Brinkman half turned, spoke to the man next to him. "You Donnelly?"
"Yessir," Donnelly said cheerfully.
"He say anything I should know about?"
Donnelly scrunched up his face, thought about what I'd said. "I don't think so, Sheriff."
"Okay," said Brinkman. "You can go." He turned back to me. "You shoot Antonelli, Smith?"
I felt color fill my face like a flood tide. I could have leapt out of that chair and broken his neck.
Eve said quietly, "Sheriff."
I stepped on her word as I said, "Brinkman, you're an idiot."
"You were alone out there. No one saw what happened but you."
"Other people saw the car."
"A car driving out of a parking lot. In a hurry to get to the next drink."
Wordlessly, I let my eyes meet his. Then I pulled my gun out of my pocket, held it out to him.
He smiled delightedly. "Why, how'd you know? Just what I wanted."
"Tony's a friend of mine, Brinkman," I said quietly.
"Wouldn't be the first time a man crossed up a friend." He sniffed at my gun. "Could even be you had a good reason."
"The gun's been fired," I said. "At the car."
"At the car." He nodded. "Now tell me the whole story."
I told him. It was a short story. Donnelly, dismissed, didn't move, but sat gaping at the excitement he'd missed.
"And, of course," Brinkman said when I'd finished, "you have no idea who might be shooting at Antonelli, or at you. Do you, city boy?"
I told him what I'd told MacGregor. His response surprised me. "Frank Grice," he said. "You and me, that's something we think the same on."
"Then what's this shit about me shooting Tony?"
"Well, that was mostly to get a rise out of you," he grinned. "See, the way I look at it, anybody’d rather shoot you than him."
"Brinkman," I said carefully, "it's been a long, long day. If you're through, I'd appreciate it if you'd go to hell."
But he wasn't quite through. First he took a statement from Eve. Her calm, low voice was like a warm place to watch a storm from. Then he wanted to hear about the car, so I told him about the car. Then he asked me where Jimmy Antonelli was.
"You think Jimmy shot Tony?" I asked.
"It would make me happy."
"Making you happy isn't high on my list, Brinkman, or Jimmy's either."
"Maybe he's dead," he said thoughtfully. "Maybe that's why I can't find him."
"Well," I said, "maybe if he's dead, he'll come looking for you."
That made Donnelly laugh. It made Brinkman narrow his beady eyes and scowl. "When I find him," he said, "and he tells me you knew where he was all along, that'll make my day."
"Glad to help," I said.
Then he gave me the usual warnings about not leaving the area, about making myself available. Then he left, about a year after he'd come, with my .38 in his hand and Donnelly trailing behind him.
The waiting area was very, very quiet without cops. I stood. "You want coffee?" I asked Eve.
"Yes, I suppose I do."
I got coffee and peanut butter crackers from the vending machines. "Dinner," I said. She smiled and we ate crackers and drank coffee and said nothing.
I spent the night in Tony's hospital room. It had been close to an hour before Lydia had arrived, and another half hour after that until the surgeon, discreetly triumphant in a red streaked green gown, had pushed through the doors to tell us Tony had lived through surgery and had a good chance of staying alive.
Eve had been willing to go home then. While she was in the ladies' room, Lydia asked me, "What do you want me to do?"
"What you came here for: keep an eye on Eve."
"This doesn't change things?"
"I don't know what this does. I feel as though I've been working blindfolded for days. Every time I think I'm close, something happens I don't understand."
"Think about it," Lydia said slowly, "as though you didn't know these people. As though you really were an outsider."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I'm not sure. It's just—I can't lose the feeling there's something you're not seeing. I wish I could see it, Bill. I wish I could help."
I gave her a tired grin. "Just standing there, you help."
"God, you're impossible. If you didn't look so pathetic I'd slug you."
"That's why I practice looking like this. Actually I feel great."
Eve came back, asked me to call her in the morning. I promised I would. I watched through the glass doors as they crossed the parking lot together, saw Eve incline her head to catch Lydia's words, saw Lydia's smile flash as she unlocked her car.
After they'd driven away I sat back down, thought about what Lydia had said. My mind chased ideas around like a greyhound after a whole pack of mechanical rabbits, until I finally gave up and got up to talk to the nurse.
Tony didn't wake that night. Because it was a country hospital, the nurses found a cot for me—"From Pediatrics," they confided—and pillows and blankets and even a toothbrush in a cellophane wrapper. Because it was a hospital, I didn't sleep well anyway. Nurses came and went all night, checking Tony's tubes and bandages, his temperature and his breathing. I woke each time, and then lay awake, breathing the bitter, antiseptic air, watching the moon, tired but dutiful, move across the sky. It finally gave up and set, discouraged.
A long time after the moon had set, the sky began to show streaks of red and iron blue, like a slow-to-develop bruise. Sometime after that I heard the jingle of glass and metal that tells you the doctors are making rounds, accompanied by nurses with trays of syringes and pills and other things patients need. By then the sky was a sullen gray, as bright as it probably meant to get. I got up, washed and dressed, zipped my jacket over my bare chest because I didn't want anyone's sympathy.
I stood watching Tony, who with the aid of a complex network of machines and tubes and drugs was able to successfully complete each breath he started. His face was pallid, yellow-tinged, his eyelids dark and sunken. He already looked like a man who’d been sick a long time, a man who’d be a long time getting well.
The attending physician, a younger, colder man than the surgeon, asked me to wait outside while he did his work. When he came out he was noticeably friendlier. He told me Tony was doing well. I recognized that thaw, that softening of the armor in which he wrapped himself in case he had to deliver bad news. Relax, I wanted to tell him. You get used to it. Eventually the armor turns to stone around you. Then it doesn't soften anymore; but then you're never caught without it, either.
I didn't go back into Tony's room when the doctor was gone. Tony was not likely to wake until later. The cop MacGregor had sent was sitting patiently in the hall— had, it turned out, been sitting there most of the night, while I was tossing on the cot. Let him wait to hear from Tony. I had to move. I had to do something, while the ideas slugged it out in my head until a winner was declared.
The hospital cafeteria wasn't open yet, so I drove to Friendly's, just before the state highway entrance—E-Z- Off, E-Z-On. I had fried eggs because I knew they couldn't make fried eggs from powder, and I had bacon and potatoes and toast and coffee and orange juice and more coffee, but before any of that I called Eve Colgate.
She answered on the second ring.
"It's Bill," I said.
"Are you all right?" Eve asked. "I just called the hospital.
They've upgraded Tony's condition to 'stable.' They said you'd gone."
"He's doing all right, but the doctor says it'll be a slow recovery."
"Did he wake up? Did you speak to him?" "No."
"So he doesn't know you were there."
"It doesn't matter."
"If you're not staying with him, maybe I'll come down. He should have a friend there when he wakes."
"He'll tell you he'd rather be left alone."
"When he tells me that, I'll leave," she said easily. "Bill, how are you?"
"I'm okay. How are you two doing?"
"We're fine. We're having breakfast." A note of amusement crept into Eve's voice. "We just got back from doing the morning chores."