The Specialty of the House

by Stanley Ellin

  ‘I have survived the experience,’ Dr Cahoon said.

  Mrs Cahoon disregarded this. ‘The man told my husband to put on his suit over his pajamas. My husband will not admit it but he was very much shaken. He offered the man all the money we had in the house, and the man said, “No. We want you.” ’

  ‘Three of them,’ I said. ‘Can you describe them?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Cahoon. ‘The women wore house dresses. The one pointing the gun at me was short and stout. At least a size eighteen. She had curlers in her hair. Large pink plastic rollers. The other woman could have been a size twelve. She had gray hair done in a very unattractive permanent. The man was gray-haired, too. Medium height, medium weight, totally undistinguished in appearance. Then two of them removed my husband from the room—’

  ‘I removed myself from the room,’ Dr Cahoon said. ‘I left under my own power, putting one foot ahead of the other in the customary fashion.’

  ‘With a gun at your head,’ Mrs Cahoon pointed out.

  ‘That I cannot deny.’

  ‘And where were you taken?’ I asked.

  ‘Downstairs to my examining room.’

  ‘And then?’ I said encouragingly.

  ‘Then I was asked to produce my medical bag, which I did, and to submit to having my eyes blindfolded by a length of bandage. And since there seems to be no way of turning off your tape, officer, I will tell you that I was then conducted to a car and driven for about ten or fifteen minutes to some location where I was led indoors. When the blindfold was removed I saw that I was in a rather poorly furnished bedroom. A young man was in bed there apparently suffering acute pain, and a young woman whom I took to be his wife was also there, hysterically sympathizing with him.’

  Inspiration struck me. I said, ‘That young man was suffering a gunshot or knife wound, wasn’t he? And you were expected to treat him without informing the authorities.’

  ‘The young man,’ Dr Cahoon said, ‘was suffering what in layman’s language is called a sprained ankle, although it was his impression, and his wife’s, that the ankle was broken. After diagnosing the condition, I gave him a sedative, bound the ankle properly, advised bed rest. By now I imagine he is sound asleep, his pain eased.’

  ‘Well, mine isn’t,’ Mrs Cahoon said sharply. ‘After what I went through when they hauled you away—’

  ‘Yes?’ I prompted.

  ‘That horrible little fat woman stayed right here with me all that time. She plonked herself down on the chair next to my bed and kept that gun pointed at me. She said to me, “Just keep cool, sister,” and in the most threatening way.’

  ‘That’s all she said?’ I asked. ‘Nothing about what her accomplices were up to?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Mrs Cahoon. ‘Later on she did ask me about my bedroom drapes.’

  ‘Your bedroom drapes?’

  ‘Yes. She asked how much they cost, and when I told her she said in a very sneering manner, “They really took you, didn’t they?” But every time I asked about my husband she just stared at me with those beady little eyes and wouldn’t say a word.’

  Schultz stirred himself. He said to Dr Cahoon, ‘But they brought you back okay, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dr Cahoon said. ‘They also paid me.’ He dug into a pocket and held up a twenty-dollar bill to our view. ‘The wife, or whoever she was, gave it to me before I was blindfolded again and led away. She said, “That should take care of it, Doc,” and since I was in no position to negotiate at length, I said yes, it did.’

  Schultz drew a long slow breath as if to fill his lungs for an ordeal ahead. He pointed at a chair. ‘Can I sit down?’ he said.

  ‘My home is your home,’ Dr Cahoon said.

  Schultz sat down and stretched out his legs. I was dismayed to see that this glaringly exposed to all his scuffed shoes and bedraggled socks. He said to Dr Cahoon, ‘You don’t make house calls, do you?’

  ‘I used to,’ the doctor said. ‘But you understand that my practice now—’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Schultz said, and then remarked complainingly, ‘When I was a kid, doctors made house calls. Even this time of night.’

  ‘And what,’ demanded Mrs Cahoon, justifiably angry, ‘does that have to do with the crime committed against us?’

  Schultz made no effort to answer this unanswerable question. Instead, he said to Dr Cahoon, ‘You know there’s been other cases like this lately? Other doctors being snatched?’

