Montaro Caine A Novel

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IT WAS TO BE A STRANGE SORT OF BIRTH, QUITE POSSIBLY THE strangest in the history of Mount Sinai Hospital, where Dr. Howard Mozelle had enjoyed professional privileges in the obstetrics ward for nearly thirty years. During the course of his career, he had overseen hundreds of births in these delivery rooms. He had delivered babies in rooms full of friends and family, and alongside countless midwives and doulas. Yet in his experience, at the very moment of birth, what couples sought more than anything was privacy and solitude and the illusion that the rest of the hospital was empty, that theirs was the only family in the world. Everything else was a needless distraction.

After a child was born, Mozelle tried to send parents home with their new babies as soon as it was medically permissible—not because he wanted to cut down on costs, but because he knew that, no matter how hard he tried, a hospital would always be an unnatural sort of place. He wanted his patients to leave behind the drugs, the machines, and the medical implements, and get on with the business of becoming a stronger family. He deeply believed that a birth was a profound, private event, which should have as little interference as possible from anyone aside from the family members and their doctor. Part of him wished that Whitney Carson Walker could have the same intimate experience with her husband that Whitney’s mother had had. And yet he knew all too well that this would be impossible. The birth of Whitney and Franklyn’s child was to be a monumental occasion—anything but a private, family affair. Lawyers were involved now, businesspeople, investors. The birth was to be videotaped so that all would be able to see how many coins would be found in the hands of Whitney and Franklyn’s child.

With the assistance of Dr. Mozelle, Montaro Caine had arranged to hold a meeting in a conference room in Mount Sinai on the floor below the obstetrics ward. There, he hoped, the issue of ownership of the coins that already existed and those that would soon materialize would be decided once and for all or rendered moot. Though the whereabouts of both coins were still unknown, all parties sensed that they would reappear at some point, and everything needed to be worked out in advance of that occurrence. Nancy MacDonald, on Caine’s instructions, had sent invitations to just about everyone associated with the story of the Walkers and the coins—including Luther John Doe and Thomas Lund, Carrie Pittman and Hattie Sinclair; he had even instructed Nancy to send an invitation to a certain Bahamian island in care of Matthew Perch, a man whose dwelling had no known address.

Invitations had been sent to both Caine’s allies and his foes. Caine had invited Michael Chasman and Richard Walmeyer, and he had invited Richard Davis and Roland Gabler. He had invited his opponents’ lawyer Julius Hargrove, and he had invited his own lawyer Gordon Whitcombe. He had invited those whose allegiances still seemed uncertain to him—Kritzman Fritzbrauner, Colette Beekman, and Herman Freich. Whitney’s uncle, the Walkers’ only living relative, received an invitation as well, although he was too ill to make the trip from Brooklyn. Along with the invitations that his secretary had sent, Caine had included a letter that expressed how important it was for everyone to work together to solve, or even better, to look beyond the issue of ownership. He had stressed the fact that this birth was a matter far more important than how much money the coins might be worth and who might ultimately be entitled to what. He hoped that the birth could bring all sides together as opposed to driving them further apart. He said in his letter that he wanted everyone to be on hand at the hospital when Whitney and Franklyn’s child was born. And just about everyone on Caine’s invitation list had said yes with the exception of Whitney’s uncle and Matthew Perch, who had not yet responded to Caine’s invitation. By the time Whitney’s water broke, Caine figured that he would most probably not hear from Perch at all.

Whitney had trusted Dr. Mozelle when he told her of the necessity for all these strangers to be in the hospital on the occasion of her child’s birth, while Franklyn remained suspicious. And yet, after Dr. Mozelle had explained the story of the coins to the couple, apologizing that he hadn’t told them earlier, both understood that the matter, though nearly impossible for them to fully grasp, was beyond their control. They agreed to the videotaping of the birth and everything else Caine and Mozelle had proposed.

The morning Whitney went into labor, the blinds in Whitney’s hospital room were drawn and the light was dim. Red lights from the video cameras that were positioned around the room were visible, yet the cameras made no sounds. Whitney lay in her hospital bed, while Franklyn stood beside it, holding one of her hands as Anna Hilburn held the other. Every so often, a tremor would course through Whitney’s body. Whitney would wince at the sudden, rolling pain, but whenever the doctor asked if she wanted medicine, she waved him off and shook her head.

“Breathe easy,” Anna Hilburn told her patient. “Breathe.”

In the birthing room, there was a sense that something miraculous and otherworldly was taking place, and yet, there was nothing particularly unusual about this. Even after so many years, Anna Hilburn and Howard Mozelle still found every birth to be a miracle, the transporting of a small, living being from one world into another.

