The Ferguson Affair

chapter 13

I DROVE THE SHORT two blocks from Mrs. Cline’s house to the hospital. It was a five-story brick building which stood in a quiet middle-class neighborhood. The quiet seemed oddly ominous to me. I couldn’t help wondering if Larry Gaines had suborned other hospital employees after Ella Barker turned him down. There was something chilling about the idea of criminals infiltrating a hospital.

Perhaps the police had the same idea. There was a police car in the hospital parking lot. On my way to the morgue in the basement, I ran into Wills and Granada, almost literally.

They were coming up the fire stairs with their heads thrust forward in identical attitudes. Granada had always imitated Wills’s movements and gestures. Wills stopped below me, with an impatient look, as if I was deliberately blocking his way. “What brings you here?”

“The Broadman killing. Do you have a minute?”

“No. But what can I do for you?”

Granada came up past me without a word. His bitten hand was hidden in his pocket. He stood at the head of the iron stairs, lips and chin thrust out, like a Janizary waiting for orders.

“I’m very much interested in the results of the autopsy on Broadman. Are they in?”

“Yeah, I just got a report from Dr. Simeon. Why are you so interested?”

“You know why I’m interested in Broadman. He seemed in fair shape at first. I can’t understand why he died.”

“He died of his injuries,” Wills said shortly. “What specific injuries did he have?”

I was watching Granada. If he heard what I said, or cared, he gave no sign. He put a cigarette in his mouth, lit it with a match held in his left hand, and flicked the match down the stairwell.

“Broadman had head injuries,” Wills was saying. “You get a delayed reaction with them sometimes.”

“I see. Is it all right with you if I talk to the pathologist?”

“Go ahead. Dr. Simeon will tell you the same thing.”

Wills’s voice was coldly polite. “Joe Reach mentioned you were going to take another crack at Barker.”

“Miss Barker,” I corrected him. “I had another interview with her this morning.”

“Any result?”

“I’d prefer to discuss that in private.”

Wills glanced down the empty stairs, then up to the landing where Granada was waiting.

“This is private, isn’t it?”

“Not private enough.”

“Granada’s my right-hand man.”

“He isn’t mine.”

Wills gave me a dour look, but he called up the stairs to Granada: “I’ll meet you outside, Pike.” Granada left, and Wills turned to me. “What’s all the mystery about?”

“No mystery, Lieutenant, at least as far as I’m concerned. My client tells me Gaines is mixed up with a blonde woman.”

“We got that from other sources. She know who the blonde woman is?”

“No.” I was hyperconscious of the line of truth that I was trying to straddle. “She doesn’t. She only saw her once.”

“And that’s your special private information?”

“There’s this.” I produced my lone piece of evidence, the sharkskin wallet, and handed it to Wills.

He looked at it glumly. “What is this supposed to signify?”

“It belonged to Gaines. Ella Barker kept it as a memento.”

“How touching.” Wills flipped it open, and sniffed at it disparagingly. “It stinks of perfume. Did she give it to you?”

“I found it in her apartment. She told me where it was. The girl is doing her best to co-operate.”

“She can do better than this. Did Joe Reach talk to you about a polygraph?”

“He mentioned it.”

“Why dillydally around? People are dying.”

“One of them died of a policeman’s bullets. The other one died in a manner that’s not yet established to my satisfaction.”

“To your satisfaction, for God’s sake.” Wills seldom swore. “Who do you think you are?”

“An attorney trying to protect a client from harassment.”

Wills rounded his mouth and blew out a gust of air. “Words. Big empty words. That’s all they are, and they make me sick to my stomach. What the hell is this all about? Are you trying to stick a knife in Granada’s back, or what?”

“You reamed him out last night after the Donato shooting. Why?”

“That’s between him and I. Not,” he added, “that it’s any big secret. It would have helped if Donato had lived to talk. He didn’t, so that’s that. Granada did his duty as he saw it.”

“Do you always let him interpret his duties as he sees them?”

Wills said stubbornly: “Pike Granada is a good officer. I’d rather have a hood like Donato dead, ten times over, than him.”

“Are you aware of his prior relations with Donato?”

“Yes, I’m aware of it,” Wills said on a rising note. “Pike’s lived here all his life, he knows everybody in town, it’s one of his values to us.”

“How well did he know Broadman?”

