Three Days Before the Shooting ... (42 page)

I had my doubts, but there was no question but that Hickman wasn’t wasting his energy. I started impulsively toward him, thinking to put the question of the gunman’s identity to him at the moment of awakening so as to observe his reaction, but restrained myself. He was certain to be on guard for such a maneuver, and especially from me.

Sitting back on the bench, I thought to follow his example and conserve my energy. It didn’t work; my mind kept returning to the man in the morgue. I searched my memory for details, images, echoes—anything that would help me establish an identification. But things were too confused. An image came to mind of LeeWillie Minifees standing in confounding triumph on the Senator’s lawn as he watched his Cadillac burn. And I asked myself if this had been, as Tolliver had suggested, actually a political gesture, a “diversionary tactic” and part of an earlier attempt to shoot the Senator. A few hours ago it had seemed impossible, but now anything and everything seemed possible, and this being so, I would have to have a talk with Minifees. But how? Where was he being held, and who, under the circumstances, would give me permission to see him?

Whatever the answer, it seemed obvious that I’d have to wait until morning, and perhaps by then I’d know the Senator’s fate if not the agent of that fate. So once more I rested my head against the back of the bench, thinking to nap awhile; but immediately the image of the hitching-post groom loomed behind my eyelids, and I got up and stretched my legs, taking a quick turn before the bench before I sat down again. I simply couldn’t bear another such encounter, and for the time being my only defense against that horrible nightmare’s attendant was wakefulness.

I was looking over my notes, trying to make an outline of all that had occurred from the burning of the Cadillac to the present moment, when the elevator droned slowly up the shaft and stopped to discharge a nurse, who hurried past to the Senator’s room. I could hear the elevator drop below as I watched Hickman, who slept on, unaware. In the spreading silence I watched for further activity and was about to return to my notes when another nurse came out carrying a tray. She looked at Hickman a moment, then drifted down and around the curve in the corridor, disappearing.

*
Word(s) missing after “so” in the typescript.

CHAPTER 15

I
INSPECTED MY AILING
watch. What was the time? An odor of iodoform drifted to me, bringing an image of a lonely seashore in high summer, the blue mutability of foam-fringed waves. Away. Far off a buzzer sounded, faded, leaving an interval of silence from which slowly emerged the faint clink and tinkle of glass striking against metal, and my eyes were drawn down to the end of the corridor where there now appeared a white-suited attendant pushing a metal steam cart.

Taking his time, pushing at a forward slant with his red head low over the handlebar, he approached until abreast the sleeping Hickman, pausing to gaze at the old man for a moment, then roll the cart to the other side of the Senator’s door. And now, seeing him about to knock, I got to my feet, hoping that I might have a word with one of the nurses, but as the door came slightly ajar I saw one of the security men looking through and stayed where I was, watching them. He said something to the attendant and disappeared. Then immediately a nurse took his place, carefully blocking the view as she began passing the attendant several napkin-covered trays which, squatting and rising rhythmically, he placed on a rack underneath the cart, then proceeded to hand her trays of food covered with silver serving bells. He worked swiftly, negotiating the narrow passage with professional skill, but someone inside the room must have become nervous, for he had barely handed over the last tray when the door snapped to, almost catching his hand, and a look of high indignation flashed over his freckled face and he pronounced a silent obscenity with such graphic expressiveness that I was forced to stifle a laugh. His lips continued to work angrily as he knelt beside the cart and came up with two heavy silver coffeepots and went to stand close to the door, waiting until the door swung inward and then, moving with the abrupt precision of a marine presenting a rifle for inspection, he plunged the gleaming vessels into the crack with a resounding
clank!

