Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 01 - When The Bough Breaks

by When The Bough Breaks(Lit)

  "Tomorrow at one. Rain or shine," he called after her.

  When the door had closed he invited me to sit.

  "I'll stand, myself. Can't find a chair that fits me. When I was a boy Father called in carpenters and woodcarvers, trying to come up with some way to seat me comfortably. To no avail. They did produce some fascinating abstract sculpture, however." He laughed, and held on to the trestle table for support. "I've stood most of my life. In the end it probably was beneficial. I've got legs like pig iron. My circulation's as good as that of a man half my age."

  I sat in a leather armchair. We were at eye level.

  "That Maggie," he said. "Such a sad girl. I flirt with her, try to cheer her up. She seems so lonely most of the time." He rummaged among the papers and pulled out a flask.

  "Irish Whiskey. You'll find two glasses in the top right drawer of the desk. Kindly retrieve them and give them to me."

  I found the glasses, which looked none too clean.

  Van der Graaf filled them each with an inch of whiskey, without spilling a drop.

  "Here."

  I watched him sip his drink and followed suit.

  "Do you think she could be a virgin? Is such a thing possible in this day and age?" He approached the question as if it were an epistemological puzzle.

  "I really couldn't say, Professor. I only just met her an hour ago."

  "I can't conceive of it, virginity in a woman her age. Yet the notion of those milkmaid's thighs wrapped around a pair of rutting buttocks is equally preposterous." He drank more whiskey, contemplated Margaret Dopplemeier's sex life in silence, and stared off into space.

  Finally he said: "You're a patient young man. A rare quality."

  I nodded.

  "I figure you'll come around when you're ready, Professor."

  "Yes, I do confess to a fair amount of childish behavior. It's a perquisite of my age and station. Do you know how long it's been since I taught a class or wrote a scholarly paper?"

  "Quite a while, I imagine."

  "Over two decades. Since then I've been up here engaged in long solitary stretches of allegedly deep thought--actually I loaf. And yet, I'm an honored Professor Emeritus. Don't you think it's an absurd system that tolerates such nonsense?"

  "Perhaps there's a feeling that you've earned the right to retirement with honor."

  "Bah!" He waved his hand. "That sounds too much like death. Retirement with honor and maggots gnawing at one's toes. I'll confess to you, young man, that I never earned anything. I wrote sixty-seven papers in learned journals, all but five utter garbage. I co edited three books that no one ever read, and, in general, pursued a life of a spoiled wastrel. It's been wonderful."

  He finished his whiskey and put the glass down on the table with a thump.

  "They keep me around here because I've got millions of dollars in a tax-free trust fund set up for me by Father and they hope I'll bequeath it all to them." He smiled crookedly. "I may or may not. Perhaps I should will it all to some Negro organization, or something equally outrageous. A group fighting for the rights of lesbians, perhaps. Is there such a cabal?"

  "I'm sure there must be."

  "Yes. In California, no doubt. Speaking of which, you want to know about Willie Towle from Los Angeles, do you?"

  I repeated the story about Medical World News.

  "All right," he sighed, "if you insist, I'll try to help you. God knows why anyone would be interested in Willie Towle, for a duller boy never set foot on this campus. When I found out he became a physician, I was amazed. I never thought him intellectually capable of anything quite that advanced. Of course the family is firmly rooted in medicine--one of the Towles was Grant's personal surgeon during the Civil War--there's a morsel for your article--and I imagine getting Willie admitted to medical school was no particular challenge." "He's turned out to be quite a successful doctor."

  "That doesn't surprise me. There are different types of success. One requires a combination of personality traits that Willie did indeed possess: perseverance, lack of imagination, innate conservatism. Of course, a good, straight body and a conventionally attractive face don't hurt, either. I'll wager he hasn't climbed the ranks by virtue of being a profound scientific thinker or innovative researcher. His strengths are of a more mundane nature, are they not?"

  "He has a reputation as a fine doctor," I insisted. "His patients have only good things to say about him."

  "Tells them exactly what they want to hear, no doubt. Willie was always good at that. Very popular, president of this and that. He was my student in a course on European civilization, and he was a charmer. Yes, Professor, no Professor. Always there to hold out my chair for me--Lord, how I detested that. Not to mention the fact that I rarely sat." He grimaced at the recollection. "Yes, there was a certain banal charm there. People like that in their doctors. I believe it's called bedside manner. Of course his essay exams were most telling, revealing his true substance. Predictable, accurate but not illuminating, grammatical without being literate." He paused. "This isn't the kind of information you were expecting, is it?"

  I smiled. "Not exactly."

  "You can't print this, can you?" He seemed disappointed.

  "No. I'm afraid the article is meant to be laudatory."

  "Hale and hearty blah-blah stuff--in the vernacular, bullshit, eh? How boring. Doesn't it bore you to have to write such drivel?"

  "At times. It pays the bills."

