Chapter One

“Why in hell,” Jacob Rosen asked Katherine Schwartz, “would anybody try to kill you? In a town where everybody dies of TB? Why would anybody try to kill anybody? Especially you?”

“That’s stupid, Jake, and you know it. I hate it when you talk like that.”

Jake enjoyed watching Katherine when she got mad. She was beautiful to look at any time. But when she got mad the blue eyes turned to a kind of violet and she kept blowing a loose strand of hair off her forehead. Black as black could be, that hair. Even with her left arm in a sling and the bandage wrapped around her head just above her eyes and the crutch, she still looked lovely.

“C’mon,” he said, “It’s not stupid and you know it. The whole town is devoted to sickness. Doctors trying to find a cure and hundreds, hundreds hell, thousands of people coming here hoping to get well, and a lot of them not making it. So I repeat my question, why in hell would anybody jump the gun and kill somebody? And you’re not even a patient. You take care of patients. You’re a damn institution in this town. So again, why would someone want to kill you?”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, a long sigh, the sound the wind makes when it’s caressing the tops of the trees. Just watching her take the breath was enough to make Jake forget what they were talking about. With the long knit dresses she usually wore, reaching almost to her ankles, and her slim, graceful body, a deep breath could make any conversation veer away from where it had started. She wasn’t young, maybe early to middle forties. About ten years short of him. But time, he thought, never told her body she wasn’t young.

“I suppose you came here to die?”

Jake looked at her. He didn’t answer for a time. “Okay, maybe I was too flip. Maybe nobody goes anyplace just to die, not on their own anyway. No matter how bad you are you always think that someplace there’s some hope, there’s maybe someone who can help you. That’s one thing I learned as a criminal lawyer, listening to cops tell stories while we were waiting for court to open. Whether somebody’s standing on the top of a bridge over the Hudson, or staring at a bottle of pills in their hand, or even pressing a gun to their head, they really hope somebody will step in and stop them. I guess even at the end you don’t stop hoping.”

She put her hand on his arm. “And in spite of the hard boiled talk, you think that way, don’t you Jake?”

Jake pulled the blanket away and started to get out of the cure chair. “Let me get up, okay, Kat?” he asked her. “I get antsy when I been down too long. I just want to get up and have a smoke.”

“All right,” she said. “But not too long. Doctor Kaplan was pleased with you at the weigh-in last week. Your temperature was finally down and you gained a pound. Your face is long and bony enough without your cheekbones sticking out making you look like you were an Indian. Don’t overdo now. The last time you started getting better you went downtown and got drunk and played poker for three straight days. You have to take better care of yourself. You can’t do those things and get well.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me that before,” Jake shot back. “Those country boys took me pretty good.” He got out of the chair and walked over to the porch railing. He leaned against it and took a pack of Luckies out of his bathrobe pocket. Katherine held her hand out so he lit two and handed one to her. He took a deep drag, hoping he could blow these thoughts away along with the smoke. A shiver went through him, making his shoulders tremble.

“I told you,” Katherine said. “It’s too cool for you. Get back under the blanket.”

“No, it’s all right. It’s not that. I guess it’s the way our conversation was going. I don’t know what the hell got me on that kick, that’s all. I don’t think I’ll ever believe that I’ve been here for almost two years and that I spent the first few months in bed. In bed for chrissakes.” He smiled at her. “But it’s a nice thought, Kat, you wanting me to get back under a blanket.” He held a hand up, as if to ward off her next remark. “Sorry,” he said, “I couldn’t resist. Let’s get back to what you wanted to ask me.”

”If you could, no, if you would help.”

“Help who?”

“Me.”

“How?”

“I don’t care what you say, somebody tried to kill me that night. I had a week in the hospital to think about it and I’m sure. That big black car was waiting for me to cross the street.”

Jake lit another cigarette. “All right, let’s say you’re right. Just what can I do?”

“I heard last night that somebody’s in town. He was a patient some years ago. We were—” She hesitated. “We were friends. His name is Flanders—Tony Flanders.”

Jake wondered why the hesitation, but didn’t ask.

“He was a detective. In Albany. I imagine he still is. Anyway, I’d like to see him.”

“If you know where he’s staying, why not call him?”

“I don’t know if he’d remember me. I was thinking that maybe someone could go downtown this morning and look him up. Ask him to come for dinner tonight.”

“I’ll go, if you want me to.”

“No, not you. I don’t like the way you look. I want you to rest. I thought maybe John Michael would go. He told me about Tony being in town.”

“How did he know?”

“I don’t know. I think he said someone mentioned it at O’Rourke’s when he was having a drink there.”

