The Ghost Page 3

  “Excuse me doctor,” Mac interrupted, “that’s what we need to have. We need what you call purposeful behavior. We need to question him in any way possible and we could break down the questions into short few-word sentences requiring short few-word answers. Even answers of yes or no. In other words, we need specific information because this was not a suicide attempt. Willy was deliberately pushed off a third-floor ledge of a four story apartment building. We know he was pushed. We don’t know why or who did it. We’re fairly certain it was a man who pushed him. It would be extremely helpful if God was with us, and Willy could tell us who the man was and why he pushed him.”

  “It could be, if you don’t mind me saying so,” said Dr. Fishman, “that even with God checking in here, it all will depend on if Willy is locked-in, which again, my hunch tells me—no. In these kinds of minimally conscious states, if even a little step by step improvement can be measured, then the prognosis is actually good. In other words, in a vegetative state, there is no improvement. But when it is measurable improvement, the improvement is sometimes measured in ten to twelve month intervals.”

  “Ten to twelve months?!” I practically shouted. “Willy might be like this for a year?”

  “I hope not,” Dr. Fishman replied. “but if it’s severe head trauma as in a locked-in or MCS condition, in some cases, yes that’s what we’re looking at. But as I’ve said, it might not be any of that. I’ll spare you an advanced lecture on brain anatomy. We have Dr. Sitaram Mehta, a brain specialist also on the case and if you want, which I doubt, he’ll be easily able to give you an explanation of this brain trauma stuff that would include phenomena—well just giving you a sample, an earful of what’s involved here could have you spinning especially if you’re not educated medically. In other words, this stuff is not for the uninitiated. For example, Willy’s injuries can involve the medial parietal cortex, the posterior cingulated cortex and some corticocortical connectivity between the auditory cortex and prefrontal cortices. There would also need to be cerebral spinal fluid analyses, and so forth.

  “As you can see, we take this quite seriously because as an outside chance, we could be dealing with something more serious than we now know. However, again I say, I don’t think so. Of course, we’re dealing with managing a great deal of physical and clinical data, and also managing treatment. Keep in mind, if you want to break it down, Willy was essentially and seriously concussed, so if in a locked-in kind of state the patient is aware but there’s no movement and like I’m trying to say, practically no communication. To put it as simply as I can, all voluntary movement of the body, except for his eyes would at this point be paralyzed. But that paralysis could be temporary. We’re talking also about muscles here. But I’ll add—this is not yet the final actual picture. Willy may have none of it. He may be lying unconscious simply because he got knocked out in addition to pain medication that was already administered. As I’ve said, his spine seems to be in-tact and it could very well be that all those broken bones—including his chin and perhaps his pelvis, along with other things—may, after a complete assessment—only need me and not Dr. Mehta.

  “As Detective Lyle knows, I’m an orthopedic surgeon and Willy may only need me for treatment with respect to bones. In any event, Dr. Mehta who is a brain specialist will explain it more in basic terms and you’ll be able to consult with him tomorrow when he’s here to make his rounds.”

  Again, I jumped in ahead of Mac or Lyle. “Doctor, from what you say it could be that: a) he’s possibly aware, and b) that therefore he might be able to communicate with his eyes or else there may be some other even possible ingenious way of getting him to respond; through his heart rate or blood pressure or whatever. I know I’m grasping at straws but I’m thinking that if we could figure out how to reach him and how he could reach us it would improve his emotional state; he possibly could feel actually hopeful. And best of all, we’d most likely get the information we need.”

  “Keep in mind,” the doctor answered, “if all is well, you may even be able to talk to him. Of course, you’re right and it’s a good point. As an example, some patients who have brain trauma can in rare cases move facial muscles and not just eye movements. And more good news could be that there’s a chance if Willy, in fact, had trauma to the lower brain and brainstem there may be no trauma or even any damage to the upper brain at all. And yes, sometimes it’s been reported that a full spontaneous recovery has been seen. That might or might not be the case here depending on finding out what’s at the bottom of it all. At this point we just don’t know.

