Right To Die

30

THE VIETNAMESE DOCTOR WHO DISCHARGED ME THURSDAY morning insisted that I ride a wheelchair and elevator to the public entrance. It was a blue-skied sixty degrees, and my body was balky from the hospital bed. I decided to walk off my stay before going to see Maisy Andrus.

Winding down Cambridge Street, I took Charles to the Public Garden, my side feeling a little tight but not hurting. In the garden, the curly-haired man who oversees the flower beds was directing a couple of helpers with wheelbarrows containing clumps of pansies and other more exotic bloomers. A big van with R. B. COOKE & SON, INC./PACKERS AND MOVERS was backed down to the Swan Pond. The workers were unloading detached shells of white swans. Already on the lawn were red and green benches. A couple of other guys were lashing green pontoons to the dock.

I sat for an hour or so, watching the flowers get planted so that people could see and smell them. Watching the swans and benches get hoisted over the pontoons so mothers and fathers could bring little kids for their first rides on them. Everybody getting ready for spring. There are worse ways to come back to life.

I got up and walked west on the Commonwealth boulevard. Dogs were leaping for Frisbees, and college kids were playing hacky-sack. A couple of yuppies in madras bermudas hosed the winter from their bay windows.

I reached Fairfield and went up to the condo. I tried Murphy, who wasn't in, then Neely, who was. I started to explain what Inés Roja had told me.

"Cuddy, Cuddy. Hold on a minute, okay?"

"Hold for what?"

"No, I mean just wait like, all right? Hear me out."

"Go ahead."

"Murphy calls me this morning, he's got the ballistics report already. The flattened slug from the mailbox is a match for the ones we dug out of the plaster from where Manolo tried to whack you."

"So the slugs match."

"So what does that tell you?"

"That the same rifle probably was used in both the sniping at us and the shooting at me."

"Tells me more than that, pal. Tells me that Manolo was the shooter, both times."

"Maybe he was. That – "

"We found a rag there, closet of his room at the manse. Oil on the rag's same as the oil on the rifle."

"Neely, just because- – "

"What I'm saying here is, you got the right guy, okay?"

"Neely, what I'm saying is that there might be another guy involved. Somebody to help Manolo write the notes, maybe get him stirred up about the professor injecting her husband way back when. Get it?"

"That's the line you were pushing at the hospital. Just what do you got besides Manolo of the Morgue there?"

I repeated what Roja said about the notes and suggested police protection for Maisy Andrus.

"Cuddy, I got to tell you, I don't see it that way. We got a sniping, we got a match on the slugs, we got the gun, we got the dead guy with the gun. You got smoke and mirrors."

"What will it take, Neely?"

"To put a uniform on her door?"

"Yes. Round the clock."

"Never happen. She's got the money, she can hire somebody. Like you, for instance."

From inside the town house came "Go away."

I leaned my forehead against her unopened front door and spoke louder. "Professor, we have to talk."

"I see no need for that. Please just go away."

"Not until I've finished what I started for you. It won't take long."

I heard a sound of exasperation as Andrus yanked open the door. The eyes burned out from a taut face. Her hair was tousled here and matted there, as though she hadn't brushed it since sleeping on it. A breath of warm air from behind me rustled some of the loose strands. Andrus shuddered violently and moved behind the door. I barely got in before she closed it.

Andrus shook again. "Can't stand drafts."

"Are you all right?"

Her head ratcheted up. "I'm fine! Or I would be if I weren't being interrupted every five minutes. What is it, Mr. Cuddy?"

Wondering what happened to "John," I gestured toward the parlor.

Andrus made a noise that actually sounded like "harrumph" as she strode in ahead of me and sat rigidly on a wing chair. "What?"

"First, I'm sorry about Manolo."

"Manolo? A traitor! Do you realize what my husband did for him? What I did for him? He deserved what happened."

I had the sensation of speaking to a different person, another member of a family whose personality diverged one hundred eighty degrees from the rest.

"Does your husband know?"

"Sir, my husband is d – - Oh. Oh, you mean Tuck, don't you? I've left messages for him, but we keep missing each other."

"You mean, he doesn't know about all this?"

"It is not the sort of thing one can synopsize for a Parisian hotel operator."

"Don't you think he ought to come home for you?"

"No. No, I don't, not that it's any of your business. I am hardly the damsel in distress here. This is my home, and I am perfectly capable of living in it alone for as long as I desire."

