Leave Me by Dying

by Rosemary Aubert

  Magistrate B. Sheldrake Tuppin held court behind an array of crystal and silver that seemed to reflect back the sparkling vivacity of his smile. His eyes fell on Uncle Salvatore. “Sam!” he said, extending his hand across the white expanse of the best table in the house, set beneath a window draped in gold velvet with a sheer inner curtain open to reveal the garden below. “Such a pleasure, Sam. I’m so very glad you were free today.”

  “My nephew Ellis,” Uncle Salvatore said.

  I composed myself and stepped forward. In the book-lined confines of his chamber, the magistrate had seemed older somehow and certainly less dapper than he was today in a gray suit, subtly checked vest, and burgundy tie. Shockingly, he was not wearing a white shirt, but a very pale gray one with a razor-thin burgundy stripe. The effect was one of understated elegance and I made note of it for later imitation.

  “Your nephew and I have had the pleasure of meeting before,” Tuppin said. “Have a seat.”

  We both sat. And for the next two hours all I said was “thank you” and “no, thank you.” Thank you to avocado stuffed with shrimp. No thank you to “a nice little chardonnay from France, which will someday be redundant because our vineyards in Ontario will produce one just as nice.” Thank you the next time the chardonnay was offered and the next and the time after that. Thank you to steak tartare, which I did not realize would be raw and pretended to eat with the relish of an experienced gourmand. No thank you to salad or dessert or even coffee, because I thought I would be sick. Thank you, however, to a fifteen-year-old smoky, peaty, salty single-malt scotch with which I pretended to be unfamiliar so as not to arouse the curiosity of my uncle from whose liquor cabinet I had long been sneaking tastes of just such a drink.

  Of course, there was a point to all this and through the haze in my head, I tried to figure out what it was. Celebration? Tuppin said nothing about the Billy Johnson proposal. He gave no indication that he was about to change his mind and take me on as an intern, after all, based on what he’d learned about my proposal from Kavin.

  Perhaps, I thought, this display of what Michele called “conspicuous consumption” might be intended to encourage me to choose a branch of the calling that had a reasonable prospect of high financial return. Sheldrake Tuppin winked at Uncle Salvatore. “If the poor are left to help each other,” the magistrate said, “they’ll all perish. A man serves no one by keeping himself impoverished. A man who wants to serve others is wise to look to his own interests first. A successful man is far more able to help the unfortunate than an unsuccessful one.”

  Uncle Salvatore dipped his head ever so slightly as if in deference to the wisdom of the magistrate. It was a supplicant’s gesture and cost me a moment of intense embarrassment. I think it embarrassed Tuppin, too. He looked away from my uncle without saying anything. If there was a lesson in this lunch for me, it was that even Uncle Salvatore could make a mistake.

  Dessert was a sweet wine, nothing like the dusky Italian muscatel of my Sunday afternoons on Clinton Street. It was a clear, light, topaz-colored, costly sauterne. I couldn’t resist holding it up to the light before I sipped. As I lowered the small crystal glass to my lips, I saw that Sheldrake Tuppin’s eyes were on my face. He was smiling but there was no mirth in those eyes. “Young man,” he said with un-characteristic softness, “I understand you’ve had a bit of a dust-up with Levi Rosen.”

  “Sir?” I asked in alarm. How did Magistrate Tuppin know I’d been to the morgue?

  “Well done, Mr. Ellis Portal. That upstart needs to be told now and again. My boss will be pleased.”

  “Your boss?”

  Tuppin laughed. “Yes. Even I have a boss. His name is Garrey. Attorney General Garrey.”

  UNCLE SALVATORE WAS silent in the limo and so was I. It was no longer whiskey and wine that were confusing me. I struggled to figure out the implications of what Tuppin had said. Did he know I was searching for Gleason? Did he know I suspected my friend of murder? Could Tuppin also know that Rosen’s fury had been aroused by my questioning the removal of a body from the morgue? And if Tuppin did know, did that mean my concern was in vain because the authorities were aware of that removal? What if, I thought in alarm, the authorities were implicated in the disappearance of the body? Had Rosen admitted as much? If that were true, then clearly there was a cover-up going on. I shook my head. I was beginning to feel I’d never solve this puzzle. Maybe I’d never see Gleason again. Did the thought make me happy or sad?