  “However, everything I’ve said about brain trauma and what might be involved here is speculation and also keep in mind the very important possibility that Willy may have none of that kind of injuries, and would ultimately only be dealing with the healing of surgery on broken bones.”

  We discussed the entire issue some more and periodically I noticed we all, including both detectives would glance over at Willy and take a short but optimistic look at him. It reminded me of one of my best buddies, a guy named Alex Kaye. Al would probably say that in order to send waves of healing into Willy, one or two people should sit outside of the hospital and stare at the window of Willy’s room with good thoughts directed at the window. Al believed, for example that those kinds of psychic waves could penetrate into the patient and actually have the power to cure.

  So, even though I never believed in any such hocus-pocus, at this moment, again, I was hoping Al was right and I was wrong. And despite Al’s so-called hocus-pocus healing-wave theory, he’s been a private detective for ten years and the word on the street is that he has an uncanny ability to uncover whatever or whoever he’s looking for.

  “Al once announced to me that ‘details need to be specific,’ and he said that most people would think of that little home-spun adage as a redundancy but that he knew it was nothing of the sort. He said the detail should not contain the slightest generality. Then he got that supernatural stuff going again and said the detail is the location of the Devil, as in: The Devil is in the detail. He said he’s always looking for the person as the detail but never attributing the detail to an inanimate object like table or a chair.

  * * *

  So now here I was, part of a trio along with two detectives, with not one of us really knowing how to get into the mystery of it all, where to look, and what to look for! And what do I think of at such a moment? Actually, it’s not a ‘what.’ It’s a ‘who.’ And of course, I think of Al. I think of Alex Kaye, private detective par excellence. And as God is my witness, as I’m thinking about Al, sure enough, in he walks. He sees me, nods, and then looks knowingly at Lyle.

  “Al Kaye, whatya know?” Lyle says. “Mac this is the Alex Kaye who fingered the guy responsible for the kidnapping of Rodriguez’s wife, the precinct captain at the 53rd on Webster.”

  Mac nods as Lyle says: “The guy who kidnapped Rodriguez’s wife was furious at the cops for something they did that he thought was unfair. Rod illegally kept him locked up till they were sure he was not the guy they were after. And on top of it, he was roughed up. So, what did this roughed-up guy do? He took the wife. Plucked her right off the street. Then he sent a note saying he wasn’t asking for ransom but what he really wanted was for Rodriguez to suffer. Believe that? That’s what he said. As far as he was concerned, Rodriquez was to suffer.

  “Al here got interested, especially when Rodriguez asked him to look for her—for his wife—to do it on his own, and to feel free to do whatever he needed to do even if it meant getting around any rules that were in effect. Rodriguez swore he would fix any illegal stuff that Al might possibly get into in his search for Rod’s wife and for the guy who took her. Rodriguez wanted the guy almost as much as he wanted his wife. And believe me, he really wanted his wife!

  “So, what does Al here do? The first thing was to go searching in the most recent complaint files.”

  Looking at Al, Lyle says: “Right, Al?” Al nods and then not skipping a beat, Lyle continues:
“Rodriguez gave Al here all access. In record time checking in the files, Al then comes up with a few names that he thought reflected real disgruntled guys who might have had the level of anger that justified doing something drastic. He followed the leads and in short order got the guy. No one knows the details of how he did it, but he did it. Al’s tough, right Al? I say that because when Al here roughed him up, the guy gave up the chick.

  But that’s not the end of the story because then Rodriguez had the guy—I remember the guy’s name—Josephs. Raymond Josephs. Rody got him in the back room at the precinct and practically beat him to death. He kicked the shit out of him.

  “The key to this story,” Lyle continued, “is that we need to find the guy or guys who did Willy. And like I said, Al can find guys. No doubt about it.”

  At that point, I noticed Mac was chomping at the bit so I introduced them. “Mac,” I said, “meet my buddy, Alex Kaye.”

