But the Doctor Died

by Craig Rice

  “Von Flanagan took a week off for his niece’s wedding and we’re short-handed. Those goddamn clowns,” he repeated.

  Malone, ever magnanimous in victory, said, “Don’t worry about it, Captain. You carry a big load here, and as a sympathetic citizen I want to help. So lets just make it our little secret.” Spence cringed. Malone added delicately, “Shall I wait downstairs?”

  “Why don’t you wait,” Captain Spence said patiently, “at the bottom of the Chicago River by the Madison Street Bridge … ?”

  They brought Nicholas Xavier Massey to Malone ten minutes later at the Desk. He was a pimply, sullen-eyed youth, the kind, Malone had learned from experience, who could be persuaded only by a slap in the mouth.

  “He’s all yours,” the sergeant said.

  “Excellent,” Malone said, “and now, the illegally acquired evidence.”

  Reluctantly, the sergeant reached down and came up with a brown envelope. “Okay, shyster. Beat it. And take that prize with you.”

  Down deep, Malone felt a little dirty. Not as dirty as the sergeant’s look marked him, but still dirtier than a man liked to be. However, a man had to be a realist. The old wisdom still held: Nice guys finished at the far end of the soup line. The technicality upon which he’d gotten the punk’s release was valid. The United States Supreme Court had said so, and Malone would have been derelict in his duty as a lawyer if he hadn’t taken advantage of it.

  Out in the street, Nicholas Xavier Massey said, “The Old Lady send you?”

  “Your mother came and asked my help.”

  Nick extended his hand. “Okay, gimme the stuff.”

  Malone said, “You touch this envelope, buster, and I’ll have you back in your cell so fast you’ll think you never left it.”

  Nick Massey’s sullen mouth twisted. “You’re a hell of a mouthpiece! You’re supposed to be on my side.”

  “What was the name of the outfit you broke into?”

  “That’s none of your goddam business. You’re supposed to—”

  Malone raised a finger toward a uniformed cop who was standing by a car some hundred feet away. Nick Massey dropped his hands.

  “Wait a minute, counselor. Take it easy.”

  “I’ve about had it with you. What’s the name of the place? I want to see to it that this stuff gets back where it belongs.”

  “There wasn’t no name. That’s why I went in. I thought the office was empty and I just wanted to hang around a while.”

  “Until the building emptied, so you could make a real haul?”

  “I wasn’t doing any harm.”

  “Quit whining,” Malone snapped. “I’m sick of the sight of you. What building was it? And what was the room number?”

  “One-twenty-five East. Fifth floor. Five-sixty-four.”

  Malone stared. “Did you say the fifth floor?”

  “What’s wrong, shyster? Your ears out of joint? I said the fifth floor.”

  “Okay—beat it. But remember one thing. I’m not going to forget you. Get a job and support your mother—”

  “My old man didn’t, so why should I?” Nick snarled.

  “You want a clout in the puss, punk? I said get a job! The next time you step out of line, I’ll bust you right down the middle. Remember that.”

  Nick Massey beat a sullen retreat. Malone watched him go. There were some who said love and understanding were the ticket. Maybe they were right. But this one still looked to Malone like a clout-in-the-mouth case. Malone reminded himself that he’d forgotten to send his check to the Police Organization for Waifs. POW was a good outfit and deserved support. He’d send the check as soon as he got back to the office…..

  The fifth floor corridor of 125 East was empty. It looked as though everybody had gone home. But still, Malone had taken no chances. He’d entered through the alley and climbed the fire stairs. He stood for a few moments in front of the door marked:

  Clifford Barnhall, M.D., B.A., M.S., M.A., Ph.D.

  He tried the knob. It was locked. Moving to his left, he found no name on the door marked 564 just next to Barnhall’s office. He turned the knob. It gave. The door opened. Malone went inside. The room was empty. There was nothing much in the way of furniture. But there were signs that it had been hastily vacated. A quick exit seemed indicated. The place had probably been at least partially occupied.

