Clues for Dr. Coffee, page 16
“That nearsighted pansy!” Rhodes exclaimed. “He can’t see beyond the end of his—Don’t ever try to prove anything by that fag’s testimony. And don’t tell me that anything I say may be used against me, because even if this place is bugged, I’ll deny everything. You’ve drugged me. You’ve beaten me with gocart tires. You’ve kicked my shins black and blue. I’ll swear that you’ve—”
“Stop it, Bob.”
“May I ask a question, Mr. Rhodes? I’m Doctor—”
“Sure, you’re the learned successor to Dr. Thomdyke, Dr. Watson, Dr. Sherlock, Dr. Holmes, Dr. Perry Mason, Dr.—Indeed, I’ve heard about you, Dr. Sanka. Go ahead and ask.”
“What were you doing at the Westside Apartment Hotel last night?”
“I was on assignment.”
“From whom?”
“I’m not at liberty to say. The highest courts of this state have ruled that a newsman is not required to reveal his sources. Privileged communication.”
“This ain’t a matter of privileged communication,” Ritter said. “This is a matter of murder in the first degree. Look, Rhodes—”
“Just a minute, Max. Mr. Rhodes, were you inside Apartment Twenty-six last night?”
“No.”
“Did you see a man named Paul Wallace last night?”
“No.”
“But you know that Paul Wallace was killed in Apartment Twenty-six last night, don’t you?”
“Sure. I read the papers even on my day off.”
“Did you see anyone go into Apartment Twenty-six last night?”
“No.”
“Did you see anyone come out?”
Rhodes hesitated for just the fraction of a second before he said: “No.”
“What were you doing on the second floor of the Westside?”
“I was playing a hunch. I’m a great little hunch player.”
“Did you make mincemeat of Wallace’s lights and gizzard on a hunch?” Lieutenant Ritter asked.
“Down, Cossack!” said Rhodes. “Down. Roll over. Sit up. Beg—”
“Bob, you’re not making sense,” the girl broke in. “Lieutenant, I’ll tell you why he was at the Westside. He had an awful fight with Paul Wallace night before last. You see, Bob and I are very much in love, and Bob is terribly jealous. He thinks Paul Wallace has designs on my virtue. Bob told him that if he so much as invited me to his apartment again, he would kill him.”
“And last night he made good his threat?”
“Of course not. Last night I told Bob he was being silly and he would have to go around and apologize to Paul Wallace. Only he couldn’t apologize because nobody answered when he knocked on the door. I guess Mr. Wallace was already dead.”
From the expression on Bob Rhodes’ face, Dr. Coffee judged that at least part of the girl’s story was new and startling to him.
“Patsy,” said Ritter, “if this guy Wallace was so buddy-buddy with your family, how come your Auntie Min never heard of him?”
“Because I never spoke of him in front of Auntie Min. Auntie is a real spinster. She thinks all men are creatures of the devil. If she ever thought that I went to see Mr. Wallace alone, she’d simply die, even if he was old enough to be my father.”
“Was he your father?”
“No, of course not. Lieutenant, why don’t you let Bob go home and sober up? You’ll never get a straight story out of him in this condition.”
Ritter ignored the suggestion. “Getting back to your Auntie Min,” he said, “how come she wasn’t worried to death about you alone with that voice coach of yours way down south in New Orleans?”
Patsy laughed. “He’s even older than Mr. Wallace.”
“What was his name, Miss Erryl?” Dan Coffee asked.
The girl hesitated. “You wouldn’t recognize it,” she said after a moment. “He wasn’t very well known outside of the South. In the French Quarter they used to call him Papa Albert.”
“No last name?”
“That was his last name—Albert.”
“Address?”
“Well, he used to live on Bourbon Street, but last I heard he was moving away.”
“To Baton Rouge?”
“I—I don’t know where he is now.”
“Didn’t he write to you from Baton Rouge?”
“No.”
“Or to Mr. Wallace?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Don’t you know of anyone who might have written to Mr. Wallace from Baton Rouge?”
