Wax Apple Page 7

  “Not at all,” I said. “He didn’t come in last night, he lives here.”

  Fredericks turned to Cameron with a gesture of exasperation. “He isn’t making any sense,” he complained.

  Cameron said to me, “You just said he wasn’t any of the residents. Now you say he lives here.”

  “Both are true,” I said. “You have the landlocked equivalent of a stowaway somewhere in this building. I don’t know who he is, I don’t know whether or not he’s responsible for the accidents, but I do know he’s unofficially living here.”

  “That’s impossible,” Fredericks said, and Cameron said, “That’s fantastic, Tobin. Are you sure it isn’t just someone who wandered in off the street?”

  “He was dressed in cardigan, work pants and scuffed old sneakers, very much an at-home kind of clothing. But more important than that, he knows this building. He knows it physically, he’s the one who led me to the kitchen, and did it directly, no mistakes or detours. He’s prepared a lot of meals in that kitchen, because he made our breakfast in obvious comfort with his surroundings. He didn’t open any wrong cabinets to find plates or coffee or whatever. And he chatted about the place, its history and the people here, he knows The Midway as well as either of you two. And he told me he likes to meet new people shortly after their arrival and chat with them about the place.”

  “Then why didn’t anybody ever notice him before?” Fredericks asked.

  “I’m sure other people have noticed him. But you have a constant changeover of residents here. If I were a normal resident, I wouldn’t think anything was strange about my having met Dewey, and I wouldn’t have any reason to think it was strange if I never happened to run into him again. I’ve been actively moving around trying to meet people, and there are still eight residents I haven’t met. Under normal circumstances, by the time I would meet everyone here a couple of people would be leaving and one or two new ones would have arrived. My one encounter with Dewey would quickly fade from my mind, and if I did ever think of him again I’d just take it for granted he’d finished out his six months and left.”

  Frowning heavily, Fredericks said, “I just can’t swallow it. Where would he hide? How could he possibly live here and not be seen?”

  “This is a large building,” I said. “When I first came here, Debby Lattimore told me there’d been some thought of making a map of the place for new residents, but no one knew the building well enough to draw it. I’m sure there are a dozen odd corners where a stowaway could set up housekeeping.”

  Cameron said, “But it doesn’t make sense. Why would anybody want to do something like that? A stowaway is someone who wants to take a trip but doesn’t have the money to pay his fare. This building isn’t traveling anywhere.”

  “It’s traveling through time,” I said. “It could just be somebody who wants to live here.”

  “But why? Why does he want to live here under such constricting circumstances?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “When we find him, we’ll ask him.”

  Fredericks said, grudgingly, “I suppose we have to believe you, Tobin. It’s too pointless a story to be made up.”

  “It’s too easily checked, too,” I pointed out. “If Dewey exists, if I saw him, there’s no reason we can’t find him again. As a matter of fact, there’s another way we can check. Debby was in the outer office when I came in. Would you call her in?”

  “Certainly,” Cameron said. “Why?”

  “Ask her if she remembers Dewey. If she remembers meeting him shortly after she first came here. A man in his early fifties, small-boned, wire-framed glasses, very mild manner, full of stories about The Midway.”

  Cameron nodded, and picked up his phone. He dialed one number, and asked Debby to come in. As he was hanging the phone up she walked in, and he said, “Debby, do you remember ever meeting a man named Dewey here?”

  She frowned. She glanced at me in some curiosity—my activities had to be confusing—but devoted most of her attention to the question. “Dewey? A resident?”

  “Yes. A mild-mannered man of about fifty. He liked to talk about the history of The Midway.”

  “Oh!” she said, abruptly smiling. “Him! Sure, I remember him. He wore those funny glasses with thin metal frames. They’re very in now, you know.”

  Cameron and Fredericks looked at one another, and back at Debby. Cameron said, “When did you first meet him, Debby?”

  “Just the one time, I think. Once or twice. I guess that would be just before he left.”

  “When was that?”

