Sam McCain - 02 - Wake Up Little Susie (20 page)

He has a lot of faults and he always realizes, at some point in every book, that he’s flawed and less than he wants to be. I think that’s why John D.’s books are so popular.

Because we all know deep down we’re sort of jerks. Not all the time. But every once in a while we’re jerks and we have to face it and it’s never fun. You see how deeply you’ve hurt somebody, or how you were wrong about somebody, or how you let somebody down. But facing it makes you a better person. Because maybe next time you won’t be quite as petty or arrogant or cold.

Good books are always moral, contrasting how we are with how we should be. And the good writer knows how to do this without ever letting on. All this is according to F. Scott Fitzgerald, as taught in lively and deft style by Dr. Harold Gelbman at the University of Iowa.

Forgive me. It was late at night and I was in a ruminative mood. Creak of old house.

Jet plane far above roaring into darkness, contrail across prairie moon. Needing to take a leak but too lazy to get up. Hungry but too tired to fix anything. Sleepy now but too comfortable to walk to bed. Dozing with one cat on my lap, one cat on the arm of the chair, and one cat sleeping on the back of the chair with her head resting on the top of my head. And snoring. Cats can snore pretty good when they’re up to it.

And then the phone rang.

It’s a measure of how deeply asleep I was that I jumped up as if I’d been poked. The cats jumped up, too, scattered quickly.

I was baffled for a moment, staring at a small black jangling instrument I’d never seen before.

I couldn’t imagine what its purpose was.

And then I snatched up the receiver.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“Hello!”

“Mr. McCain?” Very faint.

“Yes?”

“It’s me. Ellie. Ellie …

Chalmers.”

“Hi, Ellie.”

“I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

“Just reading is all.”

Silence.

“Ellie?”

“Yes.”

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

“He’ll be mad if I do.”

“Who will?”

“My dad.”

“Maybe I can help you.”

“I’m just scared is all.”

“What happened?”

“Sykes came to where Dad works today and hauled him out in front of everybody. They pick on him a lot anyway, on account of he was in prison.”

“What happened?”

“Sat in the squad car and accused him over and over of killing the Squires woman and now Squires. A lot of the men would sneak up to the door and watch Sykes workin’ him over. It hurt Dad’s feelings. Now he says Sykes is gonna arrest him for sure.”

“So what’s your dad going to do?”

Long silence. “Run away.”

“That’s the worst thing he could do.”

“That’s what I keep tellin’ him.”

“He won’t get far.”

“He’s got money. Somebody was out here today and left a package for him.”

“You know who it was?”

“Uh-uh. There was just this big manila envelope on the doorstep. Dad’s name on it.

There wasn’t any stamp or anything.”

“How do you know it was money?”

“I saw Dad open it and put it in his suitcase.”

“What’s supposed to happen to you, he runs off like that?”

“He said to go see you. That you’re his lawyer now and you’d know what to do.”

“I’m on my way out.”

“I’d really appreciate it.”

“You just hold him there as long as you can.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I appreciate the call, Ellie. You

did the right thing.”

“He didn’t kill those people.”

“I know he didn’t, Ellie. I know he didn’t.”

Pale red fire bloomed in bursts against the dark moon-streaked sky. A war scene. It might have been night fighting in Korea.

When I reached the top of the hill looking down on Chalmers’s acreage, I saw the source of the pale red bursts: two police cruisers.

Because the house was isolated from its neighbors, there were no onlookers. A cop with a shotgun stood in front of the door. I pulled up.

“He ain’t gonna be happy to see you,”

Pat Jarvis said.

As far as I could tell, the only thing the Jarvis family had ever done, except butter up the priests, was produce a daughter with breasts so enormous even the withered monsignor could be seen eyeing them. Patrick had none of her charm.

“Chalmers got away, and Cliff, he

figures you had somethin’ to do with it.”

Nice going, Mike, I thought. Give

Cliffie an excuse to blow your ass off when he finally catches up with you.

“I go inside?”

“If I don’t shoot you in the back, you’ll know it’s Ok.”