Another pain stabbed through Whitney’s body and she clutched Franklyn’s hand so hard, it seemed to him as if his wedding ring might just break off his finger at the knuckle. Franklyn shut his eyes and clenched his teeth while Whitney cried out, emitting a loud, low sound that seemed to come from deep within her.

“Push, child,” Anna said softly to Whitney. “It’s almost time.”

Anna knew that the baby would be born in moments—she didn’t have to look at Whitney to know this. The baby was announcing its entrance, and it didn’t have to say a word.

One floor below, the Mt. Sinai conference room was a different world entirely. Everyone at the four conference tables had arranged themselves into configurations that represented their apparent allegiances. At one table sat Kritzman Fritzbrauner, his daughter Colette, Herman Freich, Verna Fontaine, Roland Gabler, and their lawyer Julius Hargrove. Hargrove was a stout, broad-shouldered man with more hair on his knuckles than on his head, and he looked every bit the part of one of New York’s most-feared attorneys. At another table sat more attorneys from Hargrove’s firm. To Caine, the most conspicuous aspect of that table was not who was sitting at it but who wasn’t—his old friend Larry Buchanan, who still wasn’t in these lawyers’ echelon. At Caine’s own table sat his family’s lawyer, Gordon Whitcombe, Elsen Mozelle, and four empty chairs, which would have been occupied by Anna Hilburn, Howard Mozelle, and Whitney and Franklyn Walker, had they not been busy on the floor above. And at the last table sat Luther John Doe, his caretaker, Tom Lund, Carrie Pittman, Richard Walmeyer, Michael Chasman, and Hattie Sinclair.

At the center of the room stood Montaro Caine. For him, the road to this day seemed to have begun forty-six years earlier when his father had died, but in fact, it had started even earlier than that, perhaps months before Dr. Robert Caine’s arrival in New York, when Luther John Doe had carved a model of a ship for a boy he had never met. Or perhaps it had begun hundreds of thousands of years before that, when the Seventh Ship had journeyed from its dying world into space in search of a planet whose sun would not die so soon. That model that Luther had carved was now in Montaro’s jacket pocket.

As an eight-year-old child, Montaro could not have had any idea of the significance Robert Caine’s death would have on the world around him, only the impact that tragic death had on his own tiny world and that of his mother and his grandfather. Now he understood that, from the moment Robert Caine had died in that airplane crash outside Kansas City, his father’s life and his untimely passing had led everyone in this room to this particular moment, intertwining all of their fates. Even the future of Montaro’s company seemed to lie in the hands of two babies born twenty-six years ago, and in the hands of their baby who was busy being born upstairs.

Though at this moment he stood alone, Montaro took strength from those around him, from the living and from the dead. He took strength from the confidence his wife and daughter still had in him; he took strength from the examples his parents had set; and he took strength from the words that P. L. Caine had spoken to him when he was a boy, and again when he was a man: “A man has to stand up to hard times no matter what.” No matter how hard these times may have been, Montaro was standing firmly and he felt strong. Not long ago, he might have needed a drink to steady his resolve. Even more recently, he might have felt exhausted and wanted nothing more than a few hours of peaceful sleep. Now, he felt as awake and alert as he ever had.

The conference room was abuzz with nervous anticipation. The lawyers and executives at Julius Hargrove’s table were discussing percentages, fees, and technical definitions of ownership. Those at Montaro’s table were speculating about what Howard Mozelle might find when Whitney’s child was born. One coin? Two? Coins similar to the ones that they had already seen? Different coins entirely? Ones depicting new celestial configurations? Montaro’s own mind was swirling with the words he planned to use to address the room. But the moment he cleared his throat and made as if to speak, a deadly quiet took possession of the room. He thought that everybody was looking at him, but in fact, nobody was.

Instead, everyone in the room had turned to focus on the conference room’s revolving door, which had begun to turn as if of its own accord. Standing in the doorway, there appeared a tall, lean black man. He seemed to be in his middle years, with a still handsome face and salt-and-pepper hair.

Several audible gasps were heard as the man took a few steps into the room, then looked around, his eyes resting for a moment on each of the four tables. Tears streamed down Hattie Sinclair’s and Elsen Mozelle’s cheeks, and they caught each other’s eyes across the tables. Though decades had passed, the man’s face appeared little changed.

Montaro immediately knew who the man was; yes, some things you could know without ever having been told.