  “Cheer up, son,” Uncle Salvatore said, putting his hand on my shoulder as the car pulled up in front of our house. “You’ll get what you want. Don’t worry about it.”

  “PA TOOK A CALL FOR YOU,” Michele said when I walked into the kitchen.

  “A call? Who from? Where’s Pa now?”

  Michele shrugged. “Gelo,” he said, “Billy Johnson wants to see you. He says today or forget it.”

  I had only a few minutes to wash my face, change into jeans and gather the copious notes I’d made on Billy Johnson’s case. For all its interesting legal aspects, the case was tragic for Billy, at least as far as I could tell. I had decided I had the obligation to advise Billy to get a real lawyer. I saw only one way he could avoid going to Vietnam. I hated to think that telling him this and recording his reaction might be all I needed to complete my project.

  I was surprised when Michele told me we were going to walk to Billy’s new home. Not to his former dump on Parliament Street, but to a well-kept house not far from our own. “The anti-draft people are moving him around. They’ll probably keep him here until he splits,” Michele informed me. “They think he’s going to change his mind and go underground. Then they’ll go to the paper with the story. Billy will be a hero.”

  Billy and Kee Kee were staying on an upper floor in nicely furnished but, I noted, separate rooms. Nothing in the place seemed to be theirs, though. I wondered whether the wrecker’s ball had smashed all the furniture I’d seen in their other home.

  “Electricity went. Water went. And now we went,” Kee Kee said. “We wanted to show them they couldn’t get us out, but they were right and we were wrong.” It was the longest speech I’d ever heard her make and at the end of it, she sank onto the floor beside Billy’s chair and rested her head on his knee. He reached down and tenderly smoothed her hair. Seeing that gesture made my message a little easier to deliver.

  “Billy,” I began, “I’ve put a lot of hours into your case and I made a number of cogent discoveries about tribal law, Canadian immigration law and U.S. federal statutes. But the fact of the matter is I found no way to prove that you are exempt from any law binding on an American citizen. If you don’t renounce, and I take you at your word that you refuse to, you have but one recourse left to avoid the draft. And you’re going to have to act fast, because my research shows the law regarding the action I’m about to recommend is probably going to change soon, too. Then you will have no choice. You will be drafted.”

  Billy stroked Kee Kee’s shining black hair again. “What do I have to do?” he asked.

  “It’s not so very bad,” I said, smiling. “What you have to do is marry Kee Kee. And right away. Childless married men are still exempt from the draft, but they won’t be exempt for long.”

  Now it was Billy Johnson who smiled. But it was a smile of defeat. “I can’t, man,” he said. “I can’t marry Kee Kee.”

  I couldn’t understand why. She was so sweet, so lovely. Suddenly a thought struck me. I glanced at Kee Kee. She raised her head. “Is Kee Kee your sister?” I asked. “Is that why you can’t marry her?”

  “Kee Kee is my sister the way you and Michele are my brothers, Ellis,” he answered solemnly. “And someday—I guess when I come back from Vietnam—I will marry her. But I can’t marry her now. Because now, she is only twelve years old.”

  I thought he was kidding. I thought he and Kee Kee were putting me on. And indeed Kee Kee did seem to find the situation humorous. With her face against Billy’s knee, I heard her muffled laugh. She lifted h
er head and smiled, a perfectly innocent, angelic smile. The smile of a little girl who always trusts the grown-ups.

  I WORKED ALMOST all night—in the library until it closed, then at home until far past midnight. Before she went to bed, I talked Arletta into getting up at 5 a.m. to type the final version of my law project. She insisted on the outrageous fee of a dollar a page.

  But it was worth it. By 8:30 a.m. the proposal was under Kavin’s door, and by noon Sheldrake Tuppin had accepted it “for serious consideration.” Kavin said that phrase almost always meant yes.

  I felt triumphant. But not for long. When I got home from classes that evening, my mother told me Michele was too sick to eat. I couldn’t imagine what might be wrong. I ran upstairs and found my brother not in his bed, but sitting on the edge of it, his head in his hands, his dark curls entwined in his fingers.

