Veil studied me for a few moments, then slowly nodded his head, perhaps sensing that my aborted teaching career wasn't something I felt like talking about. "I'm going to make you some of my super-duper herbal tea," he said at last. "It will perk you right up."
"I'd rather have Scotch."
"Somehow, that doesn't surprise me at all," Veil said, walking away toward the entrance to the kitchen. "First, the tea."
"I feel like a Goddamn old lady," I called out, slowly sitting up on the edge of the bed, then bracing myself with my hands and closing my eyes when the room started to tilt.
"Why?" Veil called from the other side of the partition.
"I don't usually pass out so easily."
"Hey, my friend, when somebody bounces a shuriken off your forehead and you lose as much blood as you did, the only reasonable thing to do is pass out. Ask anybody. You're lucky you have a thick skull. Incidentally, I'm sorry I wasn't able to stop him from doing that. I should have kept a closer eye on him."
"You're sorry you weren't able to stop him?! I was the one with the gun, remember? By the way, that was some number you did on him. But why the hell didn't you just bop him on the head with your nunchaku, or stick a knife between his ribs?"
"You'd already put a bullet in his shoulder," Veil replied dryly. "It didn't seem quite sporting for me to use weapons."
"Sporting?!"
Veil came back into the bedroom carrying a huge ceramic mug filled to the brim with a steaming, perfectly foul-smelling liquid. "Well, you'd been telling me what a bad-ass this guy was, and he obviously thought he was a bad-ass, along with his various employers. I was curious as to how he'd fight; I thought I might learn something."
At first I thought he had to be joking, but when I looked into his face I could see that he was serious. I shook my head in amazement. "Jesus Christ. I knew you were damn good, and I never doubted that you could beat Kitten, but I never imagined that anyone could have done it so easily. I think I'll start calling you sir."
"Drink this," Veil said, handing me the mug. "Watch it; it's hot."
I sipped at the disgusting brown liquid, almost gagged. "What the hell is this stuff?!"
"I told you; super-duper herbal tea. Mother Kendry's magic healing potion."
"It tastes like you washed your socks and jock in it after our last workout."
"Drink it; all of it. It will make you feel better."
He was right about that. With Veil occasionally prodding me by raising my elbow, I drained off the mug. The throbbing in my forehead eased dramatically, the room no longer threatened to turn upside down on me, and I felt decidedly stronger, less groggy.
"So," I said as I set the empty mug down on the bed's side table, "now we have to figure out what to do with our departed assassin."
Veil nodded as he sat down next to me on the bed and absently adjusted his sling, which he had changed. "If we call the police, they're going to be all over the two of us; Kitten just doesn't look like your average burglar, especially in this neighborhood."
"You got that right. If they identify him-or if they can't identify him, which seems more likely-the cops are going to be leaning very heavily on us for explanations, which we can't give. Shannon's done his part, and we're all home free at the moment; but it's all over if anyone manages to make a link between that dead assassin and Orville Madison. If the cops check with Interpol, they'll find out that Garth filed a request for information on a guy that turned out to be Henry Kitten. A lot of worms will come crawling out of a lot of cans."
"Worms," Veil said, and smiled thinly. "You feel up to helping me with a little spring planting? I'll reward you with a Scotch from your special reserve I keep under the kitchen counter."
We gained access to the alley, which was blocked off from the street at both ends by rusting chain-link fences, through a triple-bolted steel door in the basement of the gutted building. Clambering through a treacherous jungle of rubber tires, twisted shards of rusting metal, various unrecognizable objects, garbage, and a host of scurrying, dog-sized rats, we finally made our way to the mound of junk on which the broken body of Henry Kitten lay askew, leaking blood from all its orifices. Along the way I'd picked up half of a broken steel pole, with one jagged, splayed end. Veil kicked aside some soggy cardboard, and I began digging with my makeshift shovel in the soft, rotting earth which had been exposed.
"Easy does it, Mongo," Veil said as he leaned back against a tangled pile of lumber and steel. If he was the least bit concerned about having a corpse buried beneath the windows of a loft where he lived and worked, he certainly didn't show it. He'd assured me that it would be at least a hundred years before anyone found the remains of Henry Kitten, and-considering the neighborhood-nobody in the next century would give them a second thought. Our conversation-spiced spring planting expedition might have seemed a tad macabre to me if I hadn't been so happy to be rid of Henry Kitten. "You don't want to start that wound bleeding."
"Listen, pal, with that tea you gave me I feel like I could staff an entire gravediggers' union by myself. What the hell is in that stuff? Cocaine?"
"Just herbs. It's a recipe I picked up in Laos, from the Hmong. Very good for whatever ails you. I'll give you the recipe, if you'd like."
"No, thanks. I'm not sure I could handle it."
Veil selected a jagged wood stick from the pile he was leaning against, gripped it tightly in his left hand and began helping me dig. "How's Garth?" he asked quietly.
I paused in my digging, leaned on my pole, sighed, and shook my head. "No change from the way you saw him three days ago at Langley. He's just. . gone away. His eyes are open, but there's no life in them; they look like dull marbles. He blinks, breathes, pisses down a tube into a bag, shits through another tube into another bag, gets fed through tubes in his nose, and doesn't object to being massaged and rolled into another position four times in every twenty-four hours."
"EEG?"
"Damn near normal, which is what's so frustrating. Maybe I could accept the fact that my brother's become a zombie if there were some sign of brain damage, but there isn't. All of his organs seem to be functioning quite normally, considering the fact that he's totally sedentary, but there's nothing going on with him. He reminds me of the way I found your loft that night; all the lights are on, but there's nobody home."
"Are you satisfied with his care?"
"Lippitt says it's the best, and I have no reason not to believe him. You know, the clinic is at Rockland Psychiatric Center, but it's a secret Defense Intelligence Agency facility, staffed by their people and under their control. I don't know enough about what's required in Garth's case to be in a position to evaluate the care, but all of the equipment looks like state-of-the-art, there are plenty of nurses who really seem to care running about most of the time, the food is good, and the rooms comfortable. There's a shrink for every three patients. The place is run by a shrink named Charles Slycke, who doesn't seem to care for me very much."
"What's his problem?"
"Beats me. I only met him this afternoon, before I headed down here, but I sensed a lot of hostility. Actually, I don't give a shit what he thinks of me just as long as he sees that Garth gets the best care."
"I'm sorry, Mongo."