Stone 588 (57 page)

Springer was astonished by Hinch's thick-skinned composure, even more so by the flexibility of his loyalty. Hinch, evidently, had done a body count and knew Audrey was now on top of the Hull heap. He wasn't just offering refreshments, he was offering to continue on in her service.

"Nothing for me, Hinch," Audrey told him. "But perhaps these gentlemen . . ."

"I'll have a rye and Seven," Blayney said.

Springer declined.

Pugh ordered a frozen banana daiquiri. "What's your name?" he asked Hinch.

Hinch told him, spelled it for him.

"We had a terrible thing occur here tonight, didn't we, Hinch?" Pugh said.

"Yes sir, we did."

"A robbery."

"A robbery," Hinch concurred.

"The three thieves who broke in . . there were three, weren't there?" Pugh said.

"Three."

"Who broke in and killed Mrs. Hull and Mr. Wintersgill ... but you weren't able to get a good look at them, were you?" Pugh said, leading.

"No, sir."

"Why not?"

"They had nylon stockings pulled over their heads so their features were compressed beyond recognition." Hinch said. "I couldn't even determine the color of their hair."

"What were they wearing?"

"Black coveralls and leather gloves."

"They held you at gunpoint."

"Yes, indeed. The shorter of the three kept a gun on myself and another servant while the other two went through the house."

"Did they take anything?"

"I'm certain they did. At least a few valuable things that Mrs. Hull had around," Hinch said. "I'll have to see exactly what."

"You do that."

"Yes, sir. Mrs. Hull must have refused to reveal the combination to the vault. And Mr. Wintersgill must have tried to defend her. Such a valiant gentleman, Mr. Wintersgill."

"We all agree on that," Pugh said.

A couple of pros cleaning things up. Springer thought.

Hinch looked to Audrey again. "Miss Hull, may I inquire whether you and Mr. Springer will be spending the night here or going into town?"

"We're going into town," Audrey said.

Hinch, with an absolutely straight matter-of-fact face, told her, "Groat is waiting to drive you if you wish."

"You don't have to creep. I hear you."

"I thought you were asleep."

"I was just lying here thinking. What time is it?"

"Going on twelve."

Jake switched on his bedside lamp and squinted at Springer. "I had a feeling you might drop by tonight," he said sitting up, punching his pillows and placing them against the headboard. He had on pajama bottoms. Before his leg got sick he'd worn only the tops, but he didn't want Gayle and everyone always taking looks at his leg hoping to see some sign that it was better. "Did Audrey come with you?" Jake asked.

"She just dropped me off. She had to go home."

Audrey had thought it best that Springer take care of this alone. But her heart and hope would be there with him, she'd said. "She sent you her love," Springer told Jake.

"How much of it?"

"A bunch."

"What in?"

"A hug, for one thing."

"Well, give it to me."

Springer sat on the edge of the bed so he could put his arms around his

boy. Hold him close. Jake's desperation was like a radiance that passed into his own body. Springer kept holding, wanting to absorb all of it.

Gayle came in bringing the coffee Springer had requested. Strong and black. Along with two slices of the pecan chocolate pound cake from Greenberg's that she knew he liked as much as Jake did. Gayle looked harried but seemed stronger than ever, not just persevering but prepared to fight the long fight. She placed the small tray on the table next to the chintz-covered armchair she'd moved in from her bedroom. She spent a lot of time in that chair by Jake's bed, the precious time. "If you need anything more I'll be in my room reading," she said pleasantly and went out, closing the door after her.

"Want a hunk of this cake?" Springer asked Jake.

Jake burped, pardoned himself, and said he wasn't hungry. He broke off a corner of one of the slices of cake, just to share. "I'm sure tired of taking soda bicarb," he said. "All I do is burp. In the last month I must have said a couple of million pardon-mes." Jake's intake of soda bicarbonate was essential. His system had to be kept alkaline to offset the toxicity of the chemotherapy.

"Can I use your bathroom?" Springer asked.

"Don't forget to lift the seat." Jake playfully mocked Gayle.

