“SO YOU FILED a complaint. So what’d you tell them?” Bunch, too, looked with professional interest at the red lump that swelled under the hair on the side of my head.
“Don’t touch it, Bunch!”
“It doesn’t feel sore to me.”
“It’s going to if you don’t leave it alone.” I sipped my coffee and let the hot liquid ease slowly across my tongue so it wouldn’t jar my head. It was sorer this morning than it had been last night when the police finally left and Mrs. Ottoboni stopped fussing with the ice bag and I could at last sink into bed. “I gave them a description, that’s all. They listed it as a mugging.”
“One of them said your name?”
“They knew who they were after. But the cops don’t need to know that.”
Bunch heaved off the corner of the desk. “The only toes we’ve stepped on lately have been Aegis’s.”
“That watchman got a good look at me and gave my description to the police. I suppose Leonard Kaffey recognized me.”
“So why didn’t Kaffey tell the cops who to look for?”
“That’s a good question. Why didn’t I tell the cops everything?”
“Because you’ve got something to hide.”
“And that sounds like a good answer.”
He thought a minute. “The connection with Haas?”
I made the mistake of nodding. “It could be. It seems a little over reactive, but that’s probably it.”
“Yeah. I don’t know about ‘over reactive,’ though—you figure both those projects together come close to a billion dollars, that’s a lot to protect.” The man’s weight made the floorboards squeak as he went to the window. “Still, I think that scumbag was just blowing smoke. I don’t think they’ve got the guts to try it again.” He came back to the desk and used the tip of his little finger to punch numbers into the telephone. “Lew? This is Bunch. Did you ever come up with anything on the corporation name I gave you—the Aegis Group?” He waited. “Yeah, that’s the names we got, too. They’re clean?” Bunch pulled the list of Aegis telephone numbers closer. “Here’s some more names from the same place; see if they connect with anything.” He read the list to Detective Lewellen who asked him to repeat a couple. “Yeah. I appreciate it, Lew.”
Hanging up the receiver, he told me, “All he had were the listed officers—Merrick and Kaffey—and nothing on them. He’s going to check out the others and get back to me.”
“What do you expect?”
“Probably not a damn thing. But it does cross my mind that an outfit that whistles up two-bit muscle like that might have some reason for needing it.” The man’s heavy shoulders rose and fell. “If your skull hadn’t got rattled, you might have thought of that yourself. Then again, probably not.”
“Whose skull got rattled?” Uncle Wyn let himself in without knocking. “Good morning, boys.”
“Hello, Mr. Kirk. Devlin here—your ever-loving nephew. He tried to beat up a couple of muggers last night.”
“Yeah? You all right? You hurt?”
“A couple of bumps and bruises, that’s all, Uncle.”
“So what happened?”
“Nothing much—a little scuffle.”
“I hope you got your licks in. Two of them, you say?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Bunch. “But they got away, so our hero here doesn’t get any medals.”
“Not too much sympathy, either, it sounds like. That’s a pretty bad bump. Have you seen a doctor?”
“No need to, Uncle. It’s not a concussion.”
“Now you’re talking like the man who catches bean-balls.”
“That was the safest place, Mr. Kirk. He’ll be all right.”
“I hope you boys know what you’re up to. I don’t want anything to happen to you, Dev.”
“That makes two of us, Uncle. I’m being careful.”
Uncle Wyn didn’t seem convinced, but he wouldn’t push it. He’d done his best to talk me out of this kind of work when Bunch and I first went to him for backing, and he hadn’t been successful then. “Well, I didn’t stop by to nag you about your health, though that might not be such a bad idea. It’s that Loomis guy. He gave me a call yesterday.”
“He wanted to invest a little? Get rich in the market?”
“Not likely. He asked if I knew anything about you working for a Mrs. Margaret Haas. I don’t. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell that bastard.”
“Why didn’t he ask you, Dev?” Bunch wanted to know.
“He already did. I told him as much as I wanted to.”
“I guess he thought I’d be glad to hear from him,” said Uncle Wyn. “I just thought you should know.”
For all that the man worried about my line of work, he got a vicarious thrill out of it, perhaps a faint echo of the competition and teamwork and excitement of his baseball days. Now he had brought information that might bear on a real case, and his voice held a note of pleased excitement.
“Thanks for telling us, Uncle Wyn. You want some coffee?”
“I’ll get it, son. You don’t look too full of piss and vinegar.”
“I’m okay.” And I really did feel better. Well enough, anyway, to be interested in the whys of Loomis’s roundabout way of finding out what I was up to. But I waited until Uncle Wyn had left before talking it over with Bunch.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me, either, Dev. And I don’t see why McAllister’s so worried about the widow Haas. And why he doesn’t ask you himself instead of getting Loomis to do it.”
“McAllister feels guilty about Haas. And he’s probably out of town; he spends half his life on airplanes. Besides, she was one of the professor’s graduate students a few years ago, so he’s interested too. What I really can’t understand is the urgency that would make him go to my uncle. I don’t think they’ve spoken since my father’s funeral. Uncle Wyn doesn’t like the man and hasn’t kept it a secret. For Loomis to ask a favor of him …”
“Maybe he didn’t have a choice. Maybe McAllister told him to do it. Loomis is always sucking up to the guy.” Bunch began unrolling the blueprints for the AeroLabs layout and anchored the corners of the stiff paper. “How about Mrs. Ottoboni? She settled down yet?”
“She brought me tea this morning. At six-thirty. She woke me up to tell me she was still too excited to sleep.”
“Oh, yeah? What is this thing you’ve got for widows, Dev?”
Loomis may have been worried about Margaret, but as far as I was concerned, the Haas case was dropped, and a good thing for a couple of reasons. The AeroLabs job had moved into the bidding phase and took up most of our time now, and there were inquiries from prospective clients that were serious enough to call for detailed cost estimates. I also had to rough out a contract for one prospect who wanted us to look into employee pilfering. But I did manage to see Margaret and each time was better; it was nice to discover the nuances to her beauty, moments when she thought she was unobserved and the light angled across the planes of her face to emphasize its symmetry and repose. And we always found more to talk about, the pleasure of discovering the world from each other’s perspective and of bringing our pasts together to enrich a present moment. I couldn’t list the topics we touched on—though they usually had something to do with people—and afterward I would find myself gazing into space and remembering a witty, precise observation she had made about someone. And being grateful that Bunch hadn’t seen that half-assed grin on my face. By now, both Austin and Shauna were calling me Dev and I’d taken them all to the Natural History Museum to crane up at the dinosaur bones and to make ugh noises over the mummies, to the opening of the Zephyrs’ season where we huddled under a plastic wrap and tried to pretend we were warm, on blissfully quiet picnics in the foothills where Austin and Shauna chased the bright flicker of spring butterflies or floated sticks down the foaming torrents that drained the melting snows of the high peaks. Once, as Austin and I tossed bread crumbs toward the swirl of small fish in the shallows of Clear Creek, he tried to tell me about the terrible night when he woke to the icy turmoil of his father’s death. It was confused, of course, but he remembered hearing the shot, though he did not know what it was at the time. He dreamed he woke up—something in the dream woke him up—and he heard a muffled thud and then he called for his mother and she came running up the stairs and in his dream his mother—the thing he thought was his mother—stood in the doorway and her shadow peeled the skin off her hands and arms and then reached for him and he really woke up, and he knew something bad had happened and he was afraid and screamed for his mother. It was something he hadn’t been able to tell even her—how afraid he had been and, even now, still was. I let him tell it all, spilling it out like bile from the depths of his body, a lingering illness finally spewed out, and we felt closer for having spoken of it. Maybe for all her theorizing, Susan knew something about release.
Margaret said nothing more about Haas or Aegis, and mentioned nothing about Carrie Busey or Vinny Landrum. Nor did she say anything about love, but then I didn’t ask. Without stating anything, Margaret made it clear that she did not want to commit herself; it was still too soon after her husband’s death, and there were still too many unsettled areas of her own life for her to make any major decisions. And I didn’t press her; my father could have married after my mother’s death, but he didn’t. Not for my sake, but because—as he told me once—he had married for life. His own as well as my mother’s. That was the kind of love I wanted too, and it was worth nurturing, worth approaching slowly, worth the enjoyment of verifying.
