The Specialists

Eight

The pickup truck was blue, with STEDMAN’S TREE SURGERY / LAMBERTVILLE, PA. lettered in white on the sides. The back of the truck held a couple of saws, a bucket of creosote, a stepladder, and a mound of branches and odd cuttings. Simmons, dressed in overalls and a denim cap, sat behind the wheel. Murdock was at the side door of the house talking to the woman.

“See, my helper, he noticed it from the road,” Murdock was saying. “Tell the truth, I wouldn’t of seen it myself, but then he’s got sharp eyes for a nigger.”

“A Negro,” the woman said.

“Yes, ma’am. Anyway, he seen it and slowed down, and I took a look, and that limb’s got to come off, ma’am. The borers is into it so bad there’s no saving it. The rest of the tree is sound, they’ll do like that sometimes, but that one limb is rotten with borers, and all they can do is spread. I ain’t saying she’s got to come off this minute or the tree’ll be gone tomorrow, nothing like that. But I will say that they’ll be on into the trunk by fall and be killing that tree by next spring.”

The woman said, “Termites.”

“No, borers is what they are. Termites you’ll get in houses, in dead wood, but borers—”

“We had a man who insisted the house was crawly with termites. He offered to clear them out for three hundred dollars.” The woman smiled frigidly. “We found out it was a racket.”

Murdock had his cap in his hands. He was twisting it, and Simmons fought back a laugh. Thick-soled boots and blue jeans and that flannel shirt and twisting his cap — the perfect redneck, Simmons thought.

“Well, Miz Tuthill,” Murdock said. “Well, now. Termite inspectors, well you don’t have to tell me about them.”

“He said he was just passing through,” Mrs. Tuthill said. “And for that reason he would do the job at a special rate. We didn’t even have any termites, as it happened.”

“Well,” Murdock said. “Well, borers you sure do have, Miz Tuthill. You come and look at that tree and you’ll see them borers. Why, from where you’re standing you can see how the leaves is growing funny. You see that big red oak there? See where I’m pointing? Now can you see the second branch from the bottom on the right? See those leaves, how they’re a sort of a paler shade of green, kind of on the sick side?”

The woman was nodding.

“Now I’ll tell you true, Miz Tuthill, ma’am, not like any old termite inspector. We don’t entirely wait for work to come our way. You can’t, not in this business. Mr. Stedman, what he says—”

“Oh, then you’re not Mr. Stedman?”

“No, ma’am.” Murdock smiled. “Why, there’s better than twenty of us works for Mr. Stedman, he’s the biggest tree surgeon in all eastern Pennsylvania. What he says, he says you have to look for work that has to be done. He says by the time the average person notices something wrong with a tree, why, it’s too late to do more than cut the whole thing down. An oak like that, an oak must of took forty, fifty years to grow, it’s a powerful shame to lose it.”

“Perhaps if my husband agrees, I could call your Mr. Stedman tomorrow and—”

“Ma’am, if you was to call Mr. Stedman, we’d be glad to come, but that limb, the sawing of it isn’t but a ten-dollar piece of work, and for us to come all the way clear up from Lambertville—”

“Oh, my. Only ten dollars?”

“What with us being here now, ma’am, she wouldn’t be any more than that. Oh, I see, you was recollecting that termite inspector and three hundred dollars. Now if you wanted to call the Better Business Bureau in Lambertville, or if—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Mrs. Tuthill was laughing now. “Oh, my, ten dollars, and here I thought... oh, for heaven’s sake, cut the silly thing off. Ten dollars!”

“It seems wrong,” Simmons said. “Cutting a perfectly good limb off a perfectly good tree.”

“Shucks,” Murdock said, “I reckon it would have had borers sooner or later.”

“Telling her to look how the leaves are growing.” The road swung around to the left, and Simmons tapped the brake pedal lightly. The truck rolled into the curve. “That lawn, now, that’s something else. You see how patchy it was? That comes from cutting it too low, that and using the wrong seed mix.”

“Soon as we’re all set up, you can go back and do Mrs. Tuthill’s lawn for her.”

“Somebody should. Those burnt-out patches, that comes from using a fertilizer with too much phosphate. Of course, now, to do the right kind of work on a lawn that size—”

“You suppose it’d cost as much as cleaning out her termites?”

Simmons laughed.

“Does seem like a waste,” Murdock went on. “Climbing her damn tree and sawing the damn limb off and daubing on the creosote and all just for a reference. And you damn well know Platt ain’t going to call her anyway.”

“Colonel Cross says he might.”

“Platt? Gangster like him, that kind of a bad old boy, nice old lady like Mrs. Tuthill wouldn’t give him the time of day.”

Simmons shrugged. “Might try to call Mr. Stedman in Lambertville. Might have some trouble, since there’s no Mr. Stedman in Lambertville—”

“There really a Lambertville?”

“Must be. Colonel says we need a reference. Colonel has a habit of being right. That’s Platt’s place on the right.”

“And who says crime don’t pay?”

Simmons braked the truck and slowed to a crawl. While Murdock checked out the trees on the front lawn, Simmons clicked off mental pictures of the estate itself. Eighty yards of frontage rimmed by a ten-foot iron fence. A gate in the center opening onto a circular driveway. The main house, huge, white, fronted by massive columns. A garage off to the left, with living quarters over it. The grounds, Simmons noted, were very well kept.

He said, “He just might already have a tree surgeon, Ben.”

“He’s got a tree that’s dying.”

“Really?”

Murdock pointed at an aged silver maple. “Storm damage. See where the lightning caught it? Wonder what the hell you’d do with something like that.”

“You’re the doctor.”

Murdock grinned. Simmons pulled to a stop at the gate. Guards stood on either side, thick-bodied men wearing revolvers on their hips. The one on Murdock’s side also carried a carbine.

Murdock drawled, “Stedman’s Tree Surgery, here to see Mr. Platt.”

The guard with the carbine shook his head.

“Not home?”

“No.”

Murdock grinned easily. “Think my boy and I’ll just have a look at that tree if we might.” He started to open the door. The guard leaned on it and Murdock let it swing shut.

The guard said, “Nobody comes on the grounds without Mr. Platt says it’s okay.”

Murdock hesitated, then heaved a sigh. “Well,” he said. “I’ll just phone him up tonight.”

“You do that,” the guard said.

Back on the road Murdock said, “Seemed worth a try.”

“I didn’t think they’d go for it.”

“Not the way those two take to playing soldier. Two guards, two of them, and that fat one can’t make do with just a revolver, he needs a bee-bee gun, too. You catch the fancy belt and holster?”

“That’s hand-tooled leather.”

“Nothing but the finest. Reckon they can shoot worth spit?”

“I have a feeling they practice a lot.”

“I guess,” Murdock said. He took a cigarette and gave one to Simmons. They smoked for a while in silence. “I’ll call him tonight, we’ll do the job in the morning. Lawn looked good, didn’t it?”

“Like a golf course.”

“Means he probably thought about getting a tree doctor in and never got around to it. We’ll make it all good tomorrow. How’d you like that fat boy on the gate, anyhow?”

“They were both fat.”

“Yeah. I sure had a longing to take the two of them.”

“So did I,” Simmons said.