You wanted to sound me out. Then you tried to block me."
"You had a reputation as a persistent young man," he said. "Things were piling up."
"Things? Don't you mean bodies?"
"There's no need to be melodramatic." He talked like a Disneyland android: flat, without inflection, devoid of self-doubt.
"I'm not trying to be. It's just that multiple murder still gets to me. The Nemeth boy. Handler. Elena Gutierrez. Morry Bruno. Now, Bonita Quinn and good old Ronnie Lee."
At the mention of the last name he gave a small, but noticeable start.
"Ronnie Lee's death bother you, in particular?"
"I'm not familiar with that name. That's all."
"Ronnie Lee Quinn. Bonita's ex. Melody's father. R.L. A blond fellow, tall, crazy-looking, with a bad left side. Hemiparesis. With McCaffrey's southern accent it may have sounded like he was calling him Earl."
"Ah," he said, pleased that things made sense once again, "Earl. Disgusting fellow. Unwashed. I remember meeting him once or twice."
"Piss-poor protoplasm, right?"
"If you will."
"He was one of McCaffrey's bad guys from Mexico, brought back to do a dirty job or two. Probably wanted to see his kid, so McCaffrey found her and Bonita for him. Then it dawned on him how she could fit in. She was a bright one, Bonita, wasn't she? Probably thought you were Santa Claus when you got her the job managing Minassian's building."
"She was appreciative," said Towle.
"You were doing her a big favor. You set her up so you could have access to Handler's apartment. She's the manager, she gets a master key. Then the next time she's in the office for Melody's checkup, she 'loses' her purse. It's easy to do, the lady's a scatterbrain. She didn't have it together. That's what your office girl told me. Always losing things. Meanwhile you lift the key and McCaffrey's monsters can get in whenever they want--look for tapes, do a little smashing and hacking. No sweat off poor Bonita's back, except when she becomes expendable and ends up as food for next season's zucchini crop. A dull woman. More piss-poor protoplasm."
"It wasn't supposed to happen that way. That wasn't in the plan."
"You know how it is, the best-laid plans and all that."
"You're a sarcastic young man. I hope you aren't that way with your patients."
"Ronnie Lee finishes off Bonita--he may have done it because McCaffrey told him to, or perhaps it was just settling an old score. But now McCaffrey has to get rid of Ronnie Lee, too, because fiend that he is, even he may balk at watching his own daughter die."
"You're very bright, Alex," he said. "But the sarcasm really is an unattractive trait."
"Thanks for the advice. I know you're an expert on bedside manner."
"As a matter of fact, I am. I pride myself on it. Obtain early rapport with the child and family no matter how disparate your background may be from theirs. That's the first step in delivering good care. It's what I instruct the first-year students when I proctor the pediatric section of Introduction to Clinical Medicine."
"Fascinating."
"The students give me excellent ratings on my teaching. I'm an excellent teacher."
I exerted forward pressure with the.38. His silver hair parted but he didn't flinch. I smelled his hair tonic, cloves and lime.
"Start the car and pull it to the side of the road. Just behind that giant eucalyptus."
The Lincoln rumbled and rolled, then stopped.
"Turn off the engine."
"Don't be rude," he said. "There's no need to try to intimidate me."
"Turn it off, Will."
"Doctor Towle."
"Doctor Towle."
"Is it necessary to keep that thing at the back of my head?"
"I'll ask the questions."
"It seems needless--superfluous. This isn't some cheap Western movie."
"It's worse. The blood is real and nobody gets up and walks away when the smoke clears."
"More melodrama. Mellow drama. Strange phrase."
"Stop playing around," I said angrily.
"Playing? Are we playing? I thought only children played. Jump rope, Hopscotch." His voice rose in pitch.
"Grownups play too," I said. "Nasty games."
"Games. Games help the child maintain ego integrity. I read that somewhere--Erikson? Piaget?"
Either Kruger wasn't the only actor in the family or something was happening that I hadn't been prepared for... "Anna Freud," I whispered.
"Yes. Anna. Fine woman. Would have loved to meet her, but both of us so busy... Pity... The ego must maintain integrity. At all costs." He was silent for a minute, then: "These seats need cleaning. I see spots on the leather. They make a good leather cleaner now... I saw it at the car wash."
"Melody Quinn," I said, trying to reel him back in. "We need to save her."
"Melody. Pretty girl. A pretty girl is like a melody. Pretty little child. Almost familiar..."
I talked to him but he kept fading away. Minute by minute he regressed, the rambling growing progressively more incoherent and out of context, so that at his worst, he was emitting word salad. He seemed to be suffering, the aristocratic face crowded with pain. Every few minutes he repeated the phrase, "The ego must maintain integrity," as if it was a catechism.
I needed him to get into La Casa but in his present state he was useless. I started to panic. His hands remained on the steering wheel but they trembled.
"Pills," he said.
"Where?"
"Pocket..."
"Go ahead," I said, not without suspicion, "reach in and get them. The pills and nothing else. Don't take too many."
"No... two pills... recommended dosage... never more... nevermore... quoth the raven... nevermore..."
