Private Practices (36 page)

Ben laughed and settled into his chair, letting his flight bag rest near the wall behind him. “That's it,” he said. “That's it exactly.”

He got on splendidly with the pediatrician, who afterward offered to give him a tour of some of the hospital's special facilities. But he didn't have time, he demurred. If he missed his direct flight, he'd have a lousy trip home. The pediatrician sympathized and Ben said goodbye to him, had a few farewell moments with Claudia and left the hospital.

He managed to miss his plane quite nicely by telling his cabdriver after they were already a half-mile from the hospital that he had forgotten his flight bag. The driver turned back. Ben raced up to Claudia's room, searched uselessly for his bag, ran with Claudia to Hess's office and found the bag still in the corner where he had set it down, kissed Claudia hurriedly and then, as soon as she had left him at the elevator, returned slowly to his waiting cab.

The driver was discouraged. “It's getting close to rush hour,” he complained.

“Well, try,” Ben said. “That's all anyone can do, right?”

In the end, he missed his plane by six minutes and had to wait for the five-thirty. That one had a stopover in Pittsburgh, so that he didn't arrive back in New York until after ten-thirty. If Sidney was going to have had fatal spasms, he thought as he stepped off the plane, he would certainly have had them by now. But just in case, he would give him a few extra minutes. He went into the men's room and used the urinal. Afterward he dawdled in front of a newsstand, engaging the news dealer in conversation about the muggy weather. Then he hailed a cab to take him home.

His ability to plan and execute his moves with obsessive calm deserted him as soon as he was in his apartment building. Waiting for the elevator, his heart began to pound and, getting into it, he nearly closed the door on his fingers. Outside his apartment he fumbled with his keys and dropped them. He had to force himself to control his unsteady hands in order to pick up the keys and unlock the front door.

Inside, the TV was still blaring. He heard it with a shudder of annoyance and ran to Sidney's room to turn it off even before he backtracked and approached the bathroom door. Then, in the intense silence, he hesitated, perspiration coating his forehead.

Agitated, he stared at the key to the bathroom door. If Sidney were alive, he would be in a terrible predicament. He would actually have to kill him, injecting him with an overdose. And afterward, even if he told the police he had been trying to bring him out of a convulsion and, distraught, hadn't realized how much intravenous barbiturate he was administering, they would be exceedingly suspicious. But he would have no choice. His hands shaking, he felt momentarily terrified of touching the key. And then he grasped it and began to turn it.

Those were the only really bad moments. As soon as the door swung open, he went stonily tranquil again. Sidney was dead. He had swallowed his tongue and choked. He lay gray-faced on the bathroom floor, his arms and legs extended at asymmetrical angles, as if in the moment of his final convulsion, his limbs had danced. His long, skinny neck and arms were stiff, his legs not yet gone into rigor. He was so relieved that for a second he thought absurdly that he wished he could thank Sidney for making things easier for both of them. Then he smiled at the notion and grew serious, regarding Sidney's body with pride. Had he killed his brother? And done it so skillfully? It seemed so unlike him. So beyond his capabilities. And yet, although it was inexplicable and unaccountable, clearly it was true. He felt no remorse, only an enormous sense of accomplishment.

But there was still more that had to be accomplished, he reminded himself. And he hadn't much time. He ought to be calling the police within the next few minutes, and first he had to wipe off the silvery key and hide it someplace safe. Most likely the police wouldn't even think to ask whether the bathroom had an outside key, but in case they did, he wanted it secured in a spot where they would think it had long ago been tossed. Then he had to replace all the medicines and lotions he and Sidney had carried from the bathroom into the kitchen last night. And flush away the barbiturates Sidney had turned over to him. It had to appear as if Sidney, deeply anxious over the well-being of his wife and son, had sent him to St. Louis in the morning and only then decided, impulsively and recklessly, to attempt an abrupt withdrawal.

