The room was white. It had nothing inside of it. Not a stick of furniture. No windows. No doors. Max realized that couldn’t be right. He didn’t have his glasses on. They fell off during the pum- meling he took in the Rendezvous parking lot. Yet he should be seeing light and dark, the shapes of objects. He lifted his head and fell back against the pillow. Pain shot twin lasers through the orbits of his eyes. It felt like a crack had opened in the crown of his skull. Moving spread the edges, and more of the lasers leaked out. He’d been cold-cocked by the man from the ambulance, Pinroth. He had a head wound, probably a concussion. He tried lifting up again, slowly, his neck muscles bunched. He encountered resistance. Instinctively, he attempted to push up on his elbows, to slide his knees higher.
He couldn’t move his arms or legs.
Panic flooded through him. They had him strapped to a bed. He felt pressure in the crook of his right elbow—an IV needle. The room reeked of alcohol preps and bleach. With his fingertips he brushed the cool metal tubes of a hospital bedrail. He wiggled his nose and the texture of the room shifted. There was a sheet pulled over his face; the corners tucked under the mattress as if he were wearing a giant blindfold.
“Where am I?”
“Are we awake?”
He hadn’t expected that. The voice was close, but coming from above—someone standing at his bedside, watching him.
Cold-sweating, he fought the urge to struggle.
“It’s no use trying to fool me, Max. I heard your breathing change.”
He’d listened to that voice for three days in his L.A. bungalow. Listened to it questioning him and then telling him what punishments he would face when his answers failed to satisfy. The pincers . . . the branding iron . . .
Two fingers—Horus Whiteside’s fingers—slipped under the sheet and gripped his wrist. Max could not speak. His chest rose and fell rapidly.
“Your pulse is racing, Maxwell. That’s not good for a man in your condition. I’m administering a sedative. You’ll start to relax in a moment.”
Shoes walking on carpet. This was no hospital. Max knew as much. A crinkle of plastic, the squeak of an uncapped syringe, he felt a tug at his elbow—then warmth flowing into him. The sharp qualities of his perceptions blunted. A sensation of wetness like a damp rag lay at the center of his chest.
“No, don’t—”
“Are you talking to me now?”
“Take this off my face. I can’t breathe.”
“You’re breathing fine. Trust me. I only want us to have a conversation.”
“I won’t tell you a thing,” Max said. His hands curled into fists.
“I disagree.”
Max detected a smile behind the doctor’s words.
The drug in his IV . . .
“You injected me with sodium pentothal?”
“Pure dose of ethanol, but I hope the outcome is the same. How are you feeling?”
Max didn’t answer.
“We can sit here for a while, you and I .. . enjoy the moment together.”
Max focused his hearing. What was out there besides White- side?
A beeping, at regular intervals—they had a heart monitor on him. Well, that meant this interrogation wasn’t likely to kill him. Maybe Whiteside did want to talk to him. He hadn’t hurt him. Not yet.
The beeping sounds calmed Max down. He also noticed a shushing, also coming at regular intervals but not the same intervals as the heartbeats. His lips were tingling, the way they felt after a sip of champagne.
“How’s your dog?”
“She’s great. I hope someone is taking care of her.”
“I’m certain they are.”
A hand massaged his shoulder. The drug was at work. His face seemed too large, the skin covering it too weighty, thick, and stiffening—a mud mask.
The shushing—it sounded like a ventilator. Max had listened to one for weeks while his wife was dying. He remembered it. But they obviously didn’t have him on a ventilator. It made no sense.
“You looked into the stone.”
“No ... I didn’t.”
“Why lie to me?”
“I’m not lying. I started looking but couldn’t go through with it.”
“Failure of nerve or comprehension?”
“Nerve.”
The beeping didn’t really sound that nearby. It sounded across the room. He wondered if the drug distorted hearing. If he should trust himself.
The timing of the beeps. Max concentrated. He pushed his fingertip into the top of his groin and tried to find the femoral artery . . . there ... his pulse, faint but true. The mattress under him changed. It got softer. He sank down into it. It didn’t feel bad. He had to keep track of his pulse and the monitor noise. Part of his mind didn’t care. Wanted the sinking . . .
He counted and listened to the beeps.
They didn’t match up. His pulse and the monitor were different.
“I think we’re ready to begin,” Whiteside said.
That meant someone else was in the room, another patient. Max wondered who it was. “Who’s here with me?”
“I’m here.”
“No, the other patient. The one on the ventilator. Who’s that?”
“That is someone I’m eager for you to meet, Max. But first things first. Are you feeling relaxed?”
“I feel like I need another drink. Make mine a rum and Coke.”
“That’s a beach bum’s drink.”
“Exactly what I said—”
His body encased in warm sand. Safe, drunk, hidden as treasure.
The blindfold loosened. Cotton collapsed against his cheeks. A stream of air touched his nostrils. The sheet pulled to the left. He saw vague canals, tension rippling in the underside of it—the pulling hand was almost ready to take it. The top of the sheet creased his eyebrows. His breaths came slow and even.
“Imagine your mind muscle expanding and contracting. Expanding. Contracting. You have a hole in your head, Max. See the hole stretching larger. See it growing. It gets bigger. Dilaaation. The muscle is thin as a ribbon. It gives shape to the hole the hole is deep is inside of you but the hole leads outside of you and the muscle around the hole is so thin it floats away from the hole the hole in your head the hole belongs to me.”
The sheet dropped.