Montaro Caine A Novel

13





THE HIGH-PITCHED WAIL OF FIRE ENGINE SIRENS ALONG 67TH Street invaded Dr. Mozelle’s office, forcing him to pause while the monster machines rumbled past. Rising from the couch where she sat with Anna Hilburn, Elsen Mozelle stepped toward Caine. “Mr. Caine, would you care for some coffee or some water?”

“No, thank you.”

“Coke? Diet Coke?”

“Thank you, no.”

When the sound of the sirens had faded, Dr. Mozelle directed his attention back to Montaro, who waited eagerly for the doctor’s story to continue.

“As I was saying,” Mozelle began. “Matthew Perch, from what we can gather, treated my wife in much the same manner as he did Hattie Sinclair,” Mozelle said. “She drank all sorts of different brews. Sometimes they were thick and pulpy. Sometimes they were thin and clear. Sometimes they were in between. They were all pitch-black in color, like ink, and at first, all of them were equally revolting.”

After about four weeks of treatment, according to Dr. Mozelle, his wife became accustomed to the treatment. Still, there was no discernible sign of improvement in her condition. In fact, by the end of the second month, she took a turn for the worse.

“I must tell you, it was a dramatic turn,” Dr. Mozelle told Caine. “She couldn’t hold anything in her stomach. She retched for days on end, couldn’t lift her head. She was so weak, and she remained that way for fifteen days. I didn’t think she could lose any more weight, but she did. I was afraid that dehydration and malnutrition would kill her. Her pain seemed so terrible that I finally asked if she wanted to stop. She said no. I begged Matthew Perch to allow me to stay with her at night. He refused. I began to think we had made a mistake.”

During the eleventh week of Elsen Mozelle’s treatment, however, her condition stabilized and she began to show slight signs of improvement. By the end of the twelfth week, she was able to leave her bed and walk around Perch’s hut. Four weeks later, she felt well enough that her husband began taking trips to New York so he could begin reviving his dormant medical practice. Still, when he was in New York, he never discussed his wife’s progress with anyone, partly because he had no way of knowing the extent of Elsen’s recovery, and partly because he felt that he owed Matthew Perch his absolute discretion.

And then, one day, during the fifth month of treatment, as Howard Mozelle was leaving the hut after one of his afternoon visits, Perch, who had not said much more than hello or good day to him in all that time, told the doctor in a most matter-of-fact way, “You can have her back tomorrow.” Then he walked off abruptly toward the rear of his hut.

“The next day, when I arrived, Perch was sitting under a tree a short distance from the hut,” Mozelle told Caine. “I waved to him; he didn’t wave back. But I didn’t mind because I had grown quite used to his ways. I entered the hut with the overnight bag I had brought to pack Elsen’s things. I had a camera with me and when Elsen saw it, she asked me to take some shots of her in the hut so that she could always remember it. I snapped about half a dozen pictures, and then, for reasons I don’t fully understand, I stepped over to the artwork on the west wall and took a picture of it. I did the same with the piece on the east wall. Then, I took out an envelope from my jacket pocket with ten thousand dollars in it and laid it on the table. Perch had never mentioned money, but we wanted him to have it.”

When the Mozelles stepped out of the hut into the sunlight, Matthew Perch got up from the shade of the calico tree and walked toward them. The doctor thanked Perch. Elsen asked if she might visit him again sometime. Perch just shook his head. Then, Elsen reached up and kissed him on the cheek. He looked down at her, first into her eyes, then, in turn, at her ears, her hair, her nose, her cheeks, her lips. Knowing what he was doing, she smiled, raised her hands in front of her face to show him her palms first, then the backs of both hands. Perch smiled and nodded his head slightly. It was at that particular moment that Elsen knew he understood that she had been completely cured.

Dr. Mozelle held out his hand to Perch, and this time the man took it. As they said good-bye, the strong, calloused hand of Matthew Perch gave Dr. Mozelle’s hand an extra squeeze before he disengaged his grip, turned away, entered his hut, and closed the door behind him. Mozelle and his wife started down the hill, but a few moments later, they heard a shout—Perch was rushing down the hill toward them with the envelope of money in his hands. He stopped when he reached the Mozelles.

