“Goodby. And remember—don’t make waves!”
Kane turned and walked slowly to the perimeter of the wood, where he stood watching Groper severing ties with his nervous system. Syntax, in the car, mopped his brow with a deep-blue sleeve as he glanced, with naked terror, at the madly muddling men. He leaned into his driver, croaking, “Get me the hell out of here as fast as you can!”
Kane watched, turning his head, as the car screeched away. Then he reached for a cigarette, looked to the men tormenting Groper. On his face there was no expression; it was a fixed and graven mask. But in the eyes there was movement: subtle greenish flecks spinning in a whirlpool of brown.
“Attention!” bellowed Groper. “Dammit, attention! Attention!”
“I want my Ho Chi Minh decoder ring!” pouted the inmate wearing the face guard. “I sent in the box-tops! Now where in the hell is the freaking ring!”
“Whoever he is behind that mask, he’s a pain in the ass,” said Morris Fairbanks.
“Readyyyyyy!” shrieked Groper. “Front!”
The men responded. Groper called the roll.
Kane sensed a presence, someone standing near him. He calmly blew out a match and flicked it away; then slowly turned his head and saw a middle-aged captain wearing freshly starched khakis, shirt open at the neck. In his hand he gripped a stethoscope. His expression dour and somber, he was staring at the inmates, sadly shaking his head. Then he turned and looked at Kane, offered his hand in friendly greeting. “I’m Fromme—Captain Fromme. I’m the medic here at the Center. Colonel Kane, I presume?”
Kane stared at the doctor’s hand and, after a fleeting hesitation, acquiesced in the breach of protocol, the lack of a salute. He shook the hand warmly. “Pleased to meet you, Doctor Fromme.”
“Hm. Remind me to check that throat.”
Kane smiled thinly. “It’s my manner, not my throat. Don’t give it a thought.”
“Suit yourself.” Fromme looked to the inmates with somber, grave compassion. “Poor sons-of-bitches,” he murmured bleakly.
“Could you direct me to my quarters?”
“Oh, just follow the yellow brick road.”
“What?”
“Just follow the yellow brick—”
“SERGEANT FROMME, FALL IN!” bawled Groper. He was pointing to the “doctor.”
Kane’s glance flicked quickly to Groper; to Fromme; to Groper; then to a man clad only in underwear, framed in the mansion doorway.
“Damn you, Fromme, get out of my uniform!” the man in the underwear bellowed. He stomped toward Kane and Fromme like a bull with no religion.
A deadpan sergeant, crisply uniformed, popped in front of Kane, clicked his heels and smartly saluted. “Sergeant Christian reporting for duty, sir!”
“And blasted well about time, Kildare!” Fromme greeted the sergeant icily. He pointed an index finger at Kane. “Now, will you get this man into surgery or do you plan to let him stand here bleeding to death while you and your buddies play soldier! What the hell is this—a hospital or a nut house!”
Even as Fromme was concluding this thought-provoking statement, Sergeant Christian was escorting him forcibly away. The man in underwear had arrived and, passing Fromme, deftly ripped away the stethoscope; then shouted at Sergeant Christian: “This time don’t let him wrinkle the pants!” Then he turned to Kane and saluted: “Captain Norman Fell, M.D., sir!”
In the background Kane heard Cutshaw roaring, “Sergeant Christian, unhand that man!” Kane looked to the inmates as they took up Cutshaw’s cry: booing, hissing and shouting together, “Release Sergeant Fromme!”
“Gloreyoskey, Zero, let’s return the salute!” Fell’s speech was thick and slurred.
Kane turned and looked at him blankly. He stood weaving in his underwear, hand still crooked in salute: it was the hand that held the stethoscope. His eyes were crimson smears and he hiccupped gently, almost demurely. Kane stood motionless. “Captain Fell, have you been drinking?”
Fell’s eyebrows sickled in outrage. “Drinking? In uniform?!”
After a moment of silent pondering, Kane returned the salute. “Easy. No offense.”
“Ummm,” rumbled Fell in grudging acceptance of the apology.
“Would you show me where I nest?” asked Kane. The sudden silence behind him told him that order had been restored.
Another sergeant, heavily freckled, fronted Kane and popped a salute. “Sergeant Krebs reporting for duty, sir!”
“Smashed out of his mind!” murmured Fell. Kane eyed him inscrutably, then turned again to Krebs.
