Hugger Mugger (14 page)

I
HAD BREAKFAST
with Dr. Larry Klein at the hospital cafeteria at six in the morning.

“I'm sorry to be so early,” he said when I sat down, “but I have rounds at six-thirty and patients all day.”

“I don't mind,” I said. “Maybe I'll catch a worm.”

Klein was older than I was expecting. He was smallish and wiry and looked like he might have been the off guard at a small college who got by on his set shot. I had juice, coffee, and a corn muffin. Klein was eating two frosted sweet rolls that would have sickened a coyote.

“You represent Dolly Hartman?” he said.

“Yes.”

“I like Dolly,” he said.

He put most of a pat of butter on one of his sweet rolls.

“Me too,” I said. “Were you her physician as well as Walter Clive's?”

“Yes.”

“Did Walter Clive undergo DNA testing?”

Klein sat back a little and looked at me. Around me, in the small cafeteria, nurses and patients and bleary-eyed interns were shuffling along the food line, loading up on stuff that would challenge the vascular system of a Kenyan marathoner. I could almost hear the arteries clogging all over the room. If Klein heard them he didn't seem worried.

“Why do you ask?” Klein said.

“I'd heard he was trying to establish a question of paternity.”

Klein ate some of his sweet roll, and chewed thoughtfully, and drank some coffee and wiped his mouth on his napkin.

“I'm thinking about ethics,” he said.

“Always nice to find someone who does,” I said.

“If I may ask,” Klein said, “what is the, ah, thrust of your question?”

“Dolly Hartman says that Jason is Walter's son. I thought if it was true, it might help me to find out who killed Walter.”

“I don't see how.”

“Well, with all due respect, Doctor, you probably don't have to see how. But in the murder of a wealthy person, it's good to eliminate all the heirs.”

Klein nodded. He buttered his second sweet roll.

“Yes, I can see how it would help. Is Jason mentioned in Walter's will?”

“Apparently not,” I said.

Klein swallowed some sweet roll and drank the
remainder of his coffee and looked at his watch.

“I'm going to get some more coffee,” he said. “Care for any?”

“This is fine,” I said.

Klein got up and went to the counter. I looked around at the room, which was painted with some sort of horse-country scene of riders in red coats, and dogs and rolling countryside. Klein came back with more coffee and sat down. I smiled at him. Friendly as a guy selling siding. He drank some coffee and set the cup down and looked at me. I waited.

“They were father and son,” Klein said.

“Who knows that?”

“Me.”

“You haven't told anyone?”

“I told Walter. No one else has asked until you.”

“You didn't tell Dolly? Or her kid?”

“I was, to tell you the truth, uncertain as to what my responsibility was. I have worried at it every day until now. In a way I'm glad you showed up.”

“Was Clive secretive about the test?” I said.

“Very. He took it under a pseudonym.”

“And you've told no one.”

“No. Why?”

“Christ, I don't know,” I said. “I barely know what to ask, let alone what the answers mean.”

Klein smiled. “Rather like the practice of medicine,” he said.

“I don't want to hear that,” I said.

“Well, it's not always true,” he said.

“When the time comes, I will tell Dolly and Jason about the DNA results,” I said. “But in the meantime I think we should shut up about it.”

“Fine with me,” Klein said. “Even in death, a patient has the right to privacy. But why do you care?”

“I'm looking for a guy who murdered someone. Anything that I know that he doesn't know is to my benefit.”

Klein swallowed some more coffee. “And if the murder had something to do with the inheritance, this information might be dangerous.”

“To someone,” I said.

“Maybe even to him who holds it,” Klein said.

“Pretty smart for an internist,” I said.

“Occasionally. Mostly I'm just trying to shag the nurses.”

“Be my approach,” I said.

Klein looked at his watch again. “Time for rounds,” he said. “If I can help, I will. I liked Walter Clive.”

