Baby Is Three (28 page)

He got in the car and opened the other door for her. “It was.” He took off his jacket, wrung it out over the ground, shook it, and handed it across to her. She put it over her shoulders and climbed in. “He must have had an attack of second thought. Wondered if you had killed yourself or not. Came back to see. You showed up nicely against the dark river. He couldn’t see the station wagon, and didn’t notice me in this brown suit. It must have been a big surprise to him to get lead thrown back at him. Who is he, anyway?”

“I don’t know him, really. His name’s Mordi. He came into the—”

“Morty?”

“Mordi. He came into the hash house a few times. Dark. Dresses well. Very quiet.” She shuddered. “I’ll look out for those quiet ones after this. Steel traps … dynamite sticks … they’re nice and quiet, un
-til.”

He started the motor, backed, turned, and got onto the River Road. She said suddenly, “Mr. Guinn …”

“Mmm?”

She hesitated. Then, “Mind if I take this off again? You’ll think I’m terrible, but it’s so clammy. And it’s warm this evening and somehow it doesn’t seem to matter. Though I don’t know how I’ll ever get out of the car in town.”

“Go ahead,” said Guinn. “It’s getting dark. The passing parade will think you’re still in that strapless job. You’re right—it matters as much as or as little as you let it. When we get to the hospital I’ll see if there isn’t a nurse’s uniform I can swipe for you.”

She peeled off the jacket and draped it over the seat between them. She crossed her arms and rubbed her shoulders for a moment, then sat demurely with her hands on her lap.

He said, “You took a hell of a chance with that high-dive.”

“Not so much,” she said. “I used to swim there a lot. The channel’s
real deep between the bank and that second pier, and I knew that. I noticed the way that car door opened when I was with him this afternoon. I knew it would slam wide open if I just opened it a little and I was waiting my chance. When he had to swing so near the rail to pass that trailer—that was it. I got my feet under me and dove right off the seat. I used to go off there all the time. It’s forty-two feet,” she added.

“At about forty-two miles an hour, just then,” he said: “Lucky you didn’t break your back.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

He glanced at her admiringly. “Do you have to work at that hash-house?”

“It’s a job.”

“You’ve got a better one if you want it.”

“With you? Do you mean it?”

“Yup.”

“Oh, I’d love it. I’d just love it.”

A conquest, thought Guinn.

She said, “I could maybe see him every day.”

“See who?”

“Garry.”

Not my conquest, he thought, and allowed himself one of his rare grins. “He’s a good kid.”

“He’s the bravest man I’ve ever known! Why, when that man came up out of the woods like that …”

“Tell me about it.”

“I was a little afraid of him at first, Garry I mean,” she said. “The way he was looking at me. Then he started to talk. I never heard anybody talk the way he does. Not as if I was a girl. Just as if I was … well, people. About the car and you and jet aircraft and banana cream pie and the National League. It was …” She paused. “Anyway, we heard the other car start. Garry put a hand on my arm and said not to worry. That was all, just ‘Don’t worry.’ I wish I could tell you how—safe—it made me feel.

“The car came up, and sure enough it was him—Mordi, the man
I’d been riding with before I met you. He looked out at us and then stopped his car. He leaned out for a long time and looked at me and at Garry and the station wagon, and then he got out and came up to us. I never saw such cold eyes on a human being in my life, and they shouldn’t be, they’re not the right color to be so cold.

“Garry got out and they stood looking at each other. Finally Mordi said, ‘Nobody cuts in on me, cottonhead.’

“Garry said, ‘Beat it, cottonmouth. Nothing around here belongs to you.’

“So the man said to me, ‘He’s so wrong, ain’t he, sugar?’

“And I said, ‘He’s so right.’

“He came up close, then, and told me I was going back with him. I just shook my head. Then Garry said, ‘That’ll do for now, tailor-dummy. Goodbye again.’ And he reached inside his jacket. When he did that, Mordi pulled out a gun and shot him in the head.”

Guinn’s eyes seemed to get smaller. “Garry never carries a gun,” he said. “I’ll have to tell him some things about raising on a three-card straight.”

“He’s too honest to get away with a bluff,” said Lynn.

“Oh,” said Guinn. The smile appeared again.

