Sam McCain - 01 - The Day the Music Died

by Ed Gorman

  He sighed. “You don’t have much respect for people’s feelings, do you?”

  That line, coming from the last remaining robber baron in the valley, seemed more than a little unctuous.

  But I let it pass.

  “How much?”

  “Three thousand dollars.”

  “Making a grand total of what?”

  “Eighteen thousand.”

  “In how long?”

  “Fourteen months.”

  I whistled. “That’s serious business,” I said.

  “I’m wondering if that’s what drove Kenny to it. To killing Susan and himself.”

  “If he did it.”

  “You don’t really think otherwise, do you?

  Esme is just trying to save her family’s name.

  But, hell yes, Kenny killed her. Who else would have killed her?”

  “Maybe the blackmailer,” I said. “Or somebody else.”

  “Like who, for instance?”

  I knew I was about to jump into waters far more dangerous than the ones I’d slipped into last night. “A lover.”

  “You bastard. We’re talking about my daughter.”

  “I realize that, Mr. Frazier. But we’re all vulnerable and susceptible to all sorts of things. Especially when we’re in the kind of position Susan was in.”

  “She loved him. Don’t ask me

  why.”

  “She loved him, true. But she was also miserable.” I paused. “If anybody would have been justified in looking for solace somewhere else-“

  “I raised her better than that.”

  No point in continuing on with my questions about Susan. In his mind, she was the eternal virgin.

  He looked at his watch. “I have to get over to the funeral home.”

  “I appreciate the time, Mr. Frazier.”

  He signed his breakfast tab with a flourish and then glanced at me. “I still don’t like you, McCain.”

  “Well, I’m not thinking of asking you to go dancing either.”

  “And if I catch you trying to sully my daughter’s name in any way, you’ll be finished in this town. I absolutely guarantee it.”

  He moved very well for a big man, getting up fast and angry from the booth without even nudging the table, sweeping his coat and homburg along with him. And then he was gone.

  I sat there and listened to some more restaurant noises and smoked my Pall Mall.

  Juanita came over. “He looked mad.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’d you say to him, McCain?”

  “Just asked him a couple of questions was all.”

  “Gee, his daughter just died, McCain. You got to learn to go easier on people. Like that time you accused Bobby of siphoning gas from Tom Potter’s tractor. You were really mean to him.”

  “He was guilty, Juanita.”

  “I know he was. But he’s my boyfriend, McCain, and I love him. And he wasn’t necessarily responsible for goin’ to prison those two times, either.”

  “He wasn’t?”

  “No, it was them punks he was hangin’ out with.

  Now he just hangs out with Merle Wylie.”

  “Merle Wylie? He served five years for attempted murder.”

  “It was the same with Merle, McCain. He just got in with the wrong crowd, too.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “that mst’ve been it.”

  She watched me carefully. “I can’t always tell when you’re bein’ sarcastic, but I think you are now. About Merle, I mean. He’s a lot nicer’n you think, McCain. When my

  cousin Dodi got—well, you know—knocked up, Merle knew just what to do. And it was the same when my brother got his motorcycle stolen. Bobby was up in prison then so Merle took over and he found it that night and he gave the guy who stole it two broken ribs.”

  She was about to do some more extolling when one of the customers called her. “You should be nicer to people, McCain.” And then walked away.

  There was: the phone bill, the light bill, the water bill, the car repair bill, the grocery bill, and a letter from a guy I’d represented last year on a stolen merchandise charge. He was writing from prison. He said that he couldn’t wait to see me when he got out. I wasn’t sure how to take that. As I recalled, he’d blamed me for pleading him down to accepting stolen goods. He could’ve gotten six-to-eight. He’d been caught with more than $12eajjj worth of hot appliances in his basement, along with an assortment of firearms that were definitely a no-no for a felon like himself. I got him two-to-four, but he hadn’t been happy with me.

  He said a really good lawyer would have been able to convince the jury that the stolen merchandise in his basement had belonged to somebody else. About three weeks after he hit prison, his sporadic letters started coming in. Superficially, they seemed to be very happy, chatty letters from grateful felon to happy lawyer. But the way he kept repeating how he was going to look me up when he got out made me extremely nervous, even though he had entrusted the fate of all three of his teenage daughters to me. They had been charged, variously, with armed robbery, armed mayhem, destruction of government property, auto theft and reckless driving. This had been their response to Daddy’s parole application being turned down. Abc-tv was going to do a sitcom with them to run right after Ozzie and Harriet.

  My office was one room with carpeting, a tribute to my failed attempt to make a living as a lawyer in a small Iowa town that already had far more lawyers than it needed. I never stayed any longer than I had to. After reading my mail, all of which went into the waste can, I promptly left.

  Sixteen

  “Mambo,” the lovely Pamela Forrest said when I walked into the office outside Judge Whitney’s chambers.

  “Mambo?”

  “She’s going to New York on vacation and wants to brush up on her dancing. She’s got that dance step thing you see on Tv all over the floor.”