  “A couple of days after I first got here,” she said. “In March, I think. I got a vacuum cleaner from downstairs, to do my room, and he popped up out of nowhere and helped me carry it upstairs. Then he sat around in my room for an hour or more, talking while I cleaned the room up. Gee, that would be the day after I got here, I cleaned the whole room. He told me just about everything I know about The Midway.”

  Cameron said, “And you haven’t seen him since?”

  She frowned, thinking back. “I don’t think so. Maybe in the hall sometime, I don’t know. I guess he must have left just after that, he sounded as though he’d been here a long time already.”

  Fredericks said, a trifle too sharply, “Didn’t that strike you as odd?”

  She looked at him, puzzled. “Didn’t what strike me as odd?”

  “That you only saw him the one time.”

  “No,” she said, and shrugged. “Why should it?”

  Cameron, with more sense than Fredericks, said, “There’s no reason, Debby, thank you very much.”

  She looked around at us all, more and more puzzled. “That’s it?”

  Cameron solved what could have been a sticky problem by saying, “Yes, that’s all, thank you. If you’d gotten to know him better, you might have been able to give us your impression of him, but since you just saw him the one time there’s really no point in it.”

  The explanation didn’t fully make sense to her, mostly because Fredericks’ question had been a jangling error, implying problems that Cameron’s explanation didn’t cover. And also, of course, because of my unexplained presence, the new man sitting at his ease in Doctor Cameron’s office while the two doctors are asking unusual questions. But the disparity wasn’t strong enough to make her pursue the question further, so she left, puzzling, and I knew she would sit out there in the other office thinking about it for quite a while, which was unfortunate but unavoidable.

  When we three were alone again, Cameron said, “All right, Mr. Tobin, you’ve made your point.” I was pleased to see the mister come back in front of my name; it had disappeared during Cameron’s argument with Fredericks.

  Fredericks still wanted to fight. He said to Cameron, “Which means we have two outsiders living here, not just one. How can we do anything of therapeutic value in an uncontrolled situation?”

  I said, “All situations are uncontrolled to one extent or another, except death.”

  He glowered at me, angrier with me than ever now I’d been proved right. He was like those ancient kings who responded to bad news by killing the messenger who’d brought it. He said, “I’m still not looking for understanding of technical problems from a layman, Tobin. I’d appreciate it, when Doctor Cameron and I are talking, if you wouldn’t put your two cents in.”

  “Sorry,” I said, and got to my feet.

  Cameron said, “Where are you going?”

  “Back up to my room to wait some more.”

  “But what about this man Dewey? What are we going to do about him?”

  “Doctor Cameron,” I said, “you’re talking like a layman. There are still technical problems to be worked out first. Once you and Doctor Fredericks decide what you think about the environment and the controls and all that, let me know if you still—”

  Fredericks snapped, “Come off it, Tobin, don’t act like a spoiled brat. There are other problems besides yours, you know, and—”

  “And you aren’t one of mine, Do
ctor Fredericks,” I said. “And you aren’t going to be. I refuse to go into competition with you for Doctor Cameron’s affection. I’ve been hired for one specific job, and that’s—”

  “That’s the most asinine—”

  “All I’m going to do, and if—”

  “Competition? Do you actually suppose that you—”

  “I’m not wanted for that job I’ll be happy to—”

  “Gentlemen!” Doctor Cameron was on his feet, waving his arms at us, shouting over our shouts. “Gentlemen, please!”

  “You’ve got a goddamn inflated idea of yourself, Tobin, is all I can—”

  “I’ll be happy, I say,” I repeated, louder, “to pack up and get the hell out of this semi-bedlam and wash my hands of the whole thing.”

  “Gentlemen! Please, gentlemen!”

  “You,” Fredericks shouted at me, “with your typical police mentality, all you can think of is tracking down some troubled mind as though you were hunting alligators in a swamp. Why wasn’t I told what was going on?” He rounded on Cameron suddenly, shouting, “Why wasn’t I asked for assistance? Doctor Cameron, I know these people, I know their minds. Don’t you think I could find the one who’s doing these things?”

