Pin (19 page)

“No question.”

“What about Pin?” he asked in a lower voice, as if he didn't want Pin to hear.

“What about him?”

“Does he, or did he, have any profession?”

“He's a retired physician,” I said. I was going to say more, but Ursula appeared.

“Are you sure you won't join us, Leon?” she asked. “I asked Leon to come out with us.”

“Sure, why not? How about it, Leon?”

“No. Thank you, but you two have a lot to discuss. I'm not in the mood to go out tonight. Go ahead, have fun,” I said. “Besides, Pin and I are going to have a game of chess tonight, aren't we, Pin?”

“Yes,” he said. He wouldn't say another word.

Ursula looked at Stan. He looked down and then looked up, pulling his lower lip under his upper lip. He pushed back the hair that had fallen over his forehead and then limped toward the doorway. Ursula stood staring at me.

“See you later then,” she said.

“Maybe. I might go to sleep early.”

“Good night,” Stan called, and they left. I stood by the window and watched them get into his car. He had to hobble along carefully in front of our house. There was some ice there and I hadn't done a thing
to get rid of it. I stood looking out even after they pulled away. I turned around when Pin spoke.

“We've got to plan this out well,” he said. “There's no way to do it and please Ursula at the same time.”

“I don't care about pleasing Ursula, not anymore. She brought all this on herself.”

“This is a whole new role for me,” he went on, talking as though he were merely thinking aloud. “The doctor and I were expert in keeping people alive, not knocking them off.”

“It's a new role for both of us.”

“But it has to be done. I can see that now. It has to be done.”

“How do you propose we go about it?” I pulled a chair alongside of him. His forehead wrinkled in thought, just the way my father's used to when he was considering a diagnosis. I waited patiently.

“We've got to get him alone here, at a time when Ursula is away.”

“Yes. That shouldn't be hard.” We both thought a little more.

“I've got it,” he said. “You call him, maybe tomorrow, and tell him you want to discuss Ursula's finances. Tell him, since their marriage is a certainty now, you feel he should know about all that's in her name. Tell him Ursula doesn't fully understand the responsibilities and he'll have to help her, take over your job. He'll understand and believe that.”

“Of course. Brilliant.”

“Tell him Ursula would be embarrassed to have you discuss it in her presence and you don't want to hurt her feelings. He'll understand that too, and chances are, he won't tell her he's coming over.”

“That's good. Unless he tells his aunt where he's going, no one will probably know.”

“Exactly. Now our story will be that he never came here. You see, even if he does tell someone he's coming, that doesn't prove he actually arrived.”

“But what about his car?” I stood up and paced a bit. “His car will be parked outside in front of the house.” A few moments passed and then Pin thought of something.

“We'll get rid of it, even before we get rid of his body. Take it up to the ski hill and park it in their parking lot, then get a ride down with one of the out-of-towners. That way, there'll be no one available to testify that they drove you back.”

“Hey, you know, you're not too bad for someone who isn't so expert.”

“It's just like chess. You make a move in your mind and then counter it. Think of all the counters possible and then you can move safely.”

“Just one more thing,” I said. “How do you propose we go about the actual extermination?” He liked the use of that word. I could tell. For a moment we looked at each other, dumbfounded. Then the idea came. It came to me almost as fast as it came to him, but I let him take the credit.

“The Jerry Leshner affair,” he said.

I snapped right to attention and smiled. Then I slapped my knee and stood up laughing. I walked across the room with my hand on my forehead. I turned around and looked at him and laughed. He was smiling that smile of self-contentment, so I continued to let him think he thought of it first.

“Jesus,” I said, “and the doctor had the phony leg in his office for months afterward.”

“Months.”

“You'd think that alone would have brought it to mind—I mean, since they have that in common.”

“Yes, you'd think it would have.”

“OK,” I said. “I've had a lot on my mind lately.”

“You're excused,” he said. “But don't let it happen again.” And then he laughed. It had been a long time since I heard him laugh so hard. Both of us just sat there laughing for the longest time. I didn't mind being made the butt of Pin's jokes. Most of the time, that is.

I
HEARD
S
TAN AND
U
RSULA COME HOME THAT NIGHT
. I listened to their low mumbling, Ursula's giggling and her moans of passion. I was awake throughout most of it, lying there looking up into the darkness, comforted by the thought that it would all soon end. I imagined that when they did laugh, they laughed at something that concerned Pin and me. It was Pin's and my conclusion now that Ursula wasn't to be hated and blamed as much as before. She was being victimized and influenced by a force much stronger than her. It was as if she had been attacked by some disease. You might reprimand her for being careless with her health, but your main concern was to be against the disease itself. Pin had referred to the entire plan of extermination as a form of treatment.

“It is as if we are removing an infection,” he said. I liked the way he put it.

“Right, Doc,” I said. We laughed about that too.

We all had breakfast together the next morning. Everyone was happy and polite. Even Pin cracked a few jokes at the table. This was, of course, part of our plan. There Were to be no seeds of suspicion. We were dependent upon the element of surprise. I asked Ursula if she had informed Miss Spartacus of her intentions to get married and therefore leave the library.