P
UD
P
OTTER
'
S APARTMENT
was down a side street off the square, past a sandwich shop and a place that sold baseball cards and used CDs. Upstairs, in the back, with a nice view of the railroad tracks. In the little front hall, I had to step over a narrow mattress on the floor. Beyond it there was just a bedroom, kitchenette, and bath. A window air conditioner was cranking as hard as it could, but the room wasn't cool. The mattress was bare except for a pillow and a slept-under green spread. The bed in the bedroom was unmade, but at least there were sheets. The walls were painted beige. The woodwork was painted brown. There were dishes in the sink in the kitchenette, and a couple of damp-looking towels littered the bathroom floor. Pud and Cord sat on the unmade bed while we talked. I leaned against the wall. They hadn't been awake long.

“Hard times,” I said.

“Pathetic, is what it is,” Pud said.

He wore a sleeveless undershirt and jeans. He had weight lifters' arms and a boozer's gut. Cord sat next to him in a pair of tennis shorts and no shirt.

“Things moved pretty swiftly,” Cord said. “Take us a little time to get our feet under us.”

“And do fucking what?” Pud said.

“Get on with our lives,” Cord said.

“Neither one of us knows how to do shit,” Pud said. “All we did was service the women, and you weren't even any good at that.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Cord said.

“You think he don't know?” Pud said. “He knows. Don't you know?”

I said, “Sure.”

“I ever have any trouble with you?” Pud said.

“No, never,” I said. “We were fooling around once at a party at the Clive place. But no trouble.”

Pud nodded.

“I drink too much,” he said. “Makes it hard to remember sometimes. I know I can be a damn fool.”

“Lot of that going around,” I said.

“What do you know?” Cord said.

“About what?”

“About me.”

Somehow the air conditioner had succeeded in making the room clammy but not cool.

“I know you are gay. I know you prefer boys to men. I know your wife was working truck stops.”

Cord looked at the floor.

“See,” Pud said. “I told you he knew.”

Cord shook his head slightly, still looking down.

“What's the thing about truck stops?” Pud said.

“Cord can tell you,” I said.

“I don't know anything about it,” Cord said.

He sat motionless. His voice was very small.

“She'd have made sure you knew,” I said.

“Knew what?” Pud said.

Cord began to cry softly. Pud stared at him and then at me.

“Who said what? What's the matter?”

Cord continued to cry quietly. Pud put one arm around his shoulder.

“Come on,” he said, “come on now, Cord.”

Cord turned his face in against Pud's shoulder and sobbed. Pud's face reddened and his body stiffened, but he kept his arm where it was. He didn't look at me.

“What's going to happen to us?” Cord mumbled against Pud's shoulder.

“We're gonna be fine,” Pud said. “We just need a little time to get our feet under us, you know. We're all right. We'll meet somebody else. We'll be all right.”

I waited.

“Cord's real sensitive,” Pud said. “They're like that.”

The room was too small. The air was too close. The emotions were too raw. I felt claustrophobic.

“I'll buy breakfast,” I said.

Pud nodded.

“Some coffee,” he said. “Coffee'll make us feel better.”

“You take a shower,” he said to Cord, “and get dressed. We'll meet you at Finney's.”

He looked at me.

“Joint downstairs,” he said. “They got a couple booths.”

He patted Cord's shoulder once and stood up and led me out of the apartment. Cord was still sitting on the bed sniffling.

There were in fact two booths in Finney's sandwich shop. We sat in the second one. It was against the back wall, opposite the counter, where a man and a woman were eating scrambled eggs and grits, and a grill man was busy at his trade. The young woman who worked the counter had a bright blond helmet of big hair. She also worked the booths. When she came over, with her hair and her order pad, Pud requested orange juice, ham, eggs over easy, grits, toast, and coffee. I settled for coffee.

“Poor bastard,” Pud said.

“Cord?”

“Yeah. I mean I knew, we all knew, that he was a chicken fucker. Walt had to bail his ass out a couple times. And we all figured he wasn't fucking Stonie.”

The waitress brought Pud's juice, and coffee for both of us.

“I mean he's queer as a square donut.”