  From Mrs Cahoon’s expression I saw that she was as astonished by this as I was. I was even more astonished to hear Dr Cahoon say, ‘Yes. So some of my colleagues have been saying.’

  ‘What!’ Mrs Cahoon said explosively. ‘And not a word of it getting out? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Lady, you can believe it,’ Schultz advised. ‘As for no word getting out, I guess all those other doctors who got hit this way feel like your husband does about it. They’d kind of like to keep it strictly in the family.’

  ‘Do you hear that, Florence?’ Dr Cahoon said. He said to Schultz, ‘I tried to explain this to her. Maybe you’ll have better luck at it than I did.’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Schultz said. He shook his head reproachfully at Mrs Cahoon. ‘You see, lady, if we turn in a report on this, tomorrow you won’t be able to walk out of your door what with all the reporters and TV guys there. And all of them looking to play it for comedy.’

  ‘Comedy?’ Mrs Cahoon said. ‘A crime like this?’

  ‘Well, nobody got hurt, did they? And doc here got paid for the job, just like all the others did. Now what do you make of a kidnaping where it’s the victim that gets paid off? And let’s face it, lady, the public will not be with you. Same goes for any jury that gets this case. Push the wrong button right now, and next thing you’ll be a coast-to-coast joke.’

  Plainly, Mrs Cahoon was hard hit by this. She stared at Schultz, her mouth opening and closing in a rather fishlike way. At last she found her voice. ‘Incredible,’ she said weakly.

  ‘A coast-to-coast joke, Florence,’ Dr Cahoon said. ‘Yes, indeed, the whole medical profession will have much to thank you for.’

  ‘Incredible,’ Mrs Cahoon said again. She grasped the back of a chair and managed to seat herself. Her eyes remained glassily fixed on a far wall of the room. ‘Incredible.’

  Dr Cahoon said to Schultz, ‘I think you have made your point, officer. Thank you for that. Now if you gentlemen would like a drink before you leave—’

  ‘Well—’ Schultz said, hauling himself out of his chair, then he glanced my way. ‘No, not while we’re on duty.’

  One does not enter into a confrontation with a fellow officer before the public. I maintained a tight-lipped silence until we were seated in the patrol car. I made an effort to keep my voice level. ‘Schultz,’ I said, ‘are you aware that a felony must be placed on record, however the complainant may feel about it?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. So we’ll put this down as a prowler who took off when we came around.’

  ‘You may do that, Schultz. I, however, am going to enter a detailed report on everything I have just seen and heard, including the unpleasant fact that a kidnap ring is being allowed to operate with impunity right under the department’s nose.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Schultz said. ‘Well, you’re way off base, Avakadian.’

  ‘If you are suggesting that the exposure of a crime wave—’

  ‘I already exposed it, Avakadian. Unofficial like. On my own, see? I figured out after the first few snatches that it had to be that phone-answering service all these doctors use that was behind it. It was the one thing tied in with all of them. And that’s what it was. Some nice old lady on the night switchboard there got so upset by doctors turning down house calls that she got some friends of hers to do something about it. That way, at least, they can take care of anybody they know personally and can count on not to spill the beans. And the guns are toy guns.’

  ‘Schultz, hasn’t it entered your mind that your nice old lady is guilty of at least a doz
en felonies?’

  ‘I know. But if everybody wants it hushed up, why make trouble? And I’ll let you in on something good, Avakadian, if you forget the book for once. I got a deal with that old lady, so any time me or the family needs a doctor she sees to it one shows up quick. Say the word, and she’ll sign you on with the rest of the department.’

  ‘Do you mean that the whole department is in on this?’

  ‘Sure. They’re practically all family men, ain’t they? Look at you, Avakadian, with a wife and four kids. How many times did you get turned down so far when you wanted a doctor to come fix one of them up?’

  My mind was whirling, part of it doing painful arithmetic in answer to that question, part of it recoiling in horror from the proposition being coldbloodedly offered me. But the arithmetic seemed to be submerging all other thoughts.

  ‘Schultz,’ I said at last, ‘do you absolutely guarantee that those were only toy guns?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Schultz.

  And now, looking back, I must say that things have worked out very well, especially during influenza seasons.

