"I understand," Dr. Gunner Nilsson said. "Nevertheless, I'd appreciate the opportunity to examine him privately if I may."
"Certainly, Doctor," the staff physician said. "If you need anything, just ring the buzzer over the bed. The nurse will help you."
"Thank you," Nilsson said. He took off the jacket of his blue suit and slowly rolled up his shirtsleeves, wasting time while the other doctor replaced the patient's chart, made a perfunctory check of the life-support systems, and then finally left the room.
Nilsson followed him to the door, locked the door behind him, then returned to Barenga's bed and pulled the folding screen to shield the patient from view through the glass-windowed door.
Barenga slept heavily, deeply sedated. Nilsson opened his doctor's bag, pushed aside the .38 caliber revolver in it, and shuffled through it until he found the ampule he was looking for. He snapped the neck of the tiny glass vial, drained its contents into a hypodermic syringe, pulled a tube from Barenga's arm and roughly jammed the hypodermic into the light brown skin near the inside of Barenga's left elbow.
Within sixty seconds, Barenga started to stir as the adrenal gland fought the sedatives for control of his body and began to win.
He opened his eyes wide, in a kind of frenzy, as the unblocked pain accompanied consciousness. His eyes wandered the room madly, finally focusing, without recognition or comprehension, on Nilsson.
Nilsson leaned close to the bed. His voice was a harsh guttural whisper.
"What happened to Lhasa Nilsson?" he asked.
"Who he?"
"The tall man with the blond hair. He was looking for the girl."
"Old man. Old gook killed him. Awful."
"What's a gook?"
"Gook. Yellow man. Yellow."
"What was the yellow man's name?"
"Don't know."
"Was there anyone else?"
"Man who got me. White smart-ass. He a friend of the gook's."
"You have his name?"
"Remo."
"First or last?"
"Dunno. He just say Remo."
"Hmmm. Remo. And an old Oriental. The Oriental killed Lhasa?"
"Yes."
"With a gun?"
"With his foot, man. Lhasa had the gun."
"Where did it happen?"
"Room 182 I.Waldorf."
"Was there a girl? A Vickie Stoner?"
"She was gone when we got there. The gook was protecting her."
Barenga's voice was coming slower and fainter now, his body weakening, while the fight raged internally between the pain-killing sedatives and the pain-intensifying adrenaline.
"Thank you," said Dr. Gunner Nilsson. He replaced the tube in Barenga's arm. From his bag, he fished two more ampules of adrenaline and refilled the syringe. That done, he jammed the needle hard into the leathery sole of Barenga's left foot and shot the lethal overdose into his body.
"This'll make you sleep. Pleasant dreams."
Barenga twitched as the adrenaline overpowered the sedative. His eyes rolled wildly; his mouth tried to work; then his head dropped limply to the side.
Nilsson pulled back the curtain, went to the door, unlocked it, and left.
Room 1821, Waldorf. Well, it was not much but it would be enough. At least for the last of the Nilssons.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The prop plane landed at Pittsburgh Airport in a slight rain and the stewardess decided the man in the fourth aisle seat on the left was just rude. But that was the way it often was with foreigners.
He just sat there. He had ignored her when she asked if he wanted anything. He had ignored her when she brought around the tray of drinks. He had ignored her when she asked if she could bring him a magazine. He just sat there, clutching his black leather doctor's bag to his chest, looking intently through the window.
And when the plane landed, why he had just ignored the sign demanding that seat belts remain fastened, and he was moving toward the exit door before the plane rolled to a stop. She started to tell him to get back to his seat, but he looked at her in such a strange way she decided not to say anything. And then she was too busy keeping the other passengers in their seats to worry about it.
Gunner Nilsson was the first one off. He marched down the ramp of the plane like the god Thor himself, sure of where he was going, sure of what he was doing, sure in a way he had not been sure of his medical work for years.
For thirty-five years, he had in his mind been Doctor Nilsson. But now, he felt only like Gunner Nilsson, the last surviving member of the Nilsson family, and it brought him a new sense of responsibility. Titles come and titles go; stations in life change for better or worse; but tradition is tradition. It is rooted in the blood and while it might be hidden or even suppressed, a day comes and it emerges, stronger for having been rested. He had been a fool to think of building hospitals. As an act of penitence for what? For the fact that his family for six hundred years had been the best at what they did? That required no penitence from anyone. He was glad now that he knew it. It removed the murder of Lhasa's killers from the realm of revenge and made it professional, an act of ritual ceremony.
The rain was falling harder when he hailed a cab in front of the airport and told the driver to take him to the Mosque Theater in the aging heart of the aged city.
He pressed his face against the light-streaked window as the cab plowed along streets whose drainage systems obviously had been designed to handle the runoffs from a heavy spring dew. Pittsburgh was ugly, but then, he reflected, so were all American cities. It was not true, as radicals charged, that America had invented the slum, but it had raised it to the level of an art form.
The rain made it difficult to see well, but not even the rapping of the car's pistons, the tapping of the valves, and the rumbling of the muffler could block out the noise when the taxi pulled up near the Mosque Theater.
The sidewalk and street were almost filled with teenage girls. Grim-faced policemen in dark blue uniforms, yellow rain slickers, and white riot helmets stood in front of the theater, doing ushers' work at taxpayers' expense, trying to keep the frenzied teenagers in the ticket purchase lines. The wet street glistened with the flashing overhead lights from the marquee: "TONIGHT. ONE NIGHT ONLY. MAGGOT AND THE DEAD MEAT LICE."
"Hey, it's somebody," one girl shouted as Nilsson's cab stopped in the street, just outside the main horde of teenagers.
Heads turned toward his cab.
"No, it's nobody," said another girl.
"Sure it is. He's got a cab, ain't he?"
"Anybody can have a cab."
Nilsson stepped out of the cab after paying the driver and tipping him twenty cents, which he felt was appropriate. He was met by the two girls. He pulled his collar up around his neck.
"You're right," the first girl said. "It's nobody." The girls turned away in disgust, the rain water streaming down their shiny, unpainted faces.
Before moving, Nilsson looked around quickly. The police had been too busy to notice him. Good. He turned his back on the theater and walked briskly away. He needed to think. He tucked the doctor's bag under his arm, to protect its precious contents with arm and shoulder, and began to walk along the pavement, his ripplesoled shoes squishing on those rare, level sections of the cracked, torn sidewalk. He must be careful not to step in puddles. Water on the bottom of his shoes could be wiped off; water inside shoes would squish and make it impossible for him to move silently if he had to.
He walked around the entire block, placing his feet carefully. Then, his mind made up, he crossed the street in front of the theater, walked around the groups of girls and toward the alley leading to the theater's side entrance.