Read Online No Cure for Death by Max Allan Collins - Free Book Online

politico Richard Norman, who has been successful in Iowa politics, though failing in his bid to reach the U.S. Senate. The
Register
has called young Norman “the most socially concerned, dedicated young man in the state legislature,” a sore point among Demos, who feel such areas their private domain. Assertions that Doc Sy’s son is trying to atone for his father’s misanthropy, or that the father is attempting to make amends to society through the deeds of his son, are pure speculation.
    But it is a fact that the primary failure of Doc Sy’s fabulous years as the quackery king was his own unsuccessfulattempt to snatch the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from an incumbent senator.
    And yet another fact may be key in explaining the elder Norman’s supposed attack of remorse: May Belle (Peterson) Norman, his wife and bearer of son Richard, died in 1945... of lung cancer.

ELEVEN
    Half an hour later I walked into the cluttered living room of my trailer, picking things up as I went and spending half an hour cleaning up the place—more as a nervous accompaniment to buzzing thoughts than as an act of cleanliness. When I was finished playing maid, I went to the icebox and got out a Pabst and popped the top and went back and flopped down on the couch. After I’d drained the beer, I aimed the empty can at the wastebasket over by the stove, across the room; just as I pitched the can, the phone rang, shattering my concentration, ruining my trajectory. The can clattered on the kitchenette’s tile floor, bounced back onto the carpeted living room floor, rolled a couple times and came to a standstill somewhere near center-room, creating an eyesore in my freshly tidied quarters.
    The phone was still ringing on the coffee table in front of me. I leaned over and picked up the receiver. “Yeah?”
    “Mal? John.”
    “Oh, hi. How was Suzie Blanchard?”
    “Outstanding.”
    “That’s Army for ‘good,’ as I recall.”
    “At least.”
    “So what’s up? No pun intended.”
    “That’s what I called to ask you, Mal. What have you turned up where Janet Taber’s concerned?”
    “I did some research at the library on that politician Janet worked for, and on his old man. Did you know that that guy Doc Sy, the old cancer quack, was Richard Norman’s father?”
    “Come to think of it,” John said, “that’s right. You know, you don’t hear much about the old man around town. Funny.”
    “Yeah. Funny. It’s one of those things Port City folks just don’t talk about. Unless the doors are closed tight. And I think I know why. I think the old ex-quack’s still powerful in Port City inner circles.”
    “How do you figure?”
    “Well, I can’t really say for sure, I’m mostly reading between the lines. But it’s beginning to look like Simon Norman is Port City’s answer to Howard Hughes. One thing I know for sure is he made a bundle, and made it off of people’s misery, at that. And he probably used that bundle to get behind a few budding concerns that developed into this town’s major industries, which’d include the feed plant, the office furniture company, the alcohol plant, the tire retreading factory—all of these and more, I bet.”
    “How does this tie in with Janet Taber?”
    “I don’t know that it does.”
    I heard chattering in the background, and then John’s voice came back: “Uh, look, I’m still over at Suzie’s and, uh, I guess she wants a word with me.”
    “And I can just guess what word it is. Look, see if you can find time today, between rounds, to stop over at Brennan’s and pump him a little.”
    “See what I can do. I’ll stop over and see you tonight.”
    I cradled the receiver on my shoulder, thumbed down the button on the phone with one hand and fumbled through the phone book with the other, trying to locate the college’s number.I found it and dialed. I got Jack and filled him in on my library session.
    “You aren’t thinking about trying to run down Washington’s sister