As if summoned by thought, the screen door opened and John Michael Xavier Muldowney, who had dropped the ‘Xavier’ somewhere along the line, came out onto the porch, as if he was entering from stage left to an adoring audience. He nodded to Jake Rosen then took Katherine’s hand and pressed to his lips. He was dressed, as always, in the height of fashion. A blue striped seersucker jacket over a neatly pressed pair of white ducks with a dark blue cravat at his throat. Tall, lean, dark of countenance, he looked like Abe Lincoln in pictures taken during the Civil War. Time worn, but with kindness and humor coming through.

“Top of the mornin’ to you, lovely one,” he said to Katherine. “You don’t just walk in beauty like the night, child, you surround yourself in it all the day long. Get me out of this place, lass. Let me show you the greater world out there.”

 Katherine started to look stern but gave it up and laughed. “Thank you, John Michael,” she said, drawing her hand away. “I was just going to tell you breakfast would be ready in a little while, but I can smell that you’ve already had your juice. Isn’t it a little early for that, especially when you’re not feeling well?”

“Who isn’t feeling well?” Muldowney asked. “Who is spreading that calumny? Tell me his name, just tell me that, and I’ll give him enough of a thrashing to stop him from doing it again.”

Katherine laughed again. “Stop it, fool,” she said. “You know it’s Doctor Kaplan who said it. Last week your temperature was almost a hundred and one and you had lost over a pound and a half from the week before. He’s worried about you. So am I. You won’t take care of yourself, you won’t stay in bed. This is a cure cottage, damn it. Why won’t you try to cure? You’re a hell of an example for him,” pointing to Jake, who was trying not to laugh too hard at the scene before him, which he should have been used to by now, but could never watch enough.

Muldowney looked over his shoulder at Jake. “You’re telling me, Madam,” he said, making a show of pointing one foot out at an angle and putting a hand high on his hip, “He said that? That it is I who is leading him down the garden path? It is I who causes him to stray, him who was born with a deck of cards in one hand, a tattered law book in the other and a gloomy view of the world over all? He who doesn’t spare one kind thought to any of mankind?” He spun around to Jake, taking care not to alter the pose.

“Good morning, Mr. Pot,” he said. Every word dripped with acid. “My name is Kettle. I’ve heard so much about you.”

In spite of trying to hold it, Jake started to laugh again and knew it was getting away from him. He started to cough and could taste a bitter warmth in the back of his throat. He pulled a handkerchief from his bathrobe pocket and held it to his lips. Katherine and Muldowney rushed over to the railing, but Jake turned away from them. Katherine gently turned him around and looked at the handkerchief.

“No,” she said. “No blood. But not far from it. You get back in the chair. And you,” she said to Muldowney, “go easy on the music hall humor. He’s doing all right. The last thing he needs is a hemorrhage.” They walked Jake over to the cure chair and eased him into it. Muldowney spread the blanket over him and patted his hand. “Sorry lad,” he said, gently. “I get a bit carried away. Are you all right? Anything?”

“A glass of juice,” Jake answered. “That would help. I’m okay, really. I got as carried away by your routine as you did.” Muldowney went into the house and came back out in a minute with a glass of orange juice and handed it to Jake. Jake sipped it slowly, trying to hide a look of surprise. Katherine shot a look at Muldowney. “You put something in it, didn’t you?”

“A spot of gin,” Muldowney answered. “A touch, at that. It can’t hurt. Gin is one of the few things of worth the British ever created. It won’t hurt him.”

Katherine started to say something, but Jake stopped her. “I’m okay, honest,” he said. He looked his thanks to Muldowney, then turned to Katherine. “Can we get back to what we were talking about before?” he asked. “John Michael might be interested.”

“What’s this?” Muldowney asked. “A plot? No, not a plot, a play.” He framed Jake with his hands, as if he was readying a bit of stage business. “A play, of course. The tough criminal lawyer, the king of night court, the scourge of law enforcement citizens everywhere, now a consumptive, lying pale and wan in his chair. Slightly graying hair, lean frame, prominent bones under eyes dark as Queen Vic’s soul, eyes showing a Mongol stopping by the village a long time ago.” He turned to Katherine. “Barrymore, Kat, we’ll get Barrymore, to play him. No, better Gielgud.”

Jake controlled his laughter this time, but waited a minute before he spoke. “Katherine was telling me her accident was no accident. At least that’s what she thinks.”

Muldowney turned serious. “Really, Katherine? That’s what you think?”

“I guess,” Jake said. “Is that it, Kat?”

“Yes.” Katherine Schwartz said. As the owner of one of the largest cure cottages in Saranac Lake, New York, a little village which had become over the past fifty years almost solely devoted to the care of those afflicted with the White Plague, and the head nurse, friend and confidante of those who desperately sought some sort of return to health under her care, she was more than used to death and suffering. But she had never thought about it in reference to herself.

