“Dr. Fastbuck Freddie Shanigan, MD,” Elizabeth said, sitting on the bed after dinner, her long bare legs twisted in the lotus position. “Your beloved doc. He makes good money, does he? His Web site looks appetizing. He performs abortions?”
I thought he did. Summertime sex carelessly enjoyed by the rich folks will lead to creative mishaps. Then the piper is called in and has to be paid.
“You sure?”
Me? I’m never sure of nothing.
Elizabeth kept asking and I kept answering somehow, avoiding specifics. Sure. Doctors can be big earners, big spenders. Shanigan made nothing on us, his mates, and little money on the other locals, but he reputedly made, or used to make, a fortune on the summer crowd in their vacation mansions on the ridge overlooking Bunkport Bay. The rich can afford to believe in, and pay for, hoohaha medicine. Doc learned how to do acupuncture, magic massages, studied homeopathic medications, used his “healing hands” and his “hypnotic” sea-blue eyes to heal hypochondria and psychosomatic symptoms. He also performed shamanism and sold instructions he lifted from the Internet and printed up nicely. Self-published gems, copied by the great Shaman himself. He also became a Rinko master. Rinko? I think that’s the term. I don’t know what Rinko masters do. Probably another variant on bring me your sick and give me your money. That’s all cash on the barrel-head trade, insurance doesn’t pay for any hullabaloo and way-out scary whatdoyoucallit.
Elizabeth was smiling. “I take it you don’t believe in alternative medicine.”
I said I wasn’t quite ready yet. Maybe I was waiting for the light.
“Is Doc in the cosmetic-surgery business, too?” Elizabeth asked. “Tucks and nips?”
Oh, sure.
“Working on the summer residents? But didn’t you say used to?”
Well... I did hear, from the help working for the folks on the hill, and visiting the Dolphin on their evening off, that Doc wasn’t so popular on the Ridge no more. He had been successfully sued for malpractice. Other doctors proved he installed wrong-size bosoms. Some of his treatments caused bad allergies with potentially lethal sideeffects.
The rich folks’ help is local. They have good ears and eyes. They like to gossip about their masters. Doc was out on his ear, the help told us, and there was another healer working the Ridge now: big man with a perfumed beard, a booming New Orleans jazz voice, a Vishnu and Kali MD, graduated out of a Greenland-based correspondence university. The celebrity Ridge dwellers started writing him fat checks, then the ordinary millionaires followed.
“So Shanigan isn’t doing so well now?”
Coming to think of Doc’s show of increasing wealth, I told her, it seemed he was doing even better. Who knows what his inventive genius was whispering in his ear? Was he playing the market? The new airplane (a super-fast Mooney, replacing the still-good Cessna), the new cabin cruiser (same thing there, the high-class boat he traded was only three years old), the refurbishing of his island buildings and gardens, wouldn’t that add up to a million here and there? As the Wall Street Journal says, if you go that way you’re soon talking real money.
Which he may have been borrowing. The banks were easy those days. And then maybe he paid them off, Elizabeth suggested.
“The man interests me,” Elizabeth insisted. “I could write an article if I can get some facts documented. Make some good money. Living at your expense is pleasant but I would like to help out.”
I shrugged. She had been leaving big cash on the table that I put back in her purse when she wasn’t looking.
She unfolded her shapely legs, walked about the room naked. She wasn’t shy about the lack of a breast anymore. She was talking again, tapping her notebook with a pencil. “I was listening to an intellectual carpenter,” (we have some living here, fugitives from the cities) “who said he did repairs on the Shanigan property, and who called him ‘Shenanigan.’” Elizabeth looked at me, but I don’t care about her private goings-on. Some interesting carpenter? Me jealous? Ha ha.
She continued. “My very old impotent carpenter informer says Shanigan gave him the creeps, but raved about the exotic art your drinking buddy is collecting.” She specified, saying that this happily married carpenter listed some of Shanigan’s valuables: fine Persian rugs, antique Papua New Guinea spirit shields and masks, a sketch of an elephant by Rembrandt.
I was dozing and thinking, vaguely felt her hands unclipping my fake leg and putting it gently into its night holder.
I think Elizabeth had expectations, but my thinking kept me distracted. What old carpenter? I didn’t know no old carpenter. I do know some young ones. Single guys.
The next day brought disturbing news.
It turned out that Sheriff’s and my and the Sisters’ theory was hogwash.
Tom Tipper’s body was found by Sheriff. Tom’s leaky boat, the Mary-Ann, had gotten herself stuck on a ledge behind Evergreen Island. Tom’s headless corpse was found sitting on his bunk in the cabin. A thick red V showed on the cabin’s wall behind him, his hands were holding his shotgun, aimed at where his face had been, his big toe was still stuck in the weapon’s trigger hold. Empty bottles, cigar stubs, a plate with a rotten slice of pizza, drug paraphernalia, a girlie centerfold pinned to the cabin door, contradicted a shelf filled with books on Taoism, Buddhist beat poetry, a leather-bound copy of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, and high-quality sound equipment complete with its CD collection. Monk, Eliane Elias, Miles, Mehldau, Bobo Stenson.
A note pinned to Tom’s sweatshirt said Thank you for putting up with me.
Sheriff, to show activity, called in Higher Power, that drove in from Bangor, dressed in woolies and furs and a rabbit-skin hat with flaps, boated out with Sheriff and Deputy Dog, looked, threw up, and was ready to leave.
“Suicide, right?” Sheriff asked the detective sergeant when he helped her ashore. He was holding up the thank-you note. “That’s Tom’s handwriting, all right. You want to have it verified? I got his diary, surely you have an expert up there in Portland?”
She had messed up her fur coat.
“Suicide?” Sheriff asked again.
“Just barely,” she said, leaning on Dog’s arm while she staggered to her gleaming police cruiser, driven by a female uniform. Looked like she wouldn’t be back.
“Better have Tom’s leftovers picked up by the discount cremation service,” Deputy Dog said.
“And the bleeding chair?” Elizabeth asked me over dinner that day. “Who really got shot up on the chair, you think?” She tried to stare the truth out of me. “Not Tom, am I right?”
Right, not Tom.
So who else was missing in the fair town and district of Bunkport?
Sheriff told me he had made the rounds and visited any fisherman active at this time of the year. They were all present. Their stern men, too. He also checked the Rich Ridge, the trailer camp, the nearby islands. The Sisters came over to tell us they were sorry for our loss. We played music during the wake, King Carlos replacing Tom on keyboards. He played, and sang, a Mexican version of “You Can’t Step into the Same River Twice.”
Tom would have liked that.
That night Elizabeth woke me to suggest that maybe there was no fish-person involved.
So who?
Priscilla said she had missed Dr. Shanigan lately. Had he maybe gone to the Bahamas again? According to Nurse, Elizabeth said — she and Nurse had become friendly — Freddie sometimes flew to the Caribbean in the super-fast Mooney, prostitute-resorts hopping, having a great time.
The next morning I visited Shanigan’s clinic. Nurse said she hadn’t seen her employer for over two weeks. He had left without notice and she hadn’t heard from him since. She expected him any day. She told me not to get the virus pneumonia that was knocking old folks down all over the place. “You take care now.”