Max Collins: No Cure for Death

I was feeling a little bit shook: deaths aren’t an everyday thing for me, not yet anyway, not even after everyday contact with them, which I’ve had from time to time, everything from typing obits all morning for a newspaper to tromping through some poor Asian guy’s rice crop with a rifle in my hands.

Also, I felt cheated: I didn’t have a chance to know Stefan Norman, let alone understand him. He was just a guy I talked to once for a few minutes; yet a guy who was important to me, a guy whose head I wanted to climb inside of to find the answers to some questions. A port of entry was there now, all right, but not for climbing in-for seepage only. The things in there, the man in there, were lost.

And, too, I had the spooky feeling that I was walking through a slightly altered replay of the events of Tuesday evening past. First off, John showed up in the yellow fringed buckskin jacket, blue shirt and black leather pants he’d worn then, but there was a logical reason for that: now that he’d soured on his stepfather, John was digging out his most outlandish outfits to make Brennan as uncomfortable as possible. Then at the Maxwell Building we were momentarily stopped by Oliver DeForest, the same guy who stopped us out at Colorado Hill Tuesday night. Next, John and I stood waiting for the elevator to come down and who should the doors open up on but Tuesday night’s ambulance boys, only this time it wasn’t Janet’s body they were cheerfully hauling out, but Stefan’s. I looked at John and said, “Deja vu,” and he said, “Gesundheit.”

Brennan said, “Don’t touch anything.”

I motioned to the couch. “Mind if I sit down?”

“Be my guest.”

I walked over to the couch and John followed. We sat and watched Brennan and a cop in uniform and another in a baggy gray suit wander around and try to find something to do. The uniformed cop asked Brennan if somebody ought to take fingerprints and Brennan said why bother. The guy in the baggy suit said what about the gun and Brennan said he was sure it was Stefan’s but check it out anyway and go ahead and take it down and get it checked for prints. Gray suit went over to the desk and shoved a pencil down the automatic’s barrel and walked to the door carrying the gun on a pencil like a boy scout carrying Old Glory in the parade. As he opened the door, the gun started to slide off the pencil and he instinctively guided it back in place with his free hand; he passed the torch to a cop who for no particular reason was standing watch in the outer office and told him what to do and came back and wandered around some more. The uniformed cop said anybody see the shell casing and Brennan said he already picked it up. It went on like that for fifteen minutes.

Finally I said, “Can I talk to you for a second, Brennan?”

Brennan said, “I’m kinda busy.”

“Are you?”

“Okay, okay, go ahead and talk.”

“Can we have some privacy?”

“Jesus, Mallory!”

“Brennan?”

“Let’s go on out in the hall, then.”

I looked at John and said, “Coming?”

He shook his head no. “You talk to him.”

Brennan and I walked out through the two outer offices and stood by the elevators, no one else around. “Private enough?” he said.

I said, “Suicide?”

“That’s right. Cut and dried.”

“Now isn’t that convenient?”

“What? Just what do you mean?”

“Just that it’s a nice, safe way to end the affair. For all concerned.”

“What are you implying, Mallory?”

“Am I implying something?”

“Okay, mystery writer,” Brennan said, punching the down button, “you come with me, I wanna show you something.”

We rode down in the elevator without a word, walked quickly past DeForest and went directly to Brennan’s Buick, parked in front of the building. Brennan unlocked the car door and reached in the front seat for a manila folder. He took a sheet of paper from the folder, carefully holding it by one corner with thumb and middle finger, and gave it to me, instructing me to hold it the same way.

“Read it,” he said.

“What is it?”

“What do you think it is?”

I read it over quickly, then said, “This is supposed to be a suicide note?”

“Not supposed to be. Is. ”

“Have you checked the handwriting out?”

“I know Stefan Norman’s handwriting, and that’s it.”

“But you are going to have an expert check it, aren’t you?”

“The P.D.’ll handle that end of it. That’s up to them. I suppose they’ll check it out, but just as a formality. Take my word, that’s Stefan Norman’s handwriting all right. You wanna hand that back now?”

“No, give me a second, I want to reread it.”

I went over it again, more slowly this time. It was written out longhand, in a style tight, cramped and somehow delicate. It said:

I, Stefan Norman, am responsible for the deaths of Janet Taber and her mother, Renata Ferris. I felt I was working in the best interests of myself, my family and the Fund. I was in grave error.

It was my belief that Mrs. Taber and her mother, Mrs. Ferris, were attempting to blackmail certain members of my family.

In the pursuit of this belief, I approached Mrs. Ferris on the subject of her daughter’s conduct, only to find reason to suspect the mother’s complicity in her daughter’s action. The last of several arguments resulted in a physical confrontation. She (Mrs. Ferris) was a big woman and in the heat of the moment, attacked my person.

I retaliated and she was badly injured. In panic, I left the house. Later, by accident I presume, a fire began. In this indirect manner, I am responsible for her death.

George Davis killed Janet Taber, acting on a misinterpretation of a request of mine that she be asked to leave Port City at once. In this way, I am responsible for her death-and Davis’s, as well, indirectly.

I realize now my mistake in regard to Janet Taber and her mother and have deep feelings of sorrow and regret over the entire matter.

It was signed “Stefan H. Norman,” and dated.

I handed the page back to Brennan and he took it, easing it gently into the manila folder. He leaned inside the car, laid the folder on the seat and then locked it back up. He turned to me and said, “Answers a lot of questions, doesn’t it?”

I said nothing.

Dawn. The sun glanced off the smooth surfaces of the Norman house, ricocheted off its sharp edges and shot blinding crossfires of glare across our eyes as Rita and I approached in the Rambler. The house looked smaller in the light of day, as though someone had come in during the night and replaced it with a scale model; and while no less grotesque in the morning light, the art deco castle seemed somehow less frightening, like a ghost that in the turning on of a light is revealed as a sheet caught on a nail.

We got out of the Rambler and I stood and had a look at the place. The slabs of interlocking cement showed a fresh crack here and there, as well as patches of mortarwork where others had been; the house just didn’t lend itself to mint preservation. Oh, if nobody tore it down, it’d be standing in a hundred years or two, but all that concrete, unpainted like it was, was bound to chip and crumble and lose some of its shape and, well, beauty. As a relic to be found in ages to come, by intergalactic free-booters perhaps, or maybe the mutated remains of whatever becomes of our race, the Norman place’ll be an enigmatic curiosity piece that, like a sunbleached skull sticking up out of the desert sand, makes one wonder what story was behind it.

Harold filled the back doorway. He was wearing a gray suit, white shirt open at the collar. He made like a cigar store Indian for a few moments, then came to partial life and motioned us in, grimly.