The assassin reached the window. It was tall and pivot-hung. He grabbed hold of it and swung it in. He hoisted himself to the edge of it so that from the waist down he was inside. From the waist up, he was hanging seven stories above the earth.
The door opened. People began rushing in.
The assassin hurled himself out into the open air.
“Eesh,” said Fred Gottlieb. “What a mess.”
He was talking about my face. It lay—this face of mine—pointed up at the ceiling of a hospital room. It felt lumpy, like a potato. Like a potato that hurt. All of me hurt. My eye watered. My throat was sore from being choked. My arm stung from being stabbed. The rest of me throbbed in a sort of generalized agony.
Fred Gottlieb stood in the doorway, shaking his head. “Eesh,” he said again.
The homicide detective was about my age. A burly man, built thick and low to the ground. His tan corduroy jacket was stretched tight across his shoulders. His purple paisley shirt was stretched tight across his chest. The shirt was unbuttoned at the top. Generous tufts of hair spilled out of it. It was barely buttoned at the bottom; his round belly pushed against it, trying to break free. His face was circular and rocky. His curly black hair receded on top from a wide brow. He was clean-shaven, but the stubble on his cheeks was thick and black, adding to his look of gruffness. Only his eyes gave him away. They were small and brown and deep, like little pools of water in the ground.
He shuffled into the room. It was a regulation hospital box. Four green walls. Two stark beds. Bars over a window with a river view.
There was a metal chair next to my bed. Gottlieb pulled it close, sat down.
“They tell me they’re going to let you out as soon as they get your X rays back.”
I nodded. The sore throat made it hard to talk.
“You think that’s such a good idea? I don’t know.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “You don’t look so good.”
“Thanks,” I whispered.
“I read an article in Newsweek, they said because of hospital overcrowding they sometimes release patients too soon. A couple of days later, they find them dead in the bathtub. It’s a terrible situation.”
I nodded.
“On the other hand,” he went on, “you could stay here, they put someone in the bed next to you with an infectious disease, you have to share the bathroom. You’re here for a couple of cuts and bruises, the next thing you know: hepatitis. You didn’t get a blood transfusion, did you?”
I tried to smile with the unsplit corner of my lips. I shook my head.
Fred breathed a sigh of relief at the same time as he hunched his huge shoulders in concern. Beneath his open jacket, his holster showed a moment. The black butt of his detective special blended nicely with his shirt’s lavender swirls.
“Hospitals,” he proclaimed softly, “are very unhealthy places. It’s a terrible situation.”
I nodded.
He widened his eyes wearily. “So,” he said. “So what’s the story?” I opened my mouth. Gottlieb said: “Wait: maybe you shouldn’t talk. Here, I’ll give you a pad, you can write it down.”
I stretched my neck to ease the pain as a laugh escaped me.
“Right, that’s stupid, too complicated,” Gottlieb said. He waved the idea away with his hand. “I’ll tell you what.… Fill in what we don’t have already, all right?”
I nodded.
“Okay.” He nodded back. “What we have so far: we have Timothy Colt, the big-time famous journalist, and he’s dead. He’s murdered.” He shook his head. “Such a waste, too. A successful man like that.”
My eyes shifted away from the detective’s stern face. I thought of Colt. His tough cowboy features. The humor and the sadness in them. I didn’t get to know him very well, but I got to like him. And I knew his work. He was one of the good ones.
His round, worried face hovering there above me, Gottlieb continued. “The hotel manager and the two bellhops who rescued you, they saw the man, the killer, go out the window. After that, Miss Kelsey, downstairs … he half scared her out of her wits. Such a pretty girl, too, it’s a shame. A singer with some kind of a rock band.”
My sudden breath squeaked like a new sneaker on, a basketball court. “He got away? How …? How could he?”
