Death Wears a Red Hat Page 20

  It was times like this it was unmitigated fun being a detective.

  Even on Saturday afternoons, Carl’s Chop House hosted a goodly number of diners.

  At promptly 12:30 P.M., Dr. Robert Schmitt left his Cadillac with the parking attendant at Carl’s entry.

  Services, Inc. was open only till noon on Saturdays. Schmitt generally lunched at Carl’s on Saturdays and Sundays.

  It was a rather chill day. Schmitt left his coat and hat at the check stand and was greeted rather cooly by the maitre d’.

  Near the entrance to the dining room was a tank of live lobsters. Schmitt selected the one he wished boiled for his lunch.

  He was seated at a table that would be served by a recently hired waitress. It was sometimes difficult finding a waitress who would serve him. His reputation forcefully preceded him.

  Schmitt was a rich man. A millionaire many times over, some thought. And as such he was generally shown deference, at least publicly.

  But what he did and how he did it were quite well known. He had no social life. He liked to think he had friends, but, if asked, he would not have been able to name even one. His wife was dead. She had not been his friend.

  He did not care. He wanted money and he had it. He wanted luxuries and he had them.

  Schmitt had lived in Germany from his birth in 1908 until after World War II. This was common knowledge. He had not been assigned to any of the notorious Nazi death camps, although he had been in the Medical Corps. This was common knowledge. He had counseled the medical officers in the death camps on methods of experimentation on human victims and methods of inhuman extermination. This was known by very few. And they were not talking.

  Schmitt nodded curtly to the smiling new waitress.

  “Would you like a cocktail before your meal?” she asked, as she handed him a menu.

  “No,” he snapped, “coffee. I don’t need a menu,” he spat out as he flung it across the table, “I always have lobster!”

  The waitress gingerly picked up the menu and retreated. Other diners looked over during the brief scene, then looked away in sympathetic embarrassment for the waitress.

  Oblivious to fellow diners, Schmitt sat back and let his mind wander. His thoughts, as they often did, turned to his military career. He regretted not a moment of it. He had been paid well. And he had kept most of what he’d earned. Early on, he had learned the value of the Swiss and their banks.

  “Ouch!” he cried.

  A black busboy, pouring Schmitt’s coffee, had spilled a little in the saucer. In his attempt to sop it up and already nervously fearful of the diner, he had jabbed Schmitt’s hand.

  Schmitt glanced at his hand but could see no blood.

  “Stupid fool!” he shouted.

  Again, nearby diners looked up.

  But the busboy had disappeared from view.

  The trouble with Hitler, Schmitt thought, was that he had selected the wrong race to eliminate. Schmitt had no doubt the Führer eventually would have gotten around to the Negro race, but he should have put them ahead of the Jews.

  Schmitt was very comfortable with being a member in good standing of the Master Race.

  With his disposition, only Schmitt could enjoy his lunch.

  The nurses at Services, Inc. were tidying the interior of the locked clinic when they were, as they put it, “invaded” by a pride of police.

  Several members of Homicide Squad One proceeded through the various rooms of the clinic. Some took photos of the rooms, furnishings, equipment, and gowns. Others carefully gathered and sealed in cartons the instruments and implements used in the abortions.

  Lieutenant Bourque and Sergeants Rogers and Osborn were in the reception area with nurses Teague and Ryder.

  “You don’t remember either a girl named Diane Garson or a Georgia Thomas?” asked Bourque.

  “No, neither,” Teague answered quickly.

  “How about you, Miss?” Bourque addressed an obviously unnerved Ryder.

  “No,” she said uncertainly. “Why do you want to know?”

  “They’re dead,” Bourque said flatly.

  “As a result of the treatment they received at this clinic,” Rogers added.

  Ryder gasped.

  Teague blanched but retained her noncommittal expression.

  Osborn had been busy for several minutes checking the records in the desk. The records did not reach very far into even recent history. But they did cover the past few days.

  Teague scarcely took her eyes from Osborn as the detective riffled index card after card.

