Once a Mutt (Trace 5) Read online

  “You think they do?” Trace asked.

  “What do you think? Remember that guy, I don’t remember his name, I think he’s dead, he played in that television series about a racist, like a funny series. And the worse of a racist the character became, the more stupid left-wing organizations he joined.”

  “Why was that, do you think?” Trace asked.

  “He didn’t believe any of that left-wing crap, you can count on that,” Bigot said. “What it was was that he was feeling guilty ’cause he was making ten million dollars or something, and he was afraid that people in Hollywood might think he was like his character. They’re all pansies in Hollywood. Remember that series, Teddy?”

  “No. I never watched it, I don’t think,” she said.

  “Oh. What were we talking about?” Bigot asked Trace.

  “We were talking about Paddington thinking all these pansy Hollywood phonies were on the level,” Trace said. “Mind if I have some of that wine?”

  “Help yourself. No, Hemmie didn’t understand things like that. That’s why he didn’t have any fun or anything.”

  “You ever tell him that?” Trace said.

  “Sure. A lot of times.”

  “You were close? Play golf or something?” Trace asked.

  “No, not like that. I didn’t see Hemmie much, but when I did, I always told him what I thought.”

  “Where’d you see him?” Trace said.

  “Mostly around here. Once in a while, he’d come over for his checkup or something. Nadine was always with him, but I kept her out of the examining room. Once in a while, I’d go over there for dinner. Not very often, though. I got it, you want to know how often I saw him.”

  “Right.”

  “Maybe every couple of weeks or something. He said I was his best friend. Can you believe that?”

  “And you weren’t?”

  “He was a jerk,” Bigot said.

  “Not that much of a jerk, maybe. I mean, he was doing the Hollywood routine, wasn’t he?” Trace said.

  Bigot laughed hard and started to choke on his champagne. Nurse Teddy ministered to him by pounding his back.

  “What’d you hear about that?” Bigot finally said.

  “A couple of newspaper clippings that he was doing the big-money number in Hollywood. Starlets, yabbadabbadoo, the whole thing.”

  “What bullshit,” Bigot said.

  “I saw it in black and white. Would a supermarket newspaper lie to me?” Trace said. He noticed that Nurse Teddy had never taken her eyes off him, not even when she was pounding on Bigot’s hairy back. He smiled at her.

  “Here’s what that was all about,” Bigot said.

  “Tell me about it,” Trace said.

  “What a joke. I was going out to Las Vegas for a break, and Hemmie and Nadine were in Los Angeles. I didn’t have any luck at the tables, so I went up there to meet them and I hung around for a couple of days. I had some business anyway. Once in a while, Nadine would have a meeting of the Guppy League or something that Hemmie didn’t go to, so I’d take him out to dinner. And I made sure that we always had a couple of booby traps around.”

  “Booby traps?” Trace said.

  “You know. Twiff. Actress types, and I kept duking the restaurant people to take pictures and then just print Hemmie and the woman next to him, and then I gave them to my press agent and told him to try to get Hemmie some ink.”

  “Wait a minute. Your press agent?”

  “Right. Nev McBride, the best in the business. I don’t have him anymore.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what’s a doctor doing with a press agent?”

  “Hey, medicine’s all bullshit. The difference is in the packaging. I was thinking that maybe I’d move to California, Beverly Hills, that kind of thing, and I wanted to make sure that the right crowd would recognize me. So I hired Nev.”

  “I see. What happened?”

  “Nev got Hemmie a couple of mentions. You know, he made up some bullshit about financing pictures or whatever, but that was all crap, nobody who listened to Hemmie for a minute would believe that. I had to work extra hard at being charming to keep the twiff awake during dinner ’cause all Hemmie would talk about was some freaking animal, some mountain goat or something.”

  “And then what?” Trace asked.

  “Then we came back home. And when the clippings came, I made sure Hemmie saw them.” Bigot said. “I mailed them to him.” He grinned slyly. “Anonymously.” He had large yellowed teeth with spaces between them.