  The drawers of an old desk stood open. There were several empty cartons and some paper plates that showed lunches had been served.

  Malone went to the window and looked out. It gave onto an airshaft with a blank wall on the opposite side. He froze as footsteps approached in the corridor. But they went on by and he heard the elevator door open and close. He went to a card table standing against the wall—the one between this room and Dr. Clifford Barnhall’s office—and above the table was something very interesting. A peephole.

  Malone went close and inspected the hole. It was approximately half an inch in diameter and had been fitted with a small glass. Malone put his eye to the glass and saw everything in the office beyond. The glass was a lens so that the whole interior beyond could be seen in miniature—an expensive modernistic desk, two expensive modernistic chairs, a thick expensive rug with a modernistic design, and a couch with a modernistic spread thrown over it. A typical headshrinker’s layout, Malone decided, and wondered what kind of a character Barnhall was. How many trusting females had been seduced on that couch? Or maybe women weren’t his weakness. Maybe he ran some kind of a blackmail racket.

  Malone, capable of objectivity if he so chose, wondered why he automatically condemned Barnhall of rascality. It was not beyond conjecture that the man was sincere. But Malone saw again the glazed look in Helene Justus’s eyes when passing him on State Street. But still, Barnhall may not have put the look there. Maybe he was trying to get rid of it.

  But Malone had other things to wonder about. His quick return to this location after following Helene Justus here was so highly coincidental that he smelled a trap of some sort. But who wanted to trap him and why? No, that couldn’t be it. If this was a trap, Mrs. Massey would have had to be a part of it, and the woman was entirely without guile. Also, the rest of it was entirely too complicated to have been planned.

  The only coincidence involved was that Nick Massey had robbed this particular room. Malone, for his part, had acted logically, doing exactly what he himself would have predicted if given the set of circumstances beforehand. He’d cleared his client and had come to return the loot.

  Nor was the fact that Mrs. Massey had come to him, out of all the attorneys in Chicago, too farfetched. He was well-known in her neighborhood and a majority of its nondescript wrongdoers found their way to his Washington Street office.

  Malone turned from that aspect of the situation to those more immediately pressing. Who was spying on Barnhall and why? They had certainly fled, but for what reason? Was their work here done? It seemed hardly likely to Malone that their job—whatever it had been—would terminate at the exact time Nick Massey had stumbled into their hideout. Therefore, the alternative seemed most likely. They’d fled because of Nick Massey. They’d anticipated his possible arrest and confession and they hadn’t wanted to come under the scrutiny of the police. So what they’d been engaged in had certainly been illegal. A blackmail mob? This setup had all the earmarks. Get a dictaphone and take down the confessions of Barnhall’s patients. Contact the patients later and sell the tapes to them. But was Barnhall so stupid he couldn’t spot a glass eye embedded in his own office wall?

  It was pretty confusing, and Malone did not enjoy being confused. Again, he looked through the peep hole. A shaft of sunlight came in through the window of the psychiatrist’s office. It hit the top end of the couch right where the patient’s head would rest and gave a sinister aspect to the silent, deserted office.

  Malone visualized Helene Justus’s golden head there where the light beam hit. He didn’t like it, but it crystallized the question that had been in his mind all day: What was norma
l, happy, well-balanced Helene Justus doing in a psychiatrist’s office?

  Trouble with Jake? Most unlikely, but Malone granted that if there were, Helene would be capable of covering it up—hiding it from the outside world; even from as close a friend as John J. Malone. Not so with Jake Justus, though. If their marriage had struck a rock, Jake would show it. His face would show it if nothing else. Jake’s face was as open as the City of Chicago when the lid was off.

  Malone sighed. More things to wonder about. He’d been wondering so hard that he’d forgotten the brown envelope. Now he remembered it and dumped the contents onto the table.

  There was a lady’s diamond-studded watch—valuable; a pair of imitation ruby earrings—worthless; a small lady’s coin purse with an Oriental coin in it. And two rolls of recording tape. Malone examined each piece carefully, pondered thoughtfully over the tapes, and then loaded everything back into the envelope.

