No Cure for Death

FIFTEEN

I pulled the Rambler into a place between a Lincoln Continental and a Grand Prix, making mine the only car in the whole Nottingham Acres parking lot without a vinyl top. Nottingham Acres was a big fancy U-shaped Tudor building whose grounds probably consisted of a mere acre or less, but why get technical? Besides, with the rent this joint probably charged, how could they get away with calling it Nottingham Acre?

“I’ll wait here in the car,” Rita said.

I said, “You’ll what?”

“I’ll wait here in the car.”

“You’ll wait here in the car.”

“That’s what I said.”

“What happened to ‘I’ll take you to see Stefan Norman’?”

“This is where he lives. Top floor of this wing facing us right here. Number 1207.”

“You’re something else. What is it, you afraid you’ll get your brother in trouble if Norman sees you helping me?”

“That’s part of it.”

“What else is there?”

“You might do better without me. The other time I saw Norman I didn’t get along too well with him.”

“What was that about? He make a pass?”

“Hardly. It was about my brother’s job.”

“Well. I know better than to ask you anything about that.”

“You’re learning.”

“Okay. You’ll wait here in the car.”

She nodded.

The outside of the building was made up of rough, varicolored blocks of stone, but inside everything was lush wood, like a table. There was a single elevator, self-service. It surprised me a little that there was no elevator attendant (nor for that matter, doorman or parking lot attendant), but that could be put down to Thanksgiving or technology or cutting corners. Like the acres Nottingham didn’t have.

As the elevator opened on the twelfth floor, Norman’s apartment was directly across. The door had 1207 on it in gold numbers, and was a big solid chunk of wood.

I knocked.

It took a while, but finally the door opened halfway and the opening was filled by a short, small-boned man in a long-sleeved light blue shirt with floppy pointed collars; the shirt was untucked and hanging down almost to thigh level on darker blue, also floppy bell-bottom trousers. His hair was black and curly and oily and long, his cheeks pockmarked and prominently boned, his nose hooked, and his eyes a light gray blue under thick brows. The eyes were intense, the kind of intense that holds you and can make you forget the rest of a slightly repulsive countenance.

He gave me a hesitant smile; his teeth were very good: too good.

“Have we met?” he asked. Hopefully, I thought.

“No, we haven’t, and I hope you’ll excuse this intrusion, Mister… Norman?”

“I’m Stefan Norman. Who are you?”

“My name’s Mallory. I’ve got some urgent business I’d like to talk to you about. Could I possibly have a few minutes of your time?”

“Is this some sort of prank? Did somebody on ten send you up for some sort of prank?”

“No, no I assure you. Could I speak with you, please?”

An eyebrow arched. “That’s exactly what you’re doing now.”

“Look, I know this is an imposition….”

“Intrusion would be the word, Mr. Mallory, was it?”

“Yes, Mallory. It’s very important. I drove up from Port City just to see you about it.”

“Well, I see, Mr. Mallory. If you’re willing to spend your Thanksgiving day afternoon on this project of yours, whatever it is, it must be important enough for me to spare you, I think you said, ‘a few minutes of my time’?”

“I’d appreciate it, Mr. Norman.”

“It does seem rather foolish, as I’ll be available tomorrow morning, at nine, in my office in Port City. But, come in, come in.”

He opened the door up the rest of the way, let me by, closed the door behind me, then moved in front of me and led me down a long narrow hall, long enough for the several doors on each side to open into good-sized rooms. The hall finally emptied out into a big, beam-ceilinged living room, bathed in coppery semilight from unseen fixtures up in the nonfunctional rafters. The two side walls of the room were paneled in rosewood with a conservative smattering of original abstract oils, but the room was dominated by the end wall, which was completely engulfed by a great stoneface of a fireplace, a moderate blaze befitting the time of year in its down-turned mouth. Right of the mouth was a combination color television and stereo console in a heavy rosewood cabinet; on the tube was playing the final quarter of the football game the boys at the Filet O’Soul had been getting ready to watch not so long ago. The floor was rough slate, but three-quarters of it was covered by a rust-color shag carpet, and most of that was covered by a curving, overstuffed couch of plush brown leather facing the fireplace, with room enough in between for a mammoth black marble coffee table, which served as an auxiliary bar to its well-stocked, brown-leather-padded papa that covered most of the back wall. Between the bar/table and the couch were two rustic wooden stands that were, I supposed, the Nottingham version of TV trays; on them were plates of sumptuous if standard Thanksgiving fare of turkey-cranberries-mashed potatoes-etc. Somehow, though, I got the impression these boys felt they were roughing it.

I say “these boys” because Norman wasn’t alone: he had a friend who was sitting on the couch, transfixed before the dancing images on the television screen. Norman cleared his throat and his friend rose from behind his tray and turned to greet us. He stood an inch or so over six foot and seemed sturdily built; his hands were big and roped with veins and hung loose on the ends of long arms. His hair was blond and very thin on top, with heavy, over-compensating brown sideburns; his forehead was broad over small, wide-set dark eyes and a tiny nose and tiny mouth. The weakness of some of his features was offset by a jutting, Steve Canyon-like jaw. He was wearing a yellow cashmere sweater and mustard bell-bottoms. He said, “Who’s he?” His voice was equal parts sandpaper and sinus trouble.