  “Did Mrs. Paddington see them?”

  “She did. Do you know they opened each other’s mail? Can you believe that? So the clippings came and she saw them.”

  “I bet he caught hell,” Trace said.

  “Maybe. He called me on the phone and said it was all very embarrassing and it was hard to explain to Nadine. But, hey, she had to believe him, didn’t she, that it was all harmless. I mean, what the hell, where else could she go with those teeth?”

  “I don’t know,” Trace said. “Some women murder their husbands for things like that.”

  “Naaaah, not them,” Bigot said. “It’d take more than that.”

  “You sure about that?” Trace said.

  “They were lovebirds, I tell you.”

  “What’d you do it for?” Trace asked.

  “Do what?”

  “The whole thing, starlets, press agents, all of it?”

  Bigot shrugged a big hairy-shouldered shrug. “It was fun. I thought it’d be fun. Give them something to worry about. Who knows, Hemmie might want to get into producing movies.”

  “You ever talk to him about that?”

  “Yeah, but he wasn’t really interested. Too bad too ’cause I had good friends through Nev and there were some good properties available for the right kind of money. But Hemmie…naaah, he was a stick in the dirt.”

  “When’d you see Paddington after that, after the clippings appeared?” Trace asked.

  “I been thinking about that,” Bigot said, “and actually I guess I didn’t see him anymore after that.”

  “It wasn’t too much later that he was killed,” Trace said.

  “I know. I read about that in the paper and I tried to remember whatever day it was that he got killed, but I couldn’t. Around here one day is pretty much like another. Deadbeat people. Dead-ass and deadbeat.”

  “So you don’t know if anything special happened around the time he disappeared?” Trace asked.

  “Like I said, no. You remember anything, Teddy?”

  “No,” the blond woman said.

  “Did you talk to Mrs. Paddington around that time?” Trace asked Bigot.

  “No, I didn’t talk to her at all.”

  “Maybe she was mad about those Hollywood clippings?” Trace suggested.

  Bigot paused as if considering that for the very first time. “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t understand why she should be. It was just for fun.”

  “You examined Paddington for the insurance policy,” Trace said. “How was his health?”

  “He was fine. Nothing wrong with him, except he had a little…what’s the word?” He looked helplessly at Teddy.

  “Chronic,” the woman said.

  “Little chronic cough,” Bigot said, “but nothing except that.”

  “What caused the cough?” Trace said.

  “I don’t know. Some people cough. Don’t you worry about it. He was as healthy as a horse.” He chuckled. “As healthy as one of their dogs. Both of them were.”

  “You treated Mrs. Paddington too?”

  “She didn’t need treatment. I checked her once in a while, every year or so, but she was fine.”

  “She’s not so well now,” Trace said.

  “What’s the matter?” Bigot asked.

  “I don’t know. She’s old-looking and tired. Grief, I guess. She’s got pinkeye.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” Bigot said. “But I never saw her eyes. I didn’t see much exc
ept her teeth. I’m getting crowns. Real crowns. Six hundred dollars a crown it’s going to cost.”

  “Is that a lot?” Trace asked.

  “Well, you can get them done around here for two-fifty a crown, but I’m going to have them done in Beverly Hills.”

  “A lot of money.”

  “Another client of Nev’s. He’s giving me a break, but you get what you pay for, I always say.”

  “You ever hear from Mrs. Paddington’s doctor in Westport?”

  “What’s his name?” Bigot asked.

  “I thought you might know. You might have sent records or something.”

  “Not me,” Bigot said. He looked at Teddy. “Anybody ask you for records?”

  Nurse Teddy was looking off into the distance and apparently had not heard the question.

  “Hey, wake up,” Bigot said. “Anybody ask you for Nadine’s medical records?”

  “No, honey,” she said.

  “No. I guess the answer is no.”

  Nurse Teddy was looking at Trace. She said, “Does Mrs. Paddington have pinkeye now?”

