Max Collins - No Cure for Death

Short Reign

Norman’s reign as quackery king was not as long as he would have liked, but it did last a full decade. By 1940, he was out of Port City, after several legal battles, and by 1942 began serving the four-year term in federal prison handed down in ’41 by the courts.

It was the AMA and other medical societies whose unofficial declaration of war on Norman finally caused his downfall. Ironically, his own reaction to their jabs at him in the AMA Journal caused him more trouble than the AMA itself: Norman vented so much fury in his KTKO counterattacks that the Federal Communications Commission yanked his license.

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.

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.”