I reached down, got a good grip on his collar, hauled him to his feet. I propped him back against the door of the pickup and patted him down. Just in case he was carrying a lethal weapon, like a Ping-Pong paddle or a lime Popsicle. Then I opened the door, shoved him inside, and climbed in after him. I rolled down the windows because he had upchucked all over himself. I lighted a cigarette to help defuse the stench.
I smoked patiently, waiting for his snuffling and whimpering to fade away. I wasn’t as calm as it sounds. Every time I thought of how close I came to wasting that young idiot, I’d get the shakes and have to go to deep breathing to get rid of them. I handed over my handkerchief to help him clean himself. But he was one sad looking dude, hanging onto his balls and bending far over to cushion the hurt.
We must have sat there in the damp cold for at least fifteen minutes before he was able to straighten up. He didn’t know which part of his anatomy to massage first. I was glad he was aching; his attack had scared me witless. I had thought it was Ronnie Goodfellow, of course. But if
he
had punched me in the kidneys, I’d have been peeing blood for three weeks. After I came to.
“All right,” I said, “let’s get to it. What makes you think I’m annoying your stepmother?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said sullenly.
I turned sideways, and laid an open palm against his chops. His head snapped around, and he began crying again.
“Sure you want to talk about it,” I said stonily. “Unless you want another knock on the cojones that’ll have you singing soprano for the rest of your life.”
“She said so,” he mumbled.
“Julie told you I made a pass at her?”
“She didn’t tell me. She told father. I heard her.”
I didn’t doubt him.
We sat there in silence. I gave him a cigarette and lighted another for myself. He began to feel a little better; his nerve came back.
“I’m going to tell my father that you beat me up,” he said angrily.
“Do that,” I told him. “Tell your father that we met by accident in the parking lot of the Coburn Inn, at an hour when you should be home studying, and I suddenly attacked you for no reason at all. Your father is sure to believe it.”
“Julie will believe me,” he said hotly.
“No one will believe you,” I said cruelly. “Everyone knows you’re a sack of shit. The only thing you’ve got going for you is that you’re young enough to outgrow it. Possibly.”
“Oh God,” he said hollowly, “I want to die.”
“Love her that much, do you?” I said.
“I saw her naked once,” he said, in the same tone of wonderment someone might use to say, “I saw a flying saucer.”
“Good on you,” I said, “but she happens to be your father’s wife.”
“He doesn’t appreciate her,” he said.
What’s the use? You can’t talk to snotty kids. They know it all.
“All right, Edward,” I said, sighing. “I could tell you that I never propositioned your stepmother, but I know you wouldn’t believe me. Now you tell me something: what’s going on in the research lab?”
“Going on?” he said, puzzled. “Well, you know, they do experiments. I don’t understand that stuff. I’m not into science.”
“Oh? What are you into?”
“I like poetry. I write poems. Julie says they’re very good.”
Full circle. Thorndecker’s father was a poet. Thorndecker’s son was a poet. I hoped the son wouldn’t die as his grandfather had.
“And you’ve got no idea of anything strange going on out there?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I believed him.
He said he had “borrowed” Julie’s sports car and parked it a block away. I told him that if he was smart, he’d drive directly home, soak in a hot tub, and keep his mouth shut about what had happened.
“I’m here to check on your father’s qualifications for a grant,” I said. “I don’t think he or Julie would be happy to hear you tried to dent my head tonight.”
I don’t believe he had thought of that. It sobered him. He got out of the truck, then turned back to stick his head through the open window.
“Listen,” he said, “my father’s a great man.”
“I know,” I said. “Everyone tells me so.”
“He wouldn’t do anything wrong,” he said, then walked away into the shadows. I watched him go. After awhile I got out, locked up, trotted to the Inn.
I’d had my fill of parking lots for one day.
Up in Room 3-F, I stripped down and inspected the damage. Not too bad. Some scrapings, bruises, minor contusions. I took a shower as hot as I could stand it, and that helped. Then I cracked that bottle of vodka I had purchased ten years ago and bought myself a princely snort.
I sat there in my skin, sipping warm Popov, and wondering why Julie Thorndecker had done it. Why she had told her husband that I had, ah, taken liberties. I couldn’t blame it on the “woman scorned” motive; she was more complex than that.
