The broad, courtly, almost royal facade of the school’s medical center further added to the fantasy. I forgot for a moment where I was, so convincing was the allusion to a long-gone Europe, and I slowly entered the building’s courtyard embrace thoroughly impressed by what enough Rockefeller money could do.
Several minutes later, and several floors higher up, I didn’t even have to see Philip Hoolihan to understand Dr. Yancy’s subtle warning about his ineffability. His secretary’s attitude was enough.
“You have no appointment,” she stated flatly, her cold blue eyes contrasting sharply with a soft and luxuriant snow-white hairdo.
I had purposefully announced my name only, not my profession, hoping a show of diplomacy might stand me in good stead. “Dr. Milton Yancy just called. Perhaps Dr. Hoolihan hasn’t had a chance to tell you.”
She resisted using the phone to confirm that. “I seriously doubt it. What is the purpose of your visit?”
“I’m conducting a police investigation,” I reluctantly admitted, utterly convinced of where we were heading with this.
“You’re a policeman?” Her tone let me know just how pathetic she thought my plight to be.
“Yes.”
“May I see some identification?”
I inwardly sighed. Flashing an out-of-state badge was definitely not going to work here, meaning some twenty more minutes would be wasted while Norm Runnion was located and my Valkyrie interrogator satisfied. I decided to use her own methods against her. “I’ll present those to Dr. Hoolihan himself, who is waiting for me, no matter what you’ve been told.”
There was a long, electrically charged pause, during which I impassively returned her ice-cold glare. Finally, no doubt wishing it was my right eye, she stabbed a button on her intercom with the eraser end of her pencil. “Doctor, were you expecting a visit from the police?”
“Send him in.”
Her face darkened and she pointed to a door behind her, without an additional word.
Hoolihan’s office fit the architecture that surrounded it: vast, high-ceilinged, with dark wood-paneled walls and a long stretch of tall diamond-paned windows that reminded me of a captain’s cabin in an ancient man-of-war. The furniture was burnished mahogany, the desk lamp Tiffany, and the drapes and rugs enough to make Scarlett O’Hara weep with envy.
Parked behind the aircraft carrier-sized desk was the man himself-big, bald, and broad across the shoulders, with a craggy, impenetrably hard face, overshadowed by a pair of run-amok tufted white eyebrows.
“Show me the X-rays,” he ordered, indicating the gleaming field of wood before him.
I pulled them out silently and laid them out before him.
He picked them up one by one, swiveled around in his chair, and held them up to the windows behind him. Eventually, he put the last one down and fixed me with a hard, angry look. “What did this man die of?”
“A gunshot wound to the chest.”
His eyes wavered, but only for a second. “You’re not a Chicago cop.” It wasn’t a question.
“No, sir-I’m from Vermont.” I began to dig for my credentials, wondering what had tipped him off.
He waved me to be still. “I don’t care. Go see Kevin Shilly.”
I leaned over the desk and gathered up the negatives. “Who’s he?”
Hoolihan bristled. “Who are you looking for?”
“He’s the surgeon who did this?”
“Ask him.”
I refilled my large manila envelope. “Can you tell me-”
The old man placed both his hands on the desk, as if he was about to vault out of his chair. His face was red with fury. “No, I cannot. What Dr. Shilly may or may not have done is between you and him. He is no longer associated with this facility or this university and is, therefore, not my responsibility.”
“There was bad blood about his departure?”
Hoolihan turned to face the windows. “Good day.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” I said to the back of his head and left the office.
Normally, I would have chatted with the secretary a bit, trying to get a handle on Kevin Shilly’s obviously turbulent history here. But her loyalty to her boss had been made clear a mere three minutes earlier, and I wasn’t too hopeful. Other options would have been to drop by the administrative offices or to find another friendly face in the Orthopedic Department, but Milton Yancy’s words about medical hierarchies came back to me as if in warning. Chances were good that with a man like Hoolihan at the top, people would not be as free-spoken as I needed.
I took the elevator down to the lobby and located a pay phone instead.
“Runnion.”
“Hi, this is Joe Gunther.”
There was a chuckle at the other end. “Been mugged yet?”
“Only by bureaucrats. Can you put a name into your computer and see what comes up?”
“Sure. You hit something?”
“Maybe. Dr. Kevin Shilly-orthopedic surgeon.”
“Hold on.”
I waited ten minutes. Runnion’s voice, when he came back on, was almost apologetic. “We don’t have a thing. I found him in the phone book, though-office only; residence is unlisted.” He gave me an address on North Michigan Avenue.
“Would your files go back twenty years or more?”
“No, but there would’ve been a note to check the archives, along with a reference number.”
I thanked him, promising to give him an update as soon as I could, and then dialed Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
It took twenty minutes to get Dr. Yancy on the line, during which I received several malevolent mutterings for hogging the phone.
“Sorry-I was with a patient. Any luck with the affable Dr. Hoolihan?”
“You weren’t kidding. He gave me one name, without actually saying it was the guy I’m after. Kevin Shilly. Does that ring a bell?”
There was a long pause. I remembered wondering earlier if Yancy had pointed me to Hoolihan in the hopes the old man would say what Yancy could only silently suspect. I knew now I’d been right.
“I know of him,” he finally admitted.
“How?”
“It wasn’t front-page news or anything. He didn’t get in trouble legally. But he did get in trouble. Hoolihan threw him out, from what we heard through the grapevine.”
“He was the one you were thinking about when you mentioned young doctors chafing at the bit?”
“Yes, but I was only guessing.”
“So what else did the grapevine say?”
“He did something like what you described-collected some extra money for a risky procedure that didn’t pan out. I guess that was around ’72 or ’73. Hoolihan and the others at the top had ordered him not to do it, so they had just cause, but there was history there, too. I guess it wasn’t the first time-just the first time he got caught.”
“Shilly didn’t lose his license or get reprimanded?”
“Almost. That’s another reason Hoolihan still bears a grudge. Shilly was pretty political back then, trying to socialize medicine, kick over the old traditions, open the place up to poor neighborhood blacks. And he wasn’t publicity-shy; he had good contacts in the media. When he got canned, a deal was made. Hoolihan was to let it go; Shilly was to keep his mouth shut. End of story. It helped that the patient wasn’t one of the complainers, despite the operation’s failure. Shilly had totally charmed the old lady-so they say.”
“What did he do afterward?”
“In terms of gossip, he pretty much disappeared after his run-in with Hoolihan-did the storefront-practice bit for the disadvantaged for a couple of years, I guess, then decided to hang it up and go for the money. I hear he’s got a high-class private practice north of the river.”