  Trace shrugged. “I don’t know. A couple of days ago, she said she had a touch of it. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I was just wondering,” Teddy said.

  Trace waited, but she offered nothing to fill the ensuing silence and Trace asked, “The Paddingtons have any other friends that you know about?”

  “No. They were hermits, like I said. Did I say that? I think I did. They were hermits.”

  There was something biting and coarse about Bigot’s speech and Trace said, “Where are you from?”

  “Not French, if that’s what you mean. I mean, French ancestry but not from France or like that. I don’t talk French at all.”

  “Except champagne,” Teddy said. “He can say champagne.”

  “And al dente,” Bigot said.

  “That’s good,” Trace said. “People on the Italian-French border will be very impressed. No, I meant where in the States are you from?”

  “Hoboken,” Bigot said.

  “Pretty far from Hollywood,” Trace said.

  “Hey, it wasn’t too far for Frank, was it? Frank made it, and when I was growing up, I thought, Hey, if that no-talent string bean can make it to Hollywood, why can’t I? I mean, hell, I sing better than he does. And I’m a doctor.”

  “The crooning medic. You’ve still got a good shot at it if that’s what you want,” Trace said.

  “No. Beverly Hills, that’s for me. Plastic surgery, no night calls, nobody dying on you. Do eyes and noses. Around here, you’re always getting women, they say there’s something wrong with their gallbladder and they need medicine. You know what they need,” he said, and punched his fist into the air in a sexual gesture. “That’s what they need. No more of that. California. You know my house is California-style?”

  “I noticed,” Trace said.

  “They hate it around here, these narrow-minded bastards, but I don’t care. I think it’s great,” Bigot said.

  “It is, it’s a great house,” Trace said, “but I can understand how the natives might get restless. I don’t imagine they’d think much of your house or your life-style.”

  “Exactly. You’d be amazed at how they hate me,” Bigot said. “They take everything out on me, but the hell with them, I’m going to do what I want.”

  The look on Nurse Teddy’s face as she looked at Dr. Bigot was one of unalloyed admiration. Trace thought, I guess that’s what they mean when they say personal taste makes horse races. Suddenly, Trace thought there was something sad about it all and he wanted to get out of there.

  He rose from the sling deck chair he had been lounging in and said, “Do you know who the Paddingtons’ lawyer was in town?”

  “Sure. Ben Johnson. He represents everybody in town who can afford his outrageous fees. A goddamn country lawyer, and he charges like he’s in Hollywood. I think it’s a hell of a world where a lawyer can make more than a doctor, right? All lawyers do is make misery, and us doctors, well, you know, we cure and heal, you know, like that. You think they understand that in this town, though?”

  “Some people just don’t know what’s good for them,” Trace said.

  “That’s the truth,” Bigot said. “I’m going to practice in Beverly Hills for a while and then I think I’m going to go into the restaurant business. A nice elegant place, where I don’t have to put up with a lot of people’s bullshit. Just come in once a week, pick up the receipts, maybe hang around and say hello to some people, sing a song or two, maybe a duet with Frank, and leave.”

  “You’d quit your medical practice?”

  “You can make a lot of money in Beverly Hills, but it costs a lot too,” Bigot said. “You’ve got to have fancy supplies, buy a lot of things, those little wood things for sticking down your throat, and those…What do you call them, little knives?”

  “Scalpels,” Nurse Teddy said.

  “Right, scalpels. There’s a lot of stuff like that. Restaurants are easier.”

  “Be careful,” Trace said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Seventy-five percent of all new restaurants fail,” Trace said.

  “That’s only for jerks who don’t know what they’re doing, put in money when they don’t know anything about it. You won’t find me doing that.”

  “Wise man,” Trace said. “You’d be surprised how many people fall into that trap.”

  “Jerks. All of them,” Bigot said. “Not us. Not me and Teddy.” Trace saw the doctor move his hand under the water to stroke Nurse Teddy’s leg.

  “I think I’ll be on my way,” Trace said.

