bad memories

by douglas sandler

  “They didn’t play fair with him?” Miller asked.

  “Fair? They did everything but murder him.” A tremor ran through the aged seaman’s body. Then he laughed. “How well I remember the nice, good hearted men on that rubber expedition, cheating Allen and double crossing one another! But the blow darts of the Indians down there, jungle fever, most of Paul’s crooked crew paid with their lives, but Paul came through and then a changed rubber market made the fraudulent groves they started miraculously worth a fortune. So now the survivors of that crew have come back to inherit his money.”

  “I see.” Miller thought he was beginning to get the picture. “Allen had a change of heart when he saw those men who’d sold him the investment.”

  “You don’t see anything.” Rodgers voice was high pitched and excited. “Did you ever hear of a thing called religion?”

  “Religion? What happened to Paul Allen, I told you Paul had always acted tough and ruthless, but that was only a protection for his inner softness well, after a dose of some really bad stuff, Paul decided that turtle shell of his wasn’t enough. So he tried something new, the good life, love your neighbor, love your enemies!”

  Once again Captain Daniels voice rose in bitterness. Millers eyes went unconsciously to the captains pinned up pants leg, “oh the legs got nothing to do with it.” Rodgers grunted.

  “I lost the leg long after the South American expedition, taking a scow through to Murmansk.” The timbre of his voice changed, “here comes Sally.” He said evenly.

  Sally ran the last few steps toward them, her face animated, and the transformation from her tenseness and worry of the night before was striking.

  “Good morning, dad!” She turned to John and smiled, “good morning Mr. Miller, did you sleep well here at La Querencia?”

  “La-what?”

  “La Querencia, the name of the place it’s Spanish for, the place where I belong.”

  The neck of Sally’s dress was cut in a V, instead of buttons; there were four small carved figures of gargoylish men.

  Miller noticed the pleasant curve of her bodice; she thought he was looking at the carved men.

  “I put them on myself,” she said and she placed her hand on his arm.

  “Shall we take a quick look around? I begin to smell breakfast.”

  Miller liked the way her friendliness broke through the reserve ne might otherwise have had. He sniffed and said, “I do smell something.”

  “And not its food I bet.”

  It was certainly not food, but something with the pungency of formalin. Miller puzzled about this queer smell as they headed toward the rear of the house and the smell in the air became stronger.

  “As they walked along, “I didn’t sleep well last night.” I was disturbed by peculiar sounds.” He didn’t know if he was wise telling her that. Perhaps, those sounds like the screaming of Jill Fellows were only in his mind. “I thought I heard jungle cats.” He went on hurriedly, afraid that she should think there was something strange about him. “You know the sounds they make and I was once almost sure I heard monkeys chattering.” He laughed.

  “I guess it must have been a hangover from the Central Park Zoo.”

  “Oh, don’t you know?” She gestured ahead. “Haven’t you seen?”

  Through the thick overgrowth of shrubbery loomed the fence Miller had noticed the night before. But at that time he had not realized its extent. The whole back garden, he now saw had been walled off by an exotic looking fence made of slender peeled poles lashed together. The jungle like enclosure though unexpected, fitted easily into the pattern of Paul Allen’s South American venture and Spanish tropic name given to his estate.

  “What is it?” Miller asked. “A stockade?”

  “It’s a zoo.” Sally said. “Paul Allen’s private zoo, now do you see why I thought it was funny last night my meeting you in the Central park Zoo?”

  They came to an entrance formed by a huge log placed on top of two others, a chorus of screeches from egrets and cockatoo’s greeted them as they went in. They circled slowly past cages of central and South American marmosets, tiny simians with bristly tails twice as long as their four inch squirrel like bodies.

  There were metal name plates, Miller read one on the cage of a pied billed grebo, Anthony innocent, 1892-1919, another on a iguana cage, John Haggerty 1861-1919, a snake, Samuel Houghton Drew 1884-1919. It didn’t make sense, alligators, and cats with rippling black muscles pacing with people’s names.

  “Perhaps.” He laughed. “It’s Paul Allen who had the sense of humor.” He pointed to a cage, “what’s the idea of name plates?”

  But Sally didn’t know, and not knowing why they were there didn’t seem to bother her. She was different from him in that, Miller thought.

  She took his arm again, and they left the enclosure, her hand seemed to draw him out of his loneliness. “You never get used to being alone.” He said suddenly, and was surprised to find that he had spoken aloud.

  He looked at Sally, but her eyes were not toward him, she must be thinking I am strange, he thought. She hasn’t said anything, she’s pretending that she did not hear me, and he was glad.

  Chapter Five

  Breakfast was served in a large windowed chamber with panels of dusty old rose brocade. The stiff chairs looked like museum pieces, not to be touched or sat upon. Two men and a woman were digging at grapefruit when Miller and Sally came in. One of the men was Paul Davis; Davis came to his feet, his manner and voice too exaggeratedly pleasant for sobriety,

  “Well, my friend from the train!” He said. “What are you doing here? I thought you were a stranger to this crowd?” Miller did feel like a stranger, what was he doing here? What did this have to do with Albert? The two others at the table looked on with mild interest.

  “Good morning, Sally.” Davis nodded at her. “Let me make introductions.” he placed one hand on Miller’s shoulder and waved at those at the table.

  “Mr.-say, I don’t believe I know your name.”

  “John Miller.” He felt eyes staring at him.

  “Mr. John Miller, Miss Angelia Parker, the only woman who shared our little holiday on the Rio Aripuana, a sort of camp follower, shall I say, Angelia?”

  “Shut up!” Angelia barked, and then she laughed as if she could take a joke. Angelia Parker was a woman in her forties; obviously making a last attempt to hold her youth. But her blonde hair was already lifeless and her sagging face was powder plastered and over rouged.

  “Mr. John Miller- Don Jose Mendez.” Paul Davis indicated the other man at the table. “Don’t let his face scare you; Don Jose got that saber scar as a revolutionary General. He once machine gunned five hundred men, women and children in an arena bullring.

  Paul Davis spoke in exaggeration Miller decided. These statements couldn’t be taken wholly seriously, yet Sally’s father had said Davis and Mendez had been in league to rob Allen.

  Jose Mendez smiled, nodded. “How do you do, Mr. Miller?”

  He stood up as Sally went to her chair. The revolutionary was small and chubby, with the round face and ridge less brows of the Peruvian Indian. The scar on his dark cheek was hardly more than an inch long, but it had the tooth edged look of a badly stitched seam. Two crooked Mexican cigar’s poked up from the breast pocket of his double breasted chalk striped blue coat, and when he nodded, his body bent from the waist.

  Jimmy Marks, looking sleekly fit in his crew shirt and balancing a tray of eggs and bacon on the palm of a strong hand, stopped between Miller and Sally to ask if they had any special orders for breakfast. Miller felt the urge to be pleasant to him. “They have you doing the cooking around here?”

  “Yes, Mr. Miller,” Drawled the young caretaker.

  Angelia Parker asked, “Where is your father, Sally?”

  “He’s not eating until later, he has a special diet.”

  Paul Davis nodded toward the kitchen door as Marks disappeared, “smart Johnny reb, that one.” He looked at Jose Mendez mopping h
is plate with a tuft of bread.

  “He’s a good cook,” said Mendez. “With his college education, who knows he might even work himself up to a busboy.”

  Miller shuddered at the joke and frowned, he was oppressed by these people, oppressed by his inability to estimate them.

  “One of us is missing,” Mendez observed, “where is Alvin Rodgers?”

  “Ah, that old boy’s probably dead.” Davis unlimbered a cigarette, tapped it. “He’s probably up in heaven, rolling craps with Samuel Logan!”

  Angelia Parker’s cup spilled coffee, a pained apology spread over Davis sallow face.

  “I’m sorry, Angelia, I forgot.”

  “You forgot too much!” Angelia Parker shoved back her chair, her body stiff. “You fool, you-you dissolute bum!”

  She was standing now, the rise and fall of her chest, a rhythmic movement. She locked one hand in the other, twisting.

