The Silent Salesman

by Michael Z. Lewin

  “This sortie of yours to Entropist Hospital is a recent case in point. Endangering the life of a patient while trying to prove he wasn’t who he is.”

  “That is what I appeared to be doing,” I said sharply. “But the basic intention was to get people to stop ignoring the unanswered questions surrounding the situation, and my presence here seems to prove that I’ve done just that.”

  “But at the risk of a man’s life?”

  I began to elucidate further, but he held up a hand to stop me. I stopped. The Entropist escapade wasn’t one of my finer moments, whatever the justifications and results.

  “No,” he said. “But I have to decide whether, knowing or surmising things which could endanger a number of lives, you are the sort of person who can be trusted to act responsibly.”

  “Am I likely to go and tip off people who might not like the idea that the Loftus people are working for the F.B.I.?”

  “Basically, yes.”

  “Well, I’m not likely to tip anybody off. Even if I knew who they were.”

  “Well, then,” Gartland said, “if I have your promise to wind up your investigation forthwith . . .” He waited.

  “Within reason,” I said.

  “Now, look, Samson . . .”

  “I have no desire or intention of interfering with an important F.B.I. project. But I can’t give a blanket assurance without thinking about it. That,” I noted, “would be rash of me. I’ve got some peripheral inquires in hand, and I will also have to work up a convincing way to sign my client off if I’m not to tell her the truth. But whatever I do from here on, I will certainly consult Miller, if something bothers me, before I do anything, rash or otherwise.”

  Gartland thought about it for a moment. He’d got basically what he wanted. He said, “I will personally be following what you do about this. And if there is the slightest hint that you might be putting the people involved to unnecessary risk in these final stages of their work, you’ll be back here faster than you can blink.”

  Miller walked me to the elevator. “How’d it go?”

  “Tough boy, your Gartland. He said if I didn’t play it his way, he’d take me out of the game. Rights or no rights.”

  “He’s got fucking blinkers on,” Miller said. It didn’t make much sense to me, but it was the closest thing to an expression of disloyalty to any part of the police system that I’d ever heard from him.

  “Could he do it?”

  “Probably,” Miller said. He didn’t want to think about it. It wasn’t his kind of copping. “Don’t make him prove it one way or the other.”

  “On the other hand, he seems to have a pretty good case.”

  “You’re going to ease off, then?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “I’m glad. You’re such a cantankerous son of a bitch, I was afraid you’d go against him just for the hell of it.”

  “Cantankerous? Me?”

  “Is it going to put you in financial trouble?”

  “I’ll just starve to death. Those swines took all my emergency money when they turned my office over. I suppose your Captain Gartland isn’t going to do anything about that.”

  “Is it Sunday every day this month?”

  “You don’t want a divorce, do you?”

  “I don’t. Janie might. She thinks I ought to go harder for captain.”

  He looked positively despondent about life.

  “Want to come out for a cup of coffee?”

  “I can’t,” he said. “But I appreciate your asking. In the circumstances.”

  I was on the street before I realized that the circumstance he was particularly referring to was Gartland’s threat to limit my liberty. And if Miller was that worried about it, I recognized that I should be, too.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Images and snatches of conversation came to mind as I walked home. Marcia Merom handling a gun with assurance. Old stooped Thomas Jefferson Walker asking me who I worked for, was it federal. As details, they fit. The mood of conspiracy fit. It made me curiously happy.

  Though I couldn’t quite believe that I—I—had stumbled across a big federal operation, of whatever nature. But it seemed to be a fact. I wondered what the nature might be. In a drug company . . . But as far as I knew, drugs didn’t involve explosive chemical processes. So maybe the work was on explosives. And explosives could well mean terrorists. No wonder people could be in danger.

  Sam was in the office when I stumbled up my stairs.

  “There you are Daddy! I was afraid you’d be away for ages!”

  “Been here long?”

  “About twenty minutes. Where have you been? I didn’t know that you had anything to do.”

  Cruel from one’s kid. “Found anything out?”

  She positively glowed. “Yes,” she said. “First I went and rented a car, because I thought I might travel around quite a lot. So,” she said, “now I have wheels.”

  “I’m surprised you get shoes to fit,” I said. “Is there any coffee?” “Daddy!”

  “You make us some coffee while I get my own work up to date in my notebook. Then I’ll debrief you properly.”

  “Oh,” she said. But she went before I had time to make explicit that I was assigning her to the coffeepot as an employee, and not as a female.

  I did my notes on the conversations with Miller and Gartland.

  I wondered if I could legally say in a newspaper ad, “Scrupulously honest, as advertised in Indianapolis police files.”

  When I rejoined my highly trained staff, I asked if she’d had time to see Linn, as part of the day’s flurry of activity. She hadn’t.

  I poured the coffee. “Right, Sam, short and sweet.”

  “As it turned out,” she began promisingly, “I did most of the work in the library. I found a boy there who helped me go through the microfilm of the past issues of the Star. I never realized microfilm was so big.”

  “What did you find out, Sam? Details only when they qualify the facts.”

  If we were playing detectives, we might as well play by the rules.

