"My daughter cut her hand," he said.
"Um?" Danny said.
"She was opening a can, and she cut her hand. Is that dangerous? A cut from a tin can, I mean?"
"I don't know," Danny said.
"I heard it was. They're dressing the cut in there now. She was bleeding like a pig. I hope it isn't dangerous."
"She'll be all right," Danny said. "Don't worry."
"Well, I sure hope so. Did you come here to see somebody?"
"Yes," Danny said.
"A friend?"
"Well," Danny said. He half shrugged, and then began reading the list of ingredients on the candy box, wondering what lecithin was.
In a little while, the girl came out of the Emergency Room, her hand bandaged.
"Are you all right?" her father asked.
"Yes," the girl said. "They gave me a lollipop."
Together, they went out of the hospital.
Alone, Danny Gimp sat on the bench, waiting.
Teddy Carella sat in the room with her husband, watching him. The blinds were drawn, but she could see his face clearly in the dimness, the mouth open, the eyes closed. Beside the bed, the plasma ran from an upturned bottle, slid through a tube, and entered Carella's arm. He lay without stirring, the blankets pulled up over the jagged wounds in his chest. The wounds were dressed now, but they had leaked their blood, they had done their damage, and he lay pale and unmoving, as if death were already inside him.
No, she thought, he won't die.
Please God, please dear God, don't let this man die, please.
Her thoughts ran freely, and she didn't realize she was praying because her thoughts sounded only like thoughts to her, simple thoughts, the thoughts a girl thinks. But she was praying.
She was remembering how she'd met Carella, the day he'd come to the small office she'd worked for after they'd reported a burglary. She could remember exactly how he had come into the room, he and another man, a detective who was later transferred to another precinct, a detective whose face she could no longer remember. She had been concerned only with the face of Steve Carella that day. He had entered the office, and he was tall, and he walked erect, and he wore his clothes as if he were a high-priced men's fashion model rather than a cop. He had showed her his shield and introduced himself, and she had scribbled on a sheet of paper, explaining that she could neither hear nor speak, explaining that the receptionist was out, that she was hired as a typist, but that her employer would see him in a moment, as soon as she went to tell him the police were there. His face had registered mild surprise. When she rose from her desk and went to the boss' office, she could feel his eyes on her all the way.
She was not surprised when he asked her out.
She had seen interest in his eyes, and so the surprise was not in his asking, the surprise was that he could find her interesting at all. She supposed, of course, that there were men who would try anything once, just for kicks. Why not a girl who couldn't hear or talk? Might be interesting. She supposed, at first, that this was what had motivated Steve Carella, but after their first date, she knew this wasn't the case at all. He was not interested in her ears or her tongue. He was interested in the girl Teddy Franklin. He told her so, repeatedly. It took her a long while to believe it, even though she intuitively suspected its truth.
She had gone to bed with Carella because going to bed with him seemed the natural thing to do. He asked her to marry him often, but she never quite believed he really wanted her for his wife. And then one day, belief came, the way belief suddenly comes, and she realized he really and truly did want her for his wife. They were married on August 19th, and this was December 23rd, and now he lay in a hospital bed, and it seemed he might die, it seemed possible he might die, the doctors had told her that her husband might die.
She did not concern herself with the unfairness of the situation. The situation was shockingly unfair, her husband should not have been shot, her husband should not now be fighting for his life on a hospital bed. The unfairness shrieked within her, but she did not concern herself with it, because what was done was done.
But he was good, and he was gentle, and he was her man, the only man in the world for her. There were those who held that any two people can make a go of it. If not one, then another. Throw them in bed together and things will work out all right. There's always another streetcar. Teddy did not believe this. Teddy did not believe that there was another man anywhere in the world who was as right for her as Steve Carella. Somehow, quite miraculously, he had been delivered to her doorstep, a gift, a wonderful gift.
She could not now believe he would be torn rudely from her. She could not believe it, she would not believe it. She had told him what she wanted for Christmas. She wanted him. She had said it earnestly, knowing he took it as jest, but she had meant every word of it. And now, her words were being hurled back into her face by a cruel wind. Because now she really wanted him for Christmas, now he was the only thing she really wanted for Christmas. Earlier, she had been secure when she asked for him, knowing she would certainly have him. But now, the security was gone, now there was left only a burning desire for her man to live. She would never again want anything more than Steve Carella.
And so, in the dimness of the room, she prayed, not knowing she was praying, and the words ran through her mind over and over and over again:
Let my husband live. Please let my husband live.
Detective-Lieutenant Peter Byrnes went down to the lobby at six fifteen that evening. He had been waiting in the corridor outside Carella's room all day long, hoping he could get to see him again. He had seen Carella only for a brief moment before Carella went unconscious again.
Carella had whispered a word, and the word was "Gonzo."
But Carella could say nothing more about the pusher, and so Byrnes still had only a flimsy description, a description he'd got from the three kids Carella had pinched in the car that day. No one else had heard of Gonzo, so how could Byrnes possibly pick him up? If Carella died…
He had put the thought out of his mind, sitting in the corridor. He called the precinct every half hour. And every half hour, he called home. The precinct had nothing to report. There were no leads to the new death of Dolores Faured. There were no leads to the old deaths of Aníbal and Maria Hernandez. There were no leads to Gonzo.
Things weren't much better at home. Larry was still in the process of shaking his sickness. The doctor had come again, but nothing seemed to displease Byrnes' son more. Byrnes wondered if he would ever be cured, and he wondered if they would ever find the man or men who were committing murder in his precinct. It was two days before Christmas, but Christmas would be a bleak time this year.
At six fifteen, he left the corridor and went down to the lobby. He stopped at the reception desk and asked the girl there if there was a decent eating place in the neighborhood. She suggested a greasy spoon on Lafayette.
He was heading for the revolving doors when a voice called, "Lieutenant?"
Byrnes turned. He didn't recognize the man at first. The man was small and thin, and he carried a box of candy under his arm, and he looked seedy, the way a normally seedy-looking person appears when he's trying to look dressed up. And then the face fell into place, and Byrnes said gruffly, "Hello, Danny. What're you doing here?"
"I came to see Carella," Danny said. He blinked and looked up at Byrnes.
"Yes?" Byrnes said, untouched.
"Yeah," Danny said. "How is he?"
"Bad," Byrnes said. "Look, Danny, you don't mind but I was on my way out to dinner. I'm kind of in a hurry."