Yet our kisses had moved from cheek to lips and on our last date had become long and deep and yearning for both of us.
Susan seemed to think it was a good idea. “You need a family, Dev. You need that kind of love to help take the place of your father.”
“I’m glad you think so, Susan. Do you want to read my palm, too?”
“Come on, guys, cut it out—let’s just enjoy the run.”
Bunch stretched the pace and left us no breath for arguing. We followed the dirt path beside the strip of asphalt road undulating across the prairie and toward the line of snow-glimmered peaks. To our right, the broad sheet of water penned into the reservoir was dotted with the white flicker of sails, and beyond that was etched the level horizon of the dam and then the distant clusters of office towers that marked the several centers of the sprawling, hazy city. Here, where the trail dipped and rose in rhythmic waves across the channels of Cherry Creek, cottonwoods and hackberry bushes closed over the sun-glared earth to offer momentary relief.
“I’m glad it’s not crowded.” It was too pretty a day for bickering, and Susan was willing to change the subject.
So was I. “When it cools off a little—they’ll be out then.”
A pair of laboring bicyclists zipped past, the bright colors of their jerseys bobbing with the thrust of their legs as they strained to race each other up the gentle incline. Behind, I heard the whine of a distant automobile engine, and across the rolling green of unmown prairie, the sharp buzz of a model airplane swooping in circles against the cloudless blue.
“A mile to go.” The span of Bunch’s shirt was dark with sweat and he ran with the short steps of a heavy man. Susan’s lean stride lengthened to keep up, and, following her, I felt myself slip into the hypnotic rhythm of pace and breath. Behind, the engine’s sound shifted into a louder snarl and a prickle of warning stirred at the back of my neck, and I glanced over my shoulder. A car swerved across the lanes toward us.
“Look out!” I shoved at Susan with both hands and dove headfirst away from the path of the hooking fender. Rolling across the stony ground, I yelled again at Bunch and from the corner of my eye saw his surprised face look back and then the big man jumped too. The swoop of metal blocked my view and I had a flash of a mustached face glaring down in angry triumph, its teeth showing in a curse, and then the car was past, careening back onto the pavement with a roar of engine and the stinging spray of dirt kicked up behind.
“Susan—Suze—are you all right?” Bunch, rolling up to his knees, peered wide-eyed at the figure lying on the ground.
I reached her first, my fingers groping for a pulse in the coolness of her tanned wrist. Her neck had an awkward twist to it, and, gently, I probed a finger into her mouth to be certain her tongue was clear of her throat.
“Jesus, Devlin, is she all right?”
“Her heart’s beating, she’s breathing. Don’t move her neck, Bunch. Can you see where she was hit?”
“Her head—there’s blood in her hair.”
“Hey—you folks need some help?” A helmeted bicyclist squealed to a halt at the road’s edge. “Man, I saw what that asshole did! You need an ambulance?”
“Yeah,” called Bunch. “Quick!”
The cyclist turned and sprinted back toward the park entry and the gatehouse with its attendant.
“She’s out. That’s a bad head wound.”
“What about her neck?” asked Bunch.
“I think it’s just twisted, but we’d better not move her.” Beneath her head, rising out of the hard packed earth like the dome of a mushroom, a pale stone glistened with the wet of fresh blood.
By the time the ambulance arrived, coasting forward among the small crowd of runners and cyclists who had stopped, Susan was half-conscious and moaning. Bunch talked to her steadily, trying to keep her awake, trying to keep her from lifting her head. The crew, carefully bracing her shoulders and neck, slipped a board under her torso and strapped her to it; then, with our help, they lifted her to the stretcher and carried her toward the white-and-orange ambulance.
“It was those two, wasn’t it? The ones who hit on you a few weeks ago?”
I saw again the flicker of the blurred face at the window of the car looming over me. “The one with the mustache was driving.”
Bunch rolled one fist inside the other to crack his knuckles with a muffled crunch. “I should have thought. I should have been watching.”
“We both should have been watching.”
The medical technicians strapped Susan in place and the driver ran to the cab; Bunch clambered in behind the other, the heavy machine lurching under his weight.
“Did you get a license?”
“No. It happened too fast.”
The door swung shut and the ambulance, siren a rising wail, ground away.
