He heard a sound behind him and turned his head, startled.
Karp hit him square in the face with the contents of his tin Statue of Liberty wastebasket, two gallons of water at 190 degrees, into which he had poured an almost-full bottle of Liquid Plumber. It was a pretty good trick considering Karp was balancing on one leg when he did it. Elvis shrieked and staggered backward, tripped over the tub, and fell in. He shrieked again when the boiling shower struck him and began firing his pistol reflexively. One bullet hit the ceiling. The next hit the mirror over the sink, shattering it and covering the floor with broken glass.
Karp hopped over to the alcove behind the door where he had hidden, where he had parked his bed slat. He picked it up and started for the door. A bullet cracked over his head. The sound of the gunfire and Elvis’s continuous screams were deafening in the little room. Karp was on automatic now. The drugs and the noise and the fear pumping through him made rational thought impossible. With nightmare slowness, he lurched through the fog to the doorway.
His bare foot landed on a sliver of glass and he cursed and staggered. Then his slat came down on a larger piece of glass and skidded away, and he fell.
Karp was nauseous with pain, and confused. He thought he heard Elvis screaming and scrabbling in the tub behind him. But when he looked up, there was a black man coming through the fog with a pointed pistol. How did he get out and in front of him again? Karp writhed in the broken glass and tried to reverse direction, knowing it was too late. The pistol exploded. Karp thought. Now I’m dead.
Karp actually enjoyed death. For one thing, he didn’t hurt anymore. And it was quiet. He thought, This is the silence of the tomb. That made him laugh. Other people were there, too. They turned and looked at him when he laughed. He felt embarrassed. There were dead people, like his mom and grandma, but also live people. There was Guma. There was a blond girl he had a crush on in Junior High. They were all standing around in Karp’s living room, which had been refurnished with white rugs and white modern furniture, white and chrome and glass. Marlene wasn’t there, though. He wanted to call out to her, but he didn’t want to be embarrassed again.
All the people were gathered around the doorway to the bedroom. They made a place for him in front of it. There was some kind of black hanging blocking the doorway. It was really a sort of garment, with sleeves, pants legs, and a hood. Karp knew he was supposed to get into it, so he did. He leaned back and the garment yielded like elastic. He was almost horizontal, muffled in springy blackness. Somebody said, “Open your eyes.” It seemed like a good idea.
“Holy shit! What a … what a … winger. Really ocean. A weird kind of blotter, hmm?” said Karp, through cottony lips.
“A little disoriented, are we? Pentothal will do that. How do you feel, Mister Karp?” said a voice in a lilting West Indian accent.
Karp was lying in a hospital bed. His left knee was in a heavy cast and his right wrist was in the hands of a brown young lady in a nurse’s uniform. She was taking his pulse.
“Still a little vague. Where am I and what time is it?”
“You are in a postoperative ward of Bellevue Hospital. In New York City. And it just gone eleven o’clock.”
“At night? It can’t be.”
She laughed. “In the morningtime, Mister Karp. You were in surgery for two hours and then you slept. And that man who brought you here has been waiting outside since seven.”
“The man? Could I see him?”
“Yes, for a little bit. But don’t tire you, now.”
She cranked up his bed so that he was sitting up and pulled back the curtains. Karp felt twinges of pain from his face. Bandages. When he raised his hands to feel them he noticed that his hands were also bandaged.
The nurse ushered Sonny Dunbar into the room and left. Dunbar looked beat. His eyes were bloodshot and his pale yellow suit was wrinkled and dusty. He sat down on a straight chair near Karp’s bed and rubbed his face.
“How you feeling, Butch?” he asked.
“Better than you look, anyway. They’re working you too hard, or what?”
“No, the usual.” After a pause, he continued. “I shot Elvis.”
“You shot Elvis? Jesus Christ, Sonny, if you killed my witness …”
“No, no, relax! He’s not dead. He’s down in the lock-up ward. He had surgery about the same time you did. There was nothing else I could do. You were on the floor, you looked like you were half dead, he was blazing away, screaming out of his mind, blind, the goddamn place, you couldn’t see shit anyway, so I shot him. In the arm, as it turned out, like in the movies. It’s only the third guy I ever shot. I’m still rocky behind it.”
“Oh, that was you in my bathroom. I thought I was going crazy, and Elvis was in front of me. Or somehow Louis had gotten away and was going to finish the job. Christ, you probably saved my life. What a fucking day, huh?”
“Yeah, Karp, you really know how to throw a party. By the way, Louis is here.”
“What, in Bellevue?”
“Yeah. I heard from Monahan in the Bellevue Psych Ward. Your boy is sort of a well-known figure among the guard staff. He bites, he screams, he pisses.”
“Shit, I can’t believe it, the bastard! I’m not even cold in my grave and he’s trying to slide one by me. Hand me that phone, Sonny.”
Karp had a couple of conversations, promised favors, and called in chips. In a few minutes he had made sure that Louis would not be able to get his hearing scheduled until Karp was ready for him. Slowing down the system was easy.
“OK, Sonny, why don’t you find me a wheelchair and we’ll roll down to Elvis’s room. I want to talk to him as soon as he comes around.” Dunbar went out and was gone for half hour. When he returned, it was without a wheelchair and in the company of the West Indian nurse and a stocky man with large teeth and a white brush haircut, dressed in surgical greens.
“Mister Karp, I’m Doctor Hudson. I just operated on your knee, and now Nurse Simms here tells me you want to screw up my work.”
“Butch, I tried, but she wouldn’t let me have it,” said Dunbar.
“It’s just for a few minutes, Doc. Just down the hall.”
The doctor reached down and picked up a bedpan. “You see this? The reason we give you this so you can perform your bodily functions in the comfort of your bed is because we don’t want you to leave the bed. For any reason.”
“But …”
“No buts. Look, young man, if you ever want to dance Swan Lake again, you’ll stay put, flat on your back for at least a week. Your knee is stuck together with spit. It’s a marvel you were able to run fast enough to fall down. Worst damn job I ever saw. Where did you have it done, Taiwan?”
“California.”
Hudson snorted. “Same damn difference! All right, I’ll be back tomorrow, and I want to see cobwebs on that cast. Simms, if he moves, sit on his face!” Hudson flashed a large grimace and strode out of the room. Simms took charge again. Turning to Dunbar, she said, “All right, you, visitin’ hours is ov-ah.”
“Simms, are you really going to sit on my face?” said Karp, after Dunbar had been hustled out of the room.
“None of that naughty talk, you. Here, take this pill! I don’t want you to be achin’ and yellin’ up the night nurse.”
“Kaplan! What’s going on?” said Karp on the phone. “You’re supposed to keep me in touch.” Karp had been cosseted and bullied alternately for a week by Simms and the other nurses, and by the ferocious Hudson. He had to admit that his knee felt better; the bandages were off his hands, feet and face. He was going crazy with boredom, and with worrying about Marlene suffering and about Louis somehow getting away.
“Sorry, Butch, I’ve been running off my feet. All this stuff with Louis and Elvis is extracurricular, you know. I still got to hold the fort out there.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. So what’s the story? You talk to Elvis?”
“Not exactly. His lawyer was there as soon as the docs would let him talk. But he didn’t talk. I mean stone wall.”