The Collected Ed Gorman Volume 2 - Moving Coffin

by Ed Gorman

  “I told you. That’s crazy. Nobody married to you should even look at anybody else.”

  She smiled. “Maybe I should’ve married you, Favor.”

  “Yeah, right. What a prize I am.”

  He wanted her to go on a little more, you know, kind of extol the hell out of all his virtues, but she didn’t. “I haven’t been much company since Dad died.”

  “I was sorry to hear about it. I would’ve been there but I was working in Chicago.”

  “That’s all right. We just had a small family funeral. Dad wanted to be cremated. He hated big funerals.” Her blue blue eyes were damp. “Things were kind of rough for him the last couple of years. All the foreign competition. Profits were way down. He didn’t blame David. My two brothers did, of course. They’ve always thought that they should be in charge of the company. He got so sick, the cancer and everything, he had to turn it all over to David. Actually, after the chemo didn’t do any good, I expected he’d die right away. But he hung on for almost a year.”

  “He was a good man.”

  “He always liked you and your father very much. He never forgot where he came from. The west side, I mean.”

  Her lower lip began to tremble. He wanted to take her in his arms, hold her, comfort her, make her forever grateful for his remarkable powers of succoring. “How’s the business doing now?” he said, trying to forestall her tears.

  “Much better.”

  “Oh?”

  She sipped wine, then nodded with that gorgeous head of hers.

  “We were way overextended,” she said. “The bank was even calling in some of our biggest notes. Then, thank God, right after Dad died, David met Mr. Vasquez.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “A very rich Argentinean. David’s broker knew him. And he brought them together.”

  “Vasquez bought in?”

  She shrugged. “You know me. I don’t know much about business. And really have no interest in it. I’m really more artistic than anything.”

  “Right. Your painting.”

  “It’s still the center of my life.”

  She was a terrible painter. Fortunately, she chose the representational mode to paint in. If she did abstract art, Favor wouldn’t have been able to tell if she was any good or not. If he found a bunch of paintings by Picasso in his garage, he’d be inclined to throw them away.

  “So the company’s doing well again?”

  “Yes. As I said, I just wish Dad were alive to see it. He spent his whole life building that company. And at the end—” Her eyes were moist again. “I’m sorry.”

  “No problem. I cry sometimes myself.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Somehow I can’t imagine that. You crying, I mean.”

  Favor wasn’t sure how to take that. Was she saying that he lacked the sensitivity to cry? Or was she saying that he was too macho to cry? Either way, he wasn’t sure she’d paid him a compliment.

  “The only time I ever saw David cry,” she said, “was when my father got on him one night and blamed him for the business going downhill.”

  “I thought you said your father didn’t blame him.”

  “Just that one time.”

  “Oh.”

  “It really got to David.”

  “I imagine.”

  “Took away all his pride. So he went into the den and I knocked but he wouldn’t let me in. And then I heard him crying. It was a terrible sound.” More wine. “I just don’t know what any of this has to do with that man in the red Mustang.”

  “Neither do I. But I’m going to try and find out.”

  She reached over and put her hand on his. He felt as if he were going into cardiac arrest.

  “I really appreciate this, Favor. And I want to pay you for it.”

  “No way.”

  She gave his hand a cute little squeeze. “Maybe I really should have married you, Favor.” And for one brief moment he had this wonderful thought: what if he really got something on her husband, and she really did decide to take up with Favor? What if…

  Sitting in a car and doing surveillance allowed you certain liberties. You could pick your nose, scratch your butt, belch, pass gas, and dig the green stuff out of the corners of your eyes. While his thoughts of Princess Jane were mostly ethereal, every once in awhile thoughts of her got him right in the old libido. He kept seeing the swell of her small but perfect breasts, and smelling the erotic scent of her perfume.

  This was five hours after leaving her at the restaurant. He’d started following Sam Evans right after dinner. While he waited, Favor picked up his cell phone and called a private number at the credit bureau.

  “Hey, Favor.”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “We got one of those deals?”

  “Oh, that identifies the caller?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I should get one of those. So what’d you find out about Sam Evans.”

  Paulie Daye worked at the local credit bureau. At night, from his apartment, he hacked into the bureau’s computers and sold information to a variety of people.

  “Well, he paid off all his bills. Had about ten different creditors really on his ass. Had a whole bunch of stuff—stereo, shit like that— repossessed in fact.”

  “Any idea where the money came from?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “When did it start showing up?”

  “Eight, nine months ago. Paid everything up to date in two days.”

  “Cash or checks?”

  “What’m I, a mind-reader?”

  “He buy a lot of new stuff?”

  “A lot. Bought himself a condo, for one thing, and a new Mustang, and about five thousand dollars worth of clothes.”

  “Man, what a waste.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, he ain’t exactly a male model.”

  “And he took two vacations.”

  “To where?”

  “San Juan and Paris.”

  “Wow. Sounds like Mr. Evans is doing all right for himself.”

  “He shaking somebody down?”

  “Probably.”

  “Figures. No male nurse makes this kind’ve change.”

  “I need to see his checks for the past ten months. That possible?”

