Ed McBain - Poison

"Looked like it was dropped, or what?"

"Looked like it was on the floor," Larkin said.

"So you think he was surprised while he was reading?"

"I don't think nothin' yet."

"Where was the body? On the couch or…?"

"On the floor in front of the couch. Decomposing. It was still cold Easter Sunday, the super still had the heat on. Then we got the tropics all of a sudden, so it started going bad fast."

"Anybody in the building see or hear anything?"

"Deaf, dumb and blind," Larkin said wearily. "Like always."

"Have you talked to anyone at his office yet?"

"We were gonna do that today. So where do we go from here, Willis? You want it or not? If so, I gotta talk to the Loot."

"I guess it may be ours," Willis said, and sighed.

"Good," Larkin said.

"Can you send the paperwork up here?"

"I'll have it copied and stick it in the pouch. We get a pickup around eleven."

At ten minutes past eleven that Wednesday morning, April 2, Steve Carella rang the doorbell to apartment 12A in a building on Front Street in midtown Isola. He was expected and the door opened almost at once. The man standing in the doorframe was perhaps five ten, and weighed something like a hundred and sixty pounds. He had pleasant blue eyes behind dark-rimmed eyeglasses, sandy brown hair, a mustache of the same color, and a welcoming smile on his face. He was wearing a plaid sports jacket and grey slacks, blue shirt open at the throat. Carella guessed he was in his early forties.

"Dr. Ellsworth?" he said.

"Detective Carella? Come in, please."

Carella followed him into a living room eclectically furnished in an improbable but successful blend of modern with antique. An ornately carved Brittany sideboard was on the wall opposite an arrangement of leather modular sofas. A riotously red abstract impressionist painting hung over the sofas. Something that looked like a Rembrandt—but surely wasn't—hung on another wall. There were two black leather Saarinen chairs. There was a straightbacked sidechair that looked Victorian, upholstered in a rich green brocade.

"Sorry you had to track me all over town," Ellsworth said. "Wednesday's my day off."

Carella was thinking that Wednesday was a bad day to get a toothache. Most dentists in this city took Wednesdays off.

"No trouble at all," he said. "Your home number was listed right under your office number."

"Still," Ellsworth said, and smiled apologetically. "Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

"Thanks, no," Carella said.

"So," Ellsworth said. "You're here about Jerry McKennon."

"Yes."

"What would you like to know?"

"According to his appointment calendar, he saw you on March eighth…"

"Yes?"

"… at eleven o'clock…"

"Uh-huh."

"… and again on the fifteenth at the same time…"

"Uh-huh."

"… and he was scheduled to see you again last Saturday, the twenty-ninth… but, of course, he never kept that appointment."

Ellsworth sighed heavily. "No," he said, and shook his head sadly.

"He did keep those other appointments, didn't he?"

"I assume so. I don't have my appointment calendar here, but…"

"Did he usually keep appointments he'd made?"

"Oh, yes."

"Had he been a patient of yours for a long time?"

"Since January," Ellsworth said.

"What sort of person was he?"

"I knew him only professionally, of course…"

"Of course."

"But he always seemed extremely outgoing and friendly. Many people who come to a dentist's office aren't anticipating a pleasant experience, you know. I'm afraid dentists haven't enjoyed a very good press over the years. When Marathon Man was playing—did you see that movie?"

"No, I didn't," Carella said.

"Well, Laurence Olivier plays an ex-Nazi who does these awful things to Dustin Hoffman's teeth while he's strapped in a dentist's chair. I thought I'd never see a patient again. And more recently… did you see Compromising Positions? Or read the book?"

"No, I'm sorry."

"It's about a philandering dentist who gets murdered. You have no idea how many jokes I've suffered since! Even from my own wife ! Rushing off to the office again, darling? The implication being that once a dentist has a woman's mouth open… well…" He shook his head ruefully. "In any event, not many people think of dentists as… friendly types, shall we say? Do you like your dentist?"

"Well…"

"Of course not. We're the bad guys," Ellsworth said, shaking his head again. "When all we're trying to do… well, never mind. I didn't mean to deliver a sermon on The Dentist as Knight in Shining Armor. I was merely trying to explain that Jerry McKennon never felt he was in my office to be tortured. In fact, Jerry told me some of the best jokes I've ever heard. None of them dentist jokes, by the way."

"Are there a lot of dentist jokes?" Carella asked.

"Oh, please ," Ellsworth said.

Carella couldn't think of a single dentist joke.

"The point is… until recently, anyway… he was always pleasant and jocular and totally at ease in my office."

"When you say 'until recently'…"

"Yes, well, he…"

Ellsworth shook his head.

"It may have been the nature of the work, I don't know. Some people hear the words 'root canal,' and they visualize the dentist digging clear across Suez or Panama. Actually, it's a commonplace procedure. We remove the dead nerve, clean and seal the canal, and then cap the tooth."

"Is that what these last several appointments were about? Root canal work?"

"Yes. What were those dates you gave me? I know I saw him several times in February…"

"I only have the dates for March," Carella said.

"Sometime early in the month, wasn't it?"

"Yes, one of them was on the eighth."

"It must've been around then, yes. During the February visits, I removed the nerve, reamed the canal, obtunded it, and so on. In March…"

"Obtunded?"

"Sealed it. It must have been on that March eighth visit that I fitted him with a temporary cap. And a week or so later…"

"Yes, the fifteenth…"

"Is that what you have? Then that's when it was. What I did then was take an impression of the tooth… a mold, you know, for the permanent cap… and then cemented the temporary cap back on. I expected to have the permanent cap a few weeks later…"

"That would have been the twenty-ninth…"

"Yes, I would guess so."

"The appointment he never kept."

"Yes."

Ellsworth shook his head again.

"I'll tell you… I should have suspected something like this coming."

"How do you mean?"

"People never think of dentists as medical men, you know, but we do study the same biological sciences a physician does. Human anatomy, biochemistry, bacteriology, histology, pharmacology, pathology… our training includes all that. And when an essentially cheerful man suddenly comes in looking so… hangdog… well, I should have suspected a psychological problem."

"He seemed depressed to you, did he?"

"Enormously so."

"Despondent?"

"That's another definition of depressed, isn't it?"

"Did he mention why?"

"No."

"Never hinted…"

"No."

"… not even obliquely…"

"No."

"… at what might have been troubling him?"

"No."

"I gather you weren't surprised then," Carella said.

"By what?"

"His death. By poisoning."

"Do you mean did I think he was suicidal?"

"Did you?"

"No, I never once suspected he would take his own life. Never. In that respect, I was enormously surprised. When I heard about it… God, what a shock! A patient poisoning himself? And… I'll tell you the truth, Detective Carella… I felt guilty."