“Sergeant, show me to my quarters, please.”
Fell burped indignation. “Listen, no need to ask every Tom, Dick and Harry, Colonel! I’ll lead the way!” Fell drew himself erect, turned toward the mansion and husked in an undertone:
“Now, then—march!” He strode toward the mansion in drum-major form: head bent backward, arms swinging wide, and legs lifting high in the air.
For a moment Kane watched him; then eyed Sergeant Krebs. Krebs returned his stare—expressionless, unblinking. Then could not refrain from blurting, “Sir, he really is the doctor!”
Kane said, “Thank you, Sergeant Krebs.”
Krebs studied him, worried, wondering whether the comment was a subtle rebuke for insolence. He decided that it wasn’t, quickly turned and followed Fell. Kane strode behind him, averting his gaze from the inmates.
“‘Ten—hut!” commanded Groper, saluting as Kane walked by the formation. Kane heard the men, in chorus, crying: “Hail! Hail, Caesar!”
Kane stopped. He turned and looked. The inmates’ arms were stiffly upraised in their wonted form of salute. Groper stood rigid, cheeks turned carmine. Kane did not move; not at all. But his eyes brushed over the men, brushed over each of them in series; and abruptly held fast on Cutshaw; on his blue, unblinking eyes staring intently into his own. Each man felt a current leaping out at him from the other; each man sensed some mystery, challenging and perilous.
Kane turned to Groper, returned his salute. “Carry on,” he said flatly. Then walked slowly into the mansion. But at the door he paused and turned. And even at that distance, Captain Cutshaw’s eyes found him. He was watching him; still watching. Kane’s large and sinewy fingers gently brushed along his face, tracing a memory, an ugliness, that a Korean plastic surgeon had effaced for him years ago: a scar that had jagged like lightning from his eye to the base of his jaw.
Chapter 4
Mary Jo Mawr knew the value of time; but she spent it in the belief that someday time would return the favor. Thirty and attractive, she was a warm beach, waiting—waiting for some promise calling her name across endless hope. She knew that he would come. Although there were days when she had her doubts; days when she hated her work, hated the sun-browned laughing girls who were always young while they were with her and usually married when they left. She was resident dean of women at the Consuelo Endicott College for Girls. Now she walked along its corridors whiffing chalk and perfumed cashmere.
“Oh, Miss Mawr?”
Mawr eyed the senior who had fallen in step with her, a honey-haired lisper named Sloop. Clydene Sloop. She wore braces on her teeth and clearly needed them for her head, which was largely stuffed with the lurid contents of unexpurgated editions. She slunk.
“May I be excused from gym?” wheedled Sloop.
“No,” drawled Mawr in her laconic Vassar pucker. “You may not. You need to lose weight.” It was one of those days when she hated sunsets.
“My, I think I’m rather svelte,” gritted Sloop.
“I think you are rather fat, Miss Sloop, and I’ll not endure any insolence.”
“Insolence?”
“Insolence. An inevitable derivative of overweening pride.” Clydene was the daughter of the Secretary of Defense. And she damn well knows it, thought Miss Mawr with a splash of venom. She halted abruptly, putting her hand on the knob of a door that was marked “Founder.” “Onward to gym, Miss Sloop,” she ordered, addin
g, “Fight Fiercely, Endicott!” Then pushing open the door, she glided into the Founder’s office.
“Snot!” breathed Clydene. Then jiggled down the corridor with yards of slink to spare.
“Miss Mawr, Miss Mawr, what now, what now? What are we at, eh? What? What’s the game, what’s the—? Whoop! Here, now, where are my glasses? Where, where, where? Where have I put them?” Miss Consuelo Endicott sent fumbling pink fingers crackling through papers on her desk while Miss Mawr eased into a chair, flipping her hair back from her eyes. Mawr’s nostrils twitched inquiringly as the Founder recovered her glasses, putting them on with delicate care. Mawr had her suspicions but had never been quite sure: Scotch or bourbon, she couldn’t tell which; breath is such a personal thing.
“Now, then, Miss Mawr.” The Founder’s hands were clasped studiously under a still beautiful face; still beautiful at fifty, even with dissipation. She dyed her hair, Mawr knew well; but, why not, she thought, why not? Maybe she was waiting, too. “Precisely what is it you wished to see me about?”
“I believe you sent for me. The inmates?”
