The Man Who Risked His Partner

by Donaldson, Stephen R.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Haskell asked. “If you want to pry into my life, you’ve come to the wrong place. I’ve never been down here. I’m not sure I know anybody who has ever been in this part of town.”

  He might have been surprised. It’s amazing what pain and loss do to people. But I didn’t answer him. I had better things to do.

  I took out the .45, checked the clip just to be on the safe side. Then I looked at Haskell. “Stay quiet. Don’t get out of the car. I’ll be back in a few minutes. If anything happens, try not to be seen.”

  He opened his mouth, closed it again. He must’ve noticed that I was already ignoring him.

  I found the switch for the courtesy lights and turned them off. Easing the door open, I got out. Left the door partway open so that I could get back in quickly. The cold went through my clothes as if I stood there naked.

  The .45 clamped in my fist, I moved cautiously toward the side of the house to look in one of the windows.

  In my place, a smarter—or maybe just saner—man would’ve been looking for Novick. I’d arrived at the right time of night, the time when a man with killing on his mind might be at home getting ready. No doubt a smarter man would’ve staked out his house until he left, then followed him to find out what he meant to do. If he went to Haskell’s house, he’d get nailed.

  But that wasn’t why I was there. Just the opposite. As I peeked in the window, I prayed I wouldn’t see him.

  I didn’t. The window showed me a bedroom lit by a dim red bulb hanging from the ceiling and decorated with beer cans and gun magazines. No one was in the room. But a shadow moving past the doorway told me that the house wasn’t empty.

  Not wanting to put my weight on the front porch, I moved around to the back of the house.

  There Novick and Harmon had collected enough garbage to start their own landfill. I needed both hands for caution and balance, so I put the .45 away. Somehow I had to navigate the piles of cans and stacks of broken furniture and pools of slop without crashing into anything or breaking a leg.

  Eventually I managed it. But I was never going to get my Boy Scout skulking badge. By the time I reached the back door, I heard Gail’s voice.

  “Is that you, Mase?”

  She sounded small and vulnerable, but not especially scared.

  Before I could react, she opened the door and looked out at me.

  The steps up to the door put her slightly above me. The light in the kitchen behind her let her see me a lot better than I could see her. But that was all right—as long as Novick wasn’t home.

  She’d taken me by surprise, but I didn’t let that slow me down. “Hi,” I said like I did this kind of thing every day. “Remember me? I’m the man who wanted to talk to you about Reg Haskell.”

  She didn’t say anything. Her silhouette didn’t move. But at least she didn’t close the door.

  “I couldn’t talk this morning,” I said, “not with Mase here. I couldn’t let him hear me. He wants to kill Reg.”

  “So do I,” she murmured. She sounded far away, made tiny by distance. “I love him.”

  I resisted an urge to ask her which one. Neither of them was what I would’ve called a logical response.

  “You said you wanted to talk about Reg”—a note of bitterness came into her voice—“but you didn’t. You just wanted to hurt Mase.”

  “No,” I countered. “I work for Reg. I don’t want Mase to hurt him. That’s why I couldn’t talk while Mase was there.” Since she didn’t seem likely to panic at the moment, I decided to take a chance. “Where is Mase?”

  Slowly she turned to look behind her. Then she peered out at me again. Everything she did was slow. “He went out,” she said. “I thought he came back, but it was you.”

  I could hear the ruin of her life in the way she spoke. That and the cold made it hard for me to sound calm. “Gail, let me tell you why Reg sent me.”

  She considered that She was in a different mind than she’d been this morning. “If you do,” she said finally, “Mase’ll kill you, too.”

  You mean, I thought, me in addition to Haskell? Or me in addition to you? But I couldn’t sort it out. “No, