The Three Dollar Phoenix by Walt Sautter (rooftoppers .txt) 📖

said as she pointed to “Chapter Five - Puts and Calls.”
Larry turned to Chapter Five and began a detailed explanation of the options market. Rita interjected questions periodically and the conversation flowed smoothly forward as she had planned.
An hour passed and Larry had drunk practically the entire can of V8. Rita had purposefully drunk but one cup, so as to leave the remainder for him. He was still discussing the ins and outs of security trading and she continued to play the attentive student. Actually, she found Larry to be a good teacher and she became more engrossed than she had expected.
“It should be working any time now” she thought.
Within several minutes, Larry stopped his dissertation, excused himself, and left for the men’s room.
Rita glanced at her watch the instant Larry was out of sight. She knew the lavatory was at least two minutes away. She had noticed that on the way to the coffee machine, with him yesterday.
She slid over in front of the idling terminal, on the desk and imagined typing in the code, trying to determine how much time she would have alone with the monitor. Three minutes past and Larry hadn’t returned yet. That should give her more than enough time to get a good look at Al’s chart. She moved back to her original position, picked up the book and searched for an interesting question she could ask him.
Just as she located one, Larry came around the corner, carrying a can of soda. Rita looked at the time, five minutes and thirty seconds exactly. Plenty of time, she thought.
“I brought this for you. You didn’t seem to like the juice that much. I drank practically all of it“ he said as he placed the opened soda can in front of her.
“I can’t drink all that soda” she replied.
“You have half. Let me rinse out the cups” she said and took both of them to a nearby sink in the work area. She returned, poured half the soda into each cup and asked Larry the question she had readied.
He immediately resumed his discussion as enthusiastically as before. Within fifteen minutes, Larry again excused himself, this time with a brief comment about the unusual nature of such frequent urges.
The instant he passed out of sight, Rita moved to the terminal and began to punch in the letters of Al’s code, A9033. She could feel her hands tremble a little as she typed What if he didn’t take the five minutes she had figured on? What if one of the others in the pharmacy came into the office?
She’d had an excuse in either case, a weak one, but an excuse. She hoped she didn’t have to find out if it was good enough. The monitor was facing away from the door and she could clear the screen as soon as she saw someone coming, so no one would know if anything was on it. Then, she would merely say she was familiarizing herself with the keyboard layout.
She nervously pressed the return and there it was, patient number A9033. Rita quickly scanned the readout. No medical data was displayed, only a record of medications administered. A special notation read, “Detailed Patient History Available by Preferred Access.”
She’d have to think about that later. Right now, her attention, would have to be confined to the pharmacy records that was on the screen.
Every entry was the same, 300 milligrams of Methaqualone daily, except for two occasions where additional dosages were prescribed. “Methaqualone! that’s Quaalude” she thought, heavy downers, especially at 300 milligrams a day.
Then at the bottom of the screen, another notation caught her eye, “Out patient prescription (11/19) - 12 tabs, 300 milligrams, Methaqualone deliver to Dr. House personally.”
Today is 11/19, he must have been released today. Rita looked at her watch, she had at least three minutes left. She pulled a pen from her purse and quickly jotted down everything she could from the monitor. When she finished, she cleared the screen.
She moved away from the machine and sat reading the notes she had just taken, as Larry rounded the corner. She causally folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket.
Rita spent another forty-five minutes at the pharmacy, during which Larry excused himself two more times. Her plan had worked well, she could have gone through the records of ten patients. She felt a bit sorry for Larry. He was obviously embarrassed by the situation. She suggested to him that he was probably coming down with a cold, to help relieve his chagrin.
As soon as she reached the apartment, that evening, Rita looked through the code sheets that Robbins had given her. “Preferred Access - data accessed by special entry codes only - data unavailable to general staff members” it read She interpreted that to mean that only House could view Al’s records. Then she began to reexamine the medication entries, that she had copied.
“The 300 milligrams a day of Quaalude doesn’t explain why Al was always unconscious when Ed and Angie visited him” she thought. That would cause sedation, but not loss of consciousness. Then she looked at the dates when the extra Methaqualone was administered.
She looked up with a deep, thoughtful stare and then reached for the calendar in her wallet. Both of those dates were Saturdays, and if she recalled accurately, the exact days that Ed had driven Angie to Caramore. She looked at the quantities prescribed. If she remembered her pharmacology correctly those amounts were more than sufficient to cause the effects that Ed described.
