Part Two

Dying

 

 

9

BED

 

When he needed rest from his anger, Jake practiced smelling his way around his room. That slight chlorine odor came from the bathroom. TidyBowl added a faint, sweet perfume—

What a waste, having a bathroom.

Jake realized he had just made a pun. Hilarious. He glanced down at the curving hump the catheter raised in the blanket. It looked like a mole’s burrow.

The air conditioner whispered to life. Jake rolled his eyes toward the wall, concentrating until he detected the faint fruity smell of the paint. They must have put on a fresh coat shortly before he was brought in. Pastel blue—better than pink but what was wrong with white? Not that it mattered.

He became aware of his own smells—the catheter, sweat, the oil in his hair, a faint meaty smell on his breath. He was part of the room now, like the paint and the floor wax and the toilet. For how long? Thinking of what the doctor had told him, Jake felt the dread welling up again. The floor seemed to open beneath him, dropping him into a dizzying free fall. Closing his eyes, he fought off panic.

You’ve asked me to be honest, Mr. Nacht, and I do think it’s best. With this type of injury, I’ve never seen a patient walk again. The new biofeedback therapy may well build up sensation and perhaps some movement in your hands. Though you might not think so now, that will make a huge difference in making you less dependent. And don’t write off the chance of a medical breakthrough.

I have to get out of here, Jake thought. I’ll work hard on the therapy, get my hands back. Then I’ll get the legs, I don’t care what the doctor says.

Thinking about his legs, Jake felt a measure of hope. Clearly they could move. He had seen one of them twitch yesterday but had decided it was his imagination. Then it happened again today, just a few minutes ago, his right leg jerking under the covers. He hadn’t been trying to move it, and when he did try, nothing happened. But surely Dr. Graham would consider the twitches a hopeful sign.

I will walk out of here, Jake thought, and blow Fredo’s brains out. If that ambulance chaser Krosny can get the city to fork over a few mil, I’ll take it, but I’m not going to stay paralyzed. I’m not some poor jerk who lies in a bed with tubes running in and out of him, who can’t even sit to take a leak, who has to be spoon fed like a baby. Not me.

Finding a spark of fury, he nursed it along. He imagined Fredo’s smug, stupid face in the cross hairs of his scope. He imagined his finger squeezing the trigger—

His right hand, lying on top of the white covers, drew his gaze. With a mixture of hope and fear, he stared at the trigger finger, willing it to move. It lay still. He concentrated fiercely, trying to find the pathway from his brain to the hand. What would his nerves look like running through his arm—white tunnels, maybe. Just find the right tunnel and flash through to the finger.

The smell of sweat deepened. The hand remained still.

Jake tore his gaze away from the hand and stared at the ceiling. OK, the tunnels were temporarily blocked. But they would open up again. He’d get through. You’ll see, Fredo.

Jake breathed deeply. Getting too emotional. Got to get back on a more even keel. Panic or rage, both blocked thought. And he had a lot of thinking to do—starting with exactly what had gone down in that hotel room.

Why had the cops cut it so fine? If Detective Danziger had been straight, it might figure—he’d spotted a gunman in the window, rushed his squad to the hotel and barely made it. But I don’t let heat spot me in the window, Jake thought. Besides, he knew my face, knew I was the mechanic. Some of his squad must have been straight, or Danziger could have walked over and put three more into my back. But Danziger is as bent as a snake sucking its tail.

So was the bastard early or late?

If they meant to let me whack Whiny then punch my ticket to keep me quiet, he was early. Another five seconds and whoever set me up would have gotten at least half of what they wanted. This way they got zip. Whiny isn’t dead and they can’t know I won’t talk.

So suppose they didn’t want me to whack Whiny. That makes Danziger late—almost too late.

And it doesn’t figure. If all they wanted was to pop me, why set me up on Whiny then come after me just a few hundred yards from TV cameras and a brigade of blues? Why not just send out four guys with uzis some night, catch me in an alley?

So suppose they wanted to almost kill Whiny, scare him real bad.

That works, Jake thought grimly. Here they’ve got this U.S. senator in their pocket, then he starts to shake them down. Why cancel a resource like that if you can bully it back into line? So they set up the hit, stop it in the nick of time and send a very strong message to Whiny. See what almost happened to you, senator? Lucky we were there. Maybe next time we won’t be.

Danziger was right on time, Jake thought.

And I’m the patsy.

The rage started to build in him again and with it the sting of betrayal. Through seventeen hits, Mr. C. had always played straight with him. And then he’d decided to toss him away. Whether they’d meant to kill Weingarten or scare him, Jake Nacht was not supposed to leave that hotel room alive.

First I’ll kill Fredo, Jake thought. Then Danziger. Let Mr. C. think about it for awhile. Then I’ll kill him.

Right. But when?

The rage gave way to a terrible sense of impotence.

How many days have I been here? Jake wondered.

He counted back over the nights, the periods when the room went dark and the hall outside settled into a hush. Three nights. Three days and three nights. Seemed more like three weeks, time crawling like a fly on the back of his eyeball. Through all those days he must have tried thousands of times to move his finger. Just his finger.

Jake thought about the therapy the doctor had mentioned. Biofeedback, whatever that was. And learning to hold a stick in his mouth and punch the telephone or the computer. Learning to pitch his voice to turn the lights or TV on and off. Deep breathing to make sure his lungs didn’t get congested.

No further mention of learning to move his fingers.

What if I never get better? Jake wondered. What if I can’t kill Fredo? What if I’m going to lie here until I die, tubes going in, tubes going out? For fun I can watch television. I can eat—if somebody feeds me. And I can always sleep.

The panic surged back. Jake fought it, closing his eyes, taking long, slow breaths. He heard her walk into the room, able to tell her soft, graceful tread from the sounds the other nurses made. So what? He wouldn’t even open his eyes.

Somehow, they came open anyway.

“Hello, Mr. Nacht.”

She smiled down at him. Her brown hair hung around her shoulders. Her face was pretty in a youthful sort of way, the skin smooth and freckled, her smile very even, the teeth white and perfect. Her eyes were brown with flecks of gold.

Quite a piece of work. He wanted to touch her, but it had less to do with her than wanting merely to... touch.

“Call me Jake,” he said.

“All right.” She seemed pleased. “And I’m Angel—Angela Deschanel, actually, but everyone calls me Angel.”

I can see why, Jake started to say, then something in her face stopped him. Men probably said that to her all the time. The last thing he wanted in his pathetic state was to come on to her—probably the last thing she wanted, too. “OK, Angel. Good to officially meet you at last.”

She lifted his hand off the spread and shook it.

The gesture startled him. He saw his hand in hers, but could not feel it, couldn’t even feel his arm going up and down. But in an odd way, it gave him a lift just to see himself moving.

“Dinner time already?”

“No. I just thought you might like your face washed.”

“Sure.”

He followed her with his eyes, watching as she went into the bathroom and returned with a basin. She was beginning to make him curious. She came in several times a day, often for tasks like this. Odd, in a busy public hospital like Manhattan General. He’d never thought much about hospitals, but from what he’d heard, nurses were overworked and in short supply. Ernie still groused about his gallbladder operation whenever he wanted to gross an unfavored customer out of his bar—how he’d needed his bedpan emptied and punched his button over and over and it had taken the nurses half an hour to respond.

Angel ran the washcloth gently over his face. The water was just warm enough. The soap smelled clean, free of perfume. She dried him off gently. He sensed that she was looking at his face, really looking. Most of the nurses who came in here avoided looking at him now, maybe rationing their sympathy, their horror—whatever he made them feel—so they’d have something left for the next loser.

“Thanks,” he said. “That feels better.”

“Good.”

“When are they moving me out?”

She cocked her head. “Moving you out?”

“I imagine beds are scarce in here.”

“Sure, but no one’s thinking of moving you out. We have to run more tests, make sure you’re stabilized and well enough to move. Besides, you haven’t even started your therapy.”

“I wanted to ask you about that. When Dr. Graham went over the schedule with me, he mentioned working on moving my hands.”

Angel nodded. “That’s the new biofeedback therapy. When you’re ready, we’re going to give it a try.” She hesitated, eyeing him. “You don’t want to hope for too much too soon. Your MR scan— “

“Scans can be wrong, can’t they?”

Angel hesitated again. “Sometimes. Have you been trying to move your hands?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you have any feeling in your fingers?”

“No.”

“Your spinal cord was cut almost through,” Angel said.

“But don’t cuts heal?”

“No. Not in the spinal cord of humans—at least not yet.”

Jake decided to drop his little bombshell on her. “I’ve seen my leg move—twice.”

“Yes. That’s normal in a case like yours. It’s an involuntary reflex. When the spinal cord is intact, the brain suppresses the reflex.”

He felt punctured. He stared at her, horrified, his last tiny reservoir of hope draining away. He couldn’t feel, couldn’t make anything below his neck move when he wanted, and now she was telling him that the one piece of hope he’d clung to was nothing. He was a spastic. His body, cut off from his brain, was only mocking him, defining him with those involuntary movements: jerk.

“There are some promising studies with animals.”

Jake worked at producing a smile. “Thanks for being straight with me.”

“There’s a lot you can do,” Angel said. “They’re coming up with new devices all the time—“

“Please.” He felt a strangling pressure in his throat.

She gazed at him. “I know. It’s hard. If you don’t want to talk about it now, you don’t have to. You’ll feel better after a while, when you’ve had some time to adjust.”

No, Jake thought. I’ll feel worse.

Angel fussed with his blanket, folding the top edge over, smoothing it along his chest. “You’ve really been on the news, you know. If you’d let me turn on your TV, you’d have seen yourself on channel nine. Evidently the man who shot at Weingarten disappeared into thin air. The cops smashed into his room seconds after the shot and no one was there. There’s a ledge outside the window, and that’s the only place he could have gone. The cop who shot you—Danziger—said that’s why he thought you were the gunman. He thought you’d gone out on the ledge and made it into the other room.” Angel gave a skeptical laugh. “He made you sound like Spiderman. He’s been suspended, you know.”

“Good,” Jake said tightly.

“The current theory is that the gunman hid in a plumbing crawl space in the bathroom. When Danziger shot you, the cops all ran out of the room into the hall. That would have given the real gunman a chance to slip out and escape. It’s all theory, but they have an APB out on a man named Elliot Guyer, who rented the room. Evidently the IDs were bogus, but the desk clerk said he’s got black hair and a mustache, and he’s heavier than you.”

“An APB?” Jake said, knowing exactly what she meant, but wondering how she knew.

“All Points Bulletin,” she said.

“You’re pretty handy with cop terminology.” He knew he was spinning things out, but he didn’t want her to leave. He couldn’t stand to be alone right now, to see the leg twitch again.

“When I went to college,” Angel said, “I wanted to be a cop. But no one would take me seriously.”

“Because you’re so beautiful.”

Angel looked at him with suspicion. “I wouldn’t put it quite that way. More because everyone thought I was too fragile and innocent. Do you have brothers or sisters, Jake?”

“No.” Not that I know of, he amended silently.

“I have five—four sisters and a brother. I’m the youngest. Everyone in my family talks about how spoiled I was. They don’t know what it was like, being the youngest. Everyone looks down on you. You are patronized continually. Angel’s so cute, Angel’s our little treasure. If they play a game with you, it’s their game. If they take you somewhere, it’s where they want to go. When they take the family picture, you’re always kneeling down front. You never stand in the back row. My head was patted so many times I’m surprised it isn’t flat on top.”

Jake wondered if she knew how she sounded. You had a family, he thought. Seven other people with your blood in their veins. People who loved you, treasured you.

And yet, he could see her point.

“You wanted to be a cop so you could give people orders?”

She gave him a penetrating look; he did not smile and neither did she. “That’s it exactly,” she said. “I wouldn’t have admitted that to most people.”

He said, “Being a nurse must be pretty hard, too. Maybe harder than being a cop.”

“It is.”

Her gaze lingered thoughtfully on him. He wondered what it would be like to kiss her. He could still kiss, but who would want to kiss him? You could only do so much with your tongue. And once you did it, you wanted to do other things. Having to stop with a kiss would be like chewing without swallowing. Better not to start.

“Well, I’d best be off,” Angel said. “But before I go, let me set you straight on something. You don’t have to worry about being shipped out of here. The city is footing your whole bill. They’ve told us to spare no expense. That’s why you’ve got a private room. Evidently they’re scared silly of that lawyer of yours. This is what the cops call a bad shoot. They’re liable, and they know it. You’ll probably get millions of dollars.”

“Every cloud has a silver lining,” Jake said, smiling to take the sting from the words.

Angel studied him again. “Can I ask you a question?”

“As long as it doesn’t involve fractions. I’m lousy at math.”

She smiled then sobered. “Was it you that tried to shoot the Senator?”

Jake felt a warning tingle in the skin of his neck. Was this why Angel was being so nice to him? Had the DA wired her? “No,” he said, feeling let down.

“I’m sorry. I know it was a terrible thing to suggest, but I... had to ask you.”

“Why?”

“Because it was on my mind and I want to be straight with you.”

Interesting, Jake thought. He felt his mood lifting again.

“I’ll see you at dinner,” Angel said and walked out of his room.

He watched her as far as his eyes could ravel.

She’s not just being nice, he thought. She likes me.

I wonder if I could get her to like me enough to kill me.

 

 

10

THE WHORE

 

Jake gazed up at the darkened ceiling, stymied. How could he get Angel to fall in love with him? His brain, dim and silent as the hospital around him, offered no answer.

Rolling his eyes right, he looked at the clock. The red LED numerals said ten minutes to three.

Go to sleep, he thought. Something will come in the morning.

But he knew it wouldn’t.

