Baby Is Three

by Theodore Sturgeon

  The convertible braked, and braked again, and each time a huge bite was taken out of the distance between Guinn and his quarry. He was less than two hundred feet behind when it happened.

  The Chrysler found its opening and hurtled through. It must have nipped the back corner of the lowboy the lightest of touches, and it was all but scraping the guard rail on the right. In that split second the right-hand door of the Chrysler opened. It was rear-hinged door; the wind flipped it wide. Its edge struck the guard rail and broke it off—and a slim figure in purple rose in the air and arched over the rail.

  “Lynn!”

  In the same instant he had to wrench his wheel right, then left to get through the same gap, a blessed inch or two wider now as the trailer straightened out on its side of the roadway. It had all happened so fast that the lowboy crew probably saw none of it, except two cars driving too damn fast.

  Now Guinn really had a priority to choose.

  He could go after his man and run him to earth—with the idea that Lynn might be hurt—drowned or crushed—in that wild leap over the rail. Or he could swing right at the end of the bridge, where an underpass connected with the River Road, and try to save her—knowing that the Chrysler would be miles away.

  He peered at the license plate and knew he wouldn’t forget it. He realized, too, that with Lynn out of the Chrysler, half his reason for catching it was gone. Of course, catching Percival’s murderer was reason enough, but—

  He cursed, and as he swept off the end of the bridge, pulled right. The convertible arrowed ahead.

  Down under the first pier of the bridge, Guinn pulled up. He glanced worriedly at Garry. “You’ll just have to wait, son,” he murmured.

  He slipped his gun back in its holster and ran down to the water’s edge. His first searching look was upward, at the roadway above. There was no sign of a body on the rail or on the second pier, seventy-five feet or so out in the river. She’d fallen clear, then. And on the upstream side. And then he saw her—the merest glimpse of water-darkened copper blonde hair, the flash of an arm against the brown stone of the pier.

  He kicked off his shoes, shoved his gone in one and his wallet in the other, ran down a flight of stone boat-landing steps and plunged into the river.

  He swam strongly out to the pier, wondering how he could have been so stupid as to have left his jacket on, figuring what the hell, it was a tropical and not very unwieldy; no point wasting it now. He gained the pier almost under the bridge, for the current ran fairly strongly here. He pulled himself up on its platform-like surface, which was only a foot or so above water level, and walked squishily to the upstream end.

  She was there, clinging weakly to the stone, breathing in deep gasps. When she saw him she yelped. “Oh!” She took in some water, coughed violently. He knelt and grasped her wrist.

  The coughing subsided. “Mr. Guinn …” She pushed her hair back. One side of her face and one shoulder were scarlet. “I didn’t … see you come up. I was … just getting my wind back … before I … tried to make … the bank.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, sure, except I … hit awful hard … I’m—Mr. Guinn, I’m mother naked!”

  “That was a smart move.”

  “It wasn’t a move! Strapless dress and no bra and … when I hit I just skinned right out of it! Shoes and all … Even my … Oh, this is awful!”

  “I’ve got news for you,” said Guinn, his eyes twinkling. “I’ve seen the like before.”

  “I’m terribly sorry about it,” she said surprisingly. “But … I got away from him, didn’t I?”

  “That you did. Don’t talk now. Get your wind back and I’ll give you a tow in. We’ve got to get to a hospital, but quick.”

  “Hospital? I’m—”

  “Not you. Garry.”

  “He’s—he’s dead!”

  “Not him. The slug slipped in under his temple and skinned around his big thick skull and came out over his ear, near the back. Concussion, maybe, but I don’t think there’s a fracture.”

  “Oh, come on.” She turned immediately shoreward with long competent strokes.

  Guinn let her get out into the stream and then dove after her, coming up a little ahead. He swam with a side-stroke, watching her. She suddenly coughed again.

  “Thought it was too soon,” he said. “Float.”

