He Done Her Wrong: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Eight) (Toby Peters Mysteries) (21 page)

“Not at all.”

“Next they sent a priest up to talk to me even though I’m not a Catholic. Why is it they always send a priest even though most people are not Catholics?”

Before I could answer he continued talking.

“The priest was a pleasant, chubby guy who looked scared to death but determined, so I let him in. ‘This is not the way, Craig. You can gain nothing from this. Let them go, and I’ll do what I can to help you.’ ‘You don’t even know me,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to know you, but I can see that you are a man who respects the laws of God.’ ‘I respect neither God, man, nor the Internal Revenue Service, father.’ “That is blasphemy, young man,’ he said gently. “Yes,’ I replied, wishing they had sent a more capable priest. But I’m sure they sent what they had on hand. ‘I’ll have to insist that you let that man in,’ said the priest. There was no choice for me.”

“You let him up?”

“No, I tied up the priest with the cord from the other drape, and he joined Lickter out the window. I’m not boring you, am I?”

“No.”

“Good. Well they sent Phyllis, but I wouldn’t let her in. There was no more drape cord, and I already had someone in the closet. She cried for a while and went away. You’re wondering about Ressner, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“The phone had been ringing the moment I lowered the priest out the window and heard the faraway voices below: ‘It’s a priest.’ ‘God no.’ ‘He gonna drop a priest?’ ‘That’d be something.’ ‘Oh, they’ll fall in the net.’ ‘Father,’ I called. ‘That is Mr. Lickter.’ ‘Courage,’ said the priest. ‘That’s the spirit, father,’ I shouted before answering the phone.”

Sklodovich reached under his pillow for a fresh orange.

“Then a red-faced old cop with a gun in his hand came outside the door and fired a bullet in the air. ‘Come out of there with your hands on your head or I’ll come in there and shoot you in the balls,’ he shouted indiscreetly. I was wondering why no one had thought of doing this earlier.”

“What did you do?”

“What did I do? For Chrissake I opened the door and let him in. I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid. I could tell that little son of a bitch meant business. I found out later he got a medal and they fired him for risking all those lives. A few months afterward I read in the paper that he was suspected of working for the syndicate.”

“Ressner?” I reminded him.

M.C. walked in as Sklodovich was about to speak again. He motioned to me to follow him, and I looked at Sklodovich, who was smiling at M.C.

“When are we going to arm-wrestle, M.C.? You know you’re going to give in eventually. Now is as good a time as any.”

M.C. paid no attention to Cortland’s question as I rose on weak knees, put on a pair of slippers that I found next to the bed, and started out of the room.

“Now I ask you, Toby. How can a man refuse a challenge like that and retain his dignity? See you later.”

M.C. grasped my arm and led me down a corridor of doors, past a large alcove with old couches and magazines, and by a glass-enclosed desk across from two elevators. At the desk sat two nurses, a short, young pretty one and an old thin one with a thin mouth that hardly moved as she spoke to the young girl. A tall, barrel-chested, hairy-armed man with short hair stood behind them with his arms folded. He was dressed in the same white uniform that M.C. wore, and the two men exchanged understanding glances. We stopped before the elevators, and I watched the lights go on 1-2-3-4. M.C. pressed the black button with the faded white 4 on it and concentrated on the wall as we rose.

I had decided that I would have to go along and look for a chance to get away. The fourth-floor lobby contained an enclosed desk (
PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE NURSES
), an alcove of empty chairs, a desk and a corridor of rooms. A young doctor stood in the hall, speaking to an even younger nurse. They looked at me as we passed. At the end of the hall we stopped at a door that looked like the others. M.C. opened it, motioned me in, and closed the door, leaving me alone to face two men seated at a table in a small, bare room with a cheap Degas reproduction tilted on the wall.

One man, the one with a small pointed white beard and a bald head popping through a fringe of gray hair, smiled and pointed with the stem of his pipe to an empty chair. I sat in it. The other man, a young Arabian-looking serious type with thick black hair, split his attention between me and the older man, with whom he shared an ashtray for their quite similar pipes.

