No Cure for Death (A Mallory Mystery) Page 6

  Without his most important base of pitchmanship—the radio—Norman, swamped by countless lawsuits, moved his clinic to Hot Springs, Arkansas, adding their famous waters to his own “cures,” and changed the name of his station to XTKO, the transmitter safely over the border in Mexico.

  But less than a year later, his new set-up thriving, Norman was charged by the U.S. Government for using the mails to defraud, and by 1942 Doc Sy was in Leavenworth.

  Remorseful Doc

  In 1946 he returned to Iowa, sans purple shirt and purple car, and retired into seclusion. He has been there ever since, apparently doing nothing more than sitting around counting the reported one million dollars he racked up during his reign as king of quacks. All but forgotten by the press, even in the case of his son’s political career, Norman’s influence is said to continue via a string of Port City industries in which he is supposedly a silent partner.

  Another rumor has it that Doc Sy picked up a strain of remorse during his stay at Leavenworth, and it is believed by some that he is the guiding light behind his well-known and respected son, Republican politico Richard Norman, who has been successful in Iowa politics, though failing in his bid to reach the U.S. Senate. The Register has called young Norman “the most socially concerned, dedicated young man in the state legislature,” a sore point among Demos, who feel such areas their private domain. Assertions that Doc Sy’s son is trying to atone for his father’s misanthropy, or that the father is attempting to make amends to society through the deeds of his son, are pure speculation.

  But it is a fact that the primary failure of Doc Sy’s fabulous years as the quackery king was his own unsuccessful attempt to snatch the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from an incumbent senator.

  And yet another fact may be key in explaining the elder Norman’s supposed attack of remorse: May Belle (Peterson) Norman, his wife and bearer of son Richard, died in 1945... of lung cancer.

  ELEVEN

  Half an hour later I walked into the cluttered living room of my trailer, picking things up as I went and spending half an hour cleaning up the place—more as a nervous accompaniment to buzzing thoughts than as an act of cleanliness. When I was finished playing maid, I went to the icebox and got out a Pabst and popped the top and went back and flopped down on the couch. After I’d drained the beer, I aimed the empty can at the wastebasket over by the stove, across the room; just as I pitched the can, the phone rang, shattering my concentration, ruining my trajectory. The can clattered on the kitchenette’s tile floor, bounced back onto the carpeted living room floor, rolled a couple times and came to a standstill somewhere near center-room, creating an eyesore in my freshly tidied quarters.

  The phone was still ringing on the coffee table in front of me. I leaned over and picked up the receiver. “Yeah?”

  “Mal? John.”

  “Oh, hi. How was Suzie Blanchard?”

  “Outstanding.”

  “That’s Army for ‘good,’ as I recall.”

  “At least.”

  “So what’s up? No pun intended.”

  “That’s what I called to ask you, Mal. What have you turned up where Janet Taber’s concerned?”

  “I did some research at the library on that politician Janet worked for, and on his old man. Did you know that that guy Doc Sy, the old cancer quack, was Richard Norman’s father?”

  “Come to think of it,” John said, “that’s right. You know, you don’t hear much about the old man around town. Funny.”

  “Yeah. Funny. It’s one of those things Port City folks just don’t talk about. Unless the doors are closed tight. And I think I know why. I think the old ex-quack’s still powerful in Port City inner circles.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Well, I can’t really say for sure, I’m mostly reading between the lines. But it’s beginning to look like Simon Norman is Port City’s answer to Howard Hughes. One thing I know for sure is he made a bundle, and made it off of people’s misery, at that. And he probably used that bundle to get behind a few budding concerns that developed into this town’s major industries, which’d include the feed plant, the office furniture company, the alcohol plant, the tire retreading factory—all of these and more, I bet.”

  “How does this tie in with Janet Taber?”

  “I don’t know that it does.”

  I heard chattering in the background, and then John’s voice came back: “Uh, look, I’m still over at Suzie’s and, uh, I guess she wants a word with me.”

  “And I can just guess what word it is. Look, see if you can find time today, between rounds, to stop over at Brennan’s and pump him a little.”

  “See what I can do. I’ll stop over and see you tonight.”

  I cradled the receiver on my shoulder, thumbed down the button on the phone with one hand and fumbled through the phone book with the other, trying to locate the college’s number. I found it and dialed. I got Jack and filled him in on my library session.

  “You aren’t thinking about trying to run down Washington’s sister Rita tonight, are you?” Jack asked.

  “I was thinking about it, yeah.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Why? I’m a big boy now.”

  “Not that big. With Thanksgiving tomorrow, the bars’ll be extra busy tonight. You know how it is night before a holiday. It might get a little rough if you go sailing in a black bar with that shinin’ white kisser of yours.”

  “Ah, hell with that, Jack. I got to do something, and soon. I hate this sitting on the thing like this. I want to move on it, and I got nowhere else to go with it, except the Quad Cities and Washington’s sister, Rita.”

  “Why don’t you just relax tonight—get your head together, son. Tell you what, I’ll do some checking tonight and see what I can find out about old Eyewash and his sister.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Jack.”

  “I insist.”

  “But...”

