Death of a Tall Man

by Frances Lockridge

  “We know he was all right,” Pam said. “That is, we know he was alive, Mr. Dunnigan. That isn’t what I want.”

  “Well?” Dunnigan said. His eyes blinked when he looked at her. They were bloodshot.

  “It’s hard to say,” Pam North said. “Had you ever been examined by him before?”

  Dunnigan shook his head.

  “Then maybe you wouldn’t know,” Pam said. “What I want is—something odd. Something out of the ordinary. Was he nervous? Excited? Anything like that. As if, say, he’d just got bad news? Or heard something—frightening? But you don’t know how he usually was, do you?”

  Dunnigan blinked at her. Then he shook his head again.

  “To tell you the truth, lady, I didn’t pay much attention,” he said. “He was just the doc. You know?”

  “Just somebody looking at your eyes,” Pam said.

  “Sure,” Dunnigan said. “All I wanted to know was, when could I go back to work? Do I get the insurance money?”

  That was natural, Pam told him.

  “Sure,” he said. “That’s what any guy would be interested in. Outside of that, I didn’t pay much attention.”

  “He wasn’t nervous, that you noticed?” Pam said. “Or anything?”

  “Nope,” Dunnigan said.

  Pam North said nothing. She waited.

  “I told the detective all about it,” Dunnigan said. “What there was. I heard him moving around in the next room. Then he came in and shut the door. I said ‘hello, doc’ and he said ‘hello.’ Then he sat down on the stool and told me to look at a place on the wall and turned on a light and looked at my eyes. He made me look this way and that way and then he wrote something down on my card and that was all.”

  “He didn’t say anything?”

  “Sure. He said, ‘Don’t worry, mister’—and, then he looked at the card and said, ‘Dunnigan, I’ll get in touch with your doctor. Leave the card here as you go.’”

  “That was all?”

  “Sure. He went on into the next room and I got up and got out of there. Went down a sort of hall and—”

  “By the way,” Pam said, “how did you know to go out that way?”

  “Nurse told me, when she told me to go in the room,” Dunnigan said. “She said something about when I went out, go down the corridor and turn right and I’d find a door. Sure enough.”

  Sure enough he had, Pam interpreted.

  “And nothing—strange?” Pam said.

  “Not as I noticed,” Dunnigan said. “If there was, I wouldn’t know, lady.”

  Mrs. North stood up.

  “Oh, by the way,” she said, “which room were you in?”

  “Third from the end,” Dunnigan said.

  Pamela North turned to go. Small Mabel was standing in the door of the room and Pam smiled at her.

  “Goodbye, Mabel,” Pam said.

  “Hello,” Mabel said.

  Really, Pam thought, as, outside the flat, she started down the canted stairs, it can’t be me altogether. It must be the little girl, this time. There’s simply no pleasing her.

  Pam went on down. She was disappointed, and almost inclined to give the whole thing up. Whatever it was she had vaguely hoped for—and she had to admit to herself that her hopes could hardly have been vaguer—she had not got. Like Teeney the time she had jumped for Jerry’s leg, intending to climb to his shoulder, and Jerry had moved at the same moment. Like Teeney when she went sailing through unoccupied air, with a blank look on her masked face.

  “Well, what do you want?” Henry Flint, occupant of Room No. 5 the previous afternoon at Dr. Andrew Gordon’s office, demanded. He was uncompromising. He stood at the door of his furnished room in the far West Eighties and bristled. He was hardly taller than Pam herself; he was square and broad shouldered and he looked as if something had recently disagreed with him. Me, Pam thought; I disagree with him. But probably lots of things do.

  “Who’re you?” Henry Flint demanded. “You don’t look like a cop.” He looked at her again. “Or a do-gooder,” he said. “What do you want?”

  He did not leave the door.

  Pam North, speaking as briefly as she could, told him what she wanted. Not so concisely—a little confusedly, even—she told him who she was. It might have been understood that Mrs. North, while not exactly a cop, was not exactly not a cop either.

  “Hell,” Henry Flint said. “Nothing strange. Is it strange to get kicked around? Is it strange to have some big shot treat a workingman like he was a animal? Like he was trying to grab something off, when all he wanted was to get what was coming to him? What the big shots were trying to gyp him out of? What’s strange about that, huh?”

