The Secret Lives of Dentists

by W. A. Winter

  The driver reminds himself that he has his own photos of Terry Hickman—her friends called her Terry in the newspaper story and so, from now on, will he—a trio of eight-by-ten black-and-white glossies taken by Richard Ybarra, whom the driver met at the luncheonette and has visited at his Stevens Square “studio.” The driver paid fifteen dollars for the three prints, which was highway robbery, but, truth be told, he would have paid three times that much if he’d had to.

  He’d love to keep the photos with him, clean and undamaged in the large manila envelope he lifted from the Canary Cab office, so he could look at them on his breaks, but he knows that he’d be in big trouble if they were ever discovered. So he keeps them with his magazines and books and other photos stashed safely away in his garage at home.

  He looks up from the paper and smiles at the pair of comely Central girls passing at the moment. But if they notice him at all, they pay no attention.

  Fuck ’em, he tells himself. Neither one of them can hold a candle to Terry.

  Over a late lunch at the courthouse coffee shop, Anderson and Curry brief each other on their interviews of the past three days. An early edition of the Star sits on the counter next to their coffee cups, the crumbs of their ham-and-cheese sandwiches, and a bite or two of a disappointing peach cobbler.

  “It’s too early for peaches,” Mel grouses. “Those should have stayed in the can.”

  While Curry was in North Dakota, Anderson, Lakeland, and Riemenschneider revisited the Greek and his son, the staff and assorted hangers-on at the Whoop-Tee-Doo Club, and Rose’s office neighbors. Storholm, LeBlanc, and Hessburg went back to Forty-fourth Street and recanvassed the apartment-and duplex-dwellers along the trolley tracks with instructions to determine the source of the report about a skinny guy with glasses at or near the crime scene shortly after midnight on April 9.

  “No one came up with anything fresh,” Arne says, raising his cup and then setting it down again. “Storholm says there’s a girl in one of the apartments—a hot little number, or so he says, you know Einar—who turned red and acted funny when he asked about the guy with glasses, but insisted she was sleeping and saw no one outside that night. Anyways, her apartment windows face the street out front, not the tracks in back. Her husband, who works at one of the hospitals downtown, said he didn’t get home until almost three that morning and didn’t see a thing.”

  Curry says that he talked briefly to Teresa Hickman’s father, a handful of the Kubicek and Hickman family members and friends, including neighbors and former beaus, but no one would say much about anything.

  “I had that new wire service reporter with me for a while—gave him a ride out to Dollar and back,” Mel says, lighting a cigarette. “Nice kid, but green, trying to find the spine to talk to people. Of course, the people up there didn’t much want to talk to people from down here, least of all reporters.”

  “What about that Landa kid?”

  “With the exception of Kenny Landa. He talked. He says he knew Teresa better than anyone except her sister. But he struck me as crazy as a tick on a dog’s ass. He ranted and raved and even started crying, but wasn’t very helpful. I couldn’t figure out, for instance, if Harold Hickman stole Terry away from him or vice versa, but I did confirm Landa’s alibi for the night of the murder. Landa was in Devils Lake, North Dakota, staying with another cousin and working on their cars, all that weekend.”

  Anderson lights his own cigarette and looks around the room, at everyone except his partner. He pictures Mel knocking on doors and bracing Kenny Landa while Arne raps softly on the Currys’ apartment door and fifteen minutes later commences to fuck Janine on the Currys’ sofa. Their liaison was not something Arne planned, but was something he’d been thinking about since the Currys returned from their New Orleans honeymoon in February and he and Lily joined them for celebratory drinks at Harry’s Cafe. He’s no longer sure, for that matter, if Janine’s availability occurred to him before or after he decided to send Mel to North Dakota. At any rate, he doesn’t want to think about any of that, or about Lily, either, so he returns his focus to Teresa Hickman’s unblinking gaze on the paper’s front page.

  “It will be easier to talk to the Montgomerys down here,” he says. “Assuming they’re back in town already.”

  Now Mel is looking at Arne and frowning.