Of course, he would have ranged free in the apartment, he thought, taking a last look down at Sidney's body. He wouldn't have isolated himself in the hall bathroom. Still, it was logical that he would have died in there. He might have entered it after a last minute change of heart, a loss of courage or will, or a premonition that he might be about to have a convulsion. And then, alarmed and hoping against hope, he might have searched through the bathroom medicine cabinet for some forgotten barbiturates. That there would be footprints on the inside of the door, and possibly even clawing fingerprints as well, made sense too. Sidney might very well have closed the unlocked door accidentally and then, weak or dazed, been unable to let himself out. He would have kicked and clawed until his strength failed him.

Ben began on his chores, going about them methodically. Stepping gingerly around Sidney's body, he made rapid trips in and out of the bathroom, restocking the shelves of the cupboards and cabinets. He didn't worry about his fingerprints. Of course he would have handled all these objects. They were his, the contents of his own bathroom.

The only things he took care to wipe off and afterward handle with a towel were the key, which he placed deep down in a box of curtain rings, cup hooks and long-abandoned locks in the kitchen tool closet, and the barbiturate vials Sidney had given him last night. These he touched most cautiously, spilling the contents away down the toilet and then leaving the empty vials helter skelter in the bathroom.

At last, with the towel, he opened the medicine cabinet over the sink, letting its mirrored door swing ajar. And then, proud of himself, his work finished, he called the police.

They said they would be right over and while he waited for them to arrive, he called Naomi. The police might question him about the degree of his attachment to his sister-in-law. But perhaps they would be less prone to suspiciousness if the first person he called in his moment of shock and loss was the woman he had been engaged to at the time Sidney had moved in with him.

Naomi, startled awake, sounded uncomprehending and even a little angry at first. But moments later her voice was, as he had counted upon its being, alive with sympathy and the urge to succor. “Poor Ben. Oh, my darling. Oh, God. How terrible for you. What can I do? Is there anything I can do?”

“Come be with me,” he said. “I feel empty. Frightened. As if it were myself who had died.”

Perhaps, he thought as he waited for her acquiescence, the police would ask Naomi what she knew of his relationship to Sidney. He smiled to himself. Surely she would tell them her perceptions, would harp on what she had always considered his neurotic devotion to Sidney.

“I know I've hurt you cruelly,” he went on before she had a chance to speak. “But we'll talk about it later. Tomorrow. For now, please just come and be with me. I need you very badly.”

She said she'd dress, ask one of her neighbors to stay with Petey in case he awakened, and be over as soon as she could.

Two policemen, dispatched by radio, were at his door only moments later. He spoke to them in a voice that sounded breathless with shock. “I just got home. I called out to my brother. He didn't answer. I looked for him in his room. Then I found him. In the bathroom. Here. Dead.” Affecting a motionless paralysis, he pointed the way to the bathroom.

When the police went inside he waited outside in the hallway, as if to look once more upon his brother's body was too much of an anguish to be endured.

A few minutes later, the police emerged and one of them went downstairs to the car. The other spoke gently to Ben in the hallway. “Looks like suicide. All those empty pill bottles. We're going to have to call homicide. And have the ME take a look.”

Ben nodded, unsurprised, but right afterward assumed an offended look and said, “Suicide? Not my brother.”

“I'm afraid it could be,” the policeman replied softly.

Ben shut his eyes and said nothing more, deciding to save his breath and wit for the homicide people.

They arrived all too soon, several men from the forensic unit starting to explore Sidney's body with thermometers and syringes, determining how long he had been dead and drawing blood samples for the medical examiner, while two detectives searched in his room for a suicide note. Finding none, a gray-haired detective with wiry steel-wool eyebrows led Ben into the comparative calm of the living room and began questioning him. “You're a doctor, I understand. And your brother was one too?”

Ben felt wary. At first he answered the questions with mere nods or shakes of the head, as if too overcome with grief to reply more fully. But after a while he sensed he'd better elaborate. “My brother was a barbiturate addict,” he confessed haltingly, letting shame mingle with the grief in his voice.

