Falling Angel (3 page)

He switched on an overhead lamp and a rectangle of light pierced the dark parlor and illuminated my outstretched legs as far as my knees. I made no sound other than exhaling, but expected he would smell the smoke. I was wrong. He hung his overcoat on the banister and shuffled off toward the kitchen. When he turned on the lights, I started back through the dining room.

Dr. Fowler seemed not to notice my attaché case sitting on the table. He had the refrigerator door open and was bent over, poking around inside. I leaned against the arched dining room entrance and watched him.

“About time for your evening fix?” I said.

He spun around clutching a milk carton to his shirt front with both hands. “How did you get in here?”

“Through the mail slot. Why don’t you sit down and drink your milk and we’ll have a nice, long talk.”

“You’re not with N.I.H. Who are you?”

“The name is Angel. I’m a private investigator from the city.” I pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and he sat down wearily, holding the milk as if it was all he had left in the world.

“Breaking and entering is a serious crime,” he said. “I suppose you know you’d lose your license if I were to call the police.”

I turned a chair around across the table from him and straddled it, folding my arms on the bentwood frame. “We both know you’re not calling the law. Too embarrassing if they found the opium den in the icebox.”

“I’m a medical man. It’s perfectly within my rights to store pharmaceuticals at home.”

“Come off it, doc, I saw your works cooking in the bathroom. How long have you been hooked?”

“I’m not … an addict! I will not stand for such an inference. I have severe rheumatoid arthritis. Sometimes, when the pain is overwhelming, I employ a mild narcotic analgesic. Now I suggest you get out of here or I truly will call the police.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll even dial them for you myself. They’ll get a kick out of seeing your Nalline test.”

Dr. Fowler sagged within the folds of his oversized suit. He seemed to be shrinking before my eyes. “What do you want with me?” He pushed the milk carton to one side and propped his head in his hands.

“Same thing I was after back at the hospital,” I said. “Information about Jonathan Liebling.”

“I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Doc, let’s not kid around. Liebling was never transferred to any V.A. hospital. I know because I called Albany myself and checked it. Not smart making up a story as thin as that.” I shook a cigarette out of the pack and stuck it in my mouth but didn’t light it. “The second mistake you made was using a ballpoint pen to record the fake transfer on Liebling’s chart. Ballpoints weren’t such a hot item in 1945.”

Dr. Fowler groaned and cradled his head in his arms on the tabletop. “I knew it was all over when he finally had a visitor. In almost fifteen years there were never any visitors, not one.”

“Sounds like a popular guy,” I said, thumbing my Zippo and tilting the cigarette into the flame. “Where is he now?”

“I don’t know.” Dr. Fowler pulled himself upright. It seemed to take all he had in him to get the job done. “I haven’t seen him since he was my patient during the war.”

“He must have gone someplace, doctor.”

“I have no idea where. Some people came one night long ago. He got into a car with them and drove away. I never saw him again.”

“Into a car? I thought he was supposed to be a vegetable.”

The doctor rubbed his eyes and blinked. “When he first came to us he was in a coma. But he responded well to treatment and within a month was up and around. We used to play table tennis in the afternoons.”

“Then he was normal when he left?”

“Normal? Hateful word, normal. No meaning whatsoever.” Dr. Fowler’s nervous, drumming fingers clenched into fists on the faded oilcloth. On his left hand he wore a gold signet ring engraved with a five-pointed star. “To answer your question, Liebling was not the same as you or me. After recovering his senses, his speech and sight and so on, the use of his limbs, he continued to suffer from acute amnesia.”

“You mean he had no memory?”

“None whatsoever. He had no idea who he was or where he came from. Not even his name meant anything to him. He insisted he was someone else and would eventually remember. I said he left with friends; I have only their word for it about that. Jonathan Liebling didn’t recognize them. They were strangers as far as he was concerned.”

“Tell me more about these friends. Who were they? What were their names?”

The doctor closed his eyes and pressed his trembling fingers to his temples. “It’s been so long. Years and years. I’ve done my best to forget it.”

“Don’t you go pleading amnesia on me, doc.”

“There were two of them,” he said, speaking very slowly, the words dragged out of the distance and filtered through layers of regret. “A man and a woman. I can’t tell you anything about the woman; it was dark and she stayed in the car. In any case, I’d never seen her before. The man was familiar to me. I’d met him several times. He was the one who made all the arrangements.”

