One Endless Hour (5 page)

    He stared suspiciously, but he went away without saying anything. He was too cagey to go directly to my bed. I never did see him go to it, but the next time I looked the cigarettes were no longer under the pillow. In the next couple of days Kern's attitude became markedly more friendly.

    I knew he hadn't really changed. He still had it in for me because of what I'd done to his buddy, Blaze Franklin. Nor had my attitude toward Kern changed. The cigarettes for him were intended to make a point. Since Kern controlled the normal channels for introducing merchandise onto the ward, a man who could flash a carton of cigarettes without Kern's assistance couldn't be entirely without friends beyond the locked doors. And if that were true, then the man shouldn't be an open target for the venting of Spider's malice. I could do without Kern's lighted-end cigarette treatments while I was healing from Dr. Afzul's surgery, if and when.

    There was Kern's well-known greed, too. He'd figure that if cigarettes appeared mysteriously, perhaps there would be something else for him. If Dr. Afzul didn't fail me, there would definitely be something else for Kern. The broad-shouldered, swaggering little man was an integral part of my escape plan.

    

    

    Ten days passed, more slowly than usual even, before Dr. Afzul reappeared on the ward. He didn't look in my direction during Mobley's morning tour, but that afternoon I was called to Afzul's office. The first thing I noticed when I sat down was that he was wearing an expensive pair of English brogues, shoes that must have cost eighty dollars. I nodded at them. "I see you had no trouble finding the jar, Doc," I said.

    "No." His expression was sober.

    "Then I'll take what you brought for me." The little man seemed ill-at-ease. He reached into a jacket pocket of his hospital whites and removed a folded-over wad of bills, which he handed me. I riffled it quickly. There were twenty-two hundred-dollar bills. I put it in a pocket of my robe. "That's not all that was in the jar, Doc."

    He shook his head. "I cannot give you the gun."

    "We made a bargain." I pressed him, although I had never really expected that he would turn over the weapon.

    "When I left here, I doubted the exissstence of the money, even," he said. "Finding the gun with it raised quessstions. Serious quessstions. I am now concerned to what end you would put a new face. It's not that I care what you do to yourself in the pursuit of your goal, whatever it may be, but there will be innocent byssstanders."

    "I don't understand your morality, Doc. You took my money, but you don't deliver."

    "My morality isss my own affair," he retorted, unruffled. "On the new face, I will deliver. On the gun, no."

    "What can I say to change your mind?"

    "Nothing," he said flatly. "There is self-preservation to be considered, you see. You will be gone, but I will remain. And you might not get clear away, in which case there would surely be an exhaustive invessstigation." He was silent for a moment. "You will have to make up your mind that the new face I will consstruct for you will be worth your invessstment in me."

    "All right." I shrugged it off. The gun would have helped, but the cash was next best. "What's the program now?"

    "We will begin on your face next week. A few quessstions now, please. You are a good healer? Or perhaps a cut heals slowly?"

    "It heals quickly."

    He nodded. "I will take blood sssamples. You should know there is a choice in the type of skin graft possible. With the dermatome, a skin-slicing machine, we are able to cut extremely thin slices of skin from a wide area. The choice comes in the thickness of the skin removed. We can take the top two layers, known as the epithelium and the deeper corium, which would conssstitute what is known as a full-thickness graft. Or we can take a thinner slice including only half the corium, a partial-thickness graft."

    "What's the difference, Doc?"

    "All transssplants contract and change color after healing. The thicker the transssplant, the less change, which is important in connection with the face. Conversssely, though, the thicker the transssplant the more difficulty in getting it to take permanently. A partial-thickness graft is sometimes more efficient though less esssthetic."

    I held out my stiffened hands to him, showing him the encrusted burn scars. "The hands are more important than the face, Doc. I've got to get good usage from them again. Couldn't you do these first? That way we'd know more about how I heal before you get into the tough part of things." I had a better reason than the one I was using. I wanted all the healing time possible on my hands to restore suppleness.

    "Your point has merit," Dr. Afzul acknowledged. "Except that in the case of the hands the procedure is different. I will cut loose flaps of skin in your chest, known as pedicules, and insert your hands inside until the skin of your chest grows to the backs of your hands. Then a series of incisssions will detach your hand from your chest while new skin is growing underneath. One hand at a time in this process, of course."

    "What about the face?"

    "Two different techniques will be involved. For the forehead and the nose, I will probably peel flaps of skin down from your scalp, since you will have to wear a hairpiece anyway. For the rest, mobile transplants from arms, back, and thighs. Not everything we attempt will be successful." He pursed his lips. "One thing I will tell you now. Do not get burned again, at least not in the same areas. What I do this time, no one can do a second time."

    I was only half listening. "How long will all this take?"

    "With trial and error, ten months. Perhaps longer."

    I'd hoped for something quicker, but he was the doctor. Literally. "Okay. Blow the starting whistle anytime."

    He took the blood samples before I left the office.

    That night I slipped out of bed after everyone in the ward was asleep and Kern and James were having coffee in the galley. I walked to the John and opened the closet door where they kept the brooms, mops, and disinfectants. There was a case of toilet tissue in one corner of the closet. I had looked it over good a week before. The case contained ninety-six rolls of tissue, packed eight across and twelve deep. Only about a third of the rolls were gone from the case.

    I dug down into the case, removing'a roll from each layer until I reached the bottom. I took the bottom roll out entirely. From the pocket of my robe I removed twelve hundred-dollar bills, which I rolled loosely and stuffed into the cardboard core of the toilet tissue roll. I put it back in the bottom of the case, covered it up with the rolls I had lifted out and set aside, and went back to bed. The remaining thousand dollars was still in the pocket of my robe. When the next-to-last layer of toilet tissue was reached, I'd slip into the John again at night and transfer the hidden money elsewhere.

