Sara Paretsky - Sisters on the Case

‘‘He’ll be here tonight making evening rounds. If I see him-’’

‘‘You find him, you hear me?’’ He punctuated every word with a pointing forefinger.

‘‘I’ll tell him.’’ I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I had a patient’s orders to seek out Dr. McQuirter after Angie had left for the day.

She went at five. ‘‘I am beat. Don’t bother visiting Mr. Bradford. I’ll take care of him.’’

‘‘I won’t,’’ I assured her.

At five thirty I started lurking in the lobby. Dr. McQuirter strolled in at six and paused in the doorway to cast a quick, worried look around. He actually took a step backward as I approached to announce, ‘‘I have a message for you.’’

He grinned down at me. ‘‘As a pickup line, I’d rather hear ‘I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been waiting all afternoon.’ ’’

‘‘I have,’’ I admitted, trying to keep my balance under that deep black gaze. ‘‘Lyle Bradford wants to see you. He’s in room 508.’’

‘‘I don’t know Lyle Bradford.’’ He started for the elevator.

I followed. ‘‘He came in today. I think he’s on the Orange Bowl committee.’’

He shook his head. ‘‘Still doesn’t ring a bell.’’

‘‘He specifically asked to see you. Maybe he has free tickets for you or something.’’

Dr. McQuirter put his right hand in his pocket. ‘‘He asked for me by name? I’ll check with him after I’ve seen my patients. Want to meet me on five in an hour and have coffee when I’m done with him?’’

‘‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Angie,’’ I said softly as I headed on my rounds.

As soon as I stepped off the fifth-floor elevator an hour later, I heard shouting. Two orderlies were sprinting down the hall. Luis, the meds nurse (who might or might not have once been Havana’s premier cardiologist), dashed out of the nurses’ station and headed the same way. Running in heels, I made a late fourth.

We all could hear the shouted threats. ‘‘You did this to me! I’m gonna sue you for millions! Your pretty ladies will have to work night and-’’

As I reached the door of Lyle Bradford’s room, Dr. McQuirter pulled a gun out of his pocket and killed the man before he finished the sentence.

By the time of Dr. McQuirter’s trial, I had accrued some vacation days. I sat in the packed courtroom with other hospital personnel who didn’t have to testify, grateful that Luis had pushed me toward the elevator immediately after the shooting. ‘‘You were never here. Stay out of this.’’

He and the two orderlies testified that Mr. Bradford had accused Dr. McQuirter of castrating him and had then threatened the doctor. The defense attorney went after the word ‘‘threatened,’’ trying to plant the notion of self-defense. Luis refused to play. ‘‘Mr. Bradford was standing by his bed wearing only a hospital gown. Where could he hide a weapon? He was too sore to even wear boxers.’’

Every man in the courtroom squirmed.

The prosecutor put a police detective on the witness stand to testify they were seeking connections between Dr. McQuirter and the other two unsolved castration cases. The defense attorney managed to get that testimony ruled inadmissible-arguing successfully that McQuirter wasn’t being tried for castrating Mr. Bradford, just for killing him.

On the second day, the defense started its arguments and Dr. McQuirter himself took the stand. The jury seemed unimpressed by his explanation for why he was carrying a gun on rounds that evening-‘‘I’d gotten an anonymous threat that afternoon’’-and unconvinced by his reason for checking on Bradford, who had no need of an ob-gyn and was three floors above Dr. McQuirter’s other patients: ‘‘I got a message he wanted to see me.’’

I caught my breath. Would I have to testify after all? Heaven knew what Angie would do to me if she learned I’d been in Bradford’s room.

Nobody called me. Instead, Angie was called to the stand. She testified that Dr. Randall McQuirter was an excellent doctor, highly respected and loved by all his patients and the hospital staff. She gave him a dazzling smile as she stepped down. After that, physicians, nurses, ward clerks, and even Carver spoke about what a wonderful doctor Dr. McQuirter was and how he must have been seriously provoked to do what he had done.

As we left for the day, I saw Angie in the parking lot. ‘‘You sure laid it on thick in there.’’

She shrugged. ‘‘Why not? He is a good doctor, but that’s not going to keep him out of jail.’’

A good doctor? I drove home thinking about Lyle Bradford’s last words. As soon as I got in, I called another high school friend who had become an investigative reporter with the Miami Herald . She had established amazing contacts throughout Miami’s seamier element and was so tenacious about research that her nickname was Bulldog.

‘‘There’s something odd about the McQuirter case,’’ I told her.

‘‘The Teflon doc? You’re telling me. You think he castrated Bradford and those other guys?’’

‘‘I have no idea, but he didn’t shoot Bradford for saying that. He fired after Bradford starting making threats.’’

‘‘What were his exact words?’’

She, like me, had taken senior English from a tyrant who made us memorize reams of poetry and famous speeches. We had gotten real good at verbatim repetition.

‘‘First he said, ‘You did this to me!’ Then he said, ‘I’m gonna sue you for millions! Your pretty ladies will have to work night and-’ That’s when McQuirter shot him.’’

From the silence on the other end, I knew she was writing it all down on a yellow pad. ‘‘Interesting. I’ll get back to you.’’

She didn’t get back to me, but she must have worked all night getting in touch with some of her contacts, because the next morning in court the prosecutor got permission to introduce important new evidence. The courtroom was electrified when two women testified that for several years, Dr. McQuirter had augmented his income by controlling a number of prostitutes, most of whom had come to him as adolescent patients or young nurses. The two testified that the doctor had seduced the girls-themselves included-and impregnated them, then aborted their babies (which was illegal in those days) and told them that working for him was the only way to repay their medical bills. They also testified that Lyle Bradford had been a regular patron with an increasingly nasty temper. He had broken one woman’s nose and several had needed medical attention. They had all complained to Dr. McQuirter about him.

The prosecutor insisted that their testimony plus the fact that Dr. McQuirter had carried a loaded gun to Bradford’s room pointed to premeditated murder. The jury agreed. They brought in a verdict of murder one and sent the doctor away for life.

Men in Miami slept easier.

Bulldog wrote a series of interviews with prostitutes. Randall McQuirter’s women spoke bitterly about his treatment of them, but other prostitutes praised his methods of dealing with violent customers. Violence against prostitutes dropped. Bulldog won a Pulitzer. The Miami paper still occasionally refers to the local ob-gyn who avenged prostitutes by castrating violent johns. Another Miami moment.

But some Miami moments, like some of Angie’s stories, are fabrications.

The morning after Dr. McQuirter went to prison, I arrived early at the hospital and headed to the coffee shop for one of Carlos’s batidos . Angie, Dr. Gerstein, and Rosa were having coffee at the back corner table. Before they saw me, I saw Angie pour something from a silver pocket flask into each of their cups. They raised them in a toast. ‘‘For the common good.’’