The Right Madness

by James Crumley

  “Well, tell her I wish her the best of luck getting back to J. Edgar’s house,” I said, then headed back into the hotel.

  On that terrible morning when I finally got Mac’s secretary to stop screaming and sit down, I told her to call 911 as soon as she stopped sobbing. Luckily that gave me a few minutes to poke around with my hands in my pockets. As far as I could tell by just looking, the hard drives had been jerked out of Mac’s computers. The drawers labeled current files were completely empty. The older files seemed undisturbed. I heard sirens in the distance, so I slipped out the back door to wait for the law.

  The law, in the form of Johnny Raymond, wasn’t happy.

  “What the hell happened here?”

  “You know as much as I do, Sherlock.”

  “Wrong time to get smart,” he said, putting one hand on his cuffs and the other hard on my shoulder.

  Resistance was out of the question completely, in spite of the fine moment in the bar watching the hardheaded asshole nearly choke to death.

  And this time I’m going down, I thought, until I saw Claudia’s deep maroon Jag coming down the street. Ron Musslewhite was out of town, so I had his secretary call Claudia for me.

  Usually in that sort of situation, Claudia would arrive on the wings of an ill-tempered harridan, whipping the air with the poisoned tongues of the Medusa. But she worked Johnny Raymond the other way that morning—all sweetness and politeness with legal icing. Raymond didn’t want to bite but she kept finding reasons to release me. Until he stuck his big, strong, white teeth into the cinnamon roll instead of me.

  We climbed into Claudia’s ride and headed for the nearest bar, Mutt’s, a bar that almost exemplified the phrase low dive. She looked as if she had just stepped out of the bad-butch edition of Vogue, and I looked like a guy who had been sleeping in his car while somebody died in his friend’s office. The woman I’d been tailing, no less.

  “Jesus,” she said, “I’ve seen bar rags that looked better. What the hell happened? What were you doing there?”

  I gave her a five-dollar bill and got a receipt back. “As far as I can tell, somebody killed the stripper. Then for some reason, he stole patient files, the hard disks, the floppies, and most of the paper in the place.”

  “That doesn’t answer why you were following the woman there.”

  “Mac was convinced that somebody had stolen his patient records—just the ones in long-term analysis,” I explained as if I understood it.

  “You think he killed this one? Or any of them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So what can I do except keep your bail low?”

  I waited a long time to answer. “Claudia, my dear, when I finish saying this, you can hit me, walk away, never speak to me again,” I said, “but it’s an ill-kept secret that you’ve got a line right into the department. You’ve jumped ahead of your peers every time. And something keeps you here.”

  “I like the weather,” she said calmly, my five-dollar bill still in her hand, leaving me afoot among low companions. “My favorite place.”

  “Without your help, Mac’s going down for this,” I said. “Without it, he’s meat. I know you’ve got somebody in the department by the nuts. You got to squeeze for me, honey.”

  “Be careful what you ask for, Sughrue,” she said as she folded up the five-dollar bill and slipped it between her breasts, “you might not like the answer. And don’t tell anybody but Ron or me where Lorna is until you talk to her.”

  “Would you please give me a ride to my car?” I asked. “I need about three days of sleep.” She left me in the dive, where I had to bum drinks from Mutt until Johnny Raymond found me.

  Once I had given my statement to the police, with Ron’s assistant standing over my shoulder, I slept for two days. Except for calling Lorna when I woke up to pee.

  Before I could get in the elevator, my cell phone buzzed in my windbreaker pocket. Ron Musslewhite. More good news. The early blood work on Lorna’s car revealed only one blood type. Mac’s. And a man fitting Mac’s description had stopped at the emergency room in Moses Lake to have twenty-six stitches put into the side of his skull. An accident with his tire jack was the explanation. I thanked him, then steeled myself to face Lorna, half hoping she was still asleep or, perhaps, had even disappeared.

  But Lorna was awake and tearing up the suite searching for her cocaine when I unlocked the door. Perhaps she had a little bigger nose-jones than I had suspected. “Where the hell have you been, Sughrue,” she hissed. “And where the hell is my stash, you bastard.” All the southern honey seemed to have dripped right off her tongue.