  Mac nodded to Al but then turned to me and asked how Al knew to arrive at the hospital at this precise time. “Quite a coincidence,” Mac said, looking at me.

  “Not a coincidence, Mac. It was that phone call I made last night before we turned the lights out. I called Al and told him to meet us here at about 10:30.”

  Mac turned to Al and asked him what led him to look at the complaint file for the Josephs character? Of course, Al’s a stand-up guy and immediately referenced the Mad Bomber Case of New York City and how people suspected that the bomber had something to do with a grievance at Con Ed. Al’s not the type to be self-congratulatory so he would never talk about it.

  “Al,” Lyle says, “tell it. C’mon, tell it.”

  “Never mind that,” Al immediately responded. “I got something here already about Willy that could be important. I went over to P.S. 42—Willy’s school, early this morning. It’s a block from Third Avenue near where Frankie here and Willy live. Got there 8:30 sharp. The Principal greeted me. I made some inquiries and he answered every one of my questions. And he was quick in answering them.

  “From the moment I began questioning him to the end of our contact, it took all of about maybe ten or so minutes. He explained that in addition to being in charge of the school, he also put himself in charge of the street by the school so that he is, as he said himself, ‘the self-appointed cop of the street.’ No loitering by anyone is allowed. He feels it’s his duty to protect the kids coming to, and going home from school.

  “Then he hits me with this: he starts describing two guys he chased off the block about a week ago. He said one was burly guy and the other taller and slimmer. You believe that? He felt they were hanging around too much and he got a bad feeling about it and about them. He told them to get off the block and they did—without an argument. They said something but just turned and walked away. Then he gave me descriptions—for each of them.

  “Now that’s the same description Frankie gave me on the phone last night with the exact words, ‘big, burly,´Al said. I also got that certain feeling I get sometimes when a fact just falls into place, especially when you least expect it. And this was one of those times. Then it wasn’t hard to see that it could be a connection to those guys and Willy’s situation. Because, you know when Frankie called me last night, he filled me in at the speed of light. I could tell he was upset, actually furious. He wanted to get even. You know we’ve been tight for a long time and I know Frankie.”

  I interrupted Al and looking at Mac and Lyle I repeated what Al said—that in the phone call I described the whole thing about what happened to Willy and pointed out that I was pretty sure I could make out the figure of a kind of big burly guy I thought I saw behind the window where Willy was standing on the ledge. I never mentioned any other guy.

  “Did those guys at the school talk at all?” Lyle asked Al.

  “The Principal said the big guy had some kind of European accent—sounded definitely to be German or close, like maybe Austrian or Swiss, and that the other guy, the taller, slimmer one definitely had like a Spanish accent but was light-skinned, more like a guy from some South American country, and speaking with the accent that’s different than the kind of Puerto Rican Spanish you can hear in the Bronx now. It was after the Principal told those guys to leave that they first said a few things to one another but then turned and crossed the street. But they said enough for him to catch the accents.

  “So,” Al continued, “whatya think? Where do we go from here?”

  The ‘we’ sounded to me like a gong went off because it meant that Al had insinuated himself into this investigation of Willy’s trauma, really, by writing his own invitation. Of course, I knew why Al was so interested. We’d been friends for about ten years now—soon after I got to this country—and Al had helped me out with all sorts of things. He got me kind of street-smart faster than if I had to learn it or do it all myself. So, Al knew Willy and Olga almost since Willy was born. And further, Willy always looked up to him and Al liked Willy a lot.

  The other thing is that Al is Jewish. I’m always impressed with that because like I said, when we got here, we didn’t know a thing about what to do and where to go and so forth. Al’s mother and father were still alive then. They were also immigrants who had already been here for many years. Anyway, they helped us tremendously and Al and I became best buddies; me, an Italian Catholic with family from Italy and Al, a first generation American Jewish guy whose parents were from a little Jewish ghetto—what’s known as a shtetl—from Ukraine. So ever since then, whenever I hear somebody knocking Jews, then they gotta deal with me.