“What do you think he died of, Doctor?”

“Withdrawal.”

“Not an OD?” The detective looked interested. “Couldn't he have been trying to take his life?”

Ben shook his head. “Not Sidney. No. He'd just gotten a new lease on life. His wife—well, they were separated but still very much involved with each other—his wife just gave birth to their first child.” He let his voice trail off.

The detective looked even more intrigued. He had round, fat cheeks into one of which he now popped an exploring tongue, pausing before he asked, “Was there anything else unusual about the past few days? Anything else that might have made your brother want to give up his habit suddenly?”

“Just the baby,” Ben said. Then he added, the words seeming to slip from his mouth, “And the suspension.”

The detective sat forward. “Yes?”

For a moment Ben chewed his lower lip, as if wishing he could withdraw the words he had just spoken. He looked at the detective unhappily. And then he said in a very quiet voice, “My brother's hospital privileges were revoked on Sunday.”

“I see. Because of his addiction?”

Ben nodded.

“Can you tell me about it?”

Slowly, he described Sidney's interview with Alithorn, and the detective drew out a notebook and pen. “I thought,” he concluded his account, “that in a way it was all for the best. Because afterward Sidney began to talk about withdrawal. Alithorn suggested that if he went into a detoxification clinic, he might let him back on staff.”

The detective, nodding again, asked for and made a note of Alithorn's full name.

“I never should have left him,” he said as the detective wrote.

“Why did you, Doctor?” The detective's eyes, looking up abruptly, were an intense blue under steel-wool brows.

“His wife gave birth prematurely. In St. Louis. My brother couldn't travel in his condition. He begged me to go out for the day and make sure his wife and son were in good hands. He said that assuming they were all right, he'd check into Downstate on Friday.”

“And you believed he wasn't contemplating withdrawal on his own?”

“Of course I believed that. He was taking over two thousand milligrams of barbiturates a day. Every medical man knows how dangerous barbiturate withdrawal can be.”

The detective, his expression unreadable, said, “Who'd you see in St. Louis?” His tongue went probing into his cheeks as he waited for Ben's reply.

“My sister-in-law. The baby. And a Dr. Ernest Hess. Head of the prematurity nursery.”

“Give me that name again,” the detective said, and wrote it down. Then, “I understood you to say earlier that you kept a very close watch over your brother,” he mused as he ceased writing. “That you never left him alone for more than a few hours at a stretch. How come you didn't get back here until close to midnight?”

Ben began telling him about how he had missed the four-thirty flight and as he spoke, he let his voice quiver with self-reproach. “If I'd been on time. Oh, God. If I'd been on time. If I hadn't missed the plane, he might still have been alive.”

His display of emotion seemed to affect the detective. He said considerately, “No. I don't think so. Did you examine the body?”

He shook his head.

“He seems to have been dead for quite a few hours.”

Ben slumped down onto the couch cushions and grew silent, his face deeply pained.

His years of keeping his thoughts to himself served him well. The detective, having to fill the gap in their interview, offered, “I saw your brother's room. All that stuff on the floor. I guess he wasn't exactly in his right mind.”

Ben began to feel more secure. But, he said, “Please,” in a quiet, hurt voice. “Please. My brother was a very renowned physician. A credit to the profession.”

The detective shrugged. “I'm sorry.” Then he asked briskly, “What about the deceased's wife? Does she know of the death yet?”

He shook his head again. “I haven't called her yet. I couldn't bring myself to do it. She and Sidney were very much in love.”

“Why'd they separate then?”

“He needed constant care. Constant supervision. It was too much to ask of any woman. Of anyone.”

“You did it,” the detective observed.

“That was different. He was my brother. No, more than a brother. More like a father.” To his surprise, Ben almost felt like crying. “He taught me everything I knew.” He supposed the thought of all he had learned from Sidney had somehow authentically saddened him. But how wonderful! Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he blew his nose loudly, while the detective looked away, embarrassed.

“Someone better notify the wife,” the detective muttered.