He’d made love to a lot of women. But making one fall in love with him was an art he’d never imagined needing. Ironic. He’d got straight A’s in self preservation, a subject where even the B+ students ended up in prison or dead. Plenty of people had reason to hate Jake Nacht; the friends and relatives of seventeen dead targets would add up to a big hunger for revenge. But none of those people knew who he was. He’d succeeded in staying anonymous, determined that hate would never cost him his life.

Now ignorance of love might cost him his death.

If only there was some other way besides Angel. Mr. C., for example. He could probably get Mr. C. in for a visit—a nurse would make the call for him. When Mr. C. came in, he could tell him he was going to sell him out to the cops. Jake felt a tremor of disgust. The thought of even pretending to rat to the cops made him sick to his stomach.

And Mr. C. wouldn’t buy it anyway.

If I really meant to send him up, Jake thought, the last thing I’d do was warn him. I’d sing and let him find out when the cops and DA showed up at his door. Mr. C. would see that right away. He’d know I was really just asking him to kill me.

Jake felt a pang of nausea. Pathetic. Mr. C. had set him up in the first place. The only thing that appalled him more than the idea of living like a quadruple amputee was the thought of baring his throat to the bastard who’d done it to him—and then being turned down. Because Mr. C would turn him down.

No way I can make him afraid of me, Jake thought, except for getting up and walking out of here. But that will never happen. I’ll never be able to come gunning for him and, by now, he knows it. Knows I’d have a hell of a time ratting him out, too. Told me no details of his operations. Only thing I know is that he paid me—through bag men—to hit people. And I can’t even prove that, except by getting him to hit me. Which he can figure out for himself. Wouldn’t take him two seconds to figure I’m trying to set him up, that I’d already talked to the cops and was dangling myself as bait to get him to put the noose around his own neck. Mr. C. wouldn’t send a hit man within a mile of this place if I begged him.

Jake’s mind went back to the seventeen targets. Some stood out in memory more than others. Seventeen men, dead—from the neck down and up. Mostly the scum of the earth, but even scum had friends and family who might consider revenge. Except that now the anonymity he’d worked so hard to preserve was working against him. Even if he could get in touch with a relative and prove he’d made the hit; even if that relative was capable of killing, why do it when a much better revenge would be to let him suffer endlessly? No, they’d look down at him and laugh, and that he could not stand.

Jake felt a sudden, powerful urge to tear at his hair. His hands lay impotent on the sheets. God damn! Living had become a nightmare, more people than he could count thirsted for his blood, but his only hope of dying was love.

Did it have to be Angel? She liked him, but he had no idea how to make it more than that. Was there anyone else, someone from the past who might have loved him, so he would not have to start from scratch?

He searched back over the years, recalling his relationships with women. Plenty of whores. He needed to bed women, that was his wiring.

But love was another matter. You could learn to do without it. He had not wanted love of any kind. Not since Sarge. And he didn’t want it now, but that was beside the point. Point was, had any of those woman loved him?

He remembered Caitlin. Caitlin might have loved him.

Or maybe she’d just been grateful.

Jake was suddenly aware of his heartbeat, a quickening thump against his ribs. Grateful might be enough. I did it for her as much as for me, he thought, but she doesn’t know that, and it doesn’t change the fact that she owes me.

If she even remembers I exist.

Shaking off the defeatist thought, Jake rolled his eyes toward the phone, wondering for a second why his hand wasn’t reaching for it—

Paralyzed

And the blackness swooped in, covering him from mouth to toe, pushing him down into the bed as the voice sang in his mind, paralyzed... paralyzed...

*

Caitlin O’Shea lay in her bed, unable to sleep. The last John of the night was gone. Time to take care of herself, sleep, forget. But she could not sleep. She kept thinking about Jake.

She got up and went to the French doors, opening them. A soft breeze blew off the Atlantic, lifting the sheer curtains back against her breasts and thighs. Finding a thin film of sweat, they stuck, shroud-like. With a shudder, she brushed them off and stepped, naked, onto her balcony. She gazed at the dark moon and the three-quarter moon dangling over it. A short string of lights—a freighter—chugged along the horizon. Below her, the boardwalk was almost empty. Atlantic City was winding down for the night, heading for sleep.

What about Jake? Was he asleep?

Going back inside, she flipped on her bed lamp and pulled the Times from under the bed—the paper from the day it had happened. The attempted assassination of Senator Weingarten owned the front page, encircling a photo of Weingarten cowering on the platform, shielded by a New York State Trooper. Peripheral figures were blurry—people diving for cover. Looking at Weingarten’s fearful eyes, she felt a mixture of contempt and uneasiness. Whiny liked her to tie him up and talk dirty to him. The same Whiny who stood in line to support the war on drugs—every demagogue’s favorite—but didn’t give a damn if she snorted a line right in front of him. He’d like it less if he knew there was no way she could stomach him without it. But she never let that show. She was a professional.

Whiny wasn’t that different from everyone else. Contradiction was the norm in human beings. She knew that better than anyone. People thought they were consistent, but they weren’t. They gave to “Jerry’s kids” but passed the beggar on the street. Men who wouldn’t cheat at poker would cheat on their wives. When it came to good and bad, most people were part of each. In all her life, she’d met only one who was all bad.

And Jake had killed him.

At least she was pretty sure he had.

Caitlin closed her eyes, remembering the night. He’d called himself Mark Porter. A big man, handsome in a slightly unreal way. Square jaw, brilliant green eyes, wavy bond hair that never seemed out of place. Built like a ballet dancer with thick thighs, arms ropy with muscle, a gleaming, hairless chest.

The first time, she’d found him quite attractive. And the first few sessions, he’d been all right, just the occasional little bad omen—pinching a nipple, biting her shoulder too hard, ramming into her with extra force.

No problem. A lot of Johns liked it a little rough. But she was a class act, not some Times Square whore. With no pimp, she had to be extra careful. So, after he’d slapped her one night, she’d warned him: No rough stuff.

Caitlin remembered his cold smile.

The next time, he came in with a dozen roses. While she was putting them in a vase, he hit her from behind.

She woke up naked, her mouth taped shut, and her hands and feet tied to the bed posts. Mark Porter, or whatever his real name was, sat beside the bed, watching her.

Her head ached horribly. Nausea swept her. She forced it back with a fierce effort, terrified she would choke if she vomited into the tape. Fighting for calmness, she focused her mind. How do I stop this?

Porter leaned forward and smiled at her. He held up something for her to see. A knife with a small, triangular blade, the type artists used to cut mats.

“Do you think I could kill you with this?” he said.

She tried to scream. The tape held it back, smothering it down to a muffled bleat. She yanked against the ropes. They held her tight, biting into her wrists.

“The blade is only an inch long,” Porter said reflectively. “Of course, if I make a cross cut beneath your breastbone, the round handle will slide through and I can get to work on your heart. But don’t worry, that won’t be for quite a while.”

She’d known at once he was serious; she was going to die.

Porter set the blade against her nipple. She could feel its razor sharpness. She screamed into the tape and bucked against the headboard.

The door to her bedroom swung open.

Astonishment swept Porter’s face. He turned, rising, and she saw someone coming at him.

Jake!

Caitlin drew a deep rapturous breath through her nose. For a moment the room swam, darkening at the edges.

As if in a dream, she saw Porter lunge at Jake. Jake slipped to one side, catching his wrist, twisting it up behind his back. The knife clattered to the floor. Jake spun him around. Porter swung at him. Jake ducked and hit him in the nose with the palm of his hand. Porter dropped to his knees, holding his nose as blood leaked between his fingers.

Jake picked up the knife and cut the ropes on her wrists and ankles. She ripped off the gag as he turned back to Porter. Thank God Jake had shown up early. What a beautiful sight he was, standing over Porter, gazing down at him. The look on his face was strange, though. Not angry, not anything. He looked like he was watching a dull TV show and thinking about something else.

“I wasn’t going to hurt her,” Porter whined. “It was just a game.”

“You lying fuck!” Caitlin cried. “You were going to kill me.”

Rage filled her. She sprang from the bed and rushed Porter, kicking him, pounding him with her fists. He cowered, as if afraid to resist.

After a minute, she felt Jake’s hands on her, pulling her off.

“Go sit on the bed,” he said.

She did.

“Get up,” Jake said to Porter.

“What are you going to do?” Porter said in a whipped voice. The change in him was amazing.

“Nothing. I’m just going to see you out.”

Porter looked up at Jake for a moment. Gradually, the fear left his face, replaced by a sly calculation. “You’re her pimp?” Porter said.

“You got it,” Jake said agreeably. “And your time is up for tonight.”

Porter stood, pulling on his clothes. She could see his confidence returning. Confusion filled her. Was Jake just going to let him go?

Porter walked over to her and Jake let him. “This isn’t over, bitch,” he whispered.

But it was. Jake walked out with him and she never saw Porter again. Jake didn’t come back that night. Later, she asked him what he’d done to Porter. All Jake would say was, “We had a talk. He won’t be back.”

Caitlin shivered. She picked up the newspaper again and paged to Jake’s photo—the one from his security guard badge. The single column of print beneath it was a side bar to the main story. It told how Mr. Jake Nacht, an innocent bystander staying at the same hotel as the assassin, had been mistakenly shot by an overzealous police detective.

Caitlin looked at the face in the picture. Nothing about it to draw attention. The eyes were mild, the mouth relaxed. His thick, blond hair, looking gray in the black and white photo, was neatly combed. He wore a plain uniform shirt. Looked just like a security man, placid, a little dull.

The photo lied. In person, you saw Jake’s edge, the intelligence in his eyes, the underlying power of the man, quiet and controlled, that made him so attractive in a scary way.

“It was you, wasn’t it,” she whispered, still gazing at the photo. “You killed Porter and you tried to kill Whiny. They shot you, and then you fooled them into thinking it was the wrong man.”

She put the paper down, thinking about Jake lying in the hospital bed, paralyzed for life. Did he have anyone to come see him at the hospital? He’d never talked about a family. He wasn’t married—at least that was what he’d told her.

I spent a lot of time with you, she thought. And I barely knew you. She felt a surprising pressure of tears. You saved my life, Jake. And I haven’t even been to see you.

A sudden resolve filled her. The hospital was only a couple hours drive from here. It was long past visiting hours, but she could get around that. She could put on the nurse’s uniform that she used with the Johns who liked “hospital" sex. Jake was probably sleeping, but it wouldn’t hurt to wake him up. He must have a lot of time to sleep nowadays.

*

Jake smelled her perfume—Poison. He’d bought her a bottle once at Saks. He felt a sense of wonder, turning as she stepped to the bedside. In the dark, he could not make out her face, but he knew it was her.

“You must be psychic,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

“Really?” she said softly.

“Step back into the light from the hall,” he said.

She did, and he saw that she was wearing a nurse’s uniform. “Clever.”

“I should have come sooner,” she said.

He heard the strain in her voice. Shock at seeing him like this? No, he looked normal enough, no scars on his face, no burn marks, just good old Jake lying still. What then? Guilt?

“Can I take your hand?” she said.

“Go ahead.”

She reached down below his chin. He felt nothing in his fingers, but he remembered. Her hands were very soft, the hands of a casino “honey bee”—though she was probably making more than a hundred bucks a trick by now.

“We always did meet at night, didn’t we?” Jake said.

“Why did you stop coming to see me?” Caitlin asked.

Jake looked at her dark silhouette, wondering what to tell her. That she had become uncomfortable. That her questions about Porter, about his own life, despite their casualness, had become too insistent?

“You were always too classy for me,” he said. “A girl from Vassar with a security guard who dropped out of high school.”

“Jake, don’t con me. Did you get tired of me?”

“You’re beautiful, Caitlin. You know that.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“My turn to ask you something. Why did you come tonight?”

“I thought you might, for the first time in your life, need me.”

“I do.”

She bent over and kissed him on the lips, a slow lingering kiss. He tried to return it, the way he used to, but his jaw seemed stiff, his lips made suddenly of stone. She pulled away. “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. It’s the only thing I have to give you.”

“No it’s not.”

“What can I do? Name it.”

Jake hesitated. He was still hooked up to monitors. If she held a pillow over his face, the nurses would get here before he died. If she unplugged the monitor, same thing. Maybe she could make it out of the hospital before the nurses got to the room.

“Did anyone see you come in?”

“Sure,” she said. “The guard in the lobby, a nurse on the elevator. But it’s all right. They just think I’m another nurse.”

Jake’s heart sank. Even if she got out, they’d remember her—the beautiful nurse no one had seen here before. He had planned enough hits to know a crash-and-burn when he saw one. The guard and the nurse on the elevator would sit down with a police artist. He was still enough of a celebrity that Caitlin’s indentikit picture would make the papers.

POLICE VICTIM MURDERED IN

HOSPITAL BY MYSTERY WOMAN.

Too many people who didn’t give a damn about Caitlin O’Shea knew her face intimately. One of her Johns who’d paid her for “nursey” sex would recognize the police drawing and freak. All it would take was an anonymous phone tip to the cops.

No, even if Caitlin could be persuaded to kill him, it couldn’t be tonight. He needed time to think, to come up with a way to convince her and a plan that would protect her. The next time she came to visit him, he’d be ready.

The thing to do now was to remind her of what they’d had and hope it was enough—would be enough.

“You said I could do something for you,” Caitlin prodded.

“You can tell me something. How did you... feel about me?”

He sensed surprise in her hesitation.

“What is this, Jake? I used to try and tell you how I felt, and you’d never let me.”

Jake remembered the first few times. During the sex she’d start moaning, “Oh, baby, I love it, you’re so good,” so on, and he’d made her stop. He was there to buy sex, not lies. A simple deal, all the cards on the table, no deception. He’d had enough deception from Sarge to last him a lifetime.

“I’m letting you tell me now,” he said.

She eyed him. “OK. At first, you mystified me. So polite. So respectful. Most men can’t do that. They have to despise me, especially afterward. You never did. I liked that, very much. I liked your sense of humor. I liked it when you bought me things. Then, after you saved me from that guy Porter...”