Springer went in, took only one look at himself in the mirror, realized he hadn't seen himself since early that morning. He thought the image that looked back at him was a bit glary-eyed. He removed his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and splashed double handfuls of cold water on his face. That helped him feel fresher. He got stone 588 from his jacket pocket. He noticed now that it was partially coated with blood dried a reddish brown. Winters-gill's blood, he thought, or possibly Libby's by way of Wintersgill's hands. Springer ran warm water over the stone. The blood adhered stubbornly to it. He used a fingernail brush to scrub the blood away. He dried the stone with a kleenex tissue. When he held it up to the light, it appeared restored and he felt better about it. He put it into his shirt pocket and, leaving his jacket off, went out to Jake.

"Your coffee's getting cold," Jake said.

"You stuck your finger in it?"

"My toe." Jake grinned.

Springer sat in the armchair, ate the cake, and drank the coffee while he and Jake talked about anything . . . except tomorrow. Springer knew how much Jake dreaded having to go back into Sloan-Kettering for more chemotherapy and all its distressing side-effects. He was waiting for Jake to fall asleep.

Jake yawned. "I'm sleepy," he said, "but I just can't seem to let myself fall into it."

"We all have those kind of nights," Springer said.

"I'm going to die, I think," Jake said, right at Springer. It was the first time he'd expressed the fear in words.

"No you're not."

"They're going to give me chemotherapy for as long as they can, then they're going to have to cut off my leg, and eventually I'll die anyway . . . in ten years or so."

"Who told you that?"

"I read about it in some medical books Mom got. She didn't show them to me. I sneaked a peek at them when she wasn't around. She had the places all marked and everything. I know."

"Well, you're not going to die."

"Why not?"

"Because we're going to do everything within our power to make sure that you don't."

"For instance?" Jake challenged a bit hopefully.

"For one thing we're going to believe you're not going to die. We're going to believe that with all our inner strength. We're going to all put our believing together so it's stronger than dying."

Jake pictured it. "Sure," he remarked dubiously.

Springer paused to choose his tack. "Did 1 ever tell you about your greatgrandfather's believing stone?" he asked.

"His what?"

"Believing stone."

"Nope."

"I thought I had."

"What was my great-grandfather's name?"

"Willard."

"You probably told somebody else about it."

"I wouldn't. It's strictly a family thing."

"Confidential information."

A conspiratorial nod from Springer. "One day way back when your greatgrandfather was about your age, he was looking for arrowheads in a field up in New Milford. It was springtime and the ground had just been plowed up, and he knew that was usually the best time to find arrowheads."

"What kind of Indians used to be up around there?"

"Mohawks," Springer said, which was the first tribe that came to mind. "Anyway, your great-grandfather . . ."

"Why don't you call him Willard?"

". . . Willard didn't find any arrowheads that day but he did find a pretty stone, and he took it home and everyone agreed it was so different from the sort of stones seen in those parts that it must have come from somewhere else. Willard was proud of it and it got so he always carried it around with him, and before long he discovered that his stone could do things for him."

"What sort of things?"

"Well, whenever he got low on believing all he had to do was hold the stone in his hand and it would give him a refill."

A skeptical side glance from Jake.

Springer didn't let it faze him. "That stone came in handy countless times for Willard. He always caught trout even when the water in the streams was too warm or too low. Once he caught an eighteen-inch brown with his hands by just grabbing in under the grassy overhang of a bank. And in winter when he wanted to go sledding there was always good ice for him on one hill or the other. Simply because he had enough belief that that was how those things would be."

Jake shook his head incredulously. "You expect me to believe all that?"

"Are you sure I never told you about the believing stone, never even mentioned it?"

"Never."

"Want to see it?"

"You got it with you?"

"I carry it with me a lot." Springer took stone 588 from his shirt pocket, handed it to Jake.

Jake looked it over. "What is it, quartz?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe it's even rock crystal." Jake offered the stone back to Springer.

"Why don't you hang on to it for a while," Springer suggested.

"What for?"

"Seems to me you're low on believing. You could use a refill."

"All I have to do is hang on to it, right?"

"Just hang on."

"For how long?"

"For as long as it takes."