  “Mrs. MacKinderick,” I said calmly, “you’ll find two fat lines on the back of the downstairs toilet, so roll up a bill and help yourself.”

  “Could I borrow one of your bills, hon,” she purred. “Dr. MacKinderick doesn’t care for me to carry cash money.” The south had risen again in her voice.

  I didn’t know what to say about that, so I rolled up my most crisp bill, and handed it to her, accepting her simpering smile as thanks. I suppose I should have realized it before: Lorna had not the slightest touch with reality; she seemed completely insane.

  But when she came back from the bathroom, after a couple of fat line bumps, she seemed perfectly normal. She sat on the couch, cupped her hands together on her tightly clenched knees—a good little girl—then asked brightly, “What was it you said about Mac?”

  The afternoon went to hell after that. Lorna went through the small makeshift bindle in the first hour, so I had to go down for the jewelry box. Then she jumped into the shower to wash off the evidence of her first hysterical sobbing. She was into the service bar white-wine stash by the time I got back. I made a quarter-ounce bindle, hoping it would last, then got some very strange looks when I took the jewelry box back to the front desk. There were rivers of tears, road miles of cocaine, and a couple of showers; then she decided she had to get out of the room—she’d been in that room for five days, dammit, she had to get out. I agreed with her, but I didn’t know it was going to take another shower, much blow-drying of her thick hair, and three changes of clothes. Finally, she decided that none of her colored outfits matched her nail and toe polish, and, dammit, her hands were shaking too badly to do the work herself. So she hit the bindle a couple of times with a long fingernail, then folded it up, and tossed it to me, saying, “Could you tote that for me, CW. I don’t have any pockets.”

  The fact that Lorna was even upright and moving was an amazing feat of insane will, the fact that she was talking fairly lucidly surely a result of the great cocaine; but the fact that she looked like a million dollars as we stepped out to the hotel’s patio bar had to be a miracle.

  Dressed in loose white raw silk pants and jacket over a black tube top, clicking along on black high-heeled sandals, a floppy hat in one hand, heavy sunglasses in the other, Lorna glowed in the watery sunlight of early afternoon. I could see Cunningham’s eyes shining from the shadows where he waited. Lorna and I sat on the sunny side of the patio bar. Of course, nothing would do but a bottle of Cristal. As we waited, Cunningham slipped out of the shadows to sit at a table on the edge of the patio, as if he was trying to catch our conversation.

  After the waiter filled our flutes, Lorna raised hers and said, “You must think me a horrible person, CW. Absolutely terrible. To be drinking champagne on such a day.”

  “You’re a real bitch,” I said, “and you’re talking like some character in a fuckin’ novel. Nobody knows what happened to your husband, who also happens to be my best friend, so let’s get serious.”

  “You don’t understand anything, do you?” she said, then drained her champagne. “Mac knew how I was when he married me.”

  “And just how the hell are you?”

  “I take things,” she said, then motioned the waiter to refill her flute. “I’ve always been a taker. Mac is a giver; I’m a taker. That’s how we are. So tell him anything you want to about me. He already knows it.”

/>   “Didn’t you hear what I told you up in the room?”

  “I’m crazy, sir, not deaf,” she said.

  “I’ll agree with that,” I said. Every time she opened her mouth, another woman popped out.

  “He’s just missing, darling, not dead,” she said. “He won’t be dead until I see the body.”

  “Is there any particular hospital you’d like me to check you into?” I said, but she just smiled sweetly. “Or can I recommend a shrink?”

  “Thanks for your concern,” she said calmly. “I’m sure it’s well meant, but it’s misplaced, CW. I’ll be fine.”

  “You need a professional keeper,” I said, then waved Cunningham over to the table. He approached very carefully. I pushed out a chair for him as I stood up. “Sit down, Agent Cunningham,” I said. “And show Mrs. MacKinderick your credentials. Lorna, this young man wants to talk to you. If you’re as fine as you think you are, you’ll keep your mouth shut. I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked, as if suddenly afraid. She flopped her hat on her head and slipped the dark shades on her face. “And why?”

