The Blackmail Club (7 page)

He turned, letting the car idle. “What?”

“First, Mary Lou Sanchez started this morning, she’s up there now. Second, seeing you have a knack for rubbing Suggs the wrong way, I took him to breakfast to try a woman’s approach.”

“What did you learn from Sergeant Charm?”

“Don’t wear open-toed pumps the morning after it rains.”

“Huh?”

“I stepped into a puddle getting out of my car at the restaurant. After I left Suggs, I had to go home to change my shoes and pantyhose.” She turned her legs sideways, pushed her toes against the floorboard, and slid her camelhair skirt several inches up her thighs. “You men don’t care what we gals have to go through to keep our legs looking good.”

Sam Spade would have said, “The dame has great gams.”
But Jack said, “Suggs. Chris. Give.”

“Okay, okay. Lower your flag, mister. Chris Andujar was killed by a thirty-eight. The gun was registered to him. The shot entered at his right temple and exited the other side. The trajectory was consistent with a self-inflicted wound. His fingerprints were smudged; forensics figured that resulted from the gun sliding down his finger as his arm collapsed.”

Nora paused to finish her coffee. “The ME reported Chris had been dead about twelve hours when Sarah found him. Like you said about the bank, it’s all jibing with her story.”

“Did Suggs find anything that hinted at foul play? And what about life insurance?”

“Nada on anything suspicious.”

“Nada?”

“It means nothing, and sounds better than what Suggs said.”

“Which was?” Jack asked, starting to put the car in reverse.

She put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t leave yet. His exact words: ‘Damn it. I told McCall there was no foul play. Tell him to go fuck himself.’ It took me ten minutes to mellow him out enough so he’d talk about the insurance.”

“And?”

“The Andujars had carried term life when they were younger, but the premiums kept increasing as they aged, so when Donny got older they let it expire. Now it’s your turn, what did Chris’s physician tell you?”

“His health was fine. The shocker was that Chris had listed
me
as the person to be contacted if his condition ever prevented him from making decisions about his treatment. That’s what let the doc feel okay about talking with me.”

“Not Sarah?”

“She was listed third.”

“Donny second?”

“Nope. Me, then his psych buddy, Radnor, then Sarah. Donny was not listed at all.”

After finally getting around to asking the favor, Nora got out of Jack’s car and walked over to her own. She wanted him to follow her while she dropped off her Mustang to get new brake linings.

Ten minutes later, Jack watched Nora’s hips pivot as she walked toward the office at the brake shop. Her small waist and legs reminded him of Lauren Bacall, the actress who had married Humphrey Bogart. When she came out of the office, and walked toward him he noticed she had larger and more active breasts than Bacall—but then bra technology had come a long way since Bacall’s days as a vamp.

Chapter 10

Dr. Phillip Radnor’s office was in a high-rise building on NW Rhode Island Avenue between Scott Circle and Connecticut Avenue. Inside the suite a receptionist with busy eyes and a saggy body leaned against the wall behind her desk, talking on the phone. She used the hand not wrapped around the phone to point toward the lobby chairs. Jack and Nora took a seat.

Dr. Radnor was a large man, not tall and powerful, but short and, the polite word, rotund.

“Mr. McCall?”

“Thank you for seeing us, Dr. Radnor. This is my partner, Nora Burke.”

The psychiatrist nodded and led them into his office which was furnished with a desk, the anticipated couch, and two occasional chairs on an area rug near the window. Jack and Nora sat there.

Several hunting and golfing photos hung on the side wall. In one of the golf pictures Radnor stood with Chris, Troy Engels, a CIA deputy Jack knew, and Chief Mandrake.

Nora opened a scratch pad. She kept most of her notes in her Palm Pilot, but she had told Jack she believed people were more comfortable talking without technology.

“Doctor, you were listed after me as the person to be contacted in the event Chris needed others to make decisions about his care. Why us? Why not his wife and son?”

Radnor put his hands flat on his desk blotter. Then brought them together and separated his palms leaving his fingers touching like flexing tent posts. After lowering his hands, he spoke.