A motorist offered me a ride to our car, and a few minutes later I sped up the long incline that led over the dam and toward Swedish Hospital.
As I drove, I went over in memory each instant of the attack and the things that I should have done differently. I should have looked sooner, a split second sooner, when I first heard the car’s motor rev higher as the driver shifted into a lower gear. I should have swung Susan clear instead of lunging with all my frightened weight to sling her stumbling and out of control. I should have moved away from the two running in front so they would have been clear. I should have known from the beginning that they would try again. Looking back, there were a lot of things I could have done that would have left Susan frightened but safe instead of moaning unconscious in the back of an ambulance.
“They knew where to find us,” Bunch had said while he crouched over the twisted form. “They tailed us until they had a chance.”
Margaret. The children. If they had been following me, they knew about them, too. I pressed the gas pedal and weaved through the heavier traffic that began feeding into the highway.
The hospital, surrounded by large trees that sheltered the neighboring streets, sat at the top of a low hill, and the emergency entrance led away from the traffic at the front of the building into its lower levels. I followed the signs for visitors to a reception shelf where I found Bunch filling out personal data and finance sheets. Then we were guided into a room where a cluster of figures hovered around Susan. An x-ray hung damp against the opaque white of a viewing glass and showed the ghostly pale of bones, the fragile blot of a skull, the black of flesh.
“What’s it look like, Doc?”
The man studying the sheet with a magnifying glass turned, slightly startled to see the figure towering at his shoulder. “The neck doesn’t seem to be broken.”
“That’s good. What’s the damage?”
He pointed to a shadowy area near the middle of the skull’s glow. “Here’s the fracture—a pretty severe depression with some bleeding. What happened?”
A nurse began making notes on a clipboard as Bunch and I explained the injury. Why she bothered was unclear, because over the next few hours as Susan was moved from emergency to x-ray and then to intensive care, every new doctor asked the same questions and more nurses copied the same answers onto more clipboards. Finally she rested behind the drawn curtain in one of a row of beds, electrodes monitoring her pulse on a softly pinging screen, and tubes and bottles dangling from hangers at the corners of the bed. She had passed out again in the ambulance and as yet had not made another sound.
“I’m going to stay for awhile, Dev.” Bunch’s voice rumbled in the muffled, constant murmur of the intensive care unit. “They’re talking about doing a CAT scan. Can you handle the AeroLabs people?”
“No problem.” Installation was supposed to start tomorrow and as always there were last-minute preparations to go over with the subcontractors. “I’ll call in a couple of hours.”
“Okay, Dev. Thanks. And look over your shoulder.”
I took Bunch’s advice as I drove the company’s Ford home to change clothes. I approached the house from a different direction; I cruised each street to check out the parked cars before pulling to the curb. In short, I did those things that I ought to have done before I brought harm to Susan. Mrs. Ottoboni peeked over the low fence that guarded the backyards from the street and waved a handful of lilac blossoms at me. “Mr. Kirk—why don’t you take some of these? They have to be trimmed and it’s a shame just to throw them in the trash.”
“Thanks, Mrs. O.” I cradled the fragrant mass in my hands. “You haven’t noticed either of those two men hanging around, have you?”
“No, and it’s a good thing for them I haven’t. How’s your head?”
“It’s fine now, no little thanks to you. I don’t want to alarm you, but it’s possible those people may come back. They’d be after me, but I wouldn’t like you to be taken by surprise.”
“Oh? I thought you told me detectives led pretty quiet lives.”
That’s what I told her when I moved in. “Yes, ma’am. Generally, we do. But these two men seem to have some kind of vendetta against me. I don’t think they’ll try anything here—not with you around. But you might keep an eye out for strangers in the neighborhood.”
“You bet I will! And I’m glad your life is getting a little more exciting. Strapping young man like you needs that. And don’t you worry about me. I got a good sharp pair of eyes, and I’m a little old lady in tennis shoes who doesn’t intend to surrender my way of living to any bunch of hoodlums.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I placed the lilac stems in a vase of water and telephoned Margaret.
“Hi—good to hear from you!”
I didn’t merely imagine the warmth in her voice and it honed my worry for her. “Margaret, I won’t be able to make dinner tonight.”
