The Expendable Man (33 page)

He was weaker now, not alone from the exertion but from the tension of haste, the fear of discovery. He retraced his faltering way to his own room, closed the door and locked it. He didn't stop to rest but crossed to the patio doors, drawing the curtains across them, after they too were locked. Dressing wasn't easy. Each move awakened a fresh vise of pain. That Skye was several inches taller didn't matter with Levis, he could roll the legs above his ankles. The belt took care of the waistline inches. That the shoes were oversize helped give him the appearance he needed, that of a poor lout wearing hand-me-downs.

It was essential that he find the keys to the Cadillac. He would have to drive it, notorious as it was; he couldn't borrow. His personal belongings should be here in the bedroom. At the hospital the nurses always stashed them in the top bureau drawer, the natural place. He found them there, the wallet, the keys, as well as all the peddler's pack from his pockets, loose silver, the half roll of mints and the open pack of gum, his cigarettes and lighter. He transferred them to his pockets. He could go.

Quietly he unlocked the corridor door. On his way back across the room, he noted the glassine bottle and put that into his pocket. He left by way of the patio. The car was parked where he expected, in the rear, shielded by the whitewashed walls from the road.

Hugh edged himself under the wheel, careful not to wrench his battered bones. He drove without lights out of the grounds. The gate was ajar; he left it open after he'd nosed through. He put on the lights as he started over the meandering lane back to Tatum, and found the jog which would carry him to Camel-back Road. He slowed here to a standstill. There were no other cars to harry him. From his wallet he took the precious scrap of paper and in the dash lights read again the directions to Doc Jopher's house.

Camelback was long and dark and sparsely traveled at this hour. Hugh held a steady pace, not too fast, not too slow, to Scottsdale Road. At the intersection of lights, he turned north. Within moments, he had left all town traffic behind. One pickup truck rattled past him, otherwise he saw no cars as he proceeded.

He continued on, as slowly now as he felt he might without attracting stray attention, until the speedometer showed he had covered the designated miles. With the moon low on the horizon, it was difficult to recognize the turn-off lanes until you were upon them. Not that there were many. He turned on mileage alone, and wasn't sure he had the right lane until he reached the venerable cottonwood growing undisturbed in the middle of it.

As all travelers must over this road, he circled the tree and crept on along the bumpy, narrowing way. Over a rise, down a decline, on into rural darkness until he saw far ahead a prick of light. It could have been a distant firefly. But as he came closer, it became a miniature green-glow square of a shaded window. Soon the house took shape, a kindergarten scrawl against the night sky. It was away from the road, on a rise, across a neglected field.

Before he reached its gate his wheels clattered across the warped boards of a bridge spanning a dry stream. Within that house, the sound would give warning of an approaching car. A few yards and he had reached the gate, never mended, the paint peeling from the white palings.

There was no need to dismount to open the gate. It swung loosely, nudged by how many cars over the years? Hugh's headlights picked out no driveway, only the choice of crisscrossing tire tracks on the stubble. Hugh made his own as had those who had come before him, in slow approach over the beaten field toward the knoll. His pulses were beating too fast, not in fear but in desperate hope.

Close up the house was frame, once white, built country style, a box with a pointed roof set atop it. The small porch and the front door faced to the west, overlooking the lane he had traveled after leaving the highway. Someone could have watched his lights from the time he first turned into it. Yet the place was so motionless, it was impossible to believe that there was anyone within.

He drove past the porch and parked at the far side, where his car would not be seen. As he silenced the motor, the drone of crickets seemed to increase sharply. Hugh climbed the three sagging steps to the porch. The moment he set foot there, the barking of a dog sounded in fury from inside the house.

Hugh did not stop moving. He crossed to the screen door. It sagged on its hinges and in several places the screen had broken from the frame. But when he took hold of it, it was hooked fast. He felt around for a doorbell and found where it had been. The push button had been wrenched out of its socket.

He gave a tentative knock on the frame of the screen, rattling the entire door. The sound of barking increased and Hugh pushed the door tight with the flat of his hand while he waited. From the appearance of the screen, the dog might be in the habit of charging at strangers.