Lynn said, “He reached in and got my wrist. I didn’t know he was going to pull so hard, so suddenly. He hauled me out and I was flat on my face before I knew what was happening. Then he hit me.” She put her hand behind her neck, stroked. “I guess I went out, and I didn’t come to all at once, either. Everything was sort of dreamy for the longest time.”

“I know that punch,” said Guinn.

“I was in his car,” she continued. “He wasn’t. I heard another shot. I remember thinking he must have gone back to finish Garry. Or maybe you.”

“Shot a hole in my gas tank,” said Guinn.

“Oh. Well, before I was completely out of it, we were charging down the hill. He drove very fast. He laughed at me. He’s crazy … what’d he want to kill a man over me for?”

“I don’t want to take a compliment away from a lady,” said Guinn,
“but it wasn’t over you. He killed somebody up there, and we were the only ones who’d seen him around. He knew what he was doing. That’s why he came back just now to make sure you were out of the running. He seems to’ve missed me altogether. I guess while I was catfooting over toward the rocks on one side, he was sneaking back on the other.

She shuddered. “He laughed at me,” she said. “He-he touched me, too.”

“I’ll speak to him about that sometime soon,” said Guinn.

The county hospital was just outside the city limits, across the highway from forest land. It was quite dark when they reached it. Guinn pulled up across the road from the big brick pylons which flanked the entrance to the hospital drive.

“Out,” he said.

She looked at him, wide-eyed. “What?”

He chuckled. “Cheer up. I’m not pulling a Mordi on you. Has it occurred to you that I’ve got to drive up to the emergency ward, floodlights and all, and that a couple of interns will be out to tote Garry in? Of course, I could explain that I’m helping you home from a floating crap game where you lost your shirt …”

She opened the door. “Hurry back,” she said.

He watched her cross the road shoulder and enter the woods. He shrugged into his damp jacket. It was clammy, but would cover his holster. Then he pulled into the drive. He turned at the parking court, wondering about the mental processes of landscapers who built graceful curves into a road which so often would have life or death at the end of it, and swung in under the brightly-lit port-cochere.

A grizzled guard hobbled over to him, peered. “Had Guinn! Back again?”

“With a customer. Get a couple of butchers out here with a stretcher, will you, Jerry?”

He followed the old man in and went over to the registration window. “Hello, Cheryl.”

A blonde woman with a face like the most comfortable of sofa
pillows looked up through the glass. When she saw him she smiled. It was like the kind of lamplight that goes with that kind of pillow. “Hadley!”

“I brought Garry in,” he said bluntly. “Someone creased his head.”

She rose. “Is he—”

“Doesn’t look too bad. But I’d like to know right away. I’m on a case. Will you take care of the gunshot report for me?”

“Oh, yes.” She got out the form, slid it through to him.

He signed it on the bottom line. “One more thing. I know you people do the best you can, but I’d like you to think up something even better for Garry. Whatever he needs, hear? I mean anything.”

He got his wallet out and thumbed through its inside compartment. An expression of almost stupid astonishment slackened his features.

Cheryl said, “What is it, Hadley? You been robbed?”

“No …” His eyes came back to earth. “No, Cheryl, I should say not.” He pulled bills out of the wallet.

C-notes. Five of them.

He closed his eyes. There was that center drawer of his desk. In it, the telephone company’s envelope. In the envelope, three of the C-notes the Morgan chick had given him. Five minus three left two. There ought to be two hundred in the wallet. There were five.

“What is it, Hadley?”

He looked at her. “Just trying to figure out whether or not I’d tipped a waiter. Here.” He slid two of the bills through the hole. They settled to her disk like a couple of pigeons on a roof. That’s extra, over the bill. I got more.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I do have to. I just want to know he’s a bit more than all right. Uh … you don’t have to talk to him about it.”

She smiled. “The way you treat him, he thinks you hate him.” She picked up the money.

“So he keeps on trying hard to make me happy. If he thought I was happy, why should he bother?”

“You’re a softy, Hadley Guinn.”

“You’re a pretty hard character yourself.” He winked at her. “Oh. Cheryl—”

“Yes, Had.”

“Can you dredge me up a nurse’s uniform? Not the starched job—one of those lab wraparounds.”

“What on earth for?”

“My Sunday school’s putting on a pageant,” he explained. “I’m to be Florence Nightingale.”

“Idiot. What size?”

“About Miss Roark and a half.” Miss Roark was the trim one in the super’s office.

