“No. But my daughter is.”
She blinked a couple of times. “Does anything you say make sense?”
“I’ve been asked that before.”
“I’m going to take you to see him anyway.”
“Thank you.”
“But you’ve got to promise not to stab him. We’ve sewn him up enough for one day. We found a fourth cut — in his shoulder from the back. Did I tell you that before?”
“Not where it was.”
She turned and we walked. “He’s in a recovery room.”
“Not intensive care, then?”
“He should be fine. Only one of the abdominal wounds was deep. There were perforations in his liver and pancreas, but not big ones. The shoulder will give him trouble for a long time, but your Wolfgang is a very lucky boy.”
“I wonder if he sees it that way yet.” After a couple of turns, I said, “Were the four wounds all with different knives? Could they tell?”
“I don’t know.”
“They didn’t find he has two hearts, by any chance, did they?”
She stopped abruptly and looked at me. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t mind me.”
“That he loves you but he loves somebody else too?”
“I know nothing whatever about his love life, if any.”
“I don’t know if he’s going to make much sense yet,” she said, “so you should be a perfect pair.”
“This whole situation doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
“No?”
“Like, why did he come to me?”
Outside some drawn curtains, Matty said, “Remember, people take different lengths of time to come around after a general anesthetic.” She opened a gap in the curtains and I went in.
8.
Wolfgang was not looking his best. The side of his head was bandaged — though I hadn’t heard about a head injury — and there were enough drips and tubes and machines to make Baron Münchhausen envious.
But he responded to the noise of my arrival and he moved to sit up while I pulled a chair close. “Mr. Albert Samson,” he said. “Greetings.”
“Mr. Wolfgang... would that be Mozart?”
“It would.” Not too spaced-out to smile.
“How’s it going?”
“I’ve felt better. But we heal quickly.”
“You told me that before. Do you remember?”
He thought. He didn’t remember.
“Have you healed enough to answer some questions?”
“I’ll try.”
“Your house is a wreck.”
“That’s not a question.”
“Why are seven women and three children living with you?”
“Not living.”
“They have — had — beds. They come home to your place after they finish work. What do you call it?”
“Visiting.”
“Silly me.”
“It wasn’t my plan.”
“Women, some with children, just started appearing at your door?”
“It began with one. I was walking around and I found this woman leaning against a fence. She’d been beaten up.”
“You found her?”
“About two miles from my house — in fact a little closer to yours than mine.”
“So you dialed nine-one-one?”
“She didn’t want me to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Do you know anything about the psychology of battered women?”
“Do you?”
“I’ve been reading up on it. Anyhow, I brought her home. I got her a bed. The idea was that she could stay for a few days, until she felt better.”
“When was this?”
“Second week in October.”
“And is she still visiting you?”
“Well, yes.”
“And she happened to have some buddies who also got beaten up?”
“I guess. Or some kind of word started spreading around. Women, and children...”
“But there are shelters in the city, Wolfgang. Organized places with much better facilities than just having beds scattered around an open space, all sharing one bathroom.”
“And one kitchen... I know. Dayspring, the Julian Center... I have a list and I tell them. And some have gone to them. But a lot don’t want to.”
“They all stayed on?”
“A lot have gone back to where they came from.” He shook his head sadly.
I said, “Back in September you talked about doing something for ‘invisible’ people.”
“This wasn’t what I meant. I want to do something to help people with problems. But now all I do is squeeze more beds in and try to keep them all from squabbling. I hate raised voices.”
He paused. I just waited. Any group of people crowded in together isn’t going to last as happy families. The Big Brother television shows made fortunes on that principle.
Wolfgang said, “I don’t want my house to be a refuge for anyone but me. And I’m sure the neighbors don’t like it. But if people are in trouble, how can I say no to them?”
“Practice makes perfect,” I said.
“But the best part...” He smiled with some life in his eyes.
“What?”
“Sometimes they hold my father’s handprint and they say it makes them feel better.”
I knew all about the “handprint,” supposedly left by his extraterrestrial father. In the real world, it was a piece of limestone with some grooves in it that looked like the fossilized veins of a leaf.
“They feel ‘better’?”
“It calms them. They say it makes them more positive about life and the future. Sometimes we sit in a circle and pass it around.”
“The psychological equivalent of homeopathy?”
“They tell me they feel something. I feel something. Maybe if you’d hold it you’d feel something too.”
“I guarantee I’d feel whatever a guy giving me a safe place to sleep and food to eat wanted me to feel.”
He tilted his head with a world-weary smile.
I said, “I didn’t see the stone in the wreckage.”
“It wasn’t out. I keep it in a safe place.”
“So the police in your house won’t be in danger of feeling better by stumbling across it.”
“Police?”
“You were cut up. Your house is a wreck. What do you expect?”
“I guess.”
“Wolfgang, what happened? You were stabbed four times, maybe with as many as four different knives. Did everyone want a piece? Like when the Brutus gang hit Julius Caesar?”
“They weren’t trying to kill me. They were trying to get me to tell them where I keep my money.”
“What happened?”
“Four men came to the door wearing masks. I wouldn’t let them in, but they broke the door down and grabbed me and said they wanted money.”
“So it was money rather than being connected to the women you were sheltering?”
“Yes and no.” He smiled.
“Will I get a straight answer if I whack that bandaged shoulder with a saline-drip bag?”
He didn’t like the sound of that.
“When I asked you before, you said it was terrorists.”
He shook his head.
“It’s what you told me,” I said.
“They had terrorists’ masks.”
“I only heard ‘terrorists.’ So we’re talking about their masks, not them?”
He nodded.
“Because I didn’t hear the apostrophe, the city of Indianapolis is on a rainbow alert.”
“They just wanted money. For some reason they thought I keep enough money around the place to be worth robbing me.”
“Do you keep a lot of money around?”
“You never know when you’re going to need cash. Especially with a lot of mouths to feed.”