The Silent Salesman

by Michael Z. Lewin

  “I thought we might go out and see somebody. Then come back when she has a bit more time.”

  “Somebody to do with the case?” she asked. “Really?”

  “We have no client,” I said, taking every opportunity to keep my grip on the facts of life. “But since I’m seeing Mrs. Pighee in the morning and her lawyer in the afternoon it can’t really hurt—”

  “Oh, you are working on it. Good for you. Daddy.”

  “Go help your grandmother while I use the phone.”

  There were six McGonigles in the phone book, and mine was the last one I tried. A woman who sounded like a mother said that Raymond McGonigle was expected in ten minutes, at six, but that his dinner was at six-thirty. I could talk to him till then.

  Sam and I didn’t find the house until ten past six. It was a small brick structure, well out east, past Brookside Park but before the Avionics.

  “Now, you’re here to listen, not to talk,” I told Sam in the van.

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  A large woman answered my knock. “Yes?”

  “My name is Albert Samson. I called about wanting to have a few words with Raymond McGonigle. Is he home yet?”

  “Raymond is here,” she said, looking at us suspiciously. “Who’s she?”

  “My daughter,” I said. “I’ve got her in tow today. I couldn’t get a baby-sitter.”

  “Well, come on in, then.”

  Raymond McGonigle was a tall young man in his early twenties. He sat in the living room wearing a suit and tie that would have been conservative when I was his age. I got the feeling that they were his working weeds and that he bore them as a burden until after duty—me—and his dinner. Then he’d change to something a little more mainstream, not to say mainline.

  “Hello, man,” he said. “Welcome to my ghetto.”

  “Mr. McGonigle?”

  “And a groovy fox, too. Hello, pretty lady.”

  “Hello.”

  “I want to ask you about an accident,” I said. “Which I understand you were a witness to. At Loftus Pharmaceuticals. I understand you work there.”

  “A pillar of the establishment.”

  “Do you know a man called John Pighee?”

  “Oh,” he said. “That’s the scene you’re after.”

  “Were you there when it happened?”

  He tilted his head and made a face of discomfort. “You put me in a difficult spot, man.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I’ve been warned—sorry, told—that people might ask about that business and the boss man doesn’t want me talking about it without . . . without direction.” Under stress, his education was showing in his accent.

  “He wants to clear anything you say?”

  “Something like that. Not,” he added, “that I’ve got much to say.”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m just trying to find out what happened, so his family will feel a little better about it. He’s pretty likely to die, from what I understand. His people want to know. It’s not an insurance thing. There can’t be much trouble in your talking to me for his family’s peace of mind.”

  “I wouldn’t say so,” he conceded.

  “Did you see the accident?”

  “No. Hell, to see a thing like that, you’ve got to be in it. I was working late down the hall and I was the first one there. I heard an explosion and I went to see what happened.”

  “So you were there, what? A minute after it happened?”

  “Or less. Unless I’ve slowed down in my old age.” He smiled at Sam.

  “And what did it look like?”

  “A mess. All the equipment shattered. Glass and wood and stuff all around. Mr. Pighee lying on the floor. Personally, I thought he was dead.”

  “Did you try to help him or call an ambulance, or what?”

  “I didn’t do anything. Dr. Dundree was there a few seconds after I was. He took care of all that stuff.”

  “Did it happen in the daytime?”

  “No, about eight at night.”

  “How come so many people were around?”

  “Research labs works strange hours. They were working on things, I suppose.”

  “But not in the same lab as you were?”

  “No. I was going through a battery of readings on a spectrometer. We were doing a set of readings every six hours.”

  “What kind of work was Pighee doing?”

  “I don’t know. I never worked in the Storeroom. Sorry, that’s what we call that lab. Whatever’s cooking, they don’t need technicians.”

  “I’d have thought that in the same company everybody knows what everybody else is doing.”

  “They’ve got something special on in there. Still do. And they don’t take the risk that industrial spies like me will go tell Lilly or the guy in the drugstore on the corner.”

  “Are you an industrial spy?”

  “A jest, man. A joke. They don’t tell me what they don’t want me to know.”

  “I see,” I said. “How long have you been working for Loftus?”

  “Thirteen and a half very long months,” he said.

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “You’re what?” he asked. “A detective or something?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, how would you like sitting around and typing up the reports of what other detectives were up to and never getting a chance to do any detectiving yourself?”

  “It doesn’t stretch your capabilities,” I said.

  “You don’t really need a chemistry major to wash up your test tubes, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, trying to be good-natured. “How hard is it to wash up test tubes?”

  “Shit,” he said. “Oh, excuse me,” he said, acknowledging Sam.

  “They just tell me to be patient. That I’m lucky to have a job at all.”

  “Are you?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Lot of science grads around?”

  “Everyone and his cousin. I’m part of a glut. Born in a ghetto. Graduated to a glut.”

  “If they’ve got guys like you champing at the bit, how does someone like John Pighee walk in and get himself into a special lab project that even the technicians don’t know anything about?”

