No Cure for Death (6 page)

“You sure you don’t mind?”

“Not at all. This is
my
hang-up, not yours.”

“I can probably help you out later on.”

“Sure. When I uncover a vast Communist conspiracy behind all this, I’ll just about have to send for the Marines, won’t I?”

He grinned. “That’s Army, kid. Keep it straight.”

I grinned back and started peeling away the wrapper from the second hamburger. “Suzie Blanchard, huh?”

“Man does not live by french fry alone,” John said, biting into one.

Down the right half of the hall, on the left side, was the college office, and beyond the glass wall of the outer office all the typewriters were covered and desks cleared and employees gone, except for Jack Masters, of course, who was in one of the inner offices with the door open, talking on his phone. It was Thanksgiving vacation and the community college was otherwise empty.

I took the seat across the desk from Jack and sat watching him bark at the superintendent over his phone.

It reminded me of the day a couple months back when our conservative, near-elderly dean was showing a bunch of guys from the North Central accrediting board around the school, and when they went into Jack’s office, he was wearing a Hamm’s Beer sweat shirt and smoking a cigar, his feet on his desk. The dean blew what of his lid was left after many such confrontations with Jack, but the North Central boys said nothing, sensing the rapport Jack had built with the two young men he was in the process of counseling.

Jack is five-eight, and near as wide as he is tall, though he isn’t fat. He’s chunky, and he’s got a paunch, but he isn’t fat. His age is indeterminate: he could be forty, he could be fifty. He looks more like a truck driver than a Dean of Admissions of a college, and he’s black.

Jack was a token black who backfired profoundly on his employers. Besides championing liberal causes and pushing his own and other minorities’ down the throats of an unwilling school board, Jack didn’t play by the unspoken rules. For instance, there was the case of the woman he was living with—a white woman. She had an apartment downtown over one of Port City’s many taverns, and unofficial word came from the school board that the Dean of Admissions shouldn’t be seen coming in and out of the apartment of such a woman (“such” being a euphemism for “white,” one supposes). Jack said, well, fine, then he’d be glad to marry the gal and make it legal. No further criticism of the Dean of Admissions’s love life was heard.

I watched as he hung up the phone. He spotted me waiting and grinned and waved me in.

“You got a minute, Jack?”

“Sure, Mallory, sure.” He gestured to the chair opposite his desk. He didn’t have his Hamm’s shirt on this time, just an off-white sport shirt.

I sat down. “Been going a few rounds with the superintendent?”

“Naturally.” He offered me a cigarette and I declined while he lit one up. “From major issues to minor. Like, he thinks the Ag boys should be excused from the Humanities, but I think they need a history course, not just history of the plow, and a literature course, not just ‘How to Read a Harvester Manual.’ And then there’s that black kid from Moline he wants expelled, just because the kid called his gym instructor a mother.”

I laughed. “Sounds like a term of endearment to me.”

He shook his head, smiled. Slapped his desk. “Well, what can I do for you, Mallory? You don’t need
counseling,
for Christ’s sake.”

“I need some information. And it’s nothing to do with school.”

“What is it, then?”

It was something like the hundredth time I’d gone through the story, but if it seemed stale to me, it didn’t to Jack: he leaned forward, intense interest on his walnut-stained face.

When I finished, Jack leaned back and said, “So what now? What’re you going to do? Investigate? You’re no detective.”

“I know that. But all I’m going to do is ask some questions, do a little research. If I can come up with anything really concrete, I’ll turn it over to Brennan.”

“Why not leave it to him
now?
”

“I didn’t think you thought much of Brennan, Jack.”

“I don’t. But in the context of this town, he’s a pretty good man. Port City’s sheriff has to be a little lazy and a little corrupt if he’s going to be an accurate reflection of his town. But when the need arises, Brennan pulls himself up to it.”

I nodded. “Well, then, you can see why I’m going to have to come up with something solid, something Brennan can’t ignore, if I’m to possibly get him up off his can.”

Jack shrugged. “All well and good, but I still can’t give you my approval of what you’re up to.”

“I don’t want your approval. Just some help. And I think you know in what way you can help me.”