“Oh—I’m disappointed. The children will be too. But thanks for calling. Can you come by later?”
“It might not be a good idea for me to see you too soon.”
The line was silent and then she said quietly, “That’s up to you, Devlin, of course.”
“Hey, whoa—it’s not what you think!”
“Then what is it?”
“Some people are following me. I don’t want to give them a chance to try anything when I’m with you or the kids.”
“What do you mean, ‘try anything’?”
I told her about Susan.
“Oh, Devlin, I’m so sorry! Is there some way I can help?”
“No. She’s in good hands and Bunch is with her. I’ll be checking with him soon. She was hurt because she was near me, Margaret. I don’t want to take any chances with you.”
“I understand, Devlin. And I appreciate it. Are you certain that it’s safe? For Austin and Shauna, I mean. One reads so many horrible things …”
“I’m sure they’ll be all right, and so will you. But if you do notice anyone or if you have any fears at all, call me. You have my numbers.”
“All right.” She asked, “Devlin, will we be able to see each other at all?”
“Sure. We’ll just have to be careful, that’s all. And this won’t last long—I promise you that.”
The meeting with the subs took the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening; at the office in the morning I was on the telephone chasing down the inevitable loose threads that turned up in last night’s meetings. I had a session with Martin, the construction manager, and spent a long time on the series of calls that always had to be made when the pace of a project sped up and the installation dates came due. But all the activity couldn’t keep my thoughts from returning to Susan and to what her injuries meant for Margaret. The fence, the guard at the entrance to the compound, these were slender protection, but it was better than nothing. Still, I’d feel better if I could arrange some kind of surveillance—something that she didn’t have to know about and worry over. There were a couple of p.i.’s who were good enough to trust—people I’d worked with before. But the best protection would be a bodyguard. Though that wasn’t too likely. Before we’d hung up, I mentioned the possibility to Margaret, but she did not want one. Definitely. After all, she said, I’d told her they were after me, not anyone else; she would be careful; she felt safe in her home with its own security devices. It was me she was worried about, and she wanted me to be very careful. “We’ve just discovered each other, Dev. I don’t want to lose that.”
“What are you smiling at?” Uncle Wyn tossed his wool cap on the desk and eyed me. “A young man staring out the window with a goofy smile like that—it must be springtime.”
“Just something personal, Uncle. There’s not much to smile at, anyway.”
“I heard about Susan on the car radio. A hit and run?”
“Yeah. But she was just unlucky. It was me they wanted.”
“Oh, Christ, Devlin.” He stifled whatever he was going to say, the lips under the long, crooked nose pinching shut. Then he shook his head. “Just be careful, my boy.”
“Don’t worry, Uncle.”
“Easier said than done, but I’ll give it a shot. How’s Susan?”
“She’s still in intensive care and still unconscious. I talked to Bunch this morning and he’ll call when he knows something.”
“If there’s anything I can do …”
“There’s not much anyone can do right now. We just wait and see.”
“That poor girl. And damn anyone who would do that.”
That was something else that had been buzzing around in my thoughts.
“How are you and Mrs. Haas getting along?”
I looked up. “Fine. I was thinking of her when you came in.”
“Yeah. That’s what I figured.” He stood, a pending figure in a light gray topcoat considering carefully his next words. “I try not to stick my nose in your life, Devlin. You know that. But since Douglas died, I’ve sort of adopted you whether you like it or not. It’s because I do care. You understand what I’m trying to say?”
“Maybe. Why don’t you just say it?”
“Right. Okay, I will. Mrs. Haas is a wonderful woman. You wouldn’t care for her unless she was. And even if I don’t know anything about the security business, I do know a little something about women. You know,” he added with awkward formality, “affairs of the heart.”
“‘Affairs of the heart? That’s an old-fashioned phrase, Uncle.”
“Yeah, well, damn it, this is serious and I’m trying to be serious. A regular Dutch uncle. So believe me—I know a little something about women. I’m sure a woman like her isn’t interested in a quick affair. Just like I know you wouldn’t take advantage of … of her bereavement for that.”
I waited.
“So you of course are considering marriage.”
I waited.