  “Oh. Well. Let’s see. Anyway, we found it. In June, 1973, on the seventh, a man named Simon Rackey died while ‘repelling an-intruder,’ it said. He was twenty-six years old, he lived alone at 4901 Washington Boulevard, and he was a technician at the Loftus Pharmaceutical Company, Incorporated. He had had polio when he was young, and went around on a metal crutch. He slipped on the back porch of the apartment and went through the rails. It was from the third floor.” She paused.

  “Were there any other names in the story? Police spokesman, Loftus representative, relatives?”

  “There was a neighbor. I looked her up in the phone book and tried her on the phone, and she was there!”

  “Good. What did you ask her?”

  “Oh,” Sam said. “I didn’t ask about the man who died. I asked her about who owned the building. I told her I was looking for an apartment.” I nodded. “She said that the building was owned by a man named Walker, but that there weren’t any vacancies at the moment But she looked up his phone number for me, and his address. She said he has some other buildings around town.”

  “That’s good work,” I said. “You didn’t happen to ask if Walker owned the building four years ago when Rackey died, did you?”

  “No, Daddy, I didn’t.”

  “That’s all right. Don’t worry,” I said.

  Instead of worrying, she said, “What do we do now, Daddy?”

  I hesitated. “You’re not going to like my answer to that” I said finally.

  “I’m not? Why not? What is it. Daddy? Tell me!”

  “For the moment, we don’t do anything much.”

  She thought. She said, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we ease off for a while.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense, Daddy. We’ve only just started finding things out.”

  “You mean you’ve only just started finding things out.”

  “But—”
/>
  “Look, who’s head gumshoe around here?”

  She thought again, and asked the right question. “Who were you out with this morning?”

  I began, “When I say ease off . . .” But I was stopped by her stony face. “Hang on a minute.”

  I picked up the phone and called Miller.

  “Al?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant Miller. I realize I forgot to ask you about one other detail concerning the subject we had our discussions about this morning.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “It’s the matter of a suspicious death a little over four years ago. One Simon Rackey, who died on June 7, 1973, at 4901 Washington Boulevard, while the occupant of the apartment Marcia Merom lives in now. I’d like the details you have on file concerning that misfortune.”

  “You’re supposed to be off this. Don’t mess with Gartland, Albert.”

  “As I explained to your superior officer this morning,” I said, “I must develop a convincing story for my client if you want this business wrapped up tight. I also told him that I would liaise with you at every opportunity. Please don’t waste everybody’s time by delaying and asking obtuse questions.”

  I hung up. To Sam I said, “We ease off by request of the Indianapolis police. But that doesn’t mean quit—not exactly.”

  Sam was half pleased and half puzzled. “Why slow down at all?”

  “Because, my dear employee and beloved offspring, I say so. And if you don’t like, it, then go get a job with some other detective agency, O.K.?”

  She studied me without speaking for an uncomfortably long time. I felt she was trying to unriddle the me behind my sphinxlike face. Innocent, obvious, topside me. She said, “So what do you want me to do?”

  “This afternoon I want you to use your new wheels and give your grandmother a few hours of your company. Then report back here.”

  She picked up her notebook and left, with no goodbye. I suppose no goodbye is better than a long goodbye.

  I went to Entropist Hospital to see Linn Pighee.

  “I thought you’d forgotten me,” she said, with a reassuring smile.

  She was pink-cheeked and spoke crisply.

  “It’s been my day for remembering important people,” I said.

  “How’s the patient, then?”

  “I’m O.K. I’ve been sleeping and sleeping and sleeping.”

  “Do they drug you or do you do it all by yourself?”

  “They help. It’s nice to be looked after. I sleep so much, but I don’t rest much with it. I suppose it will work out.”

  “No doubt,” I said. It was good to talk to her again. “It’s good to talk to you again,” I said. I took her hand.

  “You’re a nice man,” she said. “It’s nice to see you again.” For a moment she closed her eyes. She turned in her bed to face me better, then opened her windows on the world again. “Albert, I’ve been wondering,” she said.

  “Wondering what?”

  “Something you can tell me, maybe. I don’t quite know whether I should already know, from the things you’ve told me. My head, it isn’t quite right.”

  “What is it. Linn?”

  “What happened to John? I mean was it an accident or what?”

  The question sliced through me like I was soft margarine. I had to say, “I don’t know. Honestly, I wish I did.”

  “But . . .” she began. Then blinked and changed direction, “How is he? Is there any change?”

  “No,” I said, not wanting to tell her I hadn’t checked. “He’s just the same.”

  “I wish I knew,” she said. “I wish I knew what had happened.”

  After five minutes of talking, she could hardly keep her eyes open.

  She seemed to have the energy of a morning-glory, open, dramatic, strong, but short-lived. I waited until her breathing was regular. Then pulled the covers up to her chin and left her.

  I sought a nurse and found one stacking linen four doors down the corridor. I asked for medical information about Linn.

  The nurse was a patient woman. “Are you a member of the family?” she asked.

  “No. I . . .” Friend? “I’m an employee. I work for her.”

  “She’s not a well woman. I hope you didn’t talk business with her.”