This is what I came up with:
She was preparing ammunition in case I gave Thorndecker a negative report, as she feared I might. Then, having reported my churlish behavior to her husband, she might prevail upon him to write the Bingham Foundation claiming that my reactions were hardly objective, but had been colored by my unsuccessful attempt to seduce his wife.
I could imagine the response of Stacy Besant and Mrs. Cynthia to such an allegation. They might not believe it entirely; they’d tell me they didn’t believe it. But they might think it wise to send a second field investigator to check out the Thorndecker application. An older investigator. More mature. Less impetuous. And on the strength of
his
report, Thorndecker might squeak through.
I believed Julie was capable of such a Byzantine plot. Not entirely for her husband; self-interest was at work here. In Coburn, she had said, I’m a big frog in a little pond—and that was true. Most women are conservative by nature; she, in addition, was conservative by circumstance. The little she had let drop about the rackety life she led before she met Thorndecker convinced me that she enjoyed and cherished the status quo, didn’t want it to change. She had found a home.
Having settled the motives of Julie Thorndecker, and resolving to meet with her husband as soon as possible to see how much damage she had done, I got back to my favorite topic: what was going on at the Crittenden Research Laboratory? I came up with another choice assortment of wild and improbable scenarios:
Thorndecker was developing a new nerve gas. Thorndecker was a Frankenstein, putting together a monster from parts of deceased patients. Thorndecker was engaged in recombinant genetic research, combining the DNA of a parrot with that of a dog, and trying to breed a schnauzer who talked. The more Popov I inhaled, the sappier my fantasies became.
What gave me nightmares for months afterward was that I had already come up with the solution and didn’t know it.
T
HE PHONE WOKE ME
up the next morning. I have a thing about phones. I claim that when I’m calling someone who isn’t at home, dialing a number that no one will answer, I can tell after the second ring. It has a hollow, empty sound. Also, I think I can judge the mood of anyone who calls me by
their
ring: angry, loving, good or bad news. Tell me, doctor, do you think I …?
In this case, coming out a deep, dreamless sleep, the ring of the phone sounded desperate, even relayed through the hotel switchboard. I was right. It was Mary Thorndecker, and she had to see me as soon as possible. It couldn’t be at the Coburn Inn. It couldn’t be at Crittenden Hall. It couldn’t be anywhere in public. I figured that left the Carlsbad Caverns, but she insisted on the road that led around the Crittenden grounds, in the rear, past the cemetery. She said eleven o’clock, and I agreed.
I got out of bed feeling remarkably chipper. Un-hungover. You can usually trust vodka for that. After all, it’s just grain alcohol and water. Very few congeners. Drink vodka all your life, and everything will be hunky-dory—except you may end up with a liver that extends from clavicle to patella.
A shower, a shave, a fresh turtleneck—and I was ready for a fight or a frolic. When I went out into the hall, the brass indicator showed the elevator was coming down. I rang the bell, waited, watched Sam Livingston come slowly into view in his cage: feet, ankles, knees, hips, waist, shoulders, head. A revelation. The elevator shuddered to a stop. I stepped in.
“Sam,” I said, “you suckered me.”
He knew immediately what I meant.
“Nah,” he said, with almost a smile, “I just told you he puts on a good show.”
“The guy’s a phonus-balonus,” I said.
“So? He gives the folks what they want.”
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? You got Mary Thorndecker driving you out there. She thinks she’s bringing in another convert, and all the time you’re laughing up your sleeve.”
“Well …” he said solemnly, “it’s better’n TV. Hear you had a little trouble with your car.”
“Good gracious me,” I said, “word does get around. Mike’s is delivering it with new tires, I hope, at noon today. If I’m not here, will you ask them to leave the keys at the desk? No, scratch that. Will you keep the keys for me?”
He explained that he expected to leave by 1:00
P.M.
, to take care of his cleaning chores at the Episcopal church. He’d keep my car keys until then. If I hadn’t returned by one o’clock, he’d leave the keys on the dresser in my room. I said that would be fine.
We descended slowly past the second floor. In the old Greek plays, the gods must have come down out of heaven in their basket at about our speed.
