Donleavy’s forehead wrinkled like the brow of a hound. “A guy uses a knife like that, he hasn’t got much conscience or regard for human life, has he?”
“No,” I said grimly, “he hasn’t.”
I lay there and stared down at the top of the tight white bandages ringing my lower stomach, visible through the open front of the cotton hospital gown they had dressed me in. I could feel Donleavy’s eyes on me. After a time I said, “How’s Martinetti?”
“How would you expect?”
“Yeah.”
“He didn’t want to talk to us when we went out to his place,” Donleavy said. “But he couldn’t deny something was wrong, not the way he looked and the way his wife and the others there looked. It was past midnight, and he’d figured things went wrong because you weren’t back. We told him what had happened to you as far as we knew it, and he gave us the whole story then. He was a damned fool for not coming to us in the first place with it; if he had, none of this would have happened.”
Donleavy’s voice had hardened somewhat, but his eyes and his mouth were still sleepy. I said, “You won’t get any argument on that.”
“Why weren’t we notified?”
“Martinetti must have told you that.”
“I want you to tell me.”
“He didn’t want the law. He only wanted to pay the ransom to get his son back, to follow the instructions the kidnapper gave him.”
“And you went along with that?”
“He didn’t ask me for my opinion.”
“Maybe you should have offered it.”
“It wasn’t my place-or my son.”
“What was your place?”
“To make the drop for him, that’s all.”
“No investigating, or anything like that?”
“No, just make the drop.”
“How much were you getting for that?”
“Fifteen hundred dollars.”
“That’s nice money for a little drive into the hills.”
“And a knife in the belly?”
“You couldn’t have foreseen that, could you?”
“Listen, what are you trying to say, Donleavy? That I should have turned down a sour but legitimate job when I could use the money? That I should have violated a client’s trust and phoned you people about the kidnapping? That I didn’t try to talk Martinetti out of paying the ransom money because that would have meant I’d lose a fifteen-hundred-dollar fee?”
“All of those things crossed my mind.”
“And all of them are so much horseshit.”
“I’ve heard of you a little,” Donleavy said. “You used to be with the Frisco cops, didn’t you?”
“For fifteen years.”
“You don’t work much, but you’ve got a decent name.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m not leaning on you,” Donleavy said mildly. He shifted his weight on the chair. “You’ve been through enough for one night.”
I met his eyes. “Look, Donleavy, nobody feels any worse about this whole thing than I do-and I don’t mean getting cut. I’m not trying to excuse myself or my actions, right or wrong; I just want you to understand what motivated them, and what didn’t motivate them.”
“Sure,” Donleavy said, and got ponderously to his feet. He sucked in his round cheeks, and puffed them out again, like a blowfish. “We’ve talked enough for now. I think they want to give you something to make you sleep.”
“Will you tell Martinetti what happened?”
“Yeah, I’ll tell him.”
“All right.”
He did that thing with his cheeks again. “I got cut once, in the side, not half as big a gash as you got,” he said slowly. “It happened in a bar in Tucson, just after the Korean War; I was new on the cops there and I went up against a guy waving a straight razor. I was never more scared in my life after he slashed me, and I never forgot what happened. I’ve still got the scar, and every now and then I still get nightmares about it.”
He turned, fat but never soft, and shuffled over to the door and opened it and went out without looking at me again. I stared at the ceiling for a while, and then I closed my eyes to rest them. But when I did that, I could see the blood running out between my fingers in the dome light of the car, and I snapped them open again and watched my hands trembling on the bedclothes.
I thought: I’m never going to forget it, either. The scar will see to that. And maybe some nightmares, too, just like the ones Donleavy has every now and then.
* * * *
9
The doctor and the auburn-haired nurse returned to ask me if there was anybody I wanted notified of my whereabouts. I thought about having them get in touch with Erika, or perhaps Eberhardt, but there was no use in alarming either of them. I said no. They gave me a shot of something then, and I went to sleep almost immediately. I slept deep and hard, and I did not dream. It was one o’clock in the afternoon when I woke up again.
There was no fuzziness to my thinking, and the pain in my head had completely gone; the pain in my belly was no worse than I remembered it being when I had awakened before. But the ingrained fear of hospitals was strong inside me, and I felt claustrophobic. I had to urinate, and I considered throwing back the covers and trying to get up to find the john-but I was afraid to do that on my own because of the stitches. There was a push button attached to the tubular headrest of the bed, and I rang that a couple of times for assistance.
A nurse came in-thin, sad-eyed, flat-chested- and I told her I had to use the toilet but that I wanted to get up and walk there if it was all right. She said it was all right if I was very careful. I got out of bed, leaning on her, and my legs were somewhat weak and the pain grew warm across my lower belly, but I did not fall or stumble when I took my first couple of steps. The nurse went with me out of the room and down the hall one door and waited for me until I came out. Then she walked me back to bed again and wiped the sweat off my forehead with a cloth and patted me as if I had been a very good little boy. She left me alone again.
The claustrophobia had vanished and I lay quiet now. A youngish doctor with an air of nervous energy about him put in an appearance shortly and wanted to know how I felt. I told him. He took the bandages off and examined the wound in my stomach; I did not look at it myself. He put a new dressing on that burned a little, and some more outer wrappings.
I said, “How soon can I get out of here?”
“Perhaps this evening,” he answered. “I’ll want to look at the wound again before I make it definite.”
“Whatever you say.”
After he had gone, the flat-chested nurse brought a tray containing some soft-boiled eggs and a cup of lukewarm broth and a dish of liquidy lime jello. I managed to eat some of it.
Oddly, I did not want a cigarette afterward. Oddly, because following any kind of meal, no matter how light, the craving for one was always the strongest. It was the shock of being cut, I supposed, which was responsible for that; my system would be rebelling against such stimulants.
I wondered briefly if my lungs had been examined when they brought me in the night before, as a matter of course, and then decided that it was not likely. I thought: I ought to have them do it while I’m here. I ought to tell them about the cough, and the rasping in my chest, and have them do some X-rays. That’s what I ought to do. Well, maybe when the doctor comes again tonight- maybe then I’ll tell him.
The door opened and the nurse said, “You have some visitors.”
“Who are they?”
“A Mr. Donleavy and a Mr. Reese.”
“All right.”
Donleavy was still wearing the dark brown worsted; he nodded to me, his expression just as deceptively sleepy as it had been earlier. The other one, Reese, was about thirty, with cool gray-green eyes and flatly stoic features. Sparse, kinky black hair covered his scalp like moss on a round rock. He wore a semi-mod gray suit and a pale gold shirt with a silver-and-black tie, and you got the impression that he thought he was a pretty sharp and urbane guy.