Lloyd settled into the brown leather chair, hands on either arm of it, and his smile once again was that of a naughty child. Ness wrapped a cloth and rubber bandage, similar to a doctor's blood-pressure apparatus, snugly around Lloyd's bare arm above the elbow. Then he positioned a rubber cylinder, capped with shiny metal at either end, across Lloyd's chest, fastening it in place. To Lloyd's left hand, with small tonglike clamps, he attached saline-dampened sponge-pads on the palm and below the knuckles.
Then Ness took his position behind the desk. He sat with one hand poised near the dials and knobs, the other with pencil near the slowly moving chart paper.
"Now, Lloyd, I'm going to ask you questions that can be answered yes or no. In fact, I'd like you to limit yourself to those responses."
"All right."
"You mean, 'yes.'"
Lloyd grinned. "Yes."
"All of my questions will be asked only in relation to the events under investigation. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Now I have to establish a normal level of response, so we're going to perform an experiment-with your interests in science and medicine, I think you'll find this interesting. Is that all right?"
"Yes."
"It's going to allow me to show you the capability of this machine. All right?"
"Yes."
"We're going to do a little card trick. Actually, Lloyd, you're going to do it."
Ness withdrew a deck of playing cards from his suit coat pocket. He handed the cards to Lloyd, who seemed somewhat surprised, but accepted them.
Dr. Watterson seated himself on the couch and watched as if hypnotized.
"Now, Lloyd," Ness said, "I want you to select a card. Don't show it to me."
Lloyd, grinning goofily, did so.
"I'm going to ask you some questions about your card. And no matter what the true answer is, I want you to answer 'no.' Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"You're to answer 'no,' in each instance. Understood?"
"Yes."
"Is it a red card?"
"No."
"Is it a black card?"
"No."
"Is it the number ten?"
"No."
"Is the card below the number ten?"
"No."
"Is the card above the number ten?"
"No."
"Is it a face card?"
"No."
"Is it a spade?"
"No."
"Is it a club?"
"No."
"Is it a jack?"
"No."
"Is it a queen?"
"No."
"Is it a king?"
"No."
"Is it an ace?"
"No."
"All right, Lloyd. The experiments over. Incidentally, that card you're holding is the jack of spades."
Lloyd's mouth dropped open and his eyes were wide and round. He swallowed dryly. His hand, holding the card, was trembling. He looked helplessly at his father, showing his father the card, which was indeed the jack of spades.
Then Lloyd stood up, tearing away the wires and pads and cloths and tubes attached to him, rising like the waking Gulliver caught in the net of the little people.
Ness stood and said, "Lloyd…"
Lloyd made an animal sound, tearing himself free; he lurched away from the brown leather chair and dove for the tray where he'd eaten the rare steak and grabbed the shiny steak knife. He stood there, between his father, who had risen from the couch, and Ness, who had come around the desk-stood there with the juice-stained knife tight in his fist and the expression of a cornered beast distorting his features.
Then he hurtled toward Ness, steak knife raised like a dagger.
Ness stepped back but Lloyd was fast and on top of him. The hand with the steak knife slashed and tore Ness's coat sleeve and shirt, without tearing flesh, and Ness got his hand around Lloyd's wrist and with a jujitsu twist sent the knife tumbling from Lloyd's fingers.
But Lloyd's weight and strength pressed into Ness, pushed him backward, into the desk, across the polygraph, the arms of the stylus digging into Ness's back as Lloyd climbed on him, hands clawing viciously at Ness, at his face, Ness trying to bat the hands away, trying to get his own balance so he could use Lloyd's weight against him.
Then they were toppling behind the desk, onto the floor, and Lloyd sent a massive fist crashing toward Ness's face, but Ness slipped to one side and Lloyd's fist smashed into carpet; with an animal cry Lloyd lifted Ness by the lapels and hurled him against the window and glass crashed and the air of the outside was on him and even without looking Ness knew the street was fourteen stories below him.
Then Lloyd suddenly wasn't on him anymore, and Ness almost toppled out the window from lack of being held, and braced his hands on the sides of the window, cutting his right palm on the broken glass.
He dropped back into the room and saw that Dr. Watterson had pulled Lloyd away, was pulling him from behind, by both arms. Lloyd, his face red and distorted, was squirming under his father's grasp, but the father was strong and Ness took advantage of it and swung a hard right hand that seemed to take half of Lloyds face off.
Lloyd crumpled, the fight gone out of him, and began to weep; he tried to talk, but couldn't.
His father, holding on to him, but more gently now, more holding him up than holding him, said, "I'm afraid you've broken his jaw."
Angry, Ness ran to the adjoining door and flung it open.
The connecting room was empty. No Curry. No Chamberlin. What the hell…?
He went back and picked up the steak knife Lloyd had dropped, put it back on one of the trays. He found a clean napkin and wrapped his bleeding palm with it. Lloyd was sitting on the floor now, weeping, and his father was crouched beside him, examining the son's jaw clinically.
"What do you think now, Dr. Watterson?" Ness said.
"We'll handle this," he said. Very softly. "We'll handle this."
Lloyd was trying to say something, but Ness couldn't understand what it was.
"Eliot! What in the hell happened in here?"
Ness turned and Chamberlin, followed by Curry, both of them stunned by the disheveled area by the window, entered quickly from the connecting room.
"Where the hell were you two?" Ness demanded.
Chamberlin shrugged. "We heard you say you were going out for lunch. We figured we better get down to the dining room before you did."
"We went down there," Curry said, "but you never showed."
"No kidding. Well, I hope you boys had a nice lunch. Mine was medium rare." Ness nodded to them to go back in the adjoining room, which they did, closing the door behind them.
Ness walked over to Dr. Watterson, but it was obviously not a time for further discussion. The father was cradling the son in his lap, stroking his head, trying to comfort him. Lloyd was still trying to speak, without any success; between the broken jaw, and crying like a baby, Lloyd just couldn't manage it.
Then suddenly Ness got it: he figured out what word it was that Lloyd was trying to form.
"Father."
And Dr. Watterson must've understood it at the same time, because he began to cry, but not like a baby.
Like a father.
CHAPTER 19
The following Monday, midafternoon, Sam Wild strolled into a dimly lit, hole-in-the-wall bar called Mickey's, on Short Vincent Avenue, not far from City Hall. He had been told by Wanda, the safety director's secretary that her boss might be there.
And indeed he was, in a back booth, sitting quietly cradling a Scotch in two hands, with a slightly droopy-eyed look that told Wild his friend was half in the bag. Sitting across from Ness was Sergeant Martin Merlo, drinking nothing, speaking rather animatedly (for Merlo, especially), gesturing as if to make the quiet, quietly drinking man opposite pay him some heed.
Wild stood by them and said, "If I'm interrupting something, fellas…"
Ness smiled faintly and said, "Not at all," and Wild slid in on the same side of the booth as the safety director. Merlo, whose solemn face seemed even more tortured than usual, clearly did not relish the reporter joining them, but was, after all, outranked.