  Which is why I take the position in regard to police corruption that one must not be too inflexible. Let us face one indisputable fact. The rule book serves well in most cases, but it does not bring healing.

  A Corner of Paradise

  But it’s a jungle,’ well-intentioned suburban acquaintances would tell him with horror. ‘You know it’s a jungle.’

  Meaning that it was idiotic of Mr Hotchkiss – retired on a comfortable pension, two years into his Social Security, and with a few dollars in the bank – it was absolutely idiotic of him to continue living in the heart of the jungle that was New York City. Crime in the streets, in the subways, the parks, disorder, virtual anarchy. New York City.

  And here was this small, bespectacled, elderly citizen, almost shoutingly vulnerable to assault by any thug who hungered for a ready-made victim, here he was voluntarily occupying an apartment in the upper East Side of Manhattan. Definitely the heart of the jungle.

  Mr Hotchkiss would take it with a shrug. Futile, he knew, to explain that he was a born and bred New Yorker who found himself at the mere thought of life in the suburbs aching with boredom. And it would be even more futile to try convincing these fearful outlanders that the apartment he had occupied for the past 20 years and the street it was situated on provided him with a small neat corner of paradise.

  The street was a solid rank of brownstones and graystones shaded by trees which seemed to thrive on polluted air. If anything at all marred its comfortable, old-fashioned look, it was the gigantic towers of two newly built highrises, one at each end of the block. On the other hand, as Mr Hotchkiss had appraised it, luxury highrises also meant the kind of tenantry able to meet the fantastically steep rents in those shiny glass cracker boxes. Not bad at all having people like that settle down on the borders of your peaceable little kingdom.

  Mr Hotchkiss was not insensitive to the plight of the downtrodden, but he was one to look facts in the face. As far as he was concerned, those towers might be stuffed from top to bottom with embezzlers, corrupt politicians, and dishonest corporation officers, but such were not likely to go out on the streets for exercise at purse-snatching, mugging, and assault. So, simply as a matter of self-preservation in the jungle, it was better to live among the prosperous than the poor.

  And that was the best part of it, because one did not have to be overly prosperous to occupy Mr Hotchkiss’ own apartment in that brownstone midway along the block. The building was rent-controlled by city law, and the apartment, thought not all that cheap, was just within Mr Hotchkiss’ carefully budgeted means. By any standards, especially the prevailing inflationary ones, it was the wildest of bargains. Three large, high-ceilinged rooms – bedroom, living room, and kitchen – more than ample closet space, and in a midtown building provided with excellent service by a dour, hard-working Teutonic couple named Braun who occupied the first floor rear. Not only was Mr Braun an artist at unsticking windows, splicing wires, and sealing leaky plumbing, but for a comparatively small gratuity he would descend to his basement workshop and knock up sturdy wooden shelving or put together elaborate lighting arrangements which would have drawn admiration from any master electrician.

  Shelving and lighting arrangements. The shelving, three broad tiers of it, extended halfway along the walls on either side of the huge bay windows which overlooked the street. The lighting arrangements were fluorescent tubes skillfully fixed over and behind the shelves to provide on sunless days a rather macabre, but effective, artificial sunlight for the treasures on those shelves. The coleus.

  There were, by exact count, 72 of these treasures filling the table in the bay windows and lining the shelves. Six dozen small potted plants whose leaves were each an enchanting pattern of green and red in all their various shades, and of black and white providing balance with the greens and reds. And, Mr Hotchkiss had discovered with amazement and delight, no two leaves ever reproduced the precisely same pattern. One had to look closely to realize that here was infinite variety, no end to it.

  Coleus, Mr Hotchkiss would whisper now and then, the word delectable in his mouth. Coleus. Certainly not painted nettle, the flat and ugly name tacked onto them in parentheses in all those gardening books.

  Coleus.

  He had been introduced to coleus by chance not long after his retirement when he had been asked by the Ostroffs, the ancient, long-retired pharmacist and his wife who inhabited the rear apartment on his floor, to do some plant-sitting for them while they were away visiting children and grandchildren. Having learned from Mrs Braun, they had said hopefully, that Mr Hotchkiss was now retired himself and possibly with time on his hands, would he kindly keep an eye on these few potted plants for a week or two? The sad fact was that Mr and Mrs Braun who ordinarily took this responsibility had no talent for it. The plants, more often than not, suffered from their ministrations.