“Caitlin,” Jake said.

She gazed at him. “What?”

He felt the words on his tongue, an inch from coming out. He could ask it of her, ask her to do it right now. She had a chance to get away with it. And he needed it so much.

“Jake.” She smoothed his forehead. Her hand was as cool and soft as he remembered. “Poor Jake. Are you asking if I loved you? Of course I loved you, silly man.”

“Don’t con me, Caitlin.”

She stood there a long time, her hand resting lightly on his forehead.

“All right, Jake,” she said softly. “I wish I could be the whore with the heart of gold. But what I do changes a woman. Maybe we’re already changed before we go into the life. Whatever, I don’t know what love is. I know I need men to adore me. They don’t, of course. They only adore my body. But I’m not so good at the distinction. When I look in a mirror, I don’t see my brain, I see what men see, what they desire...” She trailed off. “I liked you Jake,” she said at last. “I liked you best, and that’s no lie. If I’d been a different woman, maybe I could’ve loved you. And if you had been a different man, maybe you could even have loved me.”

Jake said nothing. What was there to say?

“Can you still get hard?”

“No.”

Jake felt her hand lift from his forehead, saw rather than felt it slide down across his blanketed chest toward his groin.

“Don’t,” he said. “For both our sakes, don’t.”

“I’m sorry, Jake. Really sorry.” She leaned over and kissed his forehead. “I’ll come see you again.”

“Good,” he said.

But he knew she wouldn’t.

 

 

11

THE PROMISE

 

OCTOBER:

Jake walked through the forest. A vague anxiety gripped him. His right hand dangled at his side. He could feel the stock of the Mauser against his palm, the weight of the pistol dragging at the tendons in his arm. Looking up, he glimpsed patches of ultramarine sky through the leafy treetops. The dense color hurt his eyes, buzzing on his retinas like the vibrations of a dentist’s drill. He dropped his gaze but could not draw the ground into focus either. Dark leaves blurred around his ankles, dragging at his feet as he tried to slog through. The air stung his lungs with the smell of burning.

“Jake,” said a voice ahead of him.

Jake dropped into a crouch. He fought the unnatural weight of the Mauser, dragging it up into firing position.

“Going to get you, boy.” The voice was harsh, mocking.

Jake sighted along the short barrel at a bush straight ahead. The voice seemed to be coming from there. He tried to squeeze the trigger, but it had rusted solid.

“Come on, Jake, what are you waiting for, you limp-dick pussy? Couldn’t even get it up for that whore last night.”

Jake felt a terrible tightness in his throat. “Sarge?”

“Who else would be out here with you? You lost, boy? I see you plain as day. Got you right in my sights. You ain’t doin' so well, are you.”

“No,” Jake said.

“What’s the story?”

“Shoot me, Sarge,” Jake pleaded. “I’m paralyzed, see?” He dangled his arm for Sarge to see, letting the Mauser swing back and forth like a pendulum. He threw down the pistol. “Shoot me. I don’t want to live.”

“You’re pitiful.” Sarge emerged from the bushes and Jake gasped in shock at the blood-soaked apparition. Bullet holes stitched Sarge’s camouflage uniform and puckered the blood-drenched skin of his forehead. “You killed me, don’t you remember? I was the only friend you had.”

Jake swallowed. “You weren’t my friend.”

“Not your friend?” Sarge rolled his eyes at the dark heavens. “I took you in when no one else would have you. I let you share in the most important thing in my life. I taught you. I held back my anger when you screwed up and praised you when you did well. I was the first man in your pathetic no-account life to show an interest in you, to treat you with respect. I gave your life purpose. And you say I wasn’t your friend?”

Jake’s head ached. He couldn’t think. “You betrayed me.”

“Bullshit.”

“You made me kill you.”

“The hell I did. I was only testing you. Shooting blanks. And you failed the test. Was it really so easy to believe I could turn on you? Me, Sarge—your father, your best friend in all the world?”

Jake stared at Sarge, horrified. Shooting blanks? No, that couldn’t be right. Hadn’t he felt the bullet tear through the leaves next to his head? Or had he only dreamed that in the years since?

“You would’ve killed me.”

Sarge shook his grotesque, bloodied head sadly. Then he wasn’t Sarge any more, he was Richard Porter. One of his eyes was missing where the 9mm slug had entered. Jake’s face prickled with anxiety. Caitlin would be safe now, but he was in immediate danger. He must get Porter into the trunk of his car before someone came down the alley. He could not seem to get a proper hold on the body. It kept slipping from his grasp. It was hideously heavy.

“Jake, Jake,” said a woman’s voice behind him.

Shocked, he tried to turn, but someone was holding him.

“Jake, wake up.”

He opened his eyes. Angel gazed down at him. Her hands gripped his shoulders. He took a slow, deep breath.

“You were having a nightmare,” Angel said. “Look at you, you’re covered with sweat.”

She went into the bathroom and returned with the basin and washcloth. Gently, she sponged off his forehead and face. The water felt cool and good, pulling him clear of the dream’s lingering dread.

She looked beautiful. Her soft brown hair shone in a flood of morning sunlight. The scatter of freckles across the tops of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose made him think of a fawn he’d seen once out in the Pine Barrens. She looked so healthy, so alive that it made his breath catch in his chest. He felt suddenly mortified. Had Angel heard him moaning, crying out?

He mustered a quizzical smile. “What makes you think I was dreaming?”

“I watched your eyes.”

Jake tried to dredge up what she meant. How could she have seen his eyes? Had they been open? The idea sent a chill through him.

“You know,” Angel said with a trace of impatience, “that bump the cornea makes under the eyelid. People look around when they dream. You can see the bumps sliding back and forth, like they’re watching a tennis match.”

It sank in then that she must have been standing at his bedside, watching him sleep. Why would she do that?

“All right,” he said, “but what makes you think it was a nightmare?”

“A guess,” she said dryly. “I have good news.”

“You’re going to transplant my brain into Arnold Schwarzenegger’s body.”

She held the washrag threateningly over his face as if she were about to squeeze it out.

“Be serious, will you? What I want to tell you is you’re ready for physical therapy.”

“Great. Roll me over and I’ll do pushups with my lips.”

“With your mouth, I do believe you could do it. But maybe we should begin with something a little less strenuous, like your fingers. Start trying to get some feeling back into them.”

Jake thought of Fredo’s smug face, centered in the cross hairs, his finger curling on the trigger. Great. But who was going to prop him up and hold his arms?

“In most quadriplegics,” Angel said, “there’s some sense of touch left in the hands. Researchers have been using a biofeedback device to teach some paralyzed men to recover feeling there. We’ve put together our own version of one of the same machines...”

“Angel, wait. I don’t want to start rehab.”

“Well, we could put it off a few days, I suppose.”

“I don’t want it, period.”

She gazed at him. “This is the part where you tell me you don’t want to go on living, right?”

He said nothing, unnerved by her swift jump ahead. This conversation was an inch from going out of control. The plan was to make her love him, then ask her to kill him.

“Jake,” she said softly, “a third of all quadriplegics try to commit suicide at some point. If that’s what you’re feeling, don’t be afraid to say it.”

He was afraid to say it. And not just because it might prevent her from loving him enough for him to use her. He realized with a shock that he cared what she thought of him.

Jake felt a dull alarm. That was no good, no good at all.

“You can’t move your body,” she said—

Jake’s knee jumped in one of the spastic twitches. “Except for that.”

“Except for that. But you still have your mind. Your thoughts, your dreams, your imagination...”

“I was never much for sitting around thinking,” Jake said.

Angel gazed at him. “Then you must have hated your job.”

It took him a moment to realize she was talking about his false identity, Jake Nacht the security guard.

“All those nights sitting around in a warehouse guard shack,” Angel prompted, “and you’re telling me you didn’t think? What did you do?”

“I walked around a lot.” It sounded lame, even to him.

“Come on, you must have read books, right? Or imagined you were someplace else, doing something exciting?”

“That’s different,” Jake said. “When the shift was over, I could go out and do whatever I’d been thinking about.”

“What sort of things did you do?”

Jake did not like the direction the conversation was taking. He did not want to go on inventing a life that never had been to explain the one he no longer wanted.

“From the start,” Angel said, “I’ve had trouble imagining you as a security guard. You’re much too bright.”

“Yes ma’am, that’s me, a real rocket scientist.”

A corner of Angel’s mouth turned up. “Don’t try to hoodwink me, Jake. I’ve heard every con there is, from the tooth fairy to the bogeyman. My first day in school I got in trouble because one of my sisters had told me to be sure and ask the teacher for my masturbation papers. When I was four, my brother told me if I put a leg out of bed before morning, the crocodiles underneath would bite it.”

“You mean that’s not true?”

She smiled. “You think you can put me off the point by joking? You’re not lazy. You’re depressed. You hide it beautifully, and Lord, I do admire that, but if I were you, I’d be crying my eyes out, or cutting down everyone who tried to help me...”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Jake said. “Not you.”

She looked pleased. “I’d like to think you’re right. I’d want to be as brave as you’ve been. But brave or not, I’d be horribly depressed, I know I would. I might even want to die.”

“Aren’t you making my point for me?” Jake asked gently.

“That you should die? Not at all. You should be depressed and angry and scared and you should go on fighting it, with jokes or curses or whatever it takes, until you realize you still have a life.”

“I don’t want the life I still have.” Jake’s exasperation gave way to resignation. So much for plan A. She’d been too far ahead of him, anyway.

So what was plan B?

“You’re feeling sorry for yourself,” Angel said.

Jake considered it. Could she be right? Many times in his life he’d felt sorry for himself—when he was a kid, that is, before Sarge. He’d wanted a family, but no one had wanted him. It had hurt and he’d definitely felt sorry for himself. But as time went on he’d come close to not caring. If no one else gave a damn about him, why care about himself? Then Sarge took him in. Sarge cared. Because of it, he’d begun to believed he mattered again.

Then he’d found out why Sarge cared.

Since that day, he could not remember feeling anything for himself.

Which was not to say he felt nothing for life. Life was, for the most part, enjoyable. Or had been.

The satisfaction in doing well what you were good at. A cold beer in a dark place. The feel of a smooth gun stock in your hand. You didn’t have to feel anything for yourself to love the throb of an open road through your steering wheel at eighty miles an hour or the thrill of burying yourself in the electrifying softness of a woman. His body had come prewired for such pleasures, but now his wiring was cut. A bent cop’s bullet had destroyed the only feeling that mattered, putting all the things that kept life interesting forever beyond his reach. The only thing still within his grasp was his self, for which he felt nothing, one way or the other. Hell, if he could feel sorry for that self, as Angel was accusing, he might have a reason to live. But feeling nothing at all...

Better to die.

How could he make Angel understand that?

“Say something,” she said.

“Remember when you told me about what it was like to be the youngest?”

“Yes.”

“It made me understand why you wanted to be a cop. I need for you to understand me now, but I can’t think what to say that will make you. Nobody patted me on the head until it felt flat. But I have that same need you do to be in control.”

Angel lifted his hand from the blanket, studied it as if it were a map to his insides.

“I do understand, Jake—I wanted to be a cop so I could, yeah, give orders to someone for once in my life. That’s probably why I’m a nurse. And now you can’t even give orders to your hands—but just because I understand doesn’t mean I have to agree dying is the best way out. Your body has been changed. Now your mind has to change. It hasn’t caught up yet, but it will if you give it a chance. Maybe the way you were before, you didn’t have a body, you were your body. If this hadn’t happened, you could have gone your whole life believing that was all of it—or not thinking about it one way or the other. But this has happened. Now you’ll be forced to learn the difference between sensations and feelings, to realize you were never just your body. Your body was a tool of your mind, like a carpenter’s hammer. The hammer is broken, so now you have to go into a new line of work. That means retraining. Easy? No. But if you’ll make the effort, that new man will want to live.”

“You can’t know that.”

“And you can’t know he won’t unless you try.”

She looked up from his hand, challenging him with the beautiful, brown-gold gaze. He realized with admiration how intelligent this woman was. What she’d just said was so clear, so logical. The doctor—Graham—could never have put it so simply.

My body, the hammer, Jake thought. Not bad.

If it were possible to persuade me, Angel would be the one to do it...

He realized with a glimmer of excitement that she had just handed him a small opening. Could he make it wider?

“What if I try,” he said, “and I still want to die?”

“We’ll talk about that then.”

“Let’s talk about it now.”

“You can’t project yourself that far now. It’s no use talking about it. If you try for a year, and then you still want to discuss it, we will. I promise.”

“That’s not good enough, Angel. You want me to try. The way I feel right now, make it worth my while. I will try—but only if we make an agreement right now.”

She said nothing; her gaze stayed on his face.

“I will try my best for the next two weeks. I swear to you that I will give it everything I’ve got. If, at the end of that time, I still want to die, you will help me.”

Angel paled. “Two weeks! That’s ridiculous. You— “

“A month, then.”

“A year.”

I’ve got her! Jake thought, but kept his face impassive. “Two months.”

She stood and stalked to the end of the room and back. “Jake, I’m not going to kill you. No way.”

“Angel, if we don’t make a deal now, I’m going to give all my attention to dying. And I will make it, I promise you that. I have friends. I’ll find someone, some way. You can’t stop that.” He put absolute confidence in his voice, even though he knew it would not be so easy to find someone, not nearly so easy.

Friends...yeah, right. For too many years he had needed no one, and now that’s exactly what he had.

“The only thing you can decide,” he went on, “is whether I’ll try—with genuine effort—to do things your way. I’ll do it, give it all I’ve got, if you’ll have the courage to help me if you turn out to be wrong.”

“I’m not wrong,” she said.

“Then you have no problem.”

She paced again, to the wall and back. He saw a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead. “Six months,” she said.

“Four. I’ll do everything you say. I’ll never slack off. If I do, you’re off the hook. If I don’t, and I still want to die, you’ll do what has to be done. We’ll make it so no one can guess you helped me.”