  Along with powder for jock itch, gum for your bad breath and salve for your pig’s hemorrhoids (you have to live in Iowa to get commercials like that), Mother Tv had lately been offering us these big plastic things you put on the floor with dance steps all over them. Just follow the steps and you’re the next Fred Astaire.

  “She’s not in a very good mood, McCain,”

  Pamela said.

  “Boy, there’s a shock.”

  “I mean worse than usual.”

  “Impossible.”

  “I’m not kidding, McCain. She’s really on the warpath.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Didn’t you see the paper this morning?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  She held it up: Millionaire Kills

  Wife, Self. The deck below read:

  Prominent Whitney Family Stunned.

  Next to a photo of Kenny was a photo not of Susan but of Judge Whitney. The paper is pretty much Democratic and the judge is the polar opposite. She has written them scathing letters for some of their editorial stands. They love to publish them because, despite her obvious intelligence and genuine erudition, she does sound slightly crazed, especially when she defends the John Birch Society.

  “Well, they finally got their crack at her.”

  “They sure did, McCain. I feel

  sorry for her.”

  “I guess I might as well get it over with.”

  “I’ll buzz her.”

  While Pamela buzzed the judge and asked her if she needed anything, I looked at all the galoshes lined up against the wall across the hall.

  Iowa winter. It was like being back in second grade, in the cloakroom.

  The judge was doing her dance steps,

  following the long sheet of cheap white plastic laid on the floor. The footsteps she followed were black. Up and back, up and back. She was doing the mambo in her judicial robes. I wondered if Oliver Wendell would have approved.

  The rumor was he’d preferred the cha-cha.

  “What’re you using for music?” I asked.

  “In my head.”

  “Ah.”
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  “I listened to three mambo songs over and over last night. I’ve memorized them. It’s like having a portable radio. Except I don’t need the radio.”

  “Clever.”

  “So what do you think, McCain? Do I look all right?”

  As a number of her suitors pointed out, picture Kate Hepburn and you’ve got Judge Whitney. Physically, that is.

  Emotionally, Judge Whitney makes Kate seem like a softy. That’s why I grinned watching her mambo. In her way, she not only possesses true patrician good looks, she’s also cute as hell.

  “Cute.”

  “I look cute?”

  “You look cute.”

  She didn’t say anything, but she smiled to herself. Beautiful, she’d heard plenty of times.

  Cute, not so often. If ever.

  “I’m going to do all the nightclubs,” her honor said, slightly out of breath. “One of my ex-husbands even got me a front-row table to see Sinatra.”

  “Just be sure he doesn’t beat you up.”

  “Who? My ex-husband or Sinatra?”

  “I was thinking about Sinatra but if you’re referring to ex-husband number three, Renaldo, that boy had a pretty bad temper, too.”

  “It’s the Latin in him.”

  “Not to mention the Scotch.”

  I went over and sat down and sipped at the coffee I’d swiped from the outer office.

  Five minutes later, we got down to work.

  She went over and sat behind her desk. She said, “You saw the paper?”

  “I saw the paper.”

  “I’m taking you at your word that he didn’t kill her.”

  “He didn’t kill her.”

  She leaned forward on her elbows and glared at me. “Then when the hell are you going to prove it?

  I pay you a lot of money.”

  “Not a lot.”

  “Well, a lot more than most private investigators get.”

  “Most private investigators aren’t lawyers.”

  She made a face and slumped back in her leather chair. She reached down and pulled the middle drawer of her desk out. Moments later, she strung a rubber band between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. Our little game.

  She shot the rubber band. I tilted my head to the right. The rubber band missed me by an inch.

  “Your instincts are getting better, McCain.”

  “Thank you. I was worried about that.”

  “I used to be able to hit you every time.”

  She picked up another rubber band. This time, she got me square in the forehead. “My second husband wasn’t worth a damn at this, either. I could always hit him.”

  “That’s probably what sank the marriage.

  You lost all respect for him.”

  “What sank the marriage, my sarcastic friend, was the fact that he was spending my inheritance in very, very foolish ways.”

  “Ah.”

  Another rubber band. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  She aimed and fired. I leaned to the left on this one but the rubber band glanced off my ear. She smiled. “Nice to see I haven’t lost my touch.” Then she sat forward again, picked up her package of Gaulioses and had herself a cigarette.

  “She was unfaithful,” she said. “Susan, I mean.”

  “She had reason to be.”

  “I realize that my nephew wasn’t

  exactly a prize, McCain.”

  “That’s very perceptive of you.”

  “But the fact remains she was unfaithful.”

  “Not that he ever was, of course.”

  “There’s a difference with a man.”

  “The old double standard?”

  She shook her head. Exhaled smoke. “Not exactly. A man, at least a man like

  Kenny, wants simple sexual relationships.

  And lots of them. A woman like Susan, who feels wronged in her marriage, wants an emotional relationship as well as a sexual one.”

  She picked up another rubber band. This time, she missed me. She did another quick one and hit me.

  “We’re tied, McCain.”

  “The tension is on.”

  “Find her lover and you’ll find her killer.

  I’m convinced of that.”

  “Somebody was blackmailing her.”

