Forgotten City Read online

  Hodges was staring at him. “Is that true, Brandon? You fed her ice cream?”

  “Yes. I gave her half a scoop.”

  “On whose authority, may I ask?”

  “On no one’s,” he admitted.

  Hodges frowned again, and Brandon could read her disapproval of him in her strange yellow eyes. She had never liked or wanted him to work at her institution, and he supposed she didn’t appreciate that he evidenced no fear of her now. “You are aware, aren’t you,” she said, “that Lucy Merchant is on a no-sugar, low-cholesterol diet?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “And that giving her ice cream is a complete violation of her care plan?”

  He stared at the meticulous image of middle-aged femininity she presented behind her antique Victorian desk. She must be very naïve, he thought, to think that her cold questioning could reach inside of him. Was she trying to blame him for Lucy’s death? “I just fed her four bites of ice cream,” he said. “Four bites. And she enjoyed them, by the way.”

  “That’s not the point, though, is it?”

  “I guess not.” But it was exactly the point. As the vanilla ice cream had melted on Lucy’s tongue, he’d watched a tiny miracle of cognition happen before his eyes. He played Lucy “Cell Block Tango,” a number she had performed in the 1996 Broadway revival of Chicago—did Hodges even know Lucy had been in that production? Did she know anything about Lucy?—and Lucy’s lips began to move. She remembered the words. She sang them. He had it coming. He had it coming. He had it coming all along. The ice cream and the music had combined to free a fossilized memory. Wasn’t that more important than a glucose level?

  He pictured Lucy’s cool body still lying in the bed upstairs. He felt a sting of tears well up behind his eyes, and in that moment he understood for the first time why Lucy’s life and death meant so much to him. He and Lucy were two of a kind, both imprisoned in bodies that didn’t work as one with their minds.

  Hodges narrowed her eyes. “You were not hired to make decisions for our residents. You had no right to do what you did.”

  It’s not about who has the right, he wanted to say. It’s about what is right. And he felt a blistering hot rage inside at this immaculate woman with her perfect hair and makeup. He wished he could telekinetically tear her limbs from her body. “Then fire me.” He met her stare with a fierce resolve. “On second thought, don’t bother. I quit. Right now.” And he tore off his clip-on Park Manor ID badge and slapped it facedown on her desk.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Where the fuck were you at roll call?” McGowan growled when she came to his office. “You can’t remember to tell me when you’re going to be late? I should write you up. What is it? You still got chemo brain or something?”

  “It’s called chemo fog, and no, I don’t.” Codella did not keep the coldness out of her voice. Cancer, he knew very well, was her psychological Achilles’ heel, and he liked to find snide little ways to bring it up, to remind her of her vulnerability. “I told you I had an appointment,” she said.

  “What appointment?”

  He wanted to make her say it, she thought. Well, fine. She would say it. “I had a medical procedure.”

  “Jesus Christ, Codella. You have to stop all this doctor shit. It gets in the way.”

  She just looked at him. She had only missed three hours of work in more than three months. Dan Fisk, McGowan’s lead homicide detective, had missed whole mornings due to his failed root canal, implant appointments, divorce and custody hearings—all of which he told her about ad nauseam as if she actually cared. McGowan never jumped on him. This wasn’t about reality, she knew. This was McGowan’s personal mission to cut her off at the knees. He leaned back in his chair. “But I guess you can’t help it, can you?” He grinned. “That’s the fucked up thing about cancer, isn’t it? Once it shows up on your doorstep, you can’t ever really get rid of it, can you?”

  Are you fucking serious? she wanted to say. People could think those things—they did all the time, she could see it in their eyes—but they weren’t supposed to voice them. “When are you going to let me catch a case of my own?”

  “That’s a whole different conversation, Codella. You want to go there?”

  “I want you to answer the question.”

