The Ferguson Affair

chapter 15

MY PATH TO THE PARKING LOT led past the emergency entrance of the hospital. The ambulances were garaged across the street, and one of them was parked in the driveway facing into the street. The old youth named Whitey lounged at the wheel, listening to the radio. He turned it low when I came up to the window of the cab. “Can I help you, sir?”

“You may be able to. I saw you at Broadman’s store yesterday when you took him away. My name is Gunnarson.”

“I remember you, Mr. Gunnarson.” He tried to smile, without much success. His pale lippy face wasn’t made for smiling. “Broadman died on the way here, poor old boy. I hated to see it happen.”

“Was he a friend of yours?”

“I never saw him before in my life. But I have an empathy with them. Like we’re all fellow mortals together. Dead or alive. You know?”

I knew, though I didn’t like the way he put it. He seemed to be one of those sick-bay philosophers-sensitive wounded souls who lived by choice in the odor of sickness, flourished like mushrooms under the shadow of death.

Whitey’s eyes were like nerve ends. “It kills me to see a man die.”

“How did Broadman die?”

“He simply passed away, man. One minute he was yelling and struggling, trying to get up-he was real panicky. The next minute he sighed and was gone.” Whitey sighed and went a little himself. “I blame myself.”

“Why blame yourself?”

“Because I didn’t dream he was going to die on me. If I had only known, I could have given him oxygen, or drugs. But I let him slip away between my fingers.”

He raised one hand to the window and looked at his fingers. They dangled limply. He rested his chin on his chest, and his long face sloped into sorrow. His pale eyes appeared ready to spurt tears. “I don’t know why I stay in this awful business. There are so many disappointments. I might as well be a mortician and get it over with. I mean it, man.” He was going down for the third time in an ocean of self-pity.

I said: “What did he die of?”

“Search me. I’ve had a lot of experience, but I’m not a medical man. You’ll have to take it up with the doctors.” His tone implied obscurely that doctors could be wrong, and often were.

“The doctors don’t seem to understand the case. Can’t you give me the benefit of your experience?”

He glanced at me sideways, warily. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“I want your opinion of what killed Broadman.”

“I’m not entitled to any opinion, I’m just a lackey around here. But it must have been those injuries at the back of his head.”

“Did Broadman sustain any other injuries?”

“How do you mean?”

“On the throat, for instance.”

“Heavens, no. He certainly wasn’t choked to death, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“I’ll be frank with you, Whitey. It’s been suggested that Broadman was injured fatally after I found him in the store. Between the time that I found him and you took him away.”

“Who by, for goodness’ sake?”

“That remains to be seen. It’s been suggested that he was roughly handled.”

“No!” He was deeply shocked by the suggestion. “I handled him like a baby, with the upmost care. I always handle head injuries with the upmost care.”

“You weren’t the only one who had your hands on him.”

His eyes appeared to turn white. The flesh around them crinkled like blue crepe. He opened and closed his mouth, making noises like a hot-water bottle under stress.

“You wouldn’t be pointing a finger at my partner? Ronny wouldn’t hurt a fly. We been working together for years, ever since he got out of the Medical Corps. He wouldn’t even hurt a mosquito! I’ve seen him take a mosquito by the wings, pluck it right off his arm, and set it free.”

“Calm down, Whitey. I’m not pointing a finger at you or your sidekick. I simply want to know if you noticed anything out of the ordinary.”

“Listen, Mr. Gunnarson,” he complained, “I’m supposed to be monitoring police calls. The manager catches me out here batting the breeze-”

“If you saw anything, it won’t take long to tell me.”

“Sure, and get my own neck in a sling.”

“You can trust me to hold any information you have. It may be very important. It’s not just a matter of one man’s death, though that’s important enough.”

He pushed his fingers up into his hair and slowly closed his fist. His hair sprouted out like pale weeds between his fingers. “What do you want me to say? And who does it go to?”

“Just to me.”

“I don’t know you, Mr. Gunnarson. I do know what happens to me and my job if certain people get a down on me.”

“Name them.”

“How can I? What protection have I got? I’m no muscle man and I don’t pretend to be smart.”

“You’re not acting too smart. You seem to have evidence in a murder case, and you think you can sit on it until it explodes.”

He twisted tensely in the seat, turning his head away. His neck was thin and vulnerable-looking, like a plucked chicken’s.

“A man name of Donato murdered Broadman. I heard it on the radio. Can’t we just leave it like that?”

“Not if it isn’t true.”

“Donato’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Pike Granada shot him. You know Granada, don’t you?”

“Sure. I run into him in the course of work.” A tremor ran through his long, asthenic body. It was curled in the seat protectively, knees up. “You think I want to get myself shot, too? Leave me alone, why don’t you? I’m no hero.”

“I’m beginning to get the idea.”

All this time the radio had been murmuring in fits and starts. Now the rhythm of the dispatcher’s voice quickened. Whitey reached out and turned the radio up. It said that a new blue Imperial had been clocked at sixty proceeding east on Ocean Boulevard east of the pier.

I shouted above it: “Did Granada do something to Broadman?”

Whitey sat and pretended to be deaf. The dispatcher’s voice went on like the voice of doom. The Imperial had collided with a truck at the intersection of Ocean Boulevard and Roundtable Street. Traffic Control Car Seven was directed to the scene of the accident. A few seconds later the dispatcher relayed a report that the driver was injured.

“You see?” Whitey cried aggrievedly. “You almost made me miss an accident.”

He started his engine, and honked softly. His fat little partner, the mosquito liberator, came running out of the garage. The ambulance rolled into the street and turned toward the foot of the city, singing its siren song.

I followed it. Colonel Ferguson had a blue Imperial.