“Inmates?” The Founder’s eyes glazed over, gave her the look of a cocker spaniel who has just seen St. Francis in a Park Avenue penthouse. Then she belched unequivocally, snapping her eyes into focus. “Yes, the inmates!” she declared. “The inmates. Of course.” Once more she fumbled through papers, knocking an ornamental Buddha and an ashtray to the floor. At last, flushed and triumphant, like Venus hotly rising, she came up with the sought-for document. As prepared by Miss Mawr, it was a typewritten list of grievances adumbrating, at length, certain acts of classic outrage that had been perpetrated against the school by the madcap inmates of a mysterious United States Air Force installation which, as had already been vividly demonstrated, was literally but a stone’s throw away and set apart only by a wall.
The lofty turrets of the mansion commanded a conqueror’s view of the school, so that among the list of charges were such stunning provocations as:
(A) the hurling into the library window of two stunned frogs, an insulted and outraged bullfinch and a lox and cream cheese sandwich, the means of propulsion being a crossbow and there being appended to the payload an enigmatic printed note that stated simply: “POLICE BRUTALITY.”
(B) the parachuting of a snake onto the girls’ volleyball court, the appended note reading, this time: “LOVE ME, LOVE MY ADDER.”
(C) the loud and choral chanting of all but the last line of various obscene limericks during “Parents’ Day” ceremonies, a phenomenon artfully capped by a sudden barrage of flying jockstraps during the serving of tea on the lawn. The inmates had also posted a sign, discernible from the lawn, on a mansion turret, reading: “Consuelo Endicott has crabs!”
(D) numerous telephone calls to resident members of the school staff during the dead of night, with only heavy breathing heard from the other end of the line, although once a voice reportedly said, “Repent!” While on still another occasion the anonymous caller stated simply, “Varicose veins!” and promptly hung up.
(E) heavy mailings to the staff of Rosicrucian literature, a wondrously inscrutable venture that was followed, hard upon, by the arrival on the campus of proselytizing ambassadors of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mendicants for Christ, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Fifteenth Church of Christ Cyclotron, a local Baptist church and one bewildered Millerite. All of them claimed to be there at the request of Miss Endicott and were difficult to dispose of, especially the Witnesses, who had come equipped with a phonograph and records, and had obstinately refused to leave until the records were horribly smashed by a sturdy Miss Klutz, who taught the girls at the school gymnastics and happened to be a Catholic.
There had been more, much more: “Innumerable acts of audacity too numerous to enumerate,” as Miss Mawr had once expressed it. Mawr had put it to the Founder and asked that she deal with it, knowing that it was hopeless. The Founder dealt with nothing. She was content with having founded. For six full days she had labored, and now was fixed, like a moth in jade, in an endless seventh day: perpetually resting. The rest she left to Mawr and to Mawr’s various predecessors.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” sighed Miss Endicott, smoothing the rumpled list as she fidgeted like a blue jay waiting its turn to attack Alfred Hitchcock. “These charges, Miss Mawr…”
“What shall we do, Madame Founder?”
“Do? Yes, do. What shall we ever, ever do!”
“I thought you’d decided, Madame Founder. I thought that was why you’d sent for me.”
“Yes, of course I sent for you.”
“Yes.”
“What are ‘crabs’?”
The silence that ensued had an airless, lunar quality; and through the window, from the tennis court, floated a faint and faraway cry that sounded like “Score.”
“They are vermin,” said Miss Mawr.
“Vermin?”
“Vermin. Parasitic vermin.”
“Not salty things that scuttle?”
“No,” said Mawr, expressionless. “‘Crab’ is a slang expression.”
“Oh. Well, that’s what I thought. Yes, I—well—of course. How could anyone have a crab?”
“They can’t,” Mawr said soberly, fighting down a giggle.
“Then why do they say I have them?”
Mawr grew vaguely uncomfortable. “The expression wasn’t meant literally. It is slang for a tiny bug.”
“Bug?”
“Bug.”
“Is it something like the ‘clap’?”
Miss Mawr nearly fell off her chair. “Something.”
“Should have said so in the first place.”
“Well, I—”
“Damn bloody nonsense,” the Founder grumbled testily as she pulled open a drawer and reached for something in it—then recollected something—possibly Mawr’s presence—and quickly slid it shut again. She blinked across at her dean. “What was that you said?”