There was a splash of liquid, accompanied by protesting voices, to which, standing with back rigidly arched, he replied vehemently until the pots were removed from his hands and the door swung shut. He continued to curse at the blank white panel for a moment, then aimed a mock backhanded blow at Hickman’s chin, watching the old man sleep, then wheeled the cart around and, passing me as though I didn’t exist, headed for the elevator. He rang impatiently, leaning against the button, his head resting upon his folded arm. The car came slowly and I was about to sit down when I heard a low sound like that of a bass viol being played pizzicato. He had begun to hum a tune of eccentric rhythm oddly skipping intervals:

Ah-zoom-zee-zoom-zoom
A-bach-ditty beep broom
,
Ah-zoom, ah-zoom-ah-zoom-zoom
A-bach-rock, ah-mop-mop …

The name
Minifees
flashed in my mind, and I found myself following him into the now-opening door of the elevator.
I’m probably so tired that I’m as nutty as the nonsense he’s humming
, I thought.
But on the other hand, he may very well lead me to the car-burning fiddler…. What, by the way, are a “beep broom” and a “baccarat mop”?

With the car beginning its sluggish ascension, he turned his attention to a narrow lip of paper, leaning on the handlebar and muttering a mysterious series of numbers: “Four-eleven-forty-four, two-eleven-twenty-two, three-six, nine.” As he wrote them down, all traces of annoyance had left his freckled face; now, as he paused, looking off into space, I made my approach.

“Pardon me,” I said, “but I wonder …”

He shook his head, frowning as he stared at the paper.

“Hold it, man,” he said, “I’m trying to remember the figures for blood on the floor….”

I apologized, watching him as he continued to write; then, folding the slip, he placed it in the breast pocket of his jacket, and I saw a pair of yellow-green eyes.

“Now,” he said, “what was that you were saying?”

“Sorry for interrupting,” I said. “I was about to ask if you could do me a favor?”

“A favor?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “Doc, don’t you think it’s kind of early in the morning to start that?”

“Pardon?”

“I mean I just got started on my rounds….”

“Of course,” I said, “I understand that, but I only wanted—”

He shook his head, looking down at the cart, and I could hear the slow exhale of breath as he straightened and leaned against the wall.

“I’m sure glad you understand what I mean, Doc, because I have a hell of a lot to do.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Forget it.”

“Yeah, Doc,” he said, looking me in the eye, “I have my responsibilities too, you know?”

“Sure, I know, but I didn’t mean to interfere with your work.”

“Now that’s just fine. If it was later in the day, it would be different.”

“Sure, and I wouldn’t have bothered you if I knew my way around. But I’m a newspaper reporter assigned to keep an eye on the condition of Senator Sunraider and—”

It was as though I’d stuck him with a pin. Suddenly he struck the cart,
“Sunrainder,”
he said. “Did you say
Sun
rainder?”

“Yes, Senator Sunraider.”

“Well, I’ll be damn! If I hadn’t been half asleep I would’ve known that that was who it was. That’s where I just came from; I was right outside his door!”

“Of course, I saw you there.”

“I’ll be damn! No wonder they didn’t want me to get a look inside the room. I thought they thought I was trying to meddle.”

“Of course,” I said. “I assumed you knew.”

“Naw, man;
hell naw!”
He shook his head in violent denial. “I just came on the job and
wham!
—they sent me up there without a word. They ought to warn a man.”

“You can understand their problem,” I said. “The Senator’s under heavy security, so I suppose the authorities are allowing as few people to know his whereabouts as possible.”

“Yeah, but they could’ve warned
me
. That was like sending a man into a lion’s mouth in the dark.” He pointed toward the floor of the elevator, his eyes afire. “Those people down there are acting trigger-happy as hell. I bring them some food, and they try to take my arm off with the goddamn door!”

“You were lucky you weren’t injured,” I said, “but I don’t think it was intentional. Having such a grave responsibility has probably put them under a strain.”

“Strain, hell! This is
me
, man. What do they think I was going to do?”

“I doubt it was you so much as the fact that they’ve been ordered to treat anyone they don’t know as suspicious.”

“But I
work
here, that nurse down there
knows me.”

“Then it was probably one of the security men who closed the door. By now their nerves must be on edge. Having to guard the Senator makes them jumpy.”

“Yeah, but why the hell should we
all
start jumping? Before I went up there,
my
nerves were fine. What are they so jumpy about, anyway? Didn’t the cat who did the shooting kill himself?”

