No Cure for Death

EIGHT

I opened the Rambler door with my free hand and struggled with the other to balance a wobbly cardboard tray, the tray trying desperately to contain its cargo of one fat white paper bag and two lidded paper cups. I handed the tray in to John and let him juggle with it for a while, amazed at the ease with which he set it safely down on the seat between us, and watched as he drew out two hamburgers and a little sack of french fries from the bag, leaving in it the same configuration of food for me. My Rambler was one of many cars squeezed into the lot at Sandy’s for noontime conversion into dining rooms.

“Mal,” John said, unwrapping one of his hamburgers, “about both those accidents being out at Colorado Hill…”

“Yeah?”

“That could be a legitimate coincidence, you know. Don’t rule it out, anyway. Hardly a year goes by without one or two accidents out there.”

I nodded.

A minute or so went by, the sound in the car one of mouths chewing, not talking. In between hamburgers, John said, “Mal?”

“What?”

“You going to keep snooping around today?”

“Planned to.”

“Well, uh…”

“Well, uh, what?”

“You suppose you could drop me off some place after we eat?”

“Sure. Any place in particular?”

“Suzie Blanchard’s. It’s over on Spring.”

“Suzie Blanchard? Well, some things never change, I guess. But isn’t she married?”

“Divorced.”

“She expecting you?”

“No. I’d kind of like to surprise her.”

“I’ll bet. I didn’t know you two had kept in touch.”

“Just the last few months or so-we’ve been writing letters.”

“I see. Will she be home? Doesn’t she have a job?”

“No, she’s got a kid. Byproduct of the marriage.”

“Oh. Well. You won’t want me around.”

“Right.”

I started in on my french fries.

John said, “What are you going to do this afternoon?”

“Thought I’d run over to the college and see Jack Masters. I figure if anybody in town can give me a line on that black guy at the bus station, it’ll be Jack.”

“Not a bad idea, Mal. Mal?”

“Yeah?”

“You won’t mind it, me dropping out of the picture for a while?”

“No, no.”

“I’ll stop by your trailer around eight, okay? And see how it’s going.”

“Sure. And if you get stranded anywhere, just call me and I’ll play taxi.”

“You sure you don’t mind?”

“Not at all. This is my hang-up, not yours.”

“I can probably help you out later on.”

“Sure. When I uncover a vast Communist conspiracy behind all this, I’ll just about have to send for the Marines, won’t I?”

He grinned. “That’s Army, kid. Keep it straight.”

I grinned back and started peeling away the wrapper from the second hamburger. “Suzie Blanchard, huh?”

“Man does not live by french fry alone,” John said, biting into one.

Down the right half of the hall, on the left side, was the college office, and beyond the glass wall of the outer office all the typewriters were covered and desks cleared and employees gone, except for Jack Masters, of course, who was in one of the inner offices with the door open, talking on his phone. It was Thanksgiving vacation and the community college was otherwise empty.

I took the seat across the desk from Jack and sat watching him bark at the superintendent over his phone.

It reminded me of the day a couple months back when our conservative, near-elderly dean was showing a bunch of guys from the North Central accrediting board around the school, and when they went into Jack’s office, he was wearing a Hamm’s Beer sweat shirt and smoking a cigar, his feet on his desk. The dean blew what of his lid was left after many such confrontations with Jack, but the North Central boys said nothing, sensing the rapport Jack had built with the two young men he was in the process of counseling.

Jack is five-eight, and near as wide as he is tall, though he isn’t fat. He’s chunky, and he’s got a paunch, but he isn’t fat. His age is indeterminate: he could be forty, he could be fifty. He looks more like a truck driver than a Dean of Admissions of a college, and he’s black.

Jack was a token black who backfired profoundly on his employers. Besides championing liberal causes and pushing his own and other minorities’ down the throats of an unwilling school board, Jack didn’t play by the unspoken rules. For instance, there was the case of the woman he was living with-a white woman. She had an apartment downtown over one of Port City’s many taverns, and unofficial word came from the school board that the Dean of Admissions shouldn’t be seen coming in and out of the apartment of such a woman (“such” being a euphemism for “white,” one supposes). Jack said, well, fine, then he’d be glad to marry the gal and make it legal. No further criticism of the Dean of Admissions’s love life was heard.

I watched as he hung up the phone. He spotted me waiting and grinned and waved me in.

“You got a minute, Jack?”

“Sure, Mallory, sure.” He gestured to the chair opposite his desk. He didn’t have his Hamm’s shirt on this time, just an off-white sport shirt.

I sat down. “Been going a few rounds with the superintendent?”