  “Oh, I’m all—”

  “Float,” he said. Submissively, she did. He got a hand under her chin and towed her, his long legs supplying a powerful scissor kick, his free hand gathering armloads of distance. Lynn lay back, completely relaxed, filling her lungs gratefully. Again the current carried them downstream a little way and they had to work their way up the stone embankment to the landing.

  “Please go ahead,” she said. “I’m not prissy, but—”

  “Don’t fret,” he said kindly. He scrambled up the steps and went to where he had left his shoes. Lynn hesitated, then ran up the steps and started toward the car, which was parked out of sight of the riverside roadway under the bridge. She was perhaps halfway there when there was a flash and a roar from the road. A heavy calibre slug nicked a small sapling at Lynn’s elbow. She squeaked.

  “This way,” snapped Guinn. “Jump!”

  She ran to him; he motioned her past so that the first bridge pier was between her and the source of the shots. Guinn dropped back to the stone steps, backed down them until he had cover.

  It was growing dark as reluctantly as any early summer night will. Guinn’s eyes passed the car parked on the other side of the River Road twice before he noticed it looming in the shadow of a dogwood tree.

  It was the Chrysler.

  He took careful aim and snapped two shots at it. There was a distinctly audible gasp, then a moan. Guinn sprinted toward it. A bullet struck the ground at his feet and another tugged at his sleeve. He fired and hit the dirt. Before he could so much as raise his head the starter whinnied, the motor caught, and the car moved off. It turned and sped up the ramp to the bridge level. Guinn fired once more, stood fuming for a moment, and then went back to the girl. She was flattened against the river side of the pier.

  “It’s okay now,” he said. He turned and went to the station wagon. She followed. “Was that my ardent swain?” she asked in a shaken voice.

  He got in the car and opened the other door for her. “It was.” He took off his jacket, wrung it out over the ground, shook it, and handed it across to her. She put it over her shoulders and climbed in. “He must have had an attack of second thought. Wondered if you had killed yourself or not. Came back to see. You showed up nicely against the dark river. He couldn’t see the station wagon, and didn’t notice me in this brown suit. It must have been a big surprise to him to get lead thrown back at him. Who is he, anyway?”

  “I don’t know him, really. His name’s Mordi. He came into the—”

  “Morty?”

  “Mordi. He came into the hash house a few times. Dark. Dresses well. Very quiet.” She shuddered. “I’ll look out for those quiet ones after this. Steel traps … dynamite sticks … they’re nice and quiet, un-til.”

  He started the motor, backed, turned, and got onto the River Road. She said suddenly, “Mr. Guinn …”

  “Mmm?”

  She hesitated. Then, “Mind if I take this off again? You’ll think I’m terrible, but it’s so clammy. And it’s warm this evening and somehow it doesn’t seem to matter. Though I don’t know how I’ll ever get out of the car in town.”

  “Go ahead,” said Guinn. “It’s getting dark. The passing parade will think you’re still in that strapless job. You’re right—it matters as much as or as little as you let it. When we get to the hospital I’ll see if there isn’t a nurse’s uniform I can swipe for you.”

  She peeled off the jacket and draped it over the seat between them. She crossed her arms and rubbed her shoulders for a moment, then sat demurely with her hands on her lap.

  He said, “You took a hell of a chance with that high-dive.” />
  “Not so much,” she said. “I used to swim there a lot. The channel’s real deep between the bank and that second pier, and I knew that. I noticed the way that car door opened when I was with him this afternoon. I knew it would slam wide open if I just opened it a little and I was waiting my chance. When he had to swing so near the rail to pass that trailer—that was it. I got my feet under me and dove right off the seat. I used to go off there all the time. It’s forty-two feet,” she added.

  “At about forty-two miles an hour, just then,” he said: “Lucky you didn’t break your back.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  He glanced at her admiringly. “Do you have to work at that hash-house?”

  “It’s a job.”

  “You’ve got a better one if you want it.”

  “With you? Do you mean it?”

  “Yup.”

  “Oh, I’d love it. I’d just love it.”

  A conquest, thought Guinn.

  She said, “I could maybe see him every day.”

  “See who?”

  “Garry.”

