No Good Deed by Paul Nathan

Author:Paul Nathan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504015806
Publisher: The Permanent Press

FIFTEEN

The taxi let me off in front of a cream stucco house with an overhanging second story decorated with crisscrossed wooden beams and brickwork—a kind of bastard Tudor. It stood on a good-sized plot. A well-tended lawn, trees and shrubs contributed to the image of Dr. Osko’s prosperity.

I had asked the driver to wait for me. If it looked like I was going to be here a while, I could send him away and call a cab later. I had assured Osko on the phone that I wouldn’t take much of his time.

Pressing the doorbell, I noticed there was no plate with a name on it as at Fay Carter’s. While I waited I checked the slip on which I’d jotted the address. Not that I had any doubt about it; my action was a nervous tic.

The door was opened by a woman, at a guess in her late sixties. Glasses with bright-blue designer frames. Once-dark hair, gone mostly gray, curling close to her head. Gold hoops dangling from pierced ears and, riding her floral-print blouse, a long, double-looped crystal and jet necklace. Black pants and thonged black slippers. Osko’s wife? Since I was being received so early in the day, I figured this probably wouldn’t be his secretary.

“Mr. Swain? Come in.”

I followed her through a foyer along a hall and into a room that served as the doctor’s office. She turned on a couple of lamps; the light admitted by venetian blinds was just gathering strength. My eyes took in the leather-topped desk, bookcases heavy with technical-looking volumes, and on the walls a set of nineteenth century scenic engravings and the inevitable professional certifications. I was surprised when the woman, directing me to a chair, drew back the one behind the desk and seated herself. Was Dr. Osko fobbing her off on me in his place?

“I thought—” I began to protest.

“I’m Dr. Osko,” she said. “Esther. Formerly Lester.”

I’m afraid I goggled like an idiot. “You mean you …?”

“I changed over quite a while ago.… Now, what did you want to see me about?”

I managed to recover—but there went my theory that the man reading the trial transcript in Klingmans Falls might have been Osko. Now that I was here I’d have to fish around for whatever else of relevance, if anything, lurked in the murk surrounding this character. I opened with “You are—were—the Lester Osko who interviewed the children in the Play ‘n’ Learn case?”

“Yes.”

“You remember Donald Jarrell?”

“Very well. The boy who started it all. I read in the paper that he died. There was supposed to be something mysterious about it.”

“That’s right. He appeared to be getting better—he was a patient in Westside General, about ready to be discharged. They found him dead in bed. Krinsky is affiliated with West-side, I’m employed by Krinsky—”

“Yes, you said on the phone.”

“They’ve asked me to try to help the police figure out what happened. I’m in public relations, the hospital’s somewhat under a cloud because of Jarrell, my job is to get the story and put an end to the mystery.

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