Don't Look Behind You (16 page)

“I wouldn’t be so hard to love, would I, Mike? I mean, really love?”

“No. It’d be easy.”

She lifted her head up and kissed me. It was tender, soft, yet electric. As if confirming that, the room strobed with lightning through the sheer curtains. The sky roared like a roused beast, and the rain kept drumming down, relentless but rhythmic.

She slipped out of bed and went to the window and looked out. I turned away from her. I couldn’t do this. It was wrong. She was a kid who had a thing for father figures and I wasn’t going to take advantage. She was wounded and I would not, goddamnit, take advantage.

I turned back over to tell her I thought I should go. Somewhere between the bed and the window, she’d lost her T-shirt and panties. At least I thought so—the room was very dark.

Then lightning strobed and there she was, every bit of her there in the stark white light the sky provided between roars, so slender yet shapely, her back to me, the globes of her bottom high and firm and round, the dimples so deep their dark hollows survived through the flash of light. When the strobing was over, she was just a lovely shape, barely distinct when she turned to me.

“I need this, Mike,” she said. “It’ll be just this once.”

“No,” I said. “Take a couple more sleeping pills and get some rest. This thing has you ragged.”

The sky strobed again and for an instant she was an ivory statue, a goddess with high superbly shaped breasts, not large, just perfect, and a sleek body, her belly flat but gently muscular, her sleek, supple legs apart just enough for the curly triangle to offer a glimpse of delights I knew I should not sample.

I got out of bed, intending to get into my clothes, but my interest in her obvious.

Her eyes widened appreciatively and then she did something I didn’t expect her to be able to, under the circumstances—she laughed. She came quickly over and shoved me on the bed. Then I heard her fumbling in a nightstand drawer and moments later I felt the rubber sliding down and I thought,
No, she
isn’t
an innocent.

Then she rode me, slow and sweet and finally building to something not sweet at all, but just as wonderful as the sight of her when the lightning strobes showed her to me, little snapshots of youthful female perfection, and a head of blonde hair that swung like a mane, and a face so beautiful and so blissful, as the act cancelled out anything else in her mind, sadness, betrayal, it was all gone, for those minutes.

As for the voices in my head, nobody bitched.

* * *

She’d told me the help arrived at six-thirty a.m., so I got up around five, and had a shower, while she continued to sleep. Though Pat had the study sealed, I thought there might be a door from the second floor onto the upper level of the book stacks, where I could get in without tipping my hand. I was right.

Within moments I made my way to the desk where Borensen had died. On the desktop, a pool of crusty dried blood, black with hardly any red highlights, bore the imprint of where his head had fallen. No attempt at a chalk outline had been made, though an X in a circle indicated where the gun had been, and the chair was circled in chalk to show its position. Still, I felt free to seat myself in that chair of honor, and—fingerprints having already been taken—began looking through the desk drawers.

As I suspected, Borensen had made the desk his own, and the only sign that Martin Foster had once sat and worked here were letters that had “cc:” to Borensen, correspondence relating to the musical production they were planning to mount together. This included a number of letters from Johnny Mercer himself and the Maxwell Anderson estate, for the rights to the
Star Wagon
play.

Finally I came across some banking materials—a savings book, a checkbook with register, and an envelope of monthly statements. These showed that Leif Borensen was keeping a quarter of a million dollars and change in a savings account at a Manhattan bank.

That didn’t surprise me. He hadn’t gone after Gwen with marrying money in mind. This was about “marrying” a theatrical impresario whose name and reputation would lift Borensen to a higher level—that and aligning himself with a gifted young performer in Gwen.

I did find one interesting, possibly suggestive item. Make that “items.” Borensen had made out two checks, $25,000 each, to the Institute for Neurological Disease. Was Borensen a closet philanthropist?

I looked for the cancelled checks and found them. They were deposited in a bank in Cold Spring in upstate New York. So the institute wouldn’t be tough to track.

Gwen was just waking up when I slipped into the guest room to say my goodbyes.

“You’re leaving?” she asked sleepily. You know a woman is beautiful when she wakes up beautiful.

“Yes. You don’t want me here when the help shows.”

