True-Life Adventure

“A friend who works there left something at my house and I need to return it… . Okay, good. Where’s that, exactly? Got it. Thanks a lot.” He got off the phone, giggling his head off. “Everybody’s so goddam helpful. I could have called my friend, right? And asked him where his office is. But she was so busy being nice she didn’t even think of it. Sort of restores your faith in human nature, being a crook.”
    “I wouldn’t have thought of it exactly that way.”
    Booker nodded. “It’s true though. There’d be a lot less crime today if the average citizen were more suspicious.”
    “So where’s Medical Records?”
    “Let’s sit down a minute.” He led the way to a batch of chairs near the doors. “Here’s the thing. It’s not in this building. It’s in the Ambulatory Care Center, that big glass building across the street.”
    “Let’s go.”
    “Uh-uh. I haven’t cased it. There might be a security guard or God knows what kind of alarm system. There might even be people working in the building. Anyway, I have a funny feeling about Medical Records.”
    “What?”
    “Well, listen, if you had some chronic disease and you were in and out of the hospital, sometimes you might get sick at night, right? And they’d need your chart.”
    “So you think Medical Records is open all night. I mean twenty-four hours a day. Unburgleable.”
    “Nothing is unburgleable.”
    “I don’t see any lights over there.”
    “Means nothing. The record room could be in the back of the building.”
    “So what do we do?”
    “I’m thinking.”
    I let him think.
    He sighed, finally. “If it were daytime, I’d just go over and have a look. It’s got to be done tonight?”
    “Should have been done last night.”
    “We need an inside source. You don’t know any medical librarians, do you?”
    “God, no. Wait a minute!” I said the two sentences back-to-back, falling all over each other, concurrently practically. Inspiration had come with the speed of light. “Erin Harris.”
    “You do know one.”
    “Not exactly. She used to work for the New York City Public Library.”
    “Terrific.”
    “Hang on a second. She forsook it all to move here. Now she’s in the clerical pool at the med center. I think she got sick of cataloguing.”
    Booker brightened. “How well do you know her?”
    “Well enough. She knows I write mysteries. I’ll just say I need help with a plot.”
    “You better hope she’s home.”
    She was. And eager to help, like the hospital operator. From Erin I learned these important facts: Medical Records was indeed open twenty-four hours a day; if a doctor needed a file at night, a messenger was sent for it; it was completely computerized and you needed the number of a chart to get the chart.
    I also learned it was in the basement and there was a side entrance on the plaza outside the building. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I figured it would come clear once we got down to serious burgling.
    So it looked like all we had to do was call up, claim to be Dr. Rumler, then go across the street and claim to be a messenger and we’d have one Terry Koehler hospital chart in our possession. If we could get its number, somehow.
    That meant a wholesale search of Rumler’s office. And that meant going back to the sixth floor. So we did.
    I’m sure Rumler must have had some system for keeping chart numbers— exactly what we wanted must have been somewhere in that office— but neither I nor the best little burglar in the West could turn it up. Ingenuity was called for. I turned to Booker.
    “Only one thing to do,” he said. “Invoke Kessler’s Fourth Law of Burglary.”
    “Great idea. What is it?”
    “When in doubt, brazen it out.”
    “You mean storm the building?”
    “Nope. Call Medical Records, say you’re Rumler and don’t have the number for some reason or other.”
    “You’re the doctor.”
    “No, you are.” He pushed the phone at me and I dialed Medical Records.
    “This is Dr. Rumler,” I said, “and—”
    “Dr. Rumler!” It was a light male voice. “You sound awful!”
    “I… well. I probably shouldn’t be working, but—”
    “You certainly shouldn’t. You’re exposing the patients. You should go right home and have Georgie feed you some chicken soup. In fact, I’ve got half a mind to call him right now to come get you.”
    Now I don’t like stereotypes any better then the next person, but I deduced from this chap’s voice and prissy manner of