A Hideous Beauty (19 page)

R
ICKY
“D
OC
” P
ALMER

Ricky Michael Palmer, 65, a Shelby resident and former Lewistown physician, died late Friday afternoon, October 26, in the Marias Care Center from injuries sustained in a single vehicle accident. Graveside services will be held Tuesday, Oct. 30, at Mount Calvary Cemetery. Visitation is Monday, Oct. 29, in Twin Oaks Chapel. The Twin Oaks Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

Just as I had been preparing to fly to Montana to interview Doc Palmer for the book, this newspaper clipping was handed to me.

Palmer and the president had been in the same platoon in
Vietnam. After the war, Palmer was the president's personal physician, retiring at the conclusion of the first term.

In some ways, selfishly I suppose, the news came as a relief. The deadline for my book was fast approaching and I really didn't have time to squeeze in a trip to Montana. I'd interviewed a host of other survivors in the president's platoon and had more than enough information and quotes to write the chapter which culminated in the presentation of a Distinguished Service Cross.

It was Ingraham who made me want to interview Palmer when he called me into his office to tell me I was wasting my time, and then again when he summoned me after learning I was going to Montana despite his advice.

I don't like people telling me how to do my job. Besides, I wanted this book to be my best writing. How often does a man get an opportunity like this one? And I didn't want some moldy old history professor at Yale or Harvard using me as an example in his lectures as a historian who publishes prematurely with incomplete research.

Two days later Ingraham slaps the obituary notice on my desk. He didn't send it by messenger. It was important enough to him to deliver the coup de grâce himself.

That pretty much settled it. I mean, what kind of person would I be to suspect the president's chief of staff of such duplicity that he would manufacture a phony obituary notice just to win an argument with a nobody freelance writer?

So I didn't bother calling to confirm Palmer's death.

At least for an hour.

Both the
Shelby Reporter
and Twin Oaks Funeral Home confirmed the obituary notice. Apparently Palmer flipped his truck on Interstate 15. They estimated he was traveling over a hundred miles per hour. Alcohol—Palmer's lifelong personal demon—contributed to the accident.

Which brings me back to the president's pajama party. Why would he think that Doc Palmer would be a better frame than me if Palmer was dead?

With more than an hour to drive, I shifted the inflatable doughnut to a more comfortable position. Maybe all that would come of this trip would be a visit to Doc Palmer's grave. But I had to see for myself. I still had Palmer's home address. I figured I'd start there and work my way to the grave.

I stepped out of the car into a dust cloud of my own making. If my directions were correct, this was the Palmer place. If I'd taken a wrong turn, this was probably Idaho, because there weren't many turns and the roads were long.

The house and barn had seen better days. Both showed evidence of being punished by strong winds and extreme temperatures. The barn had once been red. Now, it was weathered gray with red streaks.

“Hello?” I shouted.

The double barn doors gaped wide open. There was no sign of life anywhere. Same with the house. While the door was closed it looked like it had been dead for over a year.

“Just like its owner,” I muttered.

I decided to try the house first. All three porch steps groaned when I stepped on them. Or was that me groaning? It had been a long trip. The paint on the screen door, what was left of it, was peeling. The screen was torn at the corner.

I knocked.

“Hello?” I called. “Anyone home?”

With no answer I turned to the barn, but my chances of finding
anyone there looked remote. This place was deserted. I'd made the trip for nothing.

Halfway to the barn a voice stopped me. “Hold it right there!”

I turned to see a man with a gun rounding the house. A faded red ball cap was pulled down tight, trimmed around the edges with ragged gray hair. His flannel shirt was wrinkled and his overalls were worn and dirty. He advanced until he was close enough to kill me without aiming.

I displayed empty hands. “I mean you no harm.”

“That's the difference between us, then,” he spat. “I mean you plenty of harm unless you jump in that car and go back to wherever you came from.”

A huge black hole at the business end of a shotgun punctuated his point. For reasons unknown—other than that I have a tendency to see the ridiculous side of danger—I imagined myself getting a load of buckshot in the backside. My only hope was that it would hit the left cheek to balance the dog bite on the right and my limp would then be even.

Offering my friendliest smile to the man, I said, “There's no need to—”

BLAM!

Shotgun thunder rent the air. With a practiced motion he pumped the next round into the chamber and leveled the sights at my chest.

“All right!” I shouted. “All right! I'm going!”

I began working my way around the front of the car.

“It's just that I came all the way from Washington, D.C., to—”

BLAM!

Another round scattered the air. He reloaded and took two threatening steps toward me.

“I'm going! I'm going!”

Only for some reason I seemed to have forgotten how to open a car door. I clawed repeatedly at the latch but for some reason the combination of what to push and what to pull had suddenly become a mystery to me.

“What's your name?” the man barked.

Oh . . . great . . . not only couldn't I remember how to open a door, I couldn't remember my name. “Um . . . um . . . it's, um . . .”

Give me a second here, will you, buddy? Do you know how embarrassing it would be to die because you couldn't remember your own name?

“I . . . um . . . ah . . . Ah! . . . Austin. Grrrr . . . Grrrant Austin.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Actually, I don't work for—”

“WHO DO YOU WORK FOR?” he shouted.

“I'm a writer! Freelance! I wrote a book about the president.”

His brow furrowed as he chewed on that.

“Step around the car,” he said. He motioned in the direction he wanted me to go with the barrel of the shotgun.

