One Endless Hour (4 page)

    "You've never told us anything about yourself, Arnold," Glencoe continued. "Now that you're communicating better, I want to ask again about your background. Where you're from originally, what you do for a living, how you happened to be in Hudson, what triggered the events there… quite a few questions. Where would you like to begin?"

    I waited, then slowly lifted a burned hand to my scarred, ridged face. "I'd… feel… more… like… talking… if… I… didn't… know… what… I… looked… like."

    "I'm sure the hospital staff is making plans to correct it," the state police chief said smoothly. I didn't reply, and he tried again. "There must be
some
loose ends in your background that it would be advantageous to you to pick up. Why don't you let us help?"

    I wasn't going to reply, but even before I could have, the FBI man-if he was an FBI man-reached out suddenly and took hold of my hand still resting against my face. He bent down to look at the fresh cigarette burns on the back of the hand, and Glencoe leaned closer to look, too. Glencoe started to look down the ward in Spider Kern's direction, then caught himself and stared up at the ceiling instead.

    When the man with Glencoe let go of my hand, I dropped it into my lap. Glencoe cleared his throat and started over again. "Where's your hometown, Arnold?"

    I sat there.

    "Where were you living before you came to Hudson?"

    I sat there.

    It went on for ten minutes. Questions with no answers. They tired of it finally and got up to leave. "We'll be back," Glencoe promised. The usual threat was back in his voice.

    Before they left the ward, they stopped just inside the locked ward door and appeared to be arguing about something.

    I didn't doubt that Glencoe would be back.

    But just wait long enough, Colonel, I thought.

    Wait long enough and I might not be here.

    For the first time in months I'd begun to see a little daylight at the end of the tunnel.

    

    

    Dr. Sher Afzul-as proclaimed by a nameplate on his desk-sat almost knee-to-knee with me in his office. The partitioned-off, windowless space couldn't have been more than twelve by fourteen. There was the desk, two chairs, a wall cabinet, and a four-drawer file. That was it.

    He was smoking the thin tube of an aromatic-smelling cigarette as he leaned back in his chair to study me. Several more of the elongated tubes lay on the desk in front of him. The tobacco in them looked black. "How is it that you so suddenly are no longer a vegetable in conversssation with me?" he inquired.

    "I've never been a vegetable, Doc. Not since I came out of the very first bandages."

    "You are a consssumately clever actor, then?"

    "How clever does a man have to be to play idiot?"

    His dark brown features creased in a quick smile.

    "And why am I favored now with the bright side of your sssparkling persssonality?"

    "You know why. You can give me a new face."

    He nodded. "Yes, I can."

    "I'll pay for it."

    A slender eyebrow arched. "You will pay me for doing that for which the hospital already pays me?"

    "I'll pay you additionally, Doc. They'll pay you for a quick-hurry-up job that would still leave me as the leading candidate for a role in a horror movie. I want a first-class job." I kept on talking when he would have interrupted me. "I overheard members of the staff saying it would have cost thousands in any private hospital in the country for the job you did on Willie Turnbull. If anyone in the private hospitals were skilled enough to do it. How come you're buried in a place like this?"

    He smiled again. "Because I find that a prophet is without honor in countries other than his own, too. I was not without reputation in Pakistan. In Karachi. There I was of the upper-middle class. Here"-he spread his slender hands-"I qualify for-for-what is the name of your poor mountain region?"

    "Appalachia."

    "Appalachia," he agreed. "I knew that it would be difficult to establish myself here before I came, but not this difficult. It's not easy for a foreign doctor to be accepted in your country. Before the state examination can be taken, there must be both an accepted length of residence and demonssstrated hospital training. The red tape is ressstrictive."

    I glanced around the shabby office. "They're not exactly overwhelming you with facilities here, Doc."