“Yeah … ah … of course. What I want to know is, how much you’ve thought about the responsibilities, Devlin. Marrying a woman with two children is not only expensive but a tremendous responsibility.”
“I have thought about it, Uncle.”
“Well then, have you thought about what it means for your line of work? Somebody tried to kill you yesterday, you tell me, and they’re still out there.”
I waited.
“Well, damn it, here’s what I’m trying to say, and you’re not making it easy: have you considered what your line of work would mean for Mrs. Haas and her children?”
“Yes, I have. I knew a number of Secret Service agents who were married, Uncle. And if it was a good marriage, it lasted. It will be a strain, but other people have managed in similar situations, and from what I know of Margaret, we would too.”
He hesitated again. “This should be asked too: have you faced the idea that the kids are by another man?”
I considered that. “I like those kids, Uncle. Very much. I don’t doubt that I could love them as my own. For one thing, they’re a part of Margaret. For another, they’re new souls just entering into a pretty harsh world. And I’d like to do what I can to guide and help and—yes—love them toward what they’ll have to face.”
Uncle Wyn heaved a deep breath, his face tilted down to study the waxed top of the desk. “I know a little bit about jealousy, too. But you just taught me something of magnanimity. And you put words on something I feel about you, Dev.” He looked up, a slight smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “I think I worry more about you than about Ellen or Brenda or Allan. Well, maybe not Allan. But since he moved out to the Coast, you got to carry his share of my worry, too.”
“I understand, Uncle. And I appreciate it.”
“Yeah, well, let’s not be too magnanimous. But think about this: in a lot of ways, you still got a lot to learn about this world, Dev. Hell, we all do. But you’re in a dangerous line of work and now you’re thinking about getting instant family.”
“Uncle—”
“Let me finish—I just want you to hear this: there’s room in my firm for you. And not make work, either. It’s got responsibility and a lot of money in the future for some very hard work. It’s something I know you can handle. Wait a minute—I’ll be finished in a minute. I’m not leaning on you for an answer now; I just want you to know you got this alternative. If things go the way they seem and you find a problem between your present business and what you’ll owe Mrs. Haas and her children, the offer’s there. Always.”
“Thanks, Uncle.”
We talked about a few other things, but the man had said what he came to say. And when the door closed behind him, I sighed and got busy on the telephone.
When, late in the afternoon just before I closed the office, the telephone rang, I picked it up expecting a call from one of the electronics suppliers in California. But it was Bunch.
“She’s still unconscious, Dev. But the doc says her reflex actions are improving. He expects her to come out of it soon.” Bunch added, “I called her mother. She’s coming in tonight from Des Moines.”
“Want me to meet her at the airport?”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“No problem. What about the CAT scan?”
“The doc decided to wait.” Somewhere behind Bunch’s voice a flat metallic quack paged doctor somebody. “Dev, we’re not letting this one slide.”
“I’ve been doing some thinking about that.”
“And?”
“And I figure they still want me.”
“Have you seen them? By Christ—”
“Not yet. But I want them to know I’m healthy. That they got the wrong one.”
“I see.” Bunch thought it over. “We want to be careful with this one. I don’t want those bastards to get away.”
Neither did I. Nor did I want to scare them off by going after them too quickly. That had been behind my earlier call to an acquaintance at a radio station that featured twenty-four-hour news: local woman jogger injured in hit-run accident; two people running with her escaped injury. The joggers were unable to give police a description of the vehicle. I thought that if one news source decided it was a story, others would follow; and, sure enough, the six o’clock local coverage on one of the television stations had a three-second item, while another station used it to lead into a thirty-second editorial against the growing animosity between joggers and drivers.
“You think that’ll bring them back?” Restless, Bunch strode back and forth in front of the fireplace, his bulk shrinking my living room.
“It’s all we have to go with right now. I can’t see us walking up and down Colfax Avenue with pistols in hand and yelling for them to come out and fight.”
“Yeah. Well. Maybe we should just go over to Neeley’s office and wipe the goddamn place up.”
“Evidence, Bunch. We want to know for certain he did hire them. Besides, I think it’s a personal thing with those two scumbags now. That’s why they’ll take the bait—getting Susan wasn’t enough. They’re after me because they couldn’t do it right the first time.”
