“What?” I asked, my notebook falling to the floor. I bent to pick it up.
James laid the towel across the back of his neck and pulled both ends tightly.
“When Dr. Fletcher decided he didn’t like you, you were on his list forever. And it was pretty easy to get on that list. Sometimes, you didn’t even know you’d done anything.”
“And you were on the list?”
He nodded his head. “Since first year. At the time, he taught an anatomy course. He hated it, doesn’t do it anymore.”
“Obviously,” I interrupted.
James smiled. “Yeah, that’s right. I forgot. Anyway, I was one of the herd, that’s all, and content to stay that way. Somehow, I got singled out. He used to drill us, more like law school than med school. Remember The Paper Chase?”
“Yeah.”
“He made Professor Kingsfield look like a den mother. He tore me apart one day in lecture, caught me in a weak moment. I was a target for the rest of the term. Dropped me a letter grade at the end of the semester, even though everything else I’d done was top-notch. When I went to his office to protest, he tore me apart again. Apparently, no one’d taken him on like that before. He threatened to have me thrown out of school.”
“Could he have done that?”
“I’ve seen him do it since. I think the only reason I survived is that my dad’s an alum. Still knows people. Political bullshit. That’s all it is.”
“I had no idea medical schools were such shark tanks.”
James smiled. “Grow up, Harry. A lot’s at stake. You know what a doctor’s lifetime earnings can be?”
By the time I left Dr. Hughes and Son’s an hour later, I had several pages filled in my notebook: petty jealousies, betrayals, treacheries, sexual peccadillos, resentments. The struggle for research grants, tenure, awards, and recognition brings out the worst in people. I always had this naive notion that somehow the hallowed halls of the university, where learning and knowledge were prized as ends in themselves, were free of cutthroat craziness.
Right, Ace. And where’s that oceanfront property in Arizona you want me to look at?
It was getting late, and I really needed to eat. I have this weird blood sugar thing: I never seem to get hungry, and then within the space of five minutes, I’m breaking out in a cold sweat, shaking, and I’ll eat anything in sight. I could feel the onset of another blood sugar crash. Fortunately, I was headed downtown. I made a left turn just past the park onto Elliston Place, spotted a space just coming free in front of Rotier’s, and grabbed it before anybody else had the chance.
Mrs. Rotier had been fixing double cheeseburgers on French bread for the local student population for decades. I’d been eating them since high school. She’s surrogate mother for half the under-twenty-one population of Nashville, a tiny woman with the metabolism of a runaway locomotive. Her grown kids, along with most of their spouses, work the restaurant with her. It’s one place in the ever-shifting flood of the city that never seems to change.
I slid into a red vinyl booth near the back. A couple of the Rotier’s waitresses are notoriously ill-tempered, which only adds to what’s usually called the atmosphere of the place. After all, what’s Mama going to do, fire them?
It was my luck to get one that evening. About thirty seconds after I sat down, a plastic-jacketed menu slid across the table in front of me, having become airborne from somewhere behind my left shoulder.
“Make it quick. I don’t have all night.”
I looked up to see a mass of brown hair wearing an apron, with a green order pad in one hand, a cracked Bic pen in the other. I smiled. It felt good to be home.
I flipped open the menu and scanned it. “Roast beef and gravy, potatoes, stewed tomatoes, fried okra. Unsweetened tea.” I rattled off my order as quickly as possible.
While I waited for dinner, I tried to earn my money by pondering my next move. Problem was, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I could go see Bubba-what was his last name?-Hayes. Yeah, that was it. Hayes. Or I could go track down a few of the people that James Hughes had mentioned. I opened my notebook and scanned my scribblings.
Some of them I could eliminate right off. After all, the dean of the medical school may have been hacked off about that rumor that Conrad had been sleeping with his wife, but he wouldn’t have had to kill him. There would be better, more efficient, ways for the dean of a medical school to ruin one of his professor’s lives.