  “I hope you understand that our investigation could end in either or both of you being charged with being accessories to homicide, manslaughter, conspiracy, and/or withholding evidence.”

  Ryder appeared on the verge of tears. Teague, unchanged, kept her eyes riveted on Donna Osborn.

  “They’re both here,” said Osborn, a note of triumph in her voice. Her index finger marked the spot where she had found the record of Diane Garson’s visits, and the file was open to Georgia Thomas’ more recent visits.

  “Great!” said Bourque and Rogers simultaneously.

  “I should have destroyed them,” muttered Teague.

  “I was going to tell you!” Ryder seemed near a breakdown. “I was going to tell you, honest!”

  “Shut up, Ryder!” Teague warned.

  “Those poor kids,” Ryder babbled, ignoring her, “it shouldn’t have happened to them. It was all Dr. Schmitt’s fault. In all my years of nursing, I’ve never seen anyone so unprofessional and callous.”

  The police had a bird and she was singing.

  “Miss Ryder,” said Bourque soothingly, “why don’t you go into the next room with Officer Osborn. She’ll be glad to take your statement.”

  “Larry,” he turned to Roger, “take this lovely lady,” he indicated Teague, “read her her rights, and book her on everything that comes to your mind.”

  The good guys are winning, thought Rogers.

  “The best part,” Bourque continued, “I must admit I’ve reserved for myself. I’m going to Grosse Pointe Farms and tell dear old Doc Schmitt the good news!” Sometimes it was a sheer joy to be a cop.

  Following an impulse more than anything else, Dr. Robert Schmitt returned to his office rather than going home after lunch at Carl’s.

  Laboriously, he worked his short stocky body from behind the wheel. He saw nothing unusual about the clinic’s exterior. The police and clinic personnel were gone and nothing outside the clinic had been disturbed. He was unaware that anything out of the ordinary had occurred.

  At the door, he paused after inserting his key in the lock. A frown crossed his porcine face. Removing his Homburg, he ran a hand over his bald pate. He was perspiring. Something was wrong, he sensed it.

  All looked in order in the reception room. He quickly moved to the rear of the clinic. All his equipment, all his instruments—gone. A robbery? Should he call the police? If it were a robbery, why just his equipment and instruments? Why not the rest of the furnishings? The typewriters?

  Another thought, a far worse possibility, occurred to him. He returned to the reception room and jerked open the desk drawer. Gone. All the records gone. This was no robbery. This was a police action. He fell back into the chair, limp.

  He was undecided whether to leave town hurriedly or go to the police and face whatever charge they might bring against him.

  As his head began to clear and he was putting his thoughts in order, he became aware of a strong foreign odor. It pierced the normal strong disinfectant smell. He could not clearly identify the odor, but it seemed to emanate from one of the back rooms.

  Curiosity engaged, Schmitt started again cautiously toward the rear of the clinic.

  As he passed from the reception area, he was able to identify the odor. It was of burning human flesh and hair. But why here? In his clinic? In the middle of Detroit? He was confused. Badly confused.

  As he progressed further to the rear, the smell of burni
ng flesh increased till it was nearly unbearable. He pressed his handkerchief over his mouth and nose but the maneuver did little good.

  He reached the large rear office but oddly it was as if someone had installed a glass door that covered the entire entrance to the room. And the glass was clouded as if by steam.

  He rubbed a corner free of mist with his handkerchief. He peered in. He saw two men wearing striped uniforms. As if in slow motion, they were picking up naked dead bodies of men, women, and children and tossing them into a gigantic furnace. With the approach of each body, the flames leapt from the furnace to greet the corporeal fuel.

  As the stench grew to almost suffocating proportions, shrieks of terror assailed Schmitt’s ears.

  He rubbed more mist from the glass. He saw men, women, and children compressed by their sheer number. Gas was being pumped down at them from the ceiling. Instinctively, they knew immediately it was poisonous. They screamed and tore at each other.

  There was a clap of ear-shattering thunder.

  Schmitt spun about. He was standing in a black room. He sensed it was huge. A hissing sound echoed all around him. With the gas chamber and crematorium behind him and this room in front, he had no escape.

  Slowly, a string of fluorescent lights brightened the central portion of the room to reveal a high, almost judicial bench. Seated behind it was a group of people, all women. Schmitt recognized most of them. Diane Garson was there, along with Georgia Thomas, and so many more women he had butchered. There was even a small baby who had emerged alive during one of Schmitt’s sloppier abortions. Schmitt had smothered the little girl. He recognized her due to the blotchy burns covering her body. The result of saline injection.

  One by one, each woman extended her right arm, hand fisted, thumb turned downward. As the last woman gave her sign, all of them disappeared. There was another clap of thunder. Schmitt again spun about.

  Now no glass separated him from the condemned. They had stopped screaming. The gas had ceased. They were laughing at him maniacally.

  Those in the front ranks grabbed Schmitt and pulled him into their midst. Bodies pressed upon him so tightly he could scarcely breathe. Hands tore at his clothes and at his flesh. All he could see were grinning, laughing mouths. Mad hysteria was all about him.

  The crowd moved Schmitt ever closer to the furnace. Now he was directly in front of it, and forced to look inside it. It was filled with gold. His gold.

  The gold began to melt. It sizzled. Bubbles appeared. Steam rose. It became molten. It began to boil.

  Two men raised Schmitt’s struggling body over their heads. They hurled him, writhing, into the furnace. He extended his arms before him in a futile gesture of self-protection. His face contorted in terror. He shrieked one resounding “NOoooo—”

  Unlike the days of yore, seminarians’ attendance at weekday Mass was spotty at best. But they invariably rose to the challenge of the Sunday liturgy.

  Not only did all resident seminarians attend the Sunday Mass, there were also visitors. Friends and relatives of the seminarians or faculty as well as some of the homeowners or apartment dwellers in this benighted area of Detroit.

  The music, carefully rehearsed, usually included everything from a bit of Gregorian Chant to the polyphony of Palestrina to traditional to folk. The seminary choir religiously avoided all the execrable music that had been composed before but mostly after Vatican II.

  While this Sunday’s visitors were being shown to their places in the huge Gothic chapel, faculty and students were aligning themselves in the dark corridors outside the chapel. Seminarians were garbed in cassocks and surplices, a very rare occurrence. The clergy faculty were vesting in Mass robes in the large sacristy.

  “Did you hear what McNiff, out at St. Mary Magdalen in Melvindale, said the other day?” asked Father Osborn. He eased the long white alb over his shoulders and let it hang down to his ankles.

  “No, what?” asked Father Burk eagerly.

  Father Patrick McNiff was such a colorful character that the news of what he did and said was always grist for clerical gossip.

  “Well,” said Osborn, “McNiff’s associate pastor, young Harry Doyle, comes up to him the other day. It is obvious that Doyle is very upset.”

  “Yes?” Burk’s complete attention was given to Osborn as Burk automatically adjusted and tied his cincture.

  “So,” said Osborn, carefully placing the stole over his shoulders and securing its position with the cincture’s loose ends, “young Doyle has just received another notary job from the Tribunal. It seems he has received many previous directives from the Tribunal to take testimony from various parishioners on marriage cases. He feels as if he is being used by the Tribunal—”

  “Who doesn’t?” Burk interrupted.

  “In any case,” Osborn continued, “Doyle is very angry. So he comes up to McNiff and says, ‘Father, what can they do to me downtown if I refuse to take this testimony? I mean, what can they do to me if I simply refuse to do this?’”

  Burk, who had stopped vesting entirely, waited expectantly.

  “Well,” said Osborn, “McNiff told him, ‘Father, they can’t do anything to you. You’re already here!’”

  They laughed.

  “It reminds me,” said Osborn, bringing himself under control, “of another incident Doyle told me about. A while back, Doyle received a document from the Tribunal and was ordered to place the document in the parish’s secret archives.”

  Somewhat against his will, Burk was busy working the heavy chasuble, the outer vestment, down over his head. He didn’t want to miss a word of a McNiff story.