  Not my conquest, he thought, and allowed himself one of his rare grins. “He’s a good kid.”

  “He’s the bravest man I’ve ever known! Why, when that man came up out of the woods like that …”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I was a little afraid of him at first, Garry I mean,” she said. “The way he was looking at me. Then he started to talk. I never heard anybody talk the way he does. Not as if I was a girl. Just as if I was … well, people. About the car and you and jet aircraft and banana cream pie and the National League. It was …” She paused. “Anyway, we heard the other car start. Garry put a hand on my arm and said not to worry. That was all, just ‘Don’t worry.’ I wish I could tell you how—safe—it made me feel.

  “The car came up, and sure enough it was him—Mordi, the man I’d been riding with before I met you. He looked out at us and then stopped his car. He leaned out for a long time and looked at me and at Garry and the station wagon, and then he got out and came up to us. I never saw such cold eyes on a human being in my life, and they shouldn’t be, they’re not the right color to be so cold.

  “Garry got out and they stood looking at each other. Finally Mordi said, ‘Nobody cuts in on me, cottonhead.’

  “Garry said, ‘Beat it, cottonmouth. Nothing around here belongs to you.’

  “So the man said to me, ‘He’s so wrong, ain’t he, sugar?’

  “And I said, ‘He’s so right.’

  “He came up close, then, and told me I was going back with him. I just shook my head. Then Garry said, ‘That’ll do for now, tailor-dummy. Goodbye again.’ And he reached inside his jacket. When he did that, Mordi pulled out a gun and shot him in the head.”

  Guinn’s eyes seemed to get smaller. “Garry never carries a gun,” he said. “I’ll have to tell him some things about raising on a three-card straight.”

  “He’s too honest to get away with a bluff,” said Lynn.

  “Oh,” said Guinn. The smile appeared again.

  Lynn said, “He reached in and got my wrist. I didn’t know he was going to pull so hard, so suddenly. He hauled me out and I was flat on my face before I knew what was happening. Then he hit me.” She put her hand behind her neck, stroked. “I guess I went out, and I didn’t come to all at once, either. Everything was sort of dreamy for the longest time.”

  “I know that punch,” said Guinn.

  “I was in his car,” she continued. “He wasn’t. I heard another shot. I remember thinking he must have gone back to finish Garry. Or maybe you.”

  “Shot a hole in my gas tank,” said Guinn.

  “Oh. Well, before I was completely out of it, we were charging down the hill. He drove very fast. He laughed at me. He’s crazy … what’d he want to kill a man over me for?”

  “I don’t want to take a compliment away from a lady,” said Guinn, “but it wasn’t over you. He killed somebody up there, and we were the only ones who’d seen him around. He knew what he was doing. That’s why he came back just now to make sure you were out of the running. He seems to’ve missed me altogether. I guess while I was catfooting over toward the rocks on one side, he was sneaking back on the other.

  She shuddered. “He laughed at me,” she said. “He-he touched me, too.”

  “I’ll speak to him about that sometime soon,” said Guinn.

  The county hospital was just outside the city limits, across the highway from forest land. It was quite dark when they reached it. Guinn pulled up across the road from the big brick pylons which flanked the entrance to the hospital drive.

  “Out,” he said.

  She looked at him, wide-eyed. “What?”

  He chuckled. “Cheer up. I’m not pulling a Mordi on you. Has it occurred to you that I’ve got to drive up to the emergency ward, floodlights and all, and that a couple of interns will be out to tote Garry in? Of course, I could explain that I’m helping you home from a floating crap game where you lost your shirt …”

  She opened the door. “Hurry back,” she said.

  He watched her cross the road shoulder and enter the woods. He shrugged into his damp jacket. It was clammy, but would cover his holster. Then he pulled into the drive. He turned at the parking court, wondering about the mental processes of landscapers who built graceful curves into a road which so often would have life or death at the end of it, and swung in under the brightly-lit port-cochere.

  A grizzled guard hobbled over to him, peered. “Had Guinn! Back again?”

