361

by Donald E. Westlake

“Chased a lot of ambulances lately,” he said. He grinned at me, and slapped my knee. I grinned back. I felt good, to be in the states, to be with my father, to be a civilian. Great.

  We went up the Henry Hudson Parkway and over the George Washington Bridge. We took the lower level and Dad said, “This is new.”

  “This part of the bridge? It looks nutty.”

  We went up 9 to 17, and then west on 17 toward Binghamton.

  Thirty-eight miles outside New York City, when we had the road to ourselves, a tan-and-cream Chrysler pulled up next to us, and the guy on our side stuck his hand out with a gun in it and started shooting.

  Dad looked at me, and his eyes were huge and terrified. He opened his mouth and said, “Cap,” in a high strange voice. Then blood gushed out of his mouth, like red vomit.

  He fell staring in my lap, and the car swung off the road into a bridge support.

  Two

  I remember being moved. The doctor said that was impossible, it was a false memory, but I remember it. And a guy saying, “Look at the leg.”

  Then there was a long gray time, and then a time when I knew I was in a hospital bed, but I didn’t care. Nurse rustlings, glass clinkings, paper cracklings, they all happened far away in some other world. The same with movement, white against white, people passing the foot of the bed.

  Then I realized I wasn’t seeing with my right eye. All the layers of fuzzy white were in a plane, I didn’t have any depth perspective. When I closed just the left eye, it went away.

  I made a sound, and it was awful. Then there was hurried rustling, and a balloon of flesh hung over me, with smudgy eyes. A woman’s voice asked, “Are we awake?”

  I didn’t say anything. I was afraid to make that sound again. I blinked my left eye. I told my right eye to blink, but the message got lost someplace. I couldn’t feel anything around there at all.

  The balloon went away. When it came back with a doctor, I was in better shape. Every time I blinked, the left eye worked better. I could make out the wall, and the iron tubing of the foot of the bed, and the high right angle of the door frame. The balloon came in, being a nurse, and then the doctor.

  I was just reaching my hand up, slowly, to find out what was wrong with my right eye. The doctor shoved it down under the sheet again. “Now, now,” he said. “None of that. Let’s not overwork.”

  “Eye,” I said. Then I thought he might misunderstand, might think I was talking about me, so I said, “See.” I was going through the alphabet.

  “We’ll get to that,” he said. “How do you feel?”

  “See,” I said.

  “We don’t know yet. Are you in pain?”

  I was. I hadn’t noticed till then, and all of a sudden I noticed. My legs hurt, like fury. Down by the ankles, and spreading up to above the knees. And the right side of my head, a dull ache like ocean waves.

  “We’ll give you something,” he said.

  I guess he did. I went back to sleep.

  Every time I woke up, it was a little better. I woke up, went to sleep, five or six times, and then one time Bill came in. They wouldn’t let me sit up yet, and I felt like a little kid again, lying flat in the bed, my big brother standing there grinning at me. “They make us tough, Ray,” he said.

  I said, “Dad?”

  He stopped grinning, shook his head. “Shot,” he said.

  But I knew it already. I could still see him, falling sideways toward me, his eyes painted pieces of plaster. He was dead then, before the car even left the road.

  “How long’ve I been here?”

  “A month. Five weeks tomorrow.”

  “This is August?”

  “Tuesday, the sixteenth.” His grin was a little weaker this time. “You had a rough time, boy. They didn’t know if you’d live.”

  “Listen,” I said. “They won’t tell me. My eye, the right eye. It’s all bandaged.”

  He went away, diagonally across the room to a chair with a green back. He brought it over, sat in it beside the bed. Our heads were on the same level. I was getting used to figuring out perspective with only the left eye. Two, three days before, he would have just gotten smaller, and then bigger again. Now, I could think of him going away and coming back.

  Three years had changed him. His red hair was bushier, his face paler and the freckles fading, his cheeks jowlier. He looked tougher and more sober. He looked more reliable.

  He said, “They said I could tell you if you asked, but not otherwise. And only if I thought you could take it.”