I stared at two names I’d written down: Jane Collingswood and Albert Zitin. James told me they were two surgical residents who had been under Conrad’s direct supervision. There had been a lot of friction; rumor was that he was about to bust Dr. Collingswood out of the program. There’d been a blowup the day Conrad was killed. Zitin and Collingswood had gotten into a shouting match with Conrad, right out in the hall in front of patients and staff. Everybody on Four West heard it. Most uncool. That was why, in fact, James knew about it. Tension and hostility were rampant at all levels of the institution, but open warfare in front of patients was a real breach of protocol.
Another concern had been tugging at the back of my mind ever since the police questioned me. I mentioned, in relating my linear chronicle of events, the woman I’d seen step out of the room where I found Conrad. But in my memory, I seem to remember … It’s hard to say. It’s almost as if I saw a second person. Not anybody I saw clearly, you understand. But I saw this woman, an attractive, young woman in a nurse’s uniform. That is, of course, why I noticed her in the first place. But there was something else, and in my mind’s eye, I was simply unable to reconstruct it.
I heard a throat clearing behind me. “You want this or not?” I looked up to see my waitress standing behind me with a steaming plate and a drink. She’d obviously been standing there a moment or two, waiting for me to come back to earth.
“Oh, sorry.” I scooted out of her way and pulled my notebook off the table.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said. “Here. You need anything else?”
I looked down at the plate. It was all there and looked great. “Everything’s fine. Thanks.”
She broke what appeared to be a human smile, “Good. Knock ya’self out,” she instructed.
The food was exquisite, like dinner at home back when my mother still cooked. Meat-and-three, it’s called down South, and there’s nothing like it for finding a little bit of comfort in a lousy, grown-up world.
The sun had long since set even on this late summer evening when I turned left off 21st Avenue onto Division and headed toward Music Row. Way before I got there, though, I found a parking space on the street beneath an enormous umbrella of maple whose branches hung drooping and heavy out over the near lane of traffic. This part of Division was quiet at night, far from the packs of tourists that crowded the Country Music Hall of Fame, Barbara Mandrell Country, and the line of tacky souvenir shops that lined the streets all the way down to I-40. I swear, it seems that the first thing every truck driver from Tupelo who comes to Nashville and gets a recording contract does is buy himself a gift shop. Go figure. It gave new meaning and depth to the word kitsch, and there’d been many a time I had to slam on my brakes to keep from smashing into some hairy-legged, knobby-kneed geek in Bermuda shorts who wandered out into traffic because the sign that read HERE ONE DAY ONLY-ELVIS’S CADILLAC had caught his eye.
And they call L.A. La-la land.
Two punkers with safety pins through their cheeks walked past in the darkness. This town was joining the twentieth century fast, but we were still sufficiently out of it to find safety pins through cheeks shocking. I watched them walk far enough up the sidewalk to where I was sure they weren’t going to turn around and mug me, then I crossed the street. Ahead of me a block or so was the bright neon sign in the small parking lot of Bubba’s market.
BUBBA’S! YOUR 24-HOUR CONVENIENCE MART, the sign flashed, its blue and red blazing like a visual Islamic call to prayer for those bereft of cigarettes, beer, disposable diapers, and munchie relief. Below that, in bright, steady white, the guarantee: WE NEVER CLOSE!
I stepped through the heavy metal and glass doors onto the dirty linoleum floor of Bubba’s. The place was your basic redneck all-night market. Disposable lighter displays carried photos of half-nude women, Confederate flags, and my personal favorite: the broken down old Rebel soldier with a drink in one hand and the Stars and Bars in the other with the caption, “Forget, Hell!” Beer coolers lined the entire length of the wall opposite the entrance. Wire cage displays held every kind of gooey snack cake, processed cracker morsel, and potato chip variation imaginable. The place was a cathedral of cholesterol: potted meat product, deviled ham, beef stick, beef jerky, pickled pig’s feet, Vienna sausages, on and on and on, ad-quite literally-nauseam.
A skinny white dude with greasy hair, wearing a dirty T-shirt that exposed tattooed arms, stood behind the counter. He was barely visible below an overhead rack full of cigarettes, but I got a good enough look at him to guess that he was probably a recent graduate of the Tennessee Department of Corrections. I moseyed up to him and tried to look casual.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“Bubba around?”
He looked at me, suspicious that somebody actually wearing a necktie would want to see the boss. Maybe I should have left it in the car. Maybe I should have gone home and changed into overalls.
