Sam McCain - 02 - Wake Up Little Susie (24 page)

She smiled her nun’s smile and said, “She’s doing much better, McCain. Much better.”

“Her memory back?”

“She’s started recognizing people. Most people, anyway.”

A nurse was plumping Mary’s pillow for her when I walked in. “There you go. A nice shower and fresh clothes, and your dinner’ll be along in another hour or so.”

Mary’s smile was a measure of her condition.

It was back to three-quarters power. Which is damned powerful, believe me.

She looked at me. There was just a moment’s hesitation and then she said, “McCain!”

I walked over to her. I’d brought her a Herman Wouk novel and flowers, which the nurse took and put in a vase. The room was an art gallery of Get Well cards and a hothouse of flower-stuffed vases.

Mary said, holding my hands, “The nurse was telling me how you found me. On the

highway.”

I nodded. “I owe that to the black Ford.”

“The black Ford?”

I nodded. “I don’t know who she is. But she’s been around town lately in this Ford ragtop just like mine. Except it’s black. I was out on the highway, heading into town, and she suddenly appeared. So we started to drag.”

“Now, that’s mature.” The smile again.

“It’s that clean stretch of road. You can see for a couple of miles. I couldn’t help myself.

And I’m glad I did it. Dragging put me in the right spot to see you come up from that gully.”

“Well, then, I take it back.” She

laughed. “I’m very glad you acted maturely and broke the law and endangered your life by drag-racing with a beautiful woman.”

“I didn’t say anything about her being beautiful.”

“She’d have to be beautiful or the story wouldn’t be as good. All mystery women are beautiful. It’s in their club rules.”

“They have club rules?”

“Oh, yes. Developed over the

centuries.”

“Well, then, I’d say her dues are paid up.”

I leaned in and kissed her. First I kissed her on the cheek. Then I kissed her on the mouth. And I kissed her longer on the mouth than was strictly necessary.

“Say,” she said. “I’ll have to come to the hospital more often. I love all this attention from you. Especially the kiss.”

“My pleasure.” I took her hand.

She lay back. Sighed. “Sorry. I just need to rest a bit. That kiss took all my energy.”

I pulled up a chair and sat down. She dozed off quickly. I didn’t want to wake her up. It was all academic now anyway, what had happened to her. She was doing fine and the murderer had been caught. In time, she’d remember everything and we’d talk about it.

Dusk came early. The transition was quick.

What happened was the sky darkened by four or five shades on the gray scale, letting a few stars be seen in the sweep of early night.

Streetlights came on, looking lonely. You could hear news on several Tv sets

in other rooms. Nurses squeaked by in the hall, rubber soles official and officious. The dinner cart started rattling from room to room.

I mst’ve held her hand for close to an hour.

On and off, of course. In movies constant lovers really are constant. But not in life. Not in my life anyway. I occasionally had to take my hand back to dry off the palm, shake feeling back into it, scratch my head, light a cigarette, pour myself a little more water.

Then I’d put my hand gently back in hers and the feeling would come back. The surprising feeling of contentment, of genuine peace, that touching her had suddenly inspired in me. I put our hands on her womb, imagined a child there. Andfora long time I watched the shadow play of the streetlights on her face and imagined it at various stages of her life: her thirties, her forties, her fifties, her sixties. And when she was an old woman, though it was difficult to imagine in any especially vivid away because her youth was so perfect and indelible now.

The cart came to the door. Mary woke and clipped on her light.

“You ready for dinner?” a heavy woman in a pink uniform said.

“Yes, thanks.”

The smell of the food made me realize I was hungry. It also made me realize that I wasn’t hungry for hospital food. God knows they try. You see those folks in the kitchen down there working their asses off trying their best to prepare a genuinely delicious meal. But something happens to hospital food. It never quite tastes familiar. It is sort of like food but not quite, the only food that can make you long for an airline meal.

She ate hungrily, fork and knife flashing.

“This is great.”

“First it was amnesia. Now it’s delusions.”

She grinned and shook her head. “Ever the cynic. This stuff is actually pretty good.