  He left as he’d entered, down the back stairs, and caught a cab back to his office….

  Maggie had left. So had everybody else, it seemed. Malone knocked on the locked door of an office three doors down from his own to make sure Sam Belson didn’t have a broad in there, and then picked the lock with his penknife. Sam Belson was a bottle-cap broker. He sold bottle caps by the carload, and used a tape recorder for letters and memos. Malone sat down and took out his tapes and tried to fit one to the machine. No go. The wrong machine.

  Growling something about why the hell didn’t they adopt standards in the recorder business, Malone left, locking the door behind him, and went in the opposite direction—two doors from his office, where he knocked again to make sure Clint Kaine didn’t have a brunette in there. Clint couldn’t stand blondes. If he were doing extracurricular work with a broad, she would be a brunette.

  But Kaine’s office was deserted also. Malone opened the door with the penknife and went in. Kaine ran a collection agency and put his correspondence on a different make of recorder. Malone smiled. It was the right make—the one any business man with common sense would buy.

  Malone threaded the tape, flipped the switch, and sat back to listen. The voice was definitely female, but not Helene’s:

  “I don’t know, Doctor—I just freeze up.”

  “Do you mean you actually feel a chill?”

  Barnhall’s voice—Malone assumed it to be Barnhall’s—was low, sympathetic, and very professional.

  “No—not that. I—I go stiff lying there. He’s hanging over me, panting like a mastiff and pawing at me—and I go stiff.”

  “Does his closeness frighten you?”

  “No—I don’t think so.”

  “Does it revolt you?”

  “God no! I wait all day for him—slopping around, doing the dishes, watching the clock. When he comes in from work I’m hotter than a firecracker. If he’d grab me then and drag me into the bedroom it would be great. But we eat and watch TV and then he goes in the bathroom and hawks into the john for five minutes—hey, maybe that’s what does it—him hawking into the john with me all in my transparent black nightie waiting—uh-huh! Maybe I am revolted like you say!”

  “If that is the cause of your condition—”

  Malone snapped the rewind button and the inane dialogue cackled back at him in reverse. He removed the tape and inserted the second role.

  The dialogue began:

  “It just piles up some way, Doctor. Day after day. Sometimes I think I can’t take another minute of it….”

  Malone sat entranced. It was a male voice, and at the first sound of it his mouth had dropped open. A voice so unmistakable a deaf cretin could have identified it. Malone closed his mouth and listened, utterly fascinated. When it was over, he played it back again.

  But when he returned to his office, he could not remember much of what was said. It had been the voice rather than the words that had brought him joy.

  “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he chortled, and put the tape, along with the rest of the brown envelope’s contents, into the battered safe beside his desk.

  “I’ll be a bandy-legged bastard,” he said. And headed for Joe the Angel’s bar….

  Chapter Four

  Helene Justus was out of breath when she knocked on Vivian Conover’s door in the Craymore Hotel. The door opened and the two girls shared a glad cry as they rushed into each other’s arms.

  “Viv! Darling! It’s been so long!”

  “Helene! Angel! I didn’t think you’d ever come.”

  Helene drew back, glancing around. “Oh, you have a suite!”

  Vivian laughed. “It’s only two rooms. But Walden is picking up the whole tab—until I get settled—so I decided to splurge.”

  “It’s nice. I always liked the Craymore.”

  “I too. It’s old, but it has a dignity about it. I hate those modern places with coffee in the bathroom and that sort of thing. How is Jake?”

  “Fine—just fine. We’ll go over to the Casino later. We can catch one of the shows and have dinner.”

  “I’d love to dear, but not tonight. I’m exhausted. Besides, there will be plenty of time.”

  “Of course. Right now, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Tell me!” Helene kicked off her shoes and sat on the bed, curling her feet under her.

  “Tell you what, darling?”