The older doctor (Thomas Mitchell with an earache) leaned back and flipped through a chart in front of him, his underlip curled over his upper and his eyebrows up as if straining to let in maximum light.

“My name is Dr. Vaderg—” and his voice cracked and went squeaky. Coughing, Dr. Vaderg—reached for a glass of water while his dark companion looked helplessly about, not knowing what to do. I pretended not to notice, but the incident obviously had shattered a carefully prepared scene. The old doctor drank, recovered, smiled slightly, and cleared his throat. I joined him in a thin, careful smile.

“My name is Dr. Vadergreff. My colleague is Dr. Randipur.” Dr. Randipur nodded.

“Your name, it is Toby Peters?” said Dr. Randipur, looking down at a pad of paper.

“Yes.” Such an answer, I thought, must be safe.

“Mr. Toby Peters. May I ask of you why is it you think you may now be here?” said Randipur, after a glance from Vadergreff, who nodded in approval at the question.

“A mistake.”

“Dr. Winning”—smiled old baldy—“seldom makes mistakes. As a matter of fact, I can’t recall him ever making a diagnostic error. He may have some minor disagreements with some of us on treatment procedures, but after all, this is a research institute and unusual cases require unusual treatment. No, I’m afraid we’ll have to look elsewhere for an explanation.” Dr. Randipur jotted down this pithy statement.

With a blank, expressionless gaze I hoped would pass for sincere attention, I fixed upon Dr. Vadergreff’s ample nose. Somehow I had given the impression that Dr. Winning had been accused of error. Since this concept was impossible for the old man, I tried to make it seem as if I had made the mistake as a result of my ignorance about Dr. Winning’s infallibility.

“Now, Mr. Peters,” Vadergreff continued through the clenched teeth, which held his pipe, “how do you account for your behavior this morning? It seems you threatened Dr. Winning and became violent. If this report is right, you had to be subdued.”

My moment had come. I told them the whole story.

When I finished, the two doctors leaned over for a whispered consultation. The old man’s eyebrows pointed up as he listened.

“We, Dr. Randipur and I, feel that you have had a difficult day, and perhaps it would be better to let you get some rest. Be assured that we are neither quacks nor fools. We are trained physicians trying to help you. Please give us the benefit of any doubts you may have and accept the help we offer.”

Vadergreff rose, and I was surprised to see how short he was. Randipur and I also rose. Vadergreff pushed a white button on the desk with his left hand. The two doctors stood frozen-smiled, waiting for someone to come and remove me so that they could relax and discuss my case, old mentor to eager pupil.

“Dr. Vadergreff.”

“Yes.”

“I would like to see Dr. Winning again.”

“Sorry, Dr. Winning has left for the night, but I’ll tell him tomorrow you want to see him. I believe he has a speaking engagement in Los Angeles, however, and won’t be back here until Friday. Can Dr. Randipur or I help you?”

“Tomorrow may be too late. We’ve got two murders. There could be two more in the next few days. Are you two in there? Do you understand what I’ve been saying?”

The door opened, and M.C. moved quickly to take my arm and guide me out.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”

He looked at me for a few seconds before shrugging noncommittally. Three minutes later I could hear him locking the door behind me when I stepped into my room.

Sklodovich was leaning forward with the palms of both hands against the wall in a vain attempt to push it over.

“How’d it go?” he asked, pushing himself from the wall and wrapping a towel around his neck.

“Fine.”

“They still think you’re nuts, huh?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t feel like talking? I know how you feel. Sure you wouldn’t like to punch me in the stomach? It would be a great opportunity to release repressed hostility, and I’d never feel it.”

“Goodnight,” I said, closed my eyes and slept.

“Goodnight.”

Maybe it was an hour, maybe it was two. Someone was shaking me. I opened my eyes to darkness and hoped it was Phil, Jeremy, or even Gunther or Mrs. Plaut. I’d even settle for Shelly.