“Jake—“

“Otherwise, I start working on my friends.”

“Four months. You do everything I say? No slacking?”

“I swear it.”

“And I’m the one who says whether you’ve lived up to your end?”

Jake hesitated. “All right.”

Angel stared at him. “Deal.”

Jake wanted to take her hand. He settled for smiling at her. For the first time since he’d awakened in the hospital, he felt a measure of hope. Four months was a long time. But he’d make it, day by day, week by week. He’d sweat it out.

And then Angel would kill him.

 

 

12

ANGEL

 

Angel yearned for intermission. Time seemed to be slowing, the universe congealing around her. She was conscious of William’s arm pressing against hers. Carnegie Hall’s graceful white balconies curved away from her on either side, converging again on the glowing stage, where a little orchestra played on and on.

And on.

The best word she could think of for Bach was busy—too many tunes going at once. The harpsichord player was pounding awfully hard for such a tinkle of sound. The violinists sawed in earnest unison, but the beat seemed out of synch with their jerking bows, kind of like a Japanese movie where the actor’s lips kept on moving after the English stopped.

Just try Bach, William had said. After you’ve heard Bach, you’ll see why baroque is better than classical.

And here she’d thought baroque was classical.

Angel wished William’s boss, Senator Harrison, had not insisted on sitting behind them in the box. He’d joked that they wouldn’t be able to see over his head—which was true enough. But the thought that the Senator could see William snuggling up to her made her a bit uncomfortable tonight. Strange.

Angel imagined what it would have been like to sit this close to Jake. The arm would have felt harder against her. William’s was soft, but what could you expect from a Senate staffer? When she’d visited him in Washington, he’d introduced her to a couple of the other guys in his office. Both of them looked soft despite the padded shoulders of their designer sportcoats. They were pale as the white rats on Uncle’s Joe’s research study—and not half so cute.

Hill rats...

At least William was cute—better than cute, he was drop dead handsome. And to be fair, it was pretty hard to pick up a tan sitting in front of computer screens under fluorescent lights all day and half the night doing the nation’s business. As for muscles, you didn’t get those writing speeches. Apparently, a lot more words than weights were lifted under the dome of the U.S. capitol.

Even after weeks in the hospital, Jake was still tanned.

Thinking about the deal she’d made with him, Angel felt a pulse of dread in her stomach. What would her former nursing instructors say if they knew she’d agreed to snuff a patient? Of course, she was positive Jake wouldn’t hold her to it. He’d been working hard for two weeks now, doing everything she asked, really throwing himself into it. He seemed to have an excellent attitude. People with excellent attitudes didn’t want to die.

So why did it keep nagging at her?

Because the key word was “seemed.” Underneath that excellent-seeming attitude, she couldn’t tell what Jake Nacht was really thinking.

Angel tried to reassure herself. Even if he didn’t yet want to live, he would by the end of the four months. And if he didn’t, it would be because he’d stopped trying. So it was a safe bet either way. Perfectly safe.

And besides, what was she supposed to have done? To try, a person had to have hope, or at least motivation. When she’d agreed to the deal, the only motivation Jake had had was his desire to die. So she’d had to go with that, harness it. Anything to get him moving.

And what if he tries real hard, gives it everything he’s got, and at the end of four months says, OK, Angel, now kill me?

I’ll tell him the deal is off, Angel thought.

The piece ended and everyone clapped. A few people yelled. Angel took her cue from William, clapping crisply the way he did. His face was alight with pleasure. Say this for him, he wasn’t faking. He really did like this Bach stuff. His enthusiasm pleased her. It wasn’t often he dropped that grave and superior mask of his. She wished he’d give a little yell, too. It would be good for him. Watching him now, she could almost imagine him as a little boy, grinning as he rode his bike with no hands. She wished she could like Bach too, so that she could share his pleasure.

Soon William would ask her to marry him, she was pretty sure of that. Lately, in her daily phone confabs with one or another of her sisters, subject number one was whether William had popped the question yet. Clearly, they all thought she’d be crazy to turn him down. Even Uncle Joe liked him. Until a few weeks ago, she’d had no doubt she’d marry William if he asked. After all, William Fitzpatrick III was intelligent, handsome and caring. Senate staffer was an important and powerful job—William was Senator Harrison’s point man on world hunger. You had to be impressed with that.

It was just that she and William didn’t seem to share many things. He was serious and she liked to joke; he dreaded hospitals, where she spent half her waking life. He liked Bach and she liked Eric Clapton. What about their wedding music? Meet in the middle? Bach, Eric... Bacharach!

The orchestra started sawing and tinkling again—apparently their last effort had fallen short of intermission. Angel resisted the urge to squirm. Lord, what these people needed was a couple of saxes—or some drums. To keep her sanity, she thought about later, when William would take her home. It still felt a little funny when he walked into her apartment ahead of her with that proprietary air, as if it were really his place and she the guest. Not that Angel had a problem with him living in. It had just naturally evolved that he’d stay with her whenever he was in New York. So far, it had been nice having William around. Of course, he never stayed long enough to wear out his welcome—just the odd weekend and an occasional rare week of leave.

Tonight, they’d go back and he’d carefully take off his tux. He’d kiss her a few times and then hustle her into bed. He’d make love quickly, uttering no sound, keeping his eyes closed, as if he thought she’d be offended for him to look at her.

Jake...Jake would look.

She pictured him lying beside her, running a hand over her stomach up to her breasts, his eyes hungry for her. Her skin warmed just thinking about it. So strange that she could think of Jake this way. She’d worked with a lot of paralyzed men, some of them as handsome as Jake, but she’d never fantasized making love to them. Knowing they couldn’t get it up would make her pity them, and she tried to stay away from pity. But somehow, even lying on his back unable to move, Jake Nacht did not inspire pity. She sensed something about him, an aura of suppressed power. Even in paralysis he seemed just a bit... dangerous, and she had to admit it excited her.

Somewhere in his past he had walked through fire. She was sure of it. But whatever it was, he kept it hidden. What was his secret? Had his whole family been killed in a car crash? Or maybe, instead of being a security guard, he was FBI or CIA, doing something so classified he could never talk about it to anyone. Maybe it was a woman. Surely a guy like Jake had been in love. Had it had ended tragically, his wife kidnapped by terrorists then killed before he could save her? Angel wished she knew. Someday, she would. She’d find out, she had to. He fascinated her—

Watch it!

With an effort, she got a grip on herself. She was Jake’s nurse, not his confidante or lover. Her job was to make him try, to rehabilitate him to the fullest extent possible. She was good at her job and she would do it and not think about what might have been. When the four months were up, Jake would realize he could live. She would marry William and go on to other patients. With all the money Jake would no doubt get from the city, he’d hire someone to look after him every day. He could get a place overlooking Central Park. He could tilt his bed up and watch the leaves turn in the fall, watch the ice skaters in the winter. He could read, watch television...

Angel felt a knot in her throat. Not pity, but dread. Somehow, she just couldn’t see Jake doing those things. What she could see was Jake, at the end of four months, asking her to kill him. She kept seeing it over and over.

She had made a very dangerous deal.

She thought about Uncle Joe’s studies with the rats. Maybe something would happen in the next four months, even a small break in the long succession of failures. Jake didn’t know that the soft-spoken balding guy who came around to examine him every day wasn’t just any neurosurgeon, that the slight air of distraction hid a tightly-focused mind, and the subject of that focus was nothing less than curing paralysis.

Uncle Joe had a strict rule of not bringing up his research to his patients. So far, no researcher had been able to effectively regenerate the spinal cord, and until someone did, he did not want to hold out false hope. If anyone could do it, Dr. Joseph Graham would be the one, Angel felt sure.

But it was a very big if.

“May I get you a champagne?” William asked.

Angel realized the orchestra had stopped playing. Everyone was standing, filing from their rows. Intermission—finally.

“Do they have anything stronger?” she asked.

*

Angel followed William into her apartment, wondering why she felt so cross. After all, the part of the concert following the intermission had been mercifully shorter. William had even let her lead him out during the encore so they could get a cab.

And now he would want to make love.

“Do you want some wine?” she asked, heading for the fridge.

“I want some Angel.” He was already standing beside the bedroom door, leaning on the jamb. He did look handsome in his tux. He loosened his tie and grinned evilly at her. She felt a faint prickle of desire. But she poured herself a glass of chardonnay before following him into the bedroom. By the time she got there, he had his coat off.

An impulse seized her. “Put it back on,” she said.

William gave her a perplexed look.

“Let’s make love with your tux on,” she said. “You can just pull your zipper down. I’ll slide my dress up and sit on the window sill.”

He gave her a tolerant smile. Taking everything off but his undershirt, he folded the tux carefully, just like always. She thought of asking him to undress her, but she didn’t want to see the tolerant smile again, so she did it herself and slid between the sheets. William turned the light out before crawling in beside her, but enough glow from the city came through the window for her to see that his eyes were already closed. Angel closed hers too, and imagined William was Jake. She felt guilty about that... but for once, she came before William.

Afterward, when he was asleep, Angel gently eased his now-leaden hand from her thigh. Tuning out his soft snores, she wondered if she should break Uncle Joe’s rule and tell Jake about his attending’s spinal cord research.

She knew most of what there was to know about it, having put in several hours a day in Uncle Joe’s lab. The latest set of rodent trials had been running for over a year; she’d done the anesthesia on each rat, made daily observations and kept the protocols straight. On the plus side, the approach was highly promising in theory. But so far the rats themselves had not provided the slightest reason to hope. Uncle Joe’s three previous studies had ended in failure. However good the theory, she hadn’t seen any evidence yet to indicate this time would be different.

No, the rule was a good one. Jake was not the type to trust in theories, and even if she did succeed in raising his hopes, what would happen when those hopes began to fade? He’d be more depressed than before, and in the bargain would lose trust in her. That trust was all that was keeping him going, and she must do nothing to undermine it. All the rehab in the world could not restore Jake’s spinal cord, and he knew that, but the commitment he was pouring into the effort could regenerate his severed will to live.

And she must see that it did, because if Jake kept on giving it his best, and the four months ended, and he still wanted to die, could she betray his trust? Could she really look him in the eye and tell him the deal was off?

 

 

13

WORKING

 

NOVEMBER

As he was about to sign onto the Internet, Jake felt a warning prickle at the nape of his neck. Keeping the “stick” firmly gripped in his teeth, he rolled his head to the side—winning back that simple ability had added a whole new dimension to his existence—half expecting to see Angel standing beside the bed. But no, the room was empty.

Just a touch of paranoia—Angel never sneaked up on him.

Morning light poured through the window, an amber sea teeming with dust mote fish. A section of the wall blazed in the sunlight, releasing the faint, fruity smell of paint. Out in the hall, where his hearing liked to go without him, the last of the breakfast trays trundled away on creaking carts.

Angel couldn’t sneak up on me if she tried, Jake told himself. No one else walks quite like her...

He closed his eyes, strangely weighed down by the thought. He knew the light, crisp tread of her feet, yes, and the smell of her skin, her laugh from far down the hall, the whisper of her nylons against each other as she moved around his bed, like another man might know the downy feel of her cheek, the contours of her lips—

Jake’s jaws ached suddenly. Easing his grip on the stick, he let the tip settle against the sheet. The important thing, the thing he should be thinking about, was that, even though Angel wouldn’t sneak up on him, she was surely aware by now of how much time he was logging on the computer. She’d promised that no one would monitor his screen from another station, but she had other ways to keep track. Nurses and aides darted in and out all day. Asking to have his privacy curtain drawn didn’t help—light from the screen gave the curtains a blue flush, especially at night, and they could probably hear the stick tapping out in the hall. And Dr. Graham, popping in at unpredictable moments, had seen him working on the computer several times.

An odd duck, Graham. He’d pick up a hand and bend it back and forth. Can you feel this, Mr. Nacht? No. This? No. Never called him Jake, never much expression on the guy’s face. Dr. Graham did not particularly like him, that was clear. Or maybe he was just one of those guys with no personality. Sometimes there’d be a look of speculation, almost greed, in his gaze.

Like I’m the goose that might lay the golden egg, Jake thought. Other times, he treats me like a side of beef.

Not yesterday, though. Graham had seemed to be really paying attention, the “golden egg” look staying on his face for the whole visit.

What’s he up to?

Jake hated mysteries, had learned the hard way how much it could cost if you didn’t figure out what was really going on inside people. But he couldn’t begin to guess what movie was playing inside Graham.

Hell with that. What mattered was that Graham not pop in when he was surfing the wrong part of the net. Fine for the nurses and Graham to see him using the computer. And by all means let them tell Angel. She’d feel good about that—more evidence he was trying.

As long as Angel didn’t know what he was trying.

He couldn’t blow it now. Nine weeks gone; he was more than halfway to his goal. Another six and he’d be out of here, away from the ripe paint smell, the floating dust motes, the eternal, fixed-camera view of the world he was coming to loathe with an aching, helpless desperation.

Gripping the stick firmly between his teeth, Jake tapped keys, trying to get to the right section of the net’s bulletin board. Instead, he found himself stumbling through the day’s news summaries. Baseball scores, stock prices, politics…

Frustrated, he poked with the stick, trying to remember the command he wanted. As the screen continued stubbornly to scroll through the news, a familiar name leapt out at him. Of its own accord, the stick froze the screen on a story in today’s New York Times:

WEINGARTEN BLAMES NRA

Jake felt a sudden burning itch along the nape of his neck where the bullet had plowed in. Anything Whiny said had to be bullshit and he was not about to waste his time on it...

On the other hand, he had nothing but time.