  Well, Mr Hotchkiss had not been all that enthusiastic about saying yes. For one thing, he felt no great warmth for potted plants, especially this odd variety which appeared to be just a bunch of leaves and no flowers. For another thing, he suspected that if, when the Ostroffs returned home, there were anything wrong with even one of those multicolored leaves, he would be held responsible.

  However, there was really no way out of it, so there he had been each day, watering and feeding according to instructions, and, most unpleasant duty of all, carefully examining each plant for the insidious mealybug.

  This, according to Mrs Ostroff, loathing in her voice as she described it, was kind of a very tiny fuzzy white thing which destroyed any plant it could get its teeth into. And if, God forbid, found, it must be instantly exterminated by a solution of alcohol delicately applied with a swab. Otherwise—!

  Grimly determined that there be no otherwise, Mr Hotchkiss each day did insect inspection, using a reading glass for the purpose. And it was with this particular duty that he found himself first mildly interested, then fascinated, then enamored of the plants. Really obsessed by those delicately formed leaves, their varieties of color, their infinite variations of pattern, and, as he finally admitted to himself, the fact that these small ornamental objects were actually living things wholly dependent on his good will and attention.

  By the time the Ostroffs returned and relieved him of his duties, he had already started his own window garden of coleus. Then, as new varieties caught his eye in florist shops, he expanded the garden and kept expanding it until finally Mr Braun had to be called in for the construction of shelving and lighting the better to cosset the collection and keep order among it. There was indeed mealybug along the way, obscene little gray-white ovals which, when Mr Hotchkiss studied them with revulsion through the reading glass, seemed to stare back at him menacingly.

  One or two precious plants were lost to them, but the alcohol solution did the trick for the rest. After that, along with their watering and feeding, there was also a rigorous mealybug ins
pection of each plant, and so mornings, from after breakfast to lunch, were pretty well taken up with this gardening.

  The results, as the Ostroffs themselves enviously admitted, were worth it. The coleus thrived in all their glory, a southern exposure and added fluorescence making them considerably more impressive than the Ostroffs’ rather meager specimens, the intense devotion they got certainly contributing to their magnificence. Mr and Mrs Ostroff could never, as they guiltily admitted, talk to their plants, although this was so highly recommended by some devotees.

  ‘I’d feel like a fool,’ said Mrs Ostroff. ‘They don’t have ears, do they? If something’s got ears, then I’ll talk to it.’

  Mr Hotchkiss talked to his plants. At first he did it uneasily, whispering his praise of them, his encouragement of them almost inaudibly, glancing over his shoulder as he did so, as if some cynic might be standing there behind him sneering at this eccentricity. Then he became bolder. He crooned lovingly to the coleus, singled out some of the more dazzling plants for special attention, made sure the others would not be miffed by this favoritism by addressing kind remarks to them, and would bid them all an equally affectionate good night when the time came in the early evening to draw the shades of the bay windows and douse the fluorescent lighting.

  Did they appreciate this? If the glowing velvety perfection of each leaf was the evidence, they appreciated it with all their flowery hearts.

  Yes, Mr Hotchkiss would gratefully reflect as he entered the living room each new morning, this lovingly tended, orderly profusion of beauty was all that had been needed to make even more paradisiacal this neat little corner of paradise.

  Not that the coleus made up his entire life. After all, here at his doorstep was glamorous Manhattan itself in its infinite, and often admission-free, variety. And at the Golden Age Club there were kinspirits, gentlemen and ladies both, eager to share visits to the park, concerts, museums, and, sometimes, movies, although movies calculated to entertain rather than shock were getting harder and harder to find. Safe in the streets as they wended their way around town? As Mr Hotchkiss put it, ‘There’s safety in numbers,’ and so they always moved safely in a group. The wolves prowling the city were out for stragglers. With Mr Hotchkiss in charge of the outings, there never were any Golden Age stragglers.