A Man to Die For Read online

  Then, again, like the flick of a light switch in a darkened room, Hunsacker came to life and flashed them all a rueful grin. "At least that's what I always said about my ex-wife. Until I found out she didn't have a heart."

  Casey was still sitting there, an arm full of packaged gowns, her mouth open, when Hunsacker strolled off toward the elevators.

  "Dr. Hunsacker, line three. Dr. Hunsacker."

  Instinctively Casey picked up the phone. It took her a minute to clear her throat to answer. "Dr. Hunsacker just left. Can I help?"

  "He was down there?"

  The outrage in the woman's voice brought Casey right around. "But he isn't now. Who's this?"

  "Labor and delivery." Now she could hear gritted teeth. "We've been waiting for him for an hour to do this damn section he was so all fired to do."

  Casey couldn't think of anything but the truth. "He was down here watching a code."

  "Well, if you see him, you tell him to get his butt up here. He scheduled this damn thing two hours ago, and he hasn't said shit to his lady, and I'm damn well not going to get permits signed until he does. Of course, this gal'll probably pop the kid on her own before he gets here anyway."

  Casey's attention was caught all over again. "I thought she was a failure to progress."

  There was a small silence, and then an "Mmmm."

  Casey knew a lot about those Mmmms. She used them often enough when she didn't need a doctor's wrath dropped on her head for an honest answer.

  "He also said he has a lady over at Izzy's," she offered.

  "I heard it was a date with a hot nurse for a late movie."

  "Oh."

  Casey's curiosity was piqued, now. She wanted to know more. Hunsacker certainly wasn't the first obstetrician to schedule a cesarean for his own convenience, but something about the extent of his stories intrigued her. Most OBs would have just given the failure-to-progress line and left it at that. He'd knitted an afghan out of it.

  Casey wondered for the first time whether there really was a patient at Izzy's waiting for him, or whether it had just been another part of a good story. She wanted to know, suddenly, what the rest of the truth was.

  When Casey hung up, she dialed Izzy's.

  "Hey, Casey," Evelyn greeted her. "I was going to call you. I got some great scuttlebutt."

  "First things first. Do you have a patient of Hunsacker's up there?"

  Another one of those silences. "Why?"

  "I'm just curious about something. He was just down here and said he was headed your way."

  A longer silence, a gathering of calm. "When pigs fly." Evelyn knew she could trust Casey. "I just got threatened with my job for calling him the third time on a lady who's spiking a temp."

  "He's not coming out?"

  "Not until he damn well feels like it. Which, he says, will undoubtedly be rounds in the morning. Until then, and I quote, I can just keep my knees together. He says he has back-to-back sections at M and M."

  It was Casey's turn for an Mmmm.

  "Yeah," Evelyn retorted. "That's what I thought. Well, I'll tell you, I'm getting real close to shoving a piece of my mind straight up that man's alimentary canal."

  "What's the scuttlebutt?"

  That switched the tone of the conversation very neatly. "Oh, yeah. You haven't talked to Wanda Trigel over here lately, have you?"

  "Wild Woman Wanda from labor and delivery? No, not since the last time I was up at Izzy's for a transfer, why?"

  "She didn't show up for work yesterday. They called her husband, and it seems Wanda drove off and hasn't come back."

  "Yeah, but that's Wanda. You know how bullheaded she is. She and Buddy probably had a fight. Give her twenty-four hours like always and she'll show up."

  "She disappeared three days ago. Buddy's really scared."

  "What do the police say?"

  "That's the bunch out in Jefferson County. They think she ran off with somebody she probably met down at the Ramblin' Rose. They told Buddy he'll probably hear from her when the divorce papers come through."

  Wild Woman hadn't been named that for nothing. Blessed with the foulest mouth this side of Eddie Murphy and a taste in cheap hair bleach, Wanda was a crack operating tech and a world-class hell-raiser. Casey couldn't say she really disagreed with the police. "Well, Wanda's never been known to take my counsel, but if she does, I'll let you know."

  "Yeah, well, while you're in a counseling mood, tell Hunsacker to stop being such a jerk. I've come really close tonight to using vocabulary only Wanda would be comfortable with."