Jake scanned the article—Senator Weingarten theorizing to the Times reporter that the hysteria fostered by the NRA over anti-gun legislation was responsible for the attempt on his life two months ago. “The gun nuts know I’m their fiercest enemy,” Senator Weingarten said. “They wanted to silence me. They sense a wavering on the part of some people. I’m just one senator, a public servant, and yet, if they could shut me up, maybe the gun lobby in this country could get a better foothold. But the assassination attempt hasn’t intimidated me one bit. I’ll go on fighting crime, and I’ll do it just as I always have: not by trampling the public’s right to privacy and free speech, but by taking the guns off the streets.”

Yeah, Jake thought dryly. Whiny has seen the light. Whiny is back in line.

Thanks to me, Jake thought.

Fury surged through him, so strong he could almost feel it lifting him from the bed. He embraced the rage, clenching his teeth, feeding it with images of Fredo’s smug face.

He imagined leaping from the bed, running down the hospital corridor to get a gun and kill them all, starting with Fredo. Jake could almost feel the tiles slapping his bare feet with cool, stinging blows, doctors and nurses turning, astonished at this miracle. In his mind, he ran past them, clinging to the hem of his rage, knowing if he lost it even for a second he’d slump to the floor in a helpless tangle, his arms and legs useless again...

Drawing a deep breath around the stick, Jake let go of the fantasy. Hate was powerful, maybe the most powerful thing in the world, but it could not raise him off this bed, any more than happy thoughts could make Peter Pan fly.

Jake steadied the stick with his teeth and put it back to work, poking keys with slow deliberation until finally he made it into the section of the Internet called “writer’s corner.”

Too bad Dr. Kevorkian didn’t have a home page. Hey, Dr. K. I need a consult. Stat.

Signing in, he started tapping out the message he had composed in his mind during the night:

Am writing a medical thriller. Need the nane (backspace, backspace) n-a-m-e of a poison that causes death from heart failure. Must be undetectable at autopsy—

Jake froze, hearing the familiar energetic tread.

“Ready to work?”

Angel, already through the door—he’d become so engrossed he hadn’t processed the sounds! Jake stabbed desperately at the key on the top row, missed, tried again. Sweat stung his eyes, making the screen blur.

“What’s that?” Angel asked.

Panic closed his throat. If she saw his message, she’d understand in a flash and two months of daily effort on her useless damned hand “exercises” would be down the drain.

“Hey, I like it.”

Relief swept him. He’d managed to switch screens. He gazed at the monitor with her as she read the quote: “It’s easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than to think yourself into a new way of acting.” She eyed him speculatively. “Very Zen. Where did you find it?”

“Just something I read in a psychology book once.” He kept his voice offhand, not overdoing it. She was smart, and if she thought he was conning her, she’d be doubly on her guard.

“You’re sweating,” Angel observed.

“It’s hot in here,” he growled. “All that damned sunlight.” He knew he was permitted a little grumpiness—in fact, she seemed almost to encourage it sometimes. Seeing her face relax a fraction, he knew it had been the right touch. The little victory failed to cheer him. Though manipulating her was a game he had to win, he found no pleasure in it.

Maneuvering the stick, Jake exited from the network, turned the power off and carefully deposited the stick into the slot in the foam cube so that he could reach the bit again when he was ready.

“You’re getting good with that.”

“I’d prefer opposable thumbs, but I’ll take whatever I can get.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“So what’s today’s shocking episode?”

“Same as yesterday’s, I’m afraid.”

Turning to the door, she waved the tech in. He pushed the cart with the video monitor and biofeedback machine into the room. Angel kept up a patter while the tech, a big guy named Mustaf, slipped the electrodes on. Today Jake imagined that he could feel the cuffs sliding over his fingers. Or maybe it wasn’t imagination. Angel had said he could expect some returning sensation. As usual, Mustaf didn’t look at him or speak to him, hooking him up with quick efficiency and heading out with a wave at Angel.

“Is he that talkative with the other patients?” Jake asked.

“Actually, he’s usually pretty friendly. I think he may be a little afraid of you.”

“Of me or of being paralyzed?”

“Of you. You feel helpless, I know. But that’s not the way people see you—”

“Give me a break, Angel—” Careful. Jake gave her a strained smile to cover his irritation. “In case you haven’t noticed, I can’t make a fist. And I couldn’t have whipped Mustaf on my best day.”

Her face remained serious. “He doesn’t think you’re going to sit up and punch him, but he sees something in you that scares him.”

Jake couldn’t quite read her tone. What was this? That’s not the way people see you. “Are you talking about Mustaf or yourself?”

Angel returned his gaze. “I’m a little afraid of you, yes.”

Jake felt a sudden stillness inside himself, deeper even than the paralysis. He’d had this same eerie feeling once before, when a target had turned and looked straight at him through the scope. Even though he’d known the man wasn’t really seeing him four hundred yards away, it had made his spine crawl. And now Angel seemed to be looking at him, really looking, seeing inside to what he really was. That must never happen. If she knew he had killed seventeen men, she might run from this room and never come back. He needed her right here every day for the next two months. Their deal had to go through, it had to.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Angel said. “I like you. I enjoy being with you, talking to you. You have a good sense of humor, great courage. You’ve been working hard, doing everything I’ve asked of you and more. But a part of you is always hidden, and that’s the part that scares me. I don’t know what that part could do, what it’s capable of.”

Jake’s anxiety eased, but only a little. “I’m just a guy, a security guard who thought a weekend in the big city would be fun.”

“Are you snowing me, Jake? Is your trying all an act?”

Jake went cold. “That’s not fair, Angel. Trying and acting are the same. Remember those words on the computer screen? Well, I’m trying to act my way into a new way of thinking—that’s what our deal was all about. So don’t ask me if I’m acting. Yes, I’m acting—I’m doing. I promised I’d try hard and I’m trying hard.”

“Are you making it, Jake?”

He could hear the fear in her voice now. What should he say? Not yes, or she’d throw it back at him later. But he couldn’t say no, either. The deal was four months, and Angel wouldn’t kill him a day sooner—if she killed him at all.

“I don’t know,” Jake lied.

“It’s just that I get the feeling your main worry in life is whether I think you’re trying, and if that’s true, then it’s because you still want to die. You’ve made up your mind and nobody or nothing can change it.”

“You’re thinking too much, Angel. Stop analyzing and just work with me, all right?”

“At the beginning, when the shock and panic were at their worst, I could understand you thinking you wanted to die. But since we made our... deal, I haven’t seen the slightest sign of depression or anger in you— ”

“Do you want me to brood? Fly into rages?”

“It might be just what you need. Our deal is that you try, not that you hide all your feelings. That’s not human, Jake. Anger and depression are normal for quadriplegics after the shock and panic wear off. But not you. You look and sound so strong. You give every appearance of a man enjoying life again. If you are, great. But if you’re not—and I honestly can’t tell which it is—that kind of control, that airtight capacity to deceive, is... scary.”

“Angel, please. I’m not trying to deceive you.”

She held his gaze a moment, then her eyes faltered away. He felt the guilt again, and it annoyed him. What, after all, did he owe this woman? She had no right to expect him not to deceive her, if that’s what it took. It was his life he was fighting for—the right to end it, which any normal person with the use of his arms and legs had. If she couldn’t understand that, it was her problem.

All the same, he wished he could take her hand.

“Angel,” he said gently, “You’re getting way ahead of yourself. This is today. We’ve got almost two months before either of us has to face whether I’ll want to die. Neither of us knows the answer to that question today, and it’s pointless to jaw about it.”

She gazed at him a moment longer, then nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Let’s get to work.”

As she plugged the leads trailing from his fingers into the biofeedback machine, Jake assessed what had just happened. Kind of encouraging, actually. If she didn’t mean to keep up her end of the deal, why worry about whether he was still determined to die?

Angel squeezed dollops of electrode paste onto the back of his neck and slipped the disc-type leads into place between his skin and the pillow. She flipped on the monitor and a green line snaked across the screen. At once, small tremors spiked along the line—evidence, according to Angel, of neurological activity in the spinal cord below the point where the bullet had gone in, small firings from the nerves in his neck, mostly. Angel adjusted some knobs below the screen, tuning out the impulses until the line went smooth.

“Ready?”

“Ready,” Jake answered, watching the screen.

The green line took a sudden jump, and he knew she’d applied current to one of his fingers. Clearly, the nerve impulse was making it past the rupture in his spinal cord to his brain. The cord had been severed almost through, but the ten percent that remained, holding the cord together, did provide a small passageway for impulses. So why couldn’t he feel the shocks? When he’d asked Angel, she’d given him a confusing little lecture about the brain. Apparently, the brain itself had no pain receptors. What it did do was interpret the pain registered in other parts of the body. The monitor proved that at least some of the shock impulses from his fingers were making it to the brain, but apparently not in enough force for the brain to notice and interpret them.

No pain, no gain.

“Did you feel that?” Angel asked hopefully.

“Nope.”

“Let’s try the middle finger.”

“Hit me.”

The line on the monitor jumped; Jake felt a very slight tingle in the middle finger of his right hand. “Hey!” he said. “I felt that!” Hope rushed through him. Three weeks on the new machine, and this was the first time he’d felt anything...

And then he reminded himself that it didn’t matter.

Angel grinned at him. “Wonderful! OK, again.”

“Yes! Just a very faint tingle.” He kept enthusiasm in his voice.

“Try and increase it. Watch the screen.”

He stared at the screen, for the first time in weeks not having to fake his concentration. He watched the little spikes, timing them. He focused his mind on making the rhythmic spikes bigger. Nothing happened.

“Again.”

He gritted his teeth, willing the spike to broaden. Come on, he thought. For Angel.

The spike edged up another millimeter. He could feel the tingle a little more strongly.

“Jake, that’s terrific. You’re doing it!”

He grinned back at her.

They kept at it for another thirty minutes. He got the spike to broaden by almost three millimeters.

“All right,” Angel said. “That’s enough for today.” She gazed at him, her eyes luminous. She was so happy, it made him feel good, too. She slid the tray table with his computer back into place and stood a moment, looking down at him. “You did fantastic,” she said.

“I did, didn’t I?”

She picked up his hand and kissed it. He kept the smile on his face until Angel had left the room.

Nice as it had been to see her pleasure, this changed nothing. Jake knew from reading the computer’s on-line encyclopedia that the most he could hope for from this new biofeedback training was to be able to feel pressure exerted on his fingers or palms; to be aware when someone moved his hand without having to look at it. Possibly, he might be able to move his fingers just a bit.

Maybe, if Fredo ever came to see him, he could flash him the bird.

Jake carefully clamped the bit of the computer stick between his teeth. Turning the machine on again, he pecked his way back to the Internet, the “Writers Corner— ”

And there it was, beside his sign-on code: Someone had answered his query already. A guy who’d researched plants in the Amazon for a pharmaceutical company. Claviceps cyanidus: Death by heart attack. The right dosage was all but untraceable at autopsy. It would be a painful death. But Jake was not afraid of pain.

At least he would go out feeling something.

 

 

14

GREEN MONSTER

 

“So how’s it hangin,’ Sport?”

Waiting for Angel to come in and start his biofeedback session, Jake felt a second of shocked disorientation at the voice. In the next instant, rage swept him. Fredo! The son of a bitch actually had the gall to come here.

Jake rolled his head over. Fredo was holding a huge vase of red roses. His eyes held a mixture of fascination and revulsion; his olive complexion had lightened a shade.

“Come to take my place?”

“Now Jakey, don’t be bitter.”

Jakey? Fredo had never called him that when he could move. Never would have dared.

He set the flowers on top of the computer monitor. Jake envisioned the water slopping into the computer, cutting off his most important link with the outside world. The thought sent a cool flood of alarm through him.

“Not there,” he said as casually as he could. “Over on the window sill.”

Fredo waited long enough to show Jake he would put the flowers where he damn well pleased, then moved them to the bed table.

“What’s this?” he asked, poking at the snake-like hump of the catheter line under the covers.

“When you’re paralyzed,” Jake said, “you don’t make piss anymore, so they have to pump it into you from that bag there.”

“No shit?” Fredo’s eyes narrowed as he realized Jake was pulling his chain. “Real smartass, aren’t you? So if you’re so fuckin’ smart, how come I’m standing here and you’re lying there like a carp somebody dragged up on the beach?”

“You tell me.”

Jake could not take his eyes off Fredo. The tailored Armani suit didn’t conceal the fact that he’d got a bit plumper around the middle since their last meeting. His dark hair arched straight back in stiff, shiny grooves left by the broad-toothed comb Fredo favored. Jake could smell his hair spray, a tacky-sweet odor that he now realized had always clung to Fredo. His sense of smell had become much more powerful during the months he’d lain here. But not powerful enough to snort a bullet into Fredo’s low forehead.

“You want I should tell you?” Fredo asked. “OK, I’ll tell you. I think you got careless, old buddy.”

Jake was suddenly conscious of the bit of his computer stick lying on its pad inches from his cheek. Could he get Fredo to bend over the bed? Then grab the stick, jab it into one of those black button eyes. A scream from Fredo would be the sweetest sound in all the world.

And then Fredo would kill him with the hogleg he always packed under his coat.

Jake imagined Angel coming in to start his rehab session, finding him with a hole blown in his forehead and a greasy guy in an Armani suit with a thick gold chain around his neck staggering around bleeding from one eye. A great picture, except for one thing. Angel was already a minute or two overdue for the session, a rarity. She was probably coming down the hall right now. If so, she would hear the shot and come running, and Fredo would have to kill her too.

Hell with it. He’d never get the stick into Fredo’s eye anyway. That was just dreaming. He gave Fredo a cool, inquisitive look.

“How’s your boy Danziger? Bet he misses his job on the police force. Who’d you get to replace him?”

A disbelieving smile twisted Fredo’s lips. He leaned over the bed. Jake saw rather than felt him prodding his body through the covers. His teeth clenched in outrage. What did the slimy bastard think he was—?

A wire. The idiot thought he was wired!

Jake almost laughed. “I never realized you felt this way about me, Fredo. Are you one of those fancy boys?”