Stefan Norman said, “His name is Mallory, he says. He came up from Port City to talk to me about something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Something, I said.” He looked at me. “This is Mr. Davis.”

“Hi,” I said.

Davis nodded. “Funny time to drop in on people.”

Norman said, “Go back and watch the game.”

The big man shrugged, in a pouty way, and sat back down to his tray of turkey and reglued his eyes to the football game.

Norman said, “Would you like a drink, Mr. Mallory?”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your dinner.”

“That’s all right, I’d eaten all I cared to anyway. When you spend a lot of time preparing a meal, you become bored with the food even before you serve it.”

I followed him over to the bar and sat down. Even the damn stools were covered with brown leather and stuffed like Chesterfield sofas. Norman said, “What would you like?”

“Anything.”

“In the spirit of the great American sports fanatic, we’ve been drinking beer today. Well, malt liquor, really. How would that be?”

“Sure.”

He got behind the bar and fiddled for a while, as though he had to brew the stuff himself, then handed me a filled glass. I drank half of it in two gulps, watching him as he stayed back of the bar, looking me over, trying to figure what to make of me, I guess. He sipped his glass of malt liquor.

I said, finally, “Did you know a girl named Janet Taber?”

He shook his head no. “No. No, I’m sorry.”

“You might have known her as Janet Ferris.”

“Ferris?”

“Yes.”

“Ferris. No, but let me think. No, I don’t think so.”

“Think some more. She worked as a secretary for your cousin during his Senate campaign.”

“She worked for Richard?”

“Janet Ferris.”

“Janet Ferris. Hmmm. Now, wait, that wouldn’t be that little girl from Drake? She was Richard’s secretary, you say?”

“That’s right.”

“I do remember her, now. Attractive girl. Brunette, isn’t she?”

“Well, she was a blonde when I saw her, but that’s possible.”

“You did say was, didn’t you? And you did say did I know a girl named Janet Ferris? What does all this use of past tense mean?”

“She’s dead.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. She was such a nice, enthusiastic girl. A real help to Richard, if memory serves.”

“She was killed in an automobile accident. Tuesday night. It was in the paper yesterday.”

“I so seldom read the Port City Journal, living up here as I do.”

“It was in the Davenport paper, too.”

“At any rate, I didn’t notice it. But I am sorry to hear it.”

“The crash was on Colorado Hill.”

“Really. I don’t see yet, Mr. Mallory, how this concerns me.”

“Richard Norman was killed in a crash on Colorado Hill.”

“So have any number of people been, which is unfortunate, but what exactly has that to do with me?”

“Janet at one time worked for your cousin, agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“She died in a crash on Colorado Hill. So did your cousin.”

“And you see that as some kind of, what? Connective tissue? Linking thread?”

“You might say that.”

“You’re reading a lot into a simple coincidence.”

“Coincidence, maybe. Not so simple.”

He studied me for a moment. Then he said, “What exactly is your interest in all this, Mr. Mallory? Are you a detective, public or private?”

“I just knew Janet Taber, that’s all.”

“Then this is not a… an official investigation.”

“If the cops were asking the right questions, I wouldn’t have to.”

He frowned; it was a thought-out frown. His facial expressions seemed calculated for the benefit of whoever he was talking to, rather than out of any real feeling or emotion.

“I hope,” he said, “this conversation begins to gather significance soon, Mr. Mallory. Your ‘urgent business’ is proving to be the delusion of what appears to be a not terribly stable mind.”

“You’ve come this far….”

He sighed. “Continue.”

“Do you know a man named Washington?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“He’s a black man.”

“How bothersome for him.”

“He’s big, and he has one eye.”

“Is that right?”

“He’s worked for your uncle for ten years.”

“Has he?”

“He has.”

Stefan looked at me, blankly.

I said, “And he has a sister named Rita.”

“And how many eyes has she?”

“What are you up to, Norman?”

“I’m up to here with you, Mr. Mallory. I believe this conversation is over. Can you find the way out?”

“Thanks for the beer.”

I trudged down the long hall and out the door and into the elevator and before two minutes were up I was again with Rita in the Rambler, and two people and one object were never more out of place as were we in the parking lot.

“Well?” she said.

I grunted. “He admitted knowing Janet, but only slightly. He claimed he didn’t know she’d been killed in an accident. He also didn’t respond to the name Taber.”

“What do you make of that?”

“What do you make of this: he says he doesn’t know you or your brother.”

“You figure that adds up to something.”

“It adds up to somebody’s lying.”

“Who do you believe?”

“You.”

That surprised her. “Why me? Why not Norman?”

“First off, you’re better looking.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Second off, Norman isn’t going back to Port City with me to arrange a meeting with a certain one-eyed gentleman. Right now.”