  "Yes. How arrogant of me not to take that into consideration. I've never had to pay bills. My bankers do that for me. I've always had far more money than I know what to do with. It leads one to incredible ignorance. It's a common fault of the indolent rich. We're unbelievably ignorant. And inbred. It brings about psychological as well as physical aberrations."

  He smiled, reached around with one arm, and tapped his hunch. "This entire campus is a haven for the offspring of the indolent, ignorant, inbred rich. Including your Doctor Willie Towle. He descends from one of the most rarefied environments you will ever find. Did you know that?"

  "Being a doctor's son?"

  "No, no." He dismissed me as if I were an especially stupid pupil. "He's one of the Two Hundred--you haven't heard of them?"

  "No."

  "Go into the bottom drawer of my desk and pull out the old map of Seattle."

  I did what I was told. The map was folded under several back issues of Playboy.

  "Give it to me," he said impatiently. He opened it and spread it on the table. "Look here."

  I stood over him. His finger pointed to a spot at the north end of the South. To a tiny island shaped like a diamond.

  "Brindamoor Island. Three square miles of innately unappealing terrain upon which are situated two hundred mansions and estates to rival any found in the United States. Josiah Jedson built his first home there--a Gothic monstrosity, it was--and others of his ilk mimicked him. I have cousins who reside there-most of us are related in one way or the other--though Father built our home on the mainland, in Win demere."

  "It's barely noticeable."

  The island was a speck in the Pacific.

  "And meant to be that way, my boy. In many of the older maps the island isn't even labeled. Of course there's no land access. The ferry makes one roundtrip from the harbor when the weather and tides permit. It's not unusual for a week or two to elapse without the trip being completed. Some of the residents own private airplanes and have landing strips on their properties. Most are content to remain in splendid isolation."

  "And Dr. Towle grew up there?"

  "He most certainly did. I believe the ancestral digs have been sold. He was an only son and when he moved to California there seemed no reason to hold on to it--most of the homes are far larger than homes have a right to be. Architectural dinosaurs. Frightfully expensive to maintain--even the Two Hundred have to budget nowadays. Not all had ancestors as clever as Father."

  He patted his midriff in self-congratulation.

  "Do you feel growing up in that kind o
f isolation had any effect on Dr. Towle?"

  "Now you sound like a psychologist, young man."

  I smiled.

  "In answer to your question: most certainly. The children of the Two Hundred were an insufferably snobbish lot--and to merit that designation at Jedson College requires extraordinary chauvinism. They were clannish, self-centered, spoiled, and not overly bright. Many had deformed siblings with chronic physical or mental problems--my remark about inbreeding was meant in all seriousness--and seemed to have been left callous and indifferent by the experience, rather than the opposite."

  "You're using the past tense. Don't they exist today?"

  "There are amazingly few young ones left. They get a taste of the outside world and are reluctant to return to Brindamoor--it really is quite bleak, despite the indoor tennis courts and one pathetic excuse for a country club."

  To stay in character I had to defend Towle.

  "Professor, I don't know Doctor Towle well, but he's very well spoken of. I've met him and he seems to be a forceful man, of strong character. Isn't it possible that growing up in the type of environment you describe Brindamoor to be could increase one's individuality?"

  The old man looked at me with contempt.

  "Rubbish! I understand you have to pretty up his image, but you'll get nothing but the truth from me. There wasn't an individual in the bunch from Brindamoor. Young man, solitude is the nectar of individuality. Our Willie Towle had no taste for it."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "I cannot recall ever seeing him alone. He palled around with two other dullards from the island. The three of them pranced around like little dictators. The Three Heads of State they were called behind their backs--pretentious, puffed-up boys. Willie, Stu and Eddy."

  "Stu and Eddy?"

  "Yes, yes, that's what I said. Stuart Hickle and Edwin Hayden."

  At the mention of those names I gave an involuntary start. I struggled to neutralize my expression, hoping the old man hadn't noticed the reaction. Happily, he appeared oblivious, as he lectured in that parched voice:

  "... and Hickle was a sickly, pimple-faced rotter with a spooky disposition, not a word out of him that wasn't censored by the other two. Hayden was a mean-spirited little sneak. I caught him cheating on an exam and he attempted to bribe me out of failing him by offering to procure for me an Indian prostitute of supposedly exotic talents--can you imagine such gall, as if I were unable to fend for myself in affairs of lust!

  Of course I failed him and wrote a sharp letter to his parents. Got no reply--no doubt they never read it, off on some European jaunt. Do you know what became of him?" he ended rhetorically.

  "No," I lied.

  "He's now a judge--in Los Angeles. In fact I believe all three of them, the glorious Heads, moved to Los Angeles. Hickle's some kind of chemist--wanted to be a doctor, just like Willie, and I believe he actually did begin medical school. But he was too stupid to pull through.

  "A judge," he repeated. "What does that say about our judicial system?"

  The information was pouring in fast and, like a pauper suddenly discovering a sizeable inheritance, I wasn't sure how to deal with it. I wanted to shed my cover and wring every last bit of information out of the old man, but there was the case--and my promises to Margaret--to think about.

