Росс Макдональд - Meet Me at the Morgue

“Buck up,” I said loudly and firmly. “You have something to tell me. I’m here.”

“I’ve seen the dead man before, Howie.”

“Where?”

“With Larry Seifel. I was afraid to tell you.”

“Go on. When was this, lately?”

“It was in February, the day Fred Miner was tried. I met Larry at the door of the courtroom – we were going to have lunch together. He and this man were in the empty courtroom, talking.”

“Are you sure?”

“I wouldn’t have spoken if I weren’t. I couldn’t forget that face, those reddish eyes. And the bald head. He wasn’t wearing a toupee that day.”

“What were they talking about?”

“I didn’t listen. They came to the door together. Larry shook hands with him, and said something about getting in touch with him in Los Angeles if he ever needed his help.”

“If Larry ever needed his help?”

“Yes. What are you going to do about it, Howie?”

“Get a positive identification from Seifel, naturally. If he’s willing to make one.”

She took hold of my arm with both hands, looking up at my face through tears. “Please don’t tell him I told you.”

“Are you so crazy about him?”

“It’s terrible. I feel lonely all the time I’m not seeing him.”

“Even if he’s mixed up in this business?”

She pressed her face against my shoulder. “He is mixed up in it, I know he is. I realized it as soon as I saw that man in the back of the mortuary. It doesn’t seem to change my feeling.”

The fine tremor of her nerves passed through her hands to my arm. Her hair had disarrayed itself. I smoothed it with my free hand.

“You’re my good right arm, Ann. I don’t want you going to pieces.”

“I’m not.” She straightened up, refastening bobby pins, regrouping her forces.

“Go home and take a rest. Forget about Mrs. Johnson. She’s made of strong stuff, and doing perfectly well.”

“So am I.” She managed to smile. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll put on my public look. Actually, I’m better off with somebody else to think about.”

“Do you like her?”

“Of course I do. I think she’s a marvelous woman.” Ann had already put on her public look. “Don’t you?”

Helen Johnson’s face was suddenly in my mind. I realized that she was a beautiful woman. Her beauty wasn’t dazzling. It was simply there, something definite and solid that had never entirely left my mind from the moment I met her.

“Don’t you?” Ann repeated with her Mona Lisa smile.

I refused to answer on the grounds that my reply might tend to incriminate me. “Beat it now, Ann. Forest is waiting for you.”

“If I’m your good right arm, you won’t tell Larry, will you?”

“Not unless I have to. But he’ll know.”

“I can’t help that, can I?”

Forest was sitting in Ann’s chair with the typed report in his hand. He turned it face down on the desk and stood up:

“This man’s record is excellent, at least on the surface. You’re sure it’s complete? No missing years or anything like that?”

“Linebarge does a thorough job,” I said. “He used to be a cop, and he has to convince himself every time.”

“He’s convinced me. If this is the full story, unretouched, I can’t see Miner in the role of kidnapper. A man doesn’t often build up a solid record for twenty or thirty years, then turn around and commit a major crime. Of course there are exceptions: embezzlement, passional murder. But kidnapping for profit takes preparation. It doesn’t come naturally to a normal man. Well, Miss Devon? Are we ready?”

“Ready,” she answered with her best public smile.

“One thing occurred to me,” he said from the doorway. “This hit-and-run he pleaded guilty to – is there any possibility it wasn’t an accident? Murder by automobile is getting pretty common in these parts. Who was the victim?”

“Not identified, so far as I know.”

“The courthouse people call him Mr. Nobody,” Ann put in.

“Two of them, eh? This case has its puzzling aspects, all right.” Forest held the door for Ann and closed it sharply behind him.

I sat down in the chair he had been warming, and phoned Larry Seifel’s office. A secretarial voice told me with sweet impatience that he was busy.

“Tell him it’s Howard Cross, and I’m also busy.”

“Very well, Mr. Goss.”

His voice sounded higher and thinner over the wire. “Who is it speaking, please?”

“Cross. I’m in my office. I want to see you right away.”

“Can’t you come over here? I’m swamped with work, drawing up one of these complicated trusts. I lost the whole morning, you know.”

I cut him short: “I’ll expect you in twenty minutes, or less. On the way – do you know Watkins’s Mortuary?”

“It’s a block up from the courthouse, isn’t it?”

“Right. Cleat’s got a corpse there, in the back room. I want you to look at it before you come here. Tell Cleat I sent you.”

“A corpse? Somebody I know?”

“You should be able to answer that question when you see him.” I hung up.

Turning the Miner report over, I began to glance through it idly, and then to read it in earnest. I hadn’t seen it since Linebarge submitted it for my approval the week before the hearing, and there were going to be questions about Fred Miner.

I skipped through the “Family Background” section, which reminded me that Frederick Andrew Miner had been born on an Ohio farm in 1916. His mother died two years after his birth and her place in his life was taken by his elder sister, Ella. Their father was a strict man, a member of the Mennonite sect whose motto was: “The Devil finds things for idle hands to do.” The boy’s hands were seldom idle. He worked full time on the farm in the spring and summer. In the winter he attended country school, and later a Union High School, where he specialized in “practical mechanics.”

According to the records of the High School [the report went on] Miner was a serious, plodding student with a good citizenship standing and great mechanical aptitude. He was, however, forced to leave school without being graduated, at the age of sixteen, and take a full-time job in a local garage. This shift was necessitated to a great extent by economic pressures. For a period of several years, while he was still in his teens, the boy was the mainstay of the family, his garage work providing the only regular cash-income the Miner family had. This was supplemented to some extent by Miner’s winnings as a stock-car racing-driver at various local meets and county fairs.

When the Depression lifted somewhat, Miner was enabled to borrow enough money, with his father’s backing, to open a small filling-station of his own. This prospered, and by 1940, when he enlisted in the armed services, Miner was the proprietor of a filling-station and an attached “service” garage.

His initial desire, Miner states, was to become a fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy. Being unable to meet the educational requirements, he elected instead to become a ground crewman in the Naval air service. After a period of boot training at Norfolk, Va., he served at various Naval air bases on the West Coast, and rose, through diligent work and regular study, to the rating of Aviation Motor Machinist’s Mate, First Class. While stationed at the Naval Air Station, San Diego, Miner met and married Amy Wolfe, daughter of a small businessman in San Diego, on Sept. 18, 1942. Their marriage, although childless, has been marked by steady and devoted companionship.

In the summer of 1943, Miner was ordered to Bremerton, Wash., to join the crew of the Eureka Bay, an escort carrier then in the final stages of construction. Mrs. Miner followed her husband to Bremerton, and remained near him during the training and shakedown period. It was during this period, she states, that Miner “took his first drink,” and discovered that he was unable to “hold his liquor.” This fact is confirmed by Dr. Levinson, who describes Miner in his attached report as “a potential alcoholic, that is, a man who is psychologically and/or physiologically abnormally susceptible to the intoxicant and depressant effects of alcohol.”