“Chris thought very highly of you, Mr. McCall. To say he loved you as a man loves a son would not be a stretch. I’m sure it was no secret to you that he saw his own son Donny as a huge disappointment. As for Sarah, she was ten or twelve years older than Chris. Maybe he figured she’d die before he would need someone to make any acute-care decisions for him.”

“What made Chris depressed and suicidal?”

Radnor ran his hand back over his shaggy crew cut.

“Mr. McCall, your question presumes Chris suffered from depression. Frankly, I agree. One cannot contemplate, let alone carry out suicide without being depressed. Admitting some failure on my part, I saw nothing that indicated he was suffering anything near that level of depression.”

“Doctor, we understand the two of you had been collaborating on some research project, and that you were also treating him for his own problem. What problem was that?”

“Chris and I had been friends since school. His death stunned me. I miss him. We were coauthoring a highly technical research paper. In laymen’s terms, our hypothesis holds that some relationship exists between kleptomania by the very wealthy and sexual dysfunction among that same group. While very few of our total patients who suffered from a sexual dysfunction also suffered from kleptomania, a high percentage of the wealthy who suffered from kleptomania also struggled with aberrant sexual behavior.”

Jack found it an interesting aside, but Radnor had evaded the question.

Nora crossed her legs, letting her black high heel slip off the back of her suspended foot. “Doctor, for which of those conditions did you treat Chris Andujar?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Burke. I told Sarah I would cooperate any way I could, but I must respect patient-doctor constraints.”

“Doctor,” Jack pleaded with hands spread, “Chris is dead. His wife asked you to talk with us. You know I was his primary designee to be consulted for his care. Please. Work with us.”

“Yes, Chris is dead, but my other patients may not want their treatment conditions to become public even after they die. I’m sorry, Mr. McCall, there is nothing further I can say.”

“A court could rule otherwise upon a petition from his wife.”

“I would then be free to tell you what you want to know—what I would be happy to tell you if I could do so without compromising my reputation. Then again, seeing the police have ruled his death a suicide, a court might see such a petition as an unnecessary fishing expedition into a doctor’s files. No, Mr. McCall, we’re into areas where I must assume if Chris had wanted you to know, he would have told you himself.”

“He did tell me Dr. Radnor. Chris had come to the realization he was bisexual and he hoped that with your help he could get free of it.”

Radnor moistened his lips and tilted back his chair. “Chris guarded that secret, but seeing he told you I see no reason not to answer your question. He was desperate to rid himself of his gay side. He knew it would devastate his antediluvian wife, and destroy his already fragile relationship with his son.”

“How promiscuous was he?” Nora asked.

“From what Chris told me, he had only one gay lover. And before you ask, Ms. Burke, he would not identify him.” The doctor stood. “I must ask you to excuse me.” He moved toward the door.

Jack stood. “Was Chris making progress?”

“He was not, to both Chris’s and my disappointment. Now, I really must get on with my day. Goodbye, Mr. McCall, Ms. Burke.”

After they got back in the car, Nora turned toward Jack, “Where the hell did that gay bit come from? Why didn’t you tell me Chris was gay?”

“It was a guess.”

“The Red Sox winning the World Series is a guess. That was more than a guess. Give.”

“Chris always came across as a man’s man, never effeminate, yet in the service there were persistent rumors. I made a presumptive statement figuring if anyone knew for certain, it would be Dr. Radnor.”

Chapter 11

A middle-aged frumpish looking woman with jowls drooping as if her mouth were saving quarters, started toward Jack when he pulled into his underground parking space after dropping Nora off to pick up her Mustang.

Despite the dim light, the woman wore rose-colored sunglasses. She carried a pink sweater laying over one arm and hand while keeping her other hand in sight. He guessed her age at forty-five, but she wore a hairstyle and carried her purse in a way that conspired to make her look older.

He lowered his window.

She moved close, her flabby chin resting on her collarbone. “Mister McCall. I’m Agnes Fuller, Christopher Andujar’s former receptionist.” The gap between her front teeth caused a slight whistle when she said
Andujar’s
.

“Shall we go up to my office, Ms. Fuller?”

She glanced both directions. “Let’s talk here.” She walked around the car, opened the passenger-side door and, ignoring the constraints of her sack dress, stepped in like a man—one leg followed by the other.

