Hadley picked up the phone. “Who is it?” He was wide awake.
“It’s late, I know, but I’ve just had a crazy idea,” Shimura said.
“What have you got?”
“I’ve got Violet Archer and Lew Burnett. And the unidentified man Pohl wants to know more about.”
“Okay.”
“Now I’m convinced there’s some connection between Burnett and Pohl’s man, and I can’t say why I know it, but my instinct is telling me there’s something there and that I’ve got to follow it up. I always follow my instinct — you taught me that a man’s natural intuitive power doesn’t lie.”
“Don’t say another word. I’m sold already. What we’re always asking ourselves — if what we feel in our guts is true — is an up-in-theair question we’re waiting to catch. Some people buy it, others don’t. You’ve got to get something solid to go on. You’ll need more than a hunch to bring it into focus, you’ll need proof. You’ve got to put Burnett together with Angela.”
“Thanks, Rand. I just had to say it out loud.”
“Now look, Shimura—”
“I am looking,” he said. “I’m looking forward to helping Pohl get a shot at being with Angela. He’s waited a long time, Rand, and now it’s coming.”
“You sure that’s what he really wants?”
“That’s what he wants, right or wrong.”
“Okay, then that’s what you’ve got to do. Goodnight.”
Shimura hung up, sighed, switched off the kitchen light, went to the bedroom, got undressed and climbed into bed with a newspaper.
[ 23 ]
Pohl stared at the orchid plant standing as a centerpiece on a dull table strewn with books. Plants were a responsibility, they required the sort of attention he’d rather give an animal or human being, but it was a gift from Angela and it was her way of reaching across a void and making contact with him after what he’d seen going on in her apartment, so he accepted it gladly, and he thought that maybe it was training for something else, a child, because that was what he’d always wanted with her, but he didn’t know where she was or what was going on, so he couldn’t let himself think about it.
He was sorry that Shimura didn’t have anything new to tell him about the man he’d seen in Angela’s living room. He didn’t have the courage to talk to her himself, he couldn’t go that far with something that made him feel so vulnerable, and if he’d had the courage it wouldn’t do him any good because she didn’t answer the phone when he called.
He was in love with her. He dialed her again. He’d always love her whether she loved him or not. It was after eleven. He listened to the telephone ringing, waited for her to answer without believing she’d pick it up, there was no answer, and he felt his stomach twist into a knot. It went on ringing, he put the receiver down. He paced up and down the living room. He looked at the orchid plant. He wanted to throw it out the window or feed it gasoline or trim it with an axe. He told himself he should’ve counted the number of times the phone rang, maybe it was an odd number and if it’d turned out to be an odd number it would’ve been lucky for him. He felt like he had run out of luck.
To change his luck, he wanted to cure himself, get this worrying and sickening thing finished with before it went any further, because if it went further he’d have much difficulty curing it and maybe he wouldn’t be able to cure it at all and end up losing everything, including his mind. No matter which way it went, a cure would put a different turn on his luck. He decided to get beat up, to get hurt for how he was letting Angela ruin his life, making him think about her all the time, and maybe that would shake him up enough to let go of what he didn’t have a grasp on anyway. He wasn’t brave enough to do it by himself. He’d have to go outside and find someone to pick a fight with. That would be the right cure, just what the doctor ordered, and he didn’t need an office visit or a prescription, just step outside, sucker, and pick a fight.
It was a good idea because it was a feeling idea and not a thinking idea. He didn’t take a jacket, he went out just the way he was dressed. He started walking down Fourteenth Street.
He wasn’t going to look for a fight in a bar. A fight with a drunk didn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t be seriously hurt, and getting himself knocked unconscious wasn’t the point. Just a bit of roughing up to loosen the fixed ideas in his head. And anyway a choice like that didn’t attract him as much as the thought of something spontaneous right here on the street. He turned onto Jackson at midnight.
Pohl was thinking clearly about this and nothing else, which was proof that the cure had already started working. It was Friday, and he didn’t have to work until Monday. He could take a beating tonight and have the weekend to recover from it. He stared straight ahead and kept walking. His mouth watered because he could almost taste the cure, and he wanted it.
He leaned into the first man that brushed past him close enough to make it look like it was not on purpose, just to try it out. He wasn’t afraid of what was going to happen to him, but he was afraid of what was happening to him because of Angela.
Pohl tried it again with a man who was twice his size. It was almost a head-on collision. He looked up at him, and the man’s face had a broad mouth that told him to apologize and the thick lips didn’t move and the weight of the demand was in his eyes. Pohl didn’t intend to offer one, but he opened his mouth just the same and nothing came out of it. The big man smiled, with a good natured look in his eyes. Pohl wasn’t expecting that.
Now there was definitely something wrong with the expression on Pohl’s face. He looked more like a crazy dog than a man. The big man, who was almost fat, took a step backward. His mouth was stiff and tight but the corners went up just a little. It wasn’t really a smile now, but a calculating look filled with uncertainty. He was trying to figure the odds. It didn’t last long, but a smile from Pohl that wasn’t really a smile went floating across the sidewalk to the man, and made him shrink into himself.
Pohl took a few steps backward, away from the target, and lowered his head like a goat. He ran straight at the man’s belly and butted him, then bounced backward off the protruding stomach, straining his own neck. The stomach was not fat, it was packed solid. The big man looked uncomprehendingly at him. Pohl was busy rubbing the back of his neck, he wasn’t paying attention to anything while he was doing it. The fist of the man crashed into the side of his head and sent him staggering sideways. It hit him again, he was he seeing colored sparks from an uppercut to his outstretched chin.
Pohl fell back against the legs of a bystander, his own legs stretched out in front of him. The bystander kept him from going down until he moved, and Pohl found himself prone on the sidewalk. The big man pulled him off the ground and put him on his feet. Pohl got his balance and the man let go of him and stepped back.
“Fat clown,” Pohl said, a thin ribbon of red going down his chin.
“Here?” the man asked.
“Right here,” Pohl said, pointing his finger at the left side of his face.
The big man hit him with a short right to the jaw and caught him before he went down.
When he came to he was walking, or being dragged along the sidewalk by the big man. They came to an all-night café. He was put in a booth, and he sat upright with his head tilted back against the imitation red leather seat. A waiter came with a towel packed with ice and pressed it against his jaw. Pain shot upward through his head and played behind his eyes. Through the pain and involuntary tears he saw the big man standing behind the waiter with a fat hand on the booth. The big man looked worried.