He waited. He was considering another knock when a dim porch light came on over his head. It startled him and he stumbled back, releasing his hold on the screen door. Someone was fumbling with a bolt. In another moment, the front door was opened to give a partial view of a big man standing inside. There was no sign of the dog. When the door opened, it had ceased barking.

Hugh put a touch of the South in his voice. “Are you Doc Jopher?”

The man peered out. “Yes, I'm the doctor.” He pushed into the aperture and peered more intently. “What you want with me? Speak up, boy, what you want?” The sour smell of old wine came from his breath, fouling the clean night air.

“I got a little trouble,” Hugh began softly.

“What kind of trouble? Speak up.”

“Well, it's like this—” He tried to say what the doctor might expect of a boy in his position. “I'm in trouble. My girl friend—you see, she—”

“You get your own kind of doctor,” the old man returned almost angrily. “I don't do no work for the colored.”

He started to push the door shut and Hugh spoke up fast. “I got money.” There was little evidence of a decent living in this broken-down house and the broken-down segment of man visible in the doorway. It didn't appear that Doc Jopher was in the business. If so, he drank up his fees. “I got plenty of money,” Hugh emphasized. At least he was holding Jopher's interest, the door remained ajar. “I can get hold of most a hundred dollars.” If he had operated on Bonnie Lee for fifty, the double amount should be tempting.

He had awakened cupidity. Even in the poor light, he could see the flicker of it over the shadowed face. Doc Jopher wet his lips and asked suspiciously, “How'd you know to come here?”

“I heard some fellows talking where I work.”

“They didn't tell you I do colored folks. They didn't say that.”

“I guess they didn't say.” Hugh drooped his head. “I didn't think about that. I got most a hundred dollars to spend—” He couldn't believe that Jopher would care about the color of skin if the money was there.

“It ain't that I'm bigoted,” Doc Jopher said as if arguing with himself. “It's just they ought to go to their own doctors.” He peered, but not at Hugh now, over his head. He might have spotted the pinpoint lights of a car. If so, the motor was not yet audible. His eyes moved back to Hugh's face and unwillingly he opened the door wider. “Well, come in,” he said crossly. “I can't talk business with you out there on the porch.” He un-hooked the decrepit screen and pushed it open with his other hand.

Hugh caught the screen and followed the old man across the threshold. He forgot about the dog until he heard the throaty growl. Across the room he discovered it, an old molting collie, shapeless in a shapeless soft chair.

“Come in,” the doctor repeated. “He won't bite you.”

Hugh closed the front door. “I'm not afraid. I got a dog of my own.”

“Get out of that chair, Duke.” Doc Jopher waggled his puffy hand in the direction of the dog. “Let the company sit down.” The animal didn't move.

“This is all right,” Hugh said, taking quick hold of a straight chair, unpadded, once part of a dining-room set. He didn't sit down, for Jopher was still standing, but he would quickly if the man insisted on ousting the animal. The sagging cretonne on Duke's chair was gray with old dirt.

“I can't teach him, seems like. Minute I turn my back, he's up there like he owned it.” Obviously Duke did. “Sit down, boy,” he told Hugh. He himself went to the table in the center of the room under a green-shaded hanging lamp. He took up a wine bottle and poured sparingly into the sticky tumbler beside it.

He was a shapeless mass of man, shapeless as the dog and the chair, yet he had retained height. He was almost as tall as Hugh. His head was large, his jowls sagged, his large nose was pocked as a drunkard's. His rheumy blue eyes peered from over-hanging eyebrows. He needed glasses, possibly he wore them for work. His hair was white and thick and the only clean-looking thing about him. His baggy gray trousers were stained with wine, his western shirt with sweat.