“Uy!” Gottlieb shook his head. “Don’t ask. He could have killed himself. He could have killed everybody. People on the street. I don’t even want to think about it. What does he do? He goes out the window. He swings down onto the ledge below. This little tiny ledge, he’s gotta be like an acrobat. There’s another window there. He breaks the glass—with his knee, says Miss Kelsey—and goes falling in. As for Miss Kelsey: I left her, she was still crying.” He waved his hand again. “I’m telling you: it’s been an awful morning. They woke me up at seven o’clock with this. I heard it was you, I didn’t know: were you dead, were you alive, what? I read in Science Times last week, they said not getting enough sleep cuts down on your resistance to infection. Maybe I shouldn’t stay around here too long.” He closed one eye, presented his face to me. “Do I look okay?”
I nodded.
“I don’t look pale or flushed or anything?”
I shook my head.
“Good. Because you look just terrible. Are you sure you want to leave?”
I nodded.
“Okay. I mean, if you want to stay, they have to keep you.” I nodded again. He sighed again. He went on: “Anyway, we got a description from the Kelsey girl. But, you know how it is, she was half asleep, she’d been to a party.… She’s a show business person, who knows what she’s doing at seven o’clock in the morning? That’s last night to her. You see what I’m saying: I could use a description.”
I gathered up my strength. “Okay,” I whispered.
He leaned back in his chair, held up a hand. “You don’t have to give it to me now. Rest, relax. Get better.”
“S’ alright. I’m just a little hoarse.”
Gottlieb shrugged, but he went into his jacket pocket and brought out a notepad. He went into his shirt pocket and brought out a pen.
I took a deep breath. Coughed a little. Said: “He was five-seven. Wiry. Bullet head. Thin, oval face. Black—dark brown.” I forced each word out with an effort. I felt like I’d accidentally swallowed a Brillo pad. “Big eyes, very mean. Thin lips, very mean. Sunken cheeks. Very mean. Not much nose anymore. Lots of bruises. Probably looks about as bad as me.”
He glanced over his notes once quickly. Flipped the book shut. “Thank you very much. Much better than Miss Kelsey, who said, and I quote, ‘He was like a happening bizarro thing, man, with short hair.’ I should issue an APB.”
I inhaled again. It sounded like wind passing through a church organ. “You get the weapon … the knife?”
“Yeah.” He raised his eyes heavenward. “And I mean, what is that, a Swiss Army scimitar?”
I laughed. “Oh,” I said. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“Sorry, but I mean it looked like some kind of ceremonial whatchem with the tribal drums. You kill a pig and it rains.” He chuckled, then stopped chuckling at once. “I don’t know. It’s a terrible situation.” He shook his head, worried. “Anyway, so when you feel better, it doesn’t have to be today, you could come down and look at some mug shots. It couldn’t hurt. I’d appreciate it.”
I gave him yet another nod. I prepared myself to speak at length again. It wasn’t getting easier. The pain in my throat was growing worse with every word.
“The knife. Colt traveled to all kinds of exotic places. Just back from Afghanistan. Headed for Nicaragua.”
Gottlieb nodded his coarse, curly head. “I know all this. I talked to his friends. I talked to your friends, Lansing and McKay. Lovely woman, Lansing. Make a nice wife for someone. She should have children. She shouldn’t be running around writing about dead people.” He studied his pointy black shoes.
“They tell you about the bar?” I wheezed. “The argument Colt had with the guy in the bar?”
“Yes, they t
old me, they told me. It doesn’t help me, but they told me. Mr. Holloway and Mr. Wexler said they recognized the man as someone named Lester Paul. He used to hang out in a country named Sentu. I’m supposed to have heard of this.”
“Yeah. Yeah,” I said slowly. “The three of them covered a revolution there. Ten years ago. That’s how they got started.’’ As I fought to speak, my battered mind clouded again with that feeling of connection: the sense that every fact was linked to every other. It was hard to make sense of it, and hard to shake.
“Right. Terrific,” said Gottlieb. “Anyhow, what they can tell me about this Lester Paul—who has an argument with Colt a few hours before he’s mysteriously murdered—what they can tell me is not a lot.” He opened the notebook again, flipped back through its pages. “Mr. Holloway and Mr. Wexler, they tell me he hangs around Mangrela, the capital city. I say: ‘He hangs around doing what?’ They say: ‘We don’t know.’ I say: ‘He has a job, this mystery man?’ They say: ‘We don’t know.’ I say: ‘So what’s his beef with the late Mr. Colt?’ They say: ‘We don’t know.’ A very informative interview. The public pays for this.” He flipped the notebook shut with the same decisiveness as before.
“Colt …” I said. I had to catch my breath, start again. “Colt said, ‘You’re dead!’ Or ‘You’re a dead man!’ Something like that.”
“Right. Very good. You remembered that. So did Lansing. She really is a lovely girl.”
I laughed some more. It hurt some more. “You’re killing me, Gottlieb. Would you ask your questions?”
“All right, all right. I’m just mentioning,” the detective said. “So—what were we saying? Oh yes. ‘You’re a dead man.’ I asked Holloway and Wexler, they said they’d heard Paul, this shadowy person who suddenly shows up in a bar arguing with Colt just before he, Colt, gets knifed to death … They shrug their shoulders, these two distinguished journalists, and they tell me Lester Paul was supposed to have been killed by the rebel armies when they took over this country of Sentu everyone’s heard of but me.” Now, he actually slipped the notepad back into his pocket. He leaned forward, his hands resting on his knees. “So—I put out a bulletin for the man. We’ll find him, we’ll ask him questions, we’ll arrest him, he’ll get life for murder. Anything else I should know?”
I stared at the cracks that crisscrossed on the white ceiling. I tried to think. The throbbing pain made it tough. The hangover was still there, too. In my stomach. In my brain. Nothing seemed straight. Nothing seemed clear. Finally my voice trailed out of me on a labored breath. It sounded like the voice of the wind in a ghost story.
“Eleanora,” I said.
Gottlieb cocked an ear at me. “Pardon?”
“Colt. He mentioned a woman. Eleanora. In Sentu. I think. I don’t know.”
“A woman?”
I nodded.
“Just a woman. That’s it.”
I closed my eyes against the haze floating through my mind. I opened my eyes. The haze was still there. “I don’t know,” I said. “It was on his mind …”
The detective rocked his head back and forth, uncertain. Pushing off his knees, he stood.
“Well, if you can think of anything else about her, let me know. If you can think of anything else about anything.”
I sighed, giving up the effort. I nodded.
“And you’ll come look at mug shots?”
I nodded.
He laid a thick hand on my shoulder. “And don’t let them chase you out of the hospital.”
I nodded.
“And don’t get hepatitis,” Gottlieb said. With a wave, he plodded to the door.
It was two in the afternoon before my doctor finally showed up: a Puerto Rican kid in his twenties. He wore thick black spectacles on his little-boy face. They slid down over his pug nose as he read the chart tied to the foot of my bed.
“You’re forty-six, is that right, Mr. Wells?”
“Yeah,” I croaked. I could still feel that bastard’s fingers on my throat.
“Well, happy birthday,” said the doctor. He let the chart drop and looked at me. “Most of your internal organs just turned sixty.”
I cast my eyes heavenward. “Can I go home now?”
“How much do you smoke a day?” the whippersnapper asked.
“A pack,” I lied.
“How much do you drink?”
“A glass of brandy for medicinal purposes.”
He studied me closely over the spectacles. He probably wore them just to look doctorly. “We took a blood test, Mr. Wells,” he said. “It’s been passed on to Scotland for bottling. What’s your excuse, man?”
“A life haunted by tragedy. Can I go home or not?”
Dr. Doom sighed, nodded. “Sure. A man ought to spend his last days in familiar surroundings.”
I started to work my way out of bed. “Nobody lives forever,” I said.
“Thank you, Mr. Kierkegaard. You’re a philosopher.” He tapped his white-shirted chest with a pen. “I’m a doctor. Take better care of the machinery, pal. Or you’re a dead man.”
With which he let me go.
I got dressed and hobbled outside onto First Avenue. The day was chill and bright, the way it often is after a blizzard. The cold bit into me, frosted my breath. The sky was cobalt. The sun was white. I could imagine the daylight glinting off the undisturbed snow of the Maine forests. I could imagine the way it would dazzle you. It was not dazzling here.
