The Little Friend (85 page)

After a long while the nurse lumbered in again (her thick-soled shoes all worn down on the outer edge) to give Harriet a shot. Harriet, who was rolling her head around, and talking to herself a bit, struggled to pull away from her worries. With effort, she turned her attention to the nurse. She had a jolly weatherbeaten face with wrinkled cheeks, thick ankles and a rolling, off-centered walk. Except for her nurse’s uniform, she might have been the captain of a sailing ship, striding across decks. Her nametag said Gladys Coots.

“Now, I’m going to get this over with as quick as I can,” she was saying.

Harriet—too weak and too worried to put up her customary resistance—rolled on her stomach and grimaced as the needle slid into her hip. She hated shots, and—when younger—had screamed and cried and fought to escape, to such a degree that Edie (who knew how to give injections) had on several occasions impatiently rolled up her sleeves right in the doctor’s office and taken over with the needle.

“Where’s my grandmother?” she asked as she rolled over, rubbing the stung place on her bottom.

“Mercy! Aint nobody told you?”

“What?” cried Harriet, scrabbling back in the bed like a crab. “What happened? Where is she?”

“Sssh. Calm down!” Energetically, the nurse began to plump up the pillows. “She had to go downtown for a while, is all. Is
all,
” she repeated, when Harriet looked at her doubtfully. “Now lie on back and make yourself comfortable.”

Never, never again in her life would Harriet know such a long day. Pain pulsed and spangled merciless in her temples; a parallelogram of sun shimmered motionless on the wall. Nurse Coots, swaying in and out with the bedpan, was a rarity: a white elephant, much heralded, returning every century or so. In the course of the interminable morning she drew blood, administered eye-drops, brought Harriet iced water, ginger ale, a dish of green gelatin which Harriet tasted and pushed aside, cutlery clattering fretful on her bright plastic tray.

Fearfully, she sat upright in bed and listened. The corridor was a sedate net of echoes: talk at the desk, occasional laughter, the tap of canes and the scrape of walkers as gray convalescents from Physical Therapy drifted up and down the hall. Every so often, a woman’s voice came on the intercom, calling out strings of numbers, obscure commands,
Carla, step into the hallway, orderly on two, orderly on two.…

As if counting out sums, Harriet worked out what she knew on her fingers, muttering under her breath, not caring if she looked like a crazy person. The preacher didn’t know about the tower. He’d said nothing to indicate he knew Danny
was up there (or dead). But all that might change if the doctor figured out that bad water was what had made Harriet sick. The Trans Am was parked far enough from the tower that probably no one had thought to look up there—and if they hadn’t already, who knows, maybe they wouldn’t.

But maybe they would. And then there was her father’s gun.
Why
hadn’t she picked it up, how could she have forgotten? Of course, she hadn’t actually shot anybody; but the gun had been shot, they’d know that, and the fact that it was at the base of the tower would surely be enough to make somebody go up and
look
in the tower.

And Hely. All his cheerful questions: had she been arrested, was a policeman on guard. It would be immensely entertaining for Hely if she
was
arrested: not a consoling thought.

Then a horrible idea occurred to her. What if policemen were watching the Trans Am? Wasn’t the car a crime scene, like on television? Wouldn’t cops and photographers be standing around it, keeping guard? And sure, the car was parked a good bit away from the tower—but would Hely have the sense to avoid a crowd, if he saw it? For that matter—would he be able to get near the tower at all? There were the warehouses, sure, closer to where the car was parked, and probably they’d look there first. But eventually they’d spread out toward the tower, wouldn’t they? She cursed herself for not warning him to be careful. If there were a lot of people, he’d have no choice but to turn around and come home.

Around midmorning, the doctor interrupted these worries. He was Harriet’s regular doctor, who saw her when she had red throat or tonsillitis, but Harriet didn’t like him much. He was young, with a heavy drab face and prematurely heavy jowls; his features were stiff and his manner cold and sarcastic. His name was Dr. Breedlove but—partly because of the steep prices he charged—Edie had given him the nickname (grown popular locally) of “Dr. Greedy.” His unfriendliness, it was said, had kept him from a more desirable post in a better town—but he was so very curt that Harriet didn’t feel she had to keep up a false front of chumminess and smiles as she did
with most adults, and for this reason she respected him grudgingly in spite of everything.