“Why all this secrecy, Ms. Fuller?” Jack asked, twisting on the seat to face her.

The makeup clogging the pores of her forehead and cheeks crusted in the deeper ravines venturing out from her nose and mouth. She took in a slow breath while her eyes kept moving like a bird in an unfamiliar cage.

“I’m being watched, Mr. McCall, some big ugly guy I saw outside my new job yesterday morning, I saw again at lunch.” She ran her hands over the sweater on her lap as if smoothing invisible wrinkles. Then she changed the subject. “I apologize for being uncooperative when Nora Burke called from your office. I think my phone may be bugged.”

“Don’t worry about it. Ms. Burke is very understanding.”

Ms. Fuller pulled a strand of her hair across her cheek. “Last night I didn’t sleep a wink. This morning I knew I had to help. I owe it to Chris—Dr. Andujar.” Her lower lip quivered.

“Take a deep breath, Ms. Fuller. I’ll arrange for someone to check your house for listening devices.”

She smiled without separating her lips. “Thank you. Dr. Andujar was a wonderful man and a fine doctor. His patients loved him. He helped a great many people. I started with him two years after he opened his practice. When his wife retired I became his office manager as well as receptionist. The last few weeks, before his death he was a changed man. Nervous. Fidgety.” Her face contorted. “He started drinking more coffee than ever. And he started smoking again after having quit for five years.”

One of her hands found the other. “The next thing I knew, he was dead.”

“Dr. Andujar specialized in sexual dysfunctions. I take that to mean he had patients who pursued and engaged in sexual behavior outside the norm. Did he engage in any of that himself?”

Her lips twitched, as if she were receiving a coded message through her dark amalgam dental fillings. The message must have told her to keep talking because she did.

“You know, before I took that job I could have defined sexual behavior outside the norm, but not after working with Dr. Andujar. But, no, gosh, no, no way could the doctor and certainly not Sarah be involved in any of that stuff.”

She blotted her eyes with the pads of her fingertips; the way a woman does to avoid smearing her makeup, and then returned to her pattern of hurried speech. “When Sarah was the office manager, she was hard on people. But like I said, the doctor and his wife were as straight as Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. Not that some of his patients didn’t try coming onto him, they even hit on me. It was no dull job. I can tell you that. Dr. Andujar even helped me shed some of my own silly inhibitions.”

She was talking a mile a minute and skipping through random thoughts. Unsure what she might say next, Jack decided to let her ramble.

“Mr. McCall, I’ve been wracking my brain, and I can’t imagine why he would take his own life. But I can tell you he was frantic toward the end. Maybe if he found out he had terminal cancer or something. It would have been like him to not tell me about that.” Her hands continually pierced the air with darting gestures. “But Sarah said his physician told her Dr. Andujar was in good health. Why did he … kill himself?”

“A few minutes ago you described Sarah as ‘hard on people.’ What did you mean?”

“Don’t get me wrong. Sarah is a lady. A real lady. But when you’re around her all the time, well, sometimes she shows a different side.”

“Like what?”

“She would speak harshly to our computer repairman, even the young hunk who delivered our bottled water. Stuff like that. When she belittled her husband, I was embarrassed for him.”

“Anything else?”

For the first time, Fuller spoke in a normal cadence. “Did he really kill himself?”

“I plan to find out, Ms. Fuller.”

“Call me Agnes, please. Sarah is lucky to have you as a friend.” Agnes turned toward the door, causing a loud leather screech, then twisted back with a note in her hand. “Here is my address and phone numbers. After Chris’s death I was unemployed for a long time. I recently got a job as a secretary at the State Department. I’ve been there about two weeks. Please don’t contact me until we find out who is following me. I don’t want whoever it is to know I’ve spoken to you.”

She pulled the door handle.

Jack reached for her arm. “Do you live alone?”

“Yes. I have a boyfriend, but he works most nights until pretty late. Why do you ask?”

“Tomorrow night at six-thirty, a repairman will come to your home. He’ll tell you he has come to repair your dishwasher. He will find and remove any surveillance equipment in your home. His name will be on his shirt, Drummond.”