“Tell me frankly, Doctor, couldn’t God have thought of some other way to protect us? Some other kind of warning system to tell us our bodies were in trouble?”
“You mean like an automatic reflex?”
“I mean something like a bell that goes off in our heads.”
“Then what happens when you sever an artery?” said Amfortas. “Would you put on the tourniquet right away, or put up with the bell while you finished your seven no-trump redoubled? And what if you’re a child? No, it just wouldn’t work.”
“Then why couldn’t our bodies have been made impervious to injury?”
“Ask God.”
“I’m asking you.”
“I don’t know the answer,” said Amfortas.
“So what is it that you do in your laboratory, Doctor?”
“Try to learn how to shut off pain when we don’t need it.”
Kinderman waited, but the neurologist said no more. “Eat your soup,” the detective gently prodded him. “It’s getting cold. Like the love of God.”
Amfortas took a spoonful, and then put the spoon down. It made a fragile little pewtery sound against the plate. “I’m not hungry,” he said. He looked at his watch. “I just remembered something,” he said. “I ought to be going.” Then he looked up at Kinderman and stared.
“It’s a wonder you believe in God at all,” said Kinderman, “what with all your knowledge of the workings of the brain.”
“Mister Kinderman?” The waiter was back. “Mister McCooey looked terribly busy up there. I thought I hadn’t ought to bother him. I’m sorry.”
The detective looked blocked. “No, interrupt him,” he said.
“But you said it wasn’t really important.”
“It isn’t. Interrupt him all the same. I’m crotchety. I never make sense. I’m old.”
“Well, okay, sir.” The waiter looked doubtful, but he walked toward the steps that led upstairs.
Kinderman returned his attention to Amfortas. “Don’t you think it’s all neurons, all this stuff we call a soul?”
Amfortas checked his watch. “I just remembered something,” he said. “I ought to be going.”
Kinderman looked puzzled. Am I crazy? He just did that already. “Where were you?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?” said Amfortas.
“Never mind. Listen, stay a little while. I have still some more things on my mind. They torment me. Won’t you stay another minute? Besides, it’s impolite to go now. I haven’t finished with my tea. Is this civilized? Witch doctors wouldn’t even do this. They would stay and enlarge shrunken heads to pass the time while the senile old white man kept talking and drooling. This is manners. Am I being too forward on this subject? Tell me frankly. People tell me all the time that I’m oblique and I’m trying to correct this, although possibly too much. Is this true? Be honest!”
A pleasant expression came over Amfortas’ face. He relaxed and said, “What is it I can help you with, Lieutenant?”
“It’s this brain-versus-mind chazerei,” said Kinderman. “For years I’ve been meaning to consult some neurologist about it, but I’m terribly shy about meeting new people. In the meantime, here you are. My cup of matzoh soup runneth over. Meantime, tell me, are the things we call feelings and thoughts nothing more than some neurons that are firing in the brain?”
“You mean, are they the very same fact as those neurons?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think?” asked Amfortas.
Kinderman looked overly wise and nodded. “I think they’re the same,” he said almost sternly.
“Why is that?”
“Why not?” the detective countered. “Who needs to reach out for this thing called a soul when the brain is clearly doing all these things? Am I right?”
Amfortas leaned forward a little. Some nerve had been touched. He spoke warmly. “Suppose that you’re looking at the sky,” he said intently. “You see a great homogeneous expanse. Is that the very same fact as a pattern of electrical discharges that run between wires in the brain? You look at a grapefruit. It produces a circular image in your sense field. But the cortical projection of this circle in your occipital lobe isn’t circular. It occupies a space that’s ellipsoidal. So how can these things be the very same fact? When you think of the universe, how do you contain it in your brain? Or, for that matter, the objects in this room? They’re shaped differently than anything in your brain, so how can they become those things in your brain? There are several other mysteries you ought to consider. One is the ‘executive’ connected with thought. Every second you’re bombarded with hundreds, maybe thousands, of sense impressions, but you filter out all but those immediately necessary to accomplish your ends of the moment, and those countless decisions are made every second and in less than a fraction of a second. What’s making that decision? What’s making the decision to make that decision? Here’s one other thing to think about, Lieutenant: the brains of schizophrenics are often better put together structurally than the brains of people without mental problems, and some people with most of their brain removed continue to function as themselves.”
“But what about this scientist with his electrodes?” said Kinderman. “He touches a certain brain cell and the person hears a voice from long ago, or he experiences a certain emotion.”
“That’s Wilder Penfield,” the neurologist responded. “But his subjects always said that whatever he produced in them with the electrodes wasn’t a part of them; it was something being done to them.”
“I am astounded,” said the detective, “to be hearing such notions from a man of science.”
“Wilder Penfield doesn’t think the mind is brain,” said Amfortas. “And neither does Sir John Eccles. He’s a British physiologist who won the Nobel Prize for his brain studies.”
Kinderman’s eyebrows rose. “Is that so?”
