"I see. Then we're just ships passing in the night?"
"I'll be back when the doctor, doctors, come to see you."
She walked out of the room. The rear view was as attractive as the front.
Matt picked up one of the bedpans.
I don't really want to use that goddamn thing, and I really don't want to use the other flat one.
He looked around the room. There were two doors. One of them had to be a bathroom.
He tried moving his wounded leg. It hurt like hell, but he could raise it.
I can stagger over there, hopping on one leg. I don't have to stand on it.
It proved possible, but considerably more painful than he thought it would be. By the time he had arranged himself on the commode, he was covered with a clammy sweat.
The telephone began to ring.
Goddammit! That's probably Dad. He said he would call when he finally got to the office. Well, I'll just have to call him back.
After a long time, it stopped ringing.
Three minutes later, he pushed open the bathroom door, which took considerably more effort than he thought it would.
Lari was standing there.
"I thought you would probably try something stupid like that," she said. "Put your arm around my shoulders."
Using Lari as a crutch, he made his way back to the bed. She watched him get in and then rearranged the thin sheet over him.
"Does this mean I don't get a gold star to take home to Mommy?"
"I'd have gotten you a crutch if you had asked for one," she said. " If that was uncomfortable, it's your own fault."
"Uncomfortable, certainly, but far more dignified."
Finally, he got her to smile. He liked her smile.
"You should start feeling a little drowsy about now," she said. "That should help the pain."
"I don't suppose I could interest you in waltzing around the room with me again?"
"Not right now, thank you," she said, and smiled again, and left, taking the bedpans with her.
He lowered the head of the bed, and then shut the television off. He was feeling drowsy, but the leg still hurt.
The telephone rang again. He picked it up.
"Dad?"
"No, not Dad," Helene's voice said.
"Oh. Hi!"
"That went far more smoothly than one would have thought, didn't it?"
"I guess."
"It's a good thing I didn't know who he was taking me to see. I just ten minutes ago saw theBulletin."
"I've seen it," he said. "It's not a very good likeness."
"Oh, I think it is. I thought it rather exciting, as a matter of fact. Not as exciting as being in the room with you like that, but exciting."
"Jesus!"
"If I thought there was any way in the world to get away with it, I'd come back. Would you like that?"
"Under the circumstances, it might not be the smartest thing to do."
"'Faint heart ne'er won fair maiden,'" she quoted.
Matt was trying to find a reply to that when he realized that she had hung up.
"Jesus H. Christ!" he said, and put the phone back in its cradle.
He recalled the pressure of her breast against his arm, and her fingers at the back of his neck. And other things about Helene.
He looked down at his middle.
"Well," he said aloud. "At least that's not broken."
Martha Washington was sitting on the narrow end of the grand piano in the living room looking out the window when she heard the key in the door and knew her husband had come home.
She looked at her watch, saw that it was a few minutes after three, and then turned to look toward the door. She didn't get off the piano.
"Hi!" she called.
Jason came into the living room pulling off his overcoat. He threw it onto the couch. When it was wet, as it was now, that tended to stain the cream-colored leather, but Martha decided this was not the time to mention that for the five hundredth time.
"How come I get hell when I set a glass on there, and you can sit on it?" he greeted her en route to the whiskey cabinet.
"BecauseI don't drip on the wood and make stains," she said.
He turned from the whiskey cabinet and smiled. That pleased her.
"How's Matt?" she asked.
"Apparently he was lucky; he's not seriously hurt. I haven't seen him."
"Why not?"
"Because when I went to the hospital this morning it looked like Suburban station at half past five. Even Farnsworth Stillwell-and his wife-were there. I thought I'd have a chance to go back, but I haven' t."
"Are you going to tell me what happened? That picture of Matt in the paper was horrifying!"
"From what I have been able to piece together, he wasn't even supposed to be there, but he showed up when they were getting ready to go, and Wohl sent him with Mickey O'Hara. They were in an alley behind the bastard's house, waiting for the detectives and the cops to go in, when the sonofabitch showed up in the alley, shooting. He was a lousy shot, fortunately-"
"He got Matt!"
"With a ricochet, it hit a brick wall first. If it had hit Matt first, he'd be-a lot worse off."
"He was covered with blood in the newspaper."
"Minor wound, scratch, really, in the forehead. The head tends to bleed a lot."
"The radio said the man died," Martha said. "Poor Matt."
"'Poor Matt'?"
"It will bother him, having taken someone's life."
"The last one he shot didn't bother him that I could see."
"That you could see."
Jason's face wrinkled as he considered that.
"Touche," he said, finally.
"I got him a box of candy. I didn't know what else to get him."
"You could have given him the picture of the naked lady. I know he'd like that."
She looked at him a minute, smiled, and said, "Okay. I will."
"Really?"
"Why not?" she asked.
"You're not thinking of taking it to the hospital?"
"Are we going to the hospital? "
"Yeah. Well, I thought maybe if you took off early and were here when I came home, you might want to go up there with me."
"I was about to go without you," she said. "You didn't call all day."
"I was busy," he said, and then added, "I found Tony."
"Oh?"
"In a bar in Roxborough. Specifically, in the back of a bar in Roxborough."
"Oh, honey!"
"I was right on the edge of taking him to a hospital. God, he looked awful. But I managed to get him to go home. I put him to bed. I just hope he stays there."
"Does Inspector Wohl know?"
He shook his head no.
"Well, maybe with all this-"
"He won't find out? You underestimate Peter Wohl."
"What's going to happen?"
"Drunks don't really reform until they hit bottom. Tony's pretty close to the bottom. Maybe I should have left him there and let him face Wohl. Maybe that would straighten him out."
"You know you couldn't do that."
"No," he agreed.
"The picture's in the spare bedroom."
"You really want to take it to the hospital?"
"If it will make him feel better, why not?"
When Jason and Martha Washington got off the elevator carrying the oil painting of the naked voluptuous lady, Jason found that Officer Matthew M. Payne had, in addition to the two uniformed cops guarding his door, other visitors, none of whom he was, in the circumstances, pleased to see.
Chief Inspector Matt Lowenstein and Staff Inspector Peter Wohl were standing in the corridor outside Matt's room, in conversation with a tall, angular man wearing a tweed jacket, a trench coat, gray flannel slacks, loafers, and the reserved collar affected by members of the clergy.
Lowenstein had seen them; there was no option of getting back on the elevator.
"Chief," Jason said.
"I'm glad you're here. I was about to suggest to Inspector Wohl that we try to find you," Lowenstein said, then changed his tone of voice from business to sociaclass="underline" "Hello, Martha. It's been a long time."