  Casey grinned. "Too bad she ran off. You could sic her on him. It'd be a great show."

  That seemed to improve Evelyn's mood. "Too late. She laid into him last week about something he did in a cesarean over here. I heard it was the best white trash fight L and D had seen in years. She told him she was better with a knife than he was. Then she told him half the gangs in North St. Louis were better with knives than he was."

  "Can't fault the girl for the truth."

  "Not the way I see it."

  "Of course, with Wanda's legendary taste, it was probably Hunsacker she met at the Ramblin' Rose."

  "No," Evelyn disagreed. "If Wanda had faced off with Hunsacker, he'd be the one missing."

  Casey was laughing along with her friend when Barb put an end to the conversation by announcing the arrival of the third overdose of the shift. Since Casey was the lucky winner for this particular grand prize, she hung up and pulled out a patient gown to keep a new mess from joining the one already on her Uniform, all the while savoring the idea of Wild Woman facing off against Hunsacker.

  Casey could just envision what their confrontation must have been like. Hunsacker might have a mean streak in him, but when Wanda was riled, she was like a pit bull. And it sounded like Wanda had been riled. It would have served Hunsacker right. Casey, for one, would have paid money to see him knocked down a couple of pegs.

  It was too bad Wanda had decided to take off. Casey would have bought Wanda dinner just to be regaled with her version of the story. Wanda did have a way with words, especially when it concerned somebody she didn't like.

  Come to think of it, it probably hadn't hurt Hunsacker at all that Wanda had disappeared so conveniently. There wasn't any doubt that if she hadn't developed an itch, she would have made it a point to entertain the grapevine with a vivid blow-by-blow account of the story of Dr. Hunsacker and the scalpel. Something Casey was sure Hunsacker wouldn't have been too fond of.

  Grabbing a nasogastric tube the size of a garden hose and a couple liters of saline, Casey decided that Hunsacker must have already heard about Wanda's elopement. That was probably why he seemed so very pleased when he made that crack about the great people over at the Palace. Wanda had forfeited the match by disappearing, so he counted it a win. Too bad. Round two would have been a killer.

  Right about at that point, Casey opened the door to room three to discover just what waited for her. All she thought about after that was where she'd rather be than pumping stomachs.

  Chapter 4

  St. Louis is a city of neighborhoods. Originally defined by its immigrant populations—the Irish to the north, the Germans to the south, and the Italians in the west center—it matured into an untidy patchwork designed by parish boundaries, democratic wards, and ethnic preference. Primarily Catholic and conservative, it boasted a southern feeling of family and a northern commitment to industry.

  White flight sucked away much of the population within the archaic boundaries of the city, and carried its neighborhood feel with it. Cities and villages quickly partitioned off surrounding county land and drew to themselves unique identities. Instead of considering itself a burgeoning metropolitan area, the growing population that spilled into surrounding counties continued to see itself as citizens of a small town, its loyalties and self-image tied to the neighborhood.

  The Central West End was artistic, the South Side blue-collar union. Yuppies migrated to Creve Coeur and Chesterfield, and
old money stayed close to Ladue. The Germans still favored Dutchtown, the best Italian restaurants were on the Hill, and the Ancient Order of the Hibernians held their St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dogtown. Blacks were seen about as often in Carondelet as whites were up on Cote Brilliant. The city was separate from the county, and surrounding counties measured their distance from the arch even as they kept their own unique flavors.

  Metropolitan St. Louis was a community of settlers who never saw a reason for moving on. It was a comfortable, intimate big city with a good-old-boy network to rival the greatest societies, and a chronic inferiority complex. It was a crazy quilt of separate entities bumping and sidling against each other like passing acquaintances in a row of too-small plane seats that promote politeness but discourage curiosity.

  This attitude had everything to do with why no one thought to look any sooner for Wanda Trigel. First of all, she disappeared from Arnold. A burgeoning Jefferson County city tucked into the southern side of the Meramec and Mississippi river merger, Arnold had long been one of the northern stops for migratory traffic along Highway 55. Poor, white, hard-line right-wingers, the initial core of Arnold had given the city its perception in the bi-state area.