  “Well,” Pam said.

  “Like I was inanimate,” Flint told her, still standing in the door and bristling at her. “Like I was too low to have any feelings, see? That’s your Doctor Gordon or whatever his name is.”

  “Was,” Pam said. “He’s dead.”

  “All right,” Flint said. “So he’s dead. Teach him to push good Americans around, that will.”

  “Well,” Pam said, involuntarily. “I doubt it.”

  “What?” Flint said. He seemed really to look at her for the first time.

  “I doubt that being dead will teach him to stop pushing Americans around,” Pam said. “I doubt that it will teach him anything, particularly.”

  “Now you said something,” Flint told her. “Now you sure said something. You an atheist?”

  “No,” Pam said, “Not particularly. Why?”

  “Sure you are,” Flint told her. “When you’re dead you’re dead. Nobody can teach you nothing. There you said something. Come in, why don’t you?”

  He moved away from the door and let Pam in.

  “Do you good to see the way a workingman lives,” Flint said, with animus. “Ain’t pretty, is it?”

  It was neither pretty nor, arrestingly, unpretty. It was clean and bare; it was without character. But the window opened above the street, and spring air came into it.

  “Actually,” Pam said, “I think it’s rather comfortable, Mr. Flint.”

  “‘Comfortable,’ she says,” Flint repeated. “‘Comfortable,’ she calls it. Would you like to live here, lady? That’s all—would you like to live here?”

  “No,” Pam said. “But it wouldn’t kill me. Or make me so terribly sorry for myself.”

  “Who’s sorry for whose self?” Flint said. “You ain’t talking about me, lady. I’ll get what’s coming to me. They can’t kick me around.”

  They seemed to go in circles, Pam thought. People so often did. They remained standing inside the room and Flint’s eyes—black eyes, she thought—blazed at her. There seemed to be nothing wrong with them, outwardly.

  “Listen, Mr. Flint,” Pam North said, “I don’t want to argue with you. All I came for was to find out if Dr. Gordon acted strange when you saw him yesterday. As if—as if something had gone wrong. As if he expected to be murdered.”

  Flint looked at her carefully.

  “Scared?” he said. “People like that doc ain’t scared. They don’t know what’s coming. He was broos-kue.”

  “What?” Pam said. “Oh. Broos-kue, of course. But not frightened?”

  “Took about two minutes with me, he did,” Flint said. “Like I was a animal. No proper examination. Didn’t even have me take my coat off.”

  Pam North shook her head slightly and, for some reason, reminded herself of Jerry.

  “Coat off?” she said. “To look at your eyes?”

  “How did he know it was just eyes?” Flint demanded. “Didn’t take the trouble to find out. Just looked at my eyes through a little metal thing and said, ‘Don’t worry, Mr. Hint. I’ll contact your doctor,’ and went on to the next sucker. You call that a proper examination?”

  “Did he really say ‘contact’?” Pam asked.

  “Why not?” Flint said. “What’s wrong with it?” He seemed sincerely puzzled.

  “Nothing, I guess,” Pam s
aid. “You feel that he gave you an—an inadequate examination? Cursory?”

  “Like I was a animal,” Flint said. “Like I was a—” He caught himself just in time, but Pam could see the participle which had formed on his lips. “Animal,” he ended, rather halfheartedly.

  “Then,” Pam said, “you thought he was hurried. Not bothering to give you a real examination. Just—going through the motions? That was what I wanted, really. Something strange?”

  “What’s strange about it?” Flint said, with renewed animus. “They’re all together, ain’t they? Push guys around. Gyp them out of what’s coming to them. Treat them like they were animals. What’ud you expect?”

  “Then,” Pam said, carefully, “you don’t think there was anything out of the ordinary about the way he acted?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?” Flint demanded. “He rushes in, gives me a quick once-over with my coat on, writes something down and kicks me out. Takes about thirty seconds. Is that any way to examine a man?”

  “Really, I don’t know, Mr. Flint,” Pam said. “I’m not a doctor.”

  “Doctors!” Flint said, disposing of them. “What else you want to know?”