    He held up both hands, then tapped himself on the forehead. "Here are my facilities. I need no other. When I first came to this country, I was in Grace Hospital in New Orleans, one of the largest and with the finest in facilities. I found, though, that someone was always watching over my shoulder. Checking on me and suggesting or ordering changes in my techniques. I decided this would be better. Here no one cares what I do."

    "I care, Doc. You heard me say I'll pay well for a good job?"

    "You will pay?" he looked skeptical. "I have examined the circumssstances of your presence here. You are indigent."

    "Only while I'm still inside the walls."

    "So? The file shows that you have no assets or even a record of regular employment." The brown eyes were probing me. "The record, in fact, is more remarkable for what it doesn't show than for what it does. Did you know that you represent a problem to Colonel Glencoe, the chief of the state police?"

    "Not a problem. A puzzle."

    "If you like. Colonel Glencoe does not favor puzzles. Or loose ends. With the purpose in mind of gathering up same, he has already recommended to Dr. Mobley that plastic surgery be performed upon you to make you more communicative."

    That must have been what Glencoe and the FBI man were talking about at the door of the ward before they left yesterday afternoon, I thought. "I don't want the kind of job they're talking about," I said. "I want the best job you can give me. For cash."

    His head was cocked to one side like a bright-eyed bird's. "This cash," he said. "How much did you have in mind?"

    "Twenty thousand. Half in advance."

    His face closed up like a furled umbrella. "Your delusions of grandeur had previously essscaped me."

    "Half in advance, cash," I repeated.

    "But all this is just talk. There iss nothing-"

    "When you're ready to take me seriously," I interrupted him, "I'll tell you where to go to put your hand on the first ten thousand. In untraceable cash. You keep that and bring me back whatever's hidden with it."

    He still looked doubtful. "This hiding place-it is near here?"

    "No."

    "Then I would have to invest my time and money in this venture?"

    "You gambled when you left Karachi, Doc. And twenty thousand would go a long way toward setting you up nicely in private practice." I tried to think how to get through to him. "When you first saw me on the ward, what were the odds against us ever having a conversation like this?"

    "Astronomical," he admitted.

    "You're still thinking of me like that. It's a mistake."

    "You have a point." He said it slowly.

    "Think it over." I rose to my feet. "The cash will be there anytime you give me the word you'd like to try for it."

    "I sssuppose this is illegal money?"

    I didn't answer his question. I opened his office door. "Don't expect me to turn verbal handsprings the next time you see me on the ward."

    His smile was unwilling and a bit sour. "That I will not expect." The smile turned to a frown. "But this pro-posssal-"

    "Think it over, Doc."

    I shuffled out into the corridor in my role of slow-moving dimwit. Dr. Afzul followed me and used his key to let me back through the heavy glass door into the ward.

    I didn't feel that the conversation had been a waste of time.

    I'd given Dr. Sher Afzul quite a bit to think about.

    

    

    Three weeks later I heard one of the nurses saying that Dr. Afzul was going to New York to attend a convention of plastic surgeons. When I felt that no one was looking at us the next time he came on the ward, I pointed a finger at myself and then at him. He nodded.

    I was summoned to his office the same afternoon.

    "This is supposed to be a preliminary examination of your condition prior to assessment on my part," he said, "but you have something to say to me?"

    "A man can have a good time in New York, Doc, if he's properly financed."

    "So we're back on that sssubject?"

    "We are. In New York you'll be close to the money."

    It reached him. "How close?"

    "About two hundred and twenty-five miles."

    He tapped thoughtfully on his desk top with a pencil.

    "Tell me exactly what it is you would have me do."

    "Hire a car in New York and drive to the spot I'll tell you. It will take you about five hours. Dig up a sealed jar eighteen inches below the surface of the ground, remove ten thousand dollars and bring me whatever else is in it. And remember that the ten thousand is only the down payment." He was silent. "Does it make sense that I'd send you after nothing when I'll still be here when you get back?"

    "No," he acknowledged. He hitched his chair forward in sudden determination. "All right. Where isss this place?"

