McKain's Dilemma

by Williamson, Chet

  By now it was lunchtime, and there was a Chinese take-out farther down the street. I bravely ordered an egg roll and a coffee to go, and took a position forty yards away from Townes's front door. I munched and gulped and waited for something to happen, thanking God for my cast-iron bladder as the hours wore on.

  My patience was rewarded, for at three-thirty a man I tentatively recognized as Christopher Townes stepped out the door. I turned before he looked in my direction, and watched him in the reflection of the plate-glass window that fronted a surprisingly clean spice and herb store. He looked around quickly, then turned and walked in the opposite direction from my stakeout point. I followed him out to Houston Street and another three blocks to a café, which he entered. I waited outside, and in a half-hour he reappeared and started back the way he'd come.

  I walked toward him and past him. There was no danger of his recognizing me, and the move put me within three feet of him, close enough to make a positive identification. I let him get fifty yards past me, then crossed the street and shadowed him back to the apartment. He went in the door without seeing me. Then I hailed a cab and headed back to Tom and Jay's.

  I took them out again to celebrate the close of another successful case, and we capped the evening by catching a Karloff double feature at a revival house. When we got back, I called Ev and told her I'd be back the next afternoon and to kiss Carlie good night for me. Despite the sound of heavy metal from the next apartment, I slept the sleep of the just.

  In the morning I called Eddie Reilly, thanked him, and offered to buy him lunch, but he was too busy. So I hopped the 10:30 train and got into Lancaster at one-thirty in the afternoon. I took a local cab—klunkier but friendlier—back home, and called Carlton Runnells. Michael Eshleman answered, and put Runnells on the line. I told him I'd found Townes, related my conversation with Ben Arkassian, and gave him the address off Houston Street. He seemed very grateful, and told me to keep the full week of salary he had given me, and to send him the receipts for all my expenses. I thanked him, he thanked me, and I took him at his word, sending him that very afternoon my receipts for cabs, train, and meals, all of which I scrupulously save.

  Within the week I got another check for the total, and forgot about Carlton Runnells and his friend Chris, until a few weeks later, when I was reminded in a way impossible to ignore.

  Chapter 5

  Before I became reinvolved with the Runnells case, however, something else happened. Something else. That sounds so blithe, so inconsequential. Yet it was the cause of so much else.

  The following Saturday, Ev, Carlie, and I went for a walk in the woods, on one of the trails near Mount Gretna, an old Chautauqua community surrounded by forest. Carlie had run on ahead as usual, and I decided to play grizzly bear and chase her. I roared my fiercest roar, she screamed, and we both ran. I caught her at a spot where the trail bent, and swept her up giggling into my arms. But as I held her, I could feel my heart pounding much faster than I had expected it to, and I suddenly felt very weak and dizzy. I lowered her carefully to the ground, uncertain of my ability to do so, and sat down in the dirt.

  "Daddy," she asked, still giggling a little, "what's the matter?"

  Ev rounded the turn. "Okay, you two," she was shouting, "no more bears, you'll scare the animals . . ." Then she saw me, and I could tell that she didn't like what she was seeing. "What happened?" she asked, coming up to me.

  "Don't know," I said thickly. "I just . . . just felt funny there for a second."

  "You're pale as death," she told me. Ev has a way with words. "Are you all right?"

  I nodded. "Yeah, sure." But I wasn't all right. As we walked back to the car, I knew that I wasn't all right. I felt so weak that I asked Ev to drive. All the way home I wondered what the hell I had eaten, figuring that it had to be food poisoning. I'd had it one time in college, and this felt very similar, as far as I could remember. Ev kept glancing at me, worry on her pretty face, while Carlie sat in the back and read Ranger Rick's Nature Magazine.

  When we got home I felt better, but Ev insisted I call a doctor. I told her there was no point, that it was probably something I ate. But Ev believes in safety first. If you've got a symptom, no matter how small, Ev thinks you should plague your doctor with it, that it's worth a twenty-five dollar fee for the peace of mind that it's just a friendly little lump, and not cancer of the epiglottis. I'm just the opposite. I always figured that if something was wrong with me, I'd know. Stupid. You never know.

