Right To Die - Jeremiah Healy (17 page)

"I remember one day, I couldn't get home in
time. So I jump into this ditch, alongside the road? Got to get
yourself below ground level. Well, I feel it coming, the twister, but
I don't have enough sense not to look up, and this apartment house,
the top two floors, anyway, be flying over my head. I could see the
plumbing pipes, even the clothes a-hanging on the bedroom doorknobs.
Then dead still, like the Almighty decided against wind as one of His
elements, and that big house just dropped like a stone, smashed all
to pieces about a hundred feet away from me. How did you know I was
from Oklahoma originally?"

Nice change of pace. "Your introduction at the
debate."

"You really there?"

"That's right."

"Doing what'?"

"Protecting my client's interests."

Givens thrust her head forward to get a better look
at me. "That Nazi honkie. You the one took him out."

"Just kind of laid hands on him. really."

She smiled a little. "Who's your client?"

"I'm happy to tell you, but my client would like
it to remain in confidence?

Givens waved her hand to say "of course."

"I'm working for Maisy Andrus."

The eyebrows rose, but the hairdo didn't budge.
"What's the problem?"

I took out the Xerox copies of the threats from my
other pocket and handed them to her. She read one, tsked, and glanced
at the others before handing them back.

"Anybody tries to tell people they ain't doing
what they should gets these."

"Not in their mailbox at home, hand delivered."

"Oh."

I put the notes away. "There a reason why you
didn't go to the bookstore after the debate'?"

"There is. You want to hear it?"

"I would."

Givens set her expression for drudgery. "I don't
have no book out, Mr. Cuddy. My people are poor, but they are behind
me. I go to that store, they go with me. They see other folks, white
folks, buying those books, they feel they got to buy some too,
support me. They can't afford that."

"One of those notes was inside a book Andrus was
given to sign."

The reverend shook her head slowly. "What do you
figure you got here, big-time crazy?"

"Daring. Clever. Maybe crazy, maybe not."

Givens looked skeptical. "Why you coming to me
with all this?"

"You oppose Andrus on the right to die. I'm
trying to talk with anybody that a real crazy might see as a kindred
spirit against her." Emphatic shake of the head this time,
almost dislodging the hairdo. "No. No, sir. My people, they are
strong and they are tough, but they are good. They vote against what
she says and march against what she says, but . . . She waved her
hand at my pocket. "Not anything like that. Not ever."

"Nobody comes to mind?"

"None of my own."

"Meaning somebody else?"

"You already got to be counting those skinhead
fools you tussled with."

"I am."

"And the police, they must have some kind of
files on this like they do on everything else."

"Not much help there."

Givens looked around the room, as if reminding
herself of her own jeopardy. "All right. There's this
right-to-lifer. White dude in Providence, name of Steven O'Brien."

Mr. O'Brien, one of the repeaters from the threat
folders. "I believe he is just plain around the bend, but . . .
maybe."

I waited. She looked up at me.

"That's all I know."

I stood. "Thanks. By the way, why'd you leave?"

"Leave what?"

"Oklahoma."

A laugh and the gentler shake of the head. "Had
me a husband, thought his thing was a battering ram and mine was a
door. Knew I had to get out or I'd like to kill him."

Givens became determined, the sermon tone creeping
back into her voice. "Before I turned to the Lord, I was turned
on to the demon drug too. That's why I know we're going to beat
cocaine and crack and what they're doing to our kids. Beat it without
Professor Andrus and her just-go-to-sleep-now ideas that pretty soon
catch on and seem like a perfect solution to all our ills. And we
can't waste an entire generation of Arthurs and Lionels while we're
doing it."

"Good luck."

"Luck, as the Lord would say, don't got nothing
to do with it."

On the way out I retrieved my gun, asking Arthur and
Lionel if they knew anyplace nearby that sold Gatorade by the case.
 

=14=

LOUIS DOLEMAN LIVED IN WEST ROXBURY, THE SOUTHWEST
corner of Boston's Suffolk County. Predominantly white, West Rox is a
mixture of magnificent homes on wide parkways and smallish ranches on
narrow streets. From Reverend Givens's church, I took Washington
Street to Belgrade Ave, then fiddled around for eight or ten blocks
until I found Doleman's address just off Centre Street. It was a
dwarf red-brick ranch among many stunted cousins. From the curb it
appeared oddly kept. The lawn, despite the season, was maintained,
but the hedges, huddled against latent snow the sun never touched,
were untrimmed. The brickwork looked recently repointed, but the
concrete stoop was crumbling.

All the window shades were drawn. I pushed the bell
next to the front door, heard no chimes, and was about to knock when
I heard what sounded like an inner door open and close. Then the
front door opened, and Louis Doleman peered out at me.

Standing in front of a closed inner door, he wore
heavy glasses and the same cardigan sweater. Liver-spotted skin hung
loosely from the neck cords. His short gray hair seemed curiously
soft, like the acrylic fur on a stuffed animal. In his right hand, a
book, the index finger keeping his place in Our Right to Die by Maisy
Andrus.

"Mr. Doleman, my name's John Cuddy." I
showed him my identification. "I wonder if I could talk with
you."

"Sure." He turned his head to look at the
inner door. The soft hair radiated from a whorl on the top of his
skull.

Doleman turned again to me. "Just step inside
here so my spacelock'll work."

Spacelock. I thought, Scotty, beam me up.

"Got to have the spacelock, otherwise Marpessa
here would be on her way back to Brazil."

Doleman was sitting in an old print chair, a faded
towel protecting the upholstery a bit late in its life. He placed the
book on a TV tray to his right, next to some cellophaned cupcakes
that should have been labeled less by expiration date and more by
half-life.