  “What do you expect they’re going to tell us?” he says. “That Bud did it? That Bud scooped Teresa off the street after her dental appointment that night, drove her someplace dark and secluded, then raped and strangled her? C’mon, Arne. Bud might be a goon, but Rose is our killer. He probably didn’t rape Teresa, but he sure as hell murdered her. He all but told us so. What more do you want?”

  Arne signals for the check from the counterman.

  What more do I want?

  I want Rose to make a full and signed confession and a guilty plea that would spare me not only the burden of legal proof but the burden of Lily Kline’s questions.

  What more do I want?

  I want to fuck your wife tonight and tomorrow night and maybe every night for the rest of my life.

  “Everything” is what he says.

  But when they knock on the Montgomerys’ door a half hour later, they find only Grace, who’s been drinking and says there’s nothing more she can tell them. They can’t help but notice a fresh bruise over her left eye and a swollen upper lip.

  Anderson is tempted to ask if she worries she will end up like her sister, only without the sex first. Instead he says, “Why didn’t you tell us that your sister had an appointment with Dr. Rose that night?”

  Grace stares at them with a drunkard’s eyes. “’Cuz I didn’t know that ’til after,” she says without conviction. “She lied to me. She said she was going to work.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us that Private Hickman isn’t Harold Junior’s father?”

  Anderson is making an educated guess that surprises even Curry. Not that the boy’s paternity is particularly relevant, but he noticed that the child’s eyes are dark brown, almost black, not at all like Private Hickman’s icy blues.

  “News to me,” Grace replies with even less conviction than accompanied her first lie.

  Arne takes a deep breath and exchanges glances with Curry. The woman is the link between Rose and her sister, but she’s no good to them in her current state and may never be.

  “Tell us what your sister told you about Dr. Rose,” Curry says.

  Grace says, “I told you everything I know.”

  Anderson asks where her husband is at the moment.

  “Out,” she says, “I know not where,” and giggles at the poetic phrasing.

  After leaving the Montgomerys’ apartment a few minutes later, Arne tells Hessburg and LeBlanc to take turns staking out the place.

  “Call the minute you see him,” Arne says, knowing that the other detectives are rolling their eyes at the request, as though Bud Montgomery is still a suspect while every cop in the city except, apparently, Arne knows the killer’s identity.

  But when Frenchy calls ninety minutes later, Anderson sends Curry home and brings Charlie Riemenschneider back to the Montgomerys’ apartment. Bud is coming down the stairs, on his way out again, when the detectives open the building’s front door. Spotting the cops, he turns on his heel and starts back upstairs, but not quickly enough. Anderson hooks both ankles with a one-armed tackle that cuts Bud’s feet out from under him—not unlike the plays he made as an All-City end on the undefeated Theodore Roosevelt varsity in 1936. Riemenschneider, a South High tough two years Arne’s senior, piles on, grabbing Montgomery in a headlock and yanking him down into the main-floor vestibule.

  “Let’s go round back,” Arne says, seizing Bud’s right wrist and twisting it sharply, forcing an audible snap and a loud yelp. Riemenschneider removes his spectacles and tucks them into his vest pocket.

  When the detectives have Bud out back, they shove him against the building’s sooty brick facade, Riemenschneider’s huge paw clamped on Bud�
��s throat.

  “Didja rape Teresa Hickman, shitbird?” Charlie says.

  “No!” Bud struggles to say.

  “But you tried, didn’t you?” Arne says, moving in close.

  “Uh-uh,” Montgomery whimpers.

  With his free hand, Riemenschneider yanks the sap out of his coat pocket and slaps it hard against Montgomery’s privates. Bud gasps and falls forward against the detective.

  “Come again, asshole?” Charlie says.

  Bud, gasping and drooling, finally says, “Okay, I fucked her. But it wasn’t rape.”

  The detectives grab Montgomery’s arms and jerk him to his feet.

  “Three or four times,” Bud says, babbling, eager to please now. “Just before bedtime, when I wasn’t working. She let me come in her room after Grace fell asleep.”

  Anderson and Riemenschneider glance at each other, and then back at Bud, who looks stupid and afraid, but proud of himself as well. Charlie smacks his right ear with the sap, drawing blood.

  Arne puts his face up close and hisses, “Did you kill her, motherfucker?”