“Sure, Hadley.” She went through a door at the back of the office. Guinn turned. They were bringing Garry in. He looked very white. Guinn followed the interns into the receiving ward. A tired man with wakeful eyes waved the interns toward an examining table. “Hello, Jim.”

The doctor thumped his shoulder. “Good to see you. That’s your Number One boy, isn’t it? Garry what’s-his-name?”

“Yeah. Can you give me a verdict quickly. I got to go.”

“What happened to him?”

The doctor bent over Garry’s head while Guinn told him. Then he rolled Garry’s lids back, peered at the eyes. He put on his stethoscope and prodded around with it.

“He might need a transfusion. Concussion possibly. Shock certainly. He might have trouble with the hearing on that side for a while. He’s a lucky boy.”

“How long will the transfusion take me?”

“No time at all. Not for you, Guinn. He’s Type B, you’re A. Don’t worry about it. We have lots in the bank. You won’t do.”

“You can tell by my astral vibrations?”

The doctor laughed. “I can tell by memory. The last time you two gave blood for the Red Cross he asked me what your blood type was, and swore a blue streak when he found out his was different. He thought he might be useful to you some time.”

“Hell.” Guinn looked at the still face. “Take care of him, Jim.”

“Sure.” He bent over the patient again. Guinn read that one casual syllable all the way through, and in it found what sort of care Garry was going to get. He said, “Thanks, Jim,” and went out.

Cheryl was waiting for him with a neatly folded paper package. “Hadley …”

“Oh, thanks, Cheryl. The uniform.” He took it.

She said, “I think I ought to tell you. There was someone here today boning through the hospital records. Yours especially.”

“Looking for what? That bone operation?”

She shook her head. “That’s in the journals—how they picked a .44 slug piece by piece out of your bone marrow. No, Hadley, the birth records.”

His face went absolutely expressionless. “Who was it?”

“A girl. A really beautiful girl.”

“Probably from a matrimonial agency trying to answer some maiden’s prayer. What kind of authority did she have?” Cheryl recoiled at the way the last words grated out. Guinn touched her shoulder. “Sorry. Well?”

“She had identification from the State Census. Strictly kosher. I just thought you ought to know.” Her eyes were very soft. “Hadley, it makes more difference than it should to you. Not the investigator. You know.”

“My birth records. Yes, I know. Maybe it does. It makes a difference to any of us.” He looked down at the package, crinkled the paper. “Hey, I got to get out of here. Thanks for everything, Cheryl.”

“For nothing, honey. Hadley, I won’t ask you about your business, but if you’ve got to go near any more gun fights, let’s not have any more hospital cases on your side. Hm?”

He went to the door, waved. “I’ll be good.” She cared. She gave a damn. It’s fine to know somebody gives a damn. “By the way, what was the name of the nosy chick?”

Cheryl said, “Morgan.”

Hadley steered through the pylon-guarded entrance, wheeled across the highway, and stopped. He waited.

Nothing happened.

He slid across the seat and peered into the black wall of the forest. Nothing.

He got back behind the wheel. He lit a cigarette. That took a little time. He opened the package, wadded up the paper and tossed it back over the seat, unfolded the crisp white dress and draped it over the seat next to him. That took some time too.

She didn’t come.

He uttered a sudden snort of disgust. Of course! The lights. He shifted, angled the car close in to the ditch, and shut off the lights and motor.

It was very quiet out there. The forest slept, but for all its sleep it was alive with little creaks and whisperings. He climbed out, and something made him close the door very quietly.

There was no wind. Somewhere a train uttered a two-toned cry, and the mountains threw it back like a wailing wall. The hospital was a gold-checkered garment tossed carelessly on a hassock, with the checks showing randomly back, up, across. The emergency entrance blazed defiantly at the patient blackness, and from the whole structure came a hum of power; machines turning, water running, life flowing, coming in, going out.

The woods had their low, live sound, too, but it was at odds with the hospital and everything it represented. The forest had its light, too.

It took Guinn a while to see the light, because his pupils were still tensed from the brilliance of the receiving ward. It was not firelight, and it wasn’t a flashlight. It looked like the third or fourth reflection of a welder’s arc, but without an arc’s flicker. Nor was it steady, like a magnesium flare; it waxed and waned irregularly, like the sound of a crowd at a prize fight. And it was very, very dim.