The Suicide Murders

SEVENTEEN

It was pushing noon when I rolled out of the sack. I remember hearing that phrase stuck in my head. The events of the past twenty-four hours, I’m glad to say, didn’t rush back like the full tide as soon as my eyes were open. I woke into something like peace. And then my mother phoned.

“Benny, where were you yesterday? I tried to get you. I called at midnight and you still weren’t home. You keeping something from me, Benny? You out with a shiksa when there are lots of nice Jewish girls sitting at home waiting for you to ask them out? Benny, you should think more of yourself. Have a little pride. Anyway, I thought you were going to call me yesterday. So, what happened?”

“Ma, call me back. I just got up. I’ve been working on a case.” I upset a stack of paperbacks on a chair trying to reach out and turn around the clock.

“A case? A case of beer maybe. Look, Benny, you’ve got to live your own life. Your father says you haven’t been to see Melvyn all week. That’s your business. You got a case; I understand. It doesn’t hurt to say hello to Melvyn, Benny, you hear?”

“Ma, I can’t talk now, honest. I’ve been up all night.”

“Benny, what you do with your time is your own business. I’ve got two glass eyes where you’re concerned.”

“Ma, I’m hanging up. I’m going to hang up the phone.”

“A son doesn’t hang up on his mother, Benny.”

“I’ll see you both for supper tomorrow night. Bye.”

“We’re having liver. I’ll see how I feel. If I feel like liver, we’ll have liver.”

“See you tomorrow night. Give Pa my love. Goodbye.”

“That’s better. Goodbye.” She banged down the phone before I had a chance to. What the newspapers call a preemptive strike.

I flipped the clock back up on the blanket with a curved wrist shot that had to be seen to be believed. It was even later than I feared. My toes found my socks just out of sight under the tumbling bedclothes, and then I tried easing my legs out of the covers. I treated myself to clean underwear and went through the ball of twisted shirtsleeves and tails and pulled out a shirt that looked as though I consigned it to the laundry on insufficient evidence. My suit smelled as though it had been simmering all night in old soup.

While I was shaving, the details of last night began to tumble into place like loose hair falling from my comb. I recalled trying to shut out the light at eight o’clock in the morning on a spring day by turning out the switch. The last thing I remembered doing was calling the hospital and finding out that Frank was out of danger: just sleeping off the effects of a bump on the head and a few earlier slugs of whiskey. I must be a decent fellow. I’ll put my name up for the peeper of the year award.

I called the hospital again and asked for him without calling him “Doctor”; I don’t think I could cope with any confusion this early in the day. It took a few minutes, but eventually they put me through.

“Hello, Frank?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s your neighbour, Benny.”

“Oh, it’s you, is it. It was for the love of you that I got this wallop on the back of my head.”

“What happened?”

“I was sitting in my office trying to determine whether to cut my throat or buy and expensive dinner, when I heard a noise coming from your office. I thought it was you returning, Ben, and hoped for a word or two. The door was open. I think I called out your name as I came out of my shop. The door stood wide open, but the room was empty. My last thought before the stars came out and danced a mazurka on my medulla oblongata was wondering where you’d disappeared to.”

“That’s all you remember?”

“Whoever it was must have been standing behind the door. I didn’t see a thing. Wait a minute, I seem to remember hearing something like a whisper, a hiss a second before the whack.”

“How are you feeling? How long are they going to put up with you?”

“I resent that. I think they’re showing signs that I’m going to be turfed out at any moment. When the phone rang just now, the nurses flipped a coin to see whether I shouldn’t be made to take it in the hall. They show no respect.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that you’re feeling better. I’ll drop in to see you later, if they don’t proceed with the eviction. Why not pull rank on them, and demand further bed-rest? Got to go. Be talking to you.”

I was glad I didn’t have Frank’s blood on my hands, even if some got on the carpet.

I walked right by the front door of “Bagels” without looking in. Instead, I slipped into a pedestal seat at the counter of the United and caught the eye of the usual girl. She went through the routine with me. I took it toasted today, in honour of the fact that it was a full week since Myrna Yates had walked up my stairs with her suspicions. My reliable itch told me that Vern Harrington was due for a second visit. And I thought I had something this time to make him hold still.

The tulip buds in the planters by the war memorial were opening as I walked up the steps of City Hall. The girl who watches over the privacy of the alderman jumped up when she saw me coming.

“Was there something?” I asked her, as she placed her frail body between me and Harrington’s door.

“Oh, no,” she said. “You’re not getting by me this time.”

“Miss Keiller, I think you’re making a mistake.”

“Oh, no, I’m not. You’d better go, or I’ll call a commissionaire.” Her words were tough, but she was a cream-puff.

“You’d better call three or four of them. And when they’re here, maybe you’ll all take this note in to Mr. Harrington.” I gave her my friendliest grin. She moved her lower lip in confusion. She had one of those permanent waves that leaves the hair looking wringing wet. Her rouge and the rest of her make-up didn’t go with the pink plastic glasses. She was like a Thunderbird with wooden wheels. She took the note from me, and held it like she thought it contained a jack-in-the-box. I tried to picture Harrington’s face as he opened the envelope and read:

I think you’d better see me for ten minutes because I might think of taking up the practice of the late Dr. Zekerman.

