“Here you go,” he said, “a hooker of gin.”
“Thanks,” McBride said. He sounded grateful. He swallowed a big gulp of the gin and made a face. “Jesus.” He started to fish the pack of Marlboros out of his left pants pocket, but snagged his thumb and said, “Oh goddamn son of a bitch, oh Jesus H. Christ.”
Durant picked up his own package of Pall Malls from the coffee table, shook one out, and offered it to McBride. “Here,” he said.
McBride took the cigarette and let Durant light it for him. He drew the smoke far down into his lungs, coughed, and said, “These fuckers are strong, aren’t they?”
Durant looked at him carefully. “Are you okay now?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“You’re not going to faint or anything?”
“No, I’m okay.”
“I’ll be right back.”
McBride drank gin until Durant returned with his open shoe box of medical supplies. McBride’s scratches weren’t as bad as they had first seemed, not even the two gashes on his forehead. Durant cleaned the blood off and dosed the scratches with an antiseptic. Then he sat back on his heels in Oriental fashion and studied McBride for a moment.
“I don’t even think you need any Band-Aids.”
“Yeah, well, thanks. I appreciate it.”
“How about your thumb?”
“It hurts like hell. I think maybe I busted it again.”
“I doubt it. You want me to look at it?”
“You know about busted thumbs?”
Durant smiled. “A little. Enough, probably.”
McBride frowned as he debated about whether he should trust his thumb to an amateur physician. When he decided finally that he should, he thrust his left hand out at Durant and said, “Here.”
Durant smiled again and examined the job that the dope-clinic doctor had done on McBride’s thumb. Careless, he thought. Even slapdash. The thumb stuck out from McBride’s hand at a thirty-degree angle. Using a pair of surgical scissors, Durant quickly snipped away the old tape and, using the same splint, fashioned a new bandage that pressed the broken thumb against the side of McBride’s left forefinger. His movements were quick and deft and curiously gentle. McBride yelped only once. When finished, Durant sat back on his heels again, and McBride examined his freshly bandaged thumb as though it were a new and highly prized toy.
“Jesus, that’s neat. That’s a hell of a lot better than that dopers’ doctor did.”
“I brought it in against your hand. Now you won’t snag it as much.”
“Yeah, that’s right, isn’t it? I was always catching it on something before. Where’d you learn how to do that?”
Durant shrugged. “You pick it up here and there.”
“You never were a doctor, were you?”
Durant smiled and shook his head. “No. Hardly.”
“You do it just like a doctor does it. You can tell. What I mean is, you got the same moves.”
Durant studied McBride for a moment. Then he said, “How’d it happen, Eddie?”
“You mean tonight.”
“That’s right. Tonight.”
McBride got his cigarettes out of his pants pocket without discomfort and lit one with a table lighter. He also took another swallow of gin. Then he looked away from Durant and said, “I had to kill both of them. I ain’t making it up, either. It was either them or me and I couldn’t think of any good reason why it should be me.”
Durant nodded as though he understood perfectly. “But that was late wasn’t it? That was toward the end.”
“Yeah, that was toward the end.”
“Go back to the beginning. Take your time.”
“You gonna call the cops?”
“I don’t know. I won’t decide that until after you tell me.”
McBride had to think about Durant’s reply. He turned it over in his mind, and as he did he saw his alternatives slipping away. I haven’t got any choice, he realized. I haven’t got any choice at all. After that he sighed and said, “Well, this is exactly what happened.”
It took Eddie McBride fifteen minutes to tell his tale. He told it in a low monotone that gave the same emphasis to both the coyotes and Icky Norris’s exploding head. He left nothing out, and in leaving nothing out he created no villains and invented no hero. It was a flat although bloody account, curiously lacking in either anger or passion. He’s doing what he unconsciously set out to do, Durant decided. He’s making it dull.
When done, McBride leaned back in the leather chair, finished his gin, and said, “And that’s it. That’s what happened.”
Durant nodded slowly and said, “You left out one thing.”
“What?”
“Why. You left out why they wanted to kill you.”
“The map. They wanted the map.”
“You were going to give them the map anyway.”
“Well, maybe they thought I had a copy of it and I’d try to sell it to somebody else.”
“You do, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Have a copy.”
McBride smiled — a grim, hard, utterly mirthless smile. “I got a dozen copies. Or had. They’re all in my room. The cops’ve probably found ’em by now.”
Durant shook his head. “You don’t have to worry about the cops.”
“You mean you’re not going to call ’em.”
“I won’t and neither will Solly Gesini. He’d have to explain too many things. It wouldn’t wash.”
“And you’re not gonna call ’em either?” McBride had to be sure. “No.”
“Why? I mean, I’m grateful as hell, but we’re not exactly buddies.”
“No, we’re not, are we? But then, I’m not Malibu’s most upright citizen, either. It’s a failing, probably. One of my many. Anyway, let’s say that’s reason number one. Reason number two is that I think maybe we can use you.”
“To do what?”
Durant stared at him. “Do you care?”
For a long moment, McBride didn’t answer. “No,” he finally said. “I don’t care.”
“Three hundred a week, Eddie?”
“Yeah. Okay. Three hundred a week.”
Durant rose. “Let me call Artie. We’ll find you a place to stay — at least for tonight.”
Durant dialed Wu’s number. It was answered on the ninth ring by Artie Wu, who said, “What do you want?”
“Did I interrupt something?”
“Not really,” Wu said. “Nothing important, anyhow. I was just making love to my wife, but I’m finished, although I’m not sure that she is.”
Durant heard Aggie Wu say something that sounded sharp. Then Wu said something that Durant couldn’t quite make out, and after that Aggie Wu giggled.
“I could call you back,” Durant said.
“No, it’s all right. I was going to call you anyway.”
“You want to go first?”
“No, go ahead. I can listen to you and tickle Aggie at the same time. It gets her over her postcoital sadness.”
Again Aggie Wu said something that sounded sharp, and again Wu made some reply that Durant couldn’t hear. But after that he could hear both of them giggle. Durant sighed.
“Okay,” Wu said.
“It’s Eddie McBride.”
“Oh?”
“He’s in a jam that I’ll tell you about later, but I’ve put him on the payroll at three hundred a week. I think we can use him.”
“Maybe down in Pelican Bay?”
“That was the idea.”
“It makes sense,” Wu said. “How bad is the jam?”
“Bad enough. We’ve got to keep him out of sight, though. Tonight anyhow.”
“Let’s put him in with Otherguy,” Wu said. “They can be roomies.”
“I’ll let you call Otherguy and tell him.”
“I’ll like that,” Wu said. “Anything else?”