    

    

    It was late the next afternoon when I was able to manage a confrontation with Spider Kern when no one else was present. I was sitting in my usual place, looking out over the hospital grounds, when Kern came into the alcove to close the Venetian blinds. I beckoned to him when he turned to leave.

    He paused, staring at me as if unsure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. I beckoned again. He approached me warily. "What the hell d'ya want, Arnold?" he rasped.

    I took the thousand dollars in bills from my pocket and handed it to him. "For… you," I said. His hard-looking mouth was already open to snap something at me when the feel of the crisp bills in his hand sank into his consciousness. His mean-looking little eyes bulged as he saw the denomination on the outside bill. He thumbed the wad rapidly, then jammed it into his pocket. "Where'd you get-" he started to bluster.

    "More… later," I cut him off. "We'll… talk."

    "Yeah," he agreed avidly. "Okay, okay. We'll talk." I could see that curiosity was consuming him.

    "No… hurry," I said.

    "Okay," he said again. He glanced around the alcove to reassure himself that no one had witnessed the transfer before he left me.

    I was under no illusion about what I'd bought from Spider Kern. A little time, that was all. A little healing time during Dr. Afzul's remaking of my face. Leopards like Spider Kern didn't change their spots overnight. He'd still plan his revenge for what I'd done to his buddy, Blaze

    Franklin, but first he'd wait to see if there were any more hundred-dollar bills around.

    As I expected, during the night the thought came to Kern that he might not have to wait. While we were at breakfast, Spider staged one of his periodic ward shakedowns, searching for "contraband." I could tell that my bed and the area around it had received special attention, but it hadn't done Kern any good.

    That brought him back to me. "What's on your mind?" He came directly to the point when he had maneuvered us into a private tete-a-tete. A saliva-saturated toothpick danced in one corner of his mouth with each word.

    I almost smiled. A week previously Spider Kern wouldn't have admitted that I had a mind. "I… want… a… gun," I said.

    He blinked. He hadn't expected anything that blunt. "Well, now, you know that's-" he began to bluster.

    "For… five thousand dollars," I cut him off.

    His lips pursed in a soundless whistle as he stared at me.

    I didn't have five thousand, but then I wasn't going to get a gun from Spider Kern, either. Not while he knew anything about it, anyway. With visions of a possible five thousand filling his mind, though, my healing period should remain uninterrupted. Kern wouldn't get me a gun, but with his eye on the money he would pretend to get it.

    "When do you want it?" he asked me.

    I was pleased to see that the train of thought he'd been pursuing for himself was just what I'd programmed for him. I touched my face. "When… finished."

    He nodded. "Time enough. Okay, for five thousand." He paused as though considering all aspects. "C.O.D."

    "C… O… D.," I repeated.

    That concluded our conversation.

    It also concluded the first step in setting up Spider Kern's pratfall.

    

    

    The next ten and a half months I'd just as soon forget. Not that there was anything excruciatingly painful about Dr. Sher Afzul's sophisticated techniques. It was nothing like having a.38 slug rip through an arm, for instance. Mostly it was the awkwardness and inconvenience of the flesh-to-flesh transfers. Plus the accompanying boring monotony. I spent a lot of time in bed because it was too much trouble to do anything else.

    Twice I thought we were finished, but little Dr. Afzul would have none of it. "I can increase the degree of naturalness," he said both times, and patiently began another complicated transplant. My own patience was just about gone.

    He didn't let me see the result of any of his efforts except those upon my hands, which had healed nicely. "It would upset you too much," he insisted while he was still working on my face. "Better that you should see it all at once. Luckily you have most of your eyelashes. A hairpiece you can buy, and eyebrows I can give you, after a fashion, but eyelashes gone are gone forever.

    He talked continuously all the time he was working on me, explaining in detail what he was doing. If I'd paid attention, I could probably have done a fair job of plastic surgery on someone else's face. I had the full course. I was so damned impatient to have the job finished, though, that at the end I wasn't listening at all.

    "When will the bandages come off for good?" I asked him on the day he assured me the final transplant had taken and we were in the last healing stage.

    "Ten days to two weeks," he answered.

    That was sooner than I had expected.

    It was time I got back to Spider Kern.

    I wanted to blow the joint after the surgery was completed but before the bandages were removed. That way no one would know what my new face looked like. Neither would I, for that matter, but I could wait.

    I couldn't make up my mind if Dr. Afzul recognized my intention or not. I'd already swiped from his office two cans of the liquefied spray he used after bandages were removed so I could use it on myself. If he missed them, he didn't say anything.

    Kern was ready for me when I approached him. "Gettin' close?" he asked, eyeing my facial bandages, which were much less elaborate than in the initial stages.

    "Right. How are we coming?"

    "I've been thinkin' about it," he said. "I'll be back after lights out when we can talk."

    For the balance of the evening I sat immobile in my chair in the alcove. I ignored Spider Kern, but I watched Rafe James. Twice as he moved about the ward James turned his mean-looking eyes in my direction. The expression upon his long, mournful-looking features could only be called speculative. It was the indicator as far as I was concerned. Whatever Spider Kern was setting up for me, Rafe James was to play a part in it.

    It was just after midnight when Kern came to my bedside. Officially he had just gone off duty. "Let's go out to the sun deck," he muttered. I got out of bed and followed him to the silent solarium. He sat down and lit a cigarette before speaking again. I could have predicted his first words. "You've got the cash?" he asked.

    "I'll have it." I didn't want him thinking he could shake me down close to the deadline and find it on me.

    "No mistakes," he warned.

    "There'll be none."

    He took a long drag on his cigarette. "You're talkin' pretty good now, huh? Been puttin' us on all this time?"

    "Would you be getting five grand if I hadn't?"