  Cameron was very unhappy. “I thought,” he said, moving his hands vaguely, “I thought professional help was the answer.”

  “Professional help? Professional help? I don’t particularly want to insult this man Tobin, but in what way would you say his roaming around here since yesterday could be called professional help? The man’s first act upon entering the building was to break his arm!”

  “Now, that’s unfair, Lorimer,” Doctor Cameron said, “and you know it. Besides, look what he’s done already, he’s discovered Dewey, this man Dewey, living in our midst and none of us even knew about it.”

  “Discovered him?” Fredericks looked elaborately around the room. “I don’t see him.”

  “Discovered the existence of Dewey.” Doctor Cameron had more patience than I would have. “Lorimer, I can understand your being upset, but there’s no justification for being unfair. We both know that Mr. Tobin was angry when he spoke to you the way he did, that the charge was nonsense, and I’m sure he already regrets having made it.”

  I did, as a matter of fact, though I wouldn’t have agreed that the charge was nonsense. But I was willing to go along with the part of the sentence I did agree with, since it had occurred to me it was foolish to stand around exchanging small arms fire forever with Doctor Lorimer Fredericks, so I said, “I do regret it, it was said in the heat of battle. I’m sorry.”

  Fredericks too had apparently decided enough sniping was enough. I’d spoken to Cameron, but Fredericks treated it as though I’d apologized directly to him, saying, “That’s all right, Tobin. I understand the impulse to lash out, I’ve fallen victim to it myself once or twice.”

  That was supposed to be a joke, but even Fredericks’ jokes made me want to go for the jugular. I restrained myself, though, and even managed a small and entirely false smile.

  “Now,” said Cameron, obviously rushing in before anybody could start up again, “the most important thing to discuss is this man Dewey. And the two questions are, it seems to me, how do we find him and is he the one responsible for the accidents?”

  “He’s the most likely,” Fredericks said. “Whatever his reasons for hiding in here in the first place, they’re probably involved with his reasons for setting the traps.”

  I didn’t think it was as sure a thing as that—Dewey just hadn’t struck me as the right kind of person for the job—but there was no point starting the ruckus all over again so I didn’t disagree with Fredericks directly, I merely said, “We’ll know better once we’ve found him.”

  Cameron said to me, “How do you propose we do that?”

  “We’ll have to recruit Bob Gale,” I said, “and the four of us start in the basement and work our way upstairs. Spread out enough to keep Dewey from slipping past us into the part we’ve already searched, and yet close enough together to remain in contact. It’ll be tricky, but we can do it.”

  Fredericks said, “And what will the other patients think of our skulking through the corridors? Or do we let them know what’s been going on?”

  “I don’t think we should,” I said. “Just in case Dewey’s innocent. And we ought to run our search late at night. That’s when he takes to moving around himself, I think, so he’ll be likelier to run across then. And the other residents won’t be awake to notice what we’re doing.”

  Doctor Cameron said, “What time do you think we should start?”

  I said, “Well, I ran into him—” and the door burst open.

  We all turned and looked, and it was Debby Lattimore, with Jerry Kanter looking agitated in the background behind her. “Doctor Cameron,” she said. “There’s been an accident.”

  9

  MY LIST OF SUSPECTS WAS now reduced by one. Kay Prendergast, twenty-two years old, three illegitimate children while still in her teens, compulsive and apparently joyless sexual promiscuity, all of which seemed to have been bleached out of her in five years inside a sanitarium, was now lying on the floor of her room, crumpled into a comma on her side, with wine dark blood oozing slowly out onto the floorboards from under her head.

  It was plain to see what had happened. A small black-and-white television set was twitching away to itself on a table, in that nervous jumpy manner television has when it’s running but no one in the room is watching. It was Kay’s own set, The Midway having no money for radio or TV sets in the residents’ rooms. Across the room, near the window, was a brown wooden captain’s chair, with a back that curved around to form the arms. Kay had come upstairs, turned on the TV, walked across the room, and sat down in her chair. The left rear leg had then collapsed, dropping her backwards, and her head had hit the radiator under the window.