“Pretty well, he worked the pawnshop detail-”

The sentence dwindled off. Wills’s face took on the appearance of pitted silver. Then it darkened like silver tarnishing all in a moment. He said in his chest: “What is this?”

“Granada had his hands on Broadman yesterday. Broadman was in fair shape before that. After that he died, very suddenly.”

“Donato killed Broadman, you know that.”

“Donato will never be able to deny it.”

Wills looked at me in silence. The silence was stitched and woven through by the noises of the hospital, the quiet footsteps of nurses, wisps of voices, the closing of a door.

“I don’t like this, Mr. Gunnarson. You’re running loose at the mouth, and I don’t like it. Granada’s one of my best men. What you’re saying is libel.”

“You’re his superior. Who else would I communicate my suspicions to?”

“You better not take ’em anywhere else, that’s for sure.”

“Is that a threat?”

“I don’t mean it that way. You want my opinion, you’ve gone off the deep end. You ought to be more careful what you say.”

“Can’t you control Granada?”

I spoke the words in anger, and regretted them as soon as they were out. The pain in my eyes was intense, and jabbing deeper into my head. The worst of it was, I couldn’t tell if it was the pain of knowledge or ignorance.

Wills let out an inarticulate sound, and made a reflex motion, striking the wall with the back of his hand. He became aware of the wallet he was holding.

“Here. This is worthless.”

Perhaps he meant to hand it to me, but it flew from his hand and slid down the iron stairs. I went down after it, and he went up after Granada. The fire door closed behind him.

Dr. Simeon was a middle-aging man with traces of a dedicated look. His office was a corner room with small windows set high in the wall, and fluorescent lighting which was probably never turned off. Under it, the doctor was as pale as one of his own cadavers.

“The results of a head injury can be surprising,” he said. “There’s often a delayed reaction, as I’ve just been telling Lieutenant Wills. It results from hemorrhaging, and the formation of a blood clot.”

“Did you find a blood clot?”

“No, I didn’t. And there was no actual fracture of the skull.” He raised a finicky, nicotine-stained hand and drummed a few dull bars on the front of his own skull. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking of taking another whack at him.”

“You mean you haven’t done a complete post-mortem?”

“It was as complete as seemed called for. I found some cerebral hemorrhaging, probably enough to account for death.” He was hedging.

“You’re not satisfied that he died of his head injuries, are you?”

“Not entirely. I’ve seen people walking around with equally serious injuries. Not,” he added dryly, “that I recommend walking around regardless as therapy for head injuries.”

“What killed him if they didn’t? Was he strangled?”

“I’ve seen no indications to that effect. There are nearly always external marks, broken veins under the skin. I’ve found no such marks outside, and nothing in the internal neck structures.”

“Are you sure?”

It was a poor question. The pathologist gave me a quick bright look. I had injured him in his professional pride.

“You can have a look at the body yourself if you like.”

It lay open on a table in the next room. I tried, but I couldn’t go near it. I’d softened up considerably since Korea. A chill seemed to emanate from the body. I realized that the impression was fantastic: the room was simply cold. But I couldn’t go near Broadman.

Simeon regarded me with satisfaction. “I’m going to go into the thoracic cavity. I’ll let you know if I discover anything, Mr. Gunnarson.”

I hardly heard him. Through an archway half obscured by rubberized curtains, I could see the wall of drawers in the adjoining room. One of the drawers was partly open. An old woman in black sat on a stool beside it, her head bowed and hooded by a shawl.

Simeon passed through the archway and touched her shoulder gently. “You mustn’t stay here in this chill, Mrs. Donato. You’ll catch cold.”

I thought it was Gus Donato’s mother. Then she turned up her face, with her eyes like black blisters. It was Donato’s widow, Secundina.

“I hope I catch double ammonia and die,” she said.

“That doesn’t make sense. Go home now and get some rest, and you’ll feel better.”

“I can’t sleep. My head goes round in circles.”

“I’ll give you a sleeping prescription. You can fill it at the hospital pharmacy.”

“No. I wanna stay here. I got a right. I wanna stay here with Gus.”

“I can’t permit you to. It isn’t healthy. Come into my office now,” Simeon said firmly. “I’ll give you that prescription.”

“I got no money.”

“I’ll make it no charge.”

He grasped her upper arm and half lifted her from the stool. She went along with him on dragging feet.