The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance (5 page)

“Nightmares may appear to be, and are, very upsetting,” Gunther said as he straightened up and I groped on my trousers. “However, according to Freud, Ernest Jones, Otto Rank, and others, the nightmare can be a therapeutic experience. It is an attempt by the unconscious mind to tell a secret to the conscious mind. But it is in the form of a puzzle, a conundrum.”

Normally, I would have had my breakfast without getting dressed, but in deference to Gunther I went to the closet, found my last clean shirt, and put it on. If Gunther hadn’t been there I probably would have worn the same shirt I’d had on the day before. It wasn’t badly wrinkled and I had no big plans for the day.

“We’re feeling very psychotherapeutic this Monday morning,” I said, sitting at the table.

“I am in the process of translating an article in German into English for a medical journal,” he explained, carefully pouring us each a cup of coffee, in clean cups he had brought in from his own room. Gunther madea comfortable living as a translator. He could handle eight languages, and business had been great since the war, most of it coming from the U.S. government.

“To consummate this translation,” he said, after taking a delicate sip of coffee and dabbing his mouth with the napkin that he had also brought from his room, “I have had to do extensive reading in the subject. The human mind is devious, Toby.”

“Your mind is trickier than you are, Gunther,” I admitted, after finishing the cup of coffee in one gulp and downing a biscuit with a glob of honey.

Gunther smiled and nodded in agreement. “Yes,” he said, “the separation of mind and body. A point Jung makes. May I ask? Do you have a hanover?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, “but you can look around. If I’ve got one you can have it.”

“No,” he tried again. “A hanover, the aftermath of too much alcohol in the system.”

“A hangover, you mean. Maybe a little,” I admitted, “but the coffee and biscuits help.” I popped two more into my mouth, finishing off the last of them, and gave Gunther a loopy grin. If my table manners got to him, he never let it show. A little over two years earlier I had gotten Gunther off a murder rap and not only had we become friends, but he had gotten me into Mrs. Plaut’s just as I was being thrown out of my old apartment for an excess of broken windows and flying bullets.

I’m not sure where the conversation would have gone next if the phone hadn’t rung in the hallway. Neither Gunther nor I was foolish enough to answer it. Mrs. Plaut would beat us to it even if it meant that she had to rush up the stairs or come inside from the garage, where she spent her spare moments keeping her 1924 Ford running. Even if you happened to be lucky enough to get to the phone first, she would arrive from nowhere to take it from you with the aid of a sharp elbow. Her ability to know when the phone was ringing was further evidence of the possible correctness of Gunther’s vibration theory.

We sat while the phone rang two more times. I picked at remaining crumbs. Gunther finished his first cup of coffee.

Then the sound of feet clapping up the stairs and the end of the ringing, followed by Mrs. Plaut’s voice knifing through the closed door.

“Hello? … Yes? … All things are possible … One thousand or more … I’ll see if Mr. Peelers is disposed.”

Then the footsteps of Mrs. Plaut coming to my door, a sharp knock, and the sudden opening of the door before I could say either enter or stay out.

“The phone is for you,” she said, surveying our breakfast dishes. “Did you look at the photographs?”

“Thank you,” I answered, getting up. “I looked at some of them, yes.”

She considered barring my way as I walked to the door and then, thanks to some intervention of the gods, changed her mind and backed away. I rambled down the hall, with her close behind, and picked up the phone.

“That woman is not reliable,” came a familiar voice.

“It depends on what you want from her, Merit,” I said, smiling at Mrs. Plaut, who waited for me, hands at her side, wearing a pensive scowl and a purple housedress covered with white flowers.

“Toby, Merit Beason has been shot again,” he said.

Straight-Ahead did not make jokes. I took him seriously. “What happened?”

“Teddy,” he said. “It didn’t go into the book the way we wrote it. The weapon was yours. The circumstances were mine. Can you get down to County Hospital, Room four-oh-three?”

“I’ll be right there, Merit,” I said, and hung up.

“Exterminating?” asked Mrs. Plaut.

“Maybe,” I said, and hurried back to my room to ask Gunther to clean up for me, which he would have done anyway.