“Naturally.” He offered me a cigarette and I declined while he lit one up. “From major issues to minor. Like, he thinks the Ag boys should be excused from the Humanities, but I think they need a history course, not just history of the plow, and a literature course, not just ‘How to Read a Harvester Manual.’ And then there’s that black kid from Moline he wants expelled, just because the kid called his gym instructor a mother.”

I laughed. “Sounds like a term of endearment to me.”

He shook his head, smiled. Slapped his desk. “Well, what can I do for you, Mallory? You don’t need counseling, for Christ’s sake.”

“I need some information. And it’s nothing to do with school.”

“What is it, then?”

It was something like the hundredth time I’d gone through the story, but if it seemed stale to me, it didn’t to Jack: he leaned forward, intense interest on his walnut-stained face.

When I finished, Jack leaned back and said, “So what now? What’re you going to do? Investigate? You’re no detective.”

“I know that. But all I’m going to do is ask some questions, do a little research. If I can come up with anything really concrete, I’ll turn it over to Brennan.”

“Why not leave it to him now?”

“I didn’t think you thought much of Brennan, Jack.”

“I don’t. But in the context of this town, he’s a pretty good man. Port City’s sheriff has to be a little lazy and a little corrupt if he’s going to be an accurate reflection of his town. But when the need arises, Brennan pulls himself up to it.”

I nodded. “Well, then, you can see why I’m going to have to come up with something solid, something Brennan can’t ignore, if I’m to possibly get him up off his can.”

Jack shrugged. “All well and good, but I still can’t give you my approval of what you’re up to.”

“I don’t want your approval. Just some help. And I think you know in what way you can help me.”

“Sure. The big black guy with one eye you tangled with.”

“Do you know him?”

“Maybe. I’ll go even so far as to say probably. After all, there can’t be too many six-four, one-eyed blacks around these parts. But it surprises me to hear of this, for two reasons. First, I haven’t seen him around in maybe a year. And second, he was an okay guy, I’d almost say he was a gentleman.”

“Take my word for it, he wasn’t gentle. How do you know him? You know his name?”

“His name is Washington. I don’t know if it’s his first or last. I’ve heard him called Eyewash, by his close friends. I used to run into him up in the Quad Cities, Davenport mostly, in any of three or four bars, bars catering to blacks, or to blacks and whites who wish to mix.”

“You still hit those clubs?”

“Once in a while. Since they moved me up from Sociology prof to desk jockey, I’ve had more responsibility on my hands than free time. I still make the rounds of the bars once a month or so, and I haven’t run into Washington in a year at least.”

“In spite of that, it does sound like the same guy.”

“Probably is. But if he’s moved from the Cities to somewhere else, it isn’t Port City, or we’d both know about it. He isn’t the kind of guy you don’t notice.”

“Anything else you can think of about him?”

“Yeah, he’s got a sister. I’m not talking soul sister, either, an honest-to-God blood sister. Rita, her name is. Very nice.”

“That so?”

“Pretty thing. Younger than her brother. ’Round twenty-five or so. I’ve seen her around some.”

“Lately?”

“Yeah, last time I was up there. She’s still around.”

“Maybe I can track her down and find Washington through her.”

“Could be.”

“How’d he lose the eye? He ever mention it?”

“I hear he lost it in a gang fight, when he was a kid. He came from Chicago originally. South Side.”

“Thought you said he was gentle.”

“Far as I know, he is. Always nice to the ladies. Saw him back down from a few fights, too. Big guy like him always has challengers, you know, and he’d just ignore any flack.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“I got no idea. He dressed well, but most of the brothers-all but me, anyway-dress to the teeth.” He got out a piece of paper and scribbled down several lines. “Here’s the names and addresses of a couple clubs you can try, to run down his sister. But Mallory…”

“Yes, Jack?”

“Watch your lily-white ass.”

I grinned. “At all times.”

He leaned back again, stabbing out his cigarette in a tray. “You know, though… if I were you I’d try a safer approach.”

“Such as?”

“Explore that Norman character. Both the old man and the son. Check it out before you go any further and see if it’s just a coincidence, this Colorado Hill thing.”

“I might just do that.”

“It ought to be fun, researching the old man. Simon Harrison Norman. Hell of a character.”

“Oh?”

“Sure, hell, didn’t you ever hear about how he raised his fortune?”

“Something to do with patent medicine, wasn’t it?”

“I’ll say! It’s one of Port City’s few lasting claims to fame. Sy Norman, back in the thirties, was the country’s leading cancer quack. Sold mineral water in a bottle as a cancer cure. Made a pile. Rumor has it he’s a silent partner back of the five major industries in this town. Look it all up. It’ll be good reading, if nothing else.”