The Three Dollar Phoenix by Walt Sautter (rooftoppers .txt) 📖

a drug rehab patient with no prior indicative test results and no referring physician’s diagnosis. House said the admitting physician would be able to clear all of that up for him. Ed scanned the forms for the name. The signature was unclear but it looked like McCarthy. He’d call tomorrow. He had a lot of paper work to do that night, but he didn’t seem to get much of it done. Every time he began, he found himself rehashing the past several weeks aver in his mind.
The next day began as usual. He arrived at the clinic at 8:00. Lucky was waiting at the door as he unlocked it.
“Hold on boy, I’ll have this open in a minute.”
As the door swung open, a large black and white dog bounded through the entrance. He looked to be half German Shepherd, half Doberman with a little bit of Collie and Boxer thrown in.
“Take it easy” yelled Ed while attempting to calm the exuberant animal.
Lucky was Rita’s dog. She picked him up the same way she befriended Sam. She found him limping down the alley between the clinic and the next door building. He was rummaging through the garbage looking for what he hoped would be his first meal in days. His hip bones protruded prominently through his shabby fur as did his ribs and shoulders. When he turned and looked at her with his sad brown eyes, Rita saw Pepper reincarnated. Pepper was her dog when she was a child. Lucky and Pepper both came from the same non-aristocratic lineage.
That one soulful glance and Rita turned and walked across the street to Bill’s and bought a bologna sandwich. She returned shortly to Lucky still rummaging unsuccessfully.
“Here boy. Here’s something for you” she called as she unwrapped the sandwich and placed it on the ground. She stepped back several feet and waited. The aroma of fresh cut bologna finally reached him and he warily began to move forward towards its source. When he reached it, he instantaneously devoured the morsel with three rapid gulps.
Rita looked more closely at the right rear leg. A large oozing sore spread over the entire flank.
“Here Lucky” she continued to coax him towards the clinic entrance and he anticipating more reward, eagerly followed.
When they entered, she shouted to Ed “Look what I found. This is Lucky.”
“How do you know that’s his real name? Maybe he’s a fugitive from the dog pound and he gave you an alias” replied Ed as he looked the dog over. That day Rita made a life long friend and the clinic got a damn good watch dog.
Ed settled the dog, walked over to his desk and sat down. In a few minutes the phone began to ring and patients started to flow in and, out of the office in a slow but steady stream. In between the calls and patients he tried to whittle down the stack of paperwork that covered his desk. It was business as usual. It was around noontime when the telephone rang for the twentieth time that morning. Ed answered it to hear the familiar sound of Charlie’s voice.
“Ed, I’ve been trying to get you for two days now” Charlie said in a relieved tone.
“Rita left a message that you called yesterday and it sounded important. Aren’t you in Dallas? Don’t you have a game today?” replied Ed.
“I’m in Dallas, alright. I want to have a long talk with you but this phone call will have to do for now.” He paused for a moment as if to collect his thoughts.
“Yesterday morning, before we left, I got a message from the front office. They wanted to see me. I went up and when I walked in, the’re five guys, in suits and ties, executive types and the owner, John Sims, all waitin’ for me. Everybody’s real nice, asking me how I like playing for the Giants and how I like the east coast and New York City and so forth. Now I know this is no social, let’s get acquainted meeting. Then out it comes. One of them says ‘Do you know Ed Bennett?’. That kinda took me by surprise, your name being mentioned out of the clear blue like that. ‘Of course’ I said. Then another one of them said ‘We’re a little concerned about you hanging around with this Bennett’. I immediately asked him why, and then a third guy said that you’re involved with drugs and it’s a bad association for members of the Giants to be seen with drug dealers.”
“What!” exclaimed Ed.
“You are kidding, aren’t you?”
He knew that there was no kidding going on here.
Charlie liked practical jokes, but this was far from a joking matter. Besides, he wouldn’t have called twice all the way from Dallas, just before a game, unless it was pretty serious stuff. He would never joke about something like this.
“I told them they must have the wrong Bennett” Charlie continued.
“But they knew all about you, about the clinic and they mentioned a guy named Sam. They said he was your distributor and strong arm man.”
“This is incredible” interjected Ed.
“Then Mr. Sims chimed in and said we want you to stop associating with Bennett. We can’t afford bad PR here. We’re trying to give you some good advice before a problem develops. With that they all got up and thanked me for my understanding shook my hand and said goodbye. I walked out dazed. I still am.”
“What else was said?” asked Ed.
“That was about it. I’ve been going over and over this in my head for two days now and that’s the whole story” replied Charlie.
“Do you know who the five guys are?”
“Well, Sims introduced me to them, but I’m not good at remembering names. I tried to remember them after I left but I can only come up with two of them, a Mr. Harb and a Mr. Sonetti. Another one’s name might have been Sloan, but I’m not sure” said Charlie.
“Did Sims say who they were, I mean what their positions were?”
“No” replied Charlie.
“I don ‘t understand any of this. You know me. I was never involved with drugs. Maybe a little grass now and then but that’s about it. Even at State some of the guys used to do a little coke and pills and you know I never took any of that stuff. I had dozens of opportunities” said Ed.
“I know, you were one of the straightest guys in the whole place” responded Charlie.
“I tried to tell them that but they didn’t listen.”
“I’m going to have to find out what’s going on here” said Ed.
“I had to call and tell you this. I was so dumbfounded by the whole thing that I just had to tell you right away. I was hopin’ that you had some explanation” said Charlie.
“Well, I don’t. Call me when you get back and we’ll go over this again. There must be some mistake” said Ed.
He hung up the phone in slow motion.
“Drug dealer? Me?” he thought, “It’s all insane.”
This was the second time in two days that someone had been accused of involvement with drugs. First Al and now him. It was all very hard to deal with. It seemed to Ed that the two circumstances might be related. If not, it was very coincidental that two innocent people suddenly became drug suspects.
Ed made two phone calls the next afternoon, one to Caramore and one to the Giants’ head office. No one at Caramore ever heard of Dr. McCarthy and no one knew who was Al Druse’s admitting physician.
When he tried to contact Sims, he got the usual secretarial run around with the promise of a return call. When he left the clinic at 6:30, no return call had been received yet.