“Very funny.”

A grin. “Ol’ Cliff’s pissed, and I

ain’t ki.in’.”

I went inside. He didn’t shoot me in the back.

Cliffie saw me and said, “I should plug you right here.”

“There’s a witness,” I said, nodding to Ellie. She wore a high school

sweatshirt, jeans, and white soiled sneakers without socks.

“You told him to do it, didn’t you?”

He lunged at me. His face was booze red.

His eyes were pretty much the same color.

“You really think I’d tell him to run? I’d lose my right to practice.”

“I gave shoot-to-kill orders, in case you’re interested.”

Ellie started crying.

“Great, Cliffie,” I said. “Why don’t you scare her some more? The guy’s only her father.”

I sat next to her in the old high-ceiling farm living room. There’d probably been a horsehair couch in here at one time, and a Windsor chair, and a soft Victorian kerosene lamp and a Victrola. There was an overhead light on now. Bare. Merciless. The charm of the place had long ago fled.

She stopped crying and just looked scared. “He wants to kill him.”

“No, he doesn’t. He just likes to talk.

Don’t you, Chief?” I was careful not to call him Cliffie. This wasn’t the time.

He glared at me. “She’s old enough to understand what he done.”

“He didn’t do anything,” I said.

“Yeah? And you can prove that?”

“Yeah, I can. I just need a few more hours.”

I had no idea what I was talking about. The point was to make Ellie feel better. She sat prim and proper, sort of gangly, and more than sort of sweet.

He looked at Ellie. “Well, I hope

for his sake she’s more cooperative with you than she was with me. It’d be a damn sight better if Chalmers turned hisself in instead of me findin’ him.”

He looked around the room again, rubbed his jaw, and then left. The emergency lights died. No red-soaked bursts of illumination in the front window anymore.

I lit a Lucky.

“Can I have one?”

“Technically, I shouldn’t do this, you know.”

“Aw, shit, Mr. McCain, just give me one, all right? I’ve been smoking for years.”

I gave her one. Lit it for her.

“He’s probably out at the old line

shack.” She told me where it was.

“I thought he was going to run away.”

“He said he wanted time to think.”

“You know, Cliffie’s going to put a tail on me. Everywhere I go, his tail will go. I go to the line shack, I’ll lead him right to your dad.”

She coughed on the cigarette.

“I thought you said you’d been smoking for

years.”

“Well, not steady, I didn’t say. I have to smoke a couple each time before I quit coughing.”

“Ah.”

“He wants to kill him. Cliffie, I

mean.”

“He wants to kill anybody he even

suspects is a criminal. And that means just about everybody.”

“Is his old man as stupid as he is?”

“Just about.”

“How’d he make all that money, then?”

I could tell she was enjoying this little respite from worrying about her father.

“Right time, right place. He had a local construction company. When the Sykeses took over, Cliffie applied for the Chief’s job.”

“So Old Man Sykes stepped in?”

“So Old Man Sykes appointed him.”

Then: “How long do you think your dad’ll be at the line shack?”

“Probably all night.”

“You plan on going there?”

“He told me not to.”

“Then don’t.”

“You think Cliffie’ll kill him?”

“No. I’ll see to that.”

“Really?” She coughed.

“Really. And meanwhile, why don’t you give up the cigarettes?”

“I will if you will.”

I smiled and kissed her on the forehead.

“Whatever happened to respect for your elders?”

Cliffie’s tail was even more amateurish than I’d expected. He followed me about half a car length back. The car was unmarked, true, but the man was in his police uniform. One sort of canceled out the other.

I was thinking about Dr. Todd Jensen. I’d been wanting to talk to him anyway. Now I wanted to talk to him as soon as possible, which meant early morning. His past with Susan Squires had always been murky. I needed to know about it in detail now, especially since he’d been identified as one of the people at Dick Keys’s garage the other night.

Bed.

All three cats piled near my

feet.

No trouble sleeping. Except that every time I moved, one or two of them meowed in protest. It was Ok for them to move, you understand, but not for me.

They have that written in their contract.