  The locals divided Arnold into three distinct areas, like the lobes of a lung. Upper Arnold was as upscale as it got, with its newer subdivisions and Walmart shopping centers. Lower Arnold, or LA, comprised an area of good old boys and girls, trailer parks and taverns. Life was hard, heads harder. Arguments were settled with pool cues and broken bottles, and the drug of choice was Busch.

  The third area was UCLA, where Wild Woman had lived with Buddy. UCLA, or the Upper Corner of Lower Arnold, was where the river rats lived, the meanest form of life in the entire area. The police wore jackboots and the denizens stayed in the flood plain because they didn't have the means or the inclination to escape. Anybody who didn't like country music was a pussy, white supremacy was considered a religion, and the average entertainment entailed the illegal, the immoral, and the fattening. Anything went, and usually did.

  The Millard boys ran that neck of the woods with brawn, bully, and the first automatic weapons south of St. Louis. Which was the second reason nobody thought much about Wanda's disappearance. She was a Millard, and apples didn't fall far from the tree.

  The Arnold police department knew that, and so did Wanda's friends. They'd partied with her and even followed her onto home turf on one or two unspeakably foolish occasions. If Wanda finally tired of respectability, nobody could really find themselves surprised.

  But no one thought to raise an outcry. The Creve Coeur police, who patrolled the area where Wanda worked, and the Jefferson County sheriff, who had jurisdiction over the last place she'd been seen, didn't think to get involved. It was Arnold's problem, and Arnold's attitude was that it was just a family problem. Just another woman who'd run out. What with the daily struggle to keep the peace in the growing, volatile area just south of St. Louis County, the police and sheriff figured they had more important things to worry about.

  As for the Millard boys, they agreed with the police.

  For Casey's part, she was a typical St. Louisan. Born and raised in Webster Groves, a solidly middle-class neighborhood in the near southwest section of St. Louis County, she had moved only as far as Creve Coeur for her freedom, and then Frontenac to marry. And now, she was home where she was perfectly comfortable shopping and entertaining within a ten-mile radius, where she was caught up more with her neighbors' problems than the county's, or the city's beyond.

  Wanda was consigned to another world, to Casey's past at Izzy's, to another county where she had no control and very little contact, to a lifestyle that Casey minimalized through indifference.

  The word of Wanda's disappearance lingered because the idea of Wanda and Hunsacker dueling was so delicious, but it didn't capture Casey's imagination or concern. Preoccupied with work, with her nagging disillusionment, with the spring holy days, Casey lost track of Wanda within days of her disappearance.

  * * *

  The Who spilled from Casey's headset and rain seeped in around the edges of her hood. It was a drizzly day, gray and indifferent, sapping even that fresh spring green from the young trees. Casey couldn't imagine why she wanted to be out walking. She was sweating and rain-damp at the same time, arms pumping, legs scissoring in rote movement as she ate up the sidewalk along Elm.

  Casey tried to concentrate on the words to "Squeeze-box," tried to match her stride with the rhythm. Instead she kept seeing the vivid images that had followed her from sleep that morning.

  The dream. Bile rose in her chest again, a red, hot gorge of terror and frustration at just the memory of it.

  She'd never had the dream before. She would have remembered it. It had been in the apartment, in Creve Coeur. She could still see the spotless whites of the walls, the slash of a blood-red afghan against the black leather couch. She'd been standing close to the front door, but not too close. Not close enough to touch or escape. All the furniture looked so comfortable, but she couldn't use it. She couldn't sit, or lie down, or close her eyes. The door looked so inviting, but no matter what she did, she couldn't get out. She had to stand there, alone, frightened, angry, without moving. She couldn't rest no matter how tired she grew. She was three years old, which was stupid. She'd been over twenty when she'd first seen that apartment.

  Casey couldn't understand why she should suddenly have that dream, why she should see that room after so many years. Unless it was the fact that her mother was pressing ever closer, demanding more time, more attention, more penance. Unless it was the fact that the job was squeezing in from the other end, the frustration mounting with every petty interference she had to suffer.