 She turned to Muldowney. “Yes,” she said finally. “I’m sure of it. And I was going to ask you to help out.”

“Help out how?”

“Nothing special. Really. I was just telling Jake that an old friend of mine is in town. I thought you’d go downtown, look him up and ask him over.”

“What’s his name?”

“Flanders. Tony Flanders.”

She walked back to the door, stopping only to say over her shoulder, “Come into breakfast.”

John Michael Muldowney helped Jacob Rosen out of the chair, his questioning look reassured by Jake’s nod, and they walked into breakfast, in the cure cottage known as Red Gables, at 4 McCarthy Terrace, Saranac Lake, New York.

It was June 26, 1927.

Chapter Two

Saranac Lake, NY

I woke up with a vicious hangover.

I should lay off cheap whisky. As near as I could tell, the television was blaring something about Calvin Coolidge. I lit a cigarette to see if I still knew how to cough. My watch read 7 a.m., June 26th, 1999, which was more information than I really needed. I looked at the other side of the bed, thinking maybe there would be somebody beautiful there, bright red hair spread over the pillow, a little smile around the slightly too wide mouth, like she was dreaming about the night before.

Yeah, right.

I remembered the lady, but she hadn’t been in my bed for a lot of years. Getting old evens things out; the hangovers get worse, but the memories get better, so that sometimes you can even tell them apart. What I needed was a hot shower. I finished the cigarette, lit another one, sat up and got out of bed. I walked across the room gingerly, to turn off the TV, but I couldn’t find it. The noise was coming from a tall, ornately carved cabinet in the corner. I went over to it. “Spartan” was engraved on one of the carved doors. I opened the cabinet. It was a radio that was blaring. I looked around, not knowing whether to be amused or angry at paying top price for a room with—for chrissakes—a radio.

Somehow the hotel room looked different. The Hotel Saranac was a pretty modern hotel for a small town. I tried to put together what I remembered about it from last night. I remembered a bartender who could make a drink that didn’t have a silly name, but that was ice cold and dry as a desert. And a good dining room. I had hoped to get something like meat loaf, or anything that couldn’t be ruined no matter how hard the chef tried, and was pleasantly surprised at the beef tournedos, which I guess is an expensive name for a steak. With a piece of blueberry pie that didn’t taste like it came off the line at a plastics factory and some strong coffee, the evening seemed off to a good start. Which it always does just before the car stops at the top for a minute before the roller coaster starts down.

I looked around the room, still trying to figure out why it was different. Then it came to me. When I checked in the room was all blond Danish modern and glass, with all the charm of a dentist’s waiting room, except there were no ten year old magazines.

Now it looked like it had been decorated by one of the Bronte sisters. A small desk with a couple of pens and an inkwell in one corner, a dark mahogany dresser between the two heavily draped windows and the huge bed with a canopy. Some kind of big potted plant stood in the corner.

 Narrow green plants coming to a point. I remembered my mother always had one in a corner of the dining room. In a corner near the window there was an old-fashioned windup Victrola, with the big speaker I remembered from the one in my grandfather’s house. The only thing it didn’t have was a little white dog sitting in front of it. On a shelf under the speaker were a stack of records. I went over and picked up the records. Some were familiar, like “Strike Up the band,” and “Why Do I Love You?” And some weren’t, like “What Does it Matter?”

I heard a rustling noise and watched a newspaper sliding under the door to my room. I wondered if I could bend over to pick it up without my head falling off and rolling under the bed, but braved it and picked up the paper. It was a copy of The Adirondack Enterprise, which I guessed was the local paper, but figured it must be a gag edition when I noticed that the headline read “Coolidge Likely To See Plenty of Wildlife On Motor Trip To Camp.” And the date was June 26th all right, but it read June 26th, 1927. There was a note attached to the paper. It read “Mr. Flanders: Please accept this free copy of our newspaper for your convenience.” I figured there must be some kind of old-timer’s day in town.

Okay, things were coming together. I knew what time it was, what the date was and what my name was. I put my cigarettes and lighter on the small desk as I passed it and started to the bathroom. Then I stopped and came back. I stared at the desk.

An inkwell?

      About Shel Damsky

Shel Damsky is a graduate of Colgate University and Cornell Law School. During  his fifty years of practicing law, he authored and coauthored several legal articles and one book, and taught legal subjects at SUNY at Albany and Pace University.

During all this time, he wanted to write short stories and novels. Even if it took seventy or so years to do it, he says, “It’s a real thrill.”

Shel is married to author Dorice Nelson and they lived for a time in Saranac Lake, before moving to their present home in Cambridge, NY.  

You may contact Shel by e-mail