He had a lurid image of injections, of full restraint, of Gloria weeping with fear. No, they wouldn’t risk anything like that, not if they knew she had been planted there. Retribution would be too quick and too certain.
He went over and over what she had told him, and he remembered that she had mentioned no name of any person to whom she reported.
He went up to his office, sat at his desk, automatically handled a few routine matters. Finally, not certain that he was doing the right thing, he looked up Lew Prade’s telephone number and phoned him.
“Yes? Who is it?”
“Steve Dalvin, Lew.”
“What’s on your mind, boy? Little info for Ricky?”
“No. A favor, Lew. How do I get in touch with Dr. Dressner?”
“Are you sick?”
“No, I just want to ask a couple of questions.”
“Okay. Hold the line. I’ll put him on. You caught us in the middle of breakfast. Why not come over and have some coffee with us?”
“I can’t leave the office, Lew. I’d appreciate it if—”
“Sure. Hold on.”
He heard voices in the background, heard a woman’s laughter, the sound of Latin-American music. “This is Dr. Dressner speaking.”
“Dalvin, Doctor. I wonder if you could give me any information about Miss Hess, your nurse. I tried to get in touch with her, and they tell me she’s sick.”
“That’s quite true.”
“What’s wrong with her, Doctor?”
“I don’t see where your interest lies, Mr. Dalvin, but I’ll try to tell you in terms you can understand. Gloria is an excellent nurse, but a very high-strung young lady. She consistently overworks, and I’ve been too busy lately to check on her. She had what you might call a collapse last night. A few delusions. Inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. She recognized her own condition and signed a voluntary commitment for ninety days. It’s really not terribly serious. Rest is the prime medication in such cases.”
“Just what are you trying to pull, Dressner?”
There was a shocked silence. “My dear Mr. Dalvin, perhaps you need some of the same treatment. You sound that way. It was a perfectly legal commitment, signed in the presence of the county health officer, and he can testify as to her irrationality. I consider your attitude quite — presumptuous.”
“Can I see her?”
“When, in my best judgment, she can be permitted to have visitors, I shall ask her if she cares to see you, Mr. Dalvin. That’s the best I can do for you, though, I repeat, I fail to see where your interest in the young lady lies.”
“We were going to get our marriage license this morning, Doctor. Does that give me a legitimate interest?”
“She mentioned that, Mr. Dalvin. I consider that part of the delusionary aspects of her condition. You can check with Dr. Daniels, the county health officer. That may cure you of your odd and, I might say, rather poorly disguised suspicions.”
“And Daniels works for Lew Prade, too, I suppose.”
“Stevie, boy, I’m on this other extension here, and I think you better quiet down and go take a cold shower or something. You bother me.”
“That’s a pretty mutual condition, Lew.”
“What you getting so hot about? I told you that nurse was out of bounds.”
“Lew, you can go to hell.”
“You still don’t figure angles, do you? I got something I don’t want to tell you over the phone. You stay in the office, and I send a boy to tell you what I got on my mind.” Lew hung up.
It was half an hour before the “boy” arrived. He was the man called Pritch. He sat down with a mild smile, bit the end off a cigar, and spat it delicately into Steve’s wastebasket. He snapped his fingers, got up, went around the desk, pulled open drawers, and closed them gently.
“Offices, they got those gimmicks in. Making recordings. It’s good to make sure.”
“I imagine.”
“You take Lew. He only talks when he’s sure it isn’t going on a tape or a record. Really talks, I mean. A guy in his position, things get taken the wrong way.”
“What did he send you to tell me?”
“You got to understand what kind of a guy Lew is. He’d go to hell and back for a friend. He says you got to count on your friends. He says he did you a favor covering up that little matter for you. You owe him a favor, and it’s all laid out what you got to do. He wants to think you’re a friend, Steve, and you two can trust each other all the way down the line. That’s the way Lew is. That’s the way he likes things.”
“You haven’t said anything yet.”
“You worried him this morning. Now, that isn’t good. He sent me over to tell you that it maybe isn’t as simple as you think. It isn’t just one of those things where if you cross him up you do a little time, maybe standing on your head. You worry him, and he thinks about other things. It upsets him. He starts thinking maybe you wouldn’t have much of a squawk to make if you had the hell beat out of you. He’d hate to have that done to a friend, being the way he is. But he gets impatient when people worry him.”
Steve rested the cast on the edge of the desk. “That’s supposed to scare me?”
“If you’re smart, it scares you. A beating isn’t like in the books, you know. It doesn’t make you any hero. You don’t bounce right back with a big smile. I got wise once. A long time ago. I should have known better. They gave it to me good. And you know, it didn’t leave a scar. Not a one. But I was a rabbit for a couple years. Jumpy. It spoils a man. You remember and wake up sweating. It doesn’t leave you with much nerve. It just leaves you with the feeling you don’t want it to happen again. But I guess nobody who’s never taken a beating can understand about it. Lew, he figured it might not impress you much. So he asks me if I got any ideas how we can lay it on the line so you’d wake up. I had an idea right away. I said, ‘Lew, the thing to promise him is that you’ll have some of the boys beat him up in front of his kids.’ That really hurt Lew. He called me a couple names. He loves kids. But after he thought it over he saw the point. He says there’s always a way to hit a man where he lives, if you look hard enough. He just hadn’t thought of that. It’s pretty standard, and I’m surprised he didn’t think of it. Those Ku Kluxers have been doing it for years. They whip anybody, they always make the family watch.” Pritch stood up, examined the end of his cigar, and lit it again. “They don’t make these anymore so they stay lit. Well, that was the message, and Lew wanted you to know that it was a little more than the rap for Marty — and, hell, he says you two ought to be friends.”
Pritch walked out, turning at the door to wave his hand in a mocking gesture of hail and farewell.
Steve sat at his desk, terribly alone. In the back of his mind was a little shadow box where he lay and yelled with fright and pain while Paulie and Diana watched with wide scared eyes.
Quit struggling, he thought. Take it as it comes. But something had altered in his mind. There had been scales in precarious balance. On one side was the threat of prison. On the other side was a crooked method of landing a crooked job. Lew had suspected, from the phone call, that the scales were tipping the wrong way. So he had placed a heavy weight on the side labeled “Prison.” By all the rules it should have reversed the direction of the scales. And yet, crazily, it seemed to have the opposite effect on his mind. Maybe it was the outrage at the threatened debasement. Coldly he realized that he could no longer take an objective approach to it. From here on in it was emotional. And the emotions said, Fight. You could save your hide from the threat of prison, and maybe learn to live with yourself. But if you saved it from the threat of pain it gave you a big yellow label you couldn’t live with.