Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

“I beg your pardon?” They were shouting by now. It sounded like an argument, although it was only the usual attempt to communicate in Las Vegas.

“I just dealt with the writers now and again, eyeballed the contracts. Chester was doing me a favor, throwing a little business my way. Wasn’t much to the job, but he paid okay.”

Another dupe of Chester Royal’s? Temple couldn’t believe it. “But... why?”

“We go back a long time. I helped him with a spot of trouble years ago.”

“In Albert Lea, Minnesota?”

Jaspar looked surprised. “Yeah, I was working out of Albert Lea, but Chester’s difficulties were in Illinois. Lots of folks wondered why Chester got an out-of-state lawyer. For one thing, we went to college in Milwaukee together—I was older because of World War Two by the time I got to college. For another, I was a good lawyer and he knew it. Everybody thinks there’s nothing in Minnesota but snow.” Jaspar grinned. “That’s not quite true, but it sure’s not as hot as this place.”

“Why’d you come to the ABA if you did so little?”

“Chester. He wanted me to be around if a writer needed a little reassurance.” Jaspar leaned close and enunciated every word. “They’re kinda temperamental, writers. Chester explained it to me. Artistic snits. He sure went through a lot of rigmarole to keep ’em happy. I don’t know much about this publishing stuff, but if I was you, I’d get out of it.”

“I’m not in publishing, I’m in PR.”

“PR? Not many Puerto Ricans in Minnesota. Vietnamese, though.”

“Tell me about the case you helped Chester with.”

“In Illinois?”

“Yes!”

“It was back in the fifties. Sad situation, nasty pickle. You couldn’t do things like that in those days, but Chester was always breaking rules. Chester was the ultimate Indian giver.”

“What do you mean?”

“If he did anything for you, there was a mousetrap in it somewhere. He had an odd sense of humor. On the surface he looked like a beneficent guy, but deep down everything was not only to his advantage, but it soothed some private sore spot to get the better of someone. An Indian giver— that’s what we used to called giving and then taking back, like the government kept grabbing back lands it’d promised the Indians. Chester handed you something with one hand and took something of you away with the other.”

“He stole a bit of their souls,” Temple said darkly.

“Maybe. But this one time a body was involved. Some woman died. They said it was Chester’s fault.”

“Was it?”

“Hell, yes! That kind of thing was illegal then. May soon be again.”

“Abortion?” Temple held her breath. Could this be the malpractice case she’d set Molina on?

Jaspar nodded and took a swig of beer from the massive mug before him. “Chester was lucky to get off with just his medical license jerked. The DA was thinking of going for manslaughter, but I was pretty sharp in those days; it ended up just a malpractice case. Helped some that the family was claiming the woman hadn’t wanted an abortion. Kinda hard to swallow.”

“What days? When exactly?”

Jaspar puckered his whole face in indecision. “Early fifties.

“Exactly?”

“ ‘Exactly’ isn’t exactly in my mental vocabulary anymore. Maybe... fifty-two.” Jaspar managed to look both stubborn and grumpy, so Temple tried a different tack.

“But why was the family’s claim that the aborted woman was unwilling so hard to swallow?”

“Well—” Jaspar leaned back in the well-padded captain’s chair. This question would permit the proper elaboration, the attorney’s equivalent of good, old-fashioned gossip. “The woman had almost a dozen kids already. Husband was a switchman for the Great Northern Railway, you know, the one with the mountain goat.”

Temple didn’t know, but figured the goat wasn’t important, so she just nodded.

“Gil—Gil—Gilhooley or some cheesecloth-curtain Irish name. Roman Catholics, of course, but it’s one thing to go to church on Sunday and bend your knee and say ‘Bless me, Father,’ and another to live with ten hungry mouths and another one coming.”

“But the family—the husband—insisted she never would have asked for an abortion?”

“Mary... Ellen, that’s it! Mary Ellen Gilhooley. Women aren’t having kids like that anymore. I never did know how they took that kind of wear and tear back then. They don’t do it nowadays. Progress.”

“Mary Ellen Gilhooley died on Dr. Chester Royal’s table during the course of an abortion her husband said she’d never have asked for?”