“Sure. The big black guy with one eye you tangled with.”

“Do you know him?”

“Maybe. I’ll go even so far as to say probably. After all, there can’t be too many six-four, one-eyed blacks around these parts. But it surprises me to hear of this, for two reasons. First, I haven’t seen him around in maybe a year. And second, he was an okay guy, I’d almost say he was a gentleman.”

“Take my word for it, he wasn’t gentle. How do you know him? You know his name?”

“His name is Washington. I don’t know if it’s his first or last. I’ve heard him called Eyewash, by his close friends. I used to run into him up in the Quad Cities, Davenport mostly, in any of three or four bars, bars catering to blacks, or to blacks and whites who wish to mix.”

“You still hit those clubs?”

“Once in a while. Since they moved me up from Sociology prof to desk jockey, I’ve had more responsibility on my hands than free time. I still make the rounds of the bars once a month or so, and I haven’t run into Washington in a year at least.”

“In spite of that, it does sound like the same guy.”

“Probably is. But if he’s moved from the Cities to somewhere else, it isn’t Port City, or we’d both know about it. He isn’t the kind of guy you don’t notice.”

“Anything else you can think of about him?”

“Yeah, he’s got a sister. I’m not talking soul sister, either, an honest-to-God blood sister. Rita, her name is. Very nice.”

“That so?”

“Pretty thing. Younger than her brother. ’Round twenty-five or so. I’ve seen her around some.”

“Lately?”

“Yeah, last time I was up there. She’s still around.”

“Maybe I can track her down and find Washington through her.”

“Could be.”

“How’d he lose the eye? He ever mention it?”

“I hear he lost it in a gang fight, when he was a kid. He came from Chicago originally. South Side.”

“Thought you said he was gentle.”

“Far as I know, he is. Always nice to the ladies. Saw him back down from a few fights, too. Big guy like him always has challengers, you know, and he’d just ignore any flack.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“I got no idea. He dressed well, but most of the brothers—all but me, anyway—dress to the teeth.” He got out a piece of paper and scribbled down several lines. “Here’s the names and addresses of a couple clubs you can try, to run down his sister. But Mallory...”

“Yes, Jack?”

“Watch your lily-white ass.”

I grinned. “At all times.”

He leaned back again, stabbing out his cigarette in a tray. “You know, though... if I were you I’d try a safer approach.”

“Such as?”

“Explore that Norman character. Both the old man and the son. Check it out before you go any further and see if it’s just a coincidence, this Colorado Hill thing.”

“I might just do that.”

“It ought to be fun, researching the old man. Simon Harrison Norman. Hell of a character.”

“Oh?”

“Sure, hell, didn’t you ever hear about how he raised his fortune?”

“Something to do with patent medicine, wasn’t it?”

“I’ll say! It’s one of Port City’s few lasting claims to fame. Sy Norman, back in the thirties, was the country’s leading cancer quack. Sold mineral water in a bottle as a cancer cure. Made a pile. Rumor has it he’s a silent partner back of the five major industries in this town. Look it all up. It’ll be good reading, if nothing else.”

I was hunched over, staring into the microfilm viewer at the city library, turning the crank that caused day after day of
Port City Journal
s to glide across my vision. I’d started with January three years past, had gone through the first roll, which took me to April, and was now on the second, just into May. I was half-hypnotized by the filmed pages as they swam across my path of sight, but was shaken awake by a screaming headline: SENATOR NORMAN DIES IN CRASH. A smaller, unintentionally ambiguous headline above said WIFE AND CHILD CRITICAL.

A studio photograph of Norman, his wife and daughter, taken only a month before, was on one side of the single column story that ran down the center of the page. On the other side was a long shot of the precipice at Colorado Hill where the Norman car had gone over. The picture showed Sheriff Brennan standing at the edge, looking down over the drop-off, much as he’d been last night when John and I approached him.

According to the
Journal
account, the Norman family had been on the way home after spending an evening with friends in Davenport. The night had been a particularly dark one, no moon, and the senator apparently had “simply misjudged” the curve at the Hill. The account said the senator had not been speeding, and that the senator had not been drinking. This denial raised the questions it sought to suppress.