  “Oh, Angelia,” Davis began again. The outburst had been surprisingly touched off, as if her feelings had bubbled just beneath the surface.

  “Oh, never mind!” She hurried from the room.

  “That wasn’t a nice thing to say, Davis!” Mendez Indian eyes were steady with reproof.

  “You don’t talk about the dead. She was in love with Samuel Logan, where is your tact?”

  Mendez mouth was open, a ragged slit. He could have modeled perfectly for a Mukluk Laplander dragging a caribou across ice. Paul Davis merely stirred his coffee; suddenly Miller could stand the presence of these people no longer he must be alone. He didn’t want to leave Sally with the two men, but he saw no other choice.

  “Excuse me, Sally.” He rose. “I’ll see you later.

  He hurried from the room, hardly knowing where he was going, but heading for the front of the house, presently be found himself in a large room. The walls of which were paneled where they were not lined with books. The intricately carved desk might have come from sixteenth century Venice. On one wall was a full length gilt framed portrait. The figure represented Miller slightly of Liebermann; this too was a towering domineering figure. It is good, he reflected to be forceful and powerful, to be able to act instead of merely to think, when they put you in a cage, you could no longer act. If you were not insane, you went insane; many people’s lives were cages.

  He crossed the sage green carpet and read the brass plate underneath the picture. Portrait of Paul J. Allen, double chinned, in a black executive’s suit, ribbon hung glasses in one hand, a fat half smoked cigar in the other, yet curiously forceful. There was an actor in the movies, John thought who could have doubled for Paul Allen, and the actor played the roles of great Manufactures, Senators, and empire builders but there was something else.

  Sudden realization came to Miller, this man Allen had visited several times at Millersburg. That was why he was so familiar; he had visited Albert Smith there.

  Miller went upstairs for his hat and coat; he knew now what his first action must be. His hands in the brown coats slash pockets. He walked, and through the high wrought gate with the sign La Querencia above. He went on, over Paul Allen’s private bridge across the railroad tracks.

  Dr. Albert Smith’s brick stucco and timber house looked very much the same as it had when Miller approached it two days before, there were no police around. The case of Dr. Smith had been marked off the books. Miller stopped at the shingle that still swung by the curved walk leading to the entrance, as he walked slowly toward the house. He had sudden sense that Smith, toweringly tall, incredibly lank, was striding beside him, Smith his thin bony face laughing his Adam’s apple bobbing hunched at the shoulder a little so that he might reach down to his companion’s level, Smith the comic the clown, now lifeless.

  At the front door Miller stopped; it was locked, as he expected it would be he could almost see the wraith of Albert Smith bending down to reach beneath the sill of the door, as he had done in the past.

  “I usually leave my door open,” Albert Smith had told him once, “but when I lock the damn thing and forgot my key, like I always do, I have a spare under here. Miller bent down and his fingers touched the key dangling from a nail. It bothered him, touching a hand to a dead man’s key. He fitted the key to the door lock. Strange, that Albert should belong to the dead, he thought how quickly one became an initiate to the company. A moment later, he shoved inside.

  The reception and waiting room were like familiar people waiting for him to come, the door leading into Albert’s office partly open, Miller swung back the door and stepped inside, looking at the empty desk at the room’s far end.

  And again in his mind, the wraith of Albert Smith was suddenly sitting there, Albert with his violin, his blond parted hair falling over his short forehead and into his eyes as he played, his cheek pressed flat to the instrument, his whole body hunching about it as if to envelope it.

  It was Tchaikovsky the fifth symphony he’d played it often before. He’d play it when Miller’s mind had weighed low, and the sonorous notes had scattered the soft whispering voices that no ears but Miller’s heard.

  The melody followed Miller about the room now; it was with him as he looked at the dark stained patch on the carpet where Albert Smith had lain. It was with him as he searched with increased speed through the drawers of the desk which Albert Smith had used.

