Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [68]
Uncertain of their direction, deprived of drink, Americans in 1920 were waiting—for a storm to break the gathering tension, for a new president to be elected in November, for their economy to recover. Americans believed they had brought peace to the world. Surely they were entitled to worry about their own problems now.
There was, however, no peace in the world. In the summer of 1920, great armies still ravaged the earth. In August, a Soviet army marched triumphantly into Poland and even entered Warsaw, its sights set on Germany and beyond. Lenin had reason to be ambitious. Armed communists had seized power in Munich and declared Bavaria a Soviet Republic. The same occurred in Hungary. Right next door to the United States, revolutionaries in Mexico overthrew the American-supported regime, promising to reclaim that nation’s gigantic petroleum deposits from the companies—in particular the United States companies—that owned them.
But most Americans in 1920 neither knew nor cared. Most had had their fill of the world. Most—but not all.
On Saturday morning, September 18, two days after the bombing, one day after Colette’s lecture in Saint Thomas Church, Younger and Littlemore met at a subway station a couple of blocks from Bellevue Hospital.
“Any way to identify the girl?” asked Younger as they set off for the hospital.
“Two-Heads?” said Littlemore. “We’ll probably know in a day or two. With girls, somebody usually comes in to report them missing. Unless she’s a hooker, in which case nobody reports her.”
“I have a feeling this one isn’t a hooker,” said Younger.
The two men looked at each other.
“Did you check her teeth?” asked Younger.
“To see if she lost a molar? Yeah—I had the same idea. But nope. No missing teeth.”
“Why Colette?”
“You mean why are these things happening to her? That’s the question all right. But like I said—don’t assume everything’s connected.”
“What are you assuming—freak coincidence?”
“I’m not assuming anything. I never assume. If I had to guess, I’d say somebody thinks the Miss is somebody she isn’t. Maybe a whole lot of people think she’s somebody she isn’t.”
Bellevue was a publicly funded hospital, required to take all patients delivered to its door, and the catastrophe on Wall Street had added fresh strains upon its already overtaxed resources. Every corridor was an obstacle course of patients slumped over on chairs or stretched out on gurneys. On the third floor, Younger and Littlemore found the woman from the church in a ward she shared with more than a dozen other female patients. She was breathing but unconscious, veins pulsing on the engorged mass bulging out of her neck. A nurse told them the girl had not regained consciousness since being admitted. One bed away, a hospital physician was administering an injection to another patient. Littlemore asked him if he thought the redheaded woman was going to live.
“I wouldn’t know,” said the physician helpfully.
“Who would?” asked Littlemore.
“I would,” said the physician. “I attend on this ward. But I’ve had no time to examine her.”
“Mind if I examine her?” asked Younger.
“You’re a doctor?” asked the doctor.
“He’s a Harvard doctor,” said Littlemore.
“I’d like to get a look at what’s inside that neoplasm on her neck,” said Younger. “Do you have an X-ray machine?”
“Of course we have one,” said the doctor, “but only the hospital’s radiology staff is permitted to use it.”
“Okay,” said Littlemore. “Where can we find the radiology staff?”
“I’m the hospital’s radiology staff,” said the doctor.
Littlemore folded his arms. “And when could you do an X-ray?”
“In two weeks,” said the doctor. “I perform X-rays on the first Monday of every month.”