  "I'm a nasty old bugger, am I not?" crackled Van der Graaf.

  "You seem very perceptive, Professor."

  "Oh, do I?" He smiled craftily. "Any other tidbits I can toss your way?"

  "I know Dr. Towle lost his wife and child several years back. What can you tell me about that?"

  He stared at me, then refilled his glass and sipped. "All part of your story?"

  "All part of fleshing out the portrait," I said. It sounded feeble.

  "Ah, yes, fleshing it out. Of course. Well, it was a tragedy, no two ways about it, and your doctor was rather young to be dealing with it. He was married during his sophomore year to a lovely girl from a good Portland family. Lovely, but outside his circle--the Two Hundred tended to marry each other. The engagement came as a bit of surprise. Six months later the girl gave birth to a son and that mystery was cleared up.

  "For a while the trio seemed to be breaking up-- Hickle and Hayden slinked off by themselves as Willie attended to the duties of a married man. Then the wife and child were killed and the Heads were reunited. I suppose it's natural that a man will seek the comfort of friends in the wake of such a loss."

  "How did it happen?"

  He peered into his glass and downed the last few drops.

  "The girl--the mother--was taking the child to the hospital. He'd woken up with the croup or some such ailment. The nearest emergency facility was at the Children's Orthopedic Hospital, at the University. It was in the early morning hours, still dark. Her car went over the Evergreen Bridge and plunged into the lake. It was daybreak before it was found."

  "Where was Dr. Towle?"

  "Studying. Burning the midnight oil. Of course this caused him to be guilt-stricken, absolutely wretched. No doubt he blamed himself for not having been there and been drowned himself. You know the type of self-flagellation embraced by the bereaved."

  "A tragic affair."

  "Oh yes. She was a lovely girl."

  "Dr. Towle keeps her picture in his office."

  "A sentimentalist, is he?"

  "I suppose." I drank some whiskey. "After the tragedy he began seeing more of his friends?"

  "Yes. Though as I hear you use the term I realize something. In my concept of friendship there is implied a bond of affection, some degree of mutual admiration. Those three always looked so grim when they were together--they didn't seem to enjoy each other's company. I never knew what the link between them was, but it did exist. Willie went away to medical school and Stuart tagged along. Edwin Hayden attended law school at the same university. They settled in the same city. No doubt you'll be contacting the other two in order to obtain laudatory quotes for your article. If there is an article."

  I struggled to remain calm.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Oh, I think you know what I mean, my boy. I'm not going to ask you to present identification confirming you're who you say you are--it wouldn't prove a thing anyway--because you seem like a pleasant, intelligent young man and how many visitors to whom I can blab do you think I receive? Enough said."

  "I appreciate that, Professor."

  "And well you should. I trust you have your reasons for wanting to ask me about Willie. Undoubtedly they're boring and I've no wish to know them. Have I been helpful?"

  "You've been more than helpful." I filled our glasses and we shared another drink, no conversation passing between us.

  "Would you be willing to be a bit more helpful?" I asked.

  "That depends."

  "Dr. Towle has a nephew. Timothy Kruger. I wonder if there's anything you could tell me about him."

  Van der Graaf raised his drink to his lips with trembling hands. His face clouded.

  "Kruger." He said the name as if it were an epithet.

  "Yes."

  "Cousin. Distant cousin, not nephew."

  "Cousin, then."

  "Kruger. An old family. Prussians, every one of them. Power brokers. A powerful family." His melliflu ousness was gone and he spat out the words with mechanical intonation. "Prussians."

  He took a few steps. The arachnid stagger ceased abruptly and he let his hands drop to his sides.

  "This must be a police matter," he said.

  "Why do you say that?"

  His face blackened with anger and he raised one fist in the air, a prophet of doom.

  "Don't trifle with me, young man! If it has something to do with Timothy Kruger there's little else it could be!"

  "It is part of a criminal investigation. I can't go into details."

  "Oh, can't you? I've wagged my tongue at you without demanding to know your true intentions. A moment ago I judged them to be boring. Now I've changed my mind."

  "What
is it about the Kruger name that scares you so much, Professor?"

  "Evil," he said. "Evil frightens me. You say your questions are part of a criminal investigation. How do I know what side you're on?"

  "I'm working with the police. But I'm not a policeman."

  "I won't tolerate riddles! Either be truthful or be gone!"

  I considered the choice.

  "Margaret Dopplemeier," I said. "I don't want her to lose her job because of anything I tell you."

  "Maggie?" he snorted. "Don't worry about her, I've no intention of letting on the fact that she led you to me. She's a sad girl, needs intrigue to spice up her life. I've spoken enough to her to know that she clings longingly to the Conspiracy Theory of Life. Dangle one before her--she'll go for it like a trout for a lure. Kennedy assassinations, Unidentified Flying Objects, cancer tooth decay--all the result of a grand collusion of anonymous demons. No doubt you recognized that and exploited it."