As Dr. Greedy circled her bed, he and Harriet avoided each other’s eyes like two hostile cats. Coolly he surveyed her. He looked at her chart. Presently he demanded: “Do you eat a lot of lettuce?”

“Yes,” said Harriet, although she did no such thing.

“Do you soak it in salt water?”

“No,” said Harriet, as soon as she saw that
no
was the answer expected of her.

He muttered something about dysentery, and unwashed lettuce from Mexico, and—after a brooding pause—he hung her chart back on the foot of her bed with a clang and turned and left.

Suddenly the telephone rang. Harriet—heedless of the IV in her arm—grabbed for it before the first ring was done.

“Hey!” It was Hely. In the background, gymnasium echoes. The high-school orchestra practiced in folding chairs on the basketball court. Harriet could hear a whole zoo of tuning-up noises: honks and chirps, clarinet squeaks and trumpet blatts.

“Wait,” said Harriet, when he started talking without interruption, “no,
stop
a second.” The pay phone in the school gymnasium was in a high-traffic area, no place to have a private conversation. “Just answer yes or no. Did you get it?”

“Yes, sir.” He was talking in a voice which didn’t sound at all like James Bond, but which Harriet recognized as his James Bond voice. “I retrieved the weapon.”

“Did you throw it where I told you?”

Hely crowed. “Q,” he cried, “have I ever let you down?”

In the small, sour pause that followed, Harriet became aware of noise in the background, jostles and whispers.

“Hely,” she said, sitting up straighter, “who’s there with you?”

“Nobody,” said Hely, a little too fast. But she could hear the bump in his voice as he said it, like he was knocking some kid with his elbow.

Whispers. Somebody giggled: a
girl
. Anger flashed through Harriet like a jolt of electricity.

“Hely,” she said, “you’d better not have anybody there with you, no,” she said, above Hely’s protestations, “listen to me. Because—”

“Hey!” Was he
laughing?
“What’s your problem?”

“Because,”
said Harriet, raising her voice as far as she dared,
“your fingerprints are on the gun.”

Except for the band, and the jostles and whispers of the kids in the background, there was no sound on the other end at all.

“Hely?”

When finally he spoke, his voice was cracked and distant. “I—Get
away,
” he said crossly, to some anonymous sniggerer in the background. Slight scuffle. The receiver banged against the wall. Hely came on again after a moment or two.

“Hang on, would you?” he said.

Bang went the receiver again. Harriet listened. Agitated whispers.

“No,
you—
” said someone.

More scuffling. Harriet waited. Footsteps, running away; something shouted, indistinct. When Hely returned, he was out of breath.

“Jeez,”
he said, in an aggrieved whisper. “You set me up.”

Harriet—breathing hard herself—was silent. Her own fingerprints were on the gun too, though certainly there was no point in reminding him of that.

“Who have you told?” she demanded, after a cold silence.

“Nobody. Well—only Greg and Anton. And Jessica.”

Jessica?
thought Harriet.
Jessica Dees?

“Come on, Harriet.” Now he was being all whiny. “Don’t be so mean. I did what you told me to.”

“I didn’t ask you to tell
Jessica Dees.
”

Hely made an exasperated noise.

“It’s
your
fault. You shouldn’t have told anybody. Now you’re in trouble and I can’t help you.”

“But—” Hely struggled for words. “That’s not fair!” he said at last. “I didn’t tell anybody it was you!”

“Me that what?”

“I don’t know—whatever it was you did.”

“What makes you think I did anything?”

“Yeah,
right.
”

“Who went to the tower with you?”

“Nobody. I mean …” said Hely unhappily, realizing his mistake too late.

“Nobody.”

Silence.

“Then,” said Harriet (
Jessica Dees!
was he nuts?), “it’s
your
gun. You can’t even prove I asked you.”

“I can so!”

“Yeah? How?”

“I
can,
” he said sullenly, but without conviction. “I can too. Because …”

Harriet waited.

“Because …”

“You can’t prove a thing,” said Harriet. “And your fingerprints are all over it, the
you-know-what
. So you better go right now and think of something to tell Jessica and Greg and Anton unless you want to go to jail and die in the electric chair.”