For his part, Julius Hargrove looked on suspiciously. Though he had not called the meeting and was not in charge of the agenda, he was used to being in control. Since no one else had spoken to the self-possessed, dark-skinned stranger in their midst, Hargrove stood up and looked around at the other tables, then gestured toward the man and approached him. “Sir,” he said, “are you an invited guest, or an employee of the hospital?”

The man took his time before answering. “I believe I have been invited,” he finally said. “But no, I’m not an employee. I am here as an observer. I am here to see, to listen, and to remember.”

“Are you with the press?” Hargrove asked.

“No, I am not,” the man answered, at which point Elsen Mozelle stood.

“Mr. Hargrove,” Elsen said as she wiped her eyes. “This gentleman is very well known to me and also to Hattie Sinclair.”

“Who is he?” Hargrove asked. “What’s your name?”

“Matthew Perch,” the man replied.

Hargrove smiled, and yet his smile was neither kind nor welcoming. “Ah, you’re the elusive Mr. Perch,” he said. “You’re the one who cures cancer with bush medicine. We hear that you are a miracle worker in that regard. You are indeed welcome here, Mr. Perch. Your reputation precedes you. My apology to you. Please take a seat.”

But Perch remained standing, and then, after surveying the scene, seeming to diagnose it as he would a patient, he turned and began to move toward the revolving door. Hargrove followed Perch through that door and out into the main hallway. For a man of his age, Hargrove moved quickly but not quickly enough. He had to shout to make himself heard: “Mr. Perch, a word or two with you.”

Matthew Perch slowed his pace but did not stop.

“Sir,” Hargrove said when he had finally caught up to Perch, “my firm is here as part of Mr. Fritzbrauner’s, Mr. Davis’s, and Mr. Gabler’s legal representation. We are here to fashion a fair and just resolution as to who, among the people present today, are the true owners of the items at the center of this complex issue; who, in light of the laws of the United States, are the legal owner, or owners, of the two coins in question. I am sure you are aware of the coins I’m referring to.”

But all that Hargrove was saying seemed to sound like inconsequential gibberish to Perch, who stopped for only a moment before raising his hand to silence the lawyer. “I am going to the delivery room,” he said. “I don’t think it would be wise for you to follow me there.”

Hargrove had always known that his success in corporate law was largely attributable to his ability to read both his clients and their opponents in the world of industry. But now, a warning sign rattled within him. He instantly understood that Perch might be a man he could not read.

“No,” Hargrove answered, his voice now significantly quieter and less self-assured. “You are right, of course.”

“Good,” said Perch. “You can raise whatever issues you wish upon my return.”

Upstairs, Matthew Perch entered the delivery room unseen. Whitney was pushing hard as her husband held her hand, while Anna Hilburn reached for the baby, whose head of slick black hair was now clearly visible.

“He’s crowning,” said Anna, and Whitney gave a throaty moan that seemed to make the whole room vibrate. When Whitney closed her eyes tight to fend off the pain, she saw swirling colors and shapes, a spectacular, private display. At the foot of the hospital bed stood Dr. Mozelle, who caught a glimpse of Perch—he stood there as if he had always been there, as if he had never left, as if he was standing where he had always belonged. The men shared a silent nod of recognition as Whitney gave another strong push accompanied by yet another, even louder, deeper moan.

Franklyn gently placed a cool towel on his wife’s forehead while Dr. Mozelle moved closer to his patient.

“There you are,” said Mozelle as he saw the baby’s head. “Whitney, you’re almost there.”

“Breathe, honey,” said Franklyn. He gave his wife his hand again and she squeezed it gently, then harder.

“Ready, honey?” Franklyn asked.

Whitney managed a small smile. Yes, she was ready. She gave another push.

And now, the baby slid out of her body—a slippery boy with a mass of dark curls upon his head. When Franklyn cut the umbilical cord, Whitney trembled and cried, a cry that turned into happy laughter as she watched Anna Hilburn wrap the baby in a clean white towel. Tears appeared in Franklyn’s eyes as Anna handed the baby to Franklyn, who brought the baby to his wife. Whitney grasped the bundle and clutched it to her chest.

The new parents beamed at each other, both of them crying now. They had no consciousness of Dr. Mozelle or Anna Hilburn or of Matthew Perch standing before them. They seemed to have forgotten the cameras in the room and the conference room full of people one floor below. Franklyn sat at the edge of the bed with his arm around Whitney. She rested her head on his shoulder. They both smiled at their first child, his tiny eyes closed.

Then, the baby opened his eyes. He squirmed underneath his swaddling blanket, and as he did, Whitney understood that he was trying to do something; he was trying to open his hands.