A Heartbeat Away - Michael Palmer [79]
“Department of Health and Mental Hygiene,” Angie said, holding up her fake ID badge to the security camera installed overhead. The photograph laminated into the card was one Gottfried Sliplitz had taken from her Facebook page.
There was a lengthy pause before the door buzzed. She entered into a cramped, poorly lit hallway, dominated by an ornate, rickety wooden staircase that ascended steeply in front of her. The unmistakable odor of cooked fish and salt drifted down from the floors above.
Stepping into character, Angie hid her suitcase behind the stairwell. She looked around for an elevator, but saw none. Curious. Surely a nursing home had to have one.
Eschewing the stairs, she headed down the hallway, which turned once to the right and ended at a heavy metal door that was locked. It was possible there was an elevator somewhere behind it, but that made little sense. Perhaps the nursing home had been merged with the building next door and that was where the elevator was.
Finally, she returned to the front hallway and trudged up the steep stairs, still wondering how a nursing home could exist without some sort of transport for disabled and wheelchair-bound residents. As she ascended, the sound of voices grew louder. She stopped on the fourth floor, where the chatter was the loudest, the odor the strongest. A small sign nailed to a shuttered door read RIVERSIDE beneath its corresponding Chinese characters.
Angie paused to catch her breath, then knocked. A haggard, middle-aged Chinese woman responded. She had short dark hair streaked with gray, and wore a black blouse with a swirling, orange floral design. Angie held up her Health and Mental Hygiene identification card, and was suspiciously invited one step inside. She felt slightly foolish at having come so far on such little evidence. If she were wrong about the Riverside, she would be flying back to Garden City by morning.
“Does a Mrs. Chen reside here?” she asked.
The woman shook her head, shouted something into the space behind her, looked quizzically back at Angie, and shook her head again. Angie wished that she had the picture of Sylvia and her mother to show, but Griff had warned her that the chemical and ultraviolet decontamination process required to remove it from the Kitchen would have ruined the image altogether.
“May I come in?” she asked.
The woman nodded, spoke again in Chinese, and then motioned for Angie to enter. They stepped into a narrow, oak-floored hallway that featured rows of doors with numbers, but no glass, presumably residents’ rooms, extending in both directions. It was more dormlike than any nursing home Angie had ever visited, but the corridor was also remarkably clean and fairly free of clutter. Several walkers and wheelchairs were pushed up against the wall, plus an empty hospital bed provided the only visible clue as to the building’s function.
Angie followed the woman until they came to an open, brightly lit common area. There were two dozen or so elderly Chinese women and men seated on couches and easy chairs, or clustered around foldout bridge tables. Many of them were talking, seemingly at the same time. Some of the residents were playing games—backgammon, cards, and Mahjong. Others were watching television. A few were simply staring off, perhaps at their memories.
Angie scanned the room for Sylvia Chen’s mother. Lack of any possible candidates continued to erode her confidence in her conclusions about the place. Had she put Gottfried at risk for nothing? Melvin too? Suddenly the nonlinear thinking of her ADD, which had so often helped her break a story, seemed childish, misguided, and even worse, potentially dangerous.
A stunning young Chinese woman approached from across the lounge, requested