“Not a thing, Madame Founder. But what shall we do about the—?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all, my dear. It’s all been taken care of.”
“Oh?”
“Taken care of,” the Founder repeated sagely. Her hand had pulled open the drawer again and suddenly she seemed rather anxious to be rid of Miss Mawr. “The trouble,” she rattled brusquely, “was that foolish Colonel Ryan. I’m convinced that he was the trouble. He was naughty to those men; very naughty, very cruel; ran that place like a snake pit. Did you ever see that movie?”
“No, I—”
“Ran it like a snake pit, hiss-hiss-hiss! Don’t concern yourself, my dear. No. Not at all. Sufficient unto the day.”
Mawr waited for her to continue before she realized that the Founder had concluded her remarks. “How”—she probed with delicacy—“has it all been taken care of?”
“What?”
“The incidents. The inmates next door.”
“Oh. That. A new commanding officer. Arrived there today.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Yes. You see?”
“Did he call?” asked Mawr.
“What?”
“The new commander. Is that how you got the news?”
The startled, fleeting shadow of something like panic flitted vaguely, for an instant, across the Founder’s face. “Yes!” she said quickly. “Yes, the dear heart called. Said that everything would be—fine!”
“Good show,” drawled Miss Mawr. Then excused herself and left. For a moment she paused outside the door, her head bowed in thought. Muffled and indistinct, she heard the opening of a drawer, the clinking of glass; and smiled in bemusement. The Founder was just like her father, she thought: her gentle, beery father who used to drink on the sly to repel the Boston chill. But then, what could one do with a banker who read John Donne aloud? Except love him, she thought; love him; that’s all.
A chattering of girls tinkled lightly down the corridor and vanished around a corner. Mawr moved to a window, looked out across the campus to the wall; and t
hen above it to a turret of the gruesome Slovik mansion.
She blinked; then blinked again. The inmates had posted a new banner: “Mary Poppins has Syphilis.”
Chapter 5
Captain Norman Fell gently tipped the grinning skull atop the skeleton in his office so that the vodka bottle inset in its base could pour its contents through its gaping oral cavity into a coffee cup in his hand. “Don’t blame me!” he admonished the skull. “I told them not to operate! Remember? Eh?” The skull did not remember, splashed vodka onto his fingers. Fell gently licked them. He bore the skull no malice. Yet there was in him something dangerous.
Fell’s clinic reeked of defiance. Against one of its walls rode a white-sheeted medical examination table on over-sized wagon wheels, and set against the head of it stood a high and smugly venerable Dickensian accountant’s stool. On the walls, in heavy crayon, bold red arrows pointed to jars containing “Aspirin!” “Band-Aids!” “Dental-Floss!” and “Lemon Drops!” Another pointed out a “Suggestion Box”; and above them all a master inscription, crayoned in green, proclaimed: “Self Service.” Gaudy and squat and pouting heavily in a corner crouched a pinball machine that Fell had repainted so that its highbacked electric scoreboard now read: “Light up the Interns and Win a Free Game!” Fell thought it grand.
Humming inanely, Fell tucked a folder under his arm and moved to the clinic door. He was still in his shorts, above them an open-necked, blue wool shirt. He stepped outside into the Slovik main hall.
Like the exterior of the mansion, it was Gothic, massive and dense, with a high cathedral ceiling crisscrossed by beams from some enchanted, moaning wood. This was the Therapy Room for the inmates, cluttered with lounge chairs, chess sets, ping-pong tables, stereo, motion picture screen and projector; writing tables, magazines and canvases, set on easels, vivid with paintings by the inmates. No painting was quite completed. Each was a tale of horror abruptly halted in mid-narration. One was of an index finger that pointed straight up and was pierced by a needle, dripping blood. Another depicted a tree, its terminal branches metamorphosed into the coils of a boa constrictor crushing the head of a male infant; its creator had captioned it “Mother Love.” Still others were infinitely busy and chaotically detailed, yet with fine-drawn precision so that in a single painting one could identify a jackhammer, part of an arm and an onrushing train; the wheels of a lathe, a baleful eye, a Negro Christ, a bloody ax, a bullet in flight and a creature half-lizard, half-man. From the center of one billowed a hydrogen mushroom cloud, while high, high above it, almost microscopic in size, hung a silvery bomber pierced by a spear; on the fuselage, in red, were the tiny letters, “Me.”