Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

“Did you hear from him after that?”

“No I did not. I slept, but fitfully, and woke around one thirty a.m. Silber wasn’t home yet. I remember being irritated with him for taking a call from someone who wasn’t a regular patient; he has an excellent practice, now-there’s no need for it. I called the building manager and asked if Silber’s car had returned to the garage. It hadn’t. I didn’t sleep a wink after that. When dawn broke, so, I’m afraid, did I. I called Tom Courtney; he came around at once, phoned the police for me, then advised me to see you, should I feel the need for immediate action.”

“I’m going to need some further information,” I said.

“Certainly.”

Questioning her, I came up with a working description and other pertinent data: Peacock was forty years old, a member of the staff of Children’s Memorial. He’d been driving a 1931 black Cadillac sedan, 1936 license 25-682. Wearing a gray suit, gray topcoat, gray felt hat. Five foot seven, 150 pounds, wire frame glasses.

I walked her down to the street and helped her hail a cab. I told her I’d get right on the case, and that in future she needn’t call on me; I’d come to her at her Edgewater Beach apartment. She smiled, rather bravely I thought, as she slipped into the backseat of the cab; squeezed my arm and looked at me like I was something noble.

Well, I didn’t feel very noble. Because as her cab turned down Plymouth Court I was thinking that her husband the good doctor had probably simply had himself a big evening. He’d show up when his head stopped throbbing, or when something below the belt stopped throbbing, anyway. In future he’d need to warn his babe to stop calling him at home, even if she did have a brother or a knack for doing a convincing vocal imitation of a male.

Back in my office I got out the private detective’s most valuable weapon-the telephone book-and looked up G. W. Smale. There was a listing with the same street number-6438-but the street was wrong, South Washtenaw. The names and house numbers tallied, yes, but the streets in question were on opposite sides of the city. The reverse directory listing street numbers followed by names and numbers told me that no “G. Smale” was listed at 6438 North Whipple.

What the hell; I called the Smale on South Washtenaw.

“I don’t know any Dr. Peacock,” he said. “I never saw the man in my life.”

“Who do you take your kids to when they’re sick?”

“Nobody.”

“Nobody?”

“I don’t have any kids. I’m not a father.”

I talked to him for fifteen minutes, and he seemed forthright enough; my instincts, and I do a lot of phone work, told me to leave him to the cops, or at least till later that afternoon. I wanted to check out the doctor’s working quarters.

So I tooled my sporty ’32 Auburn over to 4753 Broadway, where Dr. Peacock shared sumptuous digs with three other doctors, highly reputable medical specialists all. His secretary was a stunning brunette in her late twenties, a Miss Kathryn Mulrooney. I like a good-looking woman in white; the illusion of virginity does something for me.

“I know what you’re going to ask,” she said, quickly, before I’d asked anything. All I’d done was show her my investigator’s i.d. and say I was in Mrs. Peacock’s employ. “Dr. Peacock had no patient named Smale; I’ve been digging through our files ever since Mrs. Peacock called this morning, just in case my memory is faulty.”

She didn’t look like she had a faulty anything.

“What’s even stranger,” she said, with a tragic expression, “he almost never answered night calls. Oh, he once upon a time did-he hated to turn away any sick child. His regular patients seldom asked him to do so, however, and this practice has become so large that he wasn’t accepting any new cases. It’s unbelievable that…”

She paused; I’d been doing my job, asking questions, listening, but a certain part of me had been undressing the attractive nurse in my mind’s eye-everybody needs a hobby-and she misread my good-natured lechery toward her for something else.

“Please!” she said. “You mustn’t leap to horrid conclusions. Dr. Peacock was a man of impeccable character. He loved his family and his home, passionately. He was no playboy; he loathed night clubs and all they stand for. He didn’t even drink!”

“I see,” I said.

“I hope you do,” she said curtly. “That he might have been involved in an affair with a woman other than his wife is unthinkable. Please believe me.”

“Perhaps I do. But could you answer one question?”

“What’s that?”

“Why are you referring to the doctor in the past tense?”

She began to cry; she’d been standing behind a counter-now she leaned against it.

“I…I wish I believed him capable of running around on Ruth, his wife. Then I wouldn’t be so convinced that something…something terrible has happened.”

I felt bad; I’d been suspicious of her, been looking to find her between the doctor’s sheets, and had made her cry. She was a sincere young woman, that was obvious.

“I’m very sorry,” I said, meaning itde her cry turned to go.

But before I went out, another question occurred to me, and I asked it: “Miss Mulrooney-had the parents of any patient ever blamed Dr. Peacock for some unfortunate results of some medical treatment he administered? Any threats of reprisal?”

“Absolutely not,” she said, chin trembling.

On this point I didn’t believe her; her indignation rang shrill. And, anyway, most doctors make enemies. I only wished she had pointed to one of those enemies.

But I’d pushed this kid enough.

I dropped by the Edgewater Beach Apartments-not to talk to Mrs. Peacock. I went up to the attendant in the lobby, a distinguished-looking blue-uniformed man in his late fifties; like so many doormen and lobby attendants, he looked like a soldier from some foreign country in a light opera.

Unlike a good solider, he was willing to give forth with much more than his name and rank. I had hoped to get from him the name of the night man, who I hoped to call and get some information from; but it turned out he was the night man.

“George was sick,” he said. “So I’m doing double-duty. I can use the extra cash more than the sleep.”

“Speaking of cash,” I said, and handed him a buck.

“Thank you, sir!”

“Now, earn it: what can you tell me about Dr. Peacock? Does he duck out at night very often?”

The attendant shook his head no. “Can’t remember the last time, before the other night. Funny thing, though.”

“Yeah?”

“He was rushing out of here, then all of a sudden stopped and turned and stood five minutes blabbing in the phone booth over there.”

Back in the Auburn, my mind was abuzz. Why else would Dr. Peacock use the lobby phone, unless it was to make a call he didn’t want his wife to hear? The “poor sick child” call had been a ruse. The baby specialist obviously had a babe.

I didn’t have a missing persons case at all. I had a stray husband who had either taken off for parts unknown with his lady love or, more likely considering the high-hat practice the doc would have to leave behind, would simply show up with some cock-and-bull story for the missus after a torrid twenty-four hour shack-up with whoever-she-was.

I drove to 6438 North Whipple Street. What my reverse phone book hadn’t told me was that this was an apartment building, a six-flat. Suddenly the case warmed up again; I found a place for the Auburn along the curb and walked up the steps into the brownstone.

No “G. Smale” was a resident, at least not a resident who had a name on any of the vestibule mailboxes.

I walked out into the cold air, my breath smoking, my mind smoking a little too: the “patient” hadn’t had a phone, but in a nice brownstone like this most likely everybody had a phone. Nothing added up. Except maybe two plus two equals rendezvous.