I didn’t look up from my Post Dispatch, but I knew the moment that shapely brunette secretary of mine entered the room. I’d know that Eau De Roma anywhere.
“Yes, Mr. Hunter?” she asked, leaning over my desk.
I tried to ignore her big blue eyes and the other endowments that the tight brown sweater advertised. “What’s an eight-letter word that means ‘a bitter denunciation’?”
She looked at the half-filled-in puzzle. “Hmmmm... How about diatribe?”
I looked at the squares. “Yeah, that’s good. That’s sort of what I thought.” I wrote it in. “Any calls?”
“Oh! I almost forgot. Mr. Capella from International Underwriters called. You’re to call back after lunch.”
Since it was well after lunch, I suggested that she get in touch with him immediately. Insurance cases are hardly glamorous, but the companies pay well and promptly — traits conspicuously absent in a good many clients.
The white light below the dial on my phone lit up. I picked it up. “Leif Hunter.”
Frank’s soft Italian tones greeted me with, “Leif, ma boy. I was afraid you wouldn’t get back to me before I left the office.”
“What’s up, Frank?”
“Got a little problem I hope you can help me with.”
Seems that three death claims had been filed against — International. Underwriters within the last month, and all three had listed American General Finance as the beneficiary. None of the three had any family to speak of, and odder yet, all three had died of a coronary while driving on Jefferson Avenue near Bixby, and two of the three had died within a block of each other. The other had kneeled over six blocks closer to the heart of the city. It appeared all three had been traveling in the same direction, and last but not least, were probably on their way from American Finance. Of course, being a month apart, the deaths had not struck anyone as odd until all three were processed through International Underwriters. It all sounded fishy to Capella, fishy enough for him to offer me a ten percent saviour’s bonus to straighten things out. If it was all a case of incredible coincidence, I got a nice fee anyway.
I jotted down the three names on a legal pad, plus a little background information, and set myself to snooping.
It was a bright, cold winter day in Clayton, Missouri, and I shivered in spite of my wool overcoat. To the east, that delightful St. Louis smog hung in the air like a thick, yellow blanket. I climbed into my dirty, blue Mustang, cranked the wreck to life and headed down highway 44 toward the morgue.
Doc Warren had presided over the downtown morgue since Pierre La Clede first traded beads to the local Indians for their furs. It wasn’t hard to find the grumpy old pathologist. As usual, he was at work in the crypt-like dissecting room of the morgue.
Doc looked like a balding, old elf with watery blue eyes. And I always thought his voice was a lot like George Bums’.
“Well, well,” he said patting the chest of an outstretched corpse. “It’s our old pal Leif Hunter.” He bent down to whisper in the corpse’s ear. “What do you think, Dave? Think he wants a favor?”
Some folks say Doc Warren has a morbid sense of humor, but don’t you believe it.
“Well,” I said. “Dr. Frankenstein at work.”
Doc stepped aside, exposing Dave’s abdomen, the skin of which had been neatly sliced open and laid aside to exhibit the entrails and such with disgusting clarity.
I put my eyes on Doc’s face — which was almost as bad as “Dave’s” entrails — and said: “What say I buy you a cup of coffee, Doc?”
Doc turned to his supine straight man. “Bribes, Dave. He’s going to try and ply me with spiritous drink.”
“Hardly spiritous,” I said.
“At my age coffee is spiritous. By the way. What brings you to Necropolis, Leif?”
I told him briefly about the insurance problem. When I finished, he nodded, motioned to a vulture-faced young intern who was examining a vial of vitreous pink fluids. “Take care of Dave here for me,” Doc, said, and we left Vulture-Face in charge of Doc’s buddy.
We stopped at a file cabinet in the outer office, and using my list of names, Doc picked out the three deaths I was investigating. “This isn’t exactly kosher,” Doc said, “but as long as you don’t actually look at them...”
We went out of the office and walked down the hall to the little staff canteen. The coffee was out of one of those big tan machines that eats dimes like candy, and the coffee, though hot, tasted like the stuff they put in the corpses.
After we seated ourselves at a table, Doc flipped open the files. I said, “Any sign of foul play on the three?”
Doc was quiet for a moment. He went through each file slowly, sipping his coffee as he read. Finally, he said, “No... But, often times, unless foul play is suspected, it’s difficult to find.”
“Come again,” I said.
“Well, unless it’s something obvious, like a gunshot wound for instance, you have to have an idea what you’re looking for. I mean I can see how it would all be curious now. The three dying the same way, in the same area, within a month of each other, but there was no way of knowing the deaths were unusual at the time. They were just routine, and no autopsy was performed on any of the three.
“One thing that’s sort of curious, not enough to get excited about, but all three died of cardiopulmonary dysfunction. This Dravek guy, the young one, seemed to be healthy enough. I mean, it’s not impossible, but young guys like him just don’t keel over from heart attacks every day. He was a mailman and did a lot of walking, I presume. He should have been in pretty good shape. At least as far as the heart is concerned. But like I said, that’s not astounding. The other two were old enough, in their sixties, and heart failure is a rather common cause of death at their age. That’s about all I can tell you.”
“And where are the bodies now?”
“Some cemetery, of course. You think they just hang around the morgue?”
“No, guess not.” I told Doc to give my regards to Dave, went out to my car and steered her for American General Finance Company, the address of which led me down Jefferson Avenue, the main drag where all three of my dead clients had met their end.
The building that housed American General Finance Company was squat and cheaply modem. It sat at the back of a blacktopped parking lot between a shoe store and a barbershop. It hadn’t rained for three days, but puddles still stood on the lot in mute testimony of the ineptitude of its designers.
Inside, a three-hundred-pound secretary whose name — so help me God — was Miss Little, took my card between two fingers the size of frankfurters and examined it. She read it, put it on her desk and looked up at me. “Well.”
“I represent International Underwriters,” I said. “I’d like to speak to your office manager.”
She darted me with her flat, brown eyes, waved a pudgy hand at a row of chairs that looked like Goodwill rejects. “Have a seat.”
I had a seat.
Reminding me of the hippo in Disney’s Fantasia, she plucked the phone from its cradle, dialed two digits, said into the mouthpiece: “Say, Charlie. There’s a guy out here wants to see you. I don’t know... Wait a minute.” She looked at the card I had given her, read it off to him.
“Representing International Underwriters,” I offered.
Miss Little frowned at me, gave that information to Charlie, replaced the phone. “He’ll see you in a moment. Make yourself comfortable.” It sounded like a direct order.
I watched as she flipped my business card into the already overfilled trash can to the right of her desk, and she watched me watch her do it. She had a smile like a razor slash.