  I now felt that with Al in the picture we had the real possibility of catching those guys. And we had something of a lead: two guys—one, possibly German, and the other, possibly, South American. That meant we’d probably made a discovery; that is, that there may have been two men in the apartment when Willy went down, not just one.

  Mac put an exclamation point on it all. “Again, Al,” Mac said, “we should all remember that Frank is pretty sure Willy was pushed by a big, burly guy and I for one will never believe that it’s just a coincidence that the Principal of the school also noted the big guy and to boot, called him ‘burly.’ But we also need to consider something very important; that the catastrophic thing that happened to Willy was, in all probability, really a message to Frank. It could be that what these guys were after was the package that Olga had hidden. It’s got something to do with the war. She brought it with her all the way from Parma.”

  “I’ve known about that package for years,” Al responded. “Frank told me about it one night when he was a bit, uh, let’s call it under the weather. Know what I mean?”

  Looking at Frank, Al said: “Frank, you never found it. Right?”

  “Right. Never.”

  “It’s possible,” Al continued, “that the package contained papers that could incriminate certain individuals or maybe even more so, a single person. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all pointing to maybe war criminals or maybe even one major criminal. Someone high up in either Mussolini or Hitler’s so-called inner circle of nut-jobs. You know Ustacio was with Mussolini. Even though he so-to-speak defected and wound up here, nevertheless, he took that package with him. That’s for sure. And he knew that Hitler wanted Mussolini to have the only copy of those secret papers.

  “I sometimes get these intuitions, Al continued, “and I can imagine that Hitler wanted Mussolini to have those papers because something in them would assure Mussolini that Hitler made some kind of arrangement to make sure Mussolini would be protected—like you know, just in case. Of course, at the moment, if I’m right, it could be that there’s a mystery guy who could be at the bottom of this thing and maybe it was this mystery guy that arranged for the two guys, or at least the big burly one that pushed Willy, to get the package—and at any cost. And I’ll go further. It could be that he’s a possible major war criminal himself and that at least one of the secrets in the papers could, if revealed, give him a death sentence.

  “So, my way-out assumption is that
the mystery guy is probably behind it all. You know, when a big deal is in the works, the boss doesn’t do the dirty work to fix it. He sends big, burly guys to fix it. So that’s why I’m thinking it’s a mystery guy calling the shots, and for us, at the moment, he’s an abstraction—like a vague presence—like a ghost.

  . 3 .

  THE TWO GUYS

  We all agreed. The two guys we were looking for were in the employ or doing the bidding of someone who at the moment, we couldn’t see. The fact is, that no one could see it, or them, or him. In view of what they did to Willy, it was clear that they weren’t going to stop there. They were determined to get the package. No life mattered. Al said it and Mac and Lyle agreed. So did I—for sure. Then looking at Mac, Lyle came up with a plan.

  “First, I think we need to do two things. We need to put a bigger team around the hospital and second, we need to figure a way of using Frank as bait. Sorry, Frank, they’re are after you and it’s you that’s going to pull them in.”

  “No problem, guys. I’m with it all the way. I especially wanna get my hands on that big guy.”

  “No, he’s mine. Let me handle it,” Al said with an obvious look of let’s call it—relish-retribution.”

  “C’mon, Al, you’re here as a self-invited guest,” Mac answered. “So cool it. We all know what you did to Josephs even before Rodriguez got to him. We can’t do anything even remotely like that. It might get these guys off—a claim of police brutality. Right?”

  Al immediately nodded and we all sat down on the floor in the hospital corridor. It was like we were having a séance and the topic was how to use me as bait. That was the common thought. But Al couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he’d need to at least hit the big guy during the take-down. So, he added to Mac’s mature comment by saying: “I know you’re right, of course, Mac, but you know, when we get this motha and if he gives us any trouble then we can really do it. See?”