  “What?”

  I told her what Frazier had told me this morning. I also told her about him visiting my apartment.

  “What was he looking for?”

  “Something to tie me to the blackmail, I guess.”

  “He thought you were the blackmailer?”

  “He seemed to think that was a strong possibility, anyway. He figures the way I nose around this town for you, I picked up something to blackmail Susan with.”

  “What if her blackmailer and her lover were the same person?”

  “I’ve thought about that, too,” I said.

  “Then I’d say it’s time for you to get your ass in gear,” she said. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Is that a hint?”

  “No, that’s an order.”

  She glared at the newspaper on her desk.

  “I can’t wait until they have to retract that headline.”

  “You going to sue them?”

  “Oh, no. It’s not the money. I’ve got plenty of that, McCain. I’d much rather have them grovel.”

  Anybody else, the line might have been ironic. She was perfectly serious.

  I stood up. She brought her hand up from below the desk. Sneak attack. She got me

  perfectly. Right on the nose. “I win, McCain. Three to two.”

  What can I tell you? A

  sixty-one-year-old woman with four ex-husbands and several fortunes in her past, gloating over an inane rubber band contest.

  I turned and started to leave her

  office. “By the way, I heard Pamela warn you that I was on the warpath. I thought I’d surprise you and be nice.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “But now, I really do want to see some results. And I mean fast, McCain.” She smiled sweetly with that elegantly cold face of hers. “Fast.”

  I started to leave again but she stopped me. “And that girl you found in the canoe last night?”

  “What about her?”

  “She has something to do with this.”

  “She does?”

  Judge Whitney nodded. For all her foibles and excesses, she had good instincts. “Don’t ask me what the connection is yet. But I sense one.”

  “She’s a teenage girl.”

  “I know she’s a teenager, McCain. But she ties into this somehow. Trust me.”

  “The doc’s probably done with his autopsy by now. Maybe I’ll stop over there.”

  “Good idea.” Then, “You really think I’m cute?”

  I smiled. “Yeah,” I said, “yeah, I d.”

  Her grin made her ten years old again, little Esme Whitney sitting in her manse being doted on by Daddy’s manservants.

  I went out and picked up my galoshes from the hallway where all the other boys and girls had stashed theirs for the day.

  Seventeen

  I didn’t have far to go to find the morgue; it’s in the basement of the courthouse.

  They try to disguise it as much as possible.

  There’s a nice-looking middle-aged receptionist. There’s a waiting area with a plump, comfortable wine-colored couch; a table filled with current issues of magazines; and a coffeepot that’s always percolating.

  Doc Novotony is a distant relative of Cliffie, Sr., and as such his credentials have been questioned a few times. Exactly what is the Cincinnati Citadel of Medinomics, anyway? And exactly where is the Thayer Medinomics Hospital where he interned? The state medical board wouldn’t give

  Novotony his license until he battled them all the way to our state supreme court, which decided, begrudgingly, that Novotony was more or less qualified to practice medicine here. But it was a split decision, with the minority report being pretty scathing.

>   Cliffie, Sr., installed Novotony as the county medical examiner. Novotony then proceeded to shock everybody by being a pretty decent M.E. with but two failings—anytime Cliffie, Sr., wanted results to come out a certain way, that was exactly how those results came out.

  And then there’s the matter of how he dresses.

  Iowa isn’t the equal of Texas in its football fervor but for some folks around here, it comes damned close. Doc Novotony, all 260 pounds and five-foot-six of him, is a good example. No matter what the occasion, and I include funerals here, you almost always see him in his black-and-gold Iowa Hawkeye football jersey and his black-and-gold cap and his black slacks with the thin gold piping down the side. He gets kidded a lot, but apparently not enough to change his clothes.

  He came out to greet me after Rita, his secretary, had walked back to tell him I was here. He has psoriasis on one side of his face. It has spread over his hands. He has obligingly dispensed with handshaking. He smelled of death, or those morgue chemicals that I associated with death. They smell the same in the places where they put animals to sleep. I took a cat in once and followed the vet back to his special death room. I wished I hadn’t.

  “Hear you had a little trouble last night, McCain,” he said. Then smiled. “Little skinny-dipping with that pretty Mary Travers, huh?”

  Rita shook her head and rolled her eyes.

  She always looked embarrassed by her boss.

  “Too bad you got the eye for Pamela Forrest, McCain,” Doc Novotony said.

  “That Mary’s a good-lookin’ gal. Plus she’s got some nice wheels on her, if you know what I mean.”

  Rita did some more eye-rolling.

  “I just said that to get Rita’s goat,” he laughed. “Got to liven this place up a

  little bit.” He picked up Rita’s package of Chesterfield’s and lit one. “I owe you one.”

  “You owe me a carton,” Rita said. This time she shook her head, but I sensed genuine amusement with her boorish boss. He wore you down and won you over. Like professional wrestling: you watched despite all your best judgment.

  “I’m here about the girl in the canoe.”

  “You want to see her?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Oh, that’s right, I forgot you’ve got a queasy stomach.” He looked over at Rita.