“We thought you could help us understand Dr. Dogen a little better,” I began. “It’s been very difficult to find out much about her. She seemed so very private.”
“That she was. I can give you some of the occupational information, and Dr. Babson, whom you’re going to see later, knows more about the personal side.
“Gemma came to Mid-Manhattan before I did, about ten years ago. A real coup for a woman-for anyone, really-to get an invitation to join this department, then to go on and head it. She was a brilliant intellect, very innovative in the field.”
He talked animatedly for twenty minutes about the care with which Dogen had built up the neurosurgical faculty at Minuit and the pride she took in recruiting students for the grueling work of her specialty.
When Mike had heard enough of the lavish praise, he interrupted the narrative. “Enough about Florence Nightingale, Doc. Who’d want her out of the way?”
Spector started at the abrupt question and sat back with one arm stroking the back of his head. “Shall I put myself at the top of the list or is that being too immodest?”
“Wherever you’d like.”
“I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors already. Gemma was planning to go back to England and chances are very good that I’ll be the one to succeed her as chief. That’s if Bill Dietrich and his boys don’t try and bring someone in from the outside, over my head.”
“How certain was it that she was going?” Mercer asked.
“None of us knew for sure. She played it as close to the vest as everything else she did. I know that on her last trip to Bosnia she stopped in London on her way home. Heard from friends at the university there that they’d welcome her back with open arms. Great credentials. And, of course,” he said, nodding in my direction, “the ‘woman’ thing.”
“Did she have any kind of deadline here for that decision?”
“A lot of things at the medical college are going to be decided in the next couple of weeks. April fifteenth, really. That’s when the faculty appointments and contracts have to be tied up for the next fall and that’s when we make the final decision about which students are accepted into the neurosurgical program.
“You’ll have to ask Dietrich, of course. His office is in charge of all those administrative decisions.”
“Yeah, we’ve been talking-”
“And be sure to take some of what he tells you with a grain of salt. He had a real weakness for Gemma even though their affair broke up months ago.”
The three of us were well trained enough to let that bombshell hit us without comment or reaction.
Mike tucked it away in his head and brought the conversation back around to Spector. “So supposeyou became chief of the department next month. How does that change life for you, Doc?”
“If you’re looking at me as a suspect, Mr. Chapman, the answer is, in very minor ways.”
“Salary?”
“No change. Oh, it might raise a few honoraria when I go out on the road, but here in the hospital it’s simply the prestige of the title. No extra dollars.”
“But you’d be happy to have the job.”
“I’d be a fool not to want it, of course. Look, the truth is, most people in our field regard it asmy department. Dogen was becoming more and more removed, taking herself out of the mainstream here, traveling abroad to third-world countries all the time. When people talk about Mid-Manhattan, with or without your saintly Gemma, they’re talking about Bob Spector’s department. That’s just a fact.”
“How many neurologists have you got-”
“Correction, Mr. Chapman. Neurosurgeons, not neurologists.” Spector snapped the answer at Mike like it was a more serious distinction than whether Gemma Dogen was alive or dead.
“I’m sorry, Doc, I’ve been using the two words interchangeably. Would you just remind me of the difference between them?”
Spector laughed his response. “The difference? About half a million dollars a year, that’s all.
“We’re the ones with the saws and the drills, Chapman. We operate, they don’t.”
“And why is it you think Gemma was leaving Mid-Manhattan?”
“I don’t think, Miss Cooper, I know. Most of us in this field make our living removing tumors from the brain and doing surgical procedures on disks. Some of us supplement that, intellectually, by doing research on diseases and disorders, like the study I’m running here on Huntington ’s.
“Gemma started out like the rest of us, but she became interested in trauma, in brain injury. Started here in New York for her because of all the gunshot wounds and car accidents. She’d never seen shooting victims in London. The Brits may go for grouse and pheasant but they’ve only recently begun to have the handgun problem we have here. Their guns have traditionally been in the hands of the upper-class hunters, thank goodness. I’m sure you law enforcement types know that.
“Anyway, once she became fascinated with trauma you couldn’t keep her out of a war zone. Hear about a village decimated somewhere in some unpronounceable country that didn’t exist a decade ago and she’d be on a plane the next day.”
“Couldn’t she stay at Mid-Manhattan and still do that work? Sounds pretty noble. Seems like they’d benefit from the prestige,” Mercer said.
“Trauma doesn’t pay the bills, gentlemen. Most of the folks in car accidents and most of the innocent people caught in the crossfire don’t have medical insurance. It may sound crass but I can bring in a lot more money for the hospital than Gemma’s do-gooding ever would.
“Trauma is, shall we say, more like an afterthought for most neurosurgeons. And besides, the best neurotrauma expert in the world is right here in New York. Jam Ghajar’s his name. Leading man in the field and a real comer. Much younger than Gemma and much more outgoing. I’d guess that was too crowded a field for her. It added to her homesickness.”
The line between Spector’s confidence and his cockiness was an extremely thin one.
Chapman tried to ease back into the talk about Dogen’s social life. “What else did you know about her relationship with Bill Dietrich, doctor?”
“That I wasn’t supposed to know about it, that’s the first thing. I had met Geoffrey-that’s her ex-quite a number of times over the years-conventions and meetings here and there. I’d say he was lucky to get out when he did. Second wife’s a much warmer girl. Lets her guard down, and her hair.
“Gemma never did much for me, sexually. Always thought getting in bed with her would be like-sorry, Miss Cooper-like putting your private parts in a vise.
“But lots of men around here didn’t seem to mind that prospect. Dietrich can tell you better than I who some of them were. I think he actually wanted to marry her at one point. Talk about a salary boost. That would have given him a nice cushion. Could have indulged his taste in antique cars.”
“You started off this meeting with an absolutely glowing review of Gemma Dogen, doctor. Then you sort of trash her. It is true, isn’t it, that you had asked her to assist you in surgery the morning her body was found?” I asked.
“There’s no question she had superb skills,” Spector said. “It was a very secure feeling to have her by my side in an OR and I invited her often. But once we left that operating theater, she had become like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Hypercritical of a lot of the students, not to mention her colleagues.
“She did great things for this hospital and this school but I really think it was time for her to move on. No secret about it, I’d have been thrilled to see her leave-by the Concorde, though, not in a pine coffin.”
Spector was done with us. He rose to his feet, told us that he had a meeting to attend in the library, and ushered us to the door.
Mike waited for the elevator doors to close before he spoke. “I’d rather screw a snake. Bill Dietrich? With his Man-Tan skin and his Grecian Formula hair, he should be dating someone who owns a Laundromat. She’d have to be washing the sheets twice a day with all the stuff that’d rub off him. What was she doing with that guy?”