“Who wants to know?”
“My name’s Harry. Harry Denton. Bubba doesn’t know me, but I think he’ll want to talk to me.”
The clerk’s eyes wandered to the tip of my chin. Seemed this guy had trouble looking people in the face. “I don’t know about that.”
“Why don’t you call Mr. Kennedy and ask him if it’s okay.” My one trump card had been played. If I knew who Mr. Kennedy was, I had to be an insider. At least, that’s what I hoped he’d think.
He stared right through me for a second. Behind me, the front door opened and two teenage kids with thin, scraggly beards and bad skin walked in, a couple of Jeff Spiccoli types by way of Birmingham. I turned back to the clerk.
“How about it? Can I talk to him?”
“Well, I-”
“At least call him,” I said. “He can always say no. But what if it turns out he really does want to see me and you don’t call him?”
He stared at me, like screw you, smart guy. But then he turned his back to me and picked up a black receiver from the shelf behind him. He whispered something into the phone, listened for a second, then hung up.
“Mr. Kennedy’ll be out in a minute,” he said, turning immediately to the two guys behind me.
I took a step or two back, looked around the store. Good spot for a holdup, I thought. Wonder how many times this place has been hit? Then again, if Bubba really does have some stroke around here, maybe the local crackheads have figured out this establishment isn’t a viable target.
I noticed a metal door nestled in a corner of the store, to the left of the beer cooler and facing the checkout counter. I hadn’t seen it before, and then I realized the overhead cigarette display rack camouflaged it, probably deliberately. In the center of the door was a small dot framed in a ring of metal: an eyepiece.
In a moment, the door opened, and the godawful biggest black guy I’ve ever seen in my life stepped through. Come to think of it, this guy could have stepped through without opening the door. This hunk had to be 250, 270, all muscle, wearing a knit pullover shirt that was clean, expensive, fashionable, and a pair of stone-washed jeans that fit him like a glove. His hair was cut short, conservative, and he wore a surprisingly tasteful gold chain around his neck. What’s a good-looking guy like that doing in a place like this?
He stepped toward me. I fought the urge to run like hell, figuring an ex-pro-football player could probably still outrun me in the forty-yard dash. “You looking for me?” he demanded, his voice low, serious. He was not a man to be messed with. I picked that up pretty quick; I’m a detective.
“Actually,” I squeaked, my throat suddenly dry. “I’m looking for Bubba Hayes.” God, I wish I’d been born with a deeper voice.
“Mr. Hayes is busy right now. Perhaps if you explained your business to me, I could set up an appointment at a later date.”
“I’m a detective,” I said, trying to force my voice an octave lower without sounding like a complete twit. “I’m investigating the death of Dr. Conrad Fletcher. I understand that Dr. Fletcher and Mr. Hayes may have had some business dealings.”
This man had the most expressionless face I’d ever seen in my life. His face was a stone carving with a thin veneer of ebony. I could no more see what he was thinking than I could see through the metal door he’d walked out of. He stared at me a moment longer, then spoke.
“This way.”
He turned, smooth and quick, and walked back toward the door. I dodged a Twinkie display and followed him. The metal door swung in hard and popped me on the shoulder. We entered a narrow hallway leading into the back of the building. It was dark, musty, with mildewed wood skids stacked against the wall and beer cases everywhere. The stale smell of beer, trash, and what was perhaps soured milk filled my nostrils. I imagined I heard rats scurrying around, although it may have been more than my imagination.
Four steps ahead of me, the imposing man moved forward silently. At the end of the hall, shrouded in shadow, was a closed door. Mr. Kennedy got to the door, stopped, then turned. I almost walked into him, but his arms were outstretched and waiting for me.
“You work homicide?” he asked. “Where’s your partner?”
“No, I-”
“D.A.’s office?”
“Actually, Mr. Kennedy, I’m a private detective.”
“Private detective!” He rolled his eyes in disgust, then moved so fast my eyes couldn’t follow. Suddenly, I was face forward into an ice-cold, dusty, mildewed cinderblock wall.