"Get them."
I kept the gun trained on him. He lowered one hand and drew out a vial not unlike the one that had held Melody's Ritalin. Carefully he shook out two white tablets, closed the vial and put it down.
"Water?" he asked, childlike.
"Take them dry."
"I shall... nuisance."
He swallowed the pills.
Kruger had been right. He was good at adjusting dosages. Within twelve minutes on my watch he was looking and sounding much better. I thought of the strain he underwent each day maintaining himself in the public eye. No doubt talking about the murders had hastened the deterioration.
"Silly of me to miss... the afternoon dose. Never forget."
I observed him with morbid fascination, watching the changes in his speech and behavior as the psychoactive chemicals took hold of his central nervous system, making note of the gradually increasing attention span, the diminishing non sequiturs, the restoration of adult conversational patterns. It was like peering into a microscope and watching a primitive organism mitose into something far more complex.
When the drug was still in its initial stage he said:
"I've done many... bad things. Gus had me do bad things. Very wrong for a... man of my stature. For someone of my breeding."
I let it pass.
Eventually he was lucid. Alert, seemingly undamaged.
"What is it, Thorazine?" I asked him.
"A variant. I've managed my own pharmacologic care for some time now. Tried a number of the phenothiazines Thorizine was good but it made me too drowsy. Couldn't have that while conducting physicals... Wouldn't want to drop a baby. No, nothing like that. Dreadful, drop an infant. This is a new agent, far superior to the others. Experimental. Sent to me by the manufacturer. Just write away for samples, use M.D. after the name, no need to justify or explain. They're more than happy to oblige... I have a healthy supply. Must take the afternoon dose, though, or everything gets confused--that's what happened, isn't it?"
"Yes. How long does it take to kick in?"
"In a man my size twenty to twenty-five minutes --remarkable, isn't it? Pop, down the hatch, wait, and the picture tube regains clarity. Life is so much more bearable. Things hurt so much less. Even now I feel it working, like
muddy waters turning crystalline. Where were we?"
"We were talking about the nasty games McCaffrey's perverts play with little children."
"I'm not one of those," he said quickly.
"I know. But you helped those perverts molest hundreds of children, gave time and money to McCaffrey, set up Handler and Gutierrez and Hickle. You overdosed Melody Quinn to keep her mouth shut. Why?"
"It's all over, isn't it?" he asked, sounding relieved.
"Yes."
"They'll take away my license to practice medicine."
"Definitely. Don't you think that's best?"
"I suppose so," he said reluctantly. "I still feel there's plenty left in me, plenty of good work to be done."
"You'll have your chance," I reassured him, realizing that the pills were less than perfect. "They'll send you some place for the rest of your life where you'll experience little in the way of stress. No paperwork, no billing, none of the hassles of medical practice. No Gus McCaffrey telling you what to do, how to run your life. Just you--and you'll look and feel fine because they'll let you continue to take your pills--and help other people. People in need of help. You're a healer, you'll be able to help them."
"I'll be able to help," he repeated.
"Absolutely."
"One human being to another. Unencumbered."
"Yes."
"I have a good bedside manner. When I'm well. When I'm not well things gets confused and things hurt--even ideas hurt, thoughts can be painful. I'm not at my best, when that happens. But when I'm functioning well I can't be beat for helping people."
"I know that, Doctor. I know your reputation."
McCaffrey had spoken to me of an innate drive toward altruism. I knew whose buttons he'd been pushing with that one.
"I'm beholden to Gus," he said, "not due to any unusual sexual proclivity. That's his link with the others--with Stuart and Eddy. Since we'd been boys I'd known of their--strange ways. We all grew up in an isolated place, a strange place. We were cultivated, like orchids. Private lessons for this and that, having to look appropriate, act appropriately. Sometimes I wonder if that refined atmosphere didn't do us more harm than good. Look how we turned out, I, with my spells--I know there are labels for it these days, but I prefer to avoid them--Stuart and Eddy with their strange sexual habits.
"They started fooling with each other one summer, when we were nine or ten. Then with other children. Smaller children, much smaller. I didn't think much of it except to know that I wasn't interested in it. The way we were raised, right or wrong didn't seem as relevant as--appropriate and inappropriate. "That's not appropriate, Willie," Father would say. I imagine had Stuart or Eddy's fathers caught them with the little ones, that would have been their description of the entire affair: Inappropriate. Like using the wrong fork at dinner."
His description of coming of age on Brindamoor was strikingly like the one Van der Graaf had given me. At that moment he seemed akin to the fancy goldfish in the tank at Oomasa: beautiful, showy, cultivated by mutation and centuries of inbreeding, raised in a protected environment. But ultimately stunted and un adaptable to the realities of life.
"In that sense, the sexual one," he said, "I was quite normal. I married, fathered a child, a son. I performed quite adequately. Stuart and Eddy continued as my chums, going about their perverted ways. It was live and let live. They never mentioned my-spells. I let them be. Stuart was really a fine fellow, not overly bright, but well-meaning. It was a pity he had to... Except for that one kink, he was a good boy. Eddy was, is different. A sense of humor but a mean one. A nasty streak runs through him. He is habitually caustic and sarcastic--that's why I'm sensitive to that type of thing. Perhaps it's because of his size..."