“Take this,” he said quietly.

Mozelle took the envelope, feeling deeply sorry that they might have offended him. “We just wanted to do something to thank you,” Mozelle said apologetically. Perch didn’t respond directly; he stared intently into Dr. Mozelle’s eyes, then into Elsen’s, then into the doctor’s again.

“To thank me?” Perch asked.

Howard Mozelle nodded, whereupon Perch made a statement that was as intriguing as it was baffling, a statement that both Elsen and Howard Mozelle had been puzzling over ever since.

“Then remember this,” Perch told them, speaking each word slowly and carefully.

“After the two have been joined together, the son shall hold the coins, and he will bring them to their destination.”

Howard and Elsen tried to ask Matthew Perch what he meant, but the man only repeated what he had already said—After the two have been joined together, the son shall hold the coins, and he will bring them to their destination. Then, he turned and walked away.

Back in New York, Elsen was examined and pronounced cured by Dr. Kempler, who agreed to respect the promise they had made to Matthew Perch not to disturb his peace.

“After that, I went back to my practice,” Mozelle told Caine now. “Elsen went back to teaching history at Columbia, a new person in many ways. Life was wonderful again.”

Dr. Mozelle paused and took a deep breath before looking over to his wife and the elderly nurse; the doctor seemed to be seeking their permission to continue. The two women gazed back at the doctor, who curled his lips between his teeth and nodded to the women before turning back to face Caine.

“Mr. Caine, during that same year, I delivered a baby to one of my patients, a healthy baby girl. The baby’s left hand was folded like this”—Mozelle made his left hand into a ball. “Anna and I were the only ones present. We opened those tiny fingers, and in them was an object. I want you to understand what I’m saying. In the baby’s left hand was an object that looked like a coin. It was not attached to the hand. We picked it up. It was firm and had the consistency of a stone. I walked to an overhead light to examine it more closely. The first side I looked at was smooth and blank, but then I turned it over. It was at that moment, Mr. Caine, that I realized that the configuration on the face of the object seemed to be an exact miniaturized replica of the artwork on one of the walls of Matthew Perch’s hut. I was dumbfounded. Anna did not understand its significance; she was simply bowled over by the fact that we had discovered an object in the baby’s hand. She couldn’t believe it, and neither could I.

“I asked Anna not to tell the mother about what we had found until we had a chance to have the object examined, to find out what it was made of, and to check it against the photographs I had taken of the objects on Perch’s walls. I discovered that I was correct; one side of the object was exactly like the piece of artwork that hung on the east wall of the hut. I did not tell the child’s mother what I had found in her baby’s hand. I have wrestled with the ethics of that decision from time to time over the years. Later, I justified my actions with ‘Science should come first,’ and with Perch’s strange prophecy to me, which seemed to justify my role in the coins’ fate.

“And now, Mr. Caine, here is where you came in. The configuration on that artwork in Matthew Perch’s hut resembled a portion of the night sky: a sprinkling of stars. That was my impression the very first time I saw them on his walls. I wondered about the significance of such a sprinkling of stars. The next day, I flew to Boston to see an astronomer friend of mine.”

“Dr. Chasman,” said Caine.

“Yes, but I wasn’t honest with him either. The time wasn’t right, I thought, to turn the scientific community loose on such little facts as we had. I told Michael that the object was a coin from an ancient civilization, and that it belonged to a friend of mine who wanted to have it analyzed by a top metallurgist. I asked him to intercede on behalf of my friend with Dr. Walmeyer at M.I.T. After he agreed, I asked him what he made of the configuration on the face of the coin.”

“What did he say?” asked Caine.

“He said that it brought to mind a familiar grouping of stars that includes portions of two different constellations,” said Mozelle. “He asked me who the owner was. I told him he was a dealer in rare objects who preferred to remain anonymous. That afternoon, after I returned to New York, he went to your old professor in the Metallurgy Department and asked him to do the workup. As you know, the professor had to leave for a conference the next day, so he turned the job over to you.