  “No!” Bud squeals. “Why would I do—”

  But before he can finish, Anderson drops him with a fist to the solar plexus.

  There’s a cellar door down a short flight of crumbling steps, and that’s where the detectives drag Montgomery. For the next several minutes, in a dank room filled with muddy garden hoses and rusty hardware, they beat him senseless. Arne has all he can do to keep from pulling out his revolver and putting a bullet between the man’s eyes.

  He leans over Bud’s bleeding, heaving body and says, “Hit your wife again, asshole, and we’ll cut off your balls and throw you in the river.”

  As he and Riemenschneider, both breathing hard and sweating, trudge back up to the alley and around the building to their car, Anderson knows that Bud Montgomery had nothing to do with Teresa Hickman’s murder. But Bud is a despicable human being. Arne is quite sure he wouldn’t feel any worse dispatching him than he did about killing Hitler’s troopers on the way to Bastogne.

  It’s almost midnight on Tuesday before Robert reconnects with Pam. To his enormous relief, she’s either extremely glad to see him or at least as sex-starved as he is, because she wastes no time pulling him into the back bedroom and onto the bed.

  After they quickly reach a rousing climax, Robert kisses her shoulder and says, “I was afraid you’d still be angry.”

  “About what?” she says.

  “You sounded angry when I called the day before my trip. About what I told you the night before.” He doesn’t want to go through it again. “If I sounded angry, I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m not anymore.”

  But she is different tonight. After the sex, she is distracted, maybe annoyed, despite what she said. He stares at her sex kitten’s body. Their lovemaking tonight was as good as ever, or nearly so, yet he can’t help but think that something has changed.

  He has been reluctant to tell her that he loves her, but now he wonders if he should, even though he wouldn’t mean it—not yet. He doesn’t think he needs to say it in order to fuck another time tonight, but he may say it anyway, with an eye on the future. He’s pretty sure that she won’t say it back; she’s not the type any more than Janice, whom he did believe he loved and told her so, but who only shook her head, looked away, and said she wasn’t “there yet.”

  Lying beside Pam, he wonders if she’s told anyone his secret. He doesn’t know whom she would have told, with the possible exception of her sister, if she was going to keep their affair to themselves. But, judging by her comments over the past few weeks, she and Janice are no longer all that close and not likely to share a confidence, least of all one that could break up a marriage. No, Robert tells himself, he doesn’t think he has to worry about that.

  He rolls her over on her back and kisses her deeply, his right hand sliding down her body to the dewy patch between her legs. She responds the way he hoped she would, her body stirring beneath his touch while his cock stiffens against her.

  “I don’t think we have time,” she whispers, but he’s fully aroused again and isn’t going to stop.

  He mounts and pushes inside her as she wraps her legs around his flanks. He pumps her for what seems like a very long time before he comes. He can tell without her saying so it was good for her, and he’s filled once again with self-confidence.

  Ten minutes later, after she disappears into the bathroom and he reaches under the bed for his socks, he touches and then pulls out a pair of men’s eyeglasses. The glasses are similar to his own, and for a moment he wonders if they’re his—but, no, these have tortoise-shell frames and belong to someone else.

  “Has Karl started wearing glasses?” he asks when Pam comes back from the bathroom, wrapping herself in a terrycloth robe.

  “No, why?” she says, a second before it dawns on her why.

  “Give me those, please!” she says, and snatches the glasses out of his hand.

  Robert doesn’t know what to say. He was hoping to tell her about his North Dakota trip and ask if she read the Star’s United Press sidebar he reported and all but wrote, never mind Mckenzie’s byline, but that isn’t going to happen now. There was another man in Pam’s bed while he was away, and that other man, in his haste to scram before her husband got home, left his glasses on the floor. He thinks, irrationally no doubt, about the “skinny young guy with glasses” that Mckenzie and the boys were talking about at the bureau, another person the detectives investigating Teresa Hickman’s murder are interested in identifying. So Robert isn’t the only one of Pam’s lovers who is skinny and nearsighted.

  Then a more urgent question: Would Pam have told this other man Robert’s secret? Robert retrieves his own glasses from the bedside table and reaches for his underwear at the foot of the bed.

