The Good Neighbor (38 page)

Colt stifled another scream, succeeding in turning it into a groan, and waited to catch his breath.

“How long could he get put away for?” he asked.

The troopers shrugged. “That’s not really our area,” said With erspoon. “That would be up to the judge.”

“Yeah, I know. I just wondered, you know, in your experience . . .” “It would be a long time,” said Riller. “You can bet on that.” “But he might not, too. Right? With plea bargains and all that

kind of stuff?”

“You really would have to wait and see what comes up during sentencing,” said Witherspoon. “Remember, it’s federal now. Those guys don’t slap you on the wrist.”

“Yeah,” said Colt. “The thing is, his wife came to see me.” “She did?” The cops were surprised.

“Yeah. Asking me for—for leniency.”

Witherspoon and Riller looked at each other and then at Colt. “He’s got four kids,” Colt said.

“Yeah, well, he shoulda thought about them before he commit ted the crime,” said Riller.

“That’s what I said.”

“You dug up his family cemetery, right? That’s what hap pened?”

“I ordered it done, yeah. Ouch!”

“People can get funny about that kind of thing,” said Wither spoon. “Some people are really touchy about their families.”

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“Yeah,” said Riller.

“So he could plead that he was temporarily deranged,” said Colt. “Right? Or something like that?”

“Usually that only works in lovers’ quarrels,” Riller said. “I never heard of a case like this before, actually. It’s pretty unusual. There’s been some stuff about it in the papers.”

“There has?” Colt was surprised. “What kind of stuff?”

“Just articles. It’s a weird one. No one’s ever heard of anything like it before.”

“Yeah, well, that goes for me, too,” Colt said.

“It would depend on if it goes to a jury,” said Witherspoon. “If he pleads not guilty by reason of temporary insanity or something like that. It would be up to the jury to decide if they believe him or not.” “
We
really can’t advise you on anything,” said Riller. “
Our
job is

to collect information and enforce the law.”

“But if this guy’s a dangerous criminal,” said Witherspoon, “and you can get him put away, then you have an obligation to do that. For the good of society.”

“Yeah. I know,” said Colt.

“You take care, Mr. Hart,” said Riller. “We’ll see you again.”

❚ ❚ ❚

Each day, the doctor who had performed the surgery appeared to check on Colt. He shone a penlight in his eyes, frowned at his arm, and examined the fluid that ran from the drainage tubes into the quart-sized plastic bags hanging from the lower arms of the IV stand. The doctor seemed impossibly young, even though he had already lost most of his hair, and there was a liberal sprinkling of freckles across his face that made him look a little like Howdy Doody.

After his last examination, Dr. Doody said, “You’re looking good, Mr. Hart. Your bones are knitting, and there’s no infection. I think you can probably go home this weekend.”

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“What day is it?” Colt asked. “I keep losing track of time in here.”

“Friday. You could be discharged on Sunday, maybe.” “When can I go back to work? Monday?” “Monday?” The man laughed. “Are you kidding?” “No. I’m not kidding.”

The doctor stopped laughing. “What is it you do that’s so wonder ful you can’t wait to get back to it?” he asked. “Most people would be asking how long they could get away with staying home.”

“Stocks,” said Colt. “I’m a trader.”

“Oh, yeah? Trader, huh? You got any hot tips?” asked Dr. Doody. “I hear the only way to make money on the market is to play with big money. Millions. Otherwise, they say it’s hardly worth it.”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘worth it,’ ” Colt said.

The doctor grinned. “Well, lessee. I have about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in student loans to pay back. And they’re projecting that in the next five years my malpractice pre miums will outstrip my earnings by . . . well, I forget how much, but it’s not like it even matters. Once you have more money going out than coming in, it’s time to get a new job. Basically, I need to make a million dollars as soon as possible.” Dr. Doody laughed again. “Any ideas?”

“Yeah,” Colt said. “Buy low and sell high.” Dr. Doody’s smile disappeared.

“Come on,” he said. “Everyone knows that.”