Yrs,

Ben Cooperman

Something in his office fell over. It wasn’t a sharp thud, but a broadloom-blunted one. Harrington was in the doorway, his face paperwhite. He was leaning on the door frame, trapping Miss Keiller inside his office. I could see her under his arm, picking up one of the slender tulip chairs.

“What do you want?” he said, underlining each word because the words didn’t seem to have enough blood in them by themselves.

“Ten minutes,” I said. “Just ten minutes.” He huffed and puffed, and when he was finished I was facing him across his desk. Miss Keiller had cleared out.

“All right: ten minutes.”

“First of all, I want you to know I’m not sore at you for making things tough for me. You slowed me down, but I’m fast and wiry. I know about you and Zekerman. And I still want to know what you know about Chester Yates’ death. Just like last time.”

“You carry a big stick. Ask your questions.”

“You knew Chester for a long time?” He rubbed his nose on his knuckles.

“We were at school, university and for a while in business together. We played golf once a week. Our wives get along.”

“Can you think of any reason why somebody might want to see him dead?”

“You mean murdered. No. Chester had no enemies. Can’t name one. Not in private life or business. I know that in business it’s natural to collect enemies, but not Chester. That wasn’t his way. He was, well, didn’t like leaving blood on the floor.”

“Was he depressed near the end?”

“Well, he shot himself, didn’t he? That ought to prove something.”

“Not in a court of law, Mr. Harrington. That’s reasoning from effects to causes. Did he seem depressed to you?”

“No, not if you put it that way.”

“No sign of business stress, or personal trouble?”

“Not that I saw, but he could have been …”

“Yes?”

“I was going to say that he could have hidden it. But that wouldn’t be Chester. Chester couldn’t dissemble. It was beyond him. A bad poker player was Chester.”

“You knew that he was one of Zekerman’s regulars too?” Harrington’s eyes widened. If I’d crowned him with one of his testimonials, gilt-frame and all, his reaction would have been less telling.

“The poor bugger,” he said simply.

“Zekerman bite?”

“That goddamned blackmailer could have driven him to suicide. God knows I’ve thought about it often enough myself.” I tried not to let my delight show in my face. “Zekerman didn’t have patients, he only had suckers he bled. I’ve been on his hook for four years. Jeeze, I didn’t know Chester was on the end of his gaff too. Slimy son of a bitch.”

“How do you know that he only treated suckers? What makes you so sure there were others?”

“I didn’t need to read it in a book. He made me crawl to see him with my money every month. We’d go through the motions of sitting in his big leather chairs and he would ask me questions about myself, and about how I felt about paying him the money, and how that by paying I was atoning in a measure for … for what he knew about what I’d done. I didn’t think for a minute that I was his only sucker. He had to have others, and he knew just how hard to squeeze them.”

“He must have squeezed too hard a few days ago.”

“Blackmail’s a dirty game. If you’re going into Zekerman’s practice, you’ll never know when you’re squeezing your last sucker. It’s over that fast.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

“You have no idea how glad I am that that … filth is dead. If I had more nerve, I’d have done it myself.”

“Did Zekerman ever ask you about Chester?”

“Zekerman made me stay and talk the full fifty minutes. He asked about city politics.”

“Did he know about C2?”

“Core Two? Yes he knew about that. But I didn’t tell him about it.”

“Who else would know about Core Two?”

“It’s a short list: me, the mayor, and, of course, Bill Ward.”

“Of course.” I had most of my ten minutes’ worth, but before I left, I thought I’d better try one more shot. “Tell me a little more about Core Two.” He looked a little surprised, as though I was skipping the hard questions and giving him another easy one.

“Well, it’s common knowledge that we have been examining plans for a satellite business centre and city hall branch on the other side of the creek someplace. The actual location, and the details of the project are still highly confidential, for reasons that are obvious.”

“Chester was in on it?”

“Certainly not. He was in a position to make a pile. It would have been most improper for him to have known anything about it.”

“I see. Can you imagine how Zekerman found out?”

“Nothing that man did would surprise me. He was the incarnation of evil, that man.”

“You mentioned it.” Harrington was holding on hard to the edge of his desk, like he was at a political rally. I had to bring him down from the heights somehow. “Look, Mr. Harrington, I know that Zekerman had you in his vise. I think I know how tight he could turn it. But I don’t care about that. I’m only concerned with finding out who killed Chester. I’m not trying to solve the problems of the world, I just want to find one murderer. That’s all.” That said it plain. I was still interested in what Zekerman had on him, but he didn’t need to know that. And I knew that when I found it, it might only be sensational and not important. When I left Harrington standing there, it looked like he was trying to see whether he could hold his breath for a full minute. It didn’t look as though he was going to make it.

As I started walking down Church Street, I saw my face reflected in a store window. There was a big grin on my kisser, and I felt as good about life as someone opening up a new bar of soap for a hot bath.