“Okay.”
“And watch your ass.”
“Okay.”
Walter peeked out into the hall. Ainsworth was talking to a young guy, a guy about Walter’s age, maybe a year or so younger. He was short with long, wild curly hair and a well-muscled frame. He was wearing jeans and a tee-shirt with the words “Wonder Wart-Hog” above a cartoon, caped hog. Ainsworth was saying, “You’re a little early, Jon,” standing by the entrance to a room that Walter assumed was the doctor’s private office. Walter shut the door.
“I think it’s just some thing about drugs he’s doing for Sturms,” Walter told his father.
“Help me up,” Charlie said.
“Dad...”
“Help me up, goddammit.”
Walter guided his father off the high table, put an arm around his waist and moved him over to the door. Charlie shook free of his son and stood on one leg.
“Give me the gun,” he ordered.
Walter gave it to him.
Charlie cracked the door and looked out.
“It’s the goddamn kid,” Charlie said to himself.
“Who?”
“The kid, it’s the goddamn kid who lives with that old guy at the antique shop. His nephew or something.” Charlie’s eyes narrowed and his lips were drawn back tight. “I smell a cross.”
Charlie pushed through the door, slammed against the wall, lost his balance momentarily, got it back quick. He hobbled forward, nearing the doctor and Jon, the gun as steady in his hand as his legs under him weren’t.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Charlie demanded.
The doctor started pushing the air with his palms. “Put that gun away! Put that gun away!”
Jon had a puzzled look on his face that rapidly dissolved into a knowing one. He pointed his finger at Charlie, as if he was aiming back another gun. “You,” he said. “I know you.” A red sheet of rage flashed across his face and Jon leaped at Charlie, like an animal jumping out of a tree.
And Charlie slapped Jon across the forehead with the heavy gun. The kid folded up and dropped hard to the floor. Charlie didn’t even lose his balance.
“Why... why in heaven’s name did you do that?” the doctor sputtered.
Charlie looked at the doctor and so did Charlie’s gun. “Are you pulling a double cross, Ainsworth? Do you know who this kid is?”
“Why, that’s... that’s just Jon, Ed Planner’s nephew. He’s only here to...”
Charlie limped painfully up to the doctor and held the gun against the man’s throat, right along his Adam’s apple. “Why is he here?”
“His... his uncle passed away today and I was helping him with the funeral arrangements, death certificate, and so on. Jon and his uncle’re like you people... have to steer clear of the authorities.”
“And do you know how his uncle ‘happened’ to pass away?”
“He was... shot.”
“And who the fuck do you think shot him?”
“Oh my God.”
Charlie stepped back a pace, said, “Walter.”
“Yes?”
“Help the doc here carry the kid in that room.”
Walter and Ainsworth carried Jon into the examining room, Charlie following them in on wobbly legs.
“No, not on the table,” Charlie said. “Just drop him on the floor there.”
They did.
The jolt seemed to rouse Jon. He stirred, shook his head, looked up. He raised a middle finger to Charlie and said, “Nolan knows you’re alive. Kiss your ass goodbye, big shot.”
Charlie slapped Jon with the gun and put him to sleep again.
Walter said, “What are you going to do, Dad?”
“I don’t know. Let me think. Help me up on the table. I want to sit down.”
Walter helped his father.
He watched his father sitting there, the close-set eyes narrowing, the lips moving ever so slightly. Was his father deciding to go ahead with the next phase of some secret master plan? Or just throwing together some spur-of-the-moment piece of strategy? Walter didn’t know and couldn’t guess. But a full minute went by before the eyes softened, the lips settled into a tight grin and a false calm washed across the tan, lined face and Charlie said, “We’ll take the little bastard with us.”
Why? Walter wanted to ask it, but knew he shouldn’t. He was glad of his father’s decision, in a way. He had a feeling the alternative would’ve been to kill the kid named Jon.
“Come here, Ainsworth,” Charlie said.
The doctor shuffled over. The room was air-conditioned and near-cold, but the doctor was sweating profusely.
“Where’s the stuff you were going to get for me?”
The doctor looked down at his right hand, which was clenched in a nervous fist. He opened it and revealed two little white packets. “Antibiotic,” the doctor said, handing one of the little envelopes to Charlie, “and painkiller,” handing him the other one. “Instructions are written on the packets.”
Charlie told the doctor about his high blood pressure and asked if it made any difference about anything. The doctor said no, but that the high blood pressure probably added to Charlie’s passing out from the wound, perhaps had made him bleed somewhat more than the average person might.
“Okay, Doc,” Charlie said, “you’re doing fine. You getting more relaxed now? Not so nervous anymore?”
Ainsworth nodded.
“Good. You don’t need to be nervous. Nothing’s going to happen to you. You’re a friend of Sturms and Sturms is a friend of a friend of mine, so we’re all friends and nothing’s going to happen to you. But I want your help. Give that kid something that’ll keep him out for a while.”
“How long?” Ainsworth asked.
“Oh, four hours maybe. Can do?”
“Yes.”
Walter watched the doctor go to the counter and fill a big hypo with clear fluid. It seemed to Walter that the doctor was moving faster than before.
Walter sat down and swallowed and looked at what was going on in front of him: a doctor in a golf outfit was giving a horse-size hypo to a weird-looking, long-haired kid who was slumped unconscious on the floor; and a man in a bright Hawaiian print shirt and bermuda shorts, thigh bandaged, hand squeezed tight around a cannon of a gun, was sitting high on an examining table, seeming to tower over the rest of the room, ruling over the insanity and violence that hung in the air of this white, unpadded cell.
Walter closed his eyes and wished it would all go away.
5
Jon woke to darkness.
He was hot. He was sticky. He hurt.
For the first few moments he was aware of nothing else: just the sauna-like heat of the room, his shirt and jeans damp, clinging to his body; the staleness of the air, like some musty old museum; the overall pain, a sluggish doped aching that coursed through his arms and legs and seemed to culminate in the throbbing between his temples; and the extreme darkness of the room, the lack of any light at all, making him think for one awful half-awake moment that he had gone blind.
Or had been blinded.
Maybe he was in hell. Maybe this was the end of an EC horror comic and he was trapped in some ironic hell for robbing that bank last year. The thought made him laugh, but the laugh got caught in his throat and came out as something else, something that smacked more of despair than amusement.
“All right,” he said aloud, but not loudly. “Okay.” Just a whisper. He was telling himself that he was alive. Assess the situation, he told himself, his head foggy. Take your time. Slowly now.
He was on his back. He could feel something hard and metallic under him, but circular, like large rings, and springy. Springs? Bedsprings? He moved his body slightly, jiggled the surface beneath him. Yes. He was on a bed. On the exposed springs of an old-fashioned bed.