Fredo jerked his hands back and glared at him.

“Usually the DA only wires guys who can walk,” Jake said. “When you’re paralyzed, they just hide the microphone in your hospital room and wait for the sleazebags to come to you.”

Fredo glanced around before he could stop himself. “Asshole,” he growled. Fredo had never been good at snappy repartee.

“Red roses,” Jake said, glancing at the vase on the bed table. “I’m touched.”

“Mr. C wants you to know his regard for you and the way you’ve taken this,” Fredo said. His voice was flat and emotionless. He’d been sent to say it, but he didn’t have to sound like he meant it.

Interesting, Jake thought. Mr. C is thanking me for not ratting him out. What am I supposed to do now, thank Mr. C for sparing my life?

“Tell Mr. C I’m a standup guy,” Jake said.

“Is that supposed to be funny? The way I hear it, you won’t be standing up no more.”

“Any more.”

“Huh?”

“You’ve got to watch those double negatives, Fredo. Unless you mean to say that I will be standing up.”

Fredo’s lip curled. “You may be flat on your ass, but you still look down on me, don’t you. You always did think I was too dumb to pick that up, but I knew how you felt from day one. I’m some dumb Guinea and you’re what, Joe Camel? Let you in on a little secret, Jakey: you were never anything but a common whacker, dime a dozen, selling yourself like a gigolo. And you know what I like, Jake? After all your whacking off, you just got five times as much for being the whackee. You ain’t a gigolo no more. You’re a whore. Maybe you should of tried it sooner.”

Five times more? What was Fredo talking about? Ah, the settlement, right. The papers had picked it up two or three days ago. The five-point-two million the city was giving him not to take it to court where only God knew what a jury might award him. He wouldn’t even have to go to court. Whoopee.

“So what you going to do with all that money?” Fredo asked. “You going to hire some girls to come in here? Yeah, have some girls in, give you a nice rubdown. But you wouldn’t feel a thing, would you? Hmmmm.” Fredo made a show of thinking. “Maybe you could buy one of those yachts, get a crew, have ’em sail you around the world. They could put you in the dinky and row you to shore, have a wheelchair waiting…”

Fredo droned on. Jake wished he’d finish gloating and get out. Angel would be hurrying in any second and he did not want Fredo to see her. He’ll leer at her, Jake thought. He’ll try and put a hand on her, and I won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.

What’ll she think of me?

Jake, I don’t understand. How did you come to know a slimeball like that? Why did you ever have anything to do with him?

Angel was no fool. Fredo had mob written all over him, wore it like a badge. When Angel was first put on my case, Jake remembered, she asked me, Did you shoot at Senator Weingarten? Fredo will bring back all of her suspicions.

Anxiety surged through him. He had to get Fredo out of here.

“...could hire a guy to move your arms and legs for you, “Fredo was saying. “Be the first paralyzed guy to dance the herky jerky.”

“Maybe I’ll hire someone to blow you away,” Jake said.

Fredo’s eyes narrowed again, then he smiled. “Right. Just dial up the yellow pages under whackers. I don’t know about piss, but they sure don’t have to put the shit back in you, do they?”

This time Jake said nothing. It was a close to a score as Fredo would ever come—the perfect motivation to walk out now, before Jake topped him again.

Sure enough, Fredo sauntered toward the door.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, Jakey.”

Jake focused all of his mind into the middle finger of his right hand, visualizing it lying there on the covers. Was it palm up? Jake rolled his head to peer down along his arm. His palm was up. Middle finger—just raise it up two inches. Come on, come on. He could almost feel the finger moving, rising. But his eyes told him otherwise. His hand lay limp and still on the blanket.

It didn’t matter. Fredo was gone.

Jake heard himself chuckling. A dry, terrible sound. He wanted to stop, but he was having trouble. He visualized Fredo’s face as seen through a Redfield variable power scope. Centering the cross hairs in the middle of his forehead, making an extra black eye there.

With an effort, Jake stopped. His throat burned. Pains shot up from his jaws to the side of his head. How had this curse fallen on him? To see Fredo only a few feet away, to have to exist on the same planet with him and not be able to kill him?

I need to die, he thought. I’ve got to die. Got to get out of here, just... get... out.

He lay for awhile, eyes closed, trying to empty himself of all feeling. Where the hell was Angel? He needed her. Focusing his mind on her, he felt calmness returning. She was the one bright thing in his life, the one thing he actually looked forward to each day. Angel had thrown herself into bringing him back, knowing it probably couldn’t work, but trying anyway. The way she talked to him, not just mindless inanities like the other nurses, but deep and straight from the shoulder, about whatever was on her mind—or his.

The way she looked at him.

Angel felt something for him. It was more than nurse and patient, more even than casual liking. He had never been so sure of anything. He almost wished she didn’t care about him. It would be easier for her to keep her end of the deal when the time came. And easier for her to forget what she’d done. He did not want her living with the guilt of killing a man who was totally dependent on her.

I asked her, Jake thought. I begged her.

But he knew it would haunt her anyway.

He ought to wish she did not care.

“Jake!”

He turned his head as she skirted his bed, smiling. Picking up his hand, she pressed her palm against his, watching his eyes to see if he felt it.

“Nothing,” he said. “Maybe you should get one of those handshake shockers like they sell in novelty shops...” He trailed off as she held her hand up and he saw the small round shocker in her palm. “That’s right,” he groaned, “break it to me gently.”

“It’s probably not working.” She inspected the gadget with a baleful eye.

He caught a sudden, crushed-grass whiff of chlorophyll. “You’re wearing different shoes.”

“Huh?” She looked down. “Oh, yeah. My running shoes. I was late, so I decided not to change.” She turned toward the door and motioned Mustaf in. The cart with the biofeedback machine rolled around the foot of the bed.

“For me?” Angel said.

Jake saw that she was looking at Fredo’s roses. His heart sank. Before, on the rare occasion he’d gotten flowers—that arrangement from his lawyer, and the ones Caitlin had sent after her visit—he’d given them to Angel right away. But these... he couldn’t. Not flowers that had had Fredo’s hands on them.

“I’d better not,” he said. “They’re from my boss, and he said he was coming back tomorrow.”

“Your boss?”

“Ex-boss.” He grinned, hoping it looked sincere. “Marsh Management in Patterson, New Jersey. Bernie Marsh. He’s in the city on business. You know, the guy whose buildings I used to guard...”

“They’re beautiful.”

Jake cringed inwardly as Angel leaned into the roses, inhaling. Mustaf moved his computer aside and started hooking up his fingers. For a second their eyes met and Jake glimpsed his disapproval. Mustaf must have a pretty good bullshit detector.

Angel flipped on the machine. “Today, let’s work on some of the other fingers,” she said as Mustaf walked out.

“I didn’t know you ran,” Jake said.

“What? Oh, the shoes. Actually, I don’t. I just wear them instead of tennis shoes when I’m doing something outside.”

He noticed that the freckles stood out on her face. Her skin had the dark, honeyed tone of someone who has just spent a few hours in the sun.

“Picnic?” he said. “In November?”

“Yup. It’s been a warm fall.”

Her gaze slid away and a sudden suspicion struck him.

Angel had been with a guy.

Well, of course she had. No ring on her finger, but a woman so beautiful, so wonderful, must date. She’d never mentioned it, but it had to be. Jake tried to let the idea die stillborn, but instead it sank its vicious little milk teeth into him.

The thought of Angel having a boyfriend had crossed his mind before, but had never seemed real, as though this room were the only place in the universe for everyone else as well as for him. But Angel had an existence—a life—outside of here. She had other people to talk to. Other men’s hearts swelled under that direct, gold-flecked gaze; other men felt the intoxicating fullness of her attention.

Men who could touch her.

The thought became a jab of pain beneath Jake’s breastbone, as though he had taken the drug he’d researched on the Internet. A close botanical relative of Claviceps cyanidus, only not from the Amazon, but from the dark jungles of his own mind.

“OK,” Angel said. “Ready?”

He realized she’d put the electrode discs under his neck already. He had a dim, echoic awareness of her lifting his head, of the cool slide of electrode paste over his skin. He turned his head toward the monitor screen where the flat green line jumped, then subsided. “Fire away.”

The line jumped.

“Which finger?”

“What?”

“Come on, Jake. Which finger did I tickle?”

“Sorry. Hit me again.”

The line jumped. “Middle?” he asked.

She sighed. “I told you, we’re going to work on some of the others today.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” He squinted at the screen. “Go.”

The line jumped. He felt nothing. He shook his head.

“That’s all right,” Angel soothed. “Let’s take a minute.” She gazed at him. “You all right?”

“Sure.” He smelled the grass again...crushed grass. It must have gotten on the sides of her shoes. He pictured her sitting down, her feet out to the side, blanket spread on the ground. In the picture, she was not alone, but the man with her refused to come into focus.

“Central Park?” he asked.

She nodded. “Over by the sheep meadow.”

“Hope you didn’t have mutton.”

She smiled. “Fried chicken and potato salad. It’s required.”

He studied her. This time she did not let her gaze slide away, though she looked like she wanted to. The silence grew and took on weight, like a stalactite hovering over them. If it fell, it might skewer them both.

“OK,” he said, “I’m ready.”

“No you’re not. What’s on your mind, Jake?”

“Nothing. What do you mean?”

She blushed slightly, the fresh tan darkening. “You just seem preoccupied.”

A queasy feeling spread through him. She wasn’t going to risk being wrong, but she wasn’t going to let it go, either. And she wasn’t wrong. “I guess you didn’t go by yourself.”

“No-o-o-o.”

“What’s his name?”

“William Fitzpatrick. He’s an aide to Senator Harrison.”

Jake looked at her, trying to think of something to say. Her reticence told him everything. This was not just some casual date, this guy was important to her. They’d managed to tiptoe around the subject, but she’d gotten grass on her feet and here they were. He wished he could put his hands under the covers and clench his fists, do something to draw off the pressure that swelled in his throat, making him want to shout at her. This was crazy. What was happening to him?

“An aide to Senator Harrison,” he repeated. His voice felt like it was being pushed out through a sieve.

“Yes,” she said brightly. “He gets up to New York every so often. He never gets any sun, so I made him go out to Central Park with me today. He got the sunburn of his life...” She trailed off, shrugging an eyebrow.

“So, are you engaged or what?”

“Not officially.”

Not officially. Jake felt the weight of dead air pressing on his chest. The light seemed to drain from the room. “Would I like him?” That was insipid. And I’ll get an insipid answer.

But he didn’t. Angel cocked her head, looking past him for a minute. “I don’t know.”

“William Fitzpatrick.”

“William Fitzpatrick.”

I wouldn’t like him, Jake thought. I don’t like him. I’ve never met him, and I’m never going to. I never had a chance with Angel—didn’t want a chance. I want her to kill me, for Christ’s sake. So how could I be feeling this way?

He mustered a smile. “Well, William is lucky to have you.” It sounded self-pitying. He suppressed a groan. “Let’s try with the machine again.”

“Jake…okay.” She drew herself up with a sigh, obviously knowing, as he did, that there was no point letting this get any more absurdly excruciating than it already was.

“Ready?”

“Go.”

He felt nothing in his fingers. He wished he could feel nothing anywhere.

After she was gone, Jake booted up the computer and signed on. He stared at the quill and inkwell icon for “Writer’s Corner,” where he had learned about Claviceps cyanidus, the Amazonian poison that stopped the heart.

What had him stumped was how to get some.

He’d been letting that question slide, but it was time to get serious. Because, in four more weeks, Angel was going to kill him.

At least he didn’t have to worry that it would ruin the rest of her life. William Fitzpatrick, aide to Senator Harrison, would be there to take her mind off it.

 

 

15

DOING IT

 

JANUARY

Knowing it was the last night of his life, Jake felt a vast relief. He had expected excitement, but no, only relief. Sweet oblivion was rolling toward him like a soft, black cloud.

Lying with the utter stillness he hated, Jake watched shadows slide across the curtains at the end of his room as people passed in the halls. Around nine, he heard the squeak of a wheelchair tooling past his door. He realized he’d been hearing it every night lately about this time—one of the ward’s paraplegics making his restless rounds up and down the hall. Jake wondered how the man—if it was a man—felt. Probably devastated that he had lost the use of his legs. No doubt he cursed the fate that had confined him to a chair, forcing him to strain and pull just to make headway. He’d have calluses on his fingers from pulling at the wheel. Right now, his biceps probably burned with exertion.

The squeaks stopped suddenly. Jake caught a whiff of sweat, strong and a little greasy—so it was a man in the chair. Jake pictured the guy pausing to reach up and wipe the sweat from his face. What a simple act. How many times had he done that himself over the years, never thinking about it, certainly finding no pleasure in it? Did the guy out there in that chair think, well, at least I can still use my arms?

No. He didn’t think that. He thought, Damn this chair.

Jake realized he was smiling into the darkness. Smiling though he didn’t think it was funny... something he’d been doing more and more. He did not like it, but he couldn’t seem to stop. Well, tomorrow, when Angel kept her promise, he’d stop.

His sense of smell awakened, Jake picked up other odors—sweet Keri Lotion from the next room; a hint of perfume, strong, like old women wear. A trace of cigarette smoke prickled high up in his nose, probably some orderly snatching a few puffs in the stairwell. The tobacco smell made him think of Mrs. Nacht. He pictured her sitting silently on her rocker, smoking, pausing every now and then to lean forward and cough.

Mom.

An arid chuckle escaped him.

And there was Sarge, sitting on the big kitchen chair, cleaning and oiling the Garand M1C with the Lyman Alaskan two-point-two hunting scope. Jake could almost smell the thin scent of the gun oil. Come over here, son, I want to show you something.

Why did he call me son? Jake wondered.

He felt a sudden, burning impatience. Come on, morning. Come on, Angel.

