On the Other Hand, Death - Stevenson Richard. Страница 45

Through the night, I dreamed over and over again about a conversation I'd had two nights earlier in the bar at the Albany Hilton.

24

• I opened the bedside drawer and took

out my watch, which a nurse or aide had thoughtfully left for me along with my wallet and keys. It was ten-fifteen. It had to be morning, because the sun was blazing in at me yet again.

Tossing aside the thin sheet that covered me, I swung

my legs over the side of the bed and let my feet touch the metal stool below as I pushed myself upright.

My head throbbed. I touched the bandage wrapped around my skull and the bulge of packing on the left side. I stood up, felt light-headed, blinked, and made the faintness go away. Holding on to the tubular sides of the other unoccupied bed in the room, I made my way to a narrow door. It was not the clothes closet, but I made use of the appliance therein nonetheless and then splashed tepid water on my face.

The clothes closet was behind the door next to the lavatory, but my clothes were not in it and I knew I was going nowhere in my hospital nightie with its little bow holding it together.

I removed the sheets from both beds and fashioned one into an East Indian dhoti, a kind of bulky loincloth, in the manner Timmy had once shown me. Whoever said nothing much tangible had ever come out of the Peace Corps was mistaken. Another sheet I wrapped around my waist skirt-fashion, and a third around my torso with a long flap hanging over my shoulder. I ripped the sewn-up end off a pillow case and made a crude skull cap to cover my bandages.

Snatching a long-stemmed plastic rose from the vase on the windowsill, I shuffled out into the corridor and down to the nurses' station.

"Hare Krishna," I said happily, and offered the rose.

"You people are not supposed to be up here! You're supposed to stay downstairs in the lobby, and you know it!"

I was ushered swiftly to the elevator.

Timmy, ever-dutiful peon to the tattered gentry in the legislature, was not in the apartment and evidently had gone to work. It was Monday morning.

I put on American clothes, had a quart of grapefruit

juice and two bowls of Wheat Chex, and phoned Dot Fisher.

"Get your money back?"

"Oh, Don, yes, yes, I did! I'm so relieved, I can't begin to tell you. I have an appointment with Mr. Trefusis at three o'clock, and I'm going over there to Millpond and just dump the whole gosh-darn bag of money right on his desk. And, let me tell you, I've never looked forward to anything this much in all my days!"

"Mind if I tag along?"

"But you're in the hospital, aren't you? Fenton said you injured your ear fighting with those dreadful men."

"It wasn't serious," I said. "I let a doctor use my head as a darning egg for an hour last night, but now I'm practically good as new. I'll pick you up at two-thirty."

"Why, yes, as a matter of fact, that would be lovely. But I've got to run now, Don. Fenton's out back holding a press conference."

"Sorry I'm missing it, but I'll catch it on the news tonight. I'm sure he's saying something quotable."

"Oh, he is, he is."

I reached Bowman at his office.

"Whozzis?" he snarled. The man hadn't had his weekend golf fix, or sleep.

"Strachey here. Those two lovelies locked up?"

"One's in jail, the other one's over there where you are, under guard. You just couldn't wait last night, could you?"

"You were up in the sky. The criminals were down on the ground where I was. But I knew you were with me in spirit, Ned. As is so often the case."

"That son of a bitch should've chewed your mouth off. What a service to the community that would've been. You okay?"

"I'll dance again. Look, what did the Andruses tell you. They spill it all?"

"Nothing but bullshit. Duane said they'd just come out to the kennel and found McWhirter there and were about to phone the department when you guys walked in and shot their dog. And Glen won't say a goddamn thing. They've got lawyers now, and before the day's done they'll all be in bed together making up the same stories. But we've got our case. It's tight. Duane's handwriting on the ransom notes, his voice on the tapes, and McWhirter's testimony will do it."

"Did they mention who put them up to it?"

"Whaddaya mean? Why do you ask that?"

I described the telephone conversation I'd overheard at the kennel window. I did not include my own speculation about who the third party was, nor the evidence that had led me to arrive at this thought.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me this before?"

"I was unconscious. As you will recall, just as you dropped out of the sky last night, I swooned. At the sight of your descent from heaven, I guess."

"The way I heard it, you fainted when you found your ear in your pants cuff."

"Yeah, that might have been the way it happened. I forget. Did you recover all the money?"

"No. Just a hundred and a half. Tell me again about this phone conversation you heard. I want to write it down."

I recited it again.

"The third guy's got the rest of the money," I said. "That's why the Andruses are keeping mum. You've got to convince them that with kidnapping and manslaughter, even involuntary, they're going to be off the streets for a long, long time. And there's no point in their waiting to get out to collect the rest of the money. Tell them with the inflation rate what it is, by the time they're free the fifty grand will be worth about a dollar thirty-five."

"Thanks for telling me my business."

"No trouble. What else did you find out at the kennel?"

"A lot of crap, and I mean crap. Dope too. In the room up front where Duane lived we found an ounce of coke."

"Any papers, letters, addresses, phone numbers?"

"An address book with some names and numbers the department is already familiar with. The narcotic squad has been building a case against certain persons, and Andrus's list will come in handy. The boys over there are grateful to me."

"Right, Ned. You did such a bang-up job on this case. Incidentally, I ran across information that Duane Andrus was peddling his ass, and had some kind of sugar daddy who must have kept him in nose candy. Did you find any evidence to support that?"

"Andrus's room did look like some kind of fag brothel. Little bottles of that chemical you people stuff up your nose, dirty movies, and picture books full of male beaver. No offense, Strachey, but I have to tell you, it made me want to puke."

"For men, you don't say 'beaver,' Ned. If it's male you call it 'wombat.'"

"Oh."

"What else was out there?"

"Nothing incriminating or otherwise of interest. There were five bottles of Vaseline Intensive Care lotion. What the hell's that for?"

"Lotta dry skin, Ned. It's for people who work in air-conditioned places, like Albany Med."

"How long you gonna be laid up over there, anyway? Not more than six months, I hope."

"Don't know. I'm just taking it a day at a time. I'll watch the soaps, feel up the orderlies, follow doctors' orders."

"One true fact out of three. That's not bad for you, Strachey."

I gave him some improbable advice, then hung up. I was looking up an address in the phone book when the phone beside me rang.

"Yah-loo."

"Is this the . . . Donald Strachey residence?" She pronounced it "Strakey."

"Mista Strakey inna hospital. This-a his mamma."