  I told her I'd wait through the weekend and see how I felt, that I was certain the sick feeling would go away. But as I lay awake in bed that night, I thought about the past week, ever since I had come back from New York. I'd felt more tired than usual, and even now I felt as if I couldn't catch my breath, as if something were pressing on my chest far more heavily than the sheet and single light blanket that were there.

  I didn't feel much better Sunday, and Monday morning I called one of the doctors at LanCo Medical Associates, and was able to get an appointment for that afternoon. He asked me a few questions, which I answered truthfully, then he took a sample of blood from my finger. He left me alone in the examination room for several minutes, and when he came back he told me that it looked as though I might be anemic. Nothing to worry about, he said, but he wanted to get me into the hospital as soon as I could for some tests.

  At that moment something happened. All the fear of death and disease of which I had never before been aware came rushing to the front of my mind, and I knew, just from the fact that I was going into the hospital for tests, that I was doomed, that I had something they would never cure, and that I was going to die.

  It was an illogical conclusion to draw—both my parents were alive and healthy as horses, and my grandparents, all of whom were dead, had not succumbed until their mid-seventies or later. My paternal grandmother had in fact lived until she was ninety-two, and I always felt she had died out of boredom, of a wish to be done with living and see what was next. I had seldom been sick, and the only time I had been in a hospital was when I had my tonsils out back in 1956. So to come up with the morbid idea that this was the beginning of the end was totally irrational, even insane. Nonetheless I felt it. Perhaps I was terrified, perhaps I was psychic.

  I told the doctor that I wouldn't be able to enter the hospital for a week or so, that I had a job that couldn't wait, and would early next week be all right?

  He pursed his lips and frowned until his eyebrows touched, and said he supposed it would be all right. I remember thinking, Jesus, I am going to die. But I didn't want to go to the hospital. I guess I thought that once I went in, I could never get out again.

  I did have a job, that much was true. I had to go to Philadelphia to testify in a divorce trial, and then it was off to New York again at the end of the week to do a quick and dirty background check on a young actor for some nervous prospective in-laws. I could have put that one off—the wedding wasn't until June—but I didn't want to.

  The doctor reluctantly agreed that the following Monday would be sufficient, and gave me the expected benediction as I left: "Now don't worry about this, it's probably nothing."

  Yeah. Nothing.

  When Ev got home I told her that the doctor wanted me in for tests next Monday, so there was really no urgency. She's a bright woman, she didn't believe me. "You stalled him, didn't you?" she asked me.

  "A little."

  "Mac, you can't play games with this . . ."

  "If he'd wanted me in right away he'd have said so."

  "Bullshit. He probably did."

  She kept at me for a while, then gave up when I told her I was ready, willing, and eager to go to the hospital the next Monday. That was as good as she was going to get, and she finally accepted it, though she didn't like it.

  In retrospect, I think that week was when our relationship began to deteriorate, and I frankly have no one but myself to blame. My mind wasn't on Ev or on Carlie. It was on sickness and possible death, and when you're thinking abou
t those things you're not the most sparkling of companions. Although I was wrong, I sensed in Ev, mixed with her angry concern, some sort of pitying solicitude that set my teeth on edge. It seemed to me that she was already rehearsing for the worst, and sensing that attitude on her part only confirmed in me my own worst suspicions. My entire behavior through this period and through the longer nightmare that followed was undoubtedly the most stupid and irrational of my life, and I knew this as I was going through it, yet I was helpless to behave any differently. It was as though a force I had never thought to reckon with had taken control of my life, and I was utterly inadequate to deal with it. It was a frightening realization to come to about oneself, and it was a long time before I realized it.

  But that's later. All that was a million years away. Distant, abstracted, in a vacuum of self-concern, I went off to Philly on Wednesday and testified, then trained up to New York on Thursday morning. I was able to get a room at the St. Moritz, which I would bill to the shaky in-laws, and set out that afternoon to sniff around and find out what I could about the young man their daughter was "crazy enough to marry."

