"You're not comfortable," he said. "Let me tuck you up properly."
His hands stripped away the sheets, and Craig gabbled his seven words as the other man lifted the smock and looked at the marks on his body, the sweat soaking from him so that the bed sheets were wet.
"My, my," said the man. "Somebody certainly didn't like you. Somebody certainly hurt you all right. You must be a very brave man. And strong too. I admire you, sport, I really do."
The voice continued, softly, gently, and Craig saw him grow chubby again, fat and well meaning and anxious to help as he told Craig how brave he was, and asked him how he managed to withstand such terrible pain. Slowly, inevitably Craig listened, and answered, the seven words falling like pierced armor from his memory. The chubby man knew all about pain—and cared. On and on Craig talked, and gradually the chubby man's questions moved from Craig's agony to Laurie S. Fisher's, and Craig wept as he remembered what had been done to him.
"And you really didn't see who did it, John?"
"No," said Craig. "I thought it was the KGB, but-"
"But what? Go on. You can tell me."
"You're the KGB, aren't you?"
"Just a research team, John. Asking questions about the problems of pain. Kaplan now. We heard there were two hoods in the Boldinis' apartment. Were they going to hurt Kaplan?"
"They were going to kill him," said Craig. "Only I killed one of them instead."
"And the other one got away, right? You should have killed him too, don't you think so?"
"Noise," said Craig. "People." Suddenly he felt very weary.
"Please, John," said the chubby man. "Don't go to sleep just yet."
Craig said, "They weren't—executives. Not like the ones who got Fisher. They were your best people. The two I met were just hired guns. Not worth killing." "Or hurting, John?"
Craig said, "I don't like hurting people. I don't like being hurt."
"John," said the chubby man, "I think you're in the wrong business."
"That too," said Craig, and slept.
The tall man came out of the shadows and looked at Craig as the two orderlies left. "Well, well," he said. "The best in the business."
"You take a blade, you sharpen it and sharpen it till it'll split a silk scarf drawn across it. Then one day you drop it on a stone floor. After that it'll still cut bread, but the silk scarves are safe. They stay in one piece."
"Damn your parables," said the tall man. "What about Fisher?"
"He didn't do that to Fisher. He couldn't. Anyway, he told us the truth. He found him." "And the girl too?"
"And the girl. She was a Scandinavian type, just like he said. Mai Olsen. Fisher met her-"
"I know all that," the tall man said, and turned back to Craig. "What do you think?"
"Of John? He can still fight, still kill if he has to—but he can't cut silk scarves."
The tall man turned away.
"Get rid of him," he said.
There were rats. He could hear them scuttering about the floor, running up the legs of the bed, ducking beneath the bedclothes every time he turned his head to see them. He'd never actually seen one, but they were there all right. He could feel them. From time to time they bit him in the arms. Not that it mattered. The bites didn't hurt; they were just reminders that the rats were there. And there was another one—probably a baby he thought—that hid behind the pillow and bit him behind the ear. A baby rat. Brown fur, naked tail, scrabbling paws. He could imagine it perfectly, but it didn't disgust him—only it was a nuisance. Biting like that. The trouble was he couldn't stop it, because his hands were tied. Better to sleep, if the rats would let him.
Suddenly a bell sounded, deferential but insistent. A telephone, he thought, an American telephone. Only there weren't any telephones, not in that room where they'd talked about the pain. The ringing went on, and Craig woke, the rats disappeared, their scrabbling the hum of air conditioning, their bites the ache in his arms and head. As he woke he noticed that his arms and legs were stretched out as if he were still strapped down. Cautiously he reached for the telephone at his bedside, and pain stabbed behind his ear.
"Noon, Mr. Craig," said the voice of the girl at the switchboard.
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's noon," said the voice again, acidly patient. "Twelve o'clock. You left word for a call."
"Oh yes," said Craig. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," said the girl. The words meant, "Jesus. Another lush."
He rang room service for breakfast and a bowl of ice, and spent a long time bathing, showering, soaking the pain from his body. The mark of the thing they'd clipped to his arm was red and angry, but it would soon go. The one behind his ear was another matter: purple, exotic, and with a lot of life left. He'd have to tell absurd lies about backing into a shelf, or something. Then he remembered the gunman he'd slammed against the wall with the door. The he wasn't so absurd.
The waiter came and he tipped him, wrapped ice in a towel, and put it on the bruise, then ate his breakfast. He found it strange that he could be so hungry, when his life was finished. He was no danger at all, so far as they were concerned. So much so that they hadn't even bothered to kill him. To them, he wasn't even a joke. Doggedly he tried to remember the questions they had asked, but all he could remember was pain, and Laurie S. Fisher, and a fat little man looking at where he too had been hurt. He also remembered a tall man, but that was all. Craig finished his coffee and began to dress and pack. If he really was finished, Loomis would have to know. He booked a seat on a plane for the next night, the first flight he could get, and went back to bed. No rats, no dreams, no arms and legs in a Saint Andrew's cross. When he woke up he felt better, remembering the man he'd hit in the stomach, the way he'd saved Kaplan's life. He remembered, too, the information Kaplan had given him, word for word. There might after all be some point in staying on, in order to find out who had decided that Craig was finished. In tracking them down. After all, the night clerk at the hotel should be able to give him some sort of a lead.
But the night clerk, when he came on duty, knew nothing, except that Craig had come back very late with two friends, and he'd had a little—difficulty in getting up to bed. In fact the two friends had helped. That would be around six in the morning. Must have been some party, Mr. Craig. Sure he remembered the ambulance, but that had been for another guest, two floors below Craig. The way the clerk had heard it, he'd called a doctor, and the doctor had diagnosed a perforated appendix and called a hospital. He didn't know what hospital. No. But the ambulance looked classy. Craig thanked him and gave him ten dollars in hard currency, taxpayers' money, then went back to his problem. The Yellow Pages told him just how full of hospitals and nursing homes New York is. Moreover, there was Loomis to be considered. He'd got Kaplan's information, and Loomis would want to know about that, as well as the fact that he, Craig, was a failure. Craig ate dinner in the hotel and slept for twelve hours.
Next morning he felt better than ever, and had found a way to solve his problem. He would call on Thaddeus Cooke, and have another fight. If he won, he would stay on. If he lost, he would report back to Loomis.
Cooke beat him three times in seven minutes, and looked almost as horrified as Craig.
"Mr. Craig," he said, "you must have got problems since I saw you last. Why, man, I tell you, they've even got down into your feet. You got to solve them, Mr. Craig, or you ain't goin' to be no good at this game any more. I tell you honest, the way you're doing now, you couldn't even lick Blossom. At least"—he thought it over, and made one concession—"not if Blossom was set for you. You go on home—get those problems licked. Or take up golf."