Murder is Not an Odd Job

by Ralph Dennis

  Edward grinned, sleepy, loose. “You two have been doing a lot of that lately. Can I assume your intentions are honorable?”

  Behind me, Hump laughed.

  “Not me. I can’t afford to play the course.” I got out a smoke and lit it. “This time we’ve been talking about when she was fourteen and staying with Alec Troutman and his family in Oklahoma.”

  “That was a long time ago.” Edward closed his eyes. “You can’t expect me to remember everything that happened thirty years ago.”

  “After Beth came to see you in San Francisco …”

  Edward sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He looked past me. “Hump, you do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Find your way out to the kitchen and get us a round of beer. And … take your time. I think your friend Hardman and I have something to talk about in private.”

  “Fifteen minutes enough?”

  “I think so,” Edward said.

  Hump looked at his watch and went out and closed the door behind him. Edward watched him go. Then he put the hash pipe on the night table and leaned over to hook my pack of smokes with a couple of fingers. “How much did Beth tell you?”

  “All of it. Up to the time you put her on a train in Oakland.”

  “You think it’s worth it, raking all this up again?”

  “I wouldn’t do it otherwise.” I got out a book of matches and lit his cigarette. “After you saw Beth off, what did you do?”

  “I caught a bus to Oklahoma City.”

  “To see Troutman?”

  He nodded. He got there early in the afternoon and he waited out front until Alec Troutman arrived. It was about dusk when he faced Troutman and told him he knew about what had happened to Beth. Troutman had cried then, and he’d tried to explain. Edward hadn’t listened to any of it. He’d beaten Troutman to the ground and he’d straddled him and kept hitting him until Troutman passed out, still crying and still trying to explain. Edward broke his nose, shattered one cheekbone and might have killed him if he hadn’t broken a hand.

  “And then?”

  He rode the bus all night to Dallas, the broken hand swelling in his lap. As soon as he arrived, he called Beth in Atlanta and later that day Beth wired him all the money she could collect or borrow in such a short time. He found a doctor who fixed the broken hand and he took a room in a boarding house. He stayed there for a month while the hand healed. During this time he established a new identity for himself, a social security card in the name of Edward Temple. And he’d gone to the rackets for a draft card. Only the card he bought, instead of giving his status as 4F, rated him as 1A and moved his age back a couple of years.

  When the hand was healed, he went to the navy recruiting office and enlisted. He spent the next three years, after boot camp and aviation electrician school, on a jeep carrier ferrying aircraft out to the Pacific. He made third class petty officer and he was honorably discharged in 1946.

  “I didn’t work long at any job: a year here, a year there.”

  “Why?”

  “Somebody found me. I don’t know how long they’d been looking. One night in 1947, outside a bar in Alameda, a man tried to run me down in a parking lot.”

  “Troutman?”

  “I don’t know. I thought it might be. I moved to Chicago. After a couple of years there, I decided it might be easier to lose myself in small towns. And each place I got so I could feel it. I’d know they’d found me and I’d leave town. It was a year here, six months in the next town. And then I thought I’d lost them for good. The last five years I was in a commune in Arizona.”

  “Disguised as a hippie?”

  “No. To tell the truth, I believed in that kind of life, in the better parts of it.” He lifted the pipe and set it in his teeth. From a piece of foil on the night table he broke off a chip of hash. “You mind?”

  I shook my head.

  “Had to be sure.” He got the chip sizzling in the pipe. The wood-burn smell was harsh when it reached me. “I got so I believed that it didn’t matter how successful you were, or how unsuccessful. The real thing was to get by, to live a good life. That the millionaire and the hippie, when they’re dead, rot and stink in about the same way.”

  “And then you heard your father was dying?”

  He nodded. “And as soon as I arrived here, it started again.”

  I stood up. “You could have saved us a lot of trouble if you’d told me this before.”

  “Beth deserved it, all the silence.” He drew the smoke in and held it. “You see, she’s had a hard life. Those husbands, those divorces, probably have their roots back in what Troutman did to her back when she was a kid. It’s not really all her fault.”