  “Fine,” he said. “When you learn to play by the rules.” He tapped his fingers on his desk. He had a new haircut with short bangs that formed a reddish fringe across the top of his forehead. With his freckled skin and full cheeks, he had to work extra hard to look manly with that coiffure. Maybe that was why he was such a son of a bitch lately.

  “I have always played by the rules,” she said.

  He waved her away. “Go help out Fisk on the Hasbrouck case, and next time you go see your doctor, you tell me personally. You got that?”

  I hate your fucking guts, she thought as she stomped down the hall to her office.

  CHAPTER 8

  The night caregiver with acne—Brandon, Julia Merchant remembered—pushed past her without a glance as she opened the door. Then three sets of eyes turned to stare at her. Two black women in burgundy Park Manor polo shirts strained the cane bottom chairs in front of Constance Hodges.

  Hodges stood and addressed the two women. “Maybelle and Josie, I think we’re done here, and I know you must be eager to get home.”

  Julia watched the caregivers lumber out. Then Hodges came around her desk and grasped Julia’s arm. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Julia.”

  “Thank you,” Julia responded mechanically.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you till four. Your father said—”

  “Yes, well, I can’t live my life on my father’s timetable. Maybe he doesn’t want to see my mother before they take her away, but I do.”

  Hodges smiled tightly. “Of course. Shall I take you up right now?”

  “I know the way, Constance.” As soon as the words were out, Julia knew they had been too curt and that she would be offended. Constance did not exactly see herself as staff. She seemed to think that she and Julia were peers, that they had something approaching a friendship. She stared into Constance’s piercing, yellow-brown eyes. Those eyes looked otherworldly. Had her father ever fucked this woman? Did that explain why the director felt entitled to act like her stand-in mother? She certainly wasn’t unattractive, but she was at least a decade too old to be in her father’s sweet spot. No, he hadn’t fucked her, she decided. Although he might have thought about it, and he might have channeled enough charm in her direction to make her think he wanted to or to make her wish he would. But no. She forced a conciliatory smile. “Thank you. I just want to be alone with her for a few moments. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course. Of course.”

  Julia turned toward the door. “I’ll speak to you this afternoon when I come back with my father.”

  She rode the elevator up and made her way to her mother’s suite. The lamps were off in her mother’s bedroom, and Julia did not turn them on. In the grainy half-light that breached the curtains’ barriers, she could just make out her mother’s body lying on the bed under a blanket, her head on a pillow.

  Julia sat on the edge of the bed and placed a palm tentatively over her mother’s hand. She had never touched a dead body before. Her mother’s skin had the cool, irregular texture of leather upholstery. Julia pressed harder, trying to find any warmth that remained below the uninviting surface, but there was none. She fought the overwhelming impulse to let go of the lifeless extremity. Instead, she gripped it with maniacal strength.

  What should she do now? What was the right thing to do? Say a prayer? Whisper last words of love and gratitude? Enumerate all the details she would never forget about her mother? Try to connect with whatever metaphysical energy lingered here in this last space where her mother had breathed? Julia stretched out on the mattress next to her mother’s body. With her face inches from her mother’s, she listened to the silence. She sensed no energy in this room. She moved a little closer.
She remembered the one time her mother had crawled into bed with her when she was a child and had trouble sleeping. And then she suddenly knew how to make this moment sacred and memorable. The knowledge came in the form of lyrics her mother had sung to her on that occasion, and she whispered them now. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You’ll never know dear how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.

  She shut her eyes. She wasn’t sure how long she stayed there, but when she finally sat up, she thought she might have slept for a moment or two. When she stood, her body felt insubstantial, as if her cells had seeped through the confines of her flesh and mingled with the grainy light filtering in.

  She brushed the wrinkles out of her skirt and blew her nose with a Kleenex from the box next to the bed. She opened the drawer of her mother’s bedside table and looked inside. She closed it and turned to the photos in the windowsill—her mother as a twenty-three-year-old dancer in the Martha Graham Company, her mother as Velma Kelly in Chicago, her mother with Larry Hirschhorn, who had cast her in Vegas Nights. In the last two years, all these memories had evaporated from her mother’s brain, and now her mother’s entire narrative was just a fable encoded into Julia’s brain. And how long would her memories last, she wondered.