“What was his name?”

“He said it was Edward Kelley. I have no way of knowing if that was the truth or not.”

I made a note of the name in my little black book. “What about the arrangements you mentioned? What was the deal there?”

“Money.” The doctor spat the word out as if it were a piece of rotten meat. “Isn’t every man supposed to have his price? Well, I certainly had mine. This fellow Kelley came to see me one day and offered money —”

“How much money?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars. Perhaps that doesn’t seem like such a vast sum now, but during the war it was more than I’d ever dreamed of.”

“It still might make for some sweet dreams today,” I said. “What did Kelley want for the money?”

“What you probably already suspect; discharge Jonathan Liebling without keeping a record. Destroy any evidence of his recovery. Most important, I was to maintain the pretense that he was still a patient at Emma Harvest.”

“Which is just what you did.”

“It wasn’t very difficult. Aside from Kelley and Liebling’s theatrical agent, or manager, I forget which, he never had any visitors.”

“What was the agent’s name?”

“I think it was Wagner; I can’t recall his first name.”

“Was he in on the arrangement with Kelley?”

“Not to my knowledge. I never saw them together, and he didn’t seem to know that Liebling had gone. He called every few months for a year or so to ask if there was any improvement, but never came up to visit. After a while, he stopped calling.”

“What about the hospital? Didn’t the administration suspect they were missing a patient?”

“Why should they? I kept his charts up to date, week by week; and every month a check came from Liebling’s trust fund to cover his expenses. As long as the bills are paid, no one is going to ask too many questions. I made up some sort of story to satisfy the nurses, but they had other patients to worry about, so it wasn’t very hard, really. As I said, there were never any visitors. After a while, all I had to do was fill out a legal affidavit which arrived every six months, regular as clockwork, from a law firm in New York.”

“McIntosh, Winesap, and Spy?”

“That’s the one.” Dr. Fowler raised his haunted eyes from the tabletop and met my gaze. “The money wasn’t for me. I want you to know that. My wife, Alice, was alive then. She had carcinoid syndrome and needed an operation we couldn’t afford. The money paid for that, and a trip to the Bahamas, but she died anyway. Didn’t take a year. You can’t buy off pain. Not with all the money in the world.”

“Tell me about Jonathan Liebling.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything at all; little things, habits, hobbies, how he liked his eggs. What color were his eyes?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Give me what you can. Start with a physical description.”

“That’s impossible. I have no idea what he looked like.”

“Don’t crap around with me, doc.” I leaned forward and blew a stream of smoke into his watery eyes.

“I’m telling the truth,” the doctor coughed. “Young Liebling came to us following intensive facial restoration.”

“Plastic surgery?”

“Yes. His head was swathed in bandages for his entire stay. I wasn’t the one who changed the dressings and so had no opportunity to see his face.”

“I know why they call it ‘plastic’ surgery,” I said, fingering my boiled-potato nose.

The doctor studied my features professionally. “Wax?”

“A war souvenir. It looked fine for a couple years. The guy I worked for had a summer place on the Jersey shore down at Barnegat. I fell asleep on the beach there one August and when I woke up it had melted inside.”

“Wax is no longer used for that procedure.”

“So I’m told.” I stood up and leaned against the table. “Give me what you can about Edward Kelley.”

“It’s been a long time,” the doctor said, “and people change.”

“How long, doc? What was the date of Liebling’s departure from the clinic?”

“It was 1943 or ‘44. During the war. I can’t remember more precisely.”

“Having another amnesia attack?”

“It’s been more than fifteen years. What do you expect?”

“The truth, doc.” I was beginning to grow impatient with the old man.

“I’m telling the truth, as best as I can recall.”

“What did this Edward Kelley look like?” I growled.

“He was a young man then, mid-thirties, I would guess. Be in his fifties now, in any case.”

“Doc, you’re stalling me.”

“I only met the man on three occasions.”

“Doc.” I reached down and took hold of the knot in his necktie, pinching it between my forefinger and thumb. Not much of a grip, but when I lifted he came up to meet me as easily as an empty husk. “Save yourself some trouble. Don’t make me squeeze the truth out of you.”

