“Now that I’ve answered your question, I’ve got one.”
“Okay.”
“Why were you so hung up on this guy?” Jimmy was still trying to formulate an answer when the doctor added, “In other words, how much of you do you see in him?”
He had a way of returning abruptly to the point.
Jim Thompson
The Ripoff: part III
The story thus far: Debt-ridden Britt Rainstar has been given a remunerative writing job by Manuela Aloe, who becomes his lover. After he tells her that he is married and cannot obtain a divorce, dangerous and unaccountable things begin to happen, for which Manuela seems to be responsible. Having been hospitalized after a terrifying attack, Britt is to be sent home under the care of nurse Kay Nolton. But on the day of his discharge his wheelchair is shoved down the hospital steps.
I was back in my hospital room.
Except for being dead, I felt quite well. Oh, I was riddled with aches and twinges and bruises, but it is scientific fact that the dead cannot become so without having some pain. All things are relative, you know. And I knew I was dead, since no man could live — or want to live — with a nose the size of an eggplant.
I could barely see around it, but I got a glimpse of Kay sitting at the side of the door. Her attention was focused on the doctor and Claggett, who stood in the doorway talking quietly. So I focused on them also, relatively speaking, that is.
“… a hell of a kickback on the sedatives, Sergeant A kind of cumulative kickback, I’d say, reoccurring over the last several days. You may have noticed a rambling, seriocomic speech pattern, a tendency to express alarm and worry through preposterous philosophizing?”
“Hmmm. He normally does a lot of that, Doctor.”
“Yes. An inability to cope, I suspect. But the sedatives seem to have carried the thing full circle. Defense became offense, possibly in response to this morning’s crisis. It could have kept him from being killed by the accident.”
My head suddenly cleared. The gauzy fogginess which had hung over everyone and everything was ripped away. And despite the enormous burden of my nose, I sat up.
Kay, Claggett, and the doctor immediately converged upon my bed.
I held up my hand and said, “Please, gentlemen and lady. Please do not ask me how I feel.”
“You might tell us?” the doctor chuckled. “And you don’t want to see us cry.”
“Second please,” I said, and I again held up my band. “Please don’t joke with me. It might destroy the little sense of humor I have left. Also, and believe you me, I m in no damned mood for jokes or kidding. I’ve had my moments of that, but that’s passed. And I contemplate no more of it for the foreseeable future.”
“I imagine you’re in quite a bit of pain,” the doctor said quietly. “Nurse, will you—”
“No,” I said. “I can survive the pain. What I want right now is a large pot of coffee.”
“Have it after you’ve rested. You really should rest, Mr. Rainstar.”
I said I was sure he was right. But I’d prefer rest that wasn’t drug induced, and I felt well enough to wait for it. “I want to talk to Sergeant Claggett, too,” I said, “and I can’t do it if I’m doped.”
The doctor glanced at Claggett, and Jeff nodded. “I won’t let him overdo it, Doc.”
“Good enough, then,” the doctor said. “If he can make it on his own, I’m all for it.”
He left, and Kay got the coffee for me. It did a little more for me than I needed doing, making my overalerted nerves cry out for something to calm them. But I fought the desire down, indicating to Claggett that I was ready to talk.
“I don’t think I can tell you anything, though,” I said. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think I was in a kind of dream state. I mean, everything seemed to be out of kilter, but not in a way that I couldn’t accept.”
“It didn’t jar you when you were shoved forward? That seemed okay to you?”
“I wasn’t aware that I had been shoved forward. My feeling was that things had been shoved away from me, not me from them. I didn’t begin to straighten out until I shot through those doors, and I wasn’t completely unfogged when I went down the steps.”
“Damn!” Claggett frowned at me. “But people were passing all around you. You must—”
“No,” I said, “they weren’t. Almost no one comes and goes through that front entrance, and I’m sure that no one did during the time I was there…”
Kay said quickly, a little anxiously, that my recollection was right. I was out of the way of passersby, which was why she had left me there in the entrance area.
Claggett looked at her, and his look was extremely cold.
Kay seemed to wilt under it, and Claggett turned back to me. “Yes, Britt? Something else?”
“Nothing helpful, I’m afraid. I know that people passed behind me. I could hear them and occasionally see their shadows. But I never saw any of them.”
Claggett grimaced, said that he apparently didn’t live right. Or something.
“Everything points to the fact that someone tried to kill you, or made a damned good stab at it. But since no one saw anyone, maybe there wasn’t anyone. Maybe it was just an evil spirit or a malign force or something of the kind. Isn’t that what you think, Nolton?”
“No, sir.” Kay bit her lip. “What I think — I know — is that I should have taken Mr. Rainstar with me when I went to the admitting desk. You warned me not to leave him untended, and I shouldn’t have done it, and I’m very sorry that I did.”
“Did you see anyone go near Mr. Rainstar?”
“No, sir. Well, yes, I may have. That’s a pretty busy place, the lobby and desk area, and people would just about have to pass in Mr. Rainstar’s vicinity.”
“But they made no impression on you? Wouldn’t remember what they looked like?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Kay said, just a wee bit snappishly. “How could I, anyway? They were just a lot of people like you see anywhere.”
“One of ’em wasn’t,” said Claggett. “But let it go. I believe I told you — but I’ll tell you again since you seem pretty forgetful — that Mr. Rainstar has been seriously harassed, and that an attempt might be made on his life. I also told you — but I’ll tell you again — that Miss Aloe is not above suspicion in the matter. We do not believe she would be directly responsible, although she could be, but rather as an employer of others. Do you think you can remember that, Miss Nolton?”
“Yes, sir.” Kay bobbed her head meekly. “I’ll remember.”
“I should hope so. I certainly hope so.” Claggett allowed a little warmth to come into his frosty blue eyes. “Now, you do understand, Nolton, that you could get hurt on this job. You’d represent a danger or an obstacle to the people who are out to get him, and you could get hurt bad. You might even get killed.”
“Yes, sir,” said Kay. “I understand that.”
“And you still want the job?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
“Sir?”
“You heard me, Nolton!” Claggett leaned forward, his eyes stabbing into her like blue icicles. “Jobs aren’t that hard to get for a registered nurse. They aren’t hard to get, period. So why are you so damned anxious to have this one? A first-class chance to screw yourself up? Well, what’s the answer? Why—”