  “Before you go, would you open us another bottle of champagne? It’s Major André, but it’s real good. A lot of people don’t know how good it is, spend a lot of money for fancy stuff with some big fancy dumb name that nobody can pronounce, like Don Pigeon, but I like André.”

  Trace opened another bottle from the wooden ice chest, handed it to Bigot, and said, “Well, thanks for your time. I really appreciate it.”

  “Lock the gate on your way out. I don’t want anybody else barging in back here.”

  “Sure,” Trace said. He had just turned the corner of the house when Bigot called his name. He turned around.

  “Yeah?” Trace said, looking at the hairy doctor and the beautiful blond nurse in the California hot tub in New Hampshire, drinking Major André champagne.

  “We’re married, you know,” Bigot said.

  Trace looked blank.

  “Teddy and me. We’ve been married for four years.”

  “That’s nice,” Trace said. He didn’t know what he was expected to say.

  “But don’t tell anybody; it’s nobody’s business,” Bigot said.

  “I won’t,” Trace said and walked away again, thinking, How sad. How terribly sad.

  The sign outside the white frame house said, BENJAMIN Y. JOHNSON, J.D. ATTORNEY AT LAW. Johnson was a tall weed-thin man in his sixties. Everything about him was thin, Trace thought. His hair was white and thin, slicked back against his head. His lips were thin, almost nothing but lines bordering the opening of his mouth. He wore thin wire-framed glasses. He was wearing a three-piece suit, his shirt collar heavily starched and buttoned tightly, even though there was no air-conditioning in his office and the place felt like a steam bath.

  If this man had been his high-school science teacher, Trace would have hated him. But if he had had to hire a lawyer, he’d look for someone like Johnson: mean, humorless, get down to business, let’s do it and get it over with, and screw the enemy any way we can.

  Johnson looked through his wire-framed glasses at Trace’s business card, as if examining a rare bug on the end of a pin. Most people gave the card back when they finished looking at it. Johnson put it inside a small parquet box atop his large, highly polished oak desk.

  “So what can I do for you, Mr. Tracy?” he said. His voice was thin too. It reminded Trace of Henry Fonda playing Abraham Lincoln.

  �
��I’m looking into the death of Helmsley Paddington,” Trace said.

  Johnson’s face remained as impassive as if he had not heard Trace.

  “You know, of course, that he’s dead,” Trace said.

  “I read in the press of his purported death,” Johnson said.

  “Purported? Why purported, if you don’t mind my asking?” Trace said.

  “From what I read, his body has not been found. No court has yet made an official declaration of his death, so until then it is purported. When a court of valid jurisdiction says that Mr. Paddington is dead, then it will no longer be purported; it will be a fact and I will refer to the fact of his death.”

  Get me out of here, Trace thought. The man’s not human. The next thing, his eyes are going to start rotating, he’ll paralyze me with a glance, and spirit me off to the Planet Nitpick and put me in a zoo.

  “Yes, very well,” Trace said. He cleared his throat. “Were you a friend of Mr. Paddington?”

  Johnson thought for a moment as if weighing the possibilities.

  Finally, he said, “No. I wouldn’t say so. He and Mrs. Paddington were occasional clients when they lived here.”

  “Would you mind telling me what they were occasional clients for?” Trace asked.

  “Why are you asking these questions?” Johnson asked. “Just what is it you are ‘looking into?’”

  “Before my insurance company pays Mrs. Paddington’s death claim, we want to make sure there is no fraud involved.” Trace paused. “It’s not only the money. We would hate to see someone hoodwink a court by falsifying information.”

  Johnson considered that noble aim. Finally, he laced his thin fingers together and said, “Very well. I will help you, as long as I don’t think that answering in any way affects client-attorney confidentiality.”

  “Thank you,” Trace said.

  “You asked on what I represented the Paddingtons. It was a minor business matter of whether or not they should create a corporation to handle their ownership of stock in a large British corporation. I told them, no, that, in my opinion, a corporation would be of no real economic or legal value to them.”