“Sam,” I said, “you know Fred Aikens? The constable?”
“Seen him around,” he said cautiously.
“What’s your take?”
He didn’t answer.
“I wouldn’t want to stroll down a dark alley with him,” I offered.
“No,” he said thoughtfully, “don’t do that.”
“Is he buddy-buddy with Ronnie Goodfellow?”
The old man turned to stare at me with his yellowish eyes.
“You ever know two cops who weren’t?” he asked. “And they don’t even have to
like
each other.”
We inched our way down to the lobby. Millie was chatting it up with two customers at the cigar counter, and didn’t notice me as I sneaked into the restaurant. It was practically empty, which surprised me until I remembered it was Saturday morning. I assumed the bank and a lot of offices and maybe some stores were closed. Anyway, I was able to get a table to myself and spread out.
After that tunafish salad for dinner the night before, I was ravenous. I shot the works with an Australian breakfast: steak and eggs, with a side order of American home-fries and a sliced tomato that tasted like a tomato. First one like that I had eaten in years.
I started my second cup of black coffee, and looked up to see Constable Ronnie Goodfellow standing opposite. From where I sat, he looked like he was on stilts. Did I tell you what a handsome guy he was? A young Clark Gable, before he grew a mustache. Goodfellow was as lean and beautiful, in a tight, chiseled way. I’m a het, and have every intention of staying that way. But even the straightest guy occasionally meets a man who makes him wonder. This is what I call the “What-if-we-were-marooned-on-a-desert-island Test.” I don’t think there’s a man alive who could pass it.
“Morning,” I said to him. “Join me for a cup?”
“I’d like to join you,” he said, “but I’ll skip the coffee, thanks. Four cups this morning, so far.”
He took off his trooper’s hat, and sat down across from me. He removed his gloves, folded them neatly inside the hat on an empty chair. Then he put his elbows on the table, scrubbed his face with his palms. He may have sighed.
“Heavy night?” I asked him.
“Trouble sleeping,” he said. “I don’t want to start on pills.”
“No,” I said, “don’t do that. Try a shot of brandy or a glass of port wine.”
“I don’t drink,” he said.
“One before you go to sleep isn’t going to hurt you.”
“My father died a rummy,” he said, with no expression whatsoever in his voice. “I don’t want to get started. Listen, Mr. Todd, I’m sorry about your car.”
I shrugged. “Probably some wild kids.”
“Probably. Still, it doesn’t look good when it happens to a visitor. I stopped by Mike’s Service Station. You’ll have your car by noon.”
“Good.”
Then we sat in silence. It seemed to me we had nothing to say to each other. I know I didn’t; he’d never tell me what I wanted to know. So I waited, figuring he had a message to deliver. If he did, he was having a hard time getting it out. He was looking down at his tanned hands, inspecting every finger like he was seeing it for the first time, massaging each knuckle, clenching a fist, then stretching palms wide.
“Mr. Todd,” he said in a low voice, not looking at me, “I really think you’re prying into things that are none of your business, that have nothing to do with your investigation.”
Then he raised those dark eyes to stare at me. It was like being jabbed with an icepick.
I took a sip of coffee that scalded my lips. I moved back from the table, fished for my cigarettes. I lighted one. I didn’t offer the pack to him.
“Let me guess,” I said. “That would be the Reverend Father Michael Bellamy reporting in. Sure. How could a grifter like him operate around here without official connivance? Tell you about our little conversation, did he?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, face impassive.
“Then what are
you
talking about?”
“As I understand it, you came up here to take a look around, inspect Dr. Thorndecker’s setup, make sure it was what he claimed it was. Is that right?”
“That’s about it.”
“Well? You’ve looked over the place. It’s what he said it was, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So? Why are you poking into things that have nothing to do with your job? Private matters. You get some kind of a kick trying to turn up dirt? You really shouldn’t do that, Mr. Todd. It could be dangerous.”
What I said next I know I shouldn’t have said. I knew it while I was saying it. But I was so frustrated, so maddened by hints, and eyebrow-liftings, and vague suggestions, and now so infuriated by this cop’s implied threat, that I slapped cards on the table I should have been pressing to my chest.