I ran around to the back, to the service entrance, where I opened my wallet and flashed my PI license in the face of a security guard so fast he couldn’t tell whether it was an FBI badge or a credit card. By the time he’d figured that out, I had disappeared into the labyrinth of halls and stairwells that make security at any hospital a nightmare.
I tried to keep my bearings but still ended up in radiation oncology and file storage before finding the main lobby. I could hear shouting from the group outside, but I couldn’t see anything: Beth Israel is an old brick building, without a plate-glass front or even any windows low enough to see outside. Hospital guards, who were completely unused to this kind of chaos, were doing an ineffectual job of keeping gawkers from blocking the main entrance. An older woman sobbed helplessly to one side that she’d just had outpatient surgery, that she needed a taxi to get home, while a second woman with a newborn looked around anxiously for her husband.
I stared at the scene for an appalled moment, then told the guards to keep people away from the door. “Tell them that anyone who obstructs the entryway is facing a fine. The back exit is free and clear—get these patients out through there. Send an SOS to the cab companies to use the rear.”
I watched until the startled guard started giving orders through his walkie-talkie before I marched down the corridor to Max’s office. Cynthia Dowling, Max’s secretary, interrupted a heated telephone exchange when she saw me.
“Cynthia, why doesn’t Max get the cops to arrest that group of yahoos?”
She shook her head. “The board’s afraid of alienating major donors. Beth Israel is one of the big Jewish charities in town. Most of the calls we’ve been getting since Posner hit the news have agreed with you, but old Mrs. Felstein is one of Posner’s supporters—she survived the war in hiding in Moldavia, you know, but when she came here she made a fortune in gum balls. Lately she’s been active in lobbying Swiss banks to release Holocaust victims’ assets. And she’s pledged twenty million dollars for our new oncology wing.”
“So if she sees Posner carried off to a paddy wagon she’ll cancel? But if someone who’s having a heart attack dies because they can’t get here, you’d face a lawsuit that would more than offset any pledge she made.”
“That’s Max’s decision. His and the board’s, and of course they’re aware of the pitfalls.” Her phone console started to blink; she pressed a button. “Mr. Loewenthal’s office . . . No, I know you have a one-thirty deadline. As soon as Mr. Loewenthal is available I’ll let him have your message. . . . Yes, I wish we weren’t in the business of saving lives here; it would make us better able to drop everything to respond to media deadlines. Mr. Loewenthal’s office, please hold. . . . Mr. Loewenthal’s office, please hold.” She looked at me, distracted, with her hand over the phone. “This place is so inefficient. The stupid temp the clerical pool sent me went to lunch an hour ago. She’s probably out front enjoying the show, and even though I’m the executive director’s secretary, the clerical office won’t send me another backup.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll leave you to it. I have some questions for Posner—tell Max if you see him that I won’t implicate the hospital.”
When I got to the main lobby, I elbowed my way through to the front of the crowd, which was once again pushing against the revolving doors. As soon as I got outside I saw the reason for their avidity: the demonstrators had stopped marching and were clumped together behind Joseph Posner, who was shouting at a small woman in a hospital coat, “You’re the worst kind of anti-Semite, a traitor to your own people.”
“And you, Mr. Posner, are the worst kind of abuser of human emotion, exploiting the horrors of Treblinka for your own aggrandizement.”
I would have known that voice anywhere, anger making her clip off words like so many cigar ends. I pushed past two of Posner’s Maccabees to reach her side. “Lotty, what are you doing here? This is a losing battle—attention is this guy’s meat and drink.”
Posner, his nostrils flaring with anger, his mouth distorted in defiance, looked like a picture captioned The gladiator waiting for the lion in my childhood Illustrated History of Rome.
Lotty, a small but ferocious lion, shook me off. “Mind your own business for once, Victoria. This man is defaming the dead for his own glory. And he’s defaming me.”
“Then we’ll take it to a court of law,” I said. “There are television cameras catching every word on tape.”
“Go ahead, take me to court, if you dare.” Posner turned as he spoke, to make sure both his supporters and the reporters heard him. “I don’t care if I spend five years in jail, if that will make the world understand my people’s cause.”
“Your people?” I kept my voice light, scornful. “Are you Moses now?”