Jonathan Kellerman - Devil's Waltz

“He may have. He lived during the height of the black plague, didn’t he?”

“True... Well” — he sat up and unwrapped the second cookie — “all credit to you, I couldn’t do it. Give me something neat and clean and theoretical, anytime.”

“I never thought of sociology as hard science.”

“Most of it isn’t. But Formal Org has all sorts of nifty models and measurable hypotheses. The illusion of precision. I delude myself regularly.”

“What kinds of things do you deal with? Industrial management? Systems analysis?”

He shook his head. “No, that’s the applied side. I’m theoretical — setting up models of how groups and institutions function on a structural level, how components mesh, phenomenologically. Ivory tower stuff, but I find it great fun. I was schooled in the ivory tower.”

“Where’s that?”

“Yale, undergrad; University of Connecticut, grad. Never finished my dissertation after I found out teaching turns me on a lot more than research.”

He stared down the empty basement corridor, watching the occasional passage of wraithlike white-coated figures in the distance.

“Scary,” he said.

“What is?”

“This place.” He yawned, glanced at his watch. “Think I’ll go up and check on the ladies. Thanks for your time.”

We both stood.

“If you ever need to talk to me,” he said, “here’s my office number.”

He put his cup down, reached into a hip pocket, and pulled out an Indian silver money clasp inlaid with an irregular turquoise. Twenty-dollar bill on the outside, credit cards and assorted papers underneath. Removing the entire wad, he shuffled through it and found a white business card. Placing it on the table, he retrieved a blue Bic from another pocket and wrote something on the card, then handed it to me.

Snarling tiger logo, WVCC TYGERS circling it. Below that:

Two lines at the bottom. He’d filled them in using dark block letters:

“If I’m in class,” he said, “this’ll connect you to the message center. If you want me around when you come visiting at the house, try to give me a day’s notice.”

Before I could reply, heavy rapid footsteps from the far end of the hall made both of us turn. A figure came toward us. Athletic gait, dark jacket.

Black leather jacket. Blue slacks and hat. One of the rent-a-cops patrolling the halls of Pediatric Paradise for signs of evil?

He came closer. A mustachioed black man with a square face and brisk eyes. I got a look at his badge and realized he wasn’t Security. LAPD. Three stripes. A sergeant.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, speaking softly but giving us the once-over. His name tag read PERKINS.

Chip said, “What is it?”

The cop read my badge. It seemed to confuse him. “You’re a doctor?”

I nodded.

“How long have you gentlemen been out here in the hall?”

Chip said, “Five or ten minutes. What’s wrong?”

Perkins’s gaze shifted to Chip’s chest, taking in the beard, then the earring. “You a doctor too?”

“He’s a parent,” I said. “Visiting his child.”

“Got a visiting badge, sir?”

Chip pulled one out and held it in front of Perkins’s face.

Perkins chewed his cheek and swung back to me. He gave off a barbershop scent. “Have either of you seen anything unusual?”

“Such as?” said Chip.

“Anything out of the ordinary, sir. Someone who doesn’t belong.”

“Doesn’t belong,” said Chip. “Like somebody healthy?”

Perkins’s eyes became slits.

I said, “We haven’t seen anything, Sergeant. It’s been quiet. Why?”

Perkins said, “Thank you,” and left. I watched him slowing for a moment as he passed the pathology lab.

Chip and I took the stairs to the lobby. A crowd of night-shifters crowded the east end, pressing toward the glass doors that led outside. On the other side of the glass the darkness was cross-cut with the cherry-red pulse of police lights. White lights, too, refracting in starbursts.

Chip said, “What’s going on?”

Without turning her head, a nurse nearby said, “Someone got attacked. In the parking lot.”

“Attacked? By whom?”

The nurse looked at him, saw he was a civilian and moved away.

I looked around for a familiar face. None. Too many years.

A pale, thin orderly with short platinum hair and a white Fu Manchu said, “Enough, already,” in a nasal voice. “All I want to do is go home. ”

Someone groaned a chorus.

Unintelligible whispers passed through the lobby. I saw a uniform on the other side of the glass, blocking the door. A burst of radio talk leaked through from the outside. Lots of movement. A vehicle swung its lights toward the glass, then turned away and sped off. I read a flash of letters: AMBULANCE. But no blinkers or siren.

“Whyn’t they just bring her in here?” said someone.

“Who says it’s a her ?”

A woman said, “It’s always a her.”

“Dinja hear? No howler,” someone answered. “Probably not an emergency.”

“Or maybe,” said the blond man, “it’s too late.”

The crowd rippled like gel in a petri dish.

Someone said, “I tried to get out the back way but they had it blocked. I’m like, this sucks.”

“I think I heard one of them say it was a doctor.”

“Who?”

“That’s all I heard.”

Buzz. Whisper.

Chip said, “Wonderful.” Turning abruptly, he began pushing his way toward the rear of the crowd, back into the hospital. Before I could say anything, he was gone.

Five minutes later, the glass door opened and the crowd surged forward. Sergeant Perkins slipped through and held out a tan palm. He looked like a substitute teacher before an unruly high school class.

“Can I have your attention for a moment?” He waited for silence, finally settled for relative quiet. “An assault’s occurred in your parking lot. We need you to file out one by one and answer some questions.”

“ What kind of assault? ”

“ Is he okay? ”

“ Who was it? ”

“ Was it a doctor? ”

“ Which lot did it happen in? ”

Perkins did the slit-eye again. “Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible, folks, and then you can all go home.”

The man with the white Fu Manchu said, “How about telling us what happened so we can protect ourselves, Officer?”

Supportive rumblings.

Perkins said, “Let’s just take it easy.”

“No, you take it easy,” said the blond man. “All you guys do is give jaywalking tickets out on the boulevard. Then, when something real happens, you ask your questions and disappear and leave us to clean up the mess.”

Perkins didn’t move or speak.

“Come on , man,” said another man, black and stooped, in a nursing uniform. “Some of us have lives . Tell us what happened.”

“Yeah!”

Perkins’s nostrils flared. He stared out at the crowd a while longer, then opened the door and backed out.

The people in the lobby twanged with anger.

A loud voice said, “ Deputy Dawg !”

“ Damned jaywalking brigade. ”

“ Yeah, buncha stiffs — hospital sticks us across the street and then we get busted trying to get to work on time. ”

Another hum of consensus. No one was talking anymore about what had happened in the lot.

The door opened again. Another cop came through, young, white, female, grim.