  “Maybe.”

  “It might be a good sign, the fact that she could talk to you about it.”

  “Call me Dr. Hardman,” I said.

  A couple of minutes later Hump brought in three cold Buds.

  Back a couple of years ago, a newspaper and magazine writer, a guy who did some financial writing on a freelance basis, split with his wife. She wanted a divorce and about all he owned. Hump and I did the dirty work for him, working on the assumption that no woman wants a divorce until she’s picked out her next husband. We’d been wrong about that. But not altogether wrong about her. For several days we watched her and she looked straight until Hump remarked that he thought her lawn was getting more work than it really needed. So we started paying attention to the seventeen-year-old boy who did her yard work. We noticed that he spent quite a bit of time in the house and several times when he left his hair was damp, as if he’d just had a shower. He was a good-looking kid, a senior in high school, and a jock. It didn’t take much to frighten the kid into making a statement about his affair with the wife. There’d been a lot of afternoon bush-shaking going on.

  Faced with the statement, the wife settled for a new home, a car, and a lump settlement. And it had been a very small lump compared to what she’d wanted in the first place. And all of this meant that Arvin Cross, the writer, owed me a favor.

  The house we’d helped him keep is in one of the older sections of town, Ansley Park, and it was once a lawyer’s home. In those days some lawyers did their business at home. If the lawyer really wanted to be fancy, he’d build him a small, separate building on the property that served as an office. The man who’d built Cross’s home back around the turn of the century had been that kind of lawyer. Now Cross used the little cottage as a workroom.

  “Alec Troutman? What about him?”

  His face was hawkish and lean. He took off his wire-rimmed glasses and placed them on the cluttered desk. He blinked at me and the pink, tired eyes reminded me of a white mouse.

  “How well do you know him?”

  “I talked to him half a day once when I was doing a piece on him about five years ago.”

  “A sympathetic piece?”

  “He liked it,” Cross said.

  “I need to know where he is. And if it can be arranged, I’d like to talk to him.”

  “That won’t be easy. Oh, I think I can find out where he is. The odds are that he won’t see you.”

  “Say I’m a writer who wants to do a piece on him.”

  Cross shook his head. “You wouldn’t get past the check he’d have done on you.”

  “Find him then.”

  It took two long-distance calls. One to the east coast office in New York and another, after clearance there, to the main office in Dallas. After some rambling talk about oil depletion and off-shore drilling and the need for a new look at the oil industry, Cross had the information. He put the receiver back in its cradle and grinned at me. “You won’t believe this, but Troutman is right here in Atlanta.”

  I believed it. Why not? He wanted Edward Templeton dead and after thirty years of wanting it, maybe he’d decided to be close enough to smell the blood when it happened. “Where?”

  “It seems there’s no chance of doing another article about him. He’s pret
ty sick. If I read between the lines, what they were telling me was that he might even be dying.”

  “Where?”

  “The Dansler Clinic. It’s over near Georgia Tech.”

  I nodded. I’d heard something about it years ago, but I couldn’t remember exactly what had been said.

  “It’s the rich man’s last hope. That and a dieting clinic for rich fat kids. Something like the rice diet up at Duke.”

  “What’s Troutman doing out there?”

  “They didn’t say. I’ll tell you this. The time I saw him there wasn’t a spare ounce on him.”

  “So what’s the clinic specialty?”

  “Miracles,” Cross said.

  “Can I get in?”

  “The clinic?” He looked me up and down. “Sure. Find yourself a doctor who’ll refer you. You could stand to lose thirty pounds.”

  I gave him the high finger and went looking for a doctor. It wasn’t hard to find a gullible one. Doctors, though they don’t like to admit it, are just as bright or just as stupid as anybody else. So I just shopped around until I found one who’d probably cheated to pass most of his exams.