“I’ve told you all I can.”

“Why are you shielding Kelley?”

“I’m not. I hardly knew him. I —”

“If you weren’t such an old fart, I’d bust you up like a soda cracker.” When he tried to pull away, I jerked the knot in his tie a touch tighter. “Why wear myself out when there’s an easier way?” Dr. Fowler’s bloodshot eyes broadcast his fear. “You’re in a cold sweat, aren’t you, doc? Can’t wait to get rid of me so you can mainline the junk in your fridge?”

“Everyone needs something to help him forget,” he whispered.

“I don’t want you to forget. I want you to remember, doc.” I took him by his arm and steered him from the kitchen. “That’s why we’re going upstairs to your room where you can lie down and think things over while I go out and grab a bite to eat.”

“What do you want to know? Kelley had dark hair and one of those thin moustaches Clark Gable made popular.”

“Not good enough, doc.” I bullied him up the stairs by the collar of his tweed jacket. “A couple hours’ cold turkey should refresh your memory.”

“Always expensively dressed,” Dr. Fowler pleaded. “Conservative suits; nothing flashy.”

I pushed him through the narrow door of his spartan room and he fell forward onto the bed. “You think it over, doc.”

“Had perfect teeth. The most engaging smile. Please don’t go.”

I closed the door behind me and turned the long-handled key in the lock. It was the kind of key grandmother used to keep her secrets. I dropped it in my pocket and went down the carpeted stairs, whistling.

SIX

It was after midnight when I got back to Dr. Fowler’s place. A single light burned in the bedroom upstairs. The doc wasn’t getting much sleep tonight. It didn’t trouble my conscience. I devoured an excellent mixed grill and sat through half a double-feature without a pang of remorse. It’s a heartless profession.

I let myself in the front door and walked back through the dark hall to the kitchen. The refrigerator purred in the shadows. I took a bottle of morphine off the top shelf to bait the hook and started upstairs, guided by my penlight. The bedroom door was locked up tight.

“Be right with you, doc,” I called, fumbling in my pockets for the key. “I brought you a little taste.”

I turned the key and opened the door. Dr. Albert Fowler didn’t say a word. He was propped against the pillows on his bed, still wearing the brown herringbone suit. The framed photograph of a woman was clutched to his chest in his left hand. In his right he held the Webley Mark 5. He was shot through the right eye. Thickened blood welled in the wound like ruby tears. Concussion drove the other eye halfway out of its socket, giving him the goggling stare of a tropical fish.

I touched the back of his hand. It was cold as something hanging in a butcher shop window. Before I touched anything else, I opened my attaché case on the floor and put on a pair of latex surgeon’s gloves I took from the snap-front pocket inside the lid.

Something was wrong with the whole setup. Shooting yourself through the eye seemed an odd way to go about it, but presumably medical men are more informed in these matters. I tried to picture the doc holding his Webley upside down with his head bent back as if he were administering eye drops. It didn’t add up.

The door was locked, and I had the key in my pocket. Suicide was the only logical explanation. “If thine eye offend thee,” I muttered, trying to put my finger on what was out of place. The room looked exactly the same, military hairbrush and mirror at attention on the bureau, an undisturbed assortment of socks and underwear in the drawers.

I picked the leatherbound Bible off the bedside table and an open box of cartridges tumbled out onto the throw rug. The book was hollow inside, a dummy. I was the dummy for not finding the bullets earlier. I picked them off the floor, groping under the bed for strays, and put them back inside the empty Bible.

I went over the room with my handkerchief, wiping everything I had touched during my initial search. The Poughkeepsie police wouldn’t exactly be charmed by the idea of art out-of-town private eye bullying one of their prominent citizens into suicide. I told myself if it was suicide they wouldn’t look for prints and kept on wiping.

I cleaned the knob and the key and closed the door, leaving it unlocked. Downstairs, I emptied the ashtray into my jacket pocket, carried it to the kitchen and washed it, stacking it with the dishes on the drainboard. I put the morphine and the milk carton back in the icebox and went over the kitchen carefully with my handkerchief. Backtracking through the cellar, I wiped the banisters and doorknobs. There was nothing I could do about the hasp on the lean-to-door. I set it in place and pushed the screws into the spongy wood. Anyone doing his job would spot it right away.