Brook stared at me for a long moment without moving. “Why was the knee put in?” he finally asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
He turned his gaze toward the window and scratched his whiskered cheek absentmindedly. “Huh. Did Nora Gold-or Hillstrom, for that matter-notice if any other kind of surgical procedure had been done on the leg?”
“They didn’t mention it if they did. I looked at the thing and it seemed clean as a whistle, except for the fancy metalwork. Why?”
“Just kicking a few ideas around in my head. What about the general condition of the guy. Could they tell if he’d been healthy, or suffering from hemophilia or TB?”
“No; in fact, Gold’s guess was he was a jock-a runner, a ballet dancer. She even hypothesized he’d had a bit of an ego, which further helped to keep him trim.”
He chuckled at that. “So, the ego’s in the bones. I always wondered. Look, let’s assume she’s right-that he was a perfectly healthy, normal specimen. That means the knee was a result of trauma. Now, normally, a patient comes in with his knee shattered, we open it up, clean it out, and let it sit for a few days, watching and treating for infection, which is almost a given in those cases. Then, we might even fuse the joint temporarily while we scratch our heads about the next move. To make a long story short, the guy’s left dangling for quite a while before we finally decide to slip him a metal knee, assuming that’s what we opt for. Then, we cut a little here, drill a little there, dab on a bunch of cement, and put the whole thing together.”
“The point is, by the time that happens, the infection-fighting stage-as a result of the wound, that is-is over, so there’s no need for antibiotics in the cement.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and gave me a satisfied look.
“That may mean something to you, Mike, but it don’t mean squat to me.”
He laughed loudly, drawing stares from the other table and giggles from the counter servers. “Right, right. I guess it wouldn’t. The point is, the only justification for a surgeon to apply a cement mixed with antibiotics is because he slapped the joint in right off the bat, with the wound still fresh. Very jazzy thing to do-also a bit foolish, for my money. Nowadays, with all those hungry lawyers running around, you’d have to have your head examined.”
“Those bones were twenty years old.”
He grew animated with interest. “The bonanza years. Between 1965 and 1975, there were about two hundred and fifty different knee designs out there. Everybody with a slide rule and a lathe was cranking them out. Then the FDA got twitchy and brought down the hammer. You wouldn’t have a picture of the thing, would you?”
I smiled at his enthusiasm, and my own good fortune. I opened the manila envelope Nora Gold had prepared for me and slid out the glossies of the knee assembly.
Brook studied them intently. “Can’t say I recognize it; probably built by one of the companies that went under. Big son of a gun-no wonder the metal detector sniffed it out.”
I was going to ask him how he knew about the detector, then remembered the newspaper. “They don’t make them that big anymore?”
“They do-I’m not crazy about the hinged style, but there’re plenty of ’em around, mostly made of a cobalt, chrome, molybdenum alloy.” He put the photos down. “They used to make airplane turbine blades out of that stuff in the late forties.”
I pulled the slip of paper Nora Gold had given me out of my pocket. “These numbers were on the knee. They mean anything to you?”
He glanced at them. “Not offhand; probably a catalogue number followed by a lot number. Companies put these on for their own benefit, using patients as guinea pigs, in a way. If the implant fails, they get it back, check those two numbers, and trace it back to its origin to find out why it crapped out. They’re always fooling with one aspect or another, changing alloy mixes or designs.”
“Can you tell who the manufacturer was?” I asked hopefully.
He stuck a lower lip out and I expected the worst. “Don’t see why not,” he said, surprising me. “See the first number, the one with the 03 after the hyphen? That’s probably the catalogue number. Generally, the first digit or two of the catalogue number identifies the product-in this case an artificial-knee assembly. Each company has a different product identifier so their device won’t be confused with another company’s. All we need to do is find the manufacturer’s catalogue in which this number stands for knee assemblies.”
I couldn’t keep the skepticism from my voice. “Won’t that mean locating the twenty-year-old catalogues of all two hundred and fifty manufacturers?”
He pushed himself up out of his chair, completely unruffled. “No problem. I’ve got ’em-all the way back to 1948.”
I stood also. “Every catalogue?”
He laughed at my expression. “Yup. Knees, hips, elbows, wrists, ankles-you name it. They’re just like any other catalogue you get in the mail. Don’t ask me why, but I never throw ’em away-kept every one I ever received.”
He led the way down the hall, detailing the mania that had driven him to save volume upon volume of useless literature, but I was only half listening. My mind was already leaping ahead to petitioning Brandt for travel papers for wherever this kneecap factory might be.
I should have curbed my enthusiasm. Michael Brook’s description of his collection paled by comparison to the real thing. He had an entire room dedicated to it, lined with bookcases and piled with cardboard boxes. There were medical journals, books, magazines, and ream upon ream of catalogs for everything under the medical sun.
I froze on the threshold, daunted by the number of days I thought I’d be spending here, and already convinced the search would be fruitless.
Brook, however, didn’t even pause. He went straight to a particular shelf and beckoned me to join him. “All right, this shelf holds catalogues from about twenty years ago, give or take five. You start from one end and I’ll start from the other. The trick is to check the contents for knee replacements, or anything having to do with knees, go to that part of the catalogue, and see if the first two digits of the first item match what you’ve got. If they don’t, then you know you’ve got the wrong company. If you get a match, then all we have to do is concentrate on that one company’s catalogues. Shouldn’t take over half an hour.”
To my relief, he was right-even pessimistic. Twenty minutes later, he slapped a single catalogue on the wooden table in the center of the room. “There you go-Articu-Tech, 1969, located in Boston. ’Course that’s good news/bad news.”
“Why?” I asked as I opened the catalogue and flipped to the right page.
“Because while Boston’s nearby, Articu-Tech’s out of business. Has been for years.”
I pulled Nora Gold’s photo back out of the manila envelope and laid it next to the glossy black-and-white illustration before me. They were one and the same. The sense of victory I felt completely obliterated any gloom I might have felt from Michael’s “bad news.” To me, seeing that knee assembly was like finding a long-lost murder weapon. I felt I was on a roll, as I had since I’d left Burlington, and indeed, as I’d been hoping I would be since we’d found the unmarked grave.
I flipped back to the front of the catalogue and looked at the masthead. There was an address, along with the names of three people: the CEO/president, the vice president in charge of sales, and the treasurer. I looked up at Brook, who was beaming like a proud parent. “All right, assuming I find one of these people, or someone else who could help me, and assuming they still have all their records, would the lot number show me who bought this particular knee?” I tapped the photo Gold had taken.
Michael shrugged. “Maybe, but probably not. It might tell you who sold it, though. Articu-Tech was pretty big in its day and had its own sales force. The lot-number files should indicate which direction the knee went. Then you’d probably have to canvass the hospitals or surgeon’s offices that particular salesman covered to find your specific knee. It shouldn’t be all that bad, though. Remember, with all those assemblies flooding the market, no one of them was a runaway best-seller. Individual lot numbers usually covered only a few units.”