It was Sklodovich.

“Get up,” he whispered. “I’ve got a meeting arranged with Dealer.”

“Great,” I whispered back. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

I closed my eyes.

“Are you getting up?”

“No.”

His hand grabbed my stomach, and for a second I thought he was going to kill me, but I soon realized that he was tickling me.

“Cu—cu—cut it out,” I chuckled.

“Are you getting up?”

“No.” I tried to curl into a ball, but he straightened my legs with no difficulty. I tried to roll off the bed as nausea welled, but he held me with one powerful, hairy arm and continued to tickle while I grew sore from laughter.

“O.K.,” I pleaded. “O.K.”

He stopped. A few more guffaws ached my head, but I stood up.

“You want to get out of here, or you want to get out of here?” he asked reasonably. “Dealer can get you out. He got Ressner out.”

“He got Ressner out?”

I forced myself up and looked at Sklodovich. The pattern of bars cast by moonlight through the window made him look as mad as he surely was.

“Dealer’s been in this place for years, longer than anybody. Psychiatry staff is meeting now. They meet every night about now. It’ll be at least an hour before they break up and anyone could think of coming here to check us. Let’s move. See if the door’s locked.”

I put on the robe he handed me and took the slippers he shoved into my hand. Standing wasn’t easy, but I did it.

I shuffled to the door and tried it. It was locked.

Sklodovich put his ear to the door, listened for a moment, and rapped twice on the wall to the left. Someone on the other side returned the two rasps and Sklodovich smiled.

“What’s Dealer’s problem?” Sklodovich asked.

“I don’t know. I never even heard of him till you mentioned him.”

“I meant that you should ask me what his problem is. I was prompting you,” said Sklodovich, taking a small wire from the heel of his right slipper and carefully placing it in the lock.

“O.K. What’s his problem?”

“He’s a prisoner. Sometimes he’s in a German prison camp or concentration camp and he’s a Jew or a British officer. Sometimes he’s in a Japanese labor compound and he’s an American sergeant. Or he’s a counterrevolutionary in a Siberian work gang. Sometimes he’s very specific. Once he was the man in the iron mask. Another time he was Edmund Dantes in the Château d’If.”

“He sounds like a big help.”

“I think so too. Come on.”

The small wire made a clicking sound in the door, which opened slightly. Sklodovich peeped out and scanned the floor in both directions before darting into the room next door, from which he had received the two answering raps. I followed, robe wrapped tightly, slippers flopping.

Sklodovich closed the door, and we faced a small, birdlike man with wild gray hair and huge saucer eyes, which bulged in a look of constant surprise. The white-gowned creature eyed me for several seconds, then reached up, pulled Sklodovich’s head down, and whispered in a loud voice:

“A guy came wit you.”

“I know,” Sklodovich replied in the same stage whisper. “He’s with me.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Me? Me? Me?” said the bird, his great eyes darting about in astonishment. “What did you ask me?”

“He’s with me.”

“Good.” He looked in triumph at me and scratched his head. A few wisps of hair rose ridiculously. “Just want to be sure, you know. Tell me,” he whispered again, pulling Sklodovich’s sleeve into a crinkly mess, “are they still out there?”

“No. Look out there for yourself.”

“Me? Me? Me? Look out there? No tank you, buster. Not me. What you think I am?” He looked at me for an answer, but I could supply none, since I didn’t think anything about him other than he was a genuine madman.

“Toby and I have got to see Dealer.”

“Toby?”

“This is Toby. He came with me.”

“I see,” said the man sagely. “Come wit me.” He turned into the room which looked exactly like our own except for a closet where we had a blank wall. One bed was neatly made. In the other, a large bulge under a crazy-quilt blanket was shivering with fear, illness, or shock. The bird opened the closet door.

“They maybe ain’t there now,” he mumbled, moving boxes from the closet floor to one side, “but open that door and they’ll be there so fast, it’ll make you pee-pee in you pants I tell ya.”