The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [134]
“You mean the other Georgie? He did the work? That’s what the police say anyway.”
“Maybe,” said Danielle. “But I always figured it was the old guy.”
“Old guy?” I asked. I felt a reflex to start, but tried to cover it by taking a sip from my glass. “What did he look like?”
“Little fella. Dressed like a millionaire. I ain’t never seen a collar so white.”
“Did he have glasses?” I asked.
“Yeah. The ones without the hooks for your ears. Why? D’you know him?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I might. He was clean-shaven, am I correct?”
“Nah,” Danielle replied. “This musta been a different millionaire. He had a mustache and beard both. Took real good care of them, too.”
“That couldn’t have been who I was thinking of,” I said, playing with the stem of my glass and praying that I was giving nothing away.
“They had a tiff one night,” said Danielle. “Georgie and the old gent. Musta been something big. Georgie got scary, the way he got all quiet when he was really hot. I think even Haggens backed off him then.”
“That says something,” I agreed.
“It does, mister.” Danielle nodded. “I can tell you. But Georgie … he could really make you quake.”
“What was the fight about?” I asked casually.
“Georgie had something on the old guy … I couldn’t hear exactly what … but it had something to do with some young bird. I think Georgie wanted money to keep his mouth shut, but the old guy didn’t wanna come across. So Georgie got real quiet, leaned over and said something, too soft to make out, and the old gent went as white as his collar. A few minutes later, he agreed to do what Georgie wanted.”
“That’s funny,” said Brigid. “The night I was here with Ephie, Georgie had some big set-to with a geezer looked just like that. Remember?”
“Sorry. I don’t remember anything about that night … except you, of course.”
She laughed, a real laugh, like a girl. For a moment, she looked quite sweet and innocent. “Ah, g’wan.”
“Oh, wait a minute,” I said, clapping a hand to my forehead. “Now I remember. Haggens had come over and told Turk someone wanted to see him. It was the, uh, geezer.” I considered this revelation for a moment. “But from what I saw, he hardly looked afraid of Turk.”
“He was scared that night, I’ll tell you,” said Danielle. “After the old boy left, Georgie was pig-in-clover happy. He said, ‘Just goes to prove, Annalise’—I was goin’ by Annalise then—’you can always find some way to get anyone to do anything. Even big, important snobs.’ I asked what he meant, but he just laughed. ‘Sometimes you give ’em what they want, and sometimes you take it away.’ I never did figure out what he meant.”
But I knew. What a fool I’d been!
“I’ve got to go,” I said to them both. “I’m sorry.” I left five dollars on the table and headed for the door.
CHAPTER 27
THE ENTIRE WAY TO TWELFTH Street, I yelled at the driver to go faster. Every moment I wasted was another moment that Farnshaw had to remain in that filthy jail.
I had never felt such a raging anger. Halsted had sat there, never flinching, never changing expression, feeding me one half-truth after another. Except when he fed me total lies, of course.
Wrong diagnosis? Ha! It had been Halsted all the time. He had butchered Rebecca Lachtmann, not because Turk had given him drugs, but because he had withheld them. An unaccountable gaffe by Turk, but I supposed he had simply assumed that Halsted would never have bungled an operation, no matter how much in need. Or perhaps he merely wanted to watch Halsted cringe and sweat his way through an ordinarily simple procedure, forced to ply his skill without his morphia crutch.
What must they have thought, after Halsted had perforated that poor girl’s bowel? The great Halsted confronted with a screaming, hemorrhaging woman on a filthy table in an ill-lit room by the docks? From his hand! And Turk standing by, knowing that a daughter of the city’s elite was dying in agony in his den. Would it have been