  I talked to a lot of people at a lot of places, and by that evening had decided that the girl was getting a pretty decent sort, even if he was an actor. Then I called Tom Jay was out of town—and we met for dinner, then went to his place for some of his home-blend coffee. Although my visit to the hospital was the primary thing on my mind, I didn't mention it. Tom could tell something was wrong, however, and asked me at one point if I felt all right. I told him I did.

  When he went into the kitchen, I started to rifle through the pile of old newspapers he kept beneath his coffee table, mostly the Times and Post from the past two weeks. I loved to read the headlines of the Post, but little else. As I flipped through them, the ones that would normally have made me smile left me stone cold, until I hit the one that read "DESIGNER DIES IN BLOODY VILLAGE BEATING."

  For a split second I thought it might not be Christopher Townes, but when I glanced at the grainy traditional photo of the removal of the body, I recognized the shabby front of the building whose address I had gotten from the phone company. I read the article, waving a hand impatiently when Tom came back in and asked me a question. Townes had been murdered the previous Thursday at eleven in the evening, the night after I had returned from New York and given Canton Runnells the address. For the first time in nearly a week I forgot all about my impending hospital stay.

  There were no suspects, police said, though they had questioned Benjamin Arkassian, the designer's roommate, who had what appeared to be an iron-clad alibi for the entire evening. He had further admitted that he had known Townes's whereabouts, that the apartment belonged to a friend of his, and Townes was using it to remain in the city while getting away from the immediate demands of his business. The story played up the actual murder itself, of course, saying that the killing was done carefully and methodically, and that the coroner's report indicated that the killer or killers may have continued to beat Townes even long after death had occurred. There were no witnesses who had seen anyone enter or leave the building that evening, and no neighbors had heard a thing—the ones above had been away until very late, and the apartment below was vacant. Ben Arkassian had discovered the body Friday afternoon when he'd received no answer to his phone calls.

  I had a problem. And Carlton Runnells had one too. If nobody but Ben Arkassian knew where Townes was holed up, that meant that Runnells could be a prime suspect. Of course, it was altogether possible that Arkassian, in a jealous fury over Townes's indiscretions, had either killed Townes himself or had gotten some-one else to do it while he established an alibi. And it was possible too that, right after I told Carlton Runnells where Chris Townes was, he and his little pal Michael zipped up to New York and beat Townes to death—why, I couldn't imagine. And that lack of motive, as much as anything, was why I gave Runnells the benefit of the doubt.

  Maybe neither Runnells nor Arkassian was guilty. Maybe it was something as simple as Townes picking up some shady East Village denizen he should have just left alone, though robbery didn't seem to be the motive, since Townes's wallet was intact. Maybe a maniacal queen then. Or maybe a fullback from Perth Amboy High who Townes invited up to see his etchings. Maybe Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo, maybe Jerry Falwell, maybe Anita Bryant, Anita Morris, Anita Ekberg . . .

  Lots of maybes, and maybes weren't getting me anywhere. I couldn't go to the police, not yet. I had the confidentiality of my client to consider. Of course, if my client was a murderer, or if I had a good reason to suspect he was, I'd go right to the Federales and no screwing around on the way. I don't mess with murder. There's not an investigator in the business who's prepared to mess with that stuff. We don't have the resources and we don't need the headaches. Oh, sure, sometimes you might get hired by the defense to do some criminal investigation on a murder case, but it's uncommon. At least I've never done it.

  So the fact of Christopher Townes's death made me very uncomfortable, as though I wasn't uncomfortable enough already. I asked Tom for the paper, and he let me have it without asking why. He can tell when I don't want to talk about something.

  The St. Moritz was quiet, but I didn't sleep well that night, so I got up and dressed early, checked out before seven, and managed to catch the Pennsylvanian, which dropped me in Lancaster at ten-thirty. My Chevy was in the parking lot where I had left it, so I drove right over to the nervous nellies and told them that their future son-in-law was not a dope fiend, a bisexual, a coprophiliac, a necrophiliac, or an alcoholic. They were relieved, if not jubilant. I promised them a written report and left.