  “It’s gone?”

  He nodded. “You went through the windshield. A piece of glass.”

  “Good Jesus.” I lay there and thought about it. I was missing an eye, forever. Never again that eye, never again.

  I’d always have to fake perspective.

  It might have been both of them. Hell, it might have been the life. I was still around, I could still see.

  What the hell did I look like these days?

  I asked him. He said, “Like a turkey’s ass, plucked. But better every day. The doctor says you won’t have any scars that show. And I’ve already talked to a guy about a glass eye. He’ll fit you for it the minute the doctor says okay.”

  “Jesus....The feet? They hurt like hell.” I knew they were still there. One time, I’d got my right hand up behind my head—that was before I could move the left hand too well—and pushed my head up so I could look down my length, and the feet were still there. I’d been worried about amputation. I’d heard of people whose legs hurt after they’d been cut off and they didn’t have any legs any more. Mine hurt, and I couldn’t move them, so I was worried they were gone. But they were there, fat tubular bulges under the sheet, encased in bandaging.

  “Your ankles were broken,” Bill said. “Crushed between the car and the bridge support. They’ve been doing bone grafts on you.”

  “And I’ll be okay?”

  “Sure.” He grinned one-sided at me. “You’ll live to play the piano again,” he told me. “With your feet, like always.”

  Then I asked him for a cigarette and he said no. So I got one from the cop who came in that evening. His name was Kirk, and he was State Police, CID, in civvies. He had me tell the story, and there wasn’t that much to tell. I hadn’t recognized either of the men in the Chrysler. I didn’t know what “Cap” meant. I didn’t know why two strangers would shoot my father.

  When he left, Miss Benson, the thin one, grabbed the cigarette out of my mouth.

  Bill came by every day, for about a week. Then one day he didn’t come around. I asked Miss Benson. She said, “He had to go back to Binghamton.”

  “Why?”

  She got evasive, and I kept asking her. So she told me, and wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kelly. His wife was hit by a car. She was killed.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I never met her.”

  Three

  When I got out of the hospital, three days after Labor Day, I had two eyes, one of them working. With that one, I saw the guy get out of the Plymouth across the street from the hospital and come walking toward me. I slowed down, feeling naked. I still remembered the one who stuck his hand out the side window with a gun in it.

  This one was different. Medium height, thin. He’d lost weight recently, and hadn’t been able to afford a new wardrobe. His jacket hung on him like a style that had never caught on. His hair was sandy; his scalp was probably sand. His face was sharp of nose and chin and eye and bone, but there was weak pulp behind it, peeking through.

  He stopped in front of me, looking at the tie Miss Benson had picked out. She’d had to buy me some clothes. My two suitcases got burned in the car. I’d given her the money, some that Bill had sent me.

  He acted as though he wanted to talk to me, but was afraid somebody might notice. I said, “Okay,” and sidestepped him and walked across the street to the Plymouth. I might have been afraid of him, but he was afraid of me. He came trotting after me, on shorter legs. I could hear him breathing
.

  I went around the Plymouth and got in the right side. He slid in behind the wheel, next to me. He looked very worried. He got out a pack of Philip Morris Commanders. On him, they were wishful thinking. He pawed one out with two fingers and thumb, and I took the pack away and got one for myself. We lit up in a leaden silence, with him trying to watch the whole outside world at once, and then, jerkily, he said, “I owe your old man a favor. I come to do it.”

  “What sort of favor?”

  “A long time back. It don’t make no difference now. You’re his son. I just want to tell you, you ought to go away. Change your name, clear out for good. Go someplace out west, maybe. But don’t go to New York.”

  “Why not?”

  He lipped his cigarette, made it look terrible. His eyes jerked around in their sockets like ball bearings. At last, he said, “There’s gonna be trouble. You don’t want to get mixed in.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “That’s the favor,” he said quickly. “Even-Stephen. If they saw me talkin’ to you, they’d gun me. I’ve done enough, maybe too much.”

  “If who saw you? The men who killed my father?”