  “We talked about the flowers and the trees and how much wetter it would be in the Sahara if it rained there occasionally.”

  The nurse nodded. “We’re still not exactly certain what is wrong with her. We’re running tests, but slowly. She’s not very strong at all. She’s totally run down and seems to have been undernourished for a long time. There are a number of vitamin and mineral deficiencies. It’s a miracle she hasn’t become a battlefield for every infection known to man.”

  “Good heavens,” I said.

  “We don’t see this sort of thing very often in someone so young.”

  “She lived alone for several months,” I said.

  “She’s such a pleasant woman. I don’t understand it. She’s hardly had any visitors. Just yourself and a young girl.”

  “My daughter,” I said.

  “It’s very unusual,” the nurse said. She was referring both to the visitors manqués and the medical situation. “She must have neglected herself dreadfully.”

  And been neglected.

  Chapter Thirty

  Before going back into the glare of Indianapolis in August, I brooded for a while in a corner of the Loftus Clinic waiting room. I deeply wanted to find out what had happened to John Pighee. And, in honesty, not only for Linn Pighee but for myself. I hate investing in questions without getting the dividend of answers.

  But if my guts’ guidance was unequivocal, my mind was full of conflict. It wasn’t merely that I was afraid of Captain Gartland: I thought he had a reasonable point of view. I conceded that there were things that I didn’t have a moral right to go poking in.

  But seeing the other guy’s point of view is confusing. There was no real decision to be made about the direction of my actions. I would go ahead.

  Carefully, if it meant possible danger to legitimate participants in a legitimate operation. But I had a right to pursue my own legitimate questions.

  And if it meant personal consequences, then that’s what it meant. If I went out of business, then I was out of business.

  It was a good time to go out of business. As I was about to have no further premises. An excellent time to have my license revoked, to seek a new life. Maybe in some new city. It could be the best thing that had ever happened to me. It depended on whether one looked at the future positively or negatively, and those of us with a propensity to martyrdom tend to see other people drinking at our cup as leaving the cup 10 percent full.

  I walked up to the reception desk for yet another encounter with the stern guardian of the Loftus portals. But all I asked was how I could get to the emergency ward, and since it meant I would leave her domain, she told me clearly and succinctly.

  The emergency ward had a hotel-style entrance bay around the corner from the Loftus Clinic. As I watched, a white ambulance screamed past me and screeched into the bay. For a few steps, like an ambulance-chasing lawyer, I trotted. But I slowed again to a heart-easing walk before I made the turn.

  In the minute before I had arrived, the ambulance had been disgorged of its contents. I saw no trace of stress or urgent activity. I walked to the desk and said, “I’d like to talk to someone.”

  A man looked at me momentarily, pushed a piece of paper in my direction, and said, “Fill in your name, address, occupation, here, here, and here. The emergency treatment fee is thirty dollars, payable in advance. You can claim it back off your insurance, if you have any. Then wait over there.” He pointed to a row of chairs half filled with people looking ill or clutching parts of their bodies.

  “I don’t want emergency treatment.”

  “This is the emergency ward,” he said. “The general entrance is left out the door, left around the corner, and the second entrance on your l
eft.”

  “I want to see a doctor,” I began.

  He was only thirty but spoke as if he had only one year to his pension and didn’t know whether he would last it. Then, “Fill in the form. Pay the cashier. Wait with the people over there.”

  I looked again at the waiting people. None of them were dripping blood. I took the form he had pushed at me again, held it up, and wadded it into a ball. “If you don’t shut up and listen to me for a minute, I’ll blow this place up with a bomb I’ve got in this.” I held up my notebook; he studied it with wide-eyed awe.

  “What?”

  “I want to talk to the doctors who were on duty here on the night of January 27th,” I said. “I need to know their names.”

  “January 27th?” he asked stupidly. I lowered my notebook and he leaned forward, trying to keep it in sight. “How the hell am I supposed to know who was on duty that night?”

  “Keep your voice down. I’m very unstable.”

  He looked me in the eyes for the first time. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Where are the records of duty assignments?”

  “I . . . I’ll tell you how to get to the office.”

  “Office office office!” I said, and opened my eyes wide to make the red lines in the white of my eyeballs visible. “I’m sick to death of offices.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said lamely. And looked again over the desk.

  “It’s all right,” I told him. “I realize it’s not your fault.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You call them and find out for me—O.K.? And no one will get hurt.”

  He called them and found out. Drs. Norman Kewanna and Fowler Boone. “O.K.?”

  I did the eyeball thing again. “Where can I find them?”

  “I . . .” he began. Then phoned back to whoever he’d phoned first. He got me their home addresses.

  I raised my notebook to the level of his counter, slowly opened it. His eyes bugged out. I wrote the names and addresses down. “Thanks,” I said.

  As I left, I passed close to a woman who sat holding her jaw, which was swollen. I gave her the thumbs-up as I said, “Good doctor, that one. Top drawer. Your mouth will be in good hands.”

  I parked the car and made my way back to the office. The only exciting thing that happened was that I walked over a chalked message on the sidewalk: “I love Paul Millard.”