  It was Friday, so both the ladies were at school. I fixed myself a very light lunch, since I didn't feel like eating, and managed to get most of it down. Then, at one o'clock, I called Carlton Runnells. Michael Eshleman answered, and put Runnells on.

  "Hello, Mr. McKain," he said, sounding robust and fresh and rich and healthy. At that moment I hated him for being all of that. "Good to hear from you."

  "Hello, Mr. Runnells. I don't know if you're going to think it's all that good."

  "Why? Is something wrong?"

  I don't know what I wanted. I think I wanted to hurt him. "Yes, you could say that. Have you heard about Townes?"

  "Chris?"

  "Yes. You didn't hear?"

  "Hear what?" His voice sounded shaky, almost as though he expected the news.

  "He's dead. He died last week."

  There was no response for a moment. Then I heard a long, shuddering breath that repeated itself. Then he whispered, "Oh my God . . . oh my God what happened . . ."

  "He was murdered." My voice was flat, without any inflection. I must have sounded cruel.

  "Murdered?" he rasped out. Then I heard him sob. It was harsh and violent, like dry heaves. After a time it stopped.

  "You hadn't heard?" I said.

  "No, no . . . Who did it? Do they know who did it?"

  "It seems not."

  "Can . . . can you find out?"

  "No. The police can do far more than I. But there's something I have to know. After I gave you the address, did you contact Townes in any way?"

  "No . . . no, I . . . oh my God, you don't think that I . . . had anything to do with this, do you?"

  "I just want to know." At that moment I didn't give a damn about his grief. I felt like steel, and I liked it. I was causing him pain. And I liked it.

  "No, Mr. McKain. I wanted to, but I couldn't. I was afraid I might get him into trouble with Ben. Just knowing he was all right, knowing he was free was enough for me . . . Oh Jesus, now I wish I had called him, or gone to see him, maybe he'd still be alive, maybe . . ." He trailed off into weeping.

  "I'm sorry I had to give you the news," I said.

  "It's . . . all right," he snuffled. "Oh, I just hope they find whoever did this. If you . . . if you hear anything, anything at all, please let me know."

  "All right. I will."

  "Good-bye."

  I hung u
p without answering. I thought he was lying. But I thought the whole world was lying.

  Chapter 6

  After I talked to Runnells, I called three friends of mine who are ticket clerks. One of them works at the Amtrak station in Lancaster, another at the Lancaster airport, and the third at the larger airport in Harrisburg. Every Christmas I take each one of them out to lunch, and buy them a bottle of Chivas. They more than pay me back in information during the year. Say a husband has told his wife he's going to Philly on business, but instead he flies to Altoona to see a woman he met on a previous trip. Pete at the US Air counter can find out just where the destination was, and if the guy flew on United, or one of the others, well, Pete knows people there too. No problem.

  So I asked each one of them to check and see if either Michael Eshleman or Carlton Runnells had purchased tickets to New York City on April 18th or 19th. They called back one after another, and told me that they had no record of either name on those dates.

  It didn't clear Runnells in my mind, of course. He had a car, probably several, and I'm sure he and Eshleman were capable of driving to the Big Apple. It just would have been easier for me if they'd used public transportation. But things weren't going to be easy for me, I could tell. As it turned out, my intimations of mortality had been all too correct. I was very ill.

  That weekend I felt terribly tired, so I slept a good deal. My shins ached unbearably, and aspirin did little to alleviate the pain. On top of everything else, some of the glands in my neck were quite swollen, as if I had a cold, even though I didn't. I did blow my nose one time, starting a nosebleed that was difficult to stop.

  I described these symptoms to the doctor on Monday morning, and he nodded sympathetically, looking more and more concerned with every new revelation. I had already been taken to my room by the time I saw him—Dr. Fedder was his name—and I was feeling foolish and uncomfortable, as well as terribly vulnerable in one of those absurd ass-naked hospital gowns. He jotted down everything I said, asked a long list of questions, and then a nurse took me to another examination room where two more white-jacketed doctors waited. One of them introduced himself as Dr. Munro, and asked me to lie down on the table, and they would take a sample of my bone marrow.