I did as he instructed. I stepped around the front of the car until nothing was between me and the shotgun.

“Take your shoes off,” he ordered.

“My shoes? What do my shoes—”

BLAM!

Bending over, I pulled off my shoes without unlacing them.

“Socks too.”

The socks flew off.

He blinked hard several times to focus on my feet with eyes so bloodshot I couldn't see any white in them. His tongue worked the inside of a cheek that was rough with salt-and-
pepper whiskers. He tilted his head to get a better look at my feet. Then he leaned over even farther.

Do you know how hard it is not to wiggle your toes when someone is looking at your feet? He leaned so far it must have made him dizzy. He stumbled sideways, but caught himself. “Shuffle them in the dirt,” he said.

I started to object, then figured the fewer times he pulled the trigger on the shotgun the better my chances of leaving here alive. I shuffled my feet in the dirt.

“Let me see the bottom of one,” he said.

I lifted my right foot and showed him the bottom.

He nodded and seemed to relax a little, but he didn't lower the shotgun. “Austin, you say.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You're the idiot they paid to write all them lies about Douglas. Or maybe you were duped. You don't look like the mercenary type to me.”

“I researched the book thoroughly,” I insisted.

“Did you now? You wrote what they wanted you to write and that makes you a liar, only worse, since you sugarcoat the lies so nice that people smile when they swallow them.”

“Listen,” I said, my ire rising. “Just because you hold a weapon doesn't make you right. Who are you to pass judgment on what I wrote, or upon me for why I wrote it?”

He shook his head. “For being a high-priced writer, you're not too smart, are you? Just what did you expect to find out here?”

“The truth.”

“And if you find the truth, will you be able to die happy?”

I never liked those Siamese-twin questions where it's assumed two queries are linked at the hip. Since I didn't have an answer for it, I kept my mouth shut.

“Just as well,” he said. “You'll find no truth here, only more lies.”

The only pictures I'd seen of Doc Palmer were of him when he was young and in the army. This man looked like he could be Doc Palmer's father, or the way a young Doc Palmer might look when he got old.

“Some very powerful men don't want me to find the truth about Doc Palmer,” I said.

The old man sniffed. “Go back to where you came from, kid. Doc Palmer is dead.”

“It's not that easy. The same men who don't want me learning the truth about Doc Palmer are attempting to frame me in an attempt to assassinate the president.”

That got his attention. “What the blue blazes are you talking about?”

“Do you have a copy of my book?”

He scowled at me.

“It's easier to show you if you do,” I explained.

I must have piqued his curiosity, for he marched me behind the barn to the lip of a garbage pit.

“I think it's in this end,” he said.

The scent of rotten milk and meats and vegetables stirred in an unholy stew of odors. I waited for him to reach for a rake or a pole or something to aid the search.

“Jump in,” he said.

“What?”

“You're the one who wants to find it, remember? I'm the one who threw it there.”

There was a three-foot drop into banana peels, eggshells, coffee grounds, and what looked like some kind of ledger paper saturated with salad oil.

He motioned with the gun for me to jump.

I picked my spot carefully. My feet hit a large piece of cardboard, then slid from under me. I went down hard, the corner of a milk carton jabbing me in the back. Scrambling to right myself, I stuck my foot in a mess of coffee grounds.

“Try over there,” he said from above, oblivious to my discomfort.

Luckily, I managed to find my book in short order beneath a flattened Wheaties cereal box. The cover had cottage cheese on it. I brushed the curds off.

“Toss it up,” he ordered.

I tossed him the book and began searching for a foothold to climb out.

“You stay down there,” he said.

“I'm not staying down here! You'll have to shoot me.”

He repositioned the shotgun so that it was pointed at my head. “Don't tempt me,” he said. “This way I can look at what you want to show me and keep an eye on you at the same time.”

I looked around and was tempted to pelt him with a fuzzy blue stalk of celery. Instead, I said, “First chapter, first word.”

Tucking the shotgun under his arm, he pulled a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket, then opened the book to the first chapter. He began to read aloud.

“No . . . just the first word,” I said, trying to find a place to stand where something wasn't squishing up between my toes. “Now . . . second chapter, second word . . .”

With the third chapter he caught on to the scheme. I let him continue on his own for a while, offering only, “It ends at the thirteenth chapter.”

After reading the thirteenth word, he closed the book and laughed. “If that don't beat all. And you had no idea they'd done this to you with your own book?”

“Go ahead, rub it in.”

“What did you do to deserve this . . . mess with someone's daughter? Oooeeee. They really did a job on you, didn't they?”

He reached down, offering me a hand.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Call me Doc.”

CHAPTER
15

W
ith the shotgun harmlessly at rest on his forearm, Doc Palmer walked me back to my car. I did a little jig as we walked, trying to shake the coffee grounds off my feet. “Doc, is there some place I can . . .”

He groaned loudly. “I'm getting too old for this kind of thing. I gotta sit down.”

I thought he was going to take me inside the house. Instead, he slumped onto the front bumper of my rental car. He propped the shotgun beside him, pulled out a handkerchief, doffed his cap, and proceeded to mop his forehead. As he did, he chuckled again, still amused at how I'd been set up with my own book. “They're clever. Yessiree . . . you gotta give them their due.”

The coffee grounds wouldn't come off. I tried wiping one foot clean with the other. “Doc, is there a—”

“You know,” he mused, “I've always wondered if things would be different had Noonan survived. What do you think? Can one man change history?”