“I—I—” Patsy Erryl suddenly covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
“Lay off the gal, will you, Cossack!” Rhodes stood up, swinging a full beer bottle like an Indian club. “If you have to work off your sadistic energy somewhere, call me any day after dark and I’ll give you some addresses which I suspect you already know. You can bring your own whips, if you want, and—”
“Sit down, Mr. Rhodes.” Dr. Coffee gently removed the bottle from the reporter’s hands. “Miss Erryl, I happened to listen to the broadcast of your operatic audition. I thought you did a first-rate job. I particularly admired the way you sang “Vissi d’arte.” Do you have any real ambition to sing La Tosca some day?”
The girl’s weeping stopped abruptly. She stared at the pathologist for a moment. Then, “Why do you ask that?”
“You seemed to have a feeling for the part of Floria Tosca,” Dr. Coffee said. “I’m sure you must be familiar with the libretto. You are, aren’t you?”
Patsy Erryl’s lips parted. She closed them again without saying a word.
“Come on, Max,” Dr. Coffee said. “Miss Erryl is right. I think you’d better tackle Mr. Rhodes again when he’s more himself.”
“But Doc, he admits—”
“Let’s go, Max. Good-bye, Miss Tosca. Good-bye, Mr. Rhodes.”
As the police car headed for Raoul’s Auberge Française (one flight up), where, since it was Thursday, Dr. Coffee knew they would be regaled with Quenelles de Brochet (dumplings of fresh-water pike in patty shells), Max Ritter said:
“Doc, I shouldn’t have listened to you. I should have taken that wise-cracking reporter downtown.”
“You won’t lose him, Max. I saw some of your most adhesive shadows loitering purposefully outside The Slot.”
“You never miss a trick, do you, Doc?” Ritter chuckled. “Doc, you don’t really believe that a guy gets so squiffed so early in the day just because he can’t apologize to a dead swindler, do you?”
“Hardly, Max. But a man might get himself thoroughly soused if he realized he was seen heading for the apartment of a man with whom he had quarreled the night before and who had since been murdered. My guess is that he spent the rest of the night ducking from bar to bar, trying to forget either that he killed a man or that he had certainly maneuvered himself into the unenviable position of appearing to have killed a man.”
As they waited for a light to change, Ritter asked: “What was that crack of yours about Tosca?”
Dr. Coffee laughed. “Pure whimsy. Probably unimportant. I wanted to watch the girl’s reaction.”
“You sure got one. What’s the pitch?”
“Max, why don’t you drop in at the Municipal Auditorium when the Metropolitan Opera troupe stops by for a week after the New York season?”
“Doc, you know damned well I never got past the Gershwin grade. Who’s the Tosca?”
“Fioria Tosca is the tragic heroine of a play by a Frenchman named Victorien Sardou which has become a popular opera by Puccini. Tosca is a singer who kills the villain Scarpia to save her lover, an early nineteenthcentury revolutionary named Mario, and, incidentally, her honor. As it turns out, her honor is about all that is saved because everybody double-crosses everybody else and there are practically no survivors. But it’s a very melodious opera, Max, and I think you might like it. Listen.” Dr. Coffee hummed “E lucevan le stelle.” “Da da da de-e-e-e, da da dum, da dum dum-m-m-m.…”
“You think we got a Patsy Tosca on our hands, Doc?”
“It’s too early to tell, Max. Right now, though, I’d say it might be a sort of wrong-way Tosca. Instead of Floria Tosca killing Scarpia to save Mario, Mario may have killed Scarpia to save Tosca. Only I’m not sure who Mario might be. I’ll know more tomorrow or the next day. I’ll call you, Max.”
Dr. Coffee was reading the slides from the Wallace autopsy. The Fite stains provided colorful sections. The acid-fast bacteria appeared in a deep ultramarine blue. The connective-tissue cells were red, and all other elements were stained yellow. He raised his eyes from the binocular microscope and summoned his Hindu resident.
“Dr. Mookerji, I want you to look at this section from the femoral lymph node. You must have seen many like it in India.”
Dr. Mookerji adjusted the focus, moved the slide around under the nose of the instrument, grunted, and held out a chubby brown hand.
“You have further sections, no doubt?”
‘Try this. From the right ear lobe.”
Dr. Mookerji grunted again, then twisted the knobs of the microscope in silence.
“Hansen s bacillus?” ventured Dr. Coffee.
