All I could do was sit there, bringing back his words, the tone of his voice, the way his face crinkled as he saw me. Somehow he had expected something different. He wasn’t looking for a guy who had the earmarks of the Bowery and every slop chute along the avenues etched into his skin.
I said, “Who was he, Pat?” in a voice soggy and hollow.
Pat didn’t bother to answer my question. I could feel his eyes crawl over me until he asked, “What did he tell you?”
I shook my head. Just once. My way could be final too.
With a calm, indifferent sincerity Pat said, “You’ll tell me. You’ll get worked on until talking won’t even be an effort. It will come out of you because there won’t be a nerve ending left to stop it. You know that.”
I heard Larry’s strained voice say, “Come off it, Pat. He can’t take much.”
“Who cares. He’s no good to anybody. He’s a louse, a stinking, drinking louse. Now he’s got something I have to have. You think I’m going to worry about him? Larry, buddy, you just don’t know me very well anymore.”
I said, “Who was he?”
The wall in front of me was a friendly pale green. It was blank from one end to the other. It was a vast, meadowlike area, totally unspoiled. There were no foreign markings, no distracting pictures. Unsympathetic. Antiseptic.
I felt Pat’s shrug and his fingers bit into my arm once more. “Okay, wise guy. Now we’ll do it my way.”
“I told you, Pat—”
“Damn it, Larry, you knock it off. This bum is a lead to a killer. He learned something from that guy and I’m going to get it out of him. Don’t hand me any pious crap or medical junk about what can happen. I know guys like this. I’ve been dealing with them all my life. They go on getting banged around from saloon to saloon, hit by cars, rolled by muggers and all they ever come up with are fresh scars. I can beat the hell out of him and maybe he’ll talk. Maybe he won’t, but man, let me tell you this—I’m going to have my crack at him and when I’m through the medics can pick up the pieces for their go. Only first me, understand?”
Larry didn’t answer him for a moment, then he said quietly. “Sure, I understand. Maybe you could use a little medical help yourself.”
I heard Pat’s breath hiss in softly. Like a snake. His hand relaxed on my arm and without looking I knew what his face was like. I had seen him go like that before and a second later he had shot a guy.
And this time it was me he listened to when I said, “He’s right, old buddy. You’re real sick.”
I knew it would come and there wouldn’t be any way of getting away from it. It was quick, it was hard, but it didn’t hurt a bit. It was like flying away to never-never land where all is quiet and peaceful and awakening is under protest because then it will really hurt and you don’t want that to happen.
Larry said, “How do you feel now?”
It was a silly question. I closed my eyes again.
“We kept you here in the hospital.”
“Don’t do me any more favors,” I told him.
“No trouble. You’re a public charge. You’re on the books as an acute alcoholic with a D and D to boot and if you’re real careful you might talk your way out on the street again. However, I have my doubts about it. Captain Chambers is pushing you hard.”
“The hell with him.”
“He’s not the only one.”
“So what’s new?” My voice was raspy, almost gone.
“The D.A., his assistant and some unidentified personnel from higher headquarters are interested in whatever statement you’d care to make.”
“The hell with them too.”
“It could be instrumental in getting you out of here.”
“Nuts. It’s the first time I’ve been to bed in a long time. I like it here.”
“Mike—” His voice had changed. There was something there now that wasn’t that of the professional medic at a bedside. It was worried and urgent and I let my eyes slit open and looked at him.
“I don’t like what’s happening to Pat.”
“Tough.”
“A good word, but don’t apply it to him. You’re the tough one. You’re not like him at all.”
“He’s tough.”
“In a sense. He’s a pro. He’s been trained and can perform certain skills most men can’t. He’s a policeman and most men aren’t that. Pat is a normal sensitive human. At least he was. I met him after you went to pot. I heard a lot about you, mister. I watched Pat change character day by day and what caused the change was you and what you did to Velda.”
The name again. In one second I lived every day the name was alive and with me. Big, Valkyrian and with hair as black as night.
“Why should he care?”
“He says she was his friend.”
Very slowly I squeezed my eyes open. “You know what she was to me?”
“I think so.”
“Okay.”
“But it could be he was in love with her too,” he said.
I couldn’t laugh like I wanted to. “She was in love with me, Doc.”
“Nevertheless, he was in love with her. Maybe you never realized it, but that’s the impression I got. He’s still a bachelor, you know.”
“Ah! He’s in love with his job. I know him.”
“Do you?”
I thought back to that night and couldn’t help the grin that tried to climb up my face. “Maybe not, Doc, maybe not. But it’s an interesting thought. It explains a lot of things.”
“He’s after you now. To him, you killed her. His whole personality, his entire character has changed. You’re the focal point. Until now he’s never had a way to get to you to make you pay for what happened. Now he has you in a nice tight bind and, believe me, you’re going to be racked back first class.”
“That’s G.I. talk, Doc.”
“I was in the same war, buddy.”
I looked at him again. His face was drawn, his eyes searching and serious. “What am I supposed to do?”
“He never told me and I never bothered to push the issue, but since I’m his friend rather than yours, I’m more interested in him personally than you.”
“Lousy bedside manner, Doc.”
“Maybe so, but he’s my friend.”
“He used to be mine.”
“No more.”
“So?”
“What happened?”
“What would you believe coming from an acute alcoholic and a D and D?”
For the first time he laughed and it was for real. “I hear you used to weigh in at two-o-five?”
“Thereabouts.”
“You’re down to one sixty-eight, dehydrated, undernourished. A bum, you know?”
“You don’t have to remind me.”
“That isn’t the point. You missed it.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Oh?”
“Medics don’t talk seriously to D and D’s. I know what I was. Now there is a choice of words if you can figure it out.”
He laughed again. “Was. I caught it.”
“Then talk.”
“Okay. You’re a loused-up character. There’s nothing to you anymore. Physically, I mean. Something happened and you tried to drink yourself down the drain.”
“I’m a weak person.”
“Guilt complex. Something you couldn’t handle. It happens to the hardest nuts I’ve seen. They can take care of anything until the irrevocable happens and then they blow. Completely.”
“Like me?”
“Like you.”
“Keep talking.”
“You were a lush.”
“So are a lot of people. I even know some doctors who—”
“You came out of it pretty fast.”
“At ease, Doc.”