Anyway, I shook his hand, and he gestured for me to come in, saying, "Good to see you, Mr. Hammer. I gather you've been a busy man while I was away."
I went down a short narrow hall that opened into a living room that was as spare as a monk's bunk. There was a fireplace, and a bookcase that included a shelf for a turntable and speakers, with a stack of classical LPs, though nothing was playing. No picture was above the mantel, and no other framed prints or paintings or even family pictures were displayed on the dark-wood-trimmed pale plaster walls. The framed quotations that characterized his office at Dorchester Medical College were not in evidence, either.
The few furnishings, however, were not cheap—brown leather sofa, two brown leather armchairs, and a glass coffee table with several art books—Dali, Miró—on a small Oriental carpet on the hardwood floor.
"I'm guessing you didn't raise your family here," I said, prowling the spartan space. He had taken my trench coat and porkpie hat, and was hanging them in the entry-hall closet.
"No," the doc admitted, "we had a bigger place, and all to ourselves."
At the bookcase I noted medical tomes, some heavy-duty philosophy running to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and doorstop classic novels by Russian writers. The doc didn't exactly come home to Harold Robbins or Irving Wallace, and no TV set was in sight.
Harrin continued: "After my wife, and then my son, were gone, I just didn't want to kick around in that big old place. Figured a bachelor pad was more in order."
As bachelor pads went, this wasn't exactly the Russell Frazer variety. There was, however, a small wet bar in one corner, trimmed out in the same brown leather, and he was heading over there, asking if I'd like a drink.
"Rye and ginger," I said.
He got me that, and—not caring to be medicated in any other way—I watched him do it; then he built himself a tumbler of Scotch. His expression was friendly as he gestured toward the furnishings that faced the fireplace. He took one of the easy chairs and I settled on the couch.
"So how was Paris, Doc? Pick up any new tricks at the conference?"
"Meeting with one's peers is always ... instructive," he said. "A lot of new information on hand, fresh research."
I sipped the drink, then set it on the glass coffee table next to the Dali book with a melting clock on the cover. "I wonder, if I hired a guy I know in Paris, to look into it? How many of those conference sessions you actually attended."
He sipped the Scotch, savored it, and his eyes remained cold as he gave me what was supposed to be a warm smile. "I attended enough of them to make a convincing case of it. Should some ambitious civil servant, or paid gumshoe, decide to check up on me, I'd come out smelling of roses. Or maybe disinfectant."
"People I work with, Doc? They can dig deeper than that."
He hiked his eyebrows, which were as black as his head of hair was white. "What do you think I was up to over there, Mr. Hammer?"
I didn't answer directly. I looked around the room, at living quarters that were little more than a cozy cage. "You don't exactly throw your money around, do you, Doc? Not what I'd call a hedonistic lifestyle."
"I'm comfortable."
"There's what, a kitchen here? A bedroom and bath? And that's it?"
He nodded, swirled his drink in one hand, looking down into the liquid like a fortuneteller studying a crystal ball. "I'm not sure I see your point, Mr. Hammer." He looked up sharply. "And why the tone, the undercurrent anyway, of hostility? What have I done to deserve that? You asked to see me, and I invited you to my home...."
But this wasn't his home. This was his cell. And that was seriously screwing up what I'd been thinking.
I tried anyway: "You've been conserving your money, haven't you, Doc? Because you had a big purchase to make, a big score."
Only one black eyebrow hiked this time. "Really? And how did you arrive at that conclusion, Mr. Hammer?"
"I'm like a physician in my way, too, only my remedies run a little radical. I study certain diseases, unfortunately not so rare as the ones you study, and come up with diagnoses, based on not just fact, but psychology."
"Sounds very scientific."
"Not really. It's more an art."
He gestured toward the window and the street beyond, and smiled. "Then you should be at home here in the Village, Mr. Hammer. Everyone here is an artist."
"You have your artistic side, too, Doc. It starts with your son, doesn't it?"
His smile faded.
"Davy was a gifted kid. I'm guessing he started out a good student as well as a natural athlete, but the academics fell by the wayside, when sports kicked in. Sports and all the fun and popularity that come with it, that can swell a kid's head. He was a party animal, your son, and he was into booze and it took him to pills and a lot harder stuff, possibly courtesy of a rough crowd he got in with—Russell Frazer, Jay Wren, maybe the Brix kid and his cronies, too. That I'm not sure about."
"Mr. Hammer," he said, and his words cut like a scalpel. "My son was a victim of both his own weaknesses, and mine. I do not blame him, not wholly, for the sad trajectory of his short life." The faded blue eyes stared at the fireplace, as if flames were licking there, which they weren't. "My wife spoiled him terribly—he was a brat from the time he could talk, but he was beautiful and gifted and she spoiled him."
"You didn't?"
"I was ... complicit." The blue eyes went to half-mast, and they studied the swirling liquid again. "I have been, in my lifetime, a driven man. A man caught up in himself, and his own goals and grandiose aspirations."
"My understanding," I said, "is you've contributed to society. You've cured, or anyway helped cure, a good share of diseases."
The tiniest shrug of his head preceded words that sounded distant: "Yes. That is true. But I neglected my wife and my son, in so doing. I allowed Linda to lavish attention and praise and possessions upon our son. And he learned, early on, that nothing was to be denied him. No desire, no happiness. All was his for the asking—anything he wanted to have or to do. It became an expectation. A right."
I sat back on the couch. My jacket was open, the .45 easily accessible. "Were you aware of his drug problem?"
"No. The extent of my parental attention was to attend his sports events, when I was available ... which was perhaps a third of the time. After Linda's death, I tried to get more involved with Davy, but for the most part he wasn't interested."
"Didn't he help you with the pottery program in the children's ward at Saxony?"
He smiled again, with genuine if rueful amusement. "That's a loaded question, isn't it, Mr. Hammer? Suppose you tell me what you know, or think you know, about the ceramics program at the hospital."
I shrugged. "It's not so much the program as the source of the ceramics—the Village Ceramics Shoppe. Too many of the players in this melodrama converge on that supposedly innocent little place. Russell Frazer worked there as a glorified delivery boy, and yet he dressed like Rex Harrison and lived like Sammy Davis—must've been pulling down good bread for menial help, huh? Your son picked up packages for the hospital program there, and Brix and his pals were seen in or around the shop. Even Billy Blue was in and out, after your son died anyway, and he may have been jumped because somebody thought he knew too much."
His eyes were narrowed now. "And what does all of that add up to for you, Mr. Hammer?"
"I think it's a dope distribution center. Russell Frazer, delivery man, could be making real dough if it was junk he was delivering, not bisque dishes and statuettes. Hell, I think they bake the stuff right into their figurines, and through some chemical process, the junk comes out again ready for marketing. They don't sell to individuals—a respectable shop like that wouldn't want junkies hanging around. But boxes or even crates of supposed greenware could be shipped out of the back nationwide, and smaller orders could be dropped off locally. It's an ideal system, and an innocuous front."