  “Dunno,” he said, showing disgust.

  “Raymond!” his mother called from behind the living-room door.

  “Time for your meal!”

  “All right!” he shouted back. But didn’t move into action. He saw me watching him. “No problem,” he said. “Ask away.”

  “If you aren’t happy at Loftus, why do you stay?”

  “A long sad story,” he said. “Even if I could get something better somewhere else, I made a deal to stick around Indy for five years. Man, long years they look like being.”

  “A deal?”

  He nodded toward the door. “With family,” he said. “And it’s getting claustrophobic is what it is; I don’t know if I’m going to last it.”

  “Problems of provincial life,” I said.

  “Hey, yeah,” he said. “I like the way you talk. You’re a funny man, man.” He paused, then nodded toward Sam. “Is this little lady . . . is she your old lady?”

  “My daughter.”

  “Is she as funny as you are?”

  “Laugh a minute.”

  “Would you mind if, like, I took her out to a flick or something? I’m getting desperate for people who don’t spend all their time talking about my future or about making Sir Jeff a little more money. Problem is all the middle-class chicks my mama tries to pair me off with, they’re busy planning the kind of wallpaper they want when they’re ninety-five. And the others are just so ignorant!”

  “Better ask her.”

  “How about it, little lady?”

  “Sure.”

  “After dinner, then.”

  “Hang on,” I said. “She’s supposed to be going to her grandmother’s tonight.”

  “Don’t worry, man. I’m no wolf.�
�

  “No, Daddy, I can go another time. I really feel like a movie.”

  McGonigle said, “That’s terrific. Where do I find you?”

  “Daddy will give you a card, won’t you. Daddy?”

  Daddy gave him a card. “Who,” I began again, “is your boss at Loftus?”

  “Guy right above me is Dr. Dundree.”

  “And when did he warn you not to talk to people about John Pighee? This afternoon?”

  He shook his head. “Day or two after the accident. I just think he was worried about the insurance investigators.”

  “And have the insurance investigators talked to you about it?”

  “Nope,” he said. “Not yet.”

  The living-room door opened. “Raymond. Your supper is on the table. Come and sit down before it gets cold.”

  This time McGonigle stood up. “Gotta go,” he said. “See you later,” he said to Sam.

  As we got into my panel truck, she said, “Don’t worry, I’ll find out everything there is to know for you.”

  “He didn’t exactly seem to be holding a flood back now. Is that why you’re going out with him?”

  “Well, I thought maybe I would be doing you a favor, giving you a little time.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well. When I was cleaning up this afternoon, and found that money?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And the picture of the lady. She’s your friend, isn’t she? I mean you’re not gay, are you? You haven’t had much time to see her since I got here. I thought you’d like an evening without me around.” “And at the same time you intend to third-degree poor McGonigle. You seem to have inherited a quality we call ‘organizational ability’ when we’re trying not to say bossiness. I wonder who from?”

  She looked at me; then started to cry.

  I let her. It’s good for children. Builds their lungs. She whimpered half the way home. Then she said, “I don’t intend to be bossy.” “Good,” I said. Then, “And neither do I. You’re entitled to your own life even while you’re luxuriating in the accommodation I provide on the floor of my living room.”

  As I was parking, she said, “Anyway, it is a heaven-sent opportunity for me to pump him, don’t you think?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  After McGonigle picked Sam up, I called my mother to tell her we weren’t coming, after all, and then, because I lack imagination, I followed Sam’s Plan and went to see my woman.

  That is, I went to her house, where I found only her daughter Lucy and the news that the object of my intentions wouldn’t be back till 9:30.

  “She went straight from work to buy things for our summer vacation.”

  “Vacation? What vacation?”

  “Hers and mine,” Lucy said exclusively. “We’ve been lent a cottage. We get it on Sunday. Didn’t you know?” The last, artfully.

  “No,” I said.

  “If you’d keep in more regular contact with her,” the little girl said, “then I guess you’d know about that sort of thing.”

  “I guess I would,” I said.

  “She did think about asking you along, but since she hadn’t heard from you she figured you were working and wouldn’t come anyway.”

  By 9:30 I’d just about had my fill of people’s daughters.

  At 11:30 I was home in bed. Getting to sleep is not usually one of my problems, but I was restless. At first I thought it was because I didn’t understand the secrecy about John Pighee’s situation at Loftus Pharmaceuticals. But after I’d thrashed myself with that for an hour, I realized I was losing sleep because Sam wasn’t home. I’d forgotten about father’s worry. It had been a long time since I was the father of a child of whom I was the father.

  I heard her bounce up the stairs at a quarter past one.

  “Oh!” she said when I came into the living room. She was sitting on my dining-room chair waiting for some milk on the stove to heat up. “I was just making myself some instant coffee,” she said.

  “With milk?”

  “Half milk and half water. What’s the frown for?”

  “It’s just my face in repose.” I hesitated, then sat down.

