They were waiting for us when Doc and I got to Room 817 at City Hall. Doc had said nothing after we left the Greek’s and as we walked in silence up the paper-littered marble stairs to the elevator I thought of a small proud spaniel coming in out of the rain. He pushed off his hat, thumb under the band, slapped it against his leg. He shrugged his jacket up on his shoulders, stood straighter. Somehow, it didn’t make him look taller. For the first time I saw how small and old he looked.
I knocked once, then pushed open the door to 817 and let Doc enter ahead of me.
Three men sat at the wooden conference table. Except for littered ashtrays and a single sheaf of papers, the tabletop was bare.
“You took your own damned sweet time, Ballard.” Chief Waylin was sweated, his collar was limp and his black tie was awry.
“Never mind, Clyde.” Police Commissioner Stewart Mitchell had silvery hair and a silvery voice. He was small, round-bellied and wore a tailored suit and custom made shirt. He was holding a cigar and looked completely unruffled. However, he did not intend to let me think I could get away with keeping him and Mayor Landon Bibb waiting. “This is a serious matter, Ballard. Naturally, we’re all anxious to have it quickly disposed of.”
I gestured to Doc. “There’s your man.”
Mayor Bibb, Mitchell and Waylin were sitting at the head of the table, facing the door. I went around the table and sat down as far from them as I could get.
His shoulders parade-rigid, Doc Yerrgsted walked to the empty chair facing the sheaf of papers. He stood looking at the papers, but did not sit down.
“They’re all there, Leonard,” the Mayor said to Yerrgsted. The Mayor was in his early fifties, had a large, balding head, gray hair. He was a troubled man. He was not sweating, as was Waylin, but neither was he as calm as Mitchell. The ashtray before him was piled high with butts. “The report has been filled out completely by your assistant. All it needs is your signature.”
“And let’s get it and get out of here, for God’s sake,” Waylin said. “I’ve been up all night.”
“I can’t believe it matters,” Yerrgsted said. He pressed his knuckles against the tabletop, bracing himself. “I can’t believe you could sleep, anyhow. Any of you.”
“What kind of stupid talk is this, Leonard?” Bibb said.
“How drunk is he, Ballard?” Mitchell stared at me through his cigar smoke.
I shrugged.
“I’m not drunk at all,” Yerrgsted said. “I’m appalled. Shocked. I saw a man tonight with a bullet in the back of his head. And now I am told I am to certify that death as a suicide.”
“It was a suicide, Doctor Yerrgsted,” Mitchell said. ‘And we’re all saddened by it. We only want you to certify the death.”
“Then we can all go home,” Waylin said.
Yerrgsted shook his head. “What about his family?”
“Never mind the family, Yerrgsted,” Bibb said. “We’ve removed Flynn’s body to the morgue. As you know—after the accident, the body was in such condition that—well, we were thinking first about his family when we ordered his casket sealed.”
Yerrgsted slapped the back of his hand down on the medical examiner’s report before him. “I can’t affix my signature to a paper like this.”
Mitchell leaned forward. “Why not?”
“Because I’m the medical examiner in this town. It is my trust, my job to decide cause of death. You men don’t seem to realize my position. My place of trust.”
“Why, you damned old souse. Stop making speeches.”
Bibb spoke quickly. “We feel as badly about this as you do, Leonard. We’re all troubled. But this is a poor time for a scandal.”
“He hasn’t got a brain left unpickled enough to see that,” Mitchell said.
“I want an investigation,” Yerrgsted said. “I’m going to have to demand an investigation.”
“You’re not demanding a damned thing,” Mitchell said.
“I’m the medical examiner, sir. I can demand an investigation by the police, by the sheriff’s office—or conduct one of my own. Why, a thing like this—I can’t believe it’s happening.”
Bibb stood up. ‘All right, Leonard. You’ve made your speech. Now listen to me. You sign that paper, or you’ll find yourself on your ass in the street. Is that clear enough?”
“I—” Yerrgsted frowned, looking at them. His shoulders sagged. He ran his hand through his thick gray hair, and jerked his head around, staring wildly at me.
I just looked at him. I did not move.
At last he sighed. He seemed to shrink inside his clothes. He pulled his gaze from me.
At last he said, “I’m wrong, I suppose. You’re our civic leaders. You certainly—more than I, perhaps—know the welfare of our town and have it at heart. Of course—suicide.” He worked a fountain pen from his pocket, almost dropped it from trembling fingers. “In the death of Thomas Elliot Flynn. Suicide.”
The three men stared as one when Yerrgsted finally signed the last paper, steadying his right hand with his left as he scrawled his signature.
He did not look at them again, or at me.
He placed his hat carefully on his head, went around the table and through the door. He closed it carefully and quietly behind him.
“Well, thank heaven, that’s over,” Bibb said.
I stood up, strode to the door. There I paused, turned.
“There’s one thing about a man who drinks,” I said. “He’s unpredictable. You never really know about him. You can’t know when he’s going to drink, whom he’s going to talk to or what he’s going to say.” I smiled at them. “Good night, gentlemen,” I said. “Sleep well.”
I found Doc at the elevator. His hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t press the down button.
He looked up at me. “Any more errands tonight, Ballard?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Fine. Should we go somewhere and have a drink?”
“Why not? Any particular place?”
“Perhaps the Greek’s?” His voice shook. “He serves a fine domestic liquor.”
“Sure,” I said. “And he’s fast, too.”
The Greek was waiting for us.
“How did it go?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said. “Doc signed his name. He needed two hands to do it, but his credit is still good. He’s got a job.”
“Ballard here could have done it with one hand behind his back,” Doc said. “Get me something to drink, Greek, I’m freezing to death.”
He walked away from us, hurrying toward that wanly lit booth in the rear where I had found him earlier. When the Greek and I got there with bourbon and water he was slumped behind the table as though he had never left it.
“I would like to prescribe for you, Ballard,” he said when I sat down across the table from him. “A nice long voyage. A trip somewhere. A vacation. Why don’t you get out of this town?”
I shrugged. “Why don’t you?”
He twisted the cork from a bottle with his teeth, drank with the cork pushed to one side of his mouth as though he were so thirsty he couldn’t wait for the glass the Greek placed on the table before him.
“I’m trying to tell you, Ballard,” he said at last “You’ve got a terrible disease. You walk around with the pain carefully concealed inside you, and all the time the disease is eating up your insides. You were hurt tonight, perhaps more than I was. Why don’t you buy a ticket on the first train out, Ballard? It doesn’t matter where.”
I tried to laugh. I said to the Greek, “Doc is angry. He hates me because I wouldn’t stand up with him over there tonight.”
Doc shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. Why should you stand up with a man who was bound to let you down? I was sorry for you.”
I laughed, slid across the seat and got up. “I’m getting out of here. You’ve been drinking some of the Greek’s private stock.”