  She'd been called into the office the day before. Just as she'd suspected, a complaint had been lodged. Not by Ahmed, though, or even Abe for the fact that she'd been merciless in staying on his tail that night ten days earlier. Besides, Abe would have dragged her off himself and just challenged her to a duel of four-letter words if he'd seen the need.

  The complaint came from the mother of the little boy she'd dragged from the hall.

  "Casey," Tom Nevers had said, fingers steepled over his '64 Cardinals World Series baseball. "You're in the big leagues. You know that you can't flip the bird at the fans."

  Baseball. As far as Tom was concerned, the world had been created by Abner Doubleday and defined by Yogi Berra. A small, asthmatic man who looked more like Woody Allen than Ryne Sandburg, Tom could spend all day trying to couch unintelligible medical terms into anachronistic baseball ones.

  "It's hardly flipping the bird," Casey reminded him, rubbing her forehead to ward away the headache this was producing. "I pulled the kid out of the way of a line drive."

  His face lit with the analogy. Casey wondered how long she could keep this up. She attended more Cardinals' games than Tom did, but even Dizzy Dean had called a nurse a nurse—not a catcher (the unsung hero of the game, who really called the shots and made the pitcher—the doctor—look good).

  "Casey, I'm afraid the fans are always right. Besides, that was Dr. Jordan's niece. He wanted the incident on your stats. I think if you just send a nice little note to the mother, he'll forget the whole thing. Especially since Dr. Hunsacker ran interference for you."

  Wrong game, she thought instinctively. At least get your sports analogies straight.

  Then the name sank in.

  "Hunsacker?" she asked.

  Tom nodded, a look of near reverence on his face, hands flat on the desk like a minister giving direction. "Dr. Jordan said something about it in his presence. You know, locker-room banter. Dr. Hunsacker insisted that he'd seen the incident, and managed to call off the fine. I think you owe him a lot, Casey. He really went to bat for you."

  Casey winced. She'd been steeling herself against that one.

  "Make sure you thank him, too," Tom said, sounding much like her mother discussing the blessed virgin. "Personally. After all, Jordan is head of staff.
He could be your one-way ticket to the minors."

  But she didn't want to thank Hunsacker. She didn't want to be in debt to him. Somehow, Casey had the feeling that he'd defended her just to see the deference in her eyes, and it pissed her off.

  Casey turned the corner from Elm onto Swon and picked up the pace, instinct driving her. When she looked up to discover herself at the distinctive pink Federalist house, she understood. Without realizing it, she'd headed straight for Poppi's.

  It shouldn't have surprised her. She always seemed to home in on Poppi when she needed a little relief from all the atonement in her life. If Poppi had ever thought it necessary to atone for anything, Casey had never heard about it.

  "Are you decent?" Casey called, opening the door without invitation. Reaching a hand beneath the dripping plastic of her hood, she shoved the earphones back onto her neck and stepped in.

  Silence. The first floor of Poppi's house remained as her parents had kept it, spare and elegant in cherrywood and oriental rugs. An impressionist print over the fireplace and brass candlesticks on the lowboy in the dining room. Upstairs was the real Poppi, with the waterbed and fabric-draped ceiling and old Peter Max posters.

  "Poppi? Jason?"

  "Oooooh, Ca-sey!" a voice whooshed from nowhere, as if suspended in the atmosphere. "Tracers!"

  Shedding her coat, Casey chuckled. So it was surrealism time at the old Henderson house. Poppi would be stretched out, timing her heartbeat to the waves on the waterbed, choreographing the dancing lights in her head.

  Casey stopped long enough to purloin a soda from the fridge, shucked her rain gear, and headed for the stairs.

  "Oh, what is your wisdom, my seer?" she asked.

  "On final approach," Poppi assured her in a voice that sounded like somebody being hypnotized.

  She was, indeed, stretched out on the bed, eyes fixed to the gray paisley ceiling, hands tracing patterns in the air, stereo pouring out Wagner. Anybody else would have at least had the decency to trip to Zeppelin, maybe Santana. Poppi had always insisted that the classics were the really psychedelic music, since most of the composers had been crazy anyway. Listening to the muted wailing from the stereo, Casey couldn't really argue.