I was standing outside the good doctor’s door at eight o’clock, exactly fifteen minutes before his nurse arrived. She still didn’t look as if she found me much of an improvement over a leper.

“He isn’t in.”

“I’ll wait.”

I sat in the reception room and went through all the boring magazines. She made coffee. She didn’t offer me any. We both kept looking at the clock on the wall to her left.

I said, “If I give you a dime, can I have a cup of coffee?”

“A quarter.”

“Hell, I can go down to the corner and get a cup of coffee for a dime. Good coffee. And a free refill.”

“Then I’d suggest you go down there.”

“You really don’t like me, do you?”

“What was your first clue?”

“What the hell did I ever do to you?”

“I don’t like your face. I hate baby faces. That’s number one. And second, I hate people who get Dr. Jensen riled up.

He’s hard enough to deal with when he isn’t riled up. But you put him in a pissy mood for two days.”

“I just asked him some questions.”

“That’s all it took.”

“How about fifteen cents?”

“How about,” she said, “twenty?”

“Deal.”

He came in just as I was finishing up my coffee. He wore a jaunty brown leather jacket, white shirt, necktie, chinos, and desert boots. And sunglasses. Dr.

Heartthrob.

“What the hell’re you doing here?” he said to me, as he picked up his phone messages.

“Looking for a few fashion tips.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means we need to talk.”

“Someday I’m going to punch your face

in.”

“I guess I don’t remember that part of the Hippocratic oath.”

“He’s such a nuisance,” his nurse said.

“He got here before I did. Tried to mooch a cup of coffee.”

“She charged me twenty cents. Ten cents of that belongs to you.”

“Why don’t you shut the hell up, McCain?

I’m sick of you. What the hell’re you doing here anyway?”

“Somebody saw you at the murder scene Friday night.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’ll give you his phone number if you want.”

“Should I call the police, doctor?” the nurse said.

He glared at me. “I’ll talk to him.”

She looked surprised. “Mrs. Malone is your first patient. She’ll be here in ten minutes.

You know how she hates to wait.”

“Screw her,” he said.

I walked through the doorway of his examining room. He reached past me and pushed the door shut. Then he took two steps back and swung at me.

All that time spent ducking the Judge’s rubber hands has trained me for such a moment. I moved my head, and his hand went right into the door. Which was when, small but determined Irishman that I am, I brought up my knee. Unimaginative but effective. I got him square too.

He turned around and leaned on his examining table and started groaning, probably the way his male patients did when he gave them prostate exams.

I opened the door. “Nurse, could we have a cup of coffee in here?”

“You sonofabitch,” he said.

She hurried in with the coffee. She looked at the way he was hunched over his examining table, the paper on it crinkling as his big hands bore down.

“My Lord, what happened?”

“I had to perform some minor surgery. He’s in recovery now.”

“Doctor?” she said.

He didn’t turn around and he didn’t speak.

“I think he’s still a little groggy from the anesthetic,” I said.

“Just get the hell out of here, Audrey!” he shouted over his shoulder.

“He isn’t quite himself,” I said, rolling my finger around my temple to indicate he was temporarily insane.

She made a ugly face at me and backed away.

This time, I closed the door. I started sipping the coffee she’d brought and then went to the back of the room and sat myself down where I could see his face.

“So tell me about Friday night.”

“Screw you.”

“You sleep with a lot of your patients, do you?”

“I don’t sleep with any of my

patients.”

“You slept with Susan Squires.”

“That was different.”

“Oh?”

“I was in love with her.”

“That why you killed her?”

He looked at me as if he were just coming out of a deep trance. “Hey.”

“What?”

“I thought that coffee was for me.”

“Oops. I forgot.”

He was still wincing. “She always said you were a dipshit.”

“Who did?”

“Susan.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Every time we’d see you, she’d say, “What a little dipshit that guy is.””

And then I did believe it because it sounded right.

Some things sound right and some don’t, and this one did.

And I felt like hell. I’d thought we were friends, Susan and I. You can never be sure what people really think of you, I guess.