  “Nothing,” Pam said. “Thank you, Mr. Hint.” She turned toward the door and stopped. “By the way,” she said, “not that it makes any difference. Are you a Communist?”

  Flint glared at her. There was rage in his eyes.

  “Me?!” he said. He almost shouted it. “Me a Commie?” His face was red with anger. “Watch out who you call a Commie, lady. Just watch out. Dirty foreign—”

  His voice pursued Pamela North down the first of the flights of stairs which led to the street.

  “Well!” Pam said to herself. She did not know whether she was disappointed or not, this time. Mr. Flint was baffling.

  Fritz Weber was small and quiet, he was almost apologetic. His eyes were invisible behind dark glasses; his voice was soft and resigned. His wife, who let Pam in, had been crying. She was a small, gray woman and her eyes were red from crying. Both of the Webers, Pam thought, were in their late fifties. Their little apartment near Stuyvesant Square—their very neat, clean little apartment—seemed to have been lived in for a good many years. Mrs. Weber met Pam North at the door, and it was so dim in the apartment, so quiet, that Pam suddenly felt embarrassingly vigorous—discordantly bright and alive. She told Mrs. Weber who she was and, as nearly as she could, why she had come.

  “The police?” Mrs. Weber said. “I’m sure I don’t know what my husband—A detective was here yesterday.” She paused. “He said he was a detective,” she said, doubtfully, almost as if she were apologizing.

  Pam explained again. She was not a detective; she was a friend of a detective. The position did not seem entirely clear even to Pam as again she tried to explain. She was looking for an oddity, not even knowing that an oddity existed. But she was trying to find out—to help find out—who had killed Dr. Andrew Gordon. And Mrs. Weber asked her to come in.

  “Doctor was a good man,” she said. “I’m sorry about doctor.”

  Fritz Weber was sitting in a chair; he sat with odd, careful precision. His arms did not rest on the chair arms; they were tight against his sides. He was looking straight ahead of him and he seemed to be waiting. But when his wife and Pam North came in he turned his head toward them and there was, then, a personal quality in his waiting. He was polite, in his quiet; he even smiled a little.

  “This lady, Fritzl,” Mrs. Weber said, and Weber began to nod. He spoke and his voice was soft and patient.

  “I heard, mama,” he said. “I heard very well. She has come about doctor.”

  “Yes,” Pam said. “About Dr. Gordon.”

  “He was a good man,” Weber said. “He could do nothing. For me he could do nothing. But he was a good man. I will tell you. It was a piece of steel. I was a toolmaker and there was a piece of steel. In my right eye. A very small piece of steel and the other doctor took it out. But it did not go well. Even after he took it out, it did not go well.”

  “I’m sorry,” Pam said. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Weber.”

  “Yes,” Weber said. “Thank you. So he—the other doctor—sent me to Dr. Gordon. And it was not the small piece of steel. There had been the small piece of steel, but it was not that. It was a disease. It did not have anything to do with the piece of steel. And there was nothing doctor could do.”

  “Oh!” Pam said. “I’m—” It seemed futile to say, again, that she was sorry. But Mr. Weber waited politely. When she did not go on, he nodded and smiled a little.

  “Yes,” he said. “I can see—I can understand—that you are sorry. It is—unpleasant to hear such things. Naturally. Doctor also was sorry. He said he wished he could say it was the small piece of steel. So that I would receive the insurance, you know. But he said he could not say that. Doctor was an honest man, so he could not say that. It was a disease, not the small piece of steel.”

  Pam said, “Oh!” again, realizing what the quiet little man was telling her. There had been an injury, which would have meant compensation. But what was wrong was not the injury; Dr. Gordon had not been able to attribute it to the injury.

  “It will be a long time?” she said. “Before—I mean—” She broke off again.

  “It will be always,” Mr. Weber said. “In a few weeks, I will not see anything. Now there is only a little light. And shadows. In a few weeks—shadows.”

  The little man had dignity. He stated a fact.

  “Even the doctor I did not see clearly,” he said. “That is what you wanted to know? He was a shadow. And, of course, I could hear his voice. He was sorry about what he had to tell me.”