  Doctor Cameron was brisk and efficient: “Debby, call the hospital. We need an ambulance. Tell them it’s an emergency.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  The room was crowded already, and Debby had to push her way through to the door. I stood to the side, near the television set, out of the line of sight between the spectators and the victim, and watched their faces. Among them were several of my suspects, like Walter Stoddard, the mournful Norman Rockwell character, my waiter at lunch. And Helen Dorsey, the battle-ax, the compulsive housecleaner. And Doris Brady, the culture shock victim. And Robert O’Hara, the husky blond all-American type who was a repeated child-molester. And Jerry Kanter, the multi-murderer who concerned himself these days with his brother-in-law’s car wash operation.

  I looked at their faces, and I tried to find an inappropriate expression in one of them. Satisfaction, perhaps, or amusement, or even anger. But there was nothing at all. Walter Stoddard simply seemed more mournful than ever, with a kind of despairing pity for the injured girl. Helen Dorsey also had pity in her face, a frowning pity that wanted to be active, to clean up, to briskly put things right somehow. Doris Brady looked mostly frightened and repelled, as though the sight of an injured body was a new challenge to the eternal verities she’d so painfully recaptured. Robert O’Hara looked pained, as though his comprehension of what had happened to Kay was overpowered by the dreadful knowledge that the same thing could happen to him. And Jerry Kanter looked helpful and sympathetic, the kind of good neighbor who always helps out in emergencies but whose passions are somehow never engaged.

  There were also some of the other victims present. Rose Ackerson and Molly Schweitzler, the two women whose table had collapsed, stood together, looking down at the body and then around at the other spectators, as though comparing the reaction to this accident with the laughter at the time of their own. But theirs had been the first accident, and this one was obviously much more serious, and no one this time was laughing.

  There was also someone new to me, and from the angry fresh scars around his mouth and across his right cheek he would be George Bartholomew, who had been h
it with the bed frame when he’d opened the storage closet door. A short man in his early forties, George Bartholomew was a saver, a string collector, newspaper hoarder, garbage keeper. He was also a kleptomaniac, constantly stealing from stores small items for which he had no desire or use, and it was his kleptomania which had attracted him to the attention of the authorities. When his house had been searched for the things he’d stolen, it was found to be crammed, room after room, with old newspapers, stray pieces of furniture, bags of rotting garbage, piles of old clothing, odds and ends of every imaginable type. The junkman who eventually cleaned the place out for the new owners subsequently reported having removed, among other things, over four hundred dollars’ worth of deposit bottles.

  Why George Bartholomew had been released after nine years in an institution I had no idea, unless it was a case of overcrowding and of releasing the least violent and dangerous patients. George Bartholomew was hardly cured, though he did limit his kleptomania to stores and never stole from people he knew. But it had been in fact his magpie or pack rat personality that had led him to open that rarely used closet in the first place. I looked at him now, and on his battered face was nothing more than a meek man’s helpless sympathy for someone who’d been hurt.

  There was a brisk discussion taking place between Helen Dorsey and Doctor Cameron. She wanted Kay picked up and put on the bed, to make her more comfortable, but Doctor Cameron didn’t want her moved until the ambulance team arrived and could determine the extent of the girl’s injuries. While the talk went on, I continued to watch the faces, and then noticed that Doctor Fredericks was watching mine.

  I met his eye, expecting him to look away, but he continued to study me, the skepticism in his expression deepening into a kind of angry and humorous challenge. He was clearly saying, Here is another of your failures, what are you going to do about it?

  Could it be him after all, could it possibly be him? I was like a poor poker player then, holding a hand that intelligence said should be folded, and yet studying it, studying it, trying to find some combination of cards and possibilities that would justify staying in the hand just a little longer. I wanted Doctor Fredericks to be guilty, he had the personality for it and it would soothe me tremendously if he were actually the one, but I knew it was stupid and fruitless to dwell on him, that my injurer was elsewhere.