“Until now, Elsen, Anna, and myself were the only people in the world who knew what I’ve just told you. The girl never met her father; he was out of the picture. But the mother and child remained patients of our clinic. In fact, we did our utmost to maintain a doctor/patient relationship with the family and did so for many years. During that time, we closely monitored mother and child. The child was normal in every way—perhaps a bit above average in intelligence, but not strikingly so. Nothing unusual appeared anywhere in the mother’s chart. Then the mother died fifteen years ago, and the child went to live with her uncle in Brooklyn.”

“What were you looking for, specifically, when you examined the woman and her daughter?” asked Caine.

“Explanations,” said Mozelle. “Any explanation. There were so many questions that we wanted answers to. The object was found in the hand of a newborn baby, and it seemed to be an exact image of something hanging on the wall in a Caribbean hut. Why had this happened? What did it mean? Had such a thing ever happened before? Why was the object from the child’s hand not an exact image of both pieces of art? It was a carbon copy of one, but the other side was blank. What about Matthew Perch? Was he the one who had made those pieces on his wall? If not, who did? We didn’t know what we were looking for. I kept thinking about those last words Perch had spoken to us—The son shall hold the coins.

“We began to quietly research everyone in the mother’s family—her brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents. We did the same with the husband and his family. We came up with nothing. I made sure that the girl was examined in our clinic, and when she was older, I saw her myself for regular appointments, but we found nothing extraordinary about her either. There were no unusual signs in her blood work or development, nothing unusual in her behavior.

“That’s the way everything stood for years, until you called us. A tragedy has taken place, Mr. Caine. From the beginning, we kept the coin you analyzed here in a safe in these offices. Today, we discovered that it’s been stolen.”

“When?” Caine asked, stunned by the news yet riveted by the story.

“We can’t say for sure—it could have been any time over the last few years. After we heard your message, we checked to make sure it was still there. It wasn’t. If the coin you saw this morning is indeed different, we will not be surprised if it turns out to match the other object on the west wall of Matthew Perch’s hut.”

“But where did it come from, that second coin?” asked Caine. “The girl’s husband maybe? Her boyfriend? Someone in his family? In hers? Do you have any idea?”

But Dr. Mozelle remained silent.

“Or … did she have a baby?” Caine asked. “A son?”

“We’re not sure yet,” Dr. Mozelle said. “All I can say is that for years Anna, Elsen, and myself have all had the same theory—that when that girl has a baby, whenever that might be, something momentous will occur.”

“Another coin, you mean?” asked Caine.

“Coins,” said Mozelle. “Perch said ‘coins.’ But for now, we must find the coins that we already know to exist; I feel that it’s our duty to do so. They must be preserved for science, your branch and mine, and Matthew Perch’s, whose involvement, I suspect, might be far more significant than we can presently imagine. The person who went into my safe and stole the coin also had access to my notes. Whoever has that coin probably knows just about everything I’ve told you. I hope your interest is sufficiently high, Mr. Caine, to want to help us with this situation.”

“How do you see me helping?” asked Caine.

“We must get hold of those coins.”

“That may be extremely difficult, Doctor.”

“Difficult, but not impossible, particularly for a man as influential and resourceful as yourself.”

“It actually may be impossible.”

“But you do know where the second coin is? I mean, who has it? The people who brought it to you this morning?”

“Hold on, Doctor,” said Caine. “The first questions we have to tackle are: Who stole the first coin from your safe, and where is that item now? Whoever has it won’t just hand it over to anyone just for the asking.”

“You’re right about that. Of course we have to find out who has it,” said Dr. Mozelle with stubborn determination. With his hands on his knees for support, he bent over closer to Caine and asked in a low, confidential tone, “Can we pursue this together, Mr. Caine?”

Caine shook his head at the strangeness of the situation. “First, please call me Montaro. And second, I would like nothing more,” he said.