Susan regained consciousness, more or less, for a little while in the early evening, and when I turned up at her bedside with her mother, Mrs. Faulk, we all had the satisfaction of a groggy smile from her fever-cracked lips. Then the nurse shooed Bunch and me out of the ICU and I talked him into a drink at my house. There wasn’t much he could do walking up and down the corridor except get in the way of the nurses.
“They’re talking brain damage, Dev.”
“What?”
“The concussion. It did a lot of damage, and they’re not sure how she’ll come out of it.”
“Jesus, Bunch.”
“Jesus doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it. I learned that a long time ago when I saw what Jesus let people do to children.” Bunch crossed the room again and slammed the heel of his hand against the wall, rattling the window in its frame.
“It’s too early to tell how badly she’s affected, Bunch.”
“Yeah. Right. Except I’ve seen people, Dev: car accidents, bullet wounds, blunt instruments—all that crap that scrambles the brains. It does things—they can’t remember words, they can’t thread a needle or even hold a pencil. Sometimes they can’t even wipe themselves.”
Bunch’s voice did not rise and he talked as if he were reading stock-market quotations, but the man’s hand had a slight tremor as it balled into a large fist against the stuccoed wall.
“The docs don’t know yet, Bunch. They can’t know. It’s too soon to tell how bad the damage is.”
“Yeah. I know.” The fist relaxed and Bunch dragged the hand across his sleepless face. “They told me I could come back at eight. I’m going to grab something to eat and go on over.”
“I’ll be by after I check the job.”
He nodded. “How’s AeroLabs? Anything you want me to do?”
“No. I went over it all with Martin this morning. He’s set to go tonight.” The idea was to do much of the wiring and remodeling at night when the company was closed, both so production wouldn’t be disturbed and for security purposes. “I’ll see how it’s going and then come by the hospital.”
Susan was asleep when, half-lost in the maze of softly lit corridors, I finally located room 522 where she had been moved since the afternoon. Mrs. Faulk, a slender woman in her fifties, looked up from a magazine and smiled welcome as I came in.
“Asleep?”
She nodded. “It’s the best thing for her.”
Susan’s tanned and healthy face already had that yellowish cast that came from illness and hospitals. The swirl of blond hair over the pillow seemed limp and lifeless as well, and one of Bunch’s large fingers stroked a tendril of it gently. I set a potted plant on a table already crowded with flowers. “Has she said anything? Any change?”
“She said hello to her mother,” said Bunch. “Mostly she’s been sleeping.”
We watched the motionless form on the high, efficient-looking hospital bed.
“Why don’t you two go on,” said Mrs. Faulk. “I know you’re working tonight, and there’s not a thing to do while she’s asleep like this.”
But Bunch was reluctant to go and it was another half-hour before the two of us rode down the oversize elevator for the lobby and the parking lot across the street where the Ford sat in nondescript anonymity.
“She’s scheduled for more x-rays and the CAT scan in the morning.” Bunch looked out the window at the lights gliding past. “They’ll have a better idea how bad it is then.”
I swung the car toward the bustle and glare of Hampden and turned east toward the AeroLabs buildings. “Her mother’s staying with her?” A cot had been made up in a dark corner of the room.
“Yeah. For tonight, anyway. I guess they let relatives do that if it’s serious enough.” He shrugged. “I’m not a relative, so I can’t stay. They didn’t even want to let me in the room with her after Mrs. Faulk got there.”
I started to say something when the radiophone wheedled its electronic chirp. “Devlin Kirk.”
“This is Vinny Landrum. We got to meet.”
“What’s your problem?”
“Not over this thing. Man, I mean it—we got to meet!”
“It’s Vinny. He wants to talk about something.” Then back to the radiophone. “I’m tied up for a couple hours. How about eleven at my office?”
“Not there. Remember where I saw you last time? Don’t say it—just tell me if you remember.”
That wasn’t too hard; it was Landrum’s office. “Yes.”
“Outside there. Eleven.” The voice clicked off.
“What’s that lint ball want?”
“Whatever it is, he didn’t want to broadcast it.” That’s what a radiophone traded for convenience—a transmission frequency that anyone with a shortwave receiver could pick up. And whatever was bothering Vinny, he was trying to keep it from someone.