“Hey, wait a minute-” He grabbed my arms and planted them palm into the wall, then kicked my legs apart. “What the he-”
His hands ran down each leg of my pants on the outside, then back up the inside. He bumped the inside of my crotch on his way up, then ran his hands up my sides. He pulled my wallet out, examined it, emptied my side pockets, pulled the small wire-bound notebook out of my shirt pocket. The man was a professional.
He grabbed the scruff of my neck, then pulled me back off the wall. Once I had my balance back, I glared at him. “You finished?”
He reached behind me and knocked twice on the metal door, then twisted the handle and opened it.
I stepped into a bank president’s office, or at least that’s what it resembled. What a shift in interior design. An enormous mahogany desk dominated the center of the room; a leather executive’s chair and a cherry butler’s table, surrounded by a leather couch and Queen Anne chairs, filled the rest. A color television and stereo system filled one wall, with a wet bar on the wall behind me.
Behind the huge desk sat Bubba Hayes. Remember Meat Loaf, the guy who sang “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights” back in the Seventies? Imagine Meat Loaf twenty years older and fifty pounds heavier, and you’ve got Bubba Hayes.
What have I gotten myself into?
The three of us stared at one another for a moment. I cleared my throat, started to say something, but was interrupted by this twisted Jabba the Hutt lookalike.
“I understand you want to talk to me, boy,” he burbled.
Mrs. Rotier’s roast beef and gravy did a somersault in my gut. “Mr. Hayes, I’m Harry Denton. I’m an investigator looking into the death of Conrad Fletcher, that doctor who was murdered last night in the medical center.”
“I know who he is. I read the papers.”
Bubba’s voice was sonorous, filling the office with the same determined resonance that he must have once projected from the pulpit.
“Yeah, well. I was just wondering if you could answer a couple of questions.”
Bubba leaned back in his massive leather chair. The wheels groaned under his weight, but held. “Depends on what they are. You’re not a police officer. No warrant, no stroke.”
Bubba smiled, revealing a row of cracked, yellowed teeth. “Right, boy?”
I was starting to resent being made to feel like an extra in a remake of Smokery and the Bandit. I’m nearly forty years old; it’s been a long time since anyone called me boy.
“I’ve been asked by the family to investigate this matter. I understand from some close friends of Dr. Fletcher’s that he had a … well, a gambling problem.”
Bubba leaned forward in the chair, his bulk heading toward the desk like a flesh-colored glacier on the move. Then he stood up, moving with a dexterity and a speed that surprised me, and came around the desk. He faced me now, maybe a foot or two away. The skin of his face was pulled tight, with just a shadow of red underneath, as if he were translucent, like a monstrous gecko.
“What’s that got to do with me?” he asked, his voice coming from somewhere deep inside the mound of flesh.
“I’ve heard that you control the action in this part of-”
Suddenly, something came out of the corner of my eye. All too late, I realized that whatever was flying upward in my direction was attached to Bubba. He caught me square in the gut, his right fist the size of a small ham.
Every bit of air shot out of my body in a second. If you’ve ever had the breath knocked out of you, you know the feeling. If you haven’t, count yourself lucky.
My feet came off the floor, and my mind went blank. I felt myself becoming weightless, then suddenly the thick green carpet slammed me in the face.
I fought to keep down dinner, although in retrospect, I can’t figure out why. I should have blown chunks all over the guy’s carpet. Would’ve served him right.
I rolled over on my side, curled in a fetal position. One hand covered my battered gut; the other was under my head useless. As I turned, I saw Bubba’s face about six inches from mine. How he could bend down that far without falling over was a mystery I’ll never figure out.
“You ask a lot of questions, boy,” he hissed. Then the massive hams stretched out again and grabbed my shirt, scrunching it up so hard my shirttail came completely out of my waistband.
Next thing I know, I’m back on my feet. Wish he’d make up his mind. He’s holding me up, because I’m still not breathing yet, not even over the shock of getting hit yet. Which means the pain hasn’t really started either. Great, I’m already hurting like hell, and it’s only just begun.
Bubba pulled me up to eye level, and I got a face full of his hot breath. Something came over me, probably an attack of bad attitude, and I got just enough air to put my foot in my mouth.
“What’d you have for dinner, man?” I gasped. “Ever heard of Listerine?”