Jake's eyes got blinky and he finally fell asleep. With stone 588 in his hand. When his fingers relaxed and released the stone. Springer found an Ace elastic bandage in one of the dresser drawers, the sort of bandage Jake used to use when he turned an ankle or pulled a muscle playing volleyball. Springer, careful not to awaken Jake, placed the stone on the inside of Jake's right wrist and wrapped the elastic bandage around it just snugly enough to keep it in place. He dimmed the lamp by draping a towel over it, so he could still see for sure the stone was there.

He removed his shoes, hunched down in the chintz-covered chair, settled into his vigil.

It was up to stone 588 now, he thought. Either it was doing what it was supposed to be able to do or it wasn't. He'd risked all for it, he'd stolen for it, he'd been almost killed, and he'd killed for it. Now was no time to start doubting it.

The following morning at half past ten Springer was in Dr. Stimson's office at Sloan-Kettering. He was alone and feeling it. Jake was down on the second floor being x-rayed, so his condition could be assessed prior to chemotherapy treatment. It was routine. Dr. Stimson was with Jake. He'd told Springer he'd return in fifteen, twenty minutes at most, but Springer had been waiting close to an hour.

The time that it was taking did not bode well, Springer thought. It probably meant the x-rays showed unexpected complications, a severe worsening of Jake's condition, medical decisions having to be made. But maybe. Springer told himself, trying for ease, they were just having equipment problems, or it could be as simple a thing as they'd run out of film.

Springer got up and walked out of the office, went down the corridor to the drinking fountain, sucked up a mouthful, and went back into the office and sat again. For about the twentieth time. He took a medical journal from the hundreds that were stacked around. Turned to any page. His eyes struck upon such phrases as limb salvage procedure, resection surgery, distant metastases, and fully malignant He closed the journal, placed it back on its stack cautiously, as though otherwise he would unleash its contents.

Dr. Stimson finally returned, with a large manila envelope containing x-rays. He appeared solemn, distracted, even a bit rattled. He apologized perfunctorily for having made Springer wait and got right to the point. "We need your consent to do another biopsy on your son's leg," he said.

Those were certainly not the words Springer had hoped to hear.

Dr. Stimson removed a large x-ray from the manila envelope. As it bent and buckled in his hands it sounded like make-believe thunder. "We must obtain some fresh tissue samples in order to evaluate the cells and determine exactly what is going on," he said, clipping the x-ray onto the lighted viewing panel on the wall.

Springer had never seen an x-ray of Jake's leg. It was strange to be able to look into flesh that he'd helped create. There was Jake's thigh and knee with the affected area so obvious, the tumor interrupting and misshaping the femur bone like an ugly growth knot on a limb, crushing in the bone, relentlessly overwhelming the adjacent flesh, blood vessels, nerves. It looked so painful to Springer that he had to close his eyes.

How ridiculous of him, he thought in eyeshut, to have put his faith in anything so illusory as stone 588. He'd been thinking with his hope. But the stone had worked for others. Why hadn't it worked for Jake? Was some sort of moral requirement involved? Could it be that the reason it hadn't worked was he'd stolen for it, killed?

Dr. Stimson meanwhile had clipped another x-ray to the light panel, on the right of the first. "Our initial thought was that the technician had made an error," he said, "that possibly she had developed the wrong film and what we were looking at was someone else's x-ray. Subsequent exposures eliminated that possibility."

Springer's eyes were open now.

Stimson explained. "These are nearly identical views of your son's leg. This one"—he indicated the x-ray on the left—"helped us make our diagnosis. It was taken a month ago. This" — he directed Springer's attention to the x-ray on the right—" is one of the x-rays we took today."

Stimson pointed out the difference between the two, how the most recent x-ray showed both the outer covering of the bone, the periosteum, and the compact bone within it to be perfectly intact, how the surrounding tissues and vessels were not distorted by malignancy. In fact, there was no sign of a tumor there or of one ever having been there.

"We don't know what to make of it," Dr. Stimson admitted. "Our entire Solid Tumor Task Force is down there now theorizing. The Cornell people who came over to take a look say that we must have misdiagnosed. I'm for making sure, doing another biopsy."