  “What’s wrong, Michele?” I asked, moving carefully toward him. He raised his face and I saw that he was crying. “What’s wrong, man? What happened?”

  “I just got a call from Kee Kee,” Michele said. “He’s in Buffalo. He’s handing himself over. He’s on his way, man. He’s on his way to Nam.”

  I sat down beside Michele. “You can’t take this personally,” I said. “You did all you could. If you get emotionally involved like this, you’ll burn out and never be able to help anybody. I know this is a bummer, but you’ll get over it. Don’t let feeling cloud your judgment. As I said, don’t take it personally.”

  It was only a little while later that I learned I should have listened to my own advice.

  Chapter 15

  Disappointed for Billy Johnson but thrilled at Kavin’s reception of my project, I hunkered down for the final onslaught of the year: studying for exams. Nobody mentioned Gleason Adams. Nobody seemed to notice he was not around. Like the man who had “disappeared” from the prosecutor’s office, no trace of Adams seemed to remain.

  If my conscience bothered me, I salved it with the memory of those cold eyes of Sheldrake Tuppin. Why should I ruin my chances of success to save a flaky snob like Gleason? I confined my thoughts to Gleason’s legal transgressions. I didn’t want to think about any other kind. I was no longer sure what role he had played at the morgue, because the incident itself no longer seemed to matter. I was more worried about my future than about Gleason’s past. Besides, I was now in twenty-four-hour study mode.

  On the evening of the day I completed my first exam, exhausted and deep in thought, I neglected to do something I’d been doing regularly recently: I neglected to avoid Philosophers’ Walk after dark. Instead of going the long way up University Avenue and around the corner to Bloor Street, I absentmindedly cut through the familiar space between buildings.

  It was another sweet May night, the air scented heavily now with lilacs bursting into bloom. Though it was nearly 9 p.m., it was not yet totally dark. Realizing my mistake, I hastened my steps along the shadowy, winding path so I could get off it as quickly as possible.

  But I was not quick enough. I heard the determined tread of someone else on the path, someone walking behind me.

  I walked faster. My pursuer, if that’s what he was, quickened his pace.

  My heart began to pound. Not from exertion, not in those days. The May evening seemed suddenly to turn as steamy as August and a thin film of perspiration coated my face, the back of my neck where my hair curled hotly, my trembling hands that I shoved in my pockets in order to appear nonchalant, my chest beneath the white shirt my mother had starched and ironed. Stones on the path skit-tered away from my rushing steps. I was running now, so fast I could feel wind brush my ear, wind scented with lilacs.

  I kept my ear cocked, aware of the possibility of clandestine laughter from beyond the trees and the hushed declarations of promises ashamed of daylight, but I heard nothing. Perhaps it was too early in the evening for assignations.

  Who was the man running after me? I didn’t want to know. I only wanted to get away. And when he breathily called my name in a voice I almost recognized, I did not turn back, but instead, in a burst of speed, sprinted for the steps ahead, steps that led to Bloor Street and safety.

  “For heaven’s sake, Portal, slow down. Wait for me.”

  I dashed up the stairs, but at the top, I stopped and turned. Silhouetted against the bright lights of Bloor, I was actually far more vulnerable than I had been in the shadows below, but only if my pursuer intended to shoot me, which, of course, was not the harm I really feared.

  “Wait,” he cried again. Darting out of the shadows beneath the trees, he reached the bottom of the stairs. I stepped sharply back and the glow from the street fell on his face.

  “Dr. Slater!”

  “Portal,” he said, huffing as he began to climb the stairs. “Don’t run. I have to talk to you.”

  He was dressed as I was, in a suit, but rumpled and the worse for wear.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked stupidly.

  He struggled to catch his breath. “Gleason Adams told me I was likely to find you leaving Flavelle House at nine when your exam was done.”

  An exam Gleason himself had missed.

  I stepped down and moved forcefully toward the pathologist. Now it was Slater who jumped back. “What do you mean Gleason told you?” I asked. “You know where he is, where he’s been for the last two weeks while I’ve been going crazy looking for him?”

  “Portal, there are some things you have to know.”