“Stonie knew it too,” I said.

“Sure.”

“What kept them together?” I said.

Pud drank his orange juice in one long pull, and put the empty glass down.

“How the fuck do I know? I wasn't a pretty good linebacker, I'd a flunked outta Alabama my freshman
year. It was like he was okay as long as she was taking care of him.”

“So why'd she stop?”

“Taking care of him?”

“Yeah.”

Pud did a big shrug.

“Fucking Clive raised some weird daughters,” he said.

“Tell me about it.”

The waitress came with Pud's breakfast. He ate some of it before he spoke again.

“After Walt died, everything got really funky around there. I don't know exactly what was going on, but the girls were spending a lot of time together.”

“Stonie and SueSue?”

“And Penny. They'd go down to the barn office and shut the door, and be in there a long time.”

He ate a bite of ham.

“Then one day SueSue gives me a call at the business office and asks me to come down to the barn. I do, and she's there and so is Stonie and Cord, and Penny and that jerkoff Delroy. Penny's sitting behind the desk, and she's as nice as pie, but she tells us we gotta leave. That we are no longer welcome on Clive property.”

He ate some egg, pushing it onto his fork with a piece of toast, and drank some coffee, and gestured at the blond counter girl for more coffee.

“And I say, ‘For crissake, I'm married to a Clive.' And Penny says, ‘That will be taken care of.' And I'm looking at SueSue and she's not looking at me. And I
see Cord staring at Stonie, and she's not looking at him either. They're both looking at Penny. And I say, ‘SueSue, for crissake, what is this?' And she shakes her head and won't look at me, and Penny says, ‘It is too painful for my sisters, I'll talk.' ”

The man and woman at the counter finished breakfast, left a dollar tip, and walked out of the shop. The blond waitress scooped the tip.

“So I say, ‘I'll be fucked if you're gonna just run me off like a stray dog.' And Penny nods, and she's so nice, she says, ‘I have asked Mr. Delroy to see to it.' And Delroy says, ‘You have until Monday.' And . . .” Pud spread his hands and raised his shoulders. “That's it. Monday Delroy and four guys show up at my house and walk me off the property with nothing I couldn't pack in a suitcase.”

“Is it your house?”

“Do I own it? No. It's on Clive property. Walt owned it. Same for Cord's place. Walt owned everything.”

“You and SueSue having trouble?”

“No more than we ever had.”

“When you had trouble, was it about drinking?”

“Yeah. She was right, I drank too much.”

“I noticed when we were . . . fooling around at the party that night, she urged you to fight me.”

“Yeah, she liked that. She liked to see me be a tough guy.”

“Is that why you acted the part?”

“When I was drunk, sure. I mean, here I am living off her old man in her old man's house. I needed to show her I was worth something.”

“She get on you about living off her father?”

“Nope. I think she liked it.”

“Control?” I said.

He shrugged.

“I ain't a smart guy,” he said.

“She faithful to you?” I said.

“Far as I know.”

He was right. He wasn't a smart guy.

“But you fooled around.”

“I never cheated on her with anyone she knew,” he said. “Just some whores. I treated her with respect.”

“That's why you kept the apartment.”

“Yeah.”

“SueSue knew about that?”

“Not from me,” he said.

“SueSue drink a lot?” I said.

“We both liked a cocktail,” he said.

“How did Cord react to all this?”

“In the barn office, when we got . . . fired, he never said a word, just kept staring at Stonie. Like his mother was leaving him.”

“And afterwards?”

“After the barn office he just disappeared and the next time I saw him he's knocking at my apartment door. He looked like shit. Said he'd been sleeping in the back room of a queer bar.”

“Bath House Bar and Grill,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“How'd he know where to come?” I said.

“I let him use the place every once in a while.”

“For romantic interludes?”

“Whatever.”

“You and Cord seem an unlikely pair,” I said.

“Yeah. Me pals with a fairy. But you know, we were both in the same boat, coupla pet spaniels.”

He ate the last of his breakfast.