I spun the manual control on the machine and eased the next day’s front page into view. Reported there was the death of Norman’s wife, and both Mr. and Mrs. Norman’s obituaries; printing an obituary on the front page is (speaking as an ex-newspaperman) the highest honor a paper can pay a corpse. From Norman’s obit I learned nothing John’s sister Lori hadn’t already told me. I kept turning. Two
Journal
s later I read of the young daughter’s death. Her obit was shortest and saddest.

I got up from the machine and went over to the desk where Brenda Halwin was working. Brenda is a nicely built, pretty blonde, a year ahead of me at the college, four years behind me in age. The sight and company of her could cheer me up after almost anything, and I hoped this would be no exception.

“Finished?” Brenda asked.

“I’m not sure. For right now, maybe. How far back do these microfilmed
Journal
s go?” I’d never gone back past the early forties.

“Very far. Seventy years, I think.”

I thought about asking Brenda what she was doing tonight. I thought about the night two weeks ago when Brenda had been with me at my trailer. I thought about another blonde, almost as pretty, but with roots, and dead.

I said, “I guess you better pull out the thirties drawer for me, Brenda.”

I wasn’t cheered up; it wasn’t like I hadn’t tried to be. I just wasn’t.

Brenda started me with January, 1930, and half an hour later I was beginning January, 1931, and had yet to see the name Simon Harrison Norman in print.

“Reading the old comic strips again, Mr. Mallory?”

I looked up from the machine. It was Miss Simmons, an elderly, attractive lady who’d been head librarian for as long as I could remember. She was the kind of “old maid” who makes it difficult to understand how she got that way; in Miss Simmons’s case, so gossip went, her true love had died in the Great War. Whichever war that was.

“Frankly, Miss Simmons,” I said, “I’m trying to avoid the comics, though I find them and the old movie ads tempting. I’ve got more serious research on my mind.”

“What subject, Mr. Mallory?”

“A local recluse of sorts. Rich recluse. Simon Norman.”

“Ah, Mr. Norman.” She smiled a small, mysterious smile, a smile out of a Gothic novel, and said, “Quite a personality, our Mr. Norman. But you won’t find much of him in the pages of the
Port City Journal.
”

“Oh?”

“That is, outside of, perhaps, a scathing editorial or two.”

“Why’s that?”

“Mr. Norman was competition. He was publisher and editor of his
own
daily newspaper, the
Midwest Clarion,
which gave the
Journal
a run for the money. The
Journal
saw fit to exclude coverage of Mr. Norman in their pages.”

“No kidding,” I said. I looked at the microfilm machine and the box of spools beside it. “But it does present a problem for me.”

“Yes, of course. And for a long time now, Mr. Norman has displayed a distinct dislike for publicity, so recent write-ups are few and far between. You could check the
Reader’s Guide
for national coverage, but our magazine collection of the thirties is quite limited.”

“You wouldn’t have microfilm files on the
Clarion?
”

“No. None have survived to be filmed.”

“And nothing on him in recent years? What about during his son’s political campaigns?”

“Well, there were some attempts to smear the Norman boy by dredging up his father’s misdeeds. But such reports would hardly be objective. Besides, most of the newspapers in the state—the
Journal
and the
Register
included—supported young Norman and declined giving detailed accounts of the speeches that included such smears.”

“Well.”

“You seem disturbed, Mr. Mallory. More disturbed than problems with a research paper might warrant.”

“This isn’t a research paper I’m working on. This is something more important than that.”

She thought for a moment, then said, “I think I can help you.” She turned away and disappeared into her office.

Five minutes later, while I was standing flirting with Brenda, Miss Simmons came up to us, gave her employee a sharp look that was mostly pretense, and handed me a small, square magazine. The magazine was marked with a white shard of paper.

“If you can tear yourself away from Miss Halwin,” Miss Simmons said, “and rekindle your enthusiasm for research, this should prove sufficient.”

I did, and it did.

The magazine was called the
Periodical of Iowa History,
was dated four years ago, and in an article called “Port City’s Millionaire Cancer Quack” had this to say: