The Silent Salesman

By Michael Z Lewin

Indianapolis PI Albert Samson takes on a hospital, a pharmaceutical company, and the FBI in this “tough and clever” mystery (The New Republic).
 
After his slowest summer ever, struggling and desperate private eye Albert Samson places an ad in the local paper, offering his services at a bargain price. Instead of new business, he gets an eviction notice.
 
But his luck seems to change when Dorothea Thomas calls with an unusual tale of woe. Her brother, John, a chemist and pharmaceutical salesman, has been in a coma since a lab explosion seven months ago. Dorothea hasn’t been allowed to visit her brother in an experimental wing of the hospital—and she needs Samson to find out why. The case gets him tangled up with the FBI and leads him straight to the black heart of the pharmaceutical industry, where secrets only hide more secrets.
 
The smart-mouthed midwestern detective who “is always good, wry company” returns in this witty crime novel in the critically acclaimed Albert Samson series (Kirkus Reviews).
 
The Silent Salesman is the 4th book in the Albert Samson Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Jan 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781480443679

Michael Z Lewin

Michael Z. Lewin has been writing mysteries, stories, and other fiction for more than forty years. Raised in Indianapolis, many of his books have been set there. More recent fiction, including the "Family" novels and stories, have been set in England where he currently lives. His writing has received many awards and generous reviews. Details of many of these, and a lot of other information, is available on his website.

Book preview

One

I spent the first half-hour after breakfast counting my money. My cash money. The two thousand dollars that made up my Never-Touch Fund. It came to $938.

For money belonging to me, that’s not a bad survival rate over nearly three years. Especially considering I keep it in a box I don’t even lock against myself. I can’t afford a lock. The only restraint I use is an otherwise friendly candid picture of my woman giving me a stern glower. It’s to inspire self-discipline.

The money came originally in a lump with a letter from a grateful client. A free and unsolicited gift. I honored the letter by giving it a file folder of its very own. And I resolved to keep the money intact until I really needed it.

I needed it.

All June I’d sat in my office, doing nothing but hand-to-mouth work and wondering why nobody in the whole of Indianapolis wanted to hire a value-for-money operative like me.

With my contacts, intelligence, integrity … cheapness.

But then I realized. It’s marriages in June.

In July I realized it was still honeymoons.…

But by August at least the divorce side of the detective business should have picked up. It hadn’t.

On Monday, the eighth, I had decided to act. One of my strong points is that I’m willing to take action. If I can’t think of anything else to do. I went to the Star, to the advertising department.

GIGANTIC AUGUST DETECTIVE SALE

20% off your private detective on all inquiries,

including divorces, if started in August.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. The ad appeared Tuesday morning.

But of course Tuesdays are usually quiet anyway. Because all the housewives and househusbands do their washing on Tuesday.

Or is that Monday?

On Wednesday morning, I went to the bank to get my money, first thing. Then I came back to have breakfast. The ad was set to run for the rest of the week, including Sunday. It was my first ad since the week I started in business in 1863. My mistake, 1963.

Things had been bad for me since I opened, of course. That’s the way I run my life, going from bad to bad. But being more than a thousand bucks down on what I wouldn’t have had but for an unexpected gratitude … That’s bad.

At 10:15 the phone rang.

Albert Samson. May I help you?

A man’s voice asked, Are you Albert Samson?

I am.

That put this ad in the paper saying 20 percent off if I start my divorce now?

That’s right.

Are you on the level?

I don’t quite know how to answer—

Either you’re on the level or you aren’t on the level. Is this some kind of joke or isn’t it?

It’s no joke. It’s perfectly serious.

Well, I think it’s a terrible joke, Samson. I think it’s in very poor taste, if you want to know what I think. He hung up."

The light bulb of my consciousness flickered for the rest of the morning. When I was off, I dreamed about doing some other form of work. Being … anything. Being something. Earning enough, after expenses, to pay tax.

When I was on, I passed the time trying to remember the names of the 1969 Mets. The ones who came from nowhere to win the National League Pennant, the World Series.

We had a lot in common, the Mets of 1969 and the Albert Samson of 1977. We both started the summer at the bottom.

At twelve, I retired to my back room for lunch. At twenty to one, I heard the unmistakable sound of someone trying to open my door. I paused, I listened, I put down the orange juice bottle and dashed the eight giant steps from my dining-room chair to my office door. I lifted and pulled. It flew open.

Hi, I said from behind my best smile.

A middle-aged woman in a long brown raincoat was halfway down the stairs. She turned and looked back up at me.

Can I help you, Ma’am?

She said, I … I … I … Then hurried down the stairs and out onto the street. Advertising sure pulls them in.

I went down the stairs, but not to pursue her. I had noticed a letter in the wire basket that catches things pushed into my mail slot. I’m not usually overeager for my mail, but last week’s letter had been from my daughter. I hadn’t seen her for twelve years, and she’d written to say she might visit me. Her mummy and rich new daddy were spending the summer in Connecticut, which was, after all, nearly next door. I opened the envelope on the spot, at the foot of the stairs.

It was an eviction notice from my landlord.

They were demolishing my building to put up offices. It didn’t seem fair, considering that the same thing had already happened to me. The site of my previous office—where I’d spent ten years—was now a multistory parking lot.

But Indianapolis is that kind of city, reaching for the sky on the sites of yesterday’s men. And redevelopment is not the kind of thing you can get inoculated against without money. I had until mid-October to vacate.

I went back up. I’d been depressed before, but now I was just sad. These lovely splintery rotting wooden stairs, I said to myself. Ahh, well.

But by the time I’d returned to my lunch I’d seen the bright side. If I had no work, I’d have plenty of time to do the moving. Everything is good for something.

Of course, if I went that long without any work, then I’d have to boil up the other shoe.…

I was getting manic with depression.

The phone rang. I sat and listened to it for a moment. Shrugged.

Albert Samson. May I help you?

I am Mrs. Dorothea Thomas, said a woman. I need someone to find out the why of something for me. Do you do that kind of work?

Yes, I said, hoping she was talking about the kind of job I could do. The last of the last shoe hadn’t tasted sole good.

Do … do you make house calls, Mr. Samson?

Yes, I said. I added, Within a reasonable distance of Indianapolis, because I didn’t want to seem too eager. She might think I wanted to eat her.

But her house turned out to be in Beech Grove and she wanted me at eight. I consulted my schedule and found I was available.

"Before you hang up, Mrs. Thomas, may I ask whether you called me because of my ad in the Star today?"

Ad? she said. No, I just picked the smallest ad in the list of detectives in the yellow pages.

Oh, I said.

See you tonight, then, she said.

Beech Grove is a suburban community, about six miles closer to downtown Indianapolis than most. The house was a substantial brick structure and had been there for quite a long time. It seemed the building to house a comfortable ambition. A big beech tree towered over its left shoulder, and I wondered what the occupants of such a settled place could possibly want with me.

Perhaps they didn’t; the porch light was off and I could see no other lights from the front of the house. I waited in my van because I was five minutes early. As I watched, I saw a woman move silhouetted along the side of the house to the front porch. But she didn’t go in. She stood by the door and looked at her wrist.

I got out and walked up the path.

Mr. Samson? the woman asked, in a hushed voice.

Yes.

Come this way, please. I followed her back along the house in the direction from which I’d seen her come.

We turned the corner and walked past the garage to a small aluminum trailer mounted wheelless on a concrete pad. The trailer windows were filled with light and Mrs. Thomas held the door for me as I went inside. I’d have told you to come here rather than the house, she said, but it takes so much explaining.

We settled in two compact chairs. She was about forty, I guessed, but she’d worn badly. Her face hung from her hairline like layered leather flaps.

I feel so foolish, she said.

Please don’t, I said, as if it meant something.

I suppose I shouldn’t have asked you to come all the way out here without really knowing if you could do anything.

I did my best to look understanding. The TV wasn’t very good tonight anyway, I said. On the phone you said you had a problem?

I … I … she said. I am being foolish, aren’t I?

It’s hard to know where to begin, I offered.

Oh, I know where to begin, she said. I’m only trying to find out what to do for the best. You see … my brother is not well. He’s been in Entropist Hospital for nearly seven months.

I’m sorry.

Yes, well, so am I, she said.

Is he very sick?

Very; that’s what they tell me. He was in an accident at work. He’s a salesman for Loftus Pharmaceuticals. There was some kind of explosion in a laboratory and he got hurt.

It sounds like very bad luck. Has the company been difficult over medical bills, or compensation? Is that the kind of problem you mean?

Oh, no. John is receiving all possible care, I’m sure of that. He is in the company’s wing of the hospital, the Loftus Clinic. And so far as compensation, his wife will have done all that. I saw John’s lawyer at the house several times during the spring.

Well, I began without end.

I just want to see John.

See him?

That’s right. The hospital won’t let me visit him.

Not at all?

I’ve tried three times. Each time, they say he’s not allowed to have any visitors, that they’ll let me know when he’s taken off the restricted list. But they haven’t let me know. I called them again yesterday, but he’s still restricted. She seemed genuinely upset.

What do they say the reason is?

They say that his condition is so serious that he has to keep away from any risk of contamination.

Just what kind of accident was this? An explosion, you said?

That’s right. He had head injuries.

I don’t know much about these things, I said truly, but maintaining sterile conditions doesn’t sound like routine physical accident treatment.

I didn’t think it was, she said positively and with relief. And that’s why I thought that you, somebody like you, you …

Have they restricted Mrs.—?

My brother’s name is Pighee. John Austin Pighee. His wife’s name is Linn.

Have they restricted Mrs. Pighee’s visits in the same way?

I don’t know, said Mrs. Thomas. Linn and I don’t converse. Though we do live … She waved a hand in the direction of the house.

So it’s your brother’s house, and his wife’s.

My brother’s house, that’s right. I used to keep house for them, before the accident. But now, with him not being there, I don’t really bother.

Have you had legal advice, Mrs. Thomas?

I did have a word once with John’s lawyer. I caught him as he was leaving.

And?

I don’t know why John gives his business to that man, she said. Or rather I do know why. They were in college together. They were friends. I must say I don’t like him any better now than I did then.

Then? At college?

Oh, yes, she said, and realized she might explain a few things. John … you should know that my brother is much younger than I am, Mr. Samson. Our parents died when he was just a teen-ager and I’ve always had a special feeling for him. My baby brother Johnny.

May I ask how old Mr. Pighee is now?

Twenty-nine.

I nodded.

But Thomas, my husband, and I … went our separate ways … just at the time Johnny was going to college, or was supposed to go, except for Linn.… And I had a little money in settlement. It seemed a good idea that I make a home for them. Help him through his academic years, do whatever I could. And the arrangement continued. And here I am.

I paused, then said, You said you’d spoken to John’s lawyer.

Walter Weston. Yes.

What did he say?

That Loftus was providing more than they were legally obliged to, that Linn had been kept fully informed of John’s progress, that she was satisfied that the best possible care was being provided.

In effect, to mind your own business.

She nodded, and said harshly, Not that Linn would mind if John didn’t make progress. She’s easily satisfied on that score.

No love lost between you and your sister-in-law?

None. It’s no secret.

Of course the lawyer, Weston, would consider his obligation to Mrs. Pighee rather stronger than his obligation to you.

No doubt about that.

And you need someone to inquire about your interests.

Yes, she said. I want to find out why I’m not allowed to visit my own—my only brother in the hospital. After all I’ve done for him.

I left Mrs. Thomas after we settled the details of my fee. She’d looked up my ad in the Star. I didn’t have the heart to put my fee up 25 percent so the 20 percent discount would bring it back to the fifty dollars a day plus expenses she would have paid if I hadn’t steered her to the ad.

There were no flies on Mrs. Thomas. She wanted to know if the discount also applied to the expenses. It didn’t.

Even at fifty plus, my rates were competitive, not to say cheap. At 20 percent off, I was an anachronism.

But without any work at all, I would be extinct, so I wasn’t complaining.

I got back to downtown Indianapolis a little after ten; I parked in the lot round the corner from my office where I had an arrangement: pay monthly night rates and park anytime, day or night. But all that would be gone when the developers got cracking. I climbed the wooden hill to my office/home and drank a pint of orange juice before turning on the TV. I watched a comic program and cried myself to sleep.

Two

I woke up early. The sheer excitement of having a job.

However, life at Entropist Hospital seemed pretty well established by ten past nine, when I got there. It is one of the large general hospitals in town, neither the fanciest nor the shoddiest. It had a reputation in town as a medical research institution—whether justified or not, I didn’t know.

At the reception desk a poster-pretty nurse asked me, Is there anything I can do for you, sir?

Can you tell me what visiting hours are, please?

Is it your wife that’s had a baby? she asked.

If she has, it’s nothing to do with me.

Our relationship went downhill from there. By the end of it, all I’d got from her was a hiss and a mimeographed sheet listing the visiting hours for the various wards. Loftus Clinic wasn’t listed as such, but a Loftus Pavilion was.

I hadn’t asked directions and didn’t feel like waiting for another hiss after the reception nurse dealt winningly with a fat woman and a little boy, so I just headed for the nearest doors that looked as if they led in rather than out.

Two rights and a left later, I found a kindly man in some sort of uniform. You’re going the wrong way, son, he said.

That’s what my mother had said when I headed for the East Coast in the fifties. They were both right.

Individually named sections of a large hospital usually reflect the pocketbook rather than the personality of the donor. The opulence of Loftus Pavilion seemed to confirm what little I knew about the grand old man who founded the company, Sir Jeffrey Loftus. He was a British-noble type, of some sort, who had come to Indianapolis once upon a time and made good. Now he was in his late eighties, but still going strong. I’d never heard him called anything but Sir Jeff on television, which is the only time I’d ever heard him called anything at all. In the last twenty years he’d been one of the leaders in the big-city-style development of Indianapolis. One of the guys who were making me homeless. He was widely open-handed in construction projects that could all loosely be described as helping the people, whatever tax or other benefits they might confer on the donors.

Not that Loftus was other than a relatively small-time kind of Carnegie, and Indianapolis-based Loftus Pharmaceuticals wasn’t even the biggest drug company in town—that honor going in spades to Eli Lilly & Company.

But for whatever reason, Loftus Pavilion had a style very different from the aging institutional character of the rest of Entropist Hospital. Newer, granted, but also more evidently purpose-built. Its street-level reception area, as I walked in, gave access to the reception desk and an area with privacy, as required. It was basically a rich place, with thick carpets, as if the paternal hand of Sir Jeff had come out of the pocket with a few extra coins so that the designers could go all the way.

The Loftus Pavilion nurse wasn’t thick. She had sharp eyes and realized I was an enemy as soon as she saw me. What do you want? she asked.

I’d like to know when I can visit John Austin Pighee, please. I think I said please.

Mr. Pighee is not allowed visitors, she replied without hesitation.

Why not?

She seemed affronted to be asked other than a time-and-place question. Because he’s not, she said. Risk of contamination: doctor’s orders.

May I have a word with his doctor, please?

Who do you think you are?

I represent a member of Mr. Pighee’s family who wants to visit him and is not satisfied with being fobbed off by someone at the front desk. It’s simply not good enough. If there is a real reason why he mustn’t be visited, fine. But we want to know more about it and from the doctor in charge of the case.

Dr. Merom isn’t in the hospital just now, she said.

Well, then, I’d like to see whoever is here, I said.

She turned her head toward a man sitting in an inner office room, separated by a windowed wall from the reception desk. Evan, she said.

The man stood up and I saw that he was wearing a para-police uniform, was clearly their security man.

Now, look … I said.

But Evan continued unhesitatingly until he was standing next to me in front of the reception desk. You want to see a man but he isn’t allowed visitors, he began, having obviously been in touch with the word exchange from the beginning. I have every sympathy with your situation, believe me. But if I were you I think I’d just let it drop, because if you keep on trying to see this man, there’s no telling what might happen. You might infect him or cause him to suffer a setback. Now, I’m painting the blackest possible picture, the blackest possible, but if you infected this man you want to see, it’s possible that he could die, just because you insisted on seeing him. You could be put on a police charge, of manslaughter or even murder.

Evan wasn’t armed, but he was tongued.

I take it you will not let me see John Austin Pighee and you will not let me talk to the person on the premises who is in charge of his case. Is that correct?

"He’s not allowed visitors," Evan said emphatically.

I shall return, I said. And left.

But I didn’t go as far as they expected me to. Only as far as the hospital’s administration offices.

Yes? said the man at the desk inside the room marked Chief Administrator. Can I do something for you?

The Chief Administrator wants to see me, I said.

Do you have an appointment? He peered into an open appointment book.

Better to see me now than wait until my client sues the hospital.

J … Just a minute, he said, and went to an inner room.

It took about a minute.

The Chief Administrator was a small, tired woman with carefully coiffed white hairs that were being gradually lost. The voice, however, was firmly rooted in Hoosierland, efficiently clipped. I understand you want to see me urgently.

I produced my pocket identification card, which showed that I was a private detective duly licensed by the State of Indiana in accordance with the Indiana Acts of 1961, Chapter 163.

So, a private detective, she said matter-of-factly. She’d had dealings with Us before. And your business?

I have a client who wants to visit her brother and isn’t being allowed to. She’s not satisfied with the reasons she’s been given for her exclusion.

Mmm, she said. A patient here?

I nodded.

The patient’s name?

I gave it.

And where is he? Which ward?

My client says ‘the Loftus Clinic’ but I’ve only been able to find something called ‘the Loftus Pavilion.’

Aaah, said the Chief Administrator, and she relaxed.

And just what is ‘aaah’ supposed to mean?

Well, Loftus Clinic is a part of the Loftus Pavilion. It’s an experimental section and a patient in there might well have different restrictions than patients in the rest of the Pavilion.

Experimental? I asked.

She didn’t answer. The administration of the Loftus Clinic has nothing to do with me.

I thought you were the administrative head of this hospital.

I am, she said.

I waited a moment for an explanation, but it wasn’t forthcoming. It will be your name on the suit my client files, I said.

An action involving me would not be to the point. Loftus Pharmaceutical Company, in exchange for the construction of a fifty-two-bed addition known as Loftus Pavilion, retains control and legal possession of a ten-bed research unit known as Loftus Clinic. The ground floor of the new wing is taken up by the Clinic and technical and reception facilities. Upper floors known as Loftus Pavilion are under my supervision, but if your client’s relative is in Loftus Clinic, you must go to the company.

It’s a completely independent body?

We provide basic staffing, maintenance, materials, and some services. They have their laundry done by our sanitation section and may draw on our kitchen facilities. They can use specialist equipment, by arrangement, can call on some of our medical and paramedical staff for consultation. But admissions, general and specific research policy, regular medical staff, and, more important for your purposes, control of access to patients, they determine for themselves and to suit themselves.

Including having a bouncer on the premises?

A bouncer?

A guy in a uniform who gets rid of querysome people by talking their hind legs off—but making it clear that if necessary he’d pull them off with his bare hands.

Well, she said, for your sort of problem, it’s a separate hospital.

Who’s in charge?

There is a department at Loftus under the Research Administration. It’s called Clinical Research.

I drove, grumbling, south. But I didn’t want my poor reception at Entropist Hospital’s various hands to predetermine the way I went into the Loftus Pharmaceutical Company, so I stopped for a cup of coffee and took the opportunity to reconstruct, for my notebook, my morning conversations.

Red tape is red tape is red tape, and the usual way to get through is to go door to door till you find someone with a pair of scissors. The question, save a couple of details, was how long it was going to take to find the door and then what it would take to get the inmate to exercise his fingers. I had at least got the name of Pighee’s doctor: Merom.

But suppose, I thought, suppose I get no joy at Loftus. What then? Pighee’s lawyer, I thought. Habeas corpus? Or maybe a little medical help? Second opinion?

Three

It’s a little early for lunch, isn’t it? I asked a woman about to bite into a huge sandwich. She hesitated.

Gee, do you think so?

Yeah, but don’t mind me. You’re too thin anyway.

Gee, do you think so?

Look, I said. I was told outside that the person in charge of the Loftus Clinic at Entropist Hospital could be found here. Is that right?

Mr. Dundree? Yeah, I guess he’s who you want. But he’s not in the office right now.

Where can I find him?

Well, he’s over at Research Three, but you can’t get in there because it’s inside the security perimeter and he isn’t expecting you. Hey, unless you’re somebody important, then I can probably get you through. You somebody important? You don’t look important.

I’m important, I said. I get so few opportunities.

"Well, in that case I’ll write you a pass that will get you through