  “Oh, you know. I’m just delighted at finding you in such high spirits. I was so afraid. You know—the last time—”

  Vivian Conover laughed softly. She was a strikingly beautiful brunette, slim, lovely, with a flawless complexion that always looked slightly tanned. She had the trimmest of ankles and was always perfectly groomed—one of those girls you suspected of sleeping suspended in the air so that nothing ever got mussed.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “The last time. I was a bit of a mess, wasn’t I?”

  “I felt so sorry for you, darling. I did my best to be of comfort, but I felt so inadequate.”

  “There’s nothing much anyone can do for a person under such circumstances.”

  “What happened to André?”

  Vivian shrugged. “He got another girl, I guess.”

  “And it didn’t—bother you?”

  “I have built-in springs, honey—emotional springs, that is. I never brood over anything. I let it come out in a flood. That way it doesn’t eat at you.”

  Helene made no reference to what Vivian had said over the phone about a wedding. In fact, if Helene had referred to it, Vivian would have reacted with alarm. It would have meant that someone had goofed.

  “Tell me about your new job,” Helene said. “I’m so excited!”

  “It could be a big one. And then again—”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s only a tryout so far as I’m concerned. I don’t know whether I’ll like Chicago or not.”

  “Why, of course you will. We’ll have wonderful times. I know a lot of eligible young men with scads of charm and money. In a month, you’ll feel like a native—I promise!”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I’m so proud of knowing such a brilliant person as you, Vivian. I think you actually awe me.”

  Vivian laughed and paced restlessly. “Honey—please! I’m blushing.” She turned suddenly. “When are you and Jake going to settle down and have some children?”

  “Good heavens! Give us time!”

  “It doesn’t take long. You would have beautiful babies.”

  They talked thus for half an hour; saying nothing, trying to recapture something they’d had—or thought they’d had—and not succeeding very well. Finally, Helene looked at her watch. Vivian instinctively followed suit, glancing at a circle on her wrist where there was no watch—only a band where the skin was lighter than the rest of her arm showing where a watch had been worn.

  “I must run,” Helene said. “Will you call me tomorrow?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep, darling.” Helene planted a quick kiss on Vivian’s cheek. “T
raveling wears one out.”

  “Tomorrow,” Vivian said, “we’ll have a long talk.”

  There was a man waiting for Helene in the lobby. He was seated with a newspaper and she would have missed him if he hadn’t lowered the paper and cleared his throat. Helene glanced down, saw him, and hesitated ever so briefly. Then she walked on, but to a close observer her expression would have given her away. It was a look of surprise and fear, a mixture that clouded her lovely blue eyes.

  Helene left the hotel and walked west to the first corner. There she turned north and hurried along. She did not look around, but the temptation was obviously great. The man was following her, however, a fact she was no doubt aware of.

  He was neither young nor old; somewhere in his late thirties or early forties. But if you decided on either, you would be likely to change your mind after a second look because he could so easily have been the other. He was neither shabbily nor neatly dressed. But anyone trying to recall his image would have found it blurred somewhere between the two extremes. There were no flashes of bright color in his dress, but neither was it drab to the point of leaving that impression. A quiet blue-striped necktie, and a shirt of either gray or blue, you would probably not remember which.

  He was the sort of man you see when turning your head to look at something else, who never quite registers, but leaves the nagging feeling that someone, was there.

  In the third block north, Helene turned into a small, unobtrusive coffee shop. As she entered, the man stopped, took a memo pad from his pocket, and wrote with a small stub pencil. He tore the sheet from the pad and folded it and moved forward toward the entrance to the coffee shop. But when he had a scant five paces to go, a second man appeared from around the far corner and hurried in the first man’s direction. There was no missing this second man. He was tall, slim, exceedingy handsome. He was dressed in a sky-blue jacket and had an even brighter blue scarf around his neck, tucked artfully under his lapels. He could have shaved with the creases of his white slacks. His hair was beautifully waved and prematurely white. He did not appear to be looking for anyone as he hurried along, completely preoccupied. He could have been on his way to seduce some unsuspecting virgin. But his impact on Helene’s stalker was quick and definite. The young-old man turned and stepped off the curb and crossed the street.