  She scooped up the photos and tucked them into her shoulder bag. And then she unplugged the sleek digital alarm clock next to the photos, stuffed that into her handbag as well, and left Park Manor.

  CHAPTER 9

  The shuttle was boarding by the time Thomas Merchant got through the TSA PreCheck line. As he walked down the Jetway, he texted Julia that he’d meet her in front of Park Manor. Then he rang Pamela, who had called three times while he was with the Senate banking subcommittee.

  Pamela didn’t bother with hello. “You could have told me yourself.”

  Merchant glanced into the cockpit as he stepped onto the plane. “Julia’s better at breaking bad news.” He supposed he should say something else, something consoling, but he was too tired from the subcommittee grilling, and Pamela would see right through whatever he said anyway and tell him he was full of shit. He certainly had to respect Lucy’s sister professionally, but he’d never been a fan of hers. She was assertive and brassy—the polar opposite of his wife—and he had no interest in women who weren’t interested in men.

  “What happened?” she asked, as if Lucy’s death were anything other than the simple calculus of inevitability.

  “Her genes happened.” He didn’t even try to mask his sarcasm. “As I’ve said before, you really should get yourself tested, Pamela.”

  “Why? So I can spend my life worrying every time I forget a name? No thanks. Besides, I’ve read the studies too. Just because you have one of the mutations doesn’t mean you’ll get it.”

  “Tell yourself that if it makes you feel better, but it’s like economic indicators. You ignore them at your financial peril. I’m on the board of Sloan Kettering. I can make a call for you. I can get you an appointment like that.” He snapped his fingers even though she couldn’t hear.

  “I’ve defended three Sloan Kettering board members and one from Mount Sinai, too. I could ask them myself. You’re an asshole, you know.”

  “I’m a realist.” He smiled at an attractive blond in an aisle seat who was staring at him. He took the aisle seat right across from hers. “I say it’s better to know what’s coming.” He tucked his briefcase under the row in front of his. “That’s why I was so insistent with Julia.”

  “Yeah, and look how that turned out.”

  “She’ll thank me some day.”

  “When are you planning to have the funeral?”

  “We’ll have a memorial service after the cremation. I don’t know when. It’ll be at Frank E. Campbell, of course.”

  “I want to be kept informed,” Pamela asserted.

  “Of course.” He laughed inwardly at her puffed up tone, as if Pamela had any authority at all over the plans he made.

  He ended that call and made the call he wanted to make.

  “I really can’t talk right now,” she whispered, and again he detected that something in her voice. A cooling off. A pulling away.

  “Come see me tonight.”

  “It’s been a long day. And the snow is already starting here. I—”

  “It’s been a long day for me, too,” he cut her off. “And I’m looking forward to an even longer night with you. I’ll send Felipe for you at nine thirty.” He pressed End before she could protest.

  A flight attendant was demonstrating the safety features of the plane. The blond woman across the aisle was staring at him again. He met her gaze and she asked, “You’re Thomas Merchant, aren’t you?”

  “Guilty as charged.” He smiled and held out his hand.

  CHAPTER 10

  Despite their obvious age difference, father and daughter struck Constance Hodges as an unhappily married husband and wife reluctantly showing up for their weekly couple’s session. Thomas claimed the long couch facing the fireplace. Julia staked out the smaller couch at a right angle to him. Hodges assumed a neutral position on the chair opposite Julia. “Shall I have some coffee or tea brought—”

  “Not for me.” Merchant cut her off. “I have to get downtown after this. Where do we stand, Constance?”

  “Dr. Fisher certified the death this morning. I have some papers for you to sign. Frank E. Campbell came at one. They’ll hold Mrs. Merchant until the death certificates are issued. We’ve alerted the media, per your request, and we’re logging condolence messages as they stream in.” Constance felt pleased by her succinct and thorough delivery.