However, they weren't the main attraction. A bird
like a giant parrot perched on his left shoulder. Most of its
feathers were shocking blue or canary yellow, but the curved beak was
black and the face was white, with long, squiggly lines under the
eyes, like a child practicing with makeup.

I said, "Marpessa."

"Marpessa, right. Named her after this Brazilian
actress I heard of. Only Brazilian actress I ever heard of, tell you
the truth. Marpessa is a macaw. To keep them from flying off, most
folks clip the primary feathers on the wing there. All but the last
one, cosmetic purposes, you see. You do that, alternating wings each
time the feathers grow back, you can let them out in the yard or
whatever, because they can't fly. Be like a helio-copter with a bum
tail rotor, just spiral down to the ground. But I couldn't bring
myself to do that to her, seems like mutilation to me. So I just make
sure to keep her in the house with the spacelock. Put that up
myself."

To be polite, I turned in my chair to admire the
patchwork job Doleman had done in framing a second, inner door at the
entrance to form his spacelock.

Turning back, I said, "Sensible. Mr. Doleman —
"

"Be crazy to have her outside anyway. With a bum
wing, she'd be a sitting duck for cats, dogs, what have you. Used to
hunt every chance I'd get, deer in the fall, waterfowl in the spring.
Never would take a stationary bird, but I can't say that about a lot
of fellows I met. No sense of sport in them. The hell good is it to
hunt, you don't do it for the sport?"

"Not much."

"You bet not much. Marpessa here is friendly as
a spaniel pup.

Comes when she's called, doesn't crap the furniture
or rug, just does this little sideways dance, lets me know it's time
for her to go."

I could hardly wait.

" 'Course, she's got her dark side too. Costs an
arm and a leg this far north to keep her warm enough. And she gets
real jealous if there are any kids . . . around . . ."

Doleman seemed to stall, like a motor that was doing
fine until someone shifted to drive. His lips moved convulsively, as
though he were practicing puckering.

"Mr. Doleman?"

He revived. "She'll talk your ear off too. Even
think she understands some of it. She'll hang upside down from a rope
I got in the kitchen there, and she'll say, 'Look, look,' like a
little kid . . ."

Again the stalling effect.

I repeated his name.

This time Doleman barely came out of the daydream.
"What was it you wanted?"

"I'm doing some work on the debate at the Rabb
the other night."

"The Rabb?"

"The library. When you asked that professor a
question?"

"Oh." Doleman lowered his head, shaking it.
Marpessa transferred all her weight to the left foot, using her beak
to pick at the claws on the right one. In a clearer tone of voice he
said, "Well, go ahead."

"I got the impression from what you said to
Professor Andrus that you felt she was involved in your daughter's
death."

"Not involved. Responsible. There's a
difference? Now he was more the man I'd seen rise from his seat at
the debate. Staunch, certain.

"Mr. Doleman, can you tell me what happened?"

"I can. You have time to hear it?"

"Yes."

Doleman moved his hands as though lathering them with
soap. "Heidi was my daughter. Wasn't the name I would have
picked out for her, but she was an orphan, war orphan out of Germany.
The wife and I couldn't have children ourselves, so we jumped at the
chance to raise her."

As Doleman talked, I did some arithmetic. "What
happened to your daughter?"

"Once we got her over here — stateside, I mean
— she was fine.

Oh, some nightmares sure, and she couldn't abide loud
noises, probably reminded her of the bombs. And she was shy around
strangers, just like Marpessa here." Doleman ruffled the bird's
feathers, and Marpessa pecked him lightly on the left cheek. "But
she did just great in school, lost most of the accent, went on to be
a secretary downtown."

"When was this, Mr. Doleman?"

"When was what?"

"When she became a secretary."

"Oh. Just after they shot Jack Kennedy. She had
to start back a couple of grades in school, on account of having no
schooling, much less any English, back in the old country. But she
was a good girl, no trouble with boys or anything. Then — "

He stopped again, but I didn't prompt him.

"Then the wife — Florence — had the heart
attack. It just come on her one night, no warning at all. Heidi was a
godsend, taking care of the house for me while I finished up at the
MTA — I was a motorman, Arborway line mostly. They call it the MBTA
now, but not me. After I retired, Heidi and me were going to sell
this place, move somewheres warm, but we never got around to it."

"How old was Heidi when your wife died, Mr.
Doleman?"

"How old?"

"Yes."

"Oh, out of her teens for sure. Hard to say.
See, she didn't give us any trouble like most kids do. so you didn't
pay that much attention to how old she was. She always seemed older.
what she'd been through in the war and all."

"What year did your wife pass away?"

"Year?"

"Year."

"Watergate. Was Watergate on the TV when we got
back from the funeral."

So call it seventy-three or so. To have been a war
orphan, his Heidi had to have been in her early thirties by then. Not
much of a life for her, but then, maybe a lot better than she
remembered from childhood.

"What happened to your daughter after your wife
died?"

"Oh, she — like I said, she took care of the
house and all. Was just the two of us, but it was a good life. Good
as could be without Florence. But then Heidi . . ."

Doleman squirmed in his seat. Marpessa became
agitated and flapped her wings, making the cry I'd heard over the
telephone and thundering, in that small, quiet room, over to a
windowsill near the inner door of the spacelock.

Doleman gave no indication that he noticed the bird.
"Heidi took sick. Doctors said they didn't know what, but they
did. They just didn't want to tell me. Didn't want me to know what
they told Heidi. She was a brave girl, none braver. She never wanted
me to worry. But you could just see it in her. The way she didn't
have any get-up-and-go. Didn't want to eat, losing weight."
Doleman rested his forehead in an upturned palm. "Was the
leukemia."