“Yes, that is so. And if mind is brain, then the brain has some capacities totally unnecessary for the physical survival of the body. I mean things like wonder and self-awareness. And some of us go so far as to believe that consciousness itself isn’t centered in the brain. There’s some reason to suspect that the whole human body, including the brain, as well as the external world itself, is all spatially situated inside consciousness. And one final thought for you, Lieutenant. It’s a couplet.”
“I love them.”
“I love this one in particular,” said Amfortas. “ ‘If the mass of the brain were the mass of the mind, the bear would be shooting at my behind.’ ” And with this, the neurologist bent to his soup and began to eat it hungrily.
From the corner of his eye, the detective saw McCooey approaching the table. “My sentiments exactly,” he said to Amfortas.
“What?” Amfortas stared over his spoon at the detective.
“I was playing devil’s advocate a little. I agree with you—mind is not brain. I am certain.”
“You’re a very strange man,” said Amfortas.
“Yes, you said that already.”
“You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?”
Kinderman looked up at McCooey. He was wearing his rimless glasses and looked studious. He still wore the colors of his school: a navy blue blazer and gray flannel pants. “Richard McCooey, meet Doctor Amfortas,” said Kinderman, gesturing toward the doctor. McCooey reached down and shook hands.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said.
“Same here.”
McCooey turned back to the detective. “What is it?” He glanced at his watch.
“It’s the tea,” said Kinderman.
“The tea?”
“What kind are you using these days?”
“It’s Lipton’s. Same as always.”
“It tastes somehow different.”
“Is that what you wanted to see me about?”
“Oh, I could talk about a hundred trivialities and whatnots, but I know you’re a very busy man. I’ll let you go.”
McCooey glanced coolly at the table. “What did
you order?” he asked.
“This is it,” the detective told him.
McCooey eyed him without expression. “This is a table for six.”
“We’re just leaving.”
McCooey turned away without a word and left.
Kinderman looked at Amfortas. He’d finished the soup. “Very good,” said Kinderman. “Your mother will get a good report.”
“Have you any other questions?” Amfortas asked him. He felt at his coffee cup. It was cool.
“Succinylcholine chloride,” said Kinderman. “You use it at your hospital?”
“Yes. I mean, not me personally. But it’s used in electroshock therapy. Why do you ask?”
“If someone in the hospital wanted to steal some, could he do it?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He could lift it off a drug cart when no one was looking. Why are you asking?”
Kinderman again deflected his question. “Then someone who is not from the hospital could do it?”
“If he knew what to look for. He would have to know the schedules for when the drug is needed and when it’s delivered.”
“Do you work in Psychiatric at times?”
“At times. Is this what you brought me here to ask, Lieutenant?” Amfortas was drilling the detective with his eyes.
“No, it isn’t,” said Kinderman. “Honest. God’s truth. But as long as we were here…” He let it trail off. “If I asked at the hospital, they would naturally want to look good and insist that it couldn’t be done. You understand? As we were speaking, I realized you would tell me the truth.”
“That’s very kind of you, Lieutenant. Thank you. You’re a very nice man.”
Kinderman felt something reaching out from him. “Likewise and ditto by me,” he acknowledged. Then he smiled with recollection. “You know ‘ditto’? It’s a word that I love. It really is. It reminds me of Here Comes Mister Jordan. Joe Pendleton said it all the time.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Do you like that movie?”
“Yes.”
“So do I. I am a patron of schmaltz, I’ll admit it. But such sweetness and innocence, these days—well, it’s gone. What a life,” sighed Kinderman.
“It’s a preparation for death.”
Once again Amfortas had surprised the detective. He appraised him warmly now. “This is true,” said Kinderman. “We must speak some other time of these things.” The detective searched the tragic eyes. They were brimming with something. What? What was it? “You’re through with your coffee?” asked Kinderman.
“Yes.”
“I’ll stay behind and get the check. You were kind to spend this time, but I know you’re very busy.” Kinderman reached out his hand. Amfortas took it and squeezed it firmly, then stood up to go. For a moment he lingered, staring quietly at Kinderman. “The succinylcholine,” he said at last. “It’s the murder. Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Amfortas nodded, then he walked away. Kinderman watched him threading through the tables. Then at last he was up the steps and gone. The detective sighed. He called for the waiter, paid the check and walked up three flights to McCooey’s office. He found him there talking to an accountant. McCooey looked up at him, inscrutable behind his glasses. “Is it something to do with the catsup?” he said tonelessly.
Kinderman beckoned to him. McCooey stood up and came over. “The man at my table,” Kinderman said. “You got a good look at his face?”
“Pretty good.”
“You’ve never seen him before?”
“I don’t know. I see thousands of people in my stores every year.”
“You didn’t see him in the line for confession yesterday?”
“Oh.”
“Did you see him?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
McCooey thought. Then he bit his lower lip and shook his head. “When you’re waiting for confession, you tend not to look at the other people. You’re mostly looking down and reviewing your sins. If I saw him, I sure don’t remember it,” he said.
“But you did see the man in the windbreaker.”
“Yes. I just don’t know if that was him.”
“Could you swear that it wasn’t?”
“No. But I really don’t think so.”
“You don’t.”
“No, I don’t. I really doubt it.”