  “That’s a big help, Constance. I’ll have Roberta connect with you as soon as I get to my office. She’ll take over arrangements from here.”

  Julia turned to him. “Don’t you even want to know the cause of death?”

  Ms. Hodges observed that Merchant seemed surprised by the question. “Coronary arrest.” She supplied the answer quietly. “Her heart simply stopped while she was sleeping.”

  “Coronary arrest is not a cause of death,” Julia snapped. “Coronary arrest is the result of something. Everyone knows that.”

  “True enough.” Hodges strained not to sound patronizing or defensive as she pointed out that people with advanced dementia couldn’t communicate their symptoms and often had undetected conditions.

  “My mother was only fifty-six years old, Constance. And she looked fine at dinner last night.” Julia turned to her father. “Not that you would know or care. When was the last time you came to see her?”

  “I was here two days ago, Julia,” he said evenly. “I brought your mother a few new things to wear.”

  “That Roberta picked out?”

  If this had truly been a couple’s session, Hodges thought now, she would interrupt Julia and ask her to reflect on the hostility in her last exchange, but she was not their therapist, she reminded herself. She was merely a facilitator, and all she could do right now was sit back and discreetly pretend not to hear their crossfire.

  “That’s out of line, Julia,” Thomas Merchant told his daughter. He turned to Constance. “I’m sorry you have to sit through this.”

  “Whatever,” Julia continued. “All I know is, my mother did not have a bad heart.”

  “We don’t really know that,” said Thomas.

  “There’s a lot we don’t know.” Julia turned back to Hodges. “Like why my mother’s night caregiver—what’s his name? Brandon Johnson?—ran out of here this morning and what he poured down my mother’s throat in a medicine cup last night.”

  The words hit Hodges like a jolt of electric current, and she found herself too rattled to speak. She had felt this level of panic only one other time in her life, sitting in her Central Park West office, after an enraged patient had slammed her stained glass desk lamp on the floor and shattered the silence into thousands of tiny colored shards. He had brought his face so close to hers that she could feel his tensile fury.
She had frozen then, and she froze now.

  “I had a camera in her room, a motion-sensitive camera in her alarm clock.”

  “Jesus Christ, Julia.” Merchant looked appalled.

  Julia kept her eyes on Hodges. “When he moved my mother into Park Manor, I had the idea I’d protect her from caregiver abuse. The camera’s been there all this time, and today I took it home and played it. I wanted to see my mother alive one last time. I didn’t expect to see that caregiver forcing her to swallow something while the nurse stood by watching. I guess my instincts were right when I bought that camera. I’d really like to know what was in that medicine cup.”

  Hodges fought back her panic with deep, even breaths. At Park Manor, only the nurse on duty was authorized to administer medications. She wore an orange coat while she prepared and dispensed them. The coat signaled to the rest of the staff that she should not be approached, spoken to, or distracted. Hodges did not even want to think about the damage it would cause to Park Manor’s reputation if news surfaced that a nurse and a caregiver had violated the sacrosanct protocol. Constance would not let that happen. She was Park Manor’s lion at the gate. If the institution were tarnished, she would be the biggest loser. Park Manor, after all, was her passport into a world few regular New Yorkers like herself ever penetrated. She had attended cocktail parties in the private homes of the city’s largest benefactors. She was invited to receptions and fundraisers in all the best venues of the city. She could pick up her phone and call heads of corporations, private school headmasters, Broadway producers, and city officials, and they would all take her calls. But her access would end without Park Manor.

  “I can assure you, Julia,” she said with as much conviction as she could summon, “that caregivers never administer medication to patients. Mrs. Merchant tended to get dehydrated. Dr. Fisher had instructed her caregivers to make every effort to get her to drink. This included giving her water at bedtime. Brandon was Mrs. Merchant’s primary night caregiver. This was his responsibility.”