Chapter IV

The next day was a Tuesday. Tuesdays he could come in to work a little late. It was a nice scheduling arrangement. Every other day, one of them would come in late. It helped to make things seem less routine.
Ed emerged victorious from his morning battle with the city traffic. He parked his car and walked towards the clinic. As he approached the door, Rita ran to meet him. She was shouting and crying simultaneously, resulting in an unintelligible stream of high frequency shrieks. She threw her arms about his waist like a drowning man hugging a life buoy. After a minute or so her incoherent babblings calmed in to a more collected flow of sob punctuated speech.
“Somebody murdered him.
Somebody murdered him” she repeated.
“Murdered who?” replied Ed in an alarmed shout.
She gestured towards the open door. Ed gently freed himself from her weakened grasp and moved towards the door. He noticed the window glass of the door had been shattered. Several feet inside the entrance lay Lucky, mouth open and tongue protruding. The body was motionless and the eyes wore a wide glazed stare. He was dead alright.
Rita followed him into the room and walked over to her desk. She picked up a sheet of paper upon which rested a large gray mass of half eaten, ground meat. A white crystalline, powder decorated its surface. She silently handed it to Ed. The paper was a plain white sheet bearing bold magic marker lettering, partially covered by the meat.
“I found this next to him this morning” she
said.
“That white stuff looks like rat poison” she added.
“What was taken?” asked Ed.
“I haven’t looked yet, but I don’t think anybody even came in. It looks like they broke the window just so they could throw the meat in.”
Ed looked at the lettering on the paper. It read, “Keep on putting your nose in.”
He couldn’t see the rest. He took it from her and carefully pushed the darkened meat from the paper onto a piece of old newspaper, being sure not to touch it with his hand. Now it was all visible, a bit blurred by stains, but easily readable.
“Keep on putting your nose in the wrong place and the next corpse you find will be wearing your face” it said.
“What the hell is this?” exclaimed Ed.
Rita looked at the message and repeated it aloud in a slow deliberate voice. Her sorrow at the loss of her dog gave way to astonishment. She had been so overwhelmed by the sight that greeted he when she arrived that morning, that she hadn’t even noticed the writing.
“Who could have done this?” she said.
“It must be a warning but a warning for what?” said Ed.
He looked over at her and saw a combination of grief and fear on her face. Then he gently put his arms around her.
“I’m sorry about Lucky. I know how much he meant to you. Who ever did this, murdered him to send me a message, and make sure I’d pay attention to it. They want to let me know they mean business. It was all directed at me, but I’m not sure I know what it’s all about.”
Rita cried and again it was combined grief and fear that caused it.
Sam walked in at the usual time, around 9:30. By then the body had been placed in a plastic bag and put out around the back of the building. Rita wasn’t sure what to do with it. Ed would probably wind up burying him in