Finally he couldn’t stand it. Grantz had died of a bad heart in a Federal prison, but some of Grantz’s friends were still around, and Wallerbaugh got in touch with them. A plastic surgeon, somebody good and absolutely trustworthy. The answer came back: Dr Adler, near Lincoln, Nebraska.
Money made it possible for him to get back into the States, via the Mexican border, without having to test the passport or other papers. Money got him to Nebraska, and more money, to Dr Adler, got him a new face. After the operation, Charles F. Wells went into Lincoln and bought a new Cadillac and drove it all the way to New York, just for the pure pleasure of being able to look at all that American countryside again.
He had avoided the friends of Grantz, so no one knew that Wallerbaugh was back in the States. The friends of Grantz. knew, but they didn’t know what he looked like or where he was or what he was calling himself these days. Only one man in the whole world knew enough about Charles F. Wells to be able to call him C. Frederick Wallerbaugh.
After six months, he began to worry. After one month of worry, he decided to act. He had a newer Cadillac by now, and he drove it back to Nebraska. He didn’t drive this tune for the pleasure, he drove so his name would not appear in the files of any commercial transportation. He drove to Nebraska and shot Dr Adler and then he drove back to New York. He was safe now, absolutely safe. There was no one left in all the world who could pose any sort of threat to him.
Chapter 3
UNTIL he got to the car, Stubbs had thought he would just keep going forward; he would get the car and then go find the man named Wells and find out if he had killed the doctor, and if it hadn’t been Wells then he’d go on and find the other man, Courtney. But in any case, all in a straight line, with nothing else in the way. That was because his thinking was muffled and hazy with only one clear spot in the centre, able to concentrate on just one train of thought at a time.
But when he got to the car, the impossibility of the straight line forced itself upon his attention. He first began to notice when he had trouble driving the car. His hands seemed thicker and slower on the wheel and one foot was heavy and only partially controlled the accelerator and his other foot was totally out of sympathy with the brake. He kept hitting the brake too hard, and making the hood of the Lincoln dip, and knocking his chest against the steering wheel. And he kept pulling away from traffic lights too fast, nearly stalling the car.
After that, because now he kept looking at his hands, he noticed how filthy they were — covered with small scars and ragged places. And his clothing was a mess. Also his stomach was upset and his nerves seemed bad.
So finally he began to realize that it was impossible, that after two weeks of living like an animal he couldn’t just go straight ahead but would have to stop and rest a while. So he stopped. He didn’t know about motels, but he knew how to find a hotel in any city. You find the railroad station.
He’d never gone far from the tracks, so he kept on paralleling them, and after a while he found a third-rate hotel. Since it was a third-rate hotel, it didn’t have a garage, but the man at the desk told him the car would be safe out in front. Stubbs took his word for it, paid for one night, and got his two suitcases from the trunk.
There was no shower in his private bath, but there was a tub. He sat for an hour in water nearly too hot to stand, adding more hot water every time the water in the tub started to cool. After that he went directly to bed, though it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet.
He woke at eight-thirty the next morning, and his head was buzzing. His nerves were far worse than yesterday, so bad that his arms and legs were shaking. He lay on his back on the bed, and his forehead was burning up. He felt a dull anger at the symptoms, because they were keeping him from the straight line, and he tried to ignore them. He pushed the covers away and got out of bed, but he immediately became dizzy and fell, hitting his face on the floor.
After a while, he got to the telephone and told the man at the desk that he needed a doctor. The man at the desk was irritated, and showed it, but he did send a doctor. He was a paunchy man with grey hair and a no-nonsense scowl, and when he came in, using the key the desk man had given him, Stubbs was back in bed, not wholly conscious.
The doctor examined him, and asked him questions he had a difficult time answering. Then he closed his black bag with a snap. “You have to stop drinking. You know that, don’t you?”
“I haven’t been drinking,” Stubbs told him. “I never drink.” It was true. Alcohol, even when he was at his best, hurt his head.
The doctor frowned, not sure whether or not to believe him. It being this particular hotel, this particular kind of hotel, the doctor had been prepared to diagnose even before seeing Stubbs. He stood looking down at him, and now he saw that the symptoms were not exactly right. Some of the symptoms that should have been there weren’t, like a craving for water and a special soreness in the joints of the arms. “Then you’ve been working too hard. Some sort of heavy physical labour without proper nutrition. You haven’t been getting enough sleep or enough rest or enough of the right kinds of food. Am I right?”
It was close enough. Stubbs nodded.
The doctor nodded, too, satisfied. “I don’t suppose you want to go to a clinic?”
“No.”
“I thought not. Can you pay for a nurse? You need someone to bring you food, at least for a day or two. You can’t leave that bed.”
“In my wallet,” Stubbs said. He motioned at his pants folded on the chair. “Take some for yourself and a nurse.”
The doctor was surprised at how much money there was in the wallet, and it made him curious as to what this man had been doing to get so rundown and have so much money, but he kept his curiosity to himself. He was a doctor with a small practice in a poor neighbourhood, plus work at a clinic, plus being house doctor for this hotel and two others very much like it. He had the constant feeling that violence and evil were all around him, kept just out of sight because these people needed him as a doctor, but if he were ever to turn his head fast and see the evil they would have to kill him, whether they needed him or not. Because of this, he had trained his curiosity to be a small and private thing.
He took some money from Stubbs’s wallet, showed him how much he had taken, and explained what each dollar of it was for. “The man downstairs said you’d only paid for one night. I think you’ll be here four more days at the very least.”
“Pay him for two,” said Stubbs.
The doctor argued with him, but Stubbs ignored him. He concentrated on the straight line and lay quiet in the bed so he’d be well sooner, and after a while the doctor stopped arguing. He shrugged, and took some more money from Stubbs’s wallet, and left.
The nurse was bitter Irish, thin-bodied and sharp-faced, and a rosary rustled in her starched pocket. She fed him, when her watch said it was time and not when he was hungry, and she took good care of him without ever talking to him. It embarrassed him to use the bedpan, but she insisted. She came for two days, because that was how much she’d been paid for. The second day he didn’t really need her, but she came anyway and wouldn’t let him out of the bed. He decided to get up as soon as she left, but he didn’t.
The third day he was on his own again. He got up and stood beside the bed, and he wasn’t dizzy. He felt weak, and very hungry, but that was all, and the trembling in his arms and legs had stopped. He got clean clothing from his suitcase and went out to a restaurant for breakfast.