He tried to picture what was going to happen, how it would go down when he asked Angel to keep her promise. The picture would not come clear and that made him uneasy. Maybe his old pal paranoia was trying to tell him something—that Angel wasn’t going to show. She’d know what day it was as surely as he did.

What if she took off and he never saw her again? Wouldn’t be a damned thing he could do about it. Running away from her promise would make her feel like a rat, but she’d probably prefer that to murder.

She’ll be here, Jake told himself. She’s not the type to run.

He went over in his mind what he would ask her to do. Claviceps cyanidus, the heart poison was out. He’d never had a chance of getting any. Even if the pharmaceutical employee on the computer net wasn’t snowing him, even if the man had his own private stock, he’d never mail a lethal poison, untraceable at autopsy, to some stranger just because the guy claimed to be a writer doing research. Working on the problem had helped pass time, but that was all.

Still, in the end, the computer had provided the solution. Jake felt himself grinning again. He sucked his lips in and bit down on them, holding them in place until the urge passed.

The shadows stopped moving on his curtains. The hospital settled into the deep silence of the late shift. Jake thought about Fredo... Mr. C... Danziger. The familiar anger came, enough to warm him, make him wish he could push back the sheet. The smell of gun oil came to him from memory again, fragrant as incense. Odd, how a word like incense could have two conflicting meanings. Incense the noun—with a tip of the hat to the computer’s CD ROM dictionary—was something the priest burned to give scented smoke during worship. But as a verb, incense meant ‘to anger.’ How many people knew that? Or that the term for his former profession— “assassin”—derived from the word hashish, because in the eleventh century the followers of Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah used to smoke the stuff before making murder raids on their enemies? I’ve learned a lot in the past four months, Jake thought.

But not how to stay alive.

After a long time, he dozed.

Clinking dishes woke him—the nurse’s aide with his breakfast. Bright sunlight streamed through now open curtains.

A nice day for dying.

Jake’s first impulse was to tell the aide to take the breakfast away. He wasn’t hungry. Then he realized eating might give him an edge. When the current coursed through his body, it might make him vomit. Then, even if the shock didn’t kill him, he could choke to death.

He let the aide feed him every spoonful of the oatmeal, every bite of toast. He sucked up eight ounces of orange juice and eight of milk through the bent straw. He tasted nothing. As usual, the aide chatted with him. He calibrated his responses carefully. Later, with her perceptions colored by knowing he was dead, she would say, “Come to think of it, Mr. Nacht did seem depressed this morning.”

But he mustn’t make her think it now or they might watch him more closely.

After she was gone, Jake turned on the computer and stared at the screen. He gripped the stick in his mouth and rotated it between his teeth until the notch he’d chewed near the end was facing down. He let the notch settle onto the slight metal lip on the tray stand. By working the stick backward into his mouth, he was able to drag the heavy tray an inch closer. He heard its casters squeak under the bed. Angling the stick slightly, he clamped down with his teeth and scrabbled at the lip of the tray again. He drew it in another half inch toward him. Sweat started up at his hairline.

After fifteen more minutes, the stick was at an extreme angle. The tray had moved three inches, but, with the stick angled so sharply to the side, he could no longer get enough purchase. He’d practiced for two weeks, and this was still the best he could do. Though he’d expected it, he felt a weary disappointment. No way around it—he needed Angel. She’d have to put the computer monitor next to his face and make it look like he’d pulled it down there.

No problem, Jake told himself. The thought that she might have helped me will never enter their minds. To suspect that, someone would have to lie here and try it himself, day after day, for as long as I did. And no one’s going to do that. They’re going to accept the obvious, that the severely depressed and determined Jake Nacht was able to build up enough strength in his jaws to pull the tray to him and drag the computer monitor over. And fate made it fall so that the power cord was close enough to his face to bite.

He’d wait until Angel was gone to chew through the cord, of course.

One more big shock. Did you feel that, Jake?

Not for long.

Jake allowed himself to relax. The sweat had barely dried on his face when Angel came in.

“How are you doing this morning?” Her smile was forced, but he thought he detected something else in her expression too—a suppressed excitement. Odd.

“I’m ready to go.” His voice sounded oddly hoarse.

She gazed at him, the beautiful, gold-flecked eyes turning shiny.

Damn, Jake thought. He rolled his head away, so he wouldn’t have to see her cry.

The bed sagged a little under his shoulder as Angel settled on the edge beside him, and he could not stop himself from looking at her again. “Would you say I’ve tried?”

She blinked and brushed a finger across the corner of one eye. “You know you have, Jake.”

And he realized it was true. Somewhere along the line, faking it had become really trying.

And still he could not move so much as his index finger.

“Angel, I’m sorry, but I want out.”

“No.”

He felt a cold rush of dread. “You can’t go back on your word.”

Tears began to roll down Angel’s face. He groaned, overwhelmed with misery, feeling like the world’s worst bastard. But he couldn’t stay trapped in this useless flesh just to keep a woman from crying.

“Come on, don’t do that. It’s wrong to be sad. You’ll be giving me what I want.”

Her tears increased, pouring down her cheeks. Her face was rigid and he knew she was battling for control. A woman like Angel didn’t cry easily. Her shoulders twitched with a suppressed sob.

“Oh, Jake. Is it so easy to think of leaving me? Don’t you feel anything for me?”

Jake stared at her, astonished. “Of course I do. Don’t you know that?”

Angel bit her lip and blotted gently at the tears. “What do I mean to you, Jake?”

He hesitated, unsure what she wanted. Months ago, he’d put the same question to Caitlin, and now Angel was bringing it back to him. Did she want him to say that he loved her? Didn’t she know he couldn’t love anyone? It was too late for that, had been for a long time.

But he did feel something. If he were a whole man, he would like to be with her every day. He would watch after her, keep her from harm. They would laugh and joke and do things together. He would get her anything she wanted that was within his power. When she got grass on her shoes at a picnic, it would be with him. But he did not love her. Love was not for Jake Nacht.

“Why are you so afraid?” she said softly. “I can say it, even if you can’t. I love you, Jake.”

Jake felt his heart race suddenly. He felt a powerful urge he’d schooled himself never to permit again—to jump up and cavort around the room. He groaned a second time, unable to help himself. This could not be. Angel in love with him was even more incomprehensible than him in love with Angel. How could she love a man who was bedridden, unable to move? He could never take her for a drive, never climb into bed with her, never hold her in his arms. How could she see him lying here day after day and not grasp that?

“What about your boyfriend?” he asked before he could stop himself. What did it matter? This could never be.

“What about him? I’ve dated lots of guys, Jake. None of them ever looked at me the way you do. None of them listened to me the way you do. You can tell what I’m thinking, read what I’m feeling. Not only can you, you do it, all the time. Jake, a man isn’t a body. That’s just the wrappings. A man is what you find inside. And you are the man I want.”

“You’re just saying that so you won’t have to kill me.” Realizing what had just popped out of his mouth, Jake grinned despite himself.

Angel laughed, wiping at a tear.

Stop this, Jake thought. Now. You are not what she thinks she sees. You have killed seventeen men. And you want to kill three more. You fall asleep every night lining up their heads in the cross hairs of an imaginary rifle.

“If you knew the real me,” he said, “you wouldn’t love me.”

Angel gave him a knowing half smile, more enchanting than Mona Lisa’s. “I do know the real you. Whatever it is you think you’ve done that’s so terrible, those days are behind you.”

Right, Jake thought. I’m all done doing anything.

“Angel, it’s impossible. Love is a physical thing, too. And I can’t give you that.”

“Oh? You’ve still got a tongue, don’t you?

Jake felt himself blushing.

“Jake, you can give me physical love. But I can’t give it to you—not at this point, anyway. Is that the problem?”

“Don’t be silly— ”

“I am not being silly. Think about it. Have you had any... desire for me? Physical desire?”

Jake felt a horrible, gray dread settling over him. He would rather do anything than talk about this. But he could see she needed the answer.

“Angel, I don’t know how it is for a woman. But for a man, physical desire happens in two places at the same time—the head and... down there.” He motioned with his chin. “Have I wanted you? Yes. You’re so beautiful in every way, what man wouldn’t want you? But I want you the way a very old man would—with my memory. I remember how it felt to get hard for a woman. I could give you the words for it. But remembering and talking aren’t the same as feeling and doing.”

Jake stopped, seeing pity in her eyes. It galled him. He fought the urge to turn away again. He ached to die. Why couldn’t she understand that?

Just then, something she’d said registered: Not at this point, anyway.

He looked at her, frustrated. “Angel, you’ve got to face it. My condition is permanent...” He trailed off. She was smiling. Why was she smiling?

“Maybe not,” she said.

“What do you mean, maybe not?” Jake felt an irrational surge of anger. “What the hell do you mean, maybe not?”

Angel got off the bed. “Wait here, Jake.”

“Is that supposed to be funny? Angel, come back here. Don’t you run out on me, damn it, you promised...” He realized she was gone. His heart was pounding again, thumping the mattress so hard that the bed trembled.

Maybe not.

Jake’s mind whirled.

Maybe not, maybe not, maybe not...

Angel walked back in. He saw that she was carrying a small box. A dusty, grain smell, not unpleasant, wafted ahead of her.

Angel opened the box and took out a white rat. “His name is Jake,” she said. “I named him that when he first came on the study.”

“What study?”

The rat squirmed out of her hand and ran up over her breast, perching on her shoulder. It nuzzled her ear. Jake found himself envying the rat.

“So what’s the plan?” he said. “You going to transplant my brain into Jake Junior’s body?”

Angel laughed. “Notice anything funny about the way he moves?”

With an effort, Jake controlled his impatience. “No. He pawed your breast and now he’s kissing your ear, which is just what I’d like to do. I’d say he has real good moves but needs a little polish in his manners. So what’s the point?”

“The point,” Angel said, “is that six weeks ago, Jake the rat couldn’t move anything but his whiskers. He had a ninety percent severance of his spinal cord. He was a ‘permanent, nonreversible’ quadriplegic.”

Jake felt a rush of vertigo, the bed seeming to spin beneath him as the world changed before his eyes. He locked his gaze on the rat, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. The bed stopped spinning, but now he seemed to float, an ecstatic sensation so alien it was almost frightening. After a second, he recognized the unfamiliar emotion: Joy!

“Angel...wait a minute now, are you... God, I can’t believe...”

“I’m not putting you on, Jake. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Jesus, Angel!” Shifting his gaze to her face, he was still hyper aware of the rat crawling along her shoulder. “What is this? You come in here knowing it’s day zero and let me go through my whole spiel about wanting to die. Then all that about leaving you and don’t I care anything for you? You cry, as if it were really going to be my last day on earth.”

“You mean you’ve changed your mind?” Angel asked innocently.

“Don’t change the subject!”

“I cried because you’ve been through so much. And I brought up... that other first, because I knew if I told you about the rat right away, I’d lose the chance to learn how you really feel about me.”

Jake tried to sort back through what he’d said to her. Had he told her he loved her or that he couldn’t love her? Whatever, it was gone—wiped out by the rat. There it sat on her shoulder, his salvation, grooming its whiskers with rapid but fussy motions of its tiny paws. It stopped and peered back at him. He felt the most incredible, warm lightness flowing through him. His heart was floating on a lake of gold. He wanted to grab Angel and kiss her. Hell, he’d even kiss the rat. “You want to know how I feel about you?” he asked. “I love you, Angel, of course I love you!”

She gave him a half-smile. “Sure, you say that now. If this works, you’re going to love everybody for a while.”

Not everybody, Jake thought. It took him a second to dredge Fredo’s face into his mind, center it in the cross hairs. No, think about Fredo later.

“Angela!”

Jake recognized the voice from the hallway, and then Dr. Graham hurried into his field of vision and snatched the rat from Angel’s shoulders, putting it quickly back in the box. He glared at her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m solving two problems at once,” Angel said.

Graham gave her a blank look. “Angela? You can’t just take a rat from the lab. When I saw one was missing, I was frantic.” He sounded incredulous and wounded.

Jake felt a deep inner satisfaction as the missing piece of the Dr. Graham puzzle dropped into place. The guy had been doing research on healing severed spinal cords. And he’d had a big success. That’s why he kept looking at me like I might be the goose that laid the golden egg, Jake thought.

He cleared his throat. “Good morning, Doctor. When can you operate?”

Graham’s eyes widened, then he frowned furiously at Angel. “You didn’t!”

“Don’t be mad, Uncle Joe. I had to.”

Uncle Joe? Jake thought. Christ, this woman is almost as good at keeping secrets as I am.

“What’s the problem, Doc? You’re a genius. You made the rat walk again. Now I’m volunteering.”

Dr. Graham stared at Jake with a mixture of dismay and greedy speculation so comical Jake had to laugh. Graham rubbed at his thinning hair, making it stand up.

“No. It’s out of the question. You have no idea what’s involved.” He shot Angel another black look. “How much have you told him?”

“Everything.”

“Mother of God!” Graham pulled at his hair, turned in a half circle, stared at the ceiling. He muttered under his breath. “If you weren’t my only sister’s daughter...”

Jake felt himself starting to bristle. He did not like the man’s tone with Angel. With an effort, he kept his voice calm.

“So, what’s the problem, Dr. Graham?”

“What’s the problem? What’s the problem? What isn’t the problem? This research has to be kept absolutely secret until I have a clear success. If this gets out— ”

“I know how to keep quiet.”

Graham eyed him, and Jake thought he saw distaste in the man’s eyes. “Do you? You’ve been practicing, have you?”

“Uncle.” Angel’s voice was low but sharp.

Jake sensed something passing between them. He still thinks I shot at Whiny! That’s why he looks at me sometimes like I’m something he picked up on the heel of his shoe. He and Angel have argued about it.

Graham looked at him again. “You’d better keep quiet about what you already know, or— ”

“Doctor, you don’t need to threaten me,” Jake said quietly. “In fact, it’s a bit unwise, don’t you think? If I were the sort to babble your secret, you’d be better off not insulting me.”