  He doesn’t know what to say so he says nothing. He dresses quickly, offers Pam a forced smile, and walks out the door before she can respond. It’s a beautiful night, moonless and chilly, but redolent of the coming spring, yet as he hits the front sidewalk on his wobbly legs he’s afraid he’s going to be sick.

  By the last week in April, the handsome Zenith Avenue home of Dr. H. David Rose—like several of its neighbors built with enough faux Tudor embellishments, including the thick, spreading ivy, to suggest an English manor house—has become a fortress of sorts.

  Ronnie Oshinsky has moved into a second-floor bedroom and conducts his own legal business (divorce work mainly) from the writing table beside a window overlooking the alley. A dozen-odd additional Oshinskys—in-laws and cousins and other members of Ruth’s extended mercantile family—quietly come and go as needed.

  Other Oshinsky cousins, scions of the original Oshinsky Brothers, Jacob and Bernard, have arranged for the private “operatives” who spend four-hour shifts sitting in a pearl-colored Chrysler Imperial out front. Three generations of cousins have provided security for Oshinsky family interests since before the Depression. While they haven’t shut down the crank calls and poison-pen letters, there’s been no garbage thrown on the lawn or other demonstrations of disapproval since they arrived.

  Rose’s two brothers—Samuel, a gynecologist currently practicing in Duluth, and George, a dentist carrying on the family’s Morrison County practice in Vincennes—are frequent visitors. Sam long ago changed his surname to Ross. He became a very wealthy man after inventing and patenting an improved speculum. It was Dr. Ross who put up the $15,000 that freed his younger brother on bond.

  David Rose no longer goes to the office, even when he can think of nothing else to do. If he had a patient, he would, but he doesn’t, so he relies on the woman from the Oshinsky enterprises to sit in his shuttered office, answer the occasional phone call, and collect the mail.

  He is by turn bemused and unsettled by all the coming and going. He’s grateful, of course, for the moral support and financial aid from his family, but understands that his acceptance is a tacit admission that his practice is small potatoes relative to his br
others’. Seven years younger than George and nine years Samuel’s junior, he has never been close to the brothers (there are no sisters), who have picked on and patronized him his entire life. Like Ruth, he is nervous about her brother bivouacked upstairs. And he worries about what the neighbors must think about the omnipresent Imperial and its hulking occupants parked out front.

  Since his arraignment, Rose has not been contacted by the police. He sometimes wonders if that peculiar Saturday afternoon visit by Sergeant Anderson was a figment of his imagination. In fact, he dreams about the big detective as often as he dreams about Teresa Hickman, both of them in unlikely scenarios and at least once sharing the same one. He has dreamed about a baby, too, though whose baby isn’t clear. Ruth says that he’s become a restless sleeper, often talking out loud about this or that, none of his outbursts making sense to her.

  Dante DeShields is a regular visitor, parking his white Cadillac behind the gray Imperial and spreading a growing archive of documents across and under the dining-room table. Rose is intrigued by the famous lawyer, even though he’s viscerally afraid of him, reminding him of a handsome but dangerous bulldog or German shepherd. (Rose has never owned or even lived in a house with a dog and knows nothing about them. Still, that’s his impression.) The papers say that DeShields is “well connected” in state and city political circles, mentioning Hubert Humphrey and other Democratic Farmer Labor Party luminaries, but Rose, who, unlike his wife, has never been much interested in politics, can’t decide if that’s helpful or not.

  Presuming Dante to be an Italian name, Rose supposes DeShields is a Catholic. Who knows what DeShields is—French, Dutch, English?—and he’s not about to ask. At any rate, the diminutive, beetle-browed attorney and Michael Haydon, his fair-haired assistant who doesn’t look old enough to shave let alone possess a law degree, are usually the only Christians in the house. Rose is aware, of course, of DeShields’s comments to the press about the dire prospects of a fair trial in Jew-hating Minneapolis, but the dentist has no firsthand reason to worry about a biased legal system. Like apparently everyone else, he assumes that the lawyer is positioning the case for a change of venue, an eventual appeal, and ultimate relief.