“Miss Spartacus is sick. She hasn't been in for a few days. She has a bad case of influenza. I'm planning to tell her when she comes back to work. I don't want her to have any added worries now.”

“Very considerate of you,” I said.

“Stan is going to help me in the library today,” she said, looking over at him. Pin gave me a quick, worried glance.

“All day?” I asked, trying not to sound very interested.

“Up until two o'clock. Then I have to do some errands for my aunt.”

“I see. Well, I think I'm going to do a little shopping myself today. I need a few things.”

“Oh?” Ursula said.

“Yes. I'm going to treat myself to a new pair of shoes. I need some underwear and socks too.”

“Drop into the library if you have a chance,” Ursula said. I looked at her. Never had I dropped into the library.

“It's too quiet over there for me.”

“I know what you mean,” Stan said smiling. “I get so I'm even whispering after I leave the place.”

Stan drove Ursula to work. It was nine o'clock.
That didn't leave Pin and me much time to make preparations. I took a cold shower to stimulate me. I was actually singing, something I hadn't done for years. Pin was happier too. We were both very upbeat.

I put on one of my nicer shirts and pairs of slacks. I spent way more time than usual on my hair, after giving myself a closer than usual shave. My skin was almost as smooth as Pin's. When I finally stood before him, he registered his approval.

“Looking good, Leon, looking good.”

“I feel good,” I said, slapping my hands together. “And I'm anxious to get started.”

I suppose there are those who will say that to use the Jerry Leshner affair as a model upon which to build our own method of extermination was needlessly complex and inefficient. I could understand such a reaction, but for us, the Leshner affair carried a certain medical truth to it. It had been part of our experience, so we knew it well. But, most of all, and this is something we readily admit to be wild rationalization, it made it all seem less like a murder and more like a treatment.

Jerry Leshner had diabetes and he was an alcoholic. Is there any combination more deadly? He was a handyman who passed himself off as a carpenter. He was really supposed to be very good at it, but he was said to be unreliable. As a child, I grew up knowing him as one of the village characters, a drunk who could often be seen staggering home, muttering to himself, giving little kids nickels, sleeping on the bench in front of the movies, urinating in the open behind parked cars or off a little behind a building. He was a short, stout man with a very round face
almost always covered with gray-black stubble. The kids always made up a lot of jokes about him. Although he wasn't married, he lived with a woman named Lillian Deutch. She worked as a chambermaid in the Dew Drop Inn, and she liked to drink just as much as Jerry. My father was treating Jerry for diabetes, but it got worse and worse until gangrene set in in the right leg. It had to be amputated. In those days Pin and I followed my father's cases closely, read his reports and asked him questions. My father was hoping I would develop an interest in medicine and be like him.

Anyway, Jerry Leshner was very careless about taking his insulin. He would often forget or be too drunk to take his shots. My father put him on Protamine Sinc insulin in order to help him cut down on the amount of shots needed per day. Of course, as time went by, the dosages had to be increased, especially because of his consumption of alcohol. He would forget to eat after taking his shots and have bad reactions. When his leg was amputated, he went on disability. Working had kept him sober some of the time. Now he spent more time drinking.

One day Lillian came home from work and found him dead on the kitchen floor. He had injected three times his dosage. She blamed it on my father, telling everyone that my father had prescribed the overdose. Of course, it was a matter that was easy to check. Leshner's treatments were kept on file. Those people who hated my father for one reason or another helped spread Lillian's accusations. A lot of people didn't like my father's objective, impersonal manner. They thought he was coldhearted and indifferent to human suffering. They said he didn't
treat people, he treated cases. My father knew that he had this reputation in some quarters, but he didn't give a damn. He was always of the belief that they needed him more than he needed them. I think a lot of people who came to his and my mother's funeral came to gloat. I know Lillian Deutch was there. She wore this stupid-looking wide-brimmed hat with all different colors of feathers sticking out of the top.

One afternoon my father told Pin and me why he thought Jerry overmedicated. I had been waiting in the lobby to go home with him. The last patient left. He was cleaning up in the office, so I went in and sat on the stool next to Pin. Miss Sansodome asked him a question about Jerry Leshner's file and he started to talk about him.

“That man simply panicked,” he said. “Not that it really made much difference. The way he was going he was bound to expire soon anyway.” My father preferred the word expire to the word die. “He had this terrible fear that every limb of his body would be amputated before his actual death. He saw himself as a basket case. I know just what was going through his mind.”

He paused and sorted out some instruments. I didn't think he was going to talk about Leshner anymore, but Pin nodded and smiled. He knew my father's ways much better than I did. My father turned toward Pin and me and laughed.

“He thought that since insulin counteracted the sugar in the blood and kept him alive, all he would have to do is increase the insulin three-fold and thus insure that no gangrene would set in in any other part of his body. He went berserk. He probably gave
himself a shot every time he had the fear of losing another part of his body.” My father laughed again and turned back to his instruments. My curiosity had been aroused.