The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [68]
“Correct.”
Kloska’s thoughts returned to the doctor’s suit. Walking down the hall, it seemed like all the doctors in this office dressed like lawyers. Not a lab coat in sight.
“Did Marlena ever mention the word harmonia to you?”
Russo shook his head.
“Something called the Thousand?”
“The Thousand what?”
“She had a doctorate in math, right? She ever talk about the ancient Greeks?” Kloska, who couldn’t believe he was asking this, choked a little on the words. “Maybe Pythagoras? Like that?”
The doctor’s brow arched high over his left eye. He looked at Kloska and then at Traden. “Actually, I saw that name just last night.”
A hopeful lean forward. “Where?”
“In my son’s eighth-grade homework.”
Five minutes later, with the interview at a stalemate and the excuse of a patient ascending in the elevator, Russo walked Kloska and Traden toward the lobby.
Casually, Kloska asked, “Have you replaced Dr. Falcone yet?”
Russo shook his head. “Her skills were unique, I’m sad to say.”
An exam room door, thick and paneled and stained, was open about six inches, and Kloska peered through it. How different was a visit to the doctor when you paid more than twenty grand for it? Did they still force you to submit to the usual humiliations? The poking and probing, the nudity and embarrassment. Kloska hated doctors and saw them only when he was extremely sick. He was certain that whatever killed him eventually would have been preventable had he only gone to see a doctor regularly, and still that threat was not severe enough to prod him into yearly checkups.
Looking through the door, he glimpsed a mahogany sideboard and a framed print hanging on the wall—some prewar British poster promoting weekend rail travel to the seashore. Reflected in the glass was a desk and on the desk he saw—
Kloska stopped. “Was that Marlena’s office?”
Russo appeared startled. “No. And anyway, we’ve already removed her things.”
Kloska studied Russo for a long second. The doctor was leaning forward, eyes down, hand gently on Bobby’s arm. He wanted the cops out of his clinic. “Can I look in there?” Kloska tapped the door with his finger, pushing it open a few extra millimeters.
Russo reached for the brass knob and shut it. “No, you can’t.”
“Why not?”
Russo took a long breath, trying to remain composed. “The men and women who come to see us are important people. They are CEOs, presidents, corporate board members, celebrities. If leaked to the public, information about their health could have broad ramifications for stock prices, consumer confidence, politics. Doctor-patient confidentiality is always sacred, but in here its importance takes on another dimension.”
“I’m not asking permission to rummage through your patients’ files,” Kloska said. “I just want to see something in plain sight on the other side of that door.”
“Whatever’s on the other side of that door is confidential. In plain sight or not.”
Kloska said, “Are you really going to make me get a warrant just to look at something sitting on a table inside that room? I’m trying to be friendly.”
Tall Dr. Russo leaned down, his face now inches above Kloska’s. He whispered, “If you think you can get a warrant for this office, I invite you to try. A third time.”
Bobby was stone-still, determined to maintain his best cop stare. This was exactly what he hated about doctors. They demanded submission. Kloska never submitted, not to shitheads on the street, not to lovers in his bed, and certainly not to rich doctors in their posh clinics. Bobby put a hand on the doctor’s sternum and pushed, not hard enough to move a triathlete like Russo, but hard enough to insult him.
Russo reacted with a sweep of his arm, which caught Kloska on the wrist. Bone on bone, it stung more than it should have, and Kloska’s reaction, the instinctive reaction of any cop to aggression, was swift. Then Russo was doubled forward and then he was on his back, his face twisted in pain and his left hand examining his ribs for the source, the exact place where Kloska’s fist had