  “With a customer. Get a couple of butchers out here with a stretcher, will you, Jerry?”

  He followed the old man in and went over to the registration window. “Hello, Cheryl.”

  A blonde woman with a face like the most comfortable of sofa pillows looked up through the glass. When she saw him she smiled. It was like the kind of lamplight that goes with that kind of pillow. “Hadley!”

  “I brought Garry in,” he said bluntly. “Someone creased his head.”

  She rose. “Is he—”

  “Doesn’t look too bad. But I’d like to know right away. I’m on a case. Will you take care of the gunshot report for me?”

  “Oh, yes.” She got out the form, slid it through to him.

  He signed it on the bottom line. “One more thing. I know you people do the best you can, but I’d like you to think up something even better for Garry. Whatever he needs, hear? I mean anything.”

  He got his wallet out and thumbed through its inside compartment. An expression of almost stupid astonishment slackened his features.

  Cheryl said, “What is it, Hadley? You been robbed?”

  “No …” His eyes came back to earth. “No, Cheryl, I should say not.” He pulled bills out of the wallet.

  C-notes. Five of them.

  He closed his eyes. There was that center drawer of his desk. In it, the telephone company’s envelope. In the envelope, three of the C-notes the Morgan chick had given him. Five minus three left two. There ought to be two hundred in the wallet. There were five.

  “What is it, Hadley?”

  He looked at her. “Just trying to figure out whether or not I’d tipped a waiter. Here.” He slid two of the bills through the hole. They settled to her disk like a couple of pigeons on a roof. That’s extra, over the bill. I got more.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I do have to. I just want to know he’s a bit more than all right. Uh … you don’t have to talk to him about it.”

  She smiled. “The way you treat him, he thinks you hate him.” She picked up the money.

  “So he keeps on trying hard to make me happy. If he thought I was happy, why should he bother?”

  “You’re a softy, Hadley Guinn.”

  “You’re a pretty hard character yourself.” He winked at her. “Oh. Cheryl—”

  “Yes, Had.”

  “Can you dredge me up a nurse’s uniform? Not the starched job—one of those lab wraparounds.
”

  “What on earth for?”

  “My Sunday school’s putting on a pageant,” he explained. “I’m to be Florence Nightingale.”

  “Idiot. What size?”

  “About Miss Roark and a half.” Miss Roark was the trim one in the super’s office.

  “Sure, Hadley.” She went through a door at the back of the office. Guinn turned. They were bringing Garry in. He looked very white. Guinn followed the interns into the receiving ward. A tired man with wakeful eyes waved the interns toward an examining table. “Hello, Jim.”

  The doctor thumped his shoulder. “Good to see you. That’s your Number One boy, isn’t it? Garry what’s-his-name?”

  “Yeah. Can you give me a verdict quickly. I got to go.”

  “What happened to him?”

  The doctor bent over Garry’s head while Guinn told him. Then he rolled Garry’s lids back, peered at the eyes. He put on his stethoscope and prodded around with it.

  “He might need a transfusion. Concussion possibly. Shock certainly. He might have trouble with the hearing on that side for a while. He’s a lucky boy.”

  “How long will the transfusion take me?”

  “No time at all. Not for you, Guinn. He’s Type B, you’re A. Don’t worry about it. We have lots in the bank. You won’t do.”

  “You can tell by my astral vibrations?”

  The doctor laughed. “I can tell by memory. The last time you two gave blood for the Red Cross he asked me what your blood type was, and swore a blue streak when he found out his was different. He thought he might be useful to you some time.”

  “Hell.” Guinn looked at the still face. “Take care of him, Jim.”

  “Sure.” He bent over the patient again. Guinn read that one casual syllable all the way through, and in it found what sort of care Garry was going to get. He said, “Thanks, Jim,” and went out.

  Cheryl was waiting for him with a neatly folded paper package. “Hadley …”

  “Oh, thanks, Cheryl. The uniform.” He took it.

  She said, “I think I ought to tell you. There was someone here today boning through the hospital records. Yours especially.”