Maybe I could order an extra meal for you tomorrow night.”

“Only if I get to drink a quart of gin first.”

“McCain, you couldn’t drink a quart of gin.

I can hold my liquor better than you can, and I can’t hold my liquor at all.”

A knock. I turned to see her

mom in the door. I stood up, kissed Mary on the forehead.

“I like the way you kissed me earlier a lot better,” she said.

“So did I but I don’t want to shock your mother.”

Her mom laughed. “Go ahead, Sam. Shock me.”

I glanced at my watch. “Actually, I have to be at my office in a few minutes.”

“What’re you working on now?” Mary asked.

“I’d say it’s a divorce case but the couple isn’t actually married yet.”

Mary smiled. “You’re so masculine when you’re incoherent.”

I got the lights on, the heat up, stopped the toilet from running, started heating up yesterday’s coffee, and officially retired my Captain Video notebook. It had done well by me.

But now the case was officially over, it was time to salute the Captain and put him away in the bottom drawer, along with notebooks from other cases.

I spent the next half hour getting the lie-detector rig set up. I still didn’t have any idea how to work it but I got it so the lights went on and the arm skittered across the rolling paper and the motor made a most impressive humming noise.

I was just finishing up when Linda and Jeff arrived. I could tell they were still estranged. They both looked awkward, afraid to even brush up against each other.

“What the hell’s this all about, McCain?”

Jeff asked. “I’ve got two very sick dogs waiting on me.” Being a popular veterinarian was more than a full-time job.

“Well, there’s a very sick human being you need to see too.”

“Who?”

“Chip O’Donlon.”

“Chip O’Donlon?”

“You two get in that closet and stay there and shut up until I tell you to come out.”

“I don’t like this,” Linda said.

“Well, I don’t especially like

baby-sitting you two, either.”

I was just lighting a Lucky when the knock came, a jaunty top-of-the-world-man

knock. One of the rulers of the cosmos had arrived in the humble form of Chip O’Donlon. I shushed them and hurried them into the closet and closed the door. Then I went to greet my favorite narcissist.

“Hey, Dad,” he said, as he walked in and gave my office his usual condescending lookover. “You got quite a pad here.”

He wore a tan cashmere jacket, no

less, a yellow V-neck sweater, white shirt, chocolate-colored slacks, desert boots. With his tousled hair and imposingly handsome face, he was his own Dreamboat Alert.

“I thought you didn’t have any money,” I said.

“I don’t.”

“Then where the hell’d you come up with a cashmere jacket?”

“I got friends, man.” He gave me his best pretty-boy grin. “Lady friends. They buy me stuff.”

The hell of it was, he was probably telling the truth.

“Sit down over there.”

He glared at me. He didn’t like being told what to do. “What’s that?”

“Lie detector.”

“You aren’t putting me on that thing.”

I had to switch tones, to the

reasoning-with-an-ape voice I have to take with about a fourth of my clients. “I have to try this out on somebody I know, Chip. Just to see if it works.”

“Not me.”

“The Ryker job?”

“What about it?”

“Now, I know you didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Damned right I didn’t.”

It was one of the few things Cliffie had accused him of that Chip actually didn’t do. “That’s the kind of question I’ll be asking. Things I already know the answer to. Simple things.”

He watched me suspiciously. “How come you’re doing this, anyway?”

“The Judge wants me to get it rigged up before next week. She wants the District Attorney to interview a witness while the machine’s running.”

“I don’t want to do it, man.”

“I’ll cancel your debt, remember?”

I’d hooked him again. That would have

made me suspicious: a lawyer willing to cancel a bill—even though he knew he’d probably never be paid anyway—j to try out a lie detector set. I knew then that one town suspicion wasn’t true. Chip O’Donlon wasn’t Albert Einstein’s illegitimate son.

“The whole thing?”

“Every penny.”

“Wow. No more of those bullshit bills from you, man? You know it’s embarrassing when the landlady sees that Deadbeat thing next to my name on the outside of your envelopes.”

“A little personal touch of mine.”

He looked the machine over. “It won’t give off electricity or anything?”