Colt sighed. How was he to explain the hours of research that went into determining a stock’s worth? It was complicated, and there was no substitute for it; you had to have an idea of what a company was worth to know whether their stock was a bargain or not. But even more complicated was the other part of it, the part he didn’t understand himself, which was that every time a kid fell off his bike in Iowa, the shudders traveled two thousand miles through the earth and rippled through the exchange floor in

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New York, manifesting themselves as the tiniest tick in the digital numbers. The market was simply a reflection of the universe, but there was no way a man of science would believe that. Colt al most didn’t believe it himself—although he knew that it was true nonetheless.

“I can’t tell you how to get rich,” he said.

“Yeah, but what do you buy?” Dr. Doody prodded him. “I mean, how do you decide what to invest in?”

“It’s a feeling,” Colt said. “It’s like a sailor looking at the hori zon in the morning. You ever do any sailing?”

“Some.”

“Well, you know how they say red sky at night, sailor ’s delight, et cetera?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s kind of the same thing. Sailing is both an art and a science. You just trust your gut, no matter what the signs say. If it looks like a nice day but they’ve got a bad feeling, some guys won’t go out.”

“You’re talking about superstition,” said Dr. Doody.

“Yeah. If you want to call it that. Sailors can read charts and wind direction and all that. But they’re also the most supersti tious people there are. The second most, I mean,” he corrected himself. “Traders are the first. Everyone I know carries some little thing with them, like a rabbit’s foot or something.”

“Yeah? So what do you carry?”

Colt permitted himself a wan smile. “A ring,” he said. “But I lost it. And you can see what the consequences of
that
were.”

“Yeah, well, thanks, anyway,” said the doctor, making a note on a chart. “I’ll be in tomorrow.” Dr. Doody went away as suddenly as he had come, leaving Colt with the distinct impression that he had just been diagnosed as being full of shit.

Colt didn’t care. Most of the time, he lay in agony, not wanting to talk to anybody. The staff were puzzled by his refusal of more pain medication, for clearly it was so bad that at times he could

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hardly speak; he could only clench his teeth and moan like a wounded animal, tossing his head from side to side. Yet he refused everything they offered him, for Colt knew he was damned if he was going back to that courtroom—literally—and he preferred to do his suffering here on earth.

When the nurse named Betty was on duty again, she came in and laid a hand on his forehead, clicking her pink tongue.

“We’re not givin’ out medals, y’know,” she said.

“It gives me nightmares,” he told her, wincing as the broken ends of his bones moved yet again, ever so minutely. “I had three. I can’t handle another one.”

Betty laughed out of her abdomen. “Honey, why on earth not?” she said. “What are you so afraid of?”

“They said I was going to be sentenced.” “Who said that?”

“The judge.”

“Oh,” Betty said knowingly. “You had
that
kind of a night mare.”

Colt was surprised. “You know the kind I mean?” he asked. “Happens all the time in here,” Betty said. “People dreamin’ of

their judgment.”

“Other people have the same dream?”

“Sure they do,” Betty said. “People who saw their own death close enough to touch it, anyway. Has the same effect on ’em. Well, not all of ’em. But enough. The smart ones. They tell me all about ’em, too. You think you’re any more different than anybody else? Don’t you know we’re all the same?”

“Sure,” said Colt. “Everything is connected. I knew that.” He caught her eye and went on earnestly, “Did you know this? A car crash in Paris shows up on the Dow later that very same day. The question is—how? That’s what I’ve never been able to piece to gether. I know it works—I just don’t know why, or how, or even when. Nobody does. At least nobody that I know of. But someday, someday someone’s gonna come along who can see everything all

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at once. He’ll be able to read the stock board and tell you what’s happened at every moment all over the world. He’ll be like . . . plugged in. The One. The Reader. Everything is already con nected, but until he comes along, no one’s gonna know how it all works.”

“That’s right, honey,” said Betty, who hadn’t really been listen ing—Colt had been rambling on and off since he came in, and she heard only a select few words. “Jesus
is
connected, like you say. And them dreams is just your mind lookin’ back over your life and figurin’ out what you didn’t do that you should a done, and what you done that you shouldn’t a.” Betty fluffed his pillow up for him and felt his pulse. “You got any regrets?” she asked casually, as she glanced at her watch.