  “Just inside for a few minutes,” I answered. “I’ve got a few things to take care of. You’re in good hands.” I left before I could hear her offer Cunningham a drink. Although I might have been interested in his answer.

  Folger met me at the front desk. He had already sent the maids to Lorna’s room. He apologized for not having a room for me, but he promised to find me something nearby, and he graciously let me use his office telephone to make half a dozen calls. He also promised to carry out the favors I asked him to do.

  By the time I got back outside, the patio was completely in shadow. The sky was still blue, the sun still shining, but in the shade I was quickly reminded that Seattle sat on the edge of a deep, cold finger of the Pacific. Lorna slept quietly in her chair, the hat over her face, the shades slipped down over her nose.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” Cunningham whispered as I sat down.

  “You two have a nice chat?”

  “She fell asleep almost as soon as you left,” he said. “Poor lady.”

  “Poor lady,” somebody growled behind us. We didn’t have to turn around to see who it was.

  “You missed your chance, Pammie,” I said over my shoulder. Then asked Cunningham to give me a hand getting Lorna up to her room. He was only too glad to help, if just to get away from Morrow’s glare.

  After we had laid Lorna on her bed, Cunningham looked at me, then stammered, “What now?”

  “Well, buddy, I’m going to undress the poor woman and put her to bed,” I said. “You want to watch? Or help?”

  He turned and walked quickly down the stairs and out the door. But not quickly enough. I saw his face. You could have painted a barn with his blush.

  As she slept in the loft, I waited downstairs with a pot of room service coffee, a sandwich, and the television. About seven, Folger tapped on the door. He handed me my package and a pair of card keys.

  “We had a cancellation,” he said. “It’s two floors down, I’m sorry to say, but it’s with our compliments.” Then he paused. “Do you have any idea how long … how long you will be staying?”

  “Until I can get her to go home,” I admitted.

  NINE

  AT TEN O’CLOCK the next morning, Lorna looked as if she hadn’t moved since I’d covered her up the night before, so I let her sleep on. I ran into Agent Cunningham on the patio. He offered me a cup of coffee, and I accepted. Yesterday’s sunshine had become today’s normal Seattle weather. Raindrops as slow as Chinese water torture, and as effective, dribbled on the canvas awning over our table. A cloud of fog, thicker than last week’s slumgullion stew, flowed and eddied across the space, leaving everything it touched wetter than the rain. You couldn’t see the Market half a block away, or Elliott Bay beyond. Hell, there were moments when I almost couldn’t see Cunningham.

  “How is she doing, Mr. Sughrue?” he asked.

  “‘Mr. Sughrue’?” I said. “Does this mean I’m no longer the scumbag of the day?”

  “That’s not my department, sir. How’s Mrs. MacKinderick?”

  “A sleeping doll,” I said.

  “A piece of work, as they say in Kansas,” he said.

  “You can say that again,” I said.

  “A piece of—”

  “Just kidding, Cunningham,” I said. “I’ve got an errand to run that’ll take a couple of hours. Perhaps while you’re making sure she doesn’t leave town, you can make sure she gets some breakfast. Or at least some tea and crumpets.”

  “There’s a crumpet shop just down the street,” he said eagerly.

  I wished him luck. Then went down into the garage for my car.

  An hour or so later I was winding through the dripping woods of Bainbridge Island across the sound. I had some idea of where Mac’s ex-wife lived, but nothing exact. We’d been over to catch a Mariners-Yanks series a few years back, and on the last afternoon, when we had several hours before our flight back to Meriwether, he had taken me out to see the house where love had died. It was large enough to be a hunting lodge, a glass and Alaskan cedar monument shining on the upper edge of a meadow that sloped down to a pond, but I suspect that the only hunting that went on was for rising stocks on the Internet.