She frowned at the onset of reality. “Oh, dear. I’ll need to tell them what happened.…”

“It’ll be in all the papers. I wouldn’t tell them anything beyond that Mr. Borensen seems to have taken his own life. They’ll be sympathetic and leave it at that.”

That calmed her. “Mike… last night was… thank you. I needed to be close to someone. I just want you to know…”

“Honey,” I said, leaning in, “I know. A young Broadway star and a broken-down old private eye have no future together. It was a one-time thing for both of us. But I’ll never forget it.”

She reached herself up and gave me a little kiss. “You may be old but you’re not broken-down.”

“That’s half a compliment, anyway. Listen, did you ever hear of something called the Institute for Neurological Disease? I think it’s upstate somewhere.”

“Actually, yes. It’s a research facility. I was involved in a telethon for them, a year or so ago. They’ve made some real breakthroughs.”

“Did you know that Leif gave fifty thousand dollars to them?”

She shrugged. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t know he had any interest in that particular cause. Really, I don’t remember him ever giving to any kind of charity. Is that significant?”

I gave her a quick kiss of my own. “Honey, in my world, fifty grand is
always
significant.”

An hour and a half north of Manhattan, Cold Spring was a hamlet of maybe fifteen hundred at the deepest point of the Hudson, a step into the past with its idyllic setting and downtown of well-preserved nineteenth-century buildings, well-served by a sunny Indian summer day. They made rifles and cannons here, a century ago, but now a battery factory kept the place afloat.

At odds with the old-timey nature of the village, the Institute for Neurological Disease—just outside Cold Spring—was a modern, low-slung glass-and-brick sprawl that might have been a grade school or a power-and-water facility. Somehow it seemed a misnomer against the majesty of nearby Storm King Mountain.

I hadn’t called ahead. Phoning the information desk at the New York Public Library got me everything I needed, including the name of the Institute’s founder—Dr. Clayton R. Beech.

I pulled the Ford into a parking lot with perhaps fifty other cars, and strolled into a doctor’s waiting room of a lobby and directly to the nurse/receptionist’s desk. The nurse was a pleasant-featured Nordic type in her fifties who still looked like a good time. She gave me a professionally polite smile that took the edge off the obvious confusion of someone who rarely dealt with walk-ins.

I took off my hat and gave her my own polite smile. “I wonder if Dr. Beech might be in. I’d like to see him.”

That seemed to amuse her, but she tried not to show it. Very blue eyes on this matronly gal.

“Sir, Dr. Beech seldom sees
anyone
—he’s extremely hands-on in our research here—and when he
does
see someone, it’s by appointment only, usually months in advance. If you could tell me the nature of your call, we might be able to arrange something early next year.”

I put on an unhappy face. “That’s disappointing.” I sighed dramatically.

“Well, I’m sorry, sir.”

“It’s just that I was here about a fifty-thousand dollar donation.”

She reached for the phone.

In five minutes, my hat in my lap, I was seated in an office of modest size, decorated only with diplomas and a calendar with flying-geese artwork. The furnishings, including a wall of filing cabinets lined up behind me like a row of soldiers, were coldly modern, like the facility.

But Dr. Beech exuded a warmth that came across immediately, unless that was something he worked up for prospective donors.

Around five ten, in his mid-sixties, bald up top but with black-and-gray sideburns that developed into a well-trimmed beard, the doctor stopped to shake my hand—and get my name—before settling in behind his desk. In the expected white smock with a dark blue bow tie, he had the build of a linebacker, gone slump-shouldered, and the wire-framed glasses of a professor, bifocals.

At his back, and the only impressive thing about this space, was a picture window on to a gymnasium-size laboratory where dozens of other white-smocked professionals were seated and sometimes standing at a row of vertically arranged benches arrayed with test tubes, beakers, flasks, Bunsen burners, heavy-duty microscopes, and sophisticated gizmos beyond my recognition.

Dr. Beech noticed I was looking past him and smiled, tenting his fingers, elbows leaned on a desk where everything was tidy, all papers stacked, even framed family photos arranged symmetrically.

“It’s one-way glass,” he said, in a bland mid-range voice. “They never know when I’m watching.”

