted out to them as the technician and radiologist conferred.
“My pictures are ready,” Francis said, but she didn’t release his wrists. If the bruised and battered college student waiting in the emergency room was lucky, the X-rays would show nothing more than a badly sprained ankle. That wasn’t a bad price to pay for falling asleep while driving on the interstate. Her car had drifted across the shoulder, then battered back and forth between the concrete overpass barriers like a pinball. “Can you wait a few minutes?” he asked.