  “I’d show you the inside, pal, but the divorce wasn’t exactly pleasant,” he had said, “and I don’t want to start it up again. You know what they say: marriages are sometimes over, but divorces never end.”

  A phrase that trickled like rainwater through my head as I searched for the place.

  Turned out, though, that we did see the inside that afternoon. As we U-turned, a great hound lumbered from the roadside, trailing his lead and baying to beat the devil.

  “Shit,” Will said. “One of Lindsey’s puppies is running wild and free. And, God, she hates that.”

  So Mac coaxed the large bloodhound, Rexford, into the backseat of the rented Caddy, then drove back to the gate while Rex snacked on the leather armrest. At the gate he pushed a button below the mike, and was greeted by a rather timid voice.

  “Lindsey, it’s Will, honey,” he said. “I found Rex in the road, and you might want him back in the house.”

  Then came a muted exchange I very carefully didn’t overhear. But the gates opened anyway.

  Inside the lovely house, it looked as if an insomniac, an alcoholic, and a speed freak shared a house. Lindsey was a pale blonde, thin almost to the point of translucence except for her large, heavy breasts, which she leaned over as if to hide them. They seemed on the verge of pulling her off her tiny, dirty feet. The bloodhounds lounged like a pride of lions, chewing on the bones of abandoned pizza boxes and the skins of french-fry bags. And the smell: an insane asylum-cum-zoo. We had a quick warm beer, then fled.

  Mac didn’t say a word until we reached SeaTac. Instead of turning into the parking garage to return the Caddy, he turned into the first strip bar he found, parked, then turned to me.

  “Let’s see some titties, pal,” he said

  It wasn’t a particularly pleasant evening, and it lasted long past our flight and into the next day. Mac and I climbed onto our flight heavily burdened with guilty hangovers. We never spoke of the evening again. Not to our wives, not to each other, and, I suspect, not even to ourselves during those dark nights of the soul.

  After looping and twisting and turning through the backwoods of Bainbridge, I finally found the gate. But I wasn’t sure that I’d found the right woman. The voice that answered my buzz was anything but timid. Or reluctant to let me in when I explained who I was.

  It was as if I had stepped into a different house. The glasswork glistened like stainless steel in the gray light. Everything was neatly in place. Lindsey seemed a different woman; she seemed to have gained both weight and stature without making herself larger. Her hair seemed the same pale blond I remembered, but somehow thicker, glowing instead of fading. And she carried her breasts as if they were new m
uscles, decently earned. She led me to the breakfast bar where we perched on stools.

  “The dogs?” I said.

  “They were killing me. Can you imagine that? Something I loved and treasured and enjoyed for most of my life was killing me with allergies,” she said. “Jesus, I had to go into an asthmatic shock and nearly die to discover it.”

  She sounded so happy, I hated to tell her the bad news. “There’s no easy way to say it, ma’am, but it looks like your ex-husband killed himself last Friday.”

  “Bullshit,” she said, then laughed. “That arrogant prick wouldn’t kill himself.”

  I told her the circumstances, but she didn’t seem either bothered or particularly convinced.

  “You haven’t heard from him lately, have you?” I asked.

  “Not a word since that day you were here,” she said. “My checks come through the lawyers just like the others’. A small enough recompense for what he cost me.”

  “The others?” I asked, not thinking about what she had said about cost.

  “His first four wives,” she said, “that I know about. One lives in Marin, one down in Colorado, another one in La Jolla, and I think the first one’s in Seattle, but her name never came up.” Then she looked at me slowly. “You didn’t know, did you?”

  “Sure,” I lied.

  “Bad liar, buddy,” she said grinning. “Will has a bad habit of marrying one of his patients about every five or six years. Especially the ones with money. Sometimes I think he loves money more than women, and boy does he love women. Of course that means divorcing the last one, which is always nasty and expensive.”

  “He never said anything—”

  “He was like that,” she said.

  “You don’t happen to have the other women’s phone numbers or addresses?”

  “I do. All but the one in Colorado,” she said, “but leave your card, and I’ll see if they want to talk to you.”