Kinderman left McCooey’s office and walked to the hospital. Once there, he walked into the gift shop and scrutinized the paperback books. He found Scruples and he plucked it from the shelf with a shake of his head. He turned to a page at random and read it. He will devour this immediately, he concluded, and he looked for something else to tide the Jesuit over until his release. He eyed The Hite Report on Men, but then selected a Gothic romance instead.
Kinderman walked to the counter with the books. The clerk eyed the titles. “I’m sure she’s going to love these,” she said.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
Kinderman looked for some comical trinket to add to the treasure. The counter was crammed with them. Then something caught his attention. He stared, unblinking.
“Something else for you today?”
The detective didn’t hear her. He picked up a plastic packet from a box. It held a set of pink barrettes, each bearing the marking “Great Falls, Virginia.”
8
Georgetown General’s psychiatric department was housed in a sprawling wing beside Neurology and was divided into two main sections. One was the disturbed ward. Here were quartered patients who were prone to fits of violence, such as paranoids and active catatonics. Among the maze of hallways and patients’ rooms in this ward, there were also padded cells. Security was tight. The other section was the so-called open ward. The patients here were harmless to themselves and to others. Most patients were aged and were there because of varying stages of senility. There were also depressives and schizophrenics, as well as alcoholics, post-stroke patients and victims of Alzheimer’s disease, which produced a state of premature senility. Among the cases there were also a handful of patients who were long-term passive catatonics. Totally withdrawn from their environment, they spent their days in immobility, often with a fixed, bizarre expression on their faces. They sometimes roused themselves to speech and were extremely suggestible, taking orders which they followed to the letter. In the open ward, security was nonexistent. The patients, in fact, were permitted to check out for the day or even for a number of days. This required only the signing of an order form by one of the doctors or, more often, the nurse on duty, or even the social worker, at times.
“Who signed her out?” asked Kinderman.
“Nurse Allerton. As it happens, she’s on duty right now. She’ll be here in just a second,” said Temple.
They were sitting in his office, a narrow little cubbyhole just around the corner from the nurse’s station in the open ward. Kinderman gazed around at the walls. They were covered with degrees and photographs of Temple. Two of the photos saw him posed in a boxer’s crouch. He looked young, nineteen or twenty, and he wore the gloves and T-shirt and headgear of collegiate boxers. His stare was menacing. All the other photos showed Temple with his arm around a pretty woman, each one different from all the others, and in each he was smiling into the camera. Kinderman dropped his gaze to the desk, where he saw a chipped, green sculpture of Excalibur, the sword of Arthurian legend. Imprinted on its base were the words TO BE DRAWN IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. Tacked against the side of the desk was the motto “An Alcoholic Is Someone Who Drinks More Than His Doctor.” Cigarette ash was on scattered papers. Kinderman’s gaze flicked over to Temple, avoiding the top of the psychiatrist’s trousers, where his fly was unzipped. “I cannot believe,” the detective said, “that this woman was allowed to go out unattended.”
The elderly woman from the dock had been traced. Upon leaving the gift shop, Kinderman had taken her photo around to every charge desk, beginning at the
hospital’s first floor. On the fourth, in Psychiatry, she was recognized as a patient in the open ward. Her name was Martina Otsi Lazlo. She was a transfer from the District Hospital where she had been for forty-one years. Her ailment had been classified at first as a mildly catatonic form of dementia praecox, a type of senility that begins in adolescence. The diagnosis continued, although the terminology had changed, until Lazlo’s transfer to Georgetown General when it opened in 1970.
“Yeah, I looked at her history,” said Temple, “and I knew it was cockeyed right away. Something else was going on.” He lit a cigarillo and tossed the match carelessly toward an ashtray on the desk. It missed and landed with a pat on an open case history of a schizophrenic. Temple eyed the miss glumly. “Hell, nobody knows what they’re doing anymore. She’d been at District so long that nobody knew the first thing about her. They’d lost her early records. Then I took one look at her making these dingbat movements all the time. With her hands. She’d move them like this,” said Temple, beginning to illustrate for Kinderman, but the detective interrupted him.
“Yes, I’ve seen them,” said Kinderman quietly.
“Oh, you have?”
“She is now in our holding ward.”
“Good for her.”
Kinderman immediately took a dislike to him. “What is the meaning of the movements?” he asked.
A light rapping at the door interrupted the answer. “Come in,” called Temple. An attractive young nurse in her twenties walked in. “Do I pick ’em?” asked Temple with a leer at the detective.
“Yes, Doctor?”
Temple looked at the nurse. “Miss Allerton, you signed out Lazlo Saturday?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Lazlo. You signed her out Saturday, correct?”
The nurse looked puzzled. “Lazlo? No, I didn’t.”
“What’s this then?” asked Temple. He picked up an order form from his desk and began to read its contents aloud to the nurse. “ ‘Subject: Lazlo, Martina Otsi. Action: Permission to visit with brother in Fairfax, Virginia, until March twenty-second.’ ” Temple then handed the order to the nurse. “It’s dated Saturday and signed by you,” he said.