"Inés Roja said you – "

"Mr. Cuddy. I prefer to be alone right now. Alone means no Tuck, no Inés, and no you."

"Professor, Inés thinks Manolo may have had help."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

I started in about the notes.

Andrus threw up her hands. "Out, Mr. Cuddy! I have been betrayed, betrayed by a man I thought loyal to me and to my family. That will take some getting over, and I would prefer to do so on my own, without your irrelevant inquiries and whether that meets with your approval or not."

She got up, but I didn't turn to go.

"Professor, have you seen a doctor?"

"I was not injured last night. Thanks to you, I'm told. Don't worry. You will be compensated for that, and I'll cover any medical bills."

Andrus went to push me toward the door. I hit her at each shoulder with the heels of my hands, sending her reeling back two steps.

The eyes burned again. "How dare you!"

"Can't you see yourself? Your appearance, your attitude."

"What I see, sir, is a trespasser and a batterer who used to work for me. Are you leaving?"

"Yes."

Staying out of the warm breeze, she slammed the door behind me.

On Friday morning I decided to spare my side the warm-up run but walk over to the river anyway. Bo wasn't there, but hundreds of obvious marathoners were, just jogging loosely for a few miles, getting the kinks out toward the race three days later.

By Saturday I figured Nancy might have cooled off enough to talk with me. The A.D.A. who answered at the courthouse said no one had seen her, and there was no answer at her apartment. When I tried Maisy Andrus, I had to wait fifteen rings before she picked up. Her voice was hoarse, like she'd been using it to yell. Telling me "positively for the last time" to butt out, she hung up.

By Sunday I was feeling restless and a little lonely. I walked over to the Hynes Convention Center for the Marathon Expo.

The building was filled with everything that ever had to do with running and a lot that didn't. Displays of the old-time shoes and shorts and singlets. Clips of Jesse Owens humbling Hitler in the thirties and Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile in the fifties. Longer pieces on Bill Rodgers in the seventies edging into Joan Benoit in the eighties. All watched reverently by probably the biggest, slimmest crowd the Hynes had ever hosted.

But after a while, being jostled this way and that, I felt nostalgia yielding to commercialism. How-to books and exercise videos, health foods and vitamin supplements, rowing machines and stationary treadmills. Uncountable cross-sectioned shoes in front of as many sales reps trumpeting arch support and heel stability. College kids working for restaurants and handing out discount flyers for beer and pasta "last suppers." I'd been trained by a pro, but I was basically an amateur, a little overwhelmed by the breadth of a sport in which I knew I just dabbled.

At a pay phone I tried Nancy at her apartment again. No answer. Maisy Andrus at the mansion. Busy signal.

I recovered my quarter and walked home.

Coming into the condo, I heard a movement near the kitchen. All I had were my keys and the chance of making the bedroom for a weapon.

"John?" said Nancy's voice from the kitchen.

I exhaled and moved around the corner into the living room.

"How did you know it was me?"

She came out of the kitchen. "I could hear your ankles grinding."

Nancy was wearing jeans and one of my old chamois shirts.

I said, "After the session with Eisenberg, I didn't expect to see you for a while."

Her face was flushed, and she used the back of her wrist to wipe away the perspiration. "I thought I'd try to cook you something."

"Unfortunately, I'm down to just pasta for the race."

"I heard that's what they push, so we're having spinach linguini, nonalcoholic beer, and whole-grain crisp-crust bread for your – what is it, your 'carbos'?"

"My carbos."

About midway through the meal and a particularly good hunk of bread, I said, "This mean you don't still think I'm stupid about running the marathon?"

"No. This means I think you are so incredibly more stupid for even considering doing it after getting shot that I realized I had to do what I could by way of damage control."

"Nance?"

"What?"

"How long you been working on that line?"

"All afternoon."

"Should have been more concise."

"I tried it a lot of different ways. That was the best."

I munched my crisp crust and shut up.

After a moment Nancy said, "So, I'll drive you out there and then come back here."

I put down the bread. "You'll be at the finish line?"

"Reluctantly. But I've got a trial first thing Tuesday, so I can't stay over."

"For once in your life, call in sick."

"Can't. But that reminds me. You should phone Del Wonsley."

"Wonsley?"

"Yes. I heard his voice on your tape machine as I was coming in."

"Did you catch any of the 1nessage?"

"Yes." Nancy used a soup spoon to twirl some pasta onto her fork. "Good news, I think. He said Alec Bacall is coming home tomorrow."