    "In Guardian Angel Cemetery in Hillsboro, New Hampshire." He wrote it down. "It's an abandoned cemetery. Drive in the front gate and follow the circular gravel driveway to the right. Turn left at the first intersection. The third headstone on the right will have the name Mallory on it. Twelve feet behind the stone you'll find the jar."

    "Suppose the gate is locked?" Dr. Afzul asked when he finished writing.

    "There's no gate as such. Just an arched entranceway. The township has a newer cemetery but still maintains the old one after a fashion. How long will you be in New York?"

    "Ten days." He said it absently. He was thinking of something else. "Dr. Mobley has approved your facial re-conssstruction."

    "Then we're in business."

    "I have proposed to Dr. Mobley that in the interest of furthering my technique I do a full-scale rebuilding job. He is consssidering it." He hesitated for a moment. "Even if he agrees, it will be tedious and painful," he warned. "It will take a long time."

    I refrained from stating the obvious. "Have a nice visit in the big city, Doc." I rose and went to the door of his office. I turned and looked back at him. "Send a carton of cigarettes onto the ward for me with one of the nurses," I said casually. "Pall Malls."

    I moved out into the corridor.

    The cigarettes were a test.

    I didn't know if I'd sold Dr. Afzul. If he dug into his own pocket for the cigarettes, he was at least partially sold. If he didn't, it was time I began looking for another boy.

    I'm not the worst judge of human nature, though, and on the way back to the ward I couldn't help feeling that for the first time in a long time I was once again in at least partial control of events.

    

    

    TWO DAYS LATER ONE OF THE NURSES IN DR. MOBLEY'S group lingered near my chair during the usual walkthrough of the ward. She waited until the group was huddled around Willie Turnbull and Dr. Mobley was taking bows for the change in Willie's attitude and personality, then hurriedly slipped me a carton of Pall Malls before she rejoined the staff.

    I concealed the cigarettes by shoving the carton up the loose sleeve of my robe. I waited until routine had returned to normal in the ward before I left my chair and hid the carton under the pillow on my bed. Cigarettes weren't taboo on the ward, but Spider Kern controlled their appearance. I wanted a carton that Kern hadn't obtained for me.

    At night I kept the carton between the coil springs in the bed, removing it each morning after ward inspection and replacing it under the pillow. It was Spider Kern's weekend off-each attendant had. one weekend off in three-and I needed his presence for the next move in my chess game.

    Kern was back on Monday, and so was Dr. Mobley. The psychiatrist stopped in front of my chair during his tour of the ward. He was flanked by the usual tight semicircle of doctors and nurses. Mobley seldom got closer than ten feet to the inmate to whom he was speaking. The technique made sense in that it was a preventive against sudden assault by a man roweled by the up-tight monotony of long days in the prison wing of the hospital. There could have been another reason, too. Four days out of five that we saw him, Mobley's nose was cherry-red. I had almost decided that Mobley's standoffish tactics were employed to keep from calling undue attention to his bourbon breath.

    "Glad to hear you're finally responding to treatment, Arnold!" the chief psychiatrist boomed at me.

    Responding to treatment was a joke, but I had a reason for showing response. "I'm… feeling… better… thank… you," I said.

    There was a murmur from the group around Mobley. The majority of them had never heard me speak before. I could see Spider Kern eyeing me speculatively from his position five yards away. Spider hadn't known I was "responding," either. I spoke because I felt I had to demonstrate to Mobley that he wouldn't be wasting the institution's money by okaying plastic surgery for me. From the way he beamed I felt I'd made my point.

    Dr. Afzul wasn't with the staff. I hoped it meant he was already en route to New York for the surgeons' convention. Now that matters had started to show progress, I was anxious to accelerate the process.

    Spider Kern came back to my chair after Mobley and his entourage had left the ward. I'd been expecting him, and I spoke before he could. "Something… for… you… under… my… pillow," I told him.