  “Look, it’s a terrific excuse for me to go bar crawlin’, son. I’m due.”

  “Well, thanks. I’ll check back with you tomorrow morning.”

  “Late morning. Gimme a break. Hey, what’d you turn up on Stefan Norman?”

  “Who?”

  “Stefan Norman. Did you try to contact him or anything?”

  “I never even heard of him. Which Norman is he?”

  “He’s the nephew of the old man. Norman’s late brother’s boy.”

  “How does he fit into the Norman empire, Jack?”

  “Well, the Norman empire, if there is one, appears to operate on a hereditary basis, only the ruling class has just about died out. You probably found out this afternoon that Norman’s wife died of cancer back in the forties, and son Richard’s dead, of course... and Richard was Norman’s only child. Norman has no brothers or sisters living—only had the one brother, and his only child was Stefan. Who is heir to the Norman empire, such as it is.”

  “What role does this Stefan play in Norman’s life, as of now?”

  “He’s in charge of something called the Norman Fund, has been ever since Richard died. Of course, he was pretty much in charge before that, too, since Richard was only a figurehead ‘chairman’ for the Fund; he had his political career, and his law practice as well.”

  “What the hell’s the Norman Fund, anyway?”

  “I don’t know, but I got a feeling if you could find out, the two of us could blackmail old man Norman and God knows who else and live comfortably for the rest of our lives off the proceeds. I suppose it’s a clearing house for the different under-the-table ties Norman has with the various industries in town. It plays at being a charitable organization. But all I can speak of for certain is the physical reality of a three-office suite here in town, in the Maxwell Building.”

  “I wish I’d known about this this afternoon....”

  “I forget that some of this stuff that’s common knowledge to me, from the business types I come in contact with, is news to you. I should’ve mentioned it. Sorry.�
��

  “That’s okay. But I’ve got to see this Stefan Norman. He sounds like the man who could once and for all fill me in on how much—or how little—Janet Taber had to do with the Normans. The Maxwell Building, you said? Think anyone would be in the office now?”

  “No way. It’s after five.”

  “Damn. Stefan Norman live in Port City?”

  “No. Davenport, I believe. Commutes down every day, I assume.”

  “Well, sooner or later I’ll have to take a little drive up to the Quad Cities and see these people.”

  “Make it later. I’ll handle this Washington thing for you tonight, and by myself. The first round of it, anyway.”

  He hung up and so did I. I leaned back on the couch.

  Next thing I knew, John was bursting in the door.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said. “Why not give me a goddamn heart attack while you’re at it?”

  “Never mind that,” he said. He threw his coat off and sat down near me on the couch. I glanced at my watch: I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I sure had, because it was almost nine P.M., now.

  He said, “I went over to the jail for a few minutes and pumped Brennan, like you said, and I got some choice items for you. First off, they had the autopsy. Janet’s neck was broken, all right, and there was some discussion involving the fact that it could have been caused by a pair of strong hands, ’cause of the bruises and all, but in light of the crash’s impact, that’s hard to say. The final judgment was that she died in the crash, but get this... there was no alcohol in her bloodstream!”

  I felt a smile work its way across my face.

  “I asked him who okayed the autopsy,” he said, “and he told me no immediate member of the family was available, so with the court’s permission the hospital boys went ahead with it. But that’s bullshit.” He dug in his pocket for a moment, came up with a scrap of paper. “You think you’ve been playing detective? Dig this. You ever see in the movies or on TV where if somebody writes on a notepad, you can rub a pencil edge across the under-sheet and make out what was written on the sheet torn off?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, upstairs by the phone there’s a notepad. And I decided to check up on Brennan, make sure he’s being straight with us.”

  “So?”

  “Here’s what I found,” he said, and he handed me the scrap of paper.

  It was a small square sheet, almost completely covered by the black shading of a lead pencil, but in white letters plainly on the page some words stood out: PHILLIP TABER, ROOM 7, PORT CITY COURT.

  TWELVE

  The Port City Court, a single, long, brown-shingled motel, stared directly at the highway that crossed its line of vision. Parked cars had their noses all but pressed against the room doors, tails inches away from fast-moving traffic. Every stall was filled, due largely to the steady flow of salesmen and college kids. Across the street was the Sandy’s where John and I’d dined that noon; down from it was a shopping mall, as well as gas stations, a U-Haul place, a Dodge dealership, and more chain restaurants—that same stretch of businesses that seems to trail on out to every town’s city limits, where a sign gives the population and says what that town’s middle name is. In Port City it was Prosperity. But what the sign didn’t say was that Prosperity’s middle name was Norman.

  Sitting behind the desk in the manager’s office, reading a confession magazine, was a young woman with a big nose that minimized otherwise pleasant features, and with platinum hair that was worn in the same style (sprayed beehive) she’d used some half a dozen years before to trap her high school steady. Half a dozen years was also about how long it’d been since I’d seen this woman, her name long since escaping my memory.

  “Oh,” she said, raising dulled eyes which momentarily lighted up, “well, if it isn’t...” And she touched her cheek and nodded quickly in pretense of remembering more than she did, not realizing she had just established for me that we had something in common.

  “Long time no see,” I said.