I grinned. “At least it’s not constant, like Big Brother.”

He might have been offended by that crack, but he wasn’t. Or, again, maybe he cut potential big-money donors some slack.

“Michael Hammer,” he said, tasting the words, eyes narrowing behind the round lenses of his glasses. “I’ve heard that name but I’m afraid I can’t place it.”

“I have a rather successful private investigation agency in Manhattan. There’s been media coverage now and then.”

Now he was nodding, and smiling. “Ah, yes. You’re a well-known figure, considered notorious in some circles. I believe you’ve been in some rather hair-raising scrapes over the years.”

“Scrapes and escapes, yes.”

He was trying to process that. I was well-known, so did that mean I had money? That I was a success? I was famous—okay, infamous—as someone who had killed but stayed within the limits of the law. Did that mean I felt guilty, and wanted to kick some dough in to a good cause? Help some people live, instead of die?

“I know you’re a busy man, Doctor. But I only know very generally what you do here. Could you explain it in more detail, but still keep it in layman’s terms?”

The smile blossomed wide in the black-and-gray beard. “Certainly, Mr. Hammer. We have been working on cures and vaccines for numerous neurological conditions and disorders. We’ve enjoyed great success, virtually wiping out several such diseases in the thirty years this institute has been in existence.”

“That’s wonderful. Very admirable, sir.”

He nodded, proud but not smug. “For several years we’ve put the lion’s share of our focus on a rare but debilitating disease called Phasger’s Syndrome, named for the first known patient to display the symptoms. That was in 1918.”

“What
are
the symptoms, Doctor?”

He flipped a hand. “They are actually quite mild, Mr. Hammer, initially. So mild that those who’ve contracted the disease often don’t know it until it’s too late. The victim has a strong sensation of a bitter taste, and the constant scent of ashes, followed by mild muscular aches not unlike the flu. In these early stages, we can already cure Phasger’s, and we are frankly on the brink of a total cure.”

The quiet pride in his voice said he could picture the Nobel Prize for Medicine on his wall right now, between the diplomas and the ducks.

“When you say ‘brink,’ Doctor—how close are you?”

The linebacker shoulders shrugged. “Five years. A year? It’s impossible to say, as a breakthrough at any given time can change everything. But I’m confident that ten years from now, Phasger’s Syndrome will be a remnant of the past, like polio.”

“Impressive.” I gestured toward the small army of research scientists. “How do you manage such feats? I would imagine the costs are staggering.”

“They are,” he said, “yet we get no government funding, and are wholly independent in that fashion. We survive on grants and gifts from corporations, charitable groups, and of course…” He gestured toward me with a smile. “…individuals.”

I smiled back at him. “The kindness of strangers, somebody said. You mentioned the early symptoms, Doctor. What does full-blown Phasger’s Syndrome develop into?”

His expression turned grave. “Something quite terrible. Every facet of the nervous system attacks the patient. The pain is excruciating and constant. It is resistant to the most potent pain medications. Something like morphine, in this context, is akin to giving aspirin to a migraine sufferer. Within a year a patient is bedridden, and must be fed intravenously. Speech is distorted to the eventual point of incomprehensibility. There is frequent bleeding from every orifice, requiring regular transfusions. The gums decay, and the teeth rot and fall out. Blindness gradually occurs within the first six months. These poor wretches… excuse my melodramatic phrasing… are prisoners in their own bodies, bodies that are declaring war on themselves.”

“Damn.”

He flipped the other hand. “So you can see why we work so diligently, around the clock, to eradicate this cruel killer. And you can see why we are so grateful to those, like yourself, who are willing to step up and contribute to this important work.”

“I’m sure you are.”

The smile blossomed even bigger. “And I must say, Mr. Hammer, that the figure you mentioned to my nurse is an impressive one. From a private individual, particularly one with no history of Phasger’s in the family, such a donation is rare indeed. Fifty thousand dollars will go a very long way in this research.”

“I’m afraid your nurse misunderstood, Doctor.”

“Oh?”

“As you know, I’m a private investigator. And I’m here to ask about a fifty-thousand dollar contribution someone made to your institute. Actually,
two
twenty-five-thousand dollar contributions.”