  A pile of pictures in one drawer broke, slid loosely apart at his touch. The music seemed to cease. There was a pretty girl on a bathing beach; she was the girl who had not married Smith! Miller shuffled past it, past a snapshot of himself and Smith, and stopped at the picture of a large group taken against a tropical background of cocoas and thatched huts, under each figure in the pose a name had been inked the word “deceased” added after some of them.

  Anthony Innocentt, John Haggard, Samuel Houghton Drew those had been the names on the cages in the zoo.

  Miller picked up a magnifying glass from the desk top, studied the faces more closely. Paul Allen was easily recognizable from the portrait on the paneled library wall. But twenty years had changed Jose Mendez and Paul Davis and Angelia Parker was like a different person! She stood to one side of the group, a beautiful young blonde in riding breeches and blouse, her arm about the waist of a tall, cavalier like young man Samuel Logan, deceased.

  Alvin Rodgers stood beside Allen Rodgers who was the man about whom Davis had joked. “He’s probably up in heaven rolling craps with Samuel Logan,” and Angelia Parker had spilled her coffee.

  Miller looked at the back of the picture and again at its front. Alvin Rodgers was familiar. Miller knew from certain then, he’d seen both Allen and Rodgers at Millersburg they’d been visiting a patient, and he’d met them afterward while they were talking to Albert, a Pattern was emerging.

  Miller replaced the picture in a drawer, his fingers trembled with urgency as he turned the pages of Dr. Smith’s appointment book, but though there were entries for two weeks in advance, and Paul Allen’s name was nowhere mentioned. He re-checked the entries for the day on which Paul Allen must have died, but there was no record of any appointment with the owner of La Querencia, next he turned to Smith’s file of carbon copies of the death certificates he had issued.

  Again, he failed to find Paul Allen’s name yet, Albert Smith must certainly have been the man’s physician, since Paul’s number was written second only to his own on the cover of Albert’s desk, bewildered and fearful of the magnitude of the challenge to him. Albert had been murdered, now it seemed increasingly probable that Allen had been murdered too. Albert’s asking him to come fishing, had said there was “a big fish waiting to be caught.” Was this an incomplete task he was finishing for Albert to find a murder, so that the man would not murder again? Or was there something else, something that concerned him, John Miller even more immediately?

  Then suddenly Miller was aware that he had been in the office a very long time indeed, and that it was approaching one o’ clock, the hour set for Allen’s funeral.

  Miller had a sandwich at a diner on Highway 10
, it was already after one by his wrist watch when he arrived at the cemetery services were already under way when he approached the place, deep in the grounds, where a dozen mourners were crowding the entrance to as small, granite crypt built into the side of the hill. Seated in the hearse, now parked nearby, the wing collard figure of the undertaker watched the ceremony, while in the silence the preacher’s voice was droning, “forasmuch as the spirit of the departed hath returned to the god who gave it. We therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”

  “A nice layout, “Observed the undertaker. “Mighty nice layout;” He tipped a chunky head at the flowers, than at the mourners. “And only two years ago Paul Allen was near bankruptcy with hardly a man to call his friend.”

  “Yes?” Said Miller, while his brown eyes soberly indifferent to the undertaker’s comments.

  The undertaker’s expression was one of cynical resignation, “Rubber” he rasped unhappily, “that’s what did it. He lost his money in it, then made a sockful when the japs moved on the rubber we had out there in the Pacific, New Guinea, Borneo where ever it is!”

  Everybody knew the story of Allen, Miller realized. This was a small town, “Allen’s rubber was in South America wasn’t it?” He asked.

  “Sure! That’s it! South America! What’s the difference? The war made his plantations a gold mine.”

  The undertaker tipped his bowler back; he waved his finger to italicize a remarkable fact. “You know,” he said. “Paul Allen thought that this bunch might pressure him into investing his stuff down in South America while they cheated him, yes sir. He hated them, then he gets his fortune back, and I guess he figures he done his old pals wrong, thinking they were crooks. So what does he do?” The undertaker shrugged his shoulders in abysmal puzzlement. “That old fool makes those bloodhounds his heirs! Least it looks that way.”

  Miller glanced toward the funeral party, “you mean these mourners here are Allen’s former business associates?” He asked innocently.