The day was sunny. My car started and I had enough gas for the trip.

I turned on the car radio and got a bugle call and a guy telling me to join the civilian army and cut the waste of gasoline. He also told me that “ordinary guys” like me could help save lives by not racing my engine, by turning off the motor when I was waiting for a friend, by shifting gears faster, by reducing speed on the open road, by having my carburetor checked, and by sharing rides with other ordinary guys.

I switched to another station and got Ray Eberle and the Modernaires singing “I Guess I’ll Have to Dream the Rest.” I tried to sing along, messed up the words, and shut up.

Parking downtown near the hospital was a problem. I didn’t want to pay for a parking lot and I didn’t want to waste time looking for a space. I didn’t know had badly Straight-Ahead had been shot—I might have saved a quarter and lost a business associate.

Luck was with me. I spotted a space being eyed by a well-dressed woman in a black Buick. While she tried to decide if she could fit, I zipped past her and went straight in. It took some maneuvering to straighten my car out, so I was too busy to see if she gave me a dirty look. I wasn’t worried about dirty looks. My mission took priority over hers, whatever hers might be. I wasn’t quite sure what my mission was, really, but I was curious and worried about my gun, where it might be, and who might be getting shot with it.

3
      

T
here were at least six good ways to get into County Hospital without checking in at the main desk and explaining your visit to one of the ex-schoolteachers behind the desk. My favorite, and the one I knew best, was through the Emergency Room, partly because I had had so much business with that part of the establishment. This time, however, I didn’t have to sneak in. I had a legitimate reason for being there, so I stopped at the main desk behind a sailor and waited while the woman who looked like Edna May Oliver playing Hidegarde Whithers handed the gob a pass.

When the sailor stepped out of the way, I put on my best Monday morning smile and said, “Merit Beason.”

Something about me did not please the woman, who gave me a prunish look and checked through her list of patients.

“Barish, Barbier, Beason, yes,” she said.

“Yes,” I repeated, reaching for the card.

“No,” she said, pulling the card back. “No visitors.”

“I’m his brother.”

“No visitors,” she repeated. “Not today. He was shot.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said, putting my hand to my chest, ready to cross my heart and hope to die.

“No one said you did. No visitors,” she repeated, pointing to the card and looking over at the brown-uniformed guard chatting to a nurse about a dozen feet away.

“I’m his son,” I tried. “I made a mistake about being his brother. I was nervous.”

“No,” she said. “Sorry.”

“I get the impression here that you don’t like me,” I said looking pained.

“That’s true,” she agreed, looking past me at the young woman holding the hand of a little boy and waiting to cope with the keeper of the gate. “But like you or not, the card says no visitors.”

“Why don’t you like me?” I said. “I’m nice to my family, pay my taxes, honor my parents memory, want to visit my uncle in the hospital.”

“You remind me of my husband,” the woman said. “Now, if you please, you’ll have to stand out of the way so I can take care of the lady.”

“But—” I began, but she put her finger to her lips just the way my third-grade teacher Mrs. Rothcup used to do and I immediately shut up.

“I’m a volunteer here,” she whispered. “I do not get paid. I am filling in for the duration of the war to free the regular receptionist, my daughter, to do more essential war-related work. I am, actually, in quite a good mood today, possibly because my husband is in Phoenix on business and partly because I just heard on the radio that the Japanese fleet has been trounced at Midway. I should hate to call that guard and have you escorted out.”

“You used to be a teacher, didn’t you?” I whispered even lower.

She nodded, pleased that her lifetime of work had so clearly molded her personality. To prove her persona, she pointed an index finger at the door. To prove my conditioning by the California school system, I turned and left the hospital.

Someone must have thought that the Japanese were planning a sneak attack on the hospital, probably intent on eliminating all the dangerous appendectomy patients before they could mobilize. The two side doors were locked. Even the window off the fire escape near the mental wing was locked, though someone had put up a colorful crayon drawing of a smiling round face with three wisps of hair sticking up. The name “Dagwood” was printed in black crayon on the picture. I wondered if it was the comic strip character or the nickname of the mental ward artist.