  The main clinic building was like the mansion on some old pre-war plantation. That is, except for the glitter of wire strands and broken glass at the top of the nine-foot stone walls and the gate with the guards on duty twenty-four hours a day. Not that it looked like a maximum-security slammer. The precautions, I guess they’d say, were for their famous guests who didn’t want to be bothered. And they’d have mentioned a talk show host, a novelist whose last book had been on the Times list for more than twenty weeks and an actress who specialized in playing kindly but misguided mothers. All of these were people the news media had a tendency to badger if they could.

  Past the gate there were long green lawns with brick paths reaching out in all directions. These were the exercise paths, for the walking and jogging the clinic recommended.

  Scattered beyond the main clinic building, in a wooded area, were the cottages, units with a living room, a bedroom, and a bath. There were larger units with a spare bedroom and a kitchen.

  The doctor who’d referred me to the clinic had been careful to let me know that these cottages were somewhat expensive. Many of the people in for the diet lived in the wards. And he’d given me a booklet which boasted about the fact that several of the larger units had up-to-date hospital equipment, that twenty-four-hour-a-day nursing service was available, and that doctors and residents were on call at all hours.

  Money wouldn’t be a problem for Alec Troutman. He’d be in the best cottage. I was sure of that.

  Hump drove me out to the clinic. He remained in the waiting room. To maintain the image of a faithful employee, he’d dressed in a plain black suit and a ratty tie and he’d carried my suitcase for me.

  I didn’t see Dr. Dansler right away. First, I had to undress down to my shorts and undergo a medical examination: heart and blood pressure and cough and a slow kneading of the fat roll around my waist. And while I dressed, the questions about my eating and drinking habits. On one page headed DIET PROFILE, I had to give him a detailed account of what I’d eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner the day before. I was careful to add a few fats and starches: hash browns and buttered toast for breakfast, at lunch french fries and buttered rolls, and for supper a baked potato with butter and sour cream and a wedge of Boston cream pie.

  The young doctor shook his head sadly a few times, as if he’d heard this foolishness a number of times before. And I stayed in my role by thinking that he probably had one of those special metabolisms that allowed gluttony without punishing him for it.

  The diet profile completed and all my clothing back on, he walked me down a bright hallway to the inner office. I waited outside while he carried my medical exam sheet and diet profile in to the great man. I guess they were talking my case over but I couldn’t hear anything they said about me.

  After about five minutes the young doctor bowed me into the office. I sat across the desk from Dr. Dansler and looked him over while he did his estimate of me. He was a man of about sixty, spare and lean. A tan covered a mass of facial wrinkles. Pale gray eyes, accented by neat silver hair, peered at me, reading my body even with clothing on it, and putting price tags on my suit, the shirt, the tie, and the shoes.

  “You don’t seem quite as overweight as our usual guest, Mr. Hardman.”

  I told him I thought I’d better do something about it before it really got out of hand. Anyway, I said, I’d read somewhere that even one pound overweight was a bad strain on the heart.

  “Of course. Quite right.” He stared down at my shiny new file for a minute or so. “According to Dr. Black, you appear to be about twenty-five pounds overweight.”

  I nodded and I hoped looked properly humble about it.

  “Two weeks at a controlled diet with supervised exercise and you should be in tiptop condition.” He closed the file. “Of course you could carry out the same kind of program for yourself.”

  I said I didn’t think I had the will power to do it alone.

  I think he’d heard that before, many times. He stood up and shook my hand and gave me directions to the business office. Ten minutes later I’d written a check for $1400, payment in advance for the first week’s stay. It could have been less, but I decided to take one of the smaller cottages. I needed the freedom of movement the privacy would give me. Sooner or later I’d have to look for Alec Troutman so we could have a talk.

  The deposit, I was told, was not returnable if I left the diet program without Dr. Dansler’s approval.

  A huge black bruiser of an orderly carried my suitcase and led Hump and me to cottage number 8. He unlocked the door, placed the suitcase on a chair and opened it.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said.

