Midnight Voices

CHAPTER 10

Andrea Costanza’s fingers had been drumming on the top of her desk for nearly half an hour, and though she herself was barely conscious of it, the occupants of every other cubicle in her vicinity were quickly going crazy. It was finally Nathan Rosenberg, whose desk faced Andrea’s and was separated from hers by nothing more than a five-foot metal divider, who decided he’d had enough. Rising from his chair, he moved around the end of his desk and peered over the divider. Sure enough, Andrea was staring off into space, her right hand resting on the desk, her fingers beating out a steady tattoo. “Enough with the drums, already,” he said.

Andrea, startled by the sudden interruption of her thoughts, jumped, and the drumming abruptly halted.

A cheer rose from the surrounding cubicles, and Andrea looked up guiltily. “Oh, God, I’ve got to learn to break that habit,” she said. “But I don’t even know I’m doing it.”

“You do it whenever you’re worried,” Nathan told her. “So what are you worried about?”

Andrea sighed. “Rebecca Mayhew.”

Nathan rolled his eyes. “Ah, poor Rebecca, who has nothing but a fabulous apartment on Central Park West, and foster parents who love her more than my parents ever even thought of loving me. I can understand why you’re concerned.”

Andrea ignored his sarcasm. “That’s the trouble. I keep getting the feeling that there’s something wrong.” She cocked her head. “Have you ever been in The Rockwell?”

“Oh, of course.” Nathan replied. “Virginia Estherbrook invites me for cocktails all the time.” He shook his head. “Jesus, Andrea. Why would I have ever been in that building?”

“Well, it’s weird,” Andrea sighed. “You know what a sick building is, right?”

“Sure. I used to work in one way downtown. A big high-rise where all the windows were hermetically sealed so you couldn’t get any fresh air at all. Then something got in the air conditioner, and everyone started getting sick.”

“But it only happens with new buildings, doesn’t it?”

Nathan spread his hands helplessly. “Do I look like an engineer? I suppose it could happen with any building. Why?”

“I saw Rebecca yesterday, and—” She hesitated, then shrugged. “Oh, it’s probably nothing.”

Nathan came around from his own cubicle and dropped into the chair in the corner of Andrea’s. “If you’re worried, it’s something. So tell me what’s going on.”

“Well, that’s the whole thing. Nothing’s going on. At least nothing I can put my finger on. Rebecca’s crazy about the Albions, and they’re just as crazy about her. But there’s something weird about the whole building, and Rebecca seems like she’s sick all the time.”

Nathan’s left eyebrow lifted skeptically. “ ‘All the time?’ ” he repeated. “Define, please.”

“Well, when I saw her at the end of spring, she was in bed with some kind of flu. And yesterday, she looked peaked, like she still had it.”

“Or another case of it.”

Andrea tipped her head, but not quite in concession. “It’s possible. That’s one of the things I keep telling myself. But she just doesn’t look healthy.”

“Not healthy, how?”

“Too thin — wan.”

Nathan Rosenberg crossed his arms across his chest. “Okay, Andrea, come clean. With all the kids in this city who are living in slums with foster parents who only put up with them to get the money every month, why are you worried about Rebecca Mayhew, who has fallen into the honey pot? For most kids, obesity is the problem, not thinness. And ‘wan’? It sounds like something out of a Victorian novel. What’s really bothering you?”

Andrea started to drum her fingers on the desktop again, then caught herself. “I told you — I don’t know. Everything seems a little off.” One by one, she ticked off everything about the building she didn’t like, from the lobby to the elevator, to the worn carpets and peeling paint.

“Which only means they have a cheap board, who won’t keep the place up,” Nathan Rosenberg countered.

“It’s not just the building. There’s Mrs. Albion, and the doctor, and the neighbors, and—”

Rosenberg held up a hand to stem the tide of words. “Whoa! The doctor? What doctor?”

“His name’s Humphries,” Andrea replied. “I’ve seen him twice. The first time was last spring, at the Albions. He was coming in just as I was leaving, and he gave me the strangest look. I mean, he’d never even met me, and he looked at me like I was some kind of — I don’t know — enemy, I guess.”

“He came to the Albions?” Rosenberg asked. “They found a doctor who makes house calls?” He grinned. “Now you’re talking weird!”

“Well, it was weird,” Andrea insisted. “Apparently he lives in the building, so I guess it’s not so strange he’d make a house call. But the thing is, I can’t find any hospital in New York where he has privileges, and I can’t find him listed in the phone book, either.”

“Maybe he’s retired, and he was just doing them a favor?”

“If he’s retired and gave up his license, then he can’t practice, favor or no favor.”

“So what do you want to do, take the girl away because the foster parents called a doctor when she was sick?”