  I felt a flash of fear. Had Gleason been arrested? Or something worse? If Gleason was in danger, who was there to rescue him? Or was it already too late for rescue? Then another thought occurred to me. I remembered the books I’d read about suicide and murder. I remembered the classic potential presuicide symptoms: hyperactivity alternating with periods of unusual calm and morose quiet. Radical changes in behavior. A lack of interest in one’s ordinary tasks and obligations.

  “Dr. Slater,” I said, “are you telling me that Gleason is . . .” The right words wouldn’t come. How did one ask a pathologist whether someone was his . . . what? Patient? Client? Cadaver? “Is Gleason dead?” I forced myself to ask. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “No. No, Portal, not that.” He glanced around. “Let’s go along on Bloor and somewhere we can talk. I won’t need much time to explain what I’ve learned. You can decide what to do with the information.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, but we walked along Bloor Street with Dr. Slater remaining silent beside me until we were sitting side by side at the counter of the diner. I couldn’t help but reflect that the last time I’d been there, I’d been trying to get rid of Gleason. Was it too late to get him back?

  “I have to begin by telling you that Adams sent me to find you.”

  I was surprised that this man, who had met Gleason only two months before, now seemed close enough to be taken into his confidence, but the only question I asked was, “Does Gleason need my help? Is he in trouble?”

  “Yes, I think you could call it that.” Dr. Slater seemed to study the liquid in the cup in front of him. He didn’t elaborate.

  “What’s wrong?” I pressed. “Where is he?”

  The pathologist seemed to think about his answer for a painfully long time before he finally yielded his response. “Those irregularities the night you and Gleason came to the morgue,” he began. “You must have thought about them often.”

  I flashed back to that March night. The scuffle at the door, the reluctance to admit us, the changes of light in the little parlor at the bottom of the stairs, the overheard argument with the chief coroner, the brief examination of the strange cadaver, the body’s disappearance, the rings. “Yes,” I said, “I have.” What was this all about if it wasn’t about those irregularities?

  “The body did not come unescorted to the morgue,” Dr. Slater said. “Many of the people we see—I mean, of course, the dead who come into our charge—are unattended. Often we have difficulty locating next of kin, friends, neighbors, even casual acq
uaintances. However, I have discovered that in this instance, the deceased came in a hearse that was sent at the request of Dr. Rosen. Though I was unaware of it at the time, I now know that in that hearse, accompanying the deceased, was a man named Neil Dennison.”

  Of course I remembered the name. The young ex-prosecutor, the lawyer who was called on the carpet for conduct unbecoming an officer of the court.

  “Dennison, I believe I told you when I last saw you,” the pathologist said, “is the man caught in a compromising situation in the vicinity of Philosophers’ Walk.”

  “He’s the next of kin of the dead woman whose body we saw?” I asked in confusion.

  Slater shook his head. “No,” he said, “which brings us to a second unusual occurrence that night. The body, I now know, did not disappear. It was taken away by the deceased’s true next of kin, the parents. The odd thing is these people arrived at the morgue with the body.”

  “They were there, weren’t they?” I asked. “Waiting in that little room, waiting while Gleason and I went into the examining room.” I had to close my eyes for a moment to fight off the image of a mother, probably not unlike my mother, seeing her child as we had seen that corpse.

  “While you and Adams were detained at the front door, we were doing what we could to maintain the dignity of all concerned: the hysterical mother, the grieving father, the deceased. But not,” he added softly, “Neil Dennison. Apparently he disappeared into the rain of the night and was not seen again until . . .”

  “Until what?” I asked in alarm. I remembered that the last time I’d seen Dr. Slater, that afternoon he’d come to Whitney Square, he’d not only mentioned Dennison, he’d mentioned murder. Was that what he was talking about now?

  “Mr. Portal,” Dr. Slater said with seeming difficulty, “I’ve come to ask you to go to Gleason Adams and help him deal with everything he knows about this sad case. I’m deeply sorry to be so mysterious, but I’ve compromised my situation considerably already and I don’t want to do it anymore.” He dug in the pocket of his rumpled trousers and pulled out a small slip of paper. He pressed it into my palm with the furtive urgency of a man passing a counterfeit bill. By the time I unfolded it and read it, Dr. Slater himself had disappeared into the night.