Max Collins - No Cure for Death

“I just knew Janet Taber, that’s all.”

“Then this is not a… an official investigation.”

“If the cops were asking the right questions, I wouldn’t have to.”

He frowned; it was a thought-out frown. His facial expressions seemed calculated for the benefit of whoever he was talking to, rather than out of any real feeling or emotion.

“I hope,” he said, “this conversation begins to gather significance soon, Mr. Mallory. Your ‘urgent business’ is proving to be the delusion of what appears to be a not terribly stable mind.”

“You’ve come this far….”

He sighed. “Continue.”

“Do you know a man named Washington?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“He’s a black man.”

“How bothersome for him.”

“He’s big, and he has one eye.”

“Is that right?”

“He’s worked for your uncle for ten years.”

“Has he?”

“He has.”

Stefan looked at me, blankly.

I said, “And he has a sister named Rita.”

“And how many eyes has she?”

“What are you up to, Norman?”

“I’m up to here with you, Mr. Mallory. I believe this conversation is over. Can you find the way out?”

“Thanks for the beer.”

I trudged down the long hall and out the door and into the elevator and before two minutes were up I was again with Rita in the Rambler, and two people and one object were never more out of place as were we in the parking lot.

“Well?” she said.

I grunted. “He admitted knowing Janet, but only slightly. He claimed he didn’t know she’d been killed in an accident. He also didn’t respond to the name Taber.”

“What do you make of that?”

“What do you make of this: he says he doesn’t know you or your brother.”

“You figure that adds up to something.”

“It adds up to somebody’s lying.”

“Who do you believe?”

“You.”

That surprised her. “Why me? Why not Norman?”

“First off, you’re better looking.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Second off, Norman isn’t going back to Port City with me to arrange a meeting with a certain one-eyed gentleman. Right now.”

Rita said, “I don’t know how I let you talk me into this,” and sat staring at the phone on the coffee table in front of her. The faces in the posters on my trailer walls seemed to stare with her.

I came over, bringing a cold bottle of Pabst and a glass and joined her on the couch. I filled the glass, pressed it into her hands. She sipped from it eagerly. I leaned back and took my time draining the bottle and several long minutes went by and I said, “Go ahead and call.”

“I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

“This is such a shitty thing to do to my brother.”

We’d gone back and forth about this all the way down from the Quad Cities, and though I still hadn’t won her exactly, she at least had agreed to come down with me and put the scene of the seesaw argument on my home ground. Her position was based on the premise that her brother Harold was incapable of committing and/or aiding-abetting a misdeed such as the one I’d outlined concerning Janet Taber. When I presented the bus station incident as counterevidence, she claimed that that could have been some other six-four, one-eyed black guy; besides, her six-four, one-eyed black brother wouldn’t go ’round sporting a bare socket: he always wore an eyepatch.

I said, “This is not a shitty thing to do. It’s a good thing to do.”

“Shove it, Mallory, what does an only child know about it, anyway? And a white one at that.”

“Prejudice rears her not-so-ugly head. Gimme back my beer.”

“I drank it all.”

I got up and went after another Pabst. When I came back she was leaning forward, her long-nailed fingers barely caressing the receiver. She caught me watching her, and jerked back. I filled her glass and sat back down beside her. I leaned back and drained the bottle and several long minutes went by and I said, “Go ahead and call.”

“I been thinking.”

“Great. Fine.”

“You think Harold killed this Janet.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said that this Janet… what was her last name?”

“Taber.”

“That this Janet Taber had her neck broken. That the accident was staged and somebody broke her neck.”

“That’s not the same thing as saying your brother killed her.”

“You implied that my brother could do it.”

“Well he probably could, if he was in the mood. One-handed. With or without eyepatch.”

“You’re such a son of a bitch, Mallory. Don’t you know what this means, what you’re asking?”

“Only you know that, Rita.”

“Mallory. Mal.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t.”

“Rita. Look at it this way. Suppose your brother did kill somebody. Wouldn’t you say something should be done about it?”

“It would depend who he killed, and why.”

“How about a woman. An unhappy young woman.”

“Stop, you’re making me cry. Tell me about the kid with heart trouble again, why don’t you?”

“Okay, all right. No more hard sell.”

“Why do you have to use me? Why can’t you just go up to old man Norman’s place yourself?”

“We went over that.”

“Go over it again.”

“Norman’s property is fenced off. Private property, right? If your brother runs into me up there, a trespasser, after what I did to him the other day, there’s not going to be enough left of me to put in a shoe box. Also, if what was left of me was turned over to Sheriff Brennan, he’d have a fine old time roasting whatever there was left to roast.”

“I’m supposed to be a buffer between you and Harold.”

“I was hoping you would be, yes. And you can get us officially past the gate up the hill.”

“But when I call I’m not to tell Harold I’m bringing you.”

“No. We’ll surprise him and make his day. What do you say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Damn!”

“It’s not an easy thing for me.”

“Well, think it over some more, that’s all I ask. You decide against it, I’ll drive you back up to Rock Island whenever you say.”

She looked at me, her eyes soft under the long lashes. She touched my cheek and I started feeling like the manipulating bastard I was. I slid my arm in around her waist and kissed her neck and said, my lips against her ear, “Look, forget it, forget it. I’ll do it some other way, or maybe I won’t do it at all.” And I meant it.

“But that’s not right, either…. Mal?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you promise me something?”

“Sure.”

“You’ll keep an open mind-you won’t prejudge anything.”

I kissed her ear. “I’ll go farther than that. No matter what it turns out your big black one-eyed brother did, I don’t care if he eats babies and runs down old ladies, no matter what, I’ll check with you and get permission before I make any move.”

“If I say no cops?”

“Then no cops.”

She slipped out of my arms and put her hand on the receiver again and said, “Thanks, Mal.”

“Thank you, Rita.”

She turned back to the phone under her fingertips and it rang and she jumped.

Then it rang again and she smiled and laughed nervously and I did, too. She picked up the receiver and handed it to me.

“Mal?”

It was John’s voice.

I said, “How was Lori’s turkey?”

“I’m in the middle of a slice of it right now,” he said. “I sneaked in here to call you. I been checking off and on all afternoon, to see if you were back from the Cities yet. How’d it go?”