Andrea glared at him. “No, I don’t want to do that. But I just have a feeling something’s not right, and I want to know what.”

Rosenberg’s eyes met hers. “Why do I have the feeling there’s still something you’re not telling me?”

Andrea was silent for several seconds, but finally nodded. “There’s also my best friend,” she said. “My friend Caroline, that I went to college with?” Nate Rosenberg nodded. “She got married yesterday. To a guy who lives in The Rockwell.”

Rosenberg uttered a low whistle. “Sounds like she made a good catch.”

“I told her to dump him. Well, not exactly dump him, but when she first told me about him, I told her not to date him. Obviously, she didn’t pay any attention to me.”

“And why should she? Do you know something about this guy? Does he have something to do with Rebecca Mayhew?”

Andrea shook her head. “That’s the thing — it’s just a feeling I have. Nothing concrete. But as soon as my friend gets back from her honeymoon — she and her kids are moving in.”

Rosenberg put on an exaggerated expression of horror. “Now I see why you’re so worried. I mean, imagine — moving in with your husband after you get married! What a shocker!”

Andrea threw her pencil at him. “Will you stop that?”

“All right, all right,” Nate replied, holding up his hands as if to fend off anything else she might throw. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You go out for dinner with me tonight, and I’ll see what I can find on this guy — what did you say his name is? Humphrey?”

“Humphries,” Andrea corrected, and spelled it out for him.

“And the guy your friend married. What’s his name?”

“Fleming. Anthony Fleming.”

Nate Rosenberg added the second name to the note he’d made of the spelling of the doctor’s name, then returned to his own cubicle, and a moment later was sitting at the keyboard of his computer, tapping rapidly.

As she tried to concentrate on some case other than Rebecca Mayhew’s, Andrea wondered if her drumming on her desktop with her fingers was as annoying as the rapid tap of Nate Rosenberg’s keyboard tapping. Deciding it probably was, she also decided to break herself of the habit. But a moment later, as she began pondering what to do about a two-year-old boy with a mother who claimed he was ‘incorrigible,’ her fingers once again began to drum.

“So here’s the deal,” Nathan Rosenberg told her that night as they sat across from each other in a little restaurant on Amsterdam. “Theodore Humphries is a doctor, but he’s not an M.D. He’s an osteopath and a homeopath, which makes him less than popular at most of the hospitals I know of.”

“But he’s licensed to practice medicine?”

“Absolutely,” Rosenberg replied. “In fact, I just might go to him myself. Our family doctor was an osteopath when I was a kid, and if she wasn’t so far out on Long Island, I’d still go to her.”

“But he’s not a medical doctor,” Andrea pressed.

Rosenberg shrugged. “Depends on your definition. The M.D.s used to hate the D.O.s. In California, they once tried to put them out of business entirely. But just because the A.M.A. doesn’t like them doesn’t make them bad doctors. It’s just a different philosophy of medicine. And as for homeopathy, there are a whole lot of people who believe in it, and even more that don’t.”

“Which means?”

“Which means that medicine is just like everything else — you figure out what works for you, and go with it. In this country, we like the medical model of germs and drugs. Other places like acupuncture, or herbalism, or all kinds of other models.”

Andrea gazed at him. “So it doesn’t bother you that the Albions aren’t using a real doctor for Rebecca?”

“Weren’t you listening? He is a real doctor. Just not an M.D.”

“What about Anthony Fleming?” Andrea asked, knowing Nate Rosenberg well enough to know that arguing over the validity of Dr. Humphries’ credentials would get nowhere.

“Not much. He has an investment firm down on West Fifty-third. That’s about it.”

“What about his former wife?” Andrea countered. “Where is she?”

Nate frowned. “What former wife? I didn’t find anything about a former wife.”

Andrea’s eyes rolled. “What did you do, look him up in the yellow pages? I know there was a wife — Caroline told me. And a couple of kids, I think.”

Nate Rosenberg spread his hands helplessly. “All I can tell you is what I found — according to his credit records, he’s golden. Only carries a couple of credit cards, and pays them off every month. No debt.”

“Not even on the place in The Rockwell?”

“Not that I could find. And no mention of a wife or kids.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Andrea said.

“What if he didn’t marry the woman? What if they just lived together?” He chuckled at the look of disappointment on Andrea’s face. “Jesus, Andrea, I think you would have been happier if I’d told you your best friend married a mass murderer.”

Andrea laughed ruefully. “Am I that bad?”

“Not bad at all,” Nate replied. “But I have to say, in this case I think you’re looking for trouble where there isn’t any.”

“Maybe I am,” Andrea sighed. But even as she spoke the words, she knew she didn’t believe them.