  “Long time,” she said. “Long time. Good to see you again, after so long.”

  “Good to see you.”

  “Say,” she said, “whatever happened to, uh...” She touched her cheek again. “That girl you...”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Kind of lose track, you know. Did you and, uh, ever get married?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but we split up. I got the boy, though. Real cute kid. He’s in the fourth grade this year.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “He was named after his father.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  “Ain’t seen you since high school.”

  “I lived out of town for a while.”

  “Those was fun days.”

  “Yeah, they were fun, all right.”

  “You didn’t want a room, did you?”

  “No, no. I’m living here in town again. I’ve come to see a guest you have here. Friend of mine. Phillip Taber?”

  She looked down her register, sliding her finger down the page as she did. “Yeah, here he is. Taber. Room seven. Checked in ’bout noon. I wasn’t on duty then.”

  I smiled at her; suddenly I flashed on sitting across from her in a study hall. I said, “He called me this afternoon and said he was in town, staying out here. I’d sure like to surprise ol’ Phil. Kind of... pop in on him, you know?”

  “Oh sure. Well, hey, why don’t you take his spare key here and do that?”

  “Could I?”

  “Boss might frown, but what the heck? Ain’t as if I don’t know you.” She reached behind her on the wall of keys and plucked one off. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure,” she said, returning to her magazine.

  Just as I was going out the door, her voice behind me said, “Nice seeing you again, and talking.”

  “Yeah, nice talking to you, too.”

  There was music, hard loud rock music, behind the door to room seven. Tiny fingers of gentle smoke were crawling out around the door’s edges, bearing the fragrance of burning incense. I put my ear to the door and heard no one speaking, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was safe to assume Taber was alone. I looked around a couple times, catching sight of a shining new green Javelin in the stall adjacent to the room, and then went ahead and worked the key in the lock.

  The lights were out, so as I went in I hit the switch.

  He was on the bed, on his back, shirt off, wearing nothing but faded bell-bottom jeans. His chest was pale and hairless, but his face was fully bearded and the hair on his head, while showing signs of thinning, was frizzily long. A joint was tight in his lips, and he was caressing it easily with the fingers of one hand; he drew a long toke on it. On the nightstand next to the bed was the stick of burning incense, but even with that hanging in the air the pervasive smell of the joint’s smoke couldn’t hide. From past experience I made it as more than simple pot—more like hashish. Maybe it was some of that smack weed that was going around, pot cured in heroin.

  He didn’t react right away. He just stayed right on his back looking up at the ceiling, the only sound coming from him being the sucking in on the cigarette.

  I shut the door and went over to a bureau opposite the bed where a cassette tape player’s twin speakers were putting out the music. I turned it down.

  All at once he came off the bed at me, like a threshing machine made out of skinny arms and legs and hair, and my back was to the wall and his bony fists were crashing again and again into my ribs. I pushed his head away with the heel of my hand and sent him down with ease, like I’d batted a weighted punching dummy, but he came back the same way, bounced right up and a sharp, hard little mallet of a fist jacked my eye, and then another jarred my stomach, and then my eye again, and the “V” point of an elbow shot pain through my balls and from there, in increasing waves, throughout my body, and suddenly I was on the floor and Janet Taber’s common-law mate, a hideous scarecrow come to life, was raising a bare foot
to stomp me, yelling, “Don’t mess with my karma, man!”

  Simultaneously I caught my senses and his foot, and I heaved him in the air. He thudded softly on the bed and I ran over and held him down on it with a straight-arm and said, “Easy man, I didn’t mean to bring you down, come on man, let’s cool it now.”

  I cooed at him like that for a while, and finally he settled down. He didn’t come down—that smack weed or whatever the hell he was on was too potent for that—but I was happy to have him just floating in one spot.

  “Phil Taber?”

  He looked at the left corner of the room and concentrated on something—a mote of dust, maybe, or a piece of lint—and his smile flickered. I took that to mean yes.

  “Janet was your wife?”

  He nodded, and as he did, a convulsion took hold of him and made his whole body nod with him.

  “What are you doing in Port City?”

  His voice was soft, almost inaudible, but I heard him say: “Hey, man, I ain’t that fuckin’ high.” And a cackle ripped out of him with the abruptness of an ambulance siren.

  Damn. That was bad. He was a laugher—somebody for whom getting high was an intensification of life’s absurdities. Which meant he would let out a peal of laughter at just about anything, everything.

  “Listen,” I said. “Listen to me. Are you so high you don’t care whether or not you get busted? You best talk things over with me or I’ll have the sheriff on your butt so fast you’ll think you’re hallucinating.”

  The cackle turned into a more or less normal laugh, which kept going as he said, “Call him... go ahead, ya stupid jerk, go ahead and call the Man.”

  That stopped me.

  “You talked to him already?” I said.

  His smile flickered yes.

  “Gave him permission for the autopsy?”

  His smile again said yes and he laughed some more.

  I didn’t know how much of this to buy, so I asked him, “What’s the sheriff’s name, since you know him so well?”

  He then did a very bad impression of Walter Brennan that was just good enough to make his point.

  I said, “Brennan knows you’re a user?”