Damn if I’m not airborne again! This time, I landed in a chair against the wall near where Mr. Kennedy is watching all this deadpan. I hit the chair hard, the small of my back taking most of the impact, but my head snapping back against the wall right where the nurse put those butterfly closures last night.
It felt like a drill bit through the back of my skull. This time, I really did see red, and the shooting pain threatened to put me completely under for a second. It hurt so bad, I forgot about the first punch.
Dazed, I shook my head to bring myself to. Big mistake. That only works in the movies. After a second or an hour, I wasn’t sure which, I felt behind my head and came back with blood on my hand.
Then I was really torqued; that fat bastard busted my head back open. No more Mister Nice Guy.
“What’d you do that for?” I growled, my voice lowering naturally.
“I wanted to impress upon you, in a way that you couldn’t mistake, the distress that man’s name causes me.” Bubba spoke like a gentlemen farmer himself, when he wanted to. I was surprised, but no less mad.
“For all you know, I could be a cop,” I said.
“Hah,” he laughed. “I know every police officer in this town. And son, you ain’t one of them. Not by a long shot.”
I put a hand on each arm of the chair and pushed myself into a standing position. I’d had, simply put, enough.
“Sit down,” Bubba ordered.
I kept my ground. “Listen, Bubba, I don’t need this crap. You and that reject from a Lite Beer commercial over there can go to hell for all I care. You don’t want to talk to me, fine. Talk to the cops.”
I took a step toward the door.
“Sit down,” Bubba repeated. A moment later, “I said sit.”
I walked around him, settled myself on the couch. I’ll sit, all right, but where I want to.
Bubba crossed back to his desk, lowered himself into the seat. “Now what is it you think I can tell the police?”
I shook my head. “No, sir. I don’t think so.”
“What you mean, boy?”
“After the welcome I’ve been given here, I don’t feel like answering any of your questions. If there’s any answering to be done here, I’ll let you do it.”
Bubba smiled, as if he couldn’t believe I’d still be getting smart with him after all this. He don’t know me very well, do he?
“I’ll say this much for you, boy. You ain’t much to look at, but you got great big brass ones.”
“From what I can tell,” I continued, ignoring what I guess was supposed to be a compliment, “Fletcher had two kinds of people in his life. Those who hated him enough to kill him, and those who merely fantasized about it.”
Bubba looked over in Mr. Kennedy’s direction and smiled. “He was not the most lovable man in God’s creation.”
“I keep running into people who thought the world would be better off without him. To tell you the truth, Bubba, I just wanted to find out if you were one of them.”
Bubba reached down below the desk, tugged at his crotch. “The man had a problem. Loved to play. Hated to lose.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen doctors with habits before. More of them have it than you think. I got quite a few in my territory. When he started, Fletcher was no better, no worse, than most. He played football during the season, pro basketball, some college games.”
“When he started?”
“Some people just can’t handle it. I told him he needed help once. Over the phone, of course. He never came here.”
I thought for a second. “How much was he into you for?”
Bubba hesitated. That made me think it was quite a bit, maybe even a few thousand. He leaned against the desk, stared at me for a moment, then spoke.
“That man owed me not quite one hundred thousand dollars.”
When I got my breath back, I whistled.
“Jesus,” I sighed.
“Jesus hadn’t got nothing to do with it, boy. At least not on this end of the action. Right now, I’d guess Jesus and Fletcher are just about wrapping up a very long talk.”
I gritted my teeth, preparing for what the next question was probably going to bring me.
“In your business,” I asked, “is that the kind of scratch that would get somebody killed?”
The color shot up Bubba’s fat neck. “Praise Jesus!” he yelled. “I’ve sinned in my time, blasphemed God in my life. But never, never, mortally sinned by taking the life of another! Besides,” he added, “a doctor would be good for it over the long run. High life-style, high profile. Wouldn’t want his revered name dragged through the mud.”
“So you’d just blackmail a doctor. A truck driver who owed that much?”
“I’d never let a truck driver owe me that much,” Bubba growled. “Now, of course, it’s just a write-off. Cost of doing business.”
“But you didn’t kill him?”
The color came back again. “The answer to that question is no, boy. Don’t ask it again.”