  “Go away.” He was getting more and more jittery by the second. “Interview’s over, favor’s done. Go away. Get outa the car.”

  I laid my left arm across his chest, holding him against the seat. My right hand patted him, didn’t find anything that felt like a weapon. He was breathing hard, and looking all over the street like he expected tanks to show up any minute, but he didn’t say anything.

  I kept my left arm where it was, and thumbed the glove compartment. The door dropped down, and I took out the gun. I don’t know guns, this was I guess a .32 caliber. It was a revolver, and stubby-barreled, all blue-black metal with a plain grip. The drum had places for six bullets. Two showed thin edges on each side, and those four had cartridges in them. I didn’t know about the one in line with the barrel or the one underneath. Just above where my thumb naturally rested there was a little catch. It pointed at S. I pushed it to O with my thumb, felt it click.

  I took my left arm back, and half-turned in the seat, so I could face him and hold the gun in my lap aimed at him. He gave me a flying millisecond glance, eyed the street some more, and said, “I come to do a favor, that’s all. Nothing else, nothing more. All bets are off. I don’t say a word, you might’s well get out of the car.”

  “Start the engine,” I said.

  He couldn’t believe it. He wanted to know where I thought I was taking him.

  “Home,” I told him. “Binghamton’s about a hundred thirty miles down 17. Drive.”

  “I won’t do it,” he said.

  “Self-defense,” I told him. “I wrestled the gun out of your hands. You were one of the men shot my father.”

  He stared at me. But he picked my right eye to stare at, the glass one. He shivered and started the car.

  It was a long ride. We didn’t talk much, and the highway looked too familiar. It was the same kind of situation, me in the same seat in the car. I kept looking back, and whenever a car passed us I winced, but nothing happened.

  We made it in under four hours. We crossed the river on the first bridge, bypassing most of the town, but it was a little after four and rush-hour. It was slow going out to Vestal.

  They built it up a lot in three years. The Penn-Can highway was going to bring civilization to the hometown after all. There were even split-level developments now, and ranch-style houses.

  Bill lived in a ranch-style out on 26. There was nobody home when we got there, but the garage door was up and the car was out. I had the guy pull the Plymouth into the garage. We got out, and I switched the gun to my left hand again while he pulled the overhead door down. I’d been changing the gun back and forth from hand to hand about every half hour, when the fingers would start to cramp.

  The door in the wall between the kitchen and the garage was also open, and the house was full of mosquitoes. The sink was full of dishes. The living-room floor was scattered with beer bottles and newspapers. Both were delivered, I guess. The beer bottles were twelve-ounce stubbies, the little fat ones you never see anywhere but at clambakes and sandlot ball games. There were two cases of them out in the garage and maybe a dozen cold in the refrigerator. That was practically all there was in the refrigerator.

  The mosquitoes had the house to themselves. There were two bedrooms, and they were both empty. One had a crib and a white dresser and pink walls. The dresser drawers were open, empty. But Bill’s clothes were all over the other bedroom and the closet, so he hadn’t moved out. He was just boarding his kid with somebody, that’s all. Probably Aunt Agatha.

  We sat in the dinette and drank Bill’s beer, and played gin with a deck of Bill’s cards. The blue-black revolver looked strange on the rose-mottled formica of the table. The guy lost consistently. He couldn’t keep his mind on the game. Every once in a while, he’d talk to me about letting him go. But he didn’t really think he could convince me.

  The backyard, just outside the dinette window, gradually became night. In the other direction, through the archway, was the living room and the picture window. It was night out that way, too, with a streetlight off a ways to the side and amber light from the picture window across the way.

  Bill came home after ten. By the way he drove, he was drunk. When he was in high school, he owned a Pontiac with no back seat and a Mercury engine, and he shoved it around tracks in stock races. Most of the time he was drunk, and half the time he rode in the money. Sober, he was a good hard driver. Drunk, he shaved his corners.