"Your tie to McCaffrey," I prompted.
"Small men often get that way. You're--I can't see you now, but I recall you as being medium-sized. Is that correct?"
"I'm five-eleven," I said wearily.
"That's medium-sized. I've always been large. Father was large. It's just as Mendel predicted--long peas, short peas--fascinating field, genetics, isn't it?"
"Doctor--"
"I've wondered about the genetic impact on many traits. Intellect, for example. The liberal dogma would have us believe that environment makes the largest contribution to intelligence. It's an egalitarian premise, but reality doesn't bear it out. Long peas, short peas. Smart parents, smart children. Stupid parents, stupid children. I, myself, am a heterozygote.
Father was brilliant. Mother was an Irish beauty, but very simple. She lived in a world where that combination served to create the perfect hostess. Father's showpiece."
"Your tie to McCaffrey," I said sharply.
"My tie? Oh nothing more serious than life and death."
He laughed. It was the first time I'd heard his laugh and I hoped it would be the last. It was a vacant discordant note, a blatant musical error screaming out in the middle of a symphony.
"I lived with Lilah and Willie Junior on the third floor of the Jedson dormitory. Stuart and Eddy shared a room on the first. As a married student I was given larger quarters--really a nice little apartment, when you got down to it. Two bedrooms, bath, living room, small kitchen. But no library, no study, so I did my reading at the kitchen table. Lilah had made it a cheerful place--bunting, trim, curtains, womanly types of things. Willie Junior was a little over two at the time, I remember. It was my senior year. I'd been having trouble with some of the premedical courses--physics, organic chemistry. I've never been a brilliant person. However, if I apply myself and keep my attention span steady I can do quite well. I desperately wanted to get into medical school on my own merits. My father and his father before him were doctors, all had been brilliant students. The joke, behind my back, was that I'd inherited my mother's brains as well as her looks--they didn't think I heard but I did. I wanted so much to show them that I could succeed on my own merits, not because I was Adolf Towle's son.
"The night it happened Willie Junior had been feeling poorly, unable to sleep. He'd been screaming and crying out, Lilah was frazzled. I ignored her requests for help, plunging myself into my studies, trying to shut out everything else. I had to bring my science grades up. It was imperative. The more anxious I got, the less able I was to pay attention. I tried to deal with it by embracing a kind of tunnel vision.
"Lilah had always been patient with me, but that night she became furious, started to come unglued. I looked up, saw her coming at me, her hands--she had tiny hands, a delicate woman--rolled up into fists, mouth open--I suppose she was screaming--eyes full of hatred. She seemed to me a bird of prey, about to swoop down and pick at my bones. I pushed her away with my arm. She fell, tumbling back, hit her head on the corner of a bureau--a hideous piece, an antique her mother had given her--and lay there, simply lay there.
"I can see the whole thing clearly now, as if it had just happened yesterday. Lilah lies there, motionless. I rise out of my chair, dreamlike, everything is swaying, everything is confusing. A small shape coming at me from the right, like a mouse, a rat. I swat it away. But it's not a rat, no, no. It's Willie Junior, coming back at me, crying for his mother, hitting me. Only dimly aware of his presence I strike out at him again, catch him on the side of his head. Too hard. He falls, lands, lies still. Unmoving. A large bruise masks the side of his face... My wife, my child, dead at my hands. I prepare to find my razor, cut my wrists, be done with it.
"Then Gus's voice is at my back. He stands in the doorway, huge, obese, sweaty, in work clothes, broom in hand. The janitor, cleaning the dormitories at night. I smell him--ammonia, body odor, cleaning fluids. He's heard the noise and has come to check. He looks at me, a long hard look, then at the bodies. He kneels over them, feels for a pulse. "They're dead," he tells me in a flat voice. For a second I think he's smiling and
I'm ready to pounce on him, to attempt a third murder. Then the smile becomes a frown. He's thinking. "Sit down," he commands me. I'm not used to being or dAred around by one of his class bu
t I'm weak and sick with grief, my knees are buckling, everything's unraveling I turn away from Lilah and Willie Junior, sit, put my face in my hands. Start to cry. I begin to grow more confused... A spell is coming on. Everything is starting to hurt. I have no pills, not like I'll have years later, when I'm a doctor. Now I'm merely a premedical student, powerless, hurting.
"Gus makes a telephone call. Minutes later my friends Stuart and Eddy appear in the room, like characters walking onstage in the midst of a dreadful play... The three of them talk among themselves, sometimes looking at me, muttering. Stuart comes to me first. He places a hand on my shoulder. "We know it was an accident, Will," he says. "We know it wasn't your fault." I start to argue with him but the words stick in my throat... The spells make it so hard to talk, so painful... I shake my head. Stuart comforts me, tells me everything will be all right. They will take care of everything. He rejoins Gus and Eddy.
When the Bough Breaks Page 37