The pristine beauty of the night before was gone. The city had crushed it under its heels and wheels. The dirt of urban life had turned the unbroken white to soggy gray. The Sanitation Department shovels had crowded it up against the curbs. The buses had churned it into slush. Now the sun was cutting through the chill to melt the slush into icy puddles. The puddles collected at the corners. Pedestrians had to leap across them. Cabbies raced through them to slash fantails of water over the pedestrians’ clothes. There were cries and curses everywhere. New York City is a winter wonderland.
I went limping and leaping through this mess until I found a newsstand. I picked up a copy of the Star. Then I hesitated. I thought about what the doctor had said. Then I bought a pack of cigarettes. I don’t like doctors, anyway.
I stood on the wet sidewalk. I slapped a cig between my lips and lit it. The smoke rasped against my hurt throat. I endured it, took another drag, and scanned the paper.
A surprise. A pleasant surprise. Cambridge had bannered the borough president. “Robins Bribe Probed.” He used the bottom half of the front page for a picture of the tiger with an inset of the lady. He then played the tiger on page three, and the bribe on page seven. That was as good a way as any to do it. Either Cambridge had caved in to city room pressure or he’d been force-fed mind-altering drugs. Either way, it had turned out all right.
With renewed faith in my chosen profession, I hailed a cab. I rode through the puddles to Vanderbilt Avenue and the concrete tower that houses the Star.
I tumbled out of the elevator on the twelfth floor and stood before a wall of glass doors. I could see myself reflected in them. My tie was gone. My jacket was torn. My face was purple. My arm was wrapped in gauze. I pushed the reflection away and walked into the city room.
The place was a maze of white cubicles under white fluorescent lights. It greeted me with a kind of white silence. That steady non-noise was the whisper of fingers on computer terminals, the hum of printers encased in glass along the wall, and the muffled rattle of newfangled phones. At the long, central city desk, editors and reporters conferred quietly. They leaned over monitors and pointed at sentences. They gripped phones to their ears or bowed their heads together. They spoke only when they needed to. They spoke in hushed tones. There was no reason for them to be so quiet, but they were.
When I had first come into the business, I had come into a life of pounding wire machines and typewriters, of shouted orders and jokes, of phones that really rang and rang often. But then there was the war, and Watergate. The glamor of presidential scandal. N
ewsmen making news. It got to be a different business after a while. A bigger business. More distinguished. Quieter. Nowadays, sometimes, when I came into the Star, I thought the place would start to rattle with my footsteps, like a fancy house full of knickknacks when the big clumsy plumber comes to call.
The white noise stopped. You could hear it die with a sort of hydraulic hiss. Lansing, leaning on a divider in earnest conversation with McKay, was the first to speak.
“Wells!” she said.
Heads turned at the city desk. Faces popped up over the cubicle partitions. Someone else called out my name and someone else. Someone waved at me. A crowd gathered around me. I nodded at them as I pushed past.
“How you feeling?” they said again and again.
Again and again, I told them, “Fine.” My voice was already beginning to recover.
They peppered me with questions. For a while I entertained them with tales of the battle. For a while longer, I griped about the hospital. They shook their heads in wonder at my bravery, resilience, toughness, integrity, decency, Americanism, and good breeding. Then they returned to work. Even McKay had to answer a phone call. In the end only Lansing remained.
I was leaning against my desk. She was standing right before me. I could smell her. She smelled good. She was wearing pale pink slacks and a striped pullover shirt. She looked good. She looked bright and new. But her eyes filled as I studied her. She put one hand up to her mouth. I saw the fingers trembling.
“Stop that,” I said.
“You look dead,” said Lansing.
“I’m okay. I need a shower and a change of clothes, that’s all.”
“You should be home. You should be resting.”
“Yeah. The doctor says I should give up cigarettes and liquor, too.”
She bit her lip, took a breath. “Silly doctors. What’ll they come up with next?”
“Crazy, isn’t it?” I looked around me at the huge expanse of a room. “Anything going on?”
“Oh God, Wells,” Lansing said. “The place is a madhouse.”
“What else is new?”
“I mean it. Go home and get some rest.”