"No.”
"Or anytime that night?" Brown said.
"No.”
"Mention a letter she may have received?”
"No.”
"What time did you leave her, Doctor?”
“Around ten.”
“Where'd you go?”
“Straight home.”
"Dr. Paine, could we go back to that first time you had dinner together? You said it was at the deli across the street. Could you tell us a little more about that, please?”
Paine sighed heavily.
"I was at the hospital late one night," he said, "and so was Mary. I ran into her coming out of the nurses' lounge, in tears. I asked her if something was wrong, and she said, "No, nothing," but she kept crying so hard I thought she might be hysterical. It was plain to me that whatever it was, she didn't want to discuss it there in the hospital, so I suggested we go across the street for a cup of coffee.
She readily accepted. Actually, she seemed relieved that she could talk it over with someone. What it was ... there was this elderly woman on the ward, Mrs. Rosenberg, Ruth Rosenberg, I believe it was. She was very seriously ill, a cancer patient, as I told you, who had perhaps two or three weeks to live, it was that bad. She wasn't a very nice person. I didn't know her before she got sick, of course, she may have been an angel, who knows? But she was definitely unpleasant now, moaning every minute of the day, snapping at doctors and nurses alike, a totally obnoxious human being.
You'd stop in her room just to be pleasant, ask how she was doing, for example, and she'd yell "How do you think I'm doing? Look at me! Does it look like I'm doing fine?" It was hard to have sympathy for a person like that, even though her situation was grave. Or a nurse would bring in her pain med, and she'd yell "It's about time! Where the hell have you been?" A most difficult woman.
I wasn't the physician who'd prescribed her medication, I'm not quite sure what it was now, probably some: sort of morphine derivative, most likely MS Confin every six hours. That would have been usual in such a case, one of the morphine sulfates. When Mary told me about the woman, she said she couldn't stand her shrieks of pain any longer, her moaning all day long, the woman was a human being and one of God's creatures, we should be able to do something to ease her suffering. Yes, I remember now.
She was on a Duragesic patch as well, absorbing Fentanyl all day long, probably fifty, sixty micrograms an hour, plus the morphine, of course.
Mary thought Mrs. Rosenberg should be getting the morphine dose every four hours instead of the prescribed six. She discussed this with the woman's doctor, told him she was in no danger of becoming an addict, she was going to die in a few weeks, anyway, couldn't they please, in the name of God, increase the regularity? The doctor told Mary he thought Mrs. Rosenberg was going for secondary gain. Wanted them to feel sorry for her. Wanted more attention from them. Mary said, "So why not? What's wrong with a little attention? Her family's abandoned her, nobody comes to see her, she just lies in bed all day, moaning in pain, begging for medication. What on earth is wrong with giving her what she so desperately needs?" Well, the doctor told Mary he might be willing to prescribe an additional milligram in the regular six-hour dose, which of course was minimal, a token gesture. But he flatly refused to medicate the woman every four hours.
Mary was furious.
She told all this to me over hamburgers and coffee in the deli. I promised I'd talk to the doctor in the morning, see what I could do.”
Paine sighed again.
"But by morning, Mrs. Rosenberg was dead.”
“Who was the doctor?" Brow asked.
"I've deliberately avoided using his name," Paine said.
"If Mary harbored any ill feelings ...”
"I'm sure she didn't, she wasn't that sort of person. In fact, I did finally talk to him about denying medication, which I consider stupid, by the way, and he saw the error of his ways.”
“In any case ...”
"Excuse me, sir.”
The waitress who'd brought their beverages was standing by the table again, a leather folder in her hand. "Whenever you're ready, sir," she said. "And sir?”
“Yes, Betsy?”
"Your wife just called. Said not to forget her racket that was restrung.”
"Thank you, Betsy," Paine said, and signed the check.
The detectives said nothing until he'd handed the leather folder back to her and she'd walked away. Then Brown said, "The doctor's name, sir?”
“Winston Hall," Paine said.
"So on the one hand," Brown said, "we got the man heading the ward rhapsodizing about Mary, sweetest woman in the world, oh dear, how I will miss her, spreading light and joy everywhere she walked, singing to all the patients, but he forgets to mention she's breaking his balls about medication! She probably hated his guts for letting Mrs. Rosenberg die in pain.”
He was behind the wheel. Whenever he got agitated, he drove somewhat recklessly. Carella hoped he wouldn't run over any old ladies.
"And on the other hand, we got another doctor who's seeing a woman not his wife sometimes twice a month," Brown said. "Makes no never mind to me she's a nun. Far as I'm concerned, he's married and seeing another woman. On a Saturday night, the last time I A married man!”
"Red light ahead," Carella said.
"I see it. Another thing, he knew he went too far," Brown said.
"That's why he clammed up all at once.”
"It wasn't the place to pursue it, anyway," Carella said.
"I know that. Otherwise I'd've jumped in. Do I look shy?”
"Oh, yes. Timid, in fact. We may have to put him in the box later.
Meanwhile, all we've got is a man who found a nun attractive and won't admit it to himself.”
“Or to his wife, either, I'll bet," Brown said.
"You're beginning to sound, like my mother," Carella said.
"And what's the matter with that Hall jackass, anyway? How's it any skin off his nose he gives the old lady an extra dose? She's gonna die, anyway, am I right?”
"Watch the road, Artie I”
"Letting an old lady die in pain that way.”
"Artie ...”
"I see it. Never once mentioned he and Mary had a little contretemps back then, did he? Way he tells it, everything was sweetness and light on the ward, Mary flitting around like Sally Field, never mind she could blow her stack when she wanted to, am I right?”
“Artie, that was a baby carriage.”
“That's okay, I didn't hit it, did I?”
“You came damn close.”
"We oughta talk to that man again. We also oughta run down to Philly, talk to Mary's brother too damn busy to bury her.”
"Philly's closed on Wednesdays," Carella said, making reference to one of the countless Philadelphia jokes in the repertoire, something the stand-up comic Vincent Cochran might have appreciated, provided he wasn't still asleep at twelve-fifteen in the afternoon. It was nine-fifteen A.M. in California.
Carella wondered what time Sister Carmelita Diaz had got home from Rome yesterday.
"Lady named Anna Hawley waiting upstairs for you," Sergeant Murchison said.
Carella didn't know anybody named Anna Hawley. "Me?" he said.
"You," Murchison said.
The muster room of the Eight-Seven was unusually quiet that Wednesday afternoon. Murchison sat behind the high mahogany muster desk like a priest behind an altar, reading the morning paper, bored to tears because the phone hadn't rung in ten minutes. Across the room, a man from Maintenance and Repair one of the two who'd been here last Friday, when the guy went ape shit in the cage upstairs was checking out the walkie-talkies on the wall rack because they weren't recharging properly. The air conditioner he and his partner had fixed was now functioning, but barely. Murchison was sweating profusely in his short-sleeved uniform shirt.
"She say about what?" Carella asked.
"The dead nun," Murchison said, and went back to his paper.