“There’s no doubt about that.”

“So what’s worrying them?”

“Accomplices,” I said. “They’re afraid that he might have had accomplices.”

“Is that right?” He gave me a questioning look. “So that’s all the more reason for that damn dietician to have warned a man. Those cops could’ve blasted me, and I wouldn’t have known what it was all about. That woman let me come on like a square. When I saw that big fellow sleeping next to the door and you sitting up the hall there, I knew right away that somebody was going through a crisis, but it didn’t occur to me that it was
Sun
rainder. Damn!”

Suddenly the car jerked to a stop, and he pushed the cart into the corridor, still shaking his head as I followed. It was quiet, the corridor was empty, a red light glowed above a door.

“Listen,” he said quietly, “have they learned why he got blasted?”

“Not yet,” I said, “but it’s hoped that when the Senator comes to he’ll be able to make a statement.”

“And ain’t
that
a hell of a deal,” he said, “because if he runs true to form he’s liable to say something that don’t
nobody
want to hear.”

“Like it or not,” I said, “they’ll have to listen and do something about it. The whole country’s upset over this affair.”

He rolled the cart and I followed, wondering how to make my approach, then saw him stopping, staring down at the polished top of the cart; then, looking at me with the utmost seriousness, he said, “Man, just thinking about it cold sober, that shooting was a mother—Hell, what I mean is, it was
something!”

“Unless I’m overstating the case,” I said, “it was a disaster.”

“You’re damn right—and I’ll tell you something else: Sunrainder might get better, but he won’t
ever
be the same. No, sir! He’ll never be the same. That cat who did it was playing for keeps. It was like he had told Sunrainder, ‘Sunrainder, man, you have messed with me and hurt my feelings, so now I’m going to blast your butt and go to hell … and pay for it!’ And he did it, man. He kept his word and dealt himself a natural mess!”

He shook his head, marveling at the enormity of it all. His white skin had reddened beneath the freckles of his now-animated face, and something in his voice made me wonder if he were about to laugh, cry, or say a prayer: reminding me of Hickman’s reaction at the time of the shooting.

“Yes, sir,” he said, moving off, “that man turned out that Senate like a stud who has taken his gal to a public dance and got mad over somebody eyeballing
her too hard and he decides to clear out the joint—commencing by
head-whipping the
poor, innocent piano player! The only thing about it is, this cat probably blasted the right man.”

He chuckled. “I can’t figure him out, though, pulling a stunt like that up there on the Hill. He must have been trying to make himself some history.”

“He did,” I said, “terrible history, there’s no predicting the aftereffects it will have on the country.”

He stopped the cart, giving me a searching glance, the humor fading from his eyes.

“You’re probably right,” he said. “That kind of mess can rub off on everybody
—and
could already have got me shot. How is old Sunrainder making out?”

“I can’t say; I’ve been here all night, and as far as I’ve been able to learn, he’s still in a coma.”

He moved again. “You know,” he said, “it must be hell to have something like that happen when you’re not even thinking about it.”

“But that’s the way such things happen, they’re meant to be unsuspected.”

“Yeah, and quick and nervy. According to the paper that cat stood up in front of all those people, whipped out his piece way up there in the visitors’ gallery, and before Sunrainder knew anything—” he stopped suddenly, leaning across the handlebar to make the gesture of firing a pistol—“before he could catch the shuffle, that cat had leveled down
—bam! bam!—
and
wasted
him!” He pulled erect, grimacing and shaking his head. “Oh, he garbaged him, man!
Ruined him—sieved him!
It was awful. The paper said he hit him everywhere, including the bottom of his
feet
! So you
know
he meant to kill him. Hell, yes! It said he dotted Sunrainder’s
i’s
and crossed his
t’s
. Said he …”

He was becoming quite carried away, and I reached out, touching his arm. “Wait,” I said, “just a second—what paper did you read?”

He froze, his green eyes regarding me as though I were suddenly insane. “What?”