“Why would House keep Al continually sedated and then induce unconsciousness when visitors arrived?” she wondered. She looked back at her notes.
The outpatient prescription was consistent, but why such an exceptionally small number of tablets? That was only about a two or three day supply at the rate he was taking them. Quaalude isn’t very expensive, and it surprised Rita that House didn’t send at least a week’s supply home with him, but that was a minor point.
That night, she called Mike from the Wedgewood and he returned the call in the usual, clandestine fashion.
“I got a look at some of Al’s charts, today” she began. “The man’s been pumped full of tranks, ever since he got to Caramore. Tell Ed they’ve been feeding him 300 milligrams of Quaalude a day, for the past two or three weeks. That’s the only medication he’s received.
“Here’s something else. He’s been released today.”
“That’s interesting” replied Mike,
“I’ll have to call his wife tomorrow and see if I can get to talk to him.”
“If he takes the medicine that they’re sending home with him, don’t expect much of a conversation” Rita answered sarcastically.
“I filed a petition, asking that Ed be brought to trial or released” said Mike.
“What happened?” asked Rita.
“They will drop all charges and let him go if we agree not to charge the police with the destruction of the clinic. I thought this kind of thing would happen. They’re not going to court with this. The evidence against Ed is too weak and the bad PR the cops would get won’t be worth it for them” replied Mike.
“So when will he be out?”
“I haven’t talked to him about it, yet. I will tomorrow. I hope he’s not stubborn and goes for the deal, but I’m not sure he will. He took the loss of the clinic harder than his being in jail. Every time I see him, he’s bitterer. I really don’t know if he’ll go for it. He might not be able to just walk away, without seeing any chance of revenge.”
“What if he doesn’t cooperate?” asked Rita.
“Well, they’ve got a dozen nickel bag junkies waiting in the wings, who’ll swear Ed sold them everything from heroin to atomic secrets. All they have to do is put a little pressure on these creeps and they’ll spit out whatever they’re told. I’m sure that they don’t want to get involved with that kind of play but they’ll do what they have to, in order to come out clean.
They just want Ed to have learned his lesson, go home, be a good boy and keep his nose out of other people’s business.”
When the conversation ended, she hung up the phone and silently prayed that Ed wouldn’t sacrifice his freedom for principle. She did feel some ambiguity however, in that the clinic had meant as much to her as it did to him. She felt an outrage and a desire for retribution too, but she knew that often vengeance must stand in line behind practicality.
Rita told Mike that she had decided to stay on at Caramore, in spite of Al’s release She had obtained only limited information, so far, but she felt that being there provided the opportunity to possibly learn more. Leaving would remove any chance of lifting the curtain of secretary that surrounded Al Druse and the incidents of the past few weeks.
As she drove back from town that evening her mind was filled with thoughts of Ed and the moral dilemma he now faced. She knew his anguish and felt bottomless empathy for him.
Suddenly, she caught a glimpse of a familiar looking car in the rear view mirror. She thought she had noticed that same car parked across the street from the Wedgewood. She also recalled having seen it riding behind her on the way to town, earlier that evening. She could make out its silhouette, several hundred feet in the distance, but couldn’t identify its driver, in the dim twilight.
She slowed down, hoping to get a better look.
The car behind her slowed and maintained its distance. She increased speed and it appeared to do likewise.
She began to feel her pulse quicken, and her driving became more and more erratic. Her gaze in the rear view mirror was almost constant now:
Several times, she barely made the sharp, hairpin turns, in the winding, narrow roadway. As the sun continued to set, the vehicle’s outline was replaced by its headlights, clearly marking its ominous presence.
Finally, she saw the iron archway of Caramore and careened into its entrance. She pulled to within thirty feet of the gatehouse and parked the car at the side of the road.
She was safe now. She could easily summon help if necessary. She watched the rear view mirror hoping to get a better look at the car as it passed the gate. Her heart beat began to fall back towards normal and the rush of adrenalin started to subside, as she waited.
About three minutes passed and then a small, dark car turned into the entrance. She could feel her stomach begin to knot again, as the dashboard of her car was lighted by its headlamps. It stopped for a moment, then backed out on to the main road, and drove off. She didn’t see much. The sudden shock of seeing the car pull into the entrance behind her, distracted her to the point were she couldn’t concentrate and the glare of its headlights would have prevented her from seeing, even if she had remained calm.

Chapter VIII

“You mean those sons a bitches wrecked three of years of my life, screwed a whole community out of decent medial care and stuck me in this shit house for two weeks and now they want me to just walk away, with no hard feelings? Are you kiddin’?” exploded Ed.
“No, I’m not kiddin’. It’s hard feelings and hard time or try to forget the whole thing