I closed the catalogue and straightened my back. “You’ve been a scholar and a gentleman, Michael. Can I borrow this?”
“Sure-you kidding? You’ve just justified my keeping the whole mess.”
I went home first, instead of back to the office. Although it was only mid-afternoon and I needed to know if the dozen or so feelers we had out had snagged anything, I needed a little peace and quiet and the chance to see if I could make any headway on the Articu-Tech lead.
I sat down in a lumpy, ancient, but very comfortable leather armchair nestled in the embrace of one of the apartment’s three bay windows. Besides my bed, this is where I spent the majority of my time at home. The light was good, the curved enclosure allowed me to surround myself with a table, a bookcase, a reading lamp, and a phone, all within equal reach, and I could also look up when the whim required and cast an eye across most of my domain.
I’d lived in this apartment for more years than I could recall. It was old and not dressed up by any means, but with the odd grace note that told of an earlier splendor: panes of leaded glass here and there, dark wood wainscoting throughout, slightly uneven, trowel-applied plaster on the walls. From the outside, these subtleties had been flattened into submission by a long-gone remodeler with little money and no taste, who’d converted a once-majestic Victorian into a three-floor apartment building. Presumably, the gingerbread, the fancy ironwork, and the broad, shady porches that had once given the building its flair had been condemned as too much to keep up. Their removal had left a forlorn blandness behind.
But the innards-especially the top floor, where I lived, and which had been the least touched of all-had retained the soul of that earlier gentility. I’d done little to help the situation, admittedly. I had no interest in interior decorating. But over the years, the house and I had blended somewhat, so that my garage-sale furnishings probably fit in better than the antiques that had once lived here. Also, there were my books and the shelves that supported them, both of which helped bridge the cultural gap between the building’s highborn beginnings and my own humble tastes. Reflecting a lifetime of eclectic interests, the books rested everywhere, from proper bookcases that lined almost every wall, to tabletops and counters, windowsills and closets. Among them all was a battered portable television set that was turned on during my gloomiest moments, when other mental support systems had crashed; but the books were my best company, along with the classical music I would play gently in the background when I read.
I parked Michael Brook’s catalogue on my lap, open at the masthead, and placed the phone before me.
Simply dialing the number listed as the Articu-Tech headquarters proved too optimistic by far, as Michael had warned me it would be. The receptionist answering identified the company as a computer software company, stated she’d never heard of Articu-Tech, and maintained she’d been answering this number for the past ten years.
At first, Directory Assistance was no help, either. They didn’t list the company or the man identified in the catalogue as its CEO and president. They also had nothing for the vice president. The treasurer, however, was listed, or at least someone with the same name.
It was not a man’s voice, though, that answered the phone, but a woman’s, tired and blurry. The treasurer was known to her-in fact, he’d walked out on her eighteen years earlier, right after the company had gone belly-up. That had left her with a big house, a fancy car, and a lot of unpaid bills. She had no idea where he was, but it was far enough away that they’d never been able to slap a subpoena on him, and she didn’t give a damn any more, anyhow.
I commiserated with her, lending an ear to her tale of economic disintegration, before gently turning the conversation to the people he’d worked with. It was a long time ago, she stressed, but there had been one guy-Hank Broca-she still saw on the street every once in a blue moon. Maybe I could find him.
I did, again through the operator-or more precisely, I found his wife, who gave me his work number.
“Articu-Tech?” Broca repeated back to me. “Wow. I haven’t heard that name in a while. I worked for ’em, all right-more like a summer job, for the amount of time it lasted.”
“Oh?” I said, trying to sound as encouraging as possible.
But Hank Broca didn’t need much prompting. “Well, all right, maybe it was a year, but time flies when you’re playing fast and loose, the way they did. Not that I knew that when I joined up. But, you know, fresh out of graduate school, full of hopes-Christ, I had no idea what they were up to.”
“What was that, Mr. Broca?”
“Hank. I still don’t know everything. I just know it put us all out of work. You gotta remember, of course, it was the go-go sixties. Companies like Articu-Tech were a dime a dozen; every engineer with a design for a hip, knee, wrist, or whatever hung out a shingle and made a grab for a million bucks. No surprise most of the companies went broke, and no surprise most of the designs didn’t hold up and that the feds came down hard.”
“Was the Articu-Tech knee any good?”
There was a stunned silence, and I immediately regretted my question. “Which one?”
I flipped to the right page and read the catalogue number to him.
“Oh. That one was okay. That was more an adaptation than a true design; the Germans had put one out like it years before.”
“What did you do for Articu-Tech?”
“I’m a mechanical engineer-was for them, too, a cheap one. I ain’t so cheap no more.” He laughed with great self-contentment.
“Did you work on this particular knee?”
For the first time, I sensed caution on his part. He had not, so far, even asked me why I was calling, nor had I had a real chance to tell him. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’m a policeman up in Vermont. We’ve just dug up a twenty-year old skeleton with that particular knee implant, and I need to put a name to the skeleton.”
The caution vanished as quickly as it had arrived. “No shit. Really? That’s amazing. You know what I thought at first?”
“What’s that?”
“I thought you were a lawyer representing some poor slob with a sour implant. You know how people get: As soon as something like that goes wrong, they forget about the ten years of pain-free activity it gave them, and they try to sue you because they jumped off a ladder one too many times and screwed up the works. It ain’t like a real knee-we tell ’em that from the start. You got to take care of it.”
“Mr. Broca, I don’t want to tie you up too long, but I was wondering how I could find out who bought that particular knee.”
“Please-Hank. Boy, that’s a tall order.”
I waited for more, but nothing came. “Did you keep in touch with any of the people you worked with back then? Maybe someone in sales?”
He laughed again. “Hey, I know. Give me that lot number again. There was one guy-a lawyer. I always thought he was about the only straight shooter among them. He was real twitchy about lawsuits, although I never heard of one being filed against Articu-Tech. I’ll give him a buzz and see what I can find out. You got a phone number?”
“I’m calling from home at the moment. Maybe I better give you my office number.”
“No, no. Sit tight. This’ll only take a few minutes. We’re not great friends, but I know where to find this guy. I’ll call you right back.”
I gave him the number and waited. He was true to his word; ten minutes later, he called back.
“Told you-back in a flash. There were three pieces in that lot, and all of ’em were sold in Chicago.”
I was amazed. “The lawyer knew that?”