“Regrets? Yeah. About a million of ’em,” said Colt.

It must be the pain making me talk this way, he thought. Be cause I know damn well I don’t regret any decision I ever made. Except for not throwing Flebberman out the window before we ever left my apartment.

“Well, who don’t? You lucky,” Betty said. “You still young. You got plenty of time to set things right again.”

“I’m almost forty years old,” said Colt. “I don’t feel as young as I used to.”

“Gracious, honey, who does?” laughed Betty. “I’m forty-three, but some mornin’s I know what it’s like to be seventy. ’Specially in my feet.”

“You married?” Colt asked.

“Oh, yes,” said Betty. “And so is you, so don’t get fresh.”

Colt managed a smile. “Not for long, I’m not. How’s my pulse?”

“Crazy. Like you runnin’ a marathon. Now, izzat because of my girlish figger or is it your arm hurtin’ again?”

“Both.”

“You sure you don’t want somethin’ to help you sleep?”

By now the pain had made Colt half-delirious, and things had

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begun to swim in and out of focus; the bounds of reality were blurred, like the smudged outlines of a chalk drawing, and he stared at Betty in her shimmering white uniform as though she’d just descended from a cloud.

“Are you an angel?” he asked.

Betty smiled. She put her hand on his forehead again.

“You be surprised how often I hear that, too,” she said. “You go to sleep now. I think you’re tired enough.”

And, encouraged by her warm, dry hand on his skin, he slept.

❚ ❚ ❚

Francie didn’t come to see him again—no surprise there—nor did Jennifer Flebberman—no surprise there, either. No one came to see him, in fact, nor did anyone send cards or flowers—none of which, when he thought about it, came as a surprise, either. Sym pathy, in his business, was the one commodity no one wanted to trade in, because you might as well cut someone’s throat as pity them. Yet later that day he began to wonder why Forszak hadn’t at least sent him a note or something, to acknowledge the fact that he still existed—and only then did it occur to Colt that no one at Anchor Capital even knew where he was.

“Betty!” he called, pressing the buzzer on the side of his bed. Betty came to the door, wiping her hands on a tissue.

“Now, Coltrane, what is it?” she said. “I do love to say that name. He was always one o’ my favorites. You finally change your mind about that medicine?”

“No,” he said. “I just realized no one at my job knows where I am. They might think I’ve just disappeared or something. Can you help me use the phone?”

“If you want,” she said. She came in and dialed the number he dictated, and held the phone up to Colt’s ear as it rang.

“Anchor Capital, this is Jeanette speaking, how can I help you?” purred the receptionist.

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Colt paused. Something in Jeanette’s voice struck a familiar and none-too-pleasant chord in him. Even though the Snake Pit was sealed off by glass doors, he could still hear the occasional muffled shout, and it went through his head like a bolt of light ning. Just imagining himself in there made him tired and achy all over.

“Jeanette. It’s Colt Hart.”

He heard her gasp. “Mr. Hart!” she said. “Everyone’s been wor ried sick about you!”

Yeah, right, he thought.

“I can’t talk long,” he said. “Just tell Forszak I had to take a lit tle time off. Had an accident.”

“An accident? My God, are you all—”

“Jeanette, I really can’t talk. My head is killing me. Tell Forszak I’m all right and I’ll be back in—well, a few days.”

Colt caught Betty’s eye then and noted her wry smile of amusement. She shook her head, as if to say,
Oh, no you won’t
.

“Is there anything you—”

“Good-bye, Jeanette,” said Colt, pressing the hang-up button. “That’s right. You just think about getting better. That’s all you

need to worry about right now,” said Betty, taking the phone away from him.

❚ ❚ ❚

On Monday morning, the doctor told Colt he could go home. His plaster cast had been replaced with one of fiberglass; this was sup ported by a strut that rested on his hip and held it out at a ninety- degree angle to his body. He looked, he thought as he regarded himself in the mirror, like a half-trussed chicken.

It was just after noon when he was released. Betty had not been in that morning, and Colt realized, with a sinking heart, that he wasn’t going to see her again. He had grown attached to her. On the spur of the moment he went to the nurse’s station and