“I’m sorry,” Graham said, making an imperfect effort to sound it. “It’s just that it’s far, far too early for human trials. I explained that to Angel yesterday. Just because rat 23 has, for the moment, regained full mobility, doesn’t mean we’re home free. Some of the rats receiving the surgery have become psychotic. Others have suffered reversals. God knows how many other problems could crop up.”

“So how soon can we operate?”

Graham raised his hands and glared at the ceiling. “You’re not listening, man.”

Jake was momentarily too fascinated to answer. He would never have imagined that the cool, clinical Dr. Graham who looked spaced out half the time could become so agitated.

Graham drew a deep breath. “Let me try once more to explain it to you. I’m afraid Angel may have given you false hope, Mr. Nacht. Yes, this rat has regained full use of its limbs. Four others not only regained sensation and motion, they became psychotic. And we’ve had other, very bad outcomes. My grant is up for renewal, and NIH, while they are very excited about the few successes, know as I do that we are far from having a workable technique. In fact, they’ve told me they will only renew my grant if I bring in two of their own researchers.”

Graham tramped away from the bed to the window and glowered down at the parking lot.

Jake could see that he was seething. And he could understand why.

“You mean they’re blackmailing you into giving them a piece of the action?”

“Not at all,” Graham said without turning. But his tone made it clear that it was exactly what he did mean. “They... feel that they may be able to help work out the problems.”

“They think their boys are smarter than you, even though you’re the one who developed this.”

This time Graham said nothing.

Grinning, Angel flashed Jake the OK sign.

“Doctor, you say there have been some very bad outcomes. As bad as being paralyzed?”

“Worse,” Graham said in a low, tired voice.

“Excuse me, but I believe I’m in a better position to know that than you. You say some of the rats went psychotic. What does that mean?”

Graham turned back to face him. “They wandered around bumping into things. They bit at themselves. Some of them ran in circles until they fell down exhausted. It was clear that they had totally lost touch with reality.”

“Doc, would it surprise you to know that I have prayed a hundred times that I could lose touch with reality?”

“It would surprise me to know that you prayed.”

“Uncle— “

Jake shot Angel a look, quieting her.

“I’m sorry,” Graham said stiffly. “That was uncalled for.”

“No problem, Doc. But let me be sure I understand this...” Jake stopped as he saw Graham roll his eyes very quickly at the ceiling. Revelation number two: He not only thinks I might be a killer, he thinks I’m stupid. Jake was surprised to find that it did not make him angry. If the man could make him walk again, he could be forgiven absolutely anything.

“The rats that turned psychotic were totally paralyzed for how long before you did the surgery on them?”

“It varied,” Graham said. “From three or four weeks to three months.”

“How do you know they didn’t go psychotic while they were paralyzed? What does a rat that can’t move do to show it’s gone psychotic?”

Graham cocked his head. Suddenly, there was respect in his eyes. But he said, “If that were so, they should have recovered when their motion was restored— ”

“Bull. Doctor Graham, you are a genius. If this works out, you’re going to be one of the great men in history and the first thing I’m going to do after you operate is kiss your feet. But you don’t know word one about being paralyzed. I came this close to going insane—imagine I’m holding my hand up, Doc, and you can’t see daylight between my thumb and finger. For two solid months, the only thing I’ve wanted is to die. I laughed for no reason. I ground my teeth. I had out-of-body experiences, thinking I was floating in space. If I had to go on like this, I can tell you I’d definitely lose touch with reality. And once I did, even if I started walking again, if I realized it at all, I’d probably think it was part of the delusion and be afraid to go sane again.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” Graham said, “but you have to realize that the vast majority of quadriplegics do not go insane.”

“Again, how would you know? If you mean we don’t stagger down Broadway muttering to ourselves, you can only be right. But I believe I heard someone say that a third of us try to snuff ourselves. Being totally unable to move changes you, Doc—not just your body, your mind. And even if walking would put me right again, maybe it’s not so easy for a rat. Maybe with their tiny brains, what they went through while they were paralyzed was more irreversible than it would be with humans.”

Graham stared at him, almost smiling. “Mr. Nacht, you might have had a decent career in science.”

“Operate on me.”

“Damn it, man, you don’t understand. The FDA would never grant me approval to do surgery on humans at this point.”

“So don’t ask.”

“Ridiculous,” Graham sputtered. “I could be severely disciplined. I’d lose my funding for sure. Maybe even my license.”

“How does five point two million sound? Would that keep you going?”

Graham stared at him. “Five million?”

“OK, I’ll keep the two hundred thousand. I’m a rich man—or hadn’t you heard?”

“You would do that—fund my research?”

“I was thinking of using the money to help retire the federal deficit,” Jake said dryly, “but yes. Under the right circumstances, I think I could be talked into funding you instead.”

“The right circumstances...”

“First, we tell no one. If you get me moving again, I fake that I’m paralyzed until I’m discharged from the hospital and out of everyone’s sight.” Which I must do anyway. “If you don’t get me moving, same thing. No one ever knows what you did but you, me and Angel. Second, if it does somehow get out, and the FDA comes down on you, I take over your funding and you, pardon the expression, tell them to put it where the sun don’t shine. Third, I give you five million no matter what happens. But the bottom line is this, Doc. You’re going to move up from rats to me.”

Graham stared at him for a long time, but it was clear to Jake that he was seeing other things, winnowing through all the possible outcomes, probably imagining the fame, the glory that would be his down the line even though he couldn’t publicize Jake right away; the immediate disgrace if he was found out, the loss of funding, and then again, the five million.

“I’m sorry,” Graham said at last. “I just can’t risk it.”

 

 

16

UNDER THE KNIFE

 

Jake felt euphoric as Angel wheeled him toward Dr. Graham’s lab. If this worked he was going to dance for an entire night with Angel, dance until they both dropped, then lie on the floor wiggling his feet until he passed out.

I’m out of control, Jake thought.

He tried to focus on the warnings Angel and Dr. Graham had drummed into him for the past week: the surgery might not be a success; and even if it was, despite his smooth reasoning about the rats, it might indeed unbalance his mind.

So what? Nothing could be worse than what he’d gone through the past four months. The surgery might make him loco; not having the surgery would definitely blow his circuits.

Jake gazed at Angel’s beautiful face. It was tense with worry. The halls of the hospital receded endlessly behind her. They seemed to be filled to overflowing with people—especially doctors and other nurses. Angel kept saying hi, how’s it going, good morning Dr. this and Dr. that. Her voice sounded calm enough, almost normal, but Jake could tell she was rigid with anxiety. If anyone dreamed that she was wheeling him into Dr. Joseph Graham’s lab for surgery rather than just to have a look at his research, it would be the end for Graham.

Jake wondered exactly how Graham was justifying this to himself. It seemed clear he thought Jake was low-life scum, possibly the man who had shot at Senator Weingarten, but maybe that was a plus for him rather than a minus. Maybe in his own mind, Graham thought he would be operating on a convict—or someone who deserved to be a convict. If the operation went wrong, Jake Nacht would get what he deserved—continued punishment.

And if it succeeded?

Had Dr. Graham given any thought to the fact that he might be putting a hit man back out on the street? Maybe he’d decided, even if that was the result, the greater good made it all right. Graham seemed like a driven man, obsessed, completely myopic about what he did.

Obsessed, was something Jake understood. Because, if Dr. Graham succeeded today, the first thing Jake was going to do when he could walk again was go after Fredo, Mr. C. and Danziger—the goal he’d fallen asleep to and awakened with every day since his first in the hospital.

He imagined the look on Fredo’s face the second before the bullet plowed in.

Hey, Jakey, Jakey, you can walk! What the fuck is—Christ, don’t shoot—

Jake felt a jolt in his neck, saw a double door sliding along the side of the gurney. The doors flapped shut behind Angel, and she seemed to relax a bit. She turned and locked them behind her. Jake winked at her. She gave him a quick, nervous smile. Dr. Graham’s head floated into view. Apparently he’d already scrubbed for the surgery. He looked strange in the green cap and mask; his eyes seemed magnified. There was an odd light in them, like he’d taken speed.

“Are you clear on the arrangement?” Dr. Graham asked him.

“I’m clear.”

“The official story is, I’m checking you out today to a private clinic where you’ll undergo evaluation. That should give enough time for any adverse effects of surgery to recede. You must not, in any case, divulge that you came to this lab and underwent surgery.”

“I understand, Doctor.”

“I hope you do. I could be ruined. If I do restore movement, you might find it hard to fake paralysis, but it’s vital that you do. A lot of people have a general idea what my research is about. We must avoid any possibility of suspicion.”

“I couldn’t agree more, Doc.” Jake suppressed a smile. If Graham restored movement to him, he’d have his own very good reasons for pretending that he was still paralyzed.

Until the right moment came.

“You agree to all that?”

“I swear it,” Jake said gravely.

“Are you ready, then?”

“I’m beyond ready, Doctor.”

Graham’s mask billowed and Jake realized he’d blown out a huge breath. Graham nodded at Angel. She moved up beside Jake and he saw her lift his arm. She held a syringe up, giving him a quick look. “Just a barbiturate,” she said. “You don’t need to be knocked out.”

“Good.” Jake didn’t like the idea of going under anesthesia—counsel from his old pal paranoia.

“This won’t sting,” Angel said. “Are you sure you want to give up painless shots?”

“Very funny.”

She concentrated on his arm. A moment later, her face blurred a little. It seemed to swim in a golden haze. He smelled something wonderful. “Whazzat? Perfume?”

“No, that’s Betadine disinfectant,” Angel said. “Basically iodine.”

“Hah.” Jake thought that was quite funny.

“Now we’re going to roll you onto the operating table,” Graham said. “We’ll do our best not to jolt you—usually four people do this part.”

“I’m a bit shorthanded myself,” Jake said. He could not tell if Graham smiled.

“One, two, three,” Graham said, and the world spun around. Green floor tiles jittered in Jake’s vision, then steadied up. He felt a cushion against his chin. He gazed at the tiles. They were beautiful. Those barbiturates were all right. Fredo could walk right up and pop him, and he’d die grinning.

“It’ll be a few minutes,” Graham said. “Angel has to scrub in.”

Jake stared at the tiles.

“Now, you understand,” Graham said, “this isn’t just surgery. In fact, the surgical aspect of it is quite minor. I’m going to expose the point where your cord was cut, check the repair and then inject the site with fetal nerve tissue in saline solution. Then I’m going to patch over the cut made by the bullet with omentum, which is a tissue that normally drapes between the stomach and colon— ”

“Where’d you get it?”

“What?”

“Where’d you get the Oh Mentum. Did’ja have to ice someone?” Jesus, careful.

“What do you mean ice?”

“I mean keep it on ice after you cut it out of someone,” Jake said, trying to recover.

“Yes. The tissue is from a man who died in a car crash just this morning. He was an organ donor. The omentum contains various biochemicals that encourage blood vessels and nerves to grow...”

Jake let him ramble on. Graham was nervous; he needed to talk. Jake was nervous too. Talking about icing people. Christ. He made a mental note never to let anyone give him a barbiturate again.

“Ready,” said Angel’s voice.

Jake gazed at the tiles, woozily determined to keep his mouth shut. Minutes dragged by. Graham mumbled short, cryptic instructions to Angel. Jake heard the tinkle of metal on stainless steel, presumably the surgical instruments. This isn’t so bad, he thought—

And then he felt a blow to his spine. Hot pain speared through his back; he gritted his teeth, but instead of subsiding, the pain grew worse, building and building. Distantly, he heard someone scream and realized it was him. Everything went black.

*

He awoke to pain. He felt like his spine had been shattered and someone was dragging a rake along the splintered ends of bone and nerve. Groaning, he opened his eyes. Angel’s head hovered over him. Her face was a pale mask of concern. Graham’s face moved up beside Angel’s. His skin was the color of ash. He was no longer wearing his mask and cap.

“What happened?” Jake groaned.

“The operation is over,” Graham said. “You’re still in the lab. How do you feel?”

“Like someone’s practicing with ginsu knives on my back.”

“Dear God. I’m sorry. None of the rats reacted this way. But it may be a promising sign.” He nodded to Angel. Jake felt a numb pressure on his arm, then a flood of coolness. Almost at once, the pain subsided.

“Better now?” Angel asked.

“Much. There’s still some pain, but nothing I can’t handle.”

Angel and Graham exchanged glances.

“I just shot you up with a big dose of morphine,” Angel said. “It should last about four-to-six hours.”

“What did you mean by ‘a promising sign?’” Jake asked Graham.

“It means the sensory nerves in your spine are still functional. The motor ones should be too, but I can’t be sure.”

Jake felt the excitement returning. Of course! If he could feel pain, he could feel other things.

“When will we know?”

“When you can move one of your fingers.”

The room blurred around Graham’s face. His voice rolled on, but became meaningless babble. Darkness closed over Jake again.

*

The next time he woke up, he was in a different room. It looked like a hospital room, but Angel informed him he was now at Uncle Joe’s clinic in Brooklyn. He coasted in and out of sleep for two days, waking long enough for Angel to feed him. He’d ask Angel the time and day, then submerge again in the warm ocean of morphine.

He lost track of time.

He awoke again. His head was clearer and the pain was back. Rolling his head to the side, he saw Angel sleeping in a chair at the foot of his bed. A second later, agony flared in his spine, making him gasp. Apparently, rolling his head was no longer painless. He dug a hand into the sheet, fighting to keep from groaning—

Dug a hand into the sheet!

Jake gasped with shock and elation. The room spun around him, catching him up in a wave of giddiness. Jesus, his hand, he could feel his right hand groping away from him, clutching the edge of the bed! Pain was still there, but so what, Christ, so what? The pain would pass. He could move! Jake felt his face twisting in a savage grin.

I’m coming, Fredo.