  He came in wide-eyed, blue basketball jacket crooked over T-shirt. He looked at me and shook his head and leaned back against the kitchen wall. “Don’t do that,” he said. His voice trembled. “Jesus, don’t do that. I thought it was Ann.” He held a quaking hand to his chest.

  It hadn’t even occurred to me. Who but his wife would be waiting home for him, the lights on? I got up, remembering the gun just in time, and said, “I didn’t think, Bill.”

  “Jesus,” he said. He shook his head and licked his lips. He pushed off from the wall and opened the refrigerator door, and dropped the bottle he grabbed for. He shut the door and fumbled for the bottle.

  I thought he was going to fall over. I waved the gun at my gin-partner. “Go open it for him,” I said.

  He did it. Bill watched him, frowning. He took the bottle and drank from it, and then he said to me, “Who is this?” He waved the bottle at the guy the way I’d waved the gun.

  “He met me outside the hospital,” I said. I told the story, finishing, “And he won’t say any more than that.”

  “Oh, he won’t.” Bill put the bottle in his left hand, and hit the guy in the mouth.

  I’d never seen that before, a man knocked out with one punch. The guy just fell down like his strings were cut.

  I said, “That’s bright. He’ll talk a lot better in that condition.”

  “I didn’t mean to hit him that hard.” He gulped the beer again, put the bottle down on the drainboard, filled a glass with water.

  “No,” I said. I put the gun on top of the refrigerator, knelt beside the guy, slapped him awake. Over my shoulder, I said, “Make yourself some coffee. You’re supposed to be three years older than me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Ray. I’ve been feeling sorry for myself.”

  “For how long?”

  “I know. Two weeks ago today. Ann.” He was on the verge of a crying jag.

  “Make coffee,” I said. “Three cups.”

  The guy on the floor twisted his head away from my slap. “Cut it out,” he whined. “Cut it out.”

  “Get on your feet,” I told him. “He won’t hit you again.”

  He didn’t believe me, but he got up, shakily. Bill was watching the water not boil. I said to him, “When you’re sensible, come into the living room. Bring the coffee with you.” I reached down the gun from the refrigerator.

  Bill said, “I’m
sorry, Ray. Jesus God, I’m sorry.”

  “If you start crying,” I told him, “I’ll walk out and the hell with you.” I prodded the guy into the living room. We turned on lights and sat looking across the street, where the picture window framed a happy family watching television, just like the ads in the Saturday Evening Post. It looked so normal I wanted to cry. Give me back my three years, Air Force. Four years, counting the year before they sent me to Germany. Give it back, I want to be home again, with Dad sometimes good for a game of catch, with Bill a big brother smelling of beer and Pontiac. I don’t want to be twenty-three, without a home or an old man. I don’t want a brother who’s grieving for a wife I never even met. That makes us strangers.

  I said to the guy, “What’s your name?”

  “Smitty.”

  “Crap.”

  “Honest to God. I got a library card to prove it.”

  That I wanted to see. Not to check the name, but because I wanted to see a library card that this guy would carry.

  He showed it to me, and it was a Brooklyn library card. Typewritten, it said: Chester P. Smith, 653 East 99th St Local 36 Apt 2. Then there was a signature that might have been Chester P. Smith and might also have been Napoleon Bonaparte.

  So he had a library card. In the same wallet he had forty-three dollars. But no driver’s license, and I’d just been a hundred thirty miles in a car with him. “I’ll call you Smitty,” I said, tossing the wallet back, “but I bet Chester P. got mad when he had to go after a new card.”

  He put the wallet away. A couple minutes later, Bill came in with three cups of coffee. Smitty shrank away when he brought the coffee over to him. Bill grinned like a spreading wound, and put the cup on the table beside the chair.

  Bill and I sat on the sofa, and Smitty sat in the armchair near the picture window, half-facing us. After a minute, Bill said, “I’m okay now.”

  “Good,” I said.

  There was silence, and then Bill cleared his throat and said, “What are we waiting for?”

  “Smitty to start talking,” I said.

  Smitty stuck a nervous thumb at the picture window. “Can’t we close these drapes?”