“Quite,” said the Hindu. “However, am of opinion that said bacilli present somewhat fragmented appearance. Observe that outline is somewhat hollowish and organisms enjoy rather puny condition if not frankly deceased. Patient was no doubt arrested case?”
“The patient is dead,” said Dr. Coffee, ‘Taut I’ll go along with you that it wasn’t Hansen’s bacillus that killed him. It rarely does. In this case it was a knife.” He stared into space as he toyed with the slides in the rack before him. After a moment, he asked: “Doris, when is that New Orleans convention of clinical pathologists that wanted me to read a paper, and I replied I didn’t think I could get away?”
Doris consulted her note book. “It’s tomorrow, Doctor.”
“Good. Doris, be an angel and see if you can get me a seat on a plane for New Orleans tonight. Then try to get me Dr. Quentin Quirk, medical officer in charge of the U. S. Public Health Service Hospital at Carville, Louisiana. Make it person to person. Then get me Mrs. Coffee on the other line.”
In five minutes Dr. Coffee had reservations on the night flight to New Orleans, had instructed his wife to pack a small bag with enough clothes for three days, and was talking to Dr. Quirk in Louisiana.
“This is Dan Coffee, Quent. I’m coming down to your shindig tomorrow after all.… Sure, I’ll read a paper if you want. I don’t care whether it’s in the proceedings or not. Will you let me ride back to your hospital with you after the show? … Fine. I’ve always wanted to see the place. See you tomorrow then, Quent. ’Bye.”
The pathologist had barely replaced the instrument when Max Ritter walked into his office and tossed a pair of very thin rubber gloves on his desk.
“Developments, Doc,” the detective said. “I’ve just come from Patsy Erryl’s Auntie Min’s place. She happens to have five pair of surgeon’s gloves in the house. Seconds, she says. Big sale of defective gloves at the five and ten. Forty-nine cents a pair because they’re imperfect but still waterproof. She buys six pair for her and Patsy to wear when they do the dishes. Only there’s only five pair there when I find ’em. She can’t remember what happened to the other pair. She thinks Patsy throws ’em out because they split.”
“So you think old Auntie Min wore the defective surgical gloves to kill Wallace?”
“I don’t say that. But this lush Rhodes is at her house practically every night to sell his bill of goods to Patsy. If he should have grabbed that sixth pair of surgeon’s gloves one night, it might explain why there ain’t any fingerprints.”
“Max, have you arrested the lad?”
“Not exactly. But the chief is getting impatient. I’m holding Rhodes as a material witness.”
“Good lord! Well, at least I won’t have to face Patsy when she starts raising hell to get lover-boy out of custody. I’m going to Louisiana tonight, Max. If it’s at all possible, don’t prefer charges before I get back. I have a hunch I may pick up a few threads down there. Do you have that letter with the Baton Rouge postmark?”
“Sure.”
“And a photo of Patsy Erryl?”
“A cinch.”
“Wish me luck, Max. I’ll call you the minute I get back. Maybe before, if I run into something hot and steaming.”
Dr. Coffee savored the applause with which the convention of pathologists greeted his paper on “Determination of the Time of Death by the Study of Bone Marrow.” He also savored several days of gastronomic research: Pompano en papillote at Antoine’s and Crab Gumbo chez Galatoire, among other delights. Then he drove northwest along the Mississippi with his old classmate at medical school, Dr. Quentin Quirk.
Except for an occasional mast which poked above the levees, Old Man River was carefully concealed from the Old River Road. The drive through the flat delta country was enlivened by the pink-and-gold bravura of the rain trees, the smell of nearby water hanging on the steamy air, and the nostalgic exchange of medical school reminiscences—who among their classmates had died, who had gone to seed, who had traded integrity for well-being and social status, who had gone on to be ornaments to the growing structure of the healing sciences.
Dr. Coffee carefully avoided mentioning the real purpose of his visit and soon the moss-hung oaks of the grounds and the ante-bellum columns and wrought-iron balconies of the administration building loomed ahead.