  “You looking for anything special?”

  “I’ll know it when I see it.”

  “Cost you five big ones.”

  “Done.”

  “Take me till about this time tomorrow. I got a friend at his bank can help me, but not till right after work.”

  Just then, Sam Evans came out of Cock A Doodle Do Night Club and got into his red Mustang.

  “Gotta go,” Favor said.

  Turned out Sam Evans was a real XXX-freak.

  He hit, in the next two hours, Club Syn, Lap-Dance-A-Looza, Your Place Or Mine, and The Slit Skirt. He stayed about the same time in each one, forty, forty-five minutes, and then jumped back in his red Mustang and hauled ass down the road. At the last one, he emerged about midnight with a bottle blonde with balloon boobs and a giggle that could shatter glass. He shagged on back to the condo. And ten minutes after crossing the threshold, killed the lights.

  Through the open window on the second floor, the blonde’s giggle floated down. A waste of a whole night. Didn’t learn one damned useful thing about Sam Evans.

  “I got the print-outs,” Paulie said nineteen hours later. “You want me to fax them?”

  “Yeah,” Favor said.

  “Sounds like a pretty boring evening to me. Going through all these check print-outs.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll be naked while I’m doing it.”

  “Careful, you can get arrested for stuff like that, Favor.”

  “Don’t remind me. I used to work vice.”

  Couple hours later, Favor was seriously thinking about getting naked. Anything to break the monotony of poring over and over the printouts of where Sam Evans had written the checks, and in what amount. Th
ere was a Cubs game on. Every time the crowd groaned, he looked up to see a Cub player looking embarrassed. Cub fans didn’t cheer, they sighed.

  He went through the lists six times before he saw that there was only one really interesting name on the whole printout: nine months ago, Sam Evans had spent $61.00 at Zenith Pharmacy. Favor wondered why a male nurse who worked for a hospital that had its own pharmacy would spend money at another pharmacy. Maybe it was as simple as the fact that the hospital pharmacy didn’t stock certain things. Maybe. The Cubs lost a close one, 14-3, and then Favor went to bed.

  “Good morning.”

  “Accounting please.”

  “Thank you.”

  This was the next morning in Favor’s combination apartment office. Favor was gagging down a cup of instant coffee while Mr. Coffee took his good sweet time about making the first real cup of the day, the sonofabitch.

  “Hello. This is Ruth.”

  “Hi, Ruth. My name’s Bob Powell and I’m a tax accountant. I’ve got a client named Sam Evans and we’re filing a late return this year. But Sam isn’t exactly great at keeping receipts. He’s got a canceled check here written to Zenith and I wondered if you could tell me what he bought that day.”

  “I can help you if he’s got an account here. Sam Evans?”

  “Right.”

  “Thank you.”

  She went away and then she came back. “The check paid the balance of his old account.”

  “I see. Do you have a list of what the check paid for?”

  “The specific items?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s see here. Two hypodermic needles. Looks like the large ones with very fine points. And a bottle of insulin.”

  The accountant Bob Powell wrote down everything she said. “Well, that’s about all I need, I guess.”

  “He in trouble?”

  “Trouble?”

  “You know, the IRS.”

  “Oh. No, not really. Just a late file. A lot of people do that.”

  “We got audited once, my husband and I, I mean, and it was terrible.”

  “I bet. Well, listen Ruth, thanks a lot.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m not sure there was an autopsy,” Jane Carson said on the phone half an hour later.

  “He died of what?”

  “A heart attack.”

  “Did he have a history of heart problems?”

  “No.”

  “Did he see a doctor within two weeks of his death for heart problems?”

  “No.”

  “Then there was an autopsy. Had to be. Legally.”

  “God, how’d you ever learn all this stuff, Favor?”

  “I just picked it up.”

  “I keep wanting to ask him about that male nurse.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “No, I won’t. But it’s tempting.” Then: “Why did you want to know about an autopsy?”

  Princess Jane had one of those circuitous conversational styles. You never knew when she was going to circle back to the original topic.

  “Because a week before your father died, Sam Evans bought some insulin at a medical supply house.”

  “Insulin? You mean for diabetes?”

  He didn’t want to share his suspicions with her just yet. “I’m not sure why he bought it,” Favor said. “It may not have anything to do with this at all.”

  “How will you find out?”

  “Talk to the medical examiner.”

  “He a friend of yours?”

  “More or less.”

  She laughed. “You don’t sound real thrilled about him.”

  “He borrowed fifty bucks from me two Christmases ago and never paid me back.”

  “Why don’t you ask him for it?”

  “Because if I asked him, he might get mad, and if he got mad then he wouldn’t help me anymore.”

  “Maybe he was drunk and forgot about it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then just figure out some subtle way to ask him, if it really bothers you, I mean.”

  “We’ll see. I’ll check in with you after I talk to him.”

  “I just can’t figure out,” Princess Jane said, “why David’d pay off a male nurse.”

  “I think,” Favor said, “we’re about to find out.”