  She put a spoon of coffee stuff in a cup, poured the pan’s contents onto it, and sat down on her air mattress. “Well,” she said, “where shall I begin?”

  What Raymond McGonigle had expected from a date with my daughter I don’t know, but from the sound of her side of things, the hours had been spent in a steady debriefing. “I started by asking him about himself,” she said. “I’ve found that people like that.”

  “Have you?”

  “Did you know that he has three older sisters and that he’s the only boy?”

  The difference—one of the differences—between a novice detective and an experienced detective lies in the ability to select from available information. Determine as you go along what’s important. Sam got information all right; but it was after two before John Pighee’s name was mentioned.

  “But Ray didn’t know him well.”

  “So he told me.”

  “But I’m sure he didn’t. They’re all very stand-offish there. It sounds a horrible place to work.”

  “Not friendly, huh?”

  “Not with lower-down people like Ray. He hates it. Not being able to work up to his capacity is bad enough, but the only people he gets along with are the other technicians. The lower technicians; there’s one higher-up technician called Seafield and he sticks with the people like Dr. Dundree.”

  “And John Pighee.”

  “Yeah. Did I do well, Daddy?”

  “Very well, kid.”

  She smiled. I noticed her eyes were bloodshot.

  “Tell you what I’ll do, Sam. In the morning I’ll give you a notebook. I want you to write down everything you can remember from your interview with R. McGonigle. Get it on paper, and out of memory.”

  “I can type,” she said.

  “All the better.”

  I woke up about 9:30. I felt good, considering that I was unemployed. I knocked on the door between my bedroom and the living room.

  “Hello?”

  “You decent, Sam?”

  “You old-fashioned?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, well, I’m decent, then.”

  I went into the living room. She was lying on the bed with a book. Decent and dressed as well.

  “Daddy? What’s your philosophy of life?”

  “Toast and orange juice.”

  “I get it. I get it.”

  But I got it in the end, because I knew how to brown the bread over the gas burner by holding it on a fork.

  “I’ll get you an electric toaster before I go,” Sam said. “Mummy said I should keep my eye out for things you need but were too proud to admit.”

  “When are you leaving Indianapolis?”

  We finished the toast in silence.

  “Well, what do we do on our case today?” Sam asked brightly as she poured some coffee.

  “We draw up a bill for Mrs. Thomas, put it in the mail, and sit back and wait for another client.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we have no client, so we’re off the case. That’s life in a detective agency. When there’s no money coming in, you don’t run around spending it. You huddle in a corner and conserve your resources.”

  Though she was confused, Sam was about to speak when the phone rang.

  I answered it. “Mr. Samson, this is Linn Pighee.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Pighee.”

  “I can see you this morning. What time can you come out?”

  “Last I heard, you were coming here.”

  “It’s not really convenient. I’d really . . . much rather you come here. It’s—it’s more private.” Moving from a business tone of voice into neo-seductive, which was pretty good going at ten in the morning.

  “Your written authorization to let me see your legal papers doesn’t require privacy. I wanted to come out there last night. I ca
n’t afford to waste time on needless trips.” I was pitiless. “And I have my crippled daughter to stay with me now and I don’t like to leave her alone.”

  “Please,” she said.

  “I’ll meet you halfway, if that’s any good to you. There’s a luncheonette called Bud’s Dugout on Virginia Avenue. I can meet you there at eleven, if that’s any better for you.”

  “All . . . all right,” Linn Pighee said. And hung up.

  Sam asked, “You’re meeting Mrs. Pighee?”

  “I’m not very consistent.”

  She shook her head.

  “Look, I was joking about huddling in a corner.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s summer. It’s warm. And I feel morally obliged to fulfill the obligations I entered into yesterday. Besides, I can sponge lunch off my mother. I’ll try to get a doggy bag and bring you some when I come back.”

  “Hey, I want to come.”

  “You have a report to type up. From last night.”

  “I can do that later.”

  “No,” I said. “Business before business.”

  * * * * *

  I got to Bud’s Dugout a few minutes before eleven. “Mom,” I said to the lady behind the counter, “don’t interrupt when this lady comes in to see me, right?”

  “Where’s the girl?” she asked.

  “I left her at the office typing up her report from last night’s investigation.”

  “What?”

  “I figure she’s got to earn her keep while she’s here.”

  “She’s in your office? Alone? A neighborhood like that?”

  “No one ever bothers me there.”

  She turned away in disgust.

  I played the pinball machines till twenty past eleven. I had just got the Special Rollover lit and was on the verge of extra balls when a cab pulled up outside.

  Linn Pighee paid the driver, got out, and came in. She was togged up to the hilt. Evening dress; make-up. The works.

  She looked terrible. Mostly green

  “Mmm, may I sit down?” she asked, and lurched into a chair near the door.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I didn’t feel like driving,” she said. “Oh, God. Is there anything to drink? Could you get me a drink?”

  “Two coffees, please, Miss,” I said to my mother.

  “Not coffee!” Linn Pighee snapped. “I mean a drink.”

  “Not here,” I said.