THE HOSPITAL corridor was long and clean and quiet in the morning sunlight. I finished signing for twelve days’ room rent and assorted services and walked slowly up the stairs to the second floor. Phil Naar waited there for me. He looked strange to me in the blue uniform with the Chief of Police arm patch. But he wore the uniform as if he had been in it all his life, instead of a week. There was a quiet sort of pride in his eyes.
“Morning, Bill.”
“Hello, Phil.”
“All checked out and everything?”
I nodded.
He hesitated, and looked at the tips of his polished black shoes. “I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind any?”
“No. I guess not, Phil.”
He shrugged. “Okay. I know how you feel.”
“Come on,” I said. “I want to get out of here.”
We walked down the hall and into one of the rooms. Gulliver was sitting up in the bed. He was bare to the waist, and great strips of tape covered his chest. His doctor had inserted a drainage tube at his side just below the armpit. Gulliver’s face was pale, what we could see of it. There was more tape and gauze across the middle of his face. He breathed through his mouth.
“Ten minutes,” the nurse said, “and don’t excite him.” She went out and shut the door.
We looked at each other uncomfortably for a few seconds. Gulliver breathed noisily through his mouth. Then he said, “Guess your face is going to heal up all right, Bill.”
“Yeah. Changed around a little. A couple of more scars. They won’t show much.”
“How’s the shoulder?”
“Stiff. It’ll loosen up.”
“Good,” Gulliver said, nodding soberly. “That’s good.” He looked at Phil, curiously. Gulliver had never worn his uniform unless he had had to. “How are things with you, Chief?”
Phil seemed a little uneasy. “Running smoothly. Nothing much happening.”
Gulliver nodded again. “Well,” he said, “It’s pretty dull around here. This is about the first time I’ve been able to sit up. So the drain will work.” He tried to laugh. “Wish I had a good cigar. Doctor says it would be too hard on the lung I’ve got left.”
He scratched at his jaw. “Nobody ever told me what happened to the girl,” he said, looking first at Phil and then at me.
“She tried to drive through a roadblock about twenty miles west of here,” I said. “The car flipped over and slid upside down into some gas pumps in front of a filling station. Everything blew sky high. She burned to death.”
“What about the politician? Her brother?”
“He had a nervous collapse. He’s getting psychiatric treatment somewhere. He’ll be as good as new one of these days.” Gulliver smiled sourly. “Better than us, Bill. Better than us.” He frowned. “I’m not bitching. I got off lucky, I guess.” He looked at me. “You know, Bill, I thought he did it. I really thought that Herne kid did it.”
“Yeah.”
He picked at the sheet that covered his legs, watching the movements of his fingers. “I was wrong about the Francis girl. What I mean is, she had more backbone than I thought. Just like the kid. Tough.”
“I’d tell her,” I said, “if I knew where to get in touch with her.”
The nurse came back into the room. “I’ve got a pain,” Gulliver said promptly to her.
“Where?”
He took her hand and guided it beneath the sheets. “Right here, honey,” he said, grinning at her shocked expression. He winked at me.
I went outside. Phil came out a few seconds later. We shook hands.
“So long, Phil,” I said.
“Look,” he said. “Bill, do you blame me?”
“No. It’s what you wanted. I know you’ll do a good job.”
“Thanks.” He smiled with dignity and brushed at something on the front of his coat. He looked at me. There was a little wave in his white hair. He looked very neat and efficient. In a way it was funny. But everybody has a dream somewhere.
“What are you going to do, Bill?”
“I don’t know. No plans. I might get out of these parts for a while. Change of scene.”
I handed him my shield.
“Keep it,” he said. “Something to remember us by.”
I put the shield in my pocket and went downstairs, not hurrying as much as I wanted to. It seemed a lot easier to walk slowly through the hall and pause on the steps just outside the doors of the hospital. And look across the trees of the park to the buildings of town. I watched an airplane, silver in the clear air across the river, rise slowly and powerfully from a long smudged feather of factory smoke.
It was a hell of a town. And it had been a hell of a life.
There was a vague ache in my chest.
And what about all the Jimmy Hernes in it?
No one in his right mind would . . .
I put a hand gently to my healing face, as if it would tear if I touched it too hard. I felt a grin starting and couldn’t stop it. I called myself all kinds of names and the grin got bigger. I put my hand in my coat pocket and my fingers closed around the badge there. The names stopped pounding into my head.
I turned around and pushed through the glass doors of the hospital and went back down the hall. I walked fast. I broke into a run and took the steps three at a time and stopped to catch my breath when I reached the second floor. He was still waiting there, standing in the middle of the hall. When he saw me he walked toward me slowly, and I waited for him.
He looked at me without much expression. Bright sunlight from a window splashed across the blue and gold front of his uniform like gossamer armor.
“The kids like Jimmy, in trouble. Maybe I’ll be able to help them.”
He shook his head and smiled.
“I hoped you’d think of that,” he said.
We walked down the stairs together.
THE END