  Bryce Lenihan, MD, it said. He was fat, bald with a little cherub Irish face. The shoulders of his dark suit coats were invariably snowy with dandruff and his teeth were invariably clogged with bits of his most recent meal. He had been medical examiner for twelve years, as long as Mayor O’Toole had been mayor. O’Toole was his uncle. You figure it out.

  Favor decided now was the time to give Lenihan the Big Hint.

  “You like my tie, Lenihan?”

  “Your tie?”

  “Yeah. This one.” He waggled the tie at him the way a big dog waggles his tongue at you.

  “Yeah, I mean it’s nice and all.”

  “Guy owed me fifty bucks for so long, I figured he’d forgotten about it. And then I open my mailbox the other day, and there’s a nice new fifty in an envelope. Guy said he was just walking down the street and remembered it all of a sudden, after all these years. You ever do that, Lenihan, forget you owe somebody money I mean?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  As if on cue, so he wouldn’t have to pursue the subject any more, Lenihan’s phone rang and he got into this five-minute discussion about spots on a dead guy’s liver, and what the spots did or didn’t signify. Favor didn’t see how anybody could be a doctor.

  After Lenihan hung up, he said, “I gotta go down to the morgue. That’s why I don’t think chicks should be doctors. Dizzy bitch can’t ever figure things out for herself, my assistant I mean. So what can I do for you, Favor, and make it fast.”

  Favor knew he could forget all about his fifty bucks. Probably forever.

  “I got three things I’m trying to put together here,” he said. “First I got a guy who had a heart attack with no history of heart attacks.”

  “Which doesn’t mean diddly. Lots of guys with no history of heart trouble die from heart attacks.”

  “Two, I’ve got a male nurse who may or may not be involved in this whole thing. And three—”

  The phone rang again.

  “Yeah?” Lenihan said, after snapping up the receiver. Then: “Then let him do his own fucking autopsy, he’s so god-damned smart. I say the guy suffocated and if he doesn’t like it, tell him to put it up his ass.”

  Lenihan slammed the phone. “Lawyers.”

  He glanced at his watch. Would Favor be able to finish his question?

  “I gotta haul ass, Favor,” Lenihan said, standing up. He did what he usually did when he stood up, whisked dandruff off his shoulders with his fingers.

  “Number three is, four days before this guy has a heart attack, the male nurse buys two large syringes with fine points—”

  “—probably 60ccs—”

  “And some insulin—” That’s when the first knock came. “And I’d like to find out,” Favor said, “if there’s a connection between these things.”

  Lenihan looked as if he were about to say something to Favor when the second knock came. “Yeah?” Lenihan shouted.

  The woman who came through the door literally cowered when she saw Dr. Lenihan. She looked as if he might turn on her and throw her into the wall or something.

  “What the hell is it, Martha?”

  A trembling hand held out a single piece of paper.

  “The lab report you wanted on the Henderson case.”

  He snatched it from her. “Tell them they can kiss my ass. I wanted this early this morning.”

  The woman cowered again, and then quickly left.

  Lenihan probably wasn’t going to win any Boss of the Year awards.

  He was scanning the lab report when Favor said, “So what do you think? Those three things I told you about fit together?”

  When Lenihan looked up, his eyes were glassy. Whatever information
the lab report held, it must be damned engrossing. “Huh?” he said.

  “The male nurse and the syringe and the insulin.”

  “God,” Dr. Bruce Lenihan, MD, said, shooting his cuff and glaring at his wristwatch. “I’m so fucking late I can’t believe it.” Then he said, “I figure a smarty-pants like you woulda been able to figure it out all by your lonesome, Favor.”

  “Figure what out?”

  “The insulin bit. Very old trick. Thing is, it still works eight out of ten times. Last convention I went to, that was one of the big topics on the docket. It’s still a problem. I mean, it doesn’t happen that often, but it’s still a bitch to spot.”

  On the way down in the elevator, Lenihan gave the lowdown on how exactly you killed a guy the way the male nurse had. Lenihan’s last words, just as Favor was saying goodbye, were, “But a really good medical examiner would be able to spot it.” He smiled. “A good one like me.”

  Lenihan had done the autopsy in question, of course, and he hadn’t spotted it at all.

  Favor had kept some of the old burglary picks he’d taken from various thieves back during his city detective days. He got into Sam Evans’ condo with no problem. He went out into the kitchen and found some Jack Daniels black label and fixed himself a drink. Then he went into the living room and parked himself in the recliner. He used the channel zapper and found the cubs game. During a long commercial break, Favor picked up the phone and called Princess Jane.

  “I think I figured it out. What your husband was up to.”

  “Oh, God, Favor, I’m almost afraid to hear.”

  He told her and she started crying almost immediately.

  All the time she cried, he thought, the cops’re going to nail David’s ass, and she’s going to be free. Maybe seventh-grade dreams really do come true. You just have to wait a while. Say twenty or thirty years.

  She kept on sobbing. “I’m sorry, Favor. I’d better go.”

  “Don’t mention any of this to your husband. I’ve got a little plan in mind.”

  He could imagine how she’d feel in his arms right now, the tender slender body against his, the warmth of the tears on her cheeks.

  “Just remember,” Favor said, “you need anything, any time night or day, you’ve got my number.”