It was time to try the Emergency Room door. That was always open, and probably only admitting a flow or trickle on this Monday morning. Saturday night and Sunday afternoon were the rush hours for the Emergency Room. On Saturday night they came in drunk and bleeding from fighting over who was winning the war. On Sunday, they came in after accidents and battles. How much of the Sunday funny papers could you read?
Quick as a Flash
and
That Brewster Boy
could only keep you busy for an hour, and another hour in church, in bed, or on a blanket in the front yard listening to the kids only made the natives crankier, reminding them that the next day was work and that the reason they had to work was their wives and families. So they got angry and lashed out or got lashed. At least that was the theory forwarded by my brother, a cop, who did not have my faith in the goodness of your met-on-the-street Los Anglian.

There were six people in the waiting room; one of them looked as if he or she was in immediate danger. Another was a kid who sat with a crude bandage covering one eye as she sat next to her mother, who tried to read a magazine. At the reception desk near the door to the treatment rooms was a dark Latin-looking woman, almost pretty. She was dressed in white and checked something off on a clipboard.

I decided against a smile. It hadn’t worked at the front desk. Since I didn’t recognize her I walked past her looking a bit disgruntled and grouched, “Dr. Morey in?”

“Dr. Morey?” she said, looking up, puzzled. “I …”

“Oh Christ,” I sighed, pausing. “I told him … listen, could you call Glendale Hospital, surgery, and ask if Dr. Taylor has left yet. Tell them Dr. Christian is waiting and must leave for Fresno. Also, if a Miss Markhan comes, send her right up to the surgery office. Then page Dr. Cyclops and ask him to report to surgery immediately. You have all that?”

She looked properly confused and repeated, “Dr. Christian at Glendale, find out when he left. Miss—”

“Markhan,” I continued, encouraging but looking at my watch to let her know I was a busy man. My watch said it was three, which wasn’t bad, no more than six hours off.

“Markham, right,” she said with an apologetic smile. “She’s to go to surgery and I’m to page Dr. Sy Glopps.”

“Right,” I said. “Sy’s probably in the cafeteria.”

I pushed through the hinged double door and strode down the hall past open and closed doors on either side and into the depths of iodine odor without looking back. I went up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. I didn’t want to have the elevator operator asking for my visitor’s card and I didn’t want to play doctor again unless I had to. I had a long day left. Luck was with me on the fourth floor: lots of people were walking around, the nursing station was three-womaned, an eight-year-old doctor was reading a chart, and the hospital paging system called out in vain for my old medical school chum Sy Glopps.

The door to Room 403 was closed. I listened, determined that no one was talking inside, pushed it open and closed the door behind me. The room was small, all white down to the cabinet next to the bed and the patient in the bed. Straight-Ahead’s eyes were closed and he was breathing heavily. I walked over to him.

“Merit,” I whispered. “Are you—”

“Alive,” he finished, his eyes still closed. “Thinking, not sleeping,” he explained, opening his eyes and looking over at me without turning his head. His brown eyes strained at their corners, so I moved to hover over him.

“What happened?” I asked. I was still whispering, even though Straight-Ahead had a private room.

“Merit Beason was shot,” he said, which he followed with an incredulous can-you-believe-that look.

“Teddy?” I said.

At this point a healthy man, or at least one with flexible neck muscles, would have shaken his head. Beason simply closed his eyes firmly and opened them again before speaking.

“No, an accomplice. It seems our strand of pasta was not in the scheme alone. It seems there was another. It seems someone named Alex put him up to it. According to Teddy … how about a sip of water for Merit Beason?” His eyes looked toward the small white table near his bed, though I was sure his eyes couldn’t take in the glass.

“Sure,” I said, picking up the dusty, not quite clear liquid and wondering how I could get it into his mouth, since he couldn’t lift his neck. Maybe there was a funnel in the drawer. I could stick the funnel in his mouth and pour the water in. I’d probably choke him to death. “How do we do this?”

“The bed cranks,” he explained.

I went to the foot of the bed and cranked it up. Beason didn’t look much better bent at the waist. He took the water, finished it off in a single gulp, and handed the glass back.