Man, they were sure giving me top-quality treatment
It was the doctor who saw me wide awake first. His mouth twisted in a funny little grin when he said, “Excuse me, gentlemen,” then he came over to me, felt my pulse automatically, raised one lid with a thumb and peered at my eye and asked, “How do you feel?”
“Like forty million,” I told him.
“Think you’ll get to spend it?”
I grinned back at him. “Nobody else will, that’s for sure. They pay off that reward yet?”
“You heard what I told Rice, didn’t you?”
“Sure, but did you mean it?”
“Well, I haven’t bought any Cadillacs lately.”
“You’ll get it.”
“I expect to. Ten years after I hang out my shingle.”
“That’s doing it the hard way.”
“And that’s the way it’s going to be,” he told me. “Any soreness?”
“Some. How do I look?”
He shrugged and dropped my hand. “Minor concussion, cuts and abrasions, two broken ribs. We were afraid of internal injuries, but apparently there weren’t any. You were lucky, Morgan.”
“Yeah, I sure was,” I laughed. “When am I to be released?”
“Depending upon your own complaint, anytime. You can delay it for a few days if you feel like it.”
“Hell, why bother?”
“Every day’s a day. I hear the chow’s better here than in a cell.”
“I haven’t tasted any of it yet,” I said. “At least there they don’t feed you through a tube and they let you up long enough to go to the john. I don’t go this bedpan routine.”
“Take your pick. It’s a hell of a choice for a millionaire, though.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
The other three moved in, standing there until the doctor finished, watching me like a bug on a pin. When the doctor stepped back Rice leaned forward and said, “Well?”
“Anytime, buddy,” I told him. “Make it easy on yourselves.”
For some reason the three of them looked at each other, annoyance scratching furrows at the corners of their eyes. Inspector Doherty seemed to clamp his teeth together like he wanted to swing at me and Carter made a tight-lippd scowl as if he had bitten into something distasteful.
Only Rice was impassive. He stared at me, his eyes never leaving mine, and said in almost a whisper, “Stay loose, Morgan. It’s not over. It’s just beginning and you’ll be back where you came from or else you’ll be dead. Luck can ride either side of the table, but just remember that you can never beat the house odds.”
The building as an innocuous affair, a second-story apartment over a deserted grocery in a block condemned by the city for an urban renewal project. The truck they had used for transportation was a Department of Public Works vehicle no different from two others parked nearby and if anyone was curious enough to look, we were just some of the city planning board inspecting the properties.
But it was a lot more than that. Only Inspector Doherty and his plainclothes assistant were on New York’s payroll. The rest came from the massive complex on the Potomac and acted with the strange reserve of a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was an appraisal that wasn’t far off. Each of them was the head of an agency directly responsible to the White House and if a decision or an action backfired, they carried their heads in their hands.
I kept getting those surreptitious glances of distaste from the time they outfitted me in new clothes until they sat me at a corner of the table in the dust-filled room, enough out of line with the others so that I would know that I wasn’t one of them, but something dirty yet necessary, like a squeamish woman putting a slimy worm on a hook just to catch a nice clean fish.
There were no introductions, but then, I didn’t need any. Gavin Woolart, the ace from the State Department, was running the show. He didn’t appreciate the look of recognition I gave his associates in the beginning, but was shrewd enough to realize my profession called for intimate knowledge of people. All people. He was smart enough to stay away from the antagonistic angles even if it hurt and when he was ready he addressed me so damn formally it was funny.
Hell, he could have called me by my number. Not by my first name, though. I didn’t have any.
Instead, he said, “Mr. Morgan, you are probably wondering what this is all about.”
I couldn’t resist the invitation. “Mr. Woolart, that is one bitch of a statement. So… yes, I am wondering what this is all about. I’m a convicted criminal, an escapee and here I am in a new suit of clothes surrounded by V.I.P.’s with sour looks. If you had asked me I’d say it was a new slant in trying to retrieve your forty million bucks.”
Somebody coughed and Woolart glared at him. “Let’s forget that for the moment.”
“Thanks a bunch,” I said.
“How much time did you draw?”
I shrugged. They knew the answer. “Thirty years. Nothing was concurrent so they’ll pick me up on the other charges as soon as I use up the time.” I grinned at him. “If I use up the time.”
“Please don’t try to be comical,” he said.
“What have I got to lose?”
“Some of those thirty years, for one thing.”
I didn’t get it at all. I leaned forward and leaned on the table. Something was about to get mighty interesting. “Let’s put it this way then,” I said. “What have I got to gain?”
Once more, there was an exchange of glances around the room. Woolart tapped the tip of a pencil on the tabletop and the sound was like that of a clock about to run out. If somebody didn’t wind it it would stop.
Gavin Woolart pressed down on the pencil and the point broke. It was an effectual little gesture. “Let me put it this way, Mr. Morgan. We know your status. We are fully acquainted with your background from the day you were born, through college, your wartime service to the present. Nothing has been omitted. An intensive investigation of your past has resulted in a dossier that details every facet of your life.”
“Except one thing, apparently,” I said. My voice was tight and husky and I could hardly get the words out.
“Yes.”
“Now I’ll ask it. What?”
“Your potential.”
I didn’t like the feeling I got. It started at the back of my neck like a cold breeze and made the muscles in my shoulders bunch up into knots. They didn’t even want to know where the forty million went to, so whatever it was put my neck on the line. The big No was already there inside my mouth to say but I couldn’t do it until he had laid it out and I could hardly wait until he did.
“Curious, Mr. Morgan?”
“Not especially,” I lied.
“You should be. With your next stay in the penitentiary, security will be absolute maximum.”
“That won’t help.”
Woolart let a little smile play with his mouth. “That’s what I mean, Mr. Morgan.”
I shook my head, not understanding.
“Your potential,” he said. “You seem to have something nobody else has. A strange talent indeed. You do things of major importance, then reinforce them by another action. It’s too bad your abilities weren’t directed into normal channels.”