At this, Harriet thought she had strained even Hely’s credulity but—judging from the stunned silence on the other end—apparently not.

“Look, Heal,” she said, taking pity on him. “
I’m
not going to tell on you.”

“You won’t?” he said faintly.

“No! It’s just you and me. Nobody knows if
you
didn’t tell ’em.”

“They don’t?”

“Look, just go tell Greg and those people you were pulling their leg,” said Harriet—waving goodbye to Nurse Coots, who was sticking her head in the door to say goodbye at the end of her shift. “I don’t know what you told them but say you made it up.”

“What if somebody finds it?” said Hely hopelessly. “What then?”

“When you went down to the tower, did you see anybody?”

“No.”

“Did you see the car?”

“No,” said Hely, after a moment of puzzlement. “What car?”

Good
, thought Harriet. He must have stayed away from the road, and come around the back way.

“What car, Harriet? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. Did you throw it in the deep part of the river?”

“Yes. Off the railroad bridge.”

“That’s good.” Hely had taken a risk, climbing up there, but he couldn’t have picked a lonelier spot. “And nobody saw? You’re sure?”

“No. But they can
drag
the river.” Silence. “You know,” he said. “My
prints.
”

Harriet didn’t correct him. “Look,” she said. With Hely you had to just keep saying the same thing over and over until he got the message. “If Jessica and those people don’t tell, nobody’ll ever know to look for any … item.”

Silence.

“So what exactly did you tell them?”

“I didn’t tell them the
exact
story.”

True enough
, thought Harriet. Hely didn’t know the exact story.

“What, then?” she said.

“It was basically—I mean, it was sort of what was in the paper this morning. About Farish Ratliff getting shot. They didn’t say a whole lot, except that the dogcatcher found him last night when he was chasing a wild dog that ran off the street and back toward the old gin. Except I left out that part, about the dogcatcher. I made it, you know …”

Harriet waited.

“… more spy.”

“Well, go make it some
more
spy,” suggested Harriet. “Tell ’em—”

“
I
know!” Now he was excited again. “That’s a great idea! I can make it like
From Russia with Love
. You know, with the briefcase—”

“—that shoots bullets and teargas.”

“
That shoots bullets and teargas!
And the shoes! The shoes!” He was talking about Agent Klebb’s shoes that had switchblades in the toes.

“Yeah, that’s great. Hely—”

“And the brass knuckles, you know, on the Training
Ground, you know, where she punches that big blond guy in the stomach?”

“Hely? I wouldn’t say
too
much.”

“No. Not too much. Like a story, though,” Hely suggested cheerfully.

“Right,” said Harriet. “Like a story.”

————

“Lawrence Eugene Ratliff?”

The stranger stopped Eugene before he got to the stairwell. He was a large, cordial-looking man with a bristly blond mustache and hard, gray, prominent eyes.

“Where you going?”

“Ah—” Eugene looked at his hands. He had been going up to the child’s room again, to see if he could get anything else out of her, but of course he couldn’t say that.

“Mind if I walk with you?”

“No problem!” said Eugene, in the personable voice that so far that day had not served him well.

Steps echoing loudly, they walked past the stairwell, all the way down to the end of the chilly hall to the door marked Exit.

“I hate to bother you,” said the man, as he pushed open the door, “especially at a time like this, but I’d like to have a word with you, if you don’t mind.”

Out they stepped, from antiseptic dim to scorching heat. “What can I do for you?” said Eugene, slicking back his hair with one hand. He felt exhausted and stiff, from spending the night sitting up in a chair, and though he’d spent too much time at the hospital lately, the roasting afternoon sun was the last place he wanted to be.

The stranger sat down on a concrete bench, and motioned for Eugene to do the same. “I’m looking for your brother Danny.”

Eugene sat down beside him and said nothing. He’d had enough commerce with the police to know that the wisest policy—always—was to play it close to the vest.

The cop clapped his hands. “Gosh, it’s hot out here, aint it?” he said. He rummaged in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes
and took his time lighting one. “Your brother Danny is friendly with an individual named Alphonse de Bienville,” he said, blowing the smoke out the side of his mouth. “Know him?”