  “Afraid I do, sir,” he said. “You’d be surprised the kinds of food people smuggle in. Cakes, cookies, and even cans of beans.”

  “Nothing in there,” I said, “but help yourself.” I’d expected some kind of search so I hadn’t packed a piece. Hump had brought it in for me. When the orderly’s back was to me I nodded at the bathroom. Hump went in and closed the door. A minute later the john flushed and he came out. Passing me he whispered, “In the towels.”

  When the unpacking was done, Hump and the orderly left. I sat down on the bed and waited for lunch. It wasn’t worth waiting for. On the tray there was a glass of some kind of juice, a bowl of rice, and a small dish of sliced peaches.

  After lunch, the orderly came for me and we walked on the exercise paths for half an hour before he took me to the gym, where I was outfitted in a heavy sweatsuit and tennis shoes and turned over to a drill inspector type who bullied about twenty of us fat men into a kind of scared sweat. First came exercises and then volleyball until I could hardly stand up. I sat down in the shower and drank cold water straight from the shower nozzle.

  I took a nap until six. Supper was some kind of drink like Tang and another bowl of rice and a dish of mandarin orange slices. And a small pot of coffee without sugar or cream.

  It was slow time until it was full dark. Then I put on my heavy walking jacket and dug around in the towel rack until I found my .38 P.P. I stuffed it in my coat pocket and walked over to the recreation room in the main building.

  I drank a cup of mint tea and watched some sloppy ping-pong games. Fat people don’t move that well and there was an especially awkward game of mixed doubles. I took my time. I was looking for a mark, a talkative type. Someone with the loose, hanging flesh that meant they’d been at the clinic for a time.

  I found him at last. He came in while I was having a second cup of the tea: a man about forty who was wearing a pair of slacks about four inches too big for him. And a shirt that could wrap around him.

  He moved over to the magazine section. He got a copy of Time. I got Sports Illustrated and sat down near him. I was skimming an article on the Dolphins when I looked up and saw him staring at me.

  “New here,
huh?”

  “First day,” I said, “and I’m starving.”

  “You get used to it. A week and you almost get to like the rice and the fruit.”

  So that was his approach. He was the old salt, the veteran, and he’d talk and talk and talk to the rookie. All I had to do was go along with the conversation and not seem to control it. In time I’d know all he knew. It wasn’t hard. He wanted to know if I was in the ward or one of the cottages. The fact that I’d taken the cottage gave me a kind of status. He said he was in the ward because he liked to be close to people.

  I nodded as if I believed him and he was off and running.

  Within a few minutes I knew all about the famous guests who’d visited the clinic during his time. It wasn’t far from there to gossip about the mysterious patient, the one in deluxe cottage number 1. There was always a large black Continental parked in front, though the other guests had to store their cars in the clinic lot. And once he’d passed by the cottage when the telephone company truck was outside and he’d seen three telephones taken inside. Hard-looking men were coming and going at all hours. One of the diet patients, a big reader of mystery novels, believed that the man in deluxe cottage number 1 was a famous Mafia figure who was in hiding from the F.B.I.

  It was cool and dark outside, with an overcast sky. Clouds that would cover me, I hoped. When I knew enough, I fought back a yawn and said the starving and the exercise had tired me. Old salt to the last, he’d said in no time I’d feel like a new man, like he did.

  Now I blundered from cottage to cottage. Over half of them were dark, no lights showing, and I knew the dead-out ones were rice-diet people like me, starved into a kind of hopeless submission.

  As soon as I saw the dark outline of the Continental, I knew I’d found the right one. Lights burned on the right side of the cottage and I moved in that direction. I came from the rear, taking a long loop to get there, and I used the shadow cover to reach the first lighted window. A bathroom. No one there. I pressed against the wall and edged toward the next window. The blinds were down but cracked slightly. At first, I wasn’t sure what I saw. It seemed to be some kind of white-on-white modern painting. And then the nurse who’d been leaning over the bed with her back to me straightened up and stepped aside.