“I know all those boys. Which one?”
“Jennings and Ryan.”
“Nice clean people. Big outfit.”
Steve kept glancing at Marty. Lew Prade paid no more attention than if Marty were a dog sleeping near his feet. Steve didn’t like the way the man was breathing. His breath came irregularly, and it was a little labored.
Prade said, “Come on in and have a drink while we’re waiting.”
“I want to see how my boy is.”
“Sure. You go ahead. Come on over when you see the ambulance.”
“I can’t understand why he’d slap a kid around.”
“No sense. I guess he don’t like kids, anyway. He isn’t very bright. Hell, last week I send him out for cards. A dozen decks. Know what he comes back with, the featherhead?” Prade sighed and shook his head. “Pinochle decks!” He went toward the house, shaking his big head sadly.
Steve went into his kitchen. Paulie’s lips had puffed up. His eyes were full of awe and pride. “Boy, did you ever conk him! Geez, what a punch!”
The Quinn boy was staring at Steve’s hand. He yanked at Paulie’s arm and said, “Hey, look at your dad’s hand!”
Mrs. Chandler looked at Steve’s hand. “Fighting and brawling,” she muttered.
“I should have apologized for interrupting and asked him to please stop slapping my son around?”
The boys were back at the window. “He’s still out. Dad!” Paulie called with delight. “We were counting for a while. We quit when we got to two hundred. Are they just going to leave him there?”
“An ambulance is coming.” Steve said.
The Quinn boy looked at Steve with such naked worship that Steve felt an absurd desire to strut. But worry nagged him. The man could be seriously hurt. He had turned into the punch. And Steve had been running hard.
There didn’t seem to be any comfortable position in which he could hold his hand. It was half again the size of the other hand.
He said, “I’m going along in the ambulance to get this hand set.”
Paulie said. “Broken, eh?” He looked a little ill. He said, “I don’t know why the guy got so mad over a little thing like that. It didn’t even dent the car or anything.” Paulie stood very still. He said in a hushed tone, “I’m going to be sick to my stomach.”
“Run, run!” Mrs. Chandler said.
Paulie was docile about going to lie down, and Mrs. Chandler shooed the Quinn boy home. After the boy had left Steve realized that he should have told him to keep the incident to himself. Then he reflected that it probably wouldn’t have done any good. He was going to be a hero to the neighborhood small fry for quite some time.
When the ambulance backed into the drive he went across to the next house. A small, wiry man in creamy slacks and a sports shirt got out with the white-coated driver. The small man was kneeling beside Marty when Steve approached. The dark eyes flicked to Steve’s hand. “Quite a Sunday punch.” he said dryly.
“What do you think, Doctor?”
“Broke his cheekbone, maybe in a couple of places. And a concussion, I guess. Okay, Sam. Let’s load him.”
Lew Prade came across the yard. “Doc, take this fellow along and fix his hand. Have somebody bring him back. Bill me. Steve Dalvin, Doc Dressner. By the way, Doc. Marty tripped over that hose there and fell and hit his puss on the front bumper.”
“And Mr. Dalvin stepped on his own hand. Sure, Lew, sure. I understand.”
“Don’t be wise, Doc. Just don’t be wise. It’s too hot today.”
Dressner sighed in a tired way. “Sure, Lew. Ride up there with Sam, Mr. Dalvin. I’ll ride in back with the patient.”
“Highball it, Doc?” Sam asked.
“No. Normal speed, Sam.”
Sam, a young man with a narrow, anemic face, drove smoothly and well.
“Where are we going?” Steve asked.
Sam gave him a quick glance of surprise. “Doc Dressner’s place. Valley Vale. Don’t you know the place?”
“Yes, I know it. I didn’t know who owned it,” Steve said. He was grimly amused. Valley Vale was a private sanitarium primarily devoted to the treatment of alcoholism and mild nervous disorders. In the bars of Coleburne it was a standing joke. One more shot, Mac. and they’ll have you up in Valley Vale. There were nastier rumors about the place, too. Steve had driven past it many times. It was out on the Valley Road southwest of the city — a place of cedars and stone walls and ornate iron gates. When you drove by the gates you could see the green lawns inside, a segment of chateau architecture, and curving gravel drives.
When they reached the big gates they drove through them and in behind one of the buildings. Sam jumped down and swung the back doors open. A man came out of the doorway and helped with the wheeled stretcher. Marty was wheeled inside, and Steve followed.
A willowy black-eyed nurse in rustling starched white moved forward quickly. Dressner said, “I want a head X-ray on this one as fast as I can get it. Then take this man’s hand, Gloria. Mr. Dalvin, wait in there until the nurse calls you.”
The stretcher disappeared down the corridor. Steve went into a small waiting room. The magazines were new. the furniture new and smart. He looked out the window. At the foot of a long slope of green lawn was a kidney-shaped swimming pool, blossoming mushrooms of bright beach umbrellas, a group of people toasting in the sun, and someone swimming slowly back and forth across the pool.
After a few minutes the nurse came back. “Ready now, Mr. Dalvin. Follow me, please.”
In a small room the black mouth of the X-ray head pointed down at a draped table. She swung it over his hand, put the taped plate under his hand, set the dials, and went behind a small, lead-sheathed screen. The equipment buzzed as she took two shots of the back of his hand and two of the palm, moving his hand into the position she wanted it each time, careful not to hurt him. She had a pretty frown of concentration, and when she turned, the starched whiteness of her uniform drew tight along the warm lines of her tall body.
“Have you worked here long?”
“You can go back to the waiting room now, Mr. Dalvin. Dr. Dressner will see you as soon as we get the plates developed.” He flushed at the bluntness of the rebuff.
Twenty minutes later Dressner strolled into the waiting room. He sat on the corner of the desk and lit a cigarette. “Two clean breaks in that cheekbone,” he said. “No skull fracture. Severe concussion. May take him two hours or two days to come out of it. We’ll fix his face after he comes out of it.”
“I never hit anyone that hard before. I want you to know that—”
Dressner lifted his thin hand. “You heard Lew. He fell. That’s all I want to know. Understand?”
“Yes, but—”
“The nurse will be in with your pictures. We’ll see about that hand.”
Steve heard her light, quick footsteps in the hall. She came in and handed Dressner the four pictures. He spread them out on the desk and said, “Come take a look, Mr. Dalvin.”
Steve looked at the skeletal pictures. The look of the bones made him think of death. Dressner touched the pictures with a capped fountain pen. “This one here, a clean break. This one splintered a little. These knuckles jammed back. Be a little tendon damage. Gloria, I don’t think that hand is puffed too badly to take care of it right now. We’ll use a local, and put it in a cast.”
They worked together as a good team. They deadened his hand, set it, and put it in a cast. The nurse took more X-rays, and Dressner said he was satisfied with the job.
The cast was startlingly white. Gloria adjusted the height of the sling so it would be comfortable.
Dressner said. “That’ll give you trouble tonight. Maybe you won’t sleep much. But I don’t want to give you anything because you might sleep too hard and roll on it. Gloria, the keys are in the convertible. Be a good girl and drive Mr. Dalvin home.”