  “So,” Osborn continued, “Doyle came to McNiff and asked in all sincerity just where these secret archives were. Well, McNiff draws young Doyle close to him and whispers in a conspiratorial tone, ‘Father, they are so secret even I don’t know where they are!’”

  They laughed again.

  The students had finished assembling in the corridor. It was 10 A.M. The procession was scheduled to begin. But it would wait until all the clergy faculty was vested and ready.

  Four buddies had managed to group themselves together.

  “Gentlemen,” announced Vi to Lombardo, “I propose an atrocity!”

  “Dandy,” agreed Dick Kiefer, “We’ve been too long without one.”

  “What is the nature of your atrocity?” Kevin Dunne demanded.

  “You all know Leo Ramrod,” said Lombardo.

  They all knew Leo Ramrod. They leaned toward each other till their heads were nearly touching. It reminded each of them of an episode from the old “Mission Impossible” series.

  “Leo Ramrod is the sacristan,” Lombardo needlessly reminded his colleagues. “Thus, Leo will be busy until late this evening, what with cleaning up from this morning’s liturgy and preparing for tomorrow’s.”

  His three lieutenants nodded their continued understanding.

  “I propose the following atrocity, gentlemen,” said their leader. “We will place Leo’s bed on top of the plasterboard stalls in the dormitory. Not only will Leo not be able to get his bed down by himself, he is too short to even reach the bed!”

  Stifled guffaws from the three soldiers.

  “One thing,” insisted Joe Smolenski, “we are all in this together.”

  It was a valid point. It would be somewhat more difficult to fix cruel and unusual punishment upon inevitable apprehension on four than on one poor soul.

  “Absolutely,” agreed Lombardo.

  The four piled their hands one on top the other.

  The procession began.

  “Have a happy liturgy, Joe,” Lombardo stage-whispered to Smolenski. Both snickered.

  The immense pipe organ, supported by three brass instruments, boomed out “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” The seminarians and faculty boomed right back. Both visitors and participants felt a thrill. It was a sound to set one’s blood moving.

  A straight-back chair had been placed in the sanctuary near the congregation.
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  As soon as he noticed it, Lombardo breathed a fervent, “Oh, God!”

  As each noted the chair, the exclamation was repeated by nearly all the seminarians. For the chair signified that old Monsignor Klenner would be the main celebrant and, worse, that he would deliver the sermon.

  Klenner’s knowledge of Latin, Greek, German, and Sanskrit, among other languages, was internationally famous. Now in his eighties, he was physically not very strong. However, the opportunity to be seated while he preached added thirty minutes to his delivery.

  Klenner never wanted to know the sermon topic before vesting for Mass. That lack of foreknowledge assured his homily a sense of freshness—and seemingly interminable length.

  As the time for the homily arrived, Klenner seated himself. His audience tried to make themselves as comfortable as possible. Some prayed for the merciful gift of sleep.

  “Ze topic uf today’s homily,” Klenner began, words clouded by his heavy German accent, “iss ze Ainchels. Now,” he launched himself, “ze vord ‘Ainchel’ comes from ze Greek ‘angelos-angelou-haw!” he said, adding the gender identification.

  Lombardo counted the pillars and wondered about their foundation.

  Smolenski mentally replayed yesterday’s Tigers game.

  Kiefer tried to estimate how long it would take the authorities to solve the Ramrod caper.

  Dunne managed to capture an impure thought and entertain it.

  Twenty-five minutes passed.

  There was a rustling. Could Klenner be finishing?

  “Und now,” Klenner intoned, “ve come to ze bad Ainchels!”

  The heat generated by all these bodies, the closeness of the air, the boredom created by the speaker all reached Sister Clotilde. Unassumingly, she slid off her pew and landed in a heap on the floor.

  As regularly happens when someone simply faints in church, overreaction springs from as many sources as possible.

  Lombardo hurdled three consecutive pews to reach the fainted woman. Her nun colleagues shrank back. Gradually, almost everyone in the chapel was gathered around the area where Clotilde’s body lay. No one was able to remember, later, whether Monsignor Klenner had continued his sermon on the angels to its projected conclusion.