  “His voice,” Pam said. “It was—there wasn’t anything odd about it? Anything you wouldn’t have expected? As if he were—oh, nervous? Worried?”

  “No,” Mr. Weber said. “I do not think he was worried. He was sorry he had to give me bad news after he examined my eyes. He told me to come home and—wait. He gave me the name of some people to see afterward. People who—he said there were things—work—one could do afterward. He said I should come and see him again in a week or two, although he did not think there was anything he could do. Doctor was an honest man.”

  “I’m—” Pam said. “I wish there were something I could do.”

  “You are good,” Mr. Weber said. “Isn’t she good, mama? But there is nothing.” He paused. After a time he said, “Things happen.”

  Pam went, then; she made small, half-phrased sounds to Mrs. Weber and it seemed to her, grotesquely, that Mrs. Weber was comforting her. She left the little apartment, and its faded neatness, and Mr. Weber, waiting in the dusk for darkness. This time, she thought, I got more than I asked for. And then, against her will, she realized how much more she had got than she had asked for. It didn’t fit, all her emotions told her; it did not fit, all that she believed to be true about the aging, beaten people she had left. Humanly, it was unbelievable. But her mind stopped her there. About people little was really unbelievable; about people you had met but once you merely thought, without remotely knowing, that things were hard to believe.

  Shut the people out of it. Make Mr. Weber merely a name. Turn him from a small, waiting man into a designation on a police file, and it was different. Then you had a man with a motive; with, she thought, the best motive they had found. Suppose his quiet was bitterness; suppose that repeated “honest” used to describe Dr. Gordon was bitter irony. Because what it amounted to was this—Dr. Gordon had ruled not only against Fritz Weber’s eyesight. He had, at the same time, ruled against the money which might have palliated blindness. He had said that the shop accident, which would be covered by the workman’s compensation law, was not the cause of what was wrong with Fritz Weber’s eyes. He had not stretched a point, as perhaps he might have. However sorry he had been, he had told Weber that his blindness was to be without recompense, while having it in his power to say something else. Men had been bitterly, violently hated for less. It was likely
that men had been killed for less. And you could not guess what flaming hatred, what violence, there might be in even the smallest and quietest of men.

  Pam North wished that she had not visited the Webers. She did not want to put into Bill Weigand’s mind what she would have to put there.

  It was noon, and before very long she should call Jerry. Perhaps, Pam thought, she ought to give the whole thing up and call Jerry now. She didn’t really want to see any more people. Not after the Webers. It would be simpler to let the rest of it go, and it would please Jerry, who would think—if he knew about it—that she should have let all of it go, from the start.

  But on the other hand, Robert Oakes lived very near. She could walk to the address on Second Avenue which was Oakes’s, and it was foolish to be so near and not finish things off, since she had gone this far. She hesitated outside the building on Stuyvesant Square and then, as if she had flipped a coin in her mind, turned and walked toward Second Avenue. Her heels clicked on the pavement. She walked as if she were under orders.

  Robert Oakes, No. 2 examining room, lived in a five-story tenement which had been reconverted. It was now of yellow brick instead of red. It had an entrance two steps down instead of several steps up. Pam pressed a downstairs bell, waited, pressed it again and tried the door. The door was unlocked. She went up a rebuilt stairway; a fireproofed anachronism, surrounded by inflammable walls. Mr. Oakes lived on the third floor—third floor rear. And, as she climbed, Pam North realized that probably he wasn’t at home. People who were at home answered their bells.

  She reached the third floor and went back down the hallways toward a door at the end. She was about ten feet from the doorway when something happened which was surprising and which was afterward difficult to describe. There was nothing in the hallway, except much used air, and yet something picked her up in gigantic, amorphous hands and threw her backward.

  There was a feeling of being struck, but of being struck everywhere at once, and at the same time there was a tremendous roar and things began to come apart around her. The door she was looking at disintegrated while she still saw it, and while she was still throwing her hands up to protect her face. Then there was movement and a sudden, jarring, interruption of movement and a sharp pain in her left shoulder, which cut through a general feeling of terror and lesser pain. And then blackness swirled in around her and poured over her, except that at the last moment there was a red glow to the darkness.