Although the back windows were open, the heat of the day was motionless, unbearable, under the low ceiling of the small square room. The room wasn't dirty, it just wasn't clean. There was a threadbare old carpet on the floor, several chairs like the one Hugh had taken, the center table, an old sideboard at the rear, and against the wall by a closed door an old-fashioned sofa with a raised headrest. Its black leather covering was cracked into brown lines like a crazy map. Was this the operating table? It wasn't the heat and the smell which sickened Hugh's stomach. A half-opened door at the rear, just beyond the dog's chair, gave a glimpse of a kitchen sink and drainboard. There were no dirty dishes visible, no clutter at all. Under the sink was the dog's plate, a small scatter of food remaining on it; beside it a bowl of water set on a newspaper. The closed door near the couch undoubtedly led to bedroom and bath.

There was a picture in a gold frame hung on the mottled gray of the wallpaper. It was of a country cottage, smothered with roses, banked in green, shaded by leafy trees with a brook at their feet. In spite of what this man was, in spite of what he had done, the pathos of that picture smote Hugh. That it was there, a home, an old home far from this desert wasteland. That this misshapen old relic was once a country child, was once a boy with dreams, once a student with aspirations, once a Doctor of Medicine. The poignant cry rose silently in him: What can happen to a man? Why?

As if in answer to the unspoken question, the old man sampled the wine, licked his lips, and took another small suck at the glass. He then sat down in an old-fashioned rocker, pushed aside the evening paper, pushed aside a small wooden-cased radio, so that there was no obstruction between his eyes and Hugh across the room. He said, “I wasn't expecting company.”

He never stopped drinking while Hugh was there, although he never replenished the glass with more than an inch of the yellowish wine. And he never did more than sip of it. He wasn't drunk, perhaps it was too early for that. But he was probably never sober.

He asked again, squinting in the direction of Hugh, “Who was it you said sent you here?”

“I didn't say no one sent me,” Hugh replied. “I heard the fellows talking. One of them said you took care of his girl.”

“And he said I did it for a hundred dollars?”

“He said he didn't have no more'n a hundred dollars and you took care of her.” He wouldn't name a name. The doctor listened to the radio and read the papers. The police had cleared him, but if he had done the operation, he must know that eventually the truth would out. Fred O.'s name might not yet have been made public, and it was doubtful if Jopher would know him by his right name, yet Hugh wouldn't chance naming him. Not yet.

“Where'd you get that much money?” The dim eyes could see Hugh's battered appearance and they were suspicious.

“I worked for it. And some I borrowed from a loan company.”

The answer must have been satisfactory. The doctor rocked in his chair. “Why don't you marry your girl?”

“I can't.” Hugh wasn't expecting this kind of questioning, he hadn't prepared for it. He made it up as he went along. “She's already married. She's got her a husband in the army. Over in Europe. He's been gone most a year.”

The sudden cackle was startling. “You're in a pretty bad spot, aren't you, boy?”

“Yessir, I am. I sure am, Boss.” He mustn't pile it on too thick. Wino though the doctor was, he had the remnant of a shrewd brain.

The doctor measured out another drink. There wasn't much left in the bottle. “Well, I just might take care of you.” He sipped and rocked. “If you got the money on hand, cash on the barrel. That's the only way I do business, cash on the barrel.”

“I got it,” Hugh affirmed.

“All right.” The eyes sharpened. “You bring her out here tonight.”

“Bring her tonight?” Hugh couldn't control his shock at the words. He hadn't planned on producing the imaginary girl, only the money for the trap. “You mean tonight?”

“That's what I said. Tonight. If you want me to do it.” A slack smile came to the big mouth. “I'm thinking of taking a little trip down to Nogales tomorrow.”

Did he need the hundred dollars to skip town while the heat was on? Possibly the police hadn't canceled out the possibility of Jopher's guilt; it could be Ringle was still nosing around. Innocent or guilty, Doc Jopher, unless his need was great, surely wouldn't be doing business until this canal case had been resolved. But the need could be for drink alone; it could be to replenish his wine cupboard that the doctor was going to Nogales. A hundred dollars would buy more spirits across the border than here. And the doc doubtless had half a dozen secret ways to carry it back over into Arizona. Exchange of favors.

Hugh was reluctant. “What time would you want me to come back?”

“Soon's you can make it. I'm not going nowhere tonight.”