“Chip, it’s not the electric chair. It’s a lie detector. A harmless lie detector.”

“Like on Dragnet?”

“Just like on Dragnet.”

“It might be cool to get hooked up to it.

They say if you’re smart enough, you can fake it out.”

I resisted the easy retort. I had to get him on my side. “I’ll even take your picture, if you want me to.”

“Hey!” he said. “That’d be cool, Dad!

Strapped up to a lie detector! The chicks’ll flip, man! They really will!”

A noise. In the closet.

Chip looked over. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“That noise?”

“Oh, you must mean the mice.”

“Mice? How big are they?”

“They go down to the feed mill to fill themselves up, and then they come back here to sleep.”

“Man, they must really chow down.”

“You wouldn’t want to hear them eat, believe me. You can hear them smacking their lips for blocks.”

Chip sat in the chair and looked the lie detector over, his brain, such as it was, no doubt filled with images of himself looking just like John Garfield wired to the machine. He’d probably carry autographed glossies around and hand them out at the supermarket.

“You’ll really take my picture with this thing on?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s your camera?” I showed him.

“That thing work?”

“You bet.”

“How old is it?”

“Not that old. Now c’mon. Let’s get you hooked up.”

I got the cuff on him and then sat down across from him. I’d spent a minute looking for my clipboard—a person never looks more serious and professional than when he’s got a clipboard —but I couldn’t find it so I had to settle for my notebook.

“Is that Captain Video?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I hate that show. Everything looks fake.”

“Let’s get on with it, all right?”

“Especially the robot.”

“What?”

“Especially that robot, Tobor. Shit, I could build something better than that in my garage.”

“Did you know that Tobor is robot spelled backward?” I figured I ought to annoy him a little more, the way he was annoying me.

“I can’t believe you’ve got a Captain Video notebook. You don’t take that thing to court, do you?”

“Not so far. Now, how about getting to work?”

“I want a cigarette in my mouth, you know, when you take the picture.”

“Of course.”

I got the arm working. I said, “Here we go.”

“Your name?”

“You know my name.”

“It’s for the machine. So it’ll know when you’re telling the truth.”

“What a stupid machine.”

“Your name.”

He sighed. “Chip O’Donlon.”

“Age.”

“Twenty-one.”

And so on.

He sighed a lot, he shifted in his chair a lot, he scratched his head, his nose, his ass.

He smoked and he didn’t smoke. He

glowered, he grimaced, he groused.

“When do we take my picture?”

“Just a few more questions.”

“This is a stupid machine.”

“Yes, I believe you’ve made that point several times.” Then I said, “Now, so

far, you’ve told the truth.”

An arrogant smile only the Chip

O’Donlons of the world can offer us. “Or maybe I beat the machine.”

“I’m glad you said that.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. Because I think a guy of your intelligence—I think that’s just what you’ve done.

I think you answered falsely a couple of times.

But I don’t think the machine got it.”

He beamed, he preened.

“So I’m going to ask you just two more questions.”

The smirk. “I’m ready, Daddy-O. Any time you are.”

I looked at my notebook as if Moses himself had left a message for me to read. “The Harrison Auto Parts store robbery last March. You have anything to do with that?”

It stopped him, as I hoped it would. The eyes narrowed; the teeth lost some of their gleam; the jaw muscles started to bunch.

“How’d you know about that?”

“It’s just a question I made up is all.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know shit about it.”

I looked over at the arm of the detector.

“You’re good, O’Donlon. You’re very good.”

He looked down at the arm too. Looked up. The smirk was back. He was under the impression he’d beaten the machine again.

“All right, one final question.”

“When do we take my picture?”

“Right after this question.”

“I want time to comb my hair.”

“Don’t worry.”

He glared at the machine. “This thing’s a joke. A moron could beat this thing.”

Yes, I thought uncharitably, and a moron just has.

“All right. Here’s the big question. You ready?”

“God, you make it sound like The $64eajjj Question or something.”

I studied my notebook again and raised my eyes slowly. “Have you ever slept with Linda Granger?”