It was Dr. Coffee’s first visit to Carville. In spite of himself, he was surprised to find that the only leprosarium in the continental United States should be such a beautiful place. He knew of course that modern therapy had removed most of the crippling effects of the disease, which was not at all the leprosy of the Bible, anyhow, and that even the superstitious dread was fading as it became generally known that the malady was only faintly communicable. Yet as Dr. Quirk gave him a personally conducted tour of the plantation—the vast quadrangle of pink-stucco domitories, the sweetsmelling avenue of magnolias leading up to the airy infirmary, the expensively modern laboratories, the Sisters of Charity in their sweeping white cornettes, the gay parasols in front of the recreation hall, the brilliantly colored birds, the private cottages for patients under the tall pecan trees beyond the golf course. Dr. Coffee wondered how, in the second half of the twentieth century, it was possible for the old stigma to persist. When he settled down to a cocktail in Dr. Quirk’s bungalow, however, he remembered what he had come for.
“Quent,” said Dr. Coffee. “I’ve seen Hansen’s bacillus only twice since we’ve left medical school; while you’ve been living with it for years. Didn’t we read something in Dermatology 101 about leprosy affecting fingerprints? Some Brazilian leprologist, as I remember.”
“That’s right; Ribeiro, probably, although several other Brazilians have been working in that field—Liera and Tanner de Abreu among them.”
“Am I dreaming, or is it true that the disease can change fingerprint patterns?”
“Definitely true,” said Dr. Quirk. “Even in its early stages, the disease may alter papillary design. The papillae flatten out, blurring the ridges and causing areas of smoothness.”
“Do the patterns ever disappear completely?”
“Oh, yes. In advanced cases, the epidermis grows tissue-thin, the interpapillary pegs often disappear, and the skin at the finger tips becomes quite smooth.”
Dr. Coffee drained the last of his Sazerac, put down his glass and gave a rather smug nod.
“Then I’ve come to the right place,” he said. “Quent, you may have a murderer among your patients—or expatients.”
“Murderer? Here?” Dr. Quirk got up and pensively tinkled a handful of ice cubes into a bar glass. “Well, it is possible. Over the years we have had three or four murders at Carville. When did your putative Carvillian commit murder?”
‘Wednesday night,” said Dr. Coffee, “in Northbank. The murderer left bloody finger marks but no distinguishable prints. I suspect the victim might also have been a one-time patient of yours. There was Diasone in his medicine chest, and at autopsy I found fragmented Hansen’s bacilli in the lymph nodes and one ear lobe. Do you know a character named Paul Wallace?”
“Wallace? Good lord!” Dr. Quirk shook Peychaud bitters into the bar glass with a savage fist. “That no-good four-flushing ape! Yes, Wallace has been in and out of here several times. Whenever he gets into trouble with the law, he tries to scare the authorities into sending him back here. ‘You can’t keep me in your jail,’ he says. ‘I’m a leper. You have to send me to Carville.’ But I won’t take him back any more. He’s an arrested case. Last time he tried to dodge a conviction, I sent him back to serve time. I knew he’d end up in some bloody mess. Who killed him?”
“Somebody who must have loathed his guts enough to cut them to pieces. It was a real hate job … by a man with no fingerprints.”
The Medical Officer in Charge shook his head. “I can’t imagine—”
“Quent, did you ever see this girl before?” Dr. Coffee opened his brief case to produce a photo of Patsy Erryl.
Dr. Quirk squinted at the picture, held it out at arm’s length, turned it at several angles, squinted again, brought it closer, then slowly shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think—” Suddenly he slapped his hand across the upper part of the photo. “Sorry,” he said. “Change signals. Her hair fooled me. I never saw her as a blonde before. That’s Patsy Erryl.”
“An ex-patient?”
Dr. Quirk nodded. “She came to Carville as a kid. Her father was an Air Force officer in the Far East. She was raised out there; Philippines, I think; one of the endemic areas, anyhow. When her father was killed in Korea, her mother brought her back to the States. The girl developed clinical symptoms. Her mother brought her to Carville and then faded out of the picture.”
“Did she die, too?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe she remarried. Anyhow, she never once came to Carville to see Patsy. Patsy responded very well to sulfones and when she was discharged as bacteriologically and clinically negative, an aunt from somewhere in the Middle West came to get her.”
“That would be Auntie Min of Northbank,” said Dr. Coffee. “How long ago was Patsy discharged?”
