“The mortuary is paying for everything. Runciter’s instructions to them.”
“The hotel tab too?” It struck him as odd. How had that been managed? “I want you to look at this citation,” he said to Don Denny. “While no one else is with us.” He passed the slip of paper over to him. “I have the rest of the message; that’s where I’ve been: getting it.”
Denny read the citation, then reread it. Then, slowly, handed it back to Joe. “Runciter thinks Pat Conley is lying,” he said.
“Yes,” Joe said.
“You realize what that would mean?” His voice rose sharply. “It means she could have nullified all this. Everything that’s happened to us, starting with Runciter’s death.”
Joe said, “It could mean more than that.”
Eying him, Denny said, “You’re right. Yes, you’re absolutely right.” He looked startled and, then, acutely responsive. Awareness glittered in his face. Of an unhappy, stricken kind.
“I don’t particularly feel like thinking about it,” Joe said. “I don’t like anything about it. It’s worse. A lot worse than what I thought before, what Al Hammond believed, for example. Which was bad enough.”
“But this could be it,” Denny said.
“Throughout all that’s been happening,” Joe said, “I’ve kept trying to understand why. I was sure if I knew why—” But Al never thought of this, he said to himself. Both of us let it drop out of our minds. For a good reason.
Denny said, “Don’t say anything to the rest of them. This may not be true; and even if it is, knowing it isn’t going to help them.”
“Knowing what?” Pat Conley said from behind them. “What isn’t going to help them?” She came around in front of them now, her black, color-saturated eyes wise and calm. Serenely calm. “It’s a shame about Edie Dorn,” she said. “And Fred Zafsky; I guess he’s gone too. That doesn’t really leave very many of us, does it? I wonder who’ll be next.” She seemed undisturbed, totally in control of herself. “Tippy is lying down in her room. She didn’t say she felt tired, but I think we must assume she is. Don’t you agree?”
After a pause Don Denny said, “Yes, I agree.”
“How did you make out with your citation, Joe?” Pat said. She held out her hand. “Can I take a look at it?”
Joe passed it to her. The moment, he thought, has come; everything is now; rolled up into the present. Into one instant.
“How did the policeman know my name?” Pat asked, after she had glanced over it; she raised her eyes, looked intently at Joe and then at Don Denny. “Why is there something here about me?”
She doesn’t recognize the writing, Joe said to himself. Because she’s not familiar with it. As the rest of us are. “Runciter,” he said. “You’re doing it, aren’t you, Pat?” he said. “It’s you, your talent. We’re here because of you.”
“And you’re killing us off,” Don Denny said to her. “One by one. But why?” To Joe he said, “What reason could she have? She doesn’t even know us, not really.”
“Is this why you came to Runciter Associates?” Joe asked her. He tried—but failed—to keep his voice steady; in his ears it wavered and he felt abrupt contempt for himself. “G. G. Ashwood scouted you and brought you in. Was he working for Hollis, is that it? Is that what really happened to us—not the bomb blast but you?”
Pat smiled.
And the lobby of the hotel blew up in Joe Chip’s face.
Chapter 13
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Darkness hummed about him, clinging to him like coagulated, damp, warm wool. The terror he had felt as intimation fused with the darkness became whole and real. I wasn’t careful, he realized. I didn’t do what Runciter told me to do; I let her see the citation.
“What’s the matter, Joe?” Don Denny’s voice, edged with great worry. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m okay.” He could see a little now; the darkness had grown horizontal lines of gray, as if it had begun to decompose. “I just feel tired,” he said, and realized how really tired his body had become. He could not remember such fatigue. Never before in his life.
Don Denny said, “Let me help you to a chair.” Joe felt his hand clamped over his shoulder; he felt Denny guiding him, and this made him afraid, this need to be led. He pulled away.
“I’m okay,” he repeated. The shape of Denny had started to form near him; he concentrated on it, then once again distinguished the turn-of-the-century lobby with its ornate crystal chandelier and its complicated yellow light. “Let me sit down,” he said and, groping, found a cane-bottomed chair.
To Pat, Don Denny said harshly, “What did you do to him?”
“She didn’t do anything to me,” Joe said, trying to make his voice firm. But it dipped shrilly, with unnatural overtones. As if it’s speeded up, he thought. High-pitched. Not my own.
“That’s right,” Pat said. “I didn’t do anything to him or to anybody else.”
Joe said, “I want to go upstairs and lie down.”
“I’ll get you a room,” Don Denny said nervously; he hovered near Joe, appearing and then disappearing as the lights of the lobby ebbed. The light waned into dull red, then grew stronger, then waned once more. “You stay there in that chair, Joe; I’ll be right back.” Denny hurried off in the direction of the desk. Pat remained.
“Anything I can do for you?” Pat asked pleasantly.
“No,” he said. It took vast effort, saying the word aloud; it clung to the internal cavern lodged in his heart, a hollowness which grew with each second. “A cigarette, maybe,” he said, and saying the full sentence exhausted him; he felt his heart labor. The difficult beating increased his burden; it was a further weight pressing down on him, a huge hand squeezing. “Do you have one?” he said, and managed to look up at her through the smoky red light. The fitful, flickering glow of an unrobust reality.
“Sorry,” Pat said. “No got.”
Joe said, “What’s—the matter with me?”
“Cardiac arrest, maybe,” Pat said.
“Do you think there’s a hotel doctor?” he managed to say.
“I doubt it.”
“You won’t see? You won’t look?”
Pat said, “I think it’s merely psychosomatic. You’re not really sick. You’ll recover.”
Returning, Don Denny said, “I’ve got a room for you, Joe. On the second floor, Room 203.” He paused, and Joe felt his scrutiny, the concern of his gaze. “Joe, you look awful. Frail. Like you’re about to blow away. My god, Joe, do you know what you look like? You look like Edie Dorn looked when we found her.”
“Oh, nothing like that,” Pat said. “Edie Dorn is dead. Joe isn’t dead. Are you, Joe?”
Joe said, “I want to go upstairs. I want to lie down.” Somehow he got to his feet; his heart thudded, seemed to hesitate, to not beat for a moment, and then it resumed, slamming like an upright iron ingot crashing against cement; each pulse of it made his whole body shudder. “Where’s the elevator?” he said.
“I’ll lead you over to it,” Denny said; again his hand clamped over Joe’s shoulder. “You’re like a feather,” Denny said. “What’s happening to you, Joe? Can you say? Do you know? Try to tell me.”
“He doesn’t know,” Pat said.
“I think he should have a doctor,” Denny said. “Right away.”
“No,” Joe said. Lying down will help me, he said to himself; he felt an oceanic pull, an enormous tide tugging at him: It urged him to lie down. It compelled him toward one thing alone, to stretch out, on his back, alone, upstairs in his hotel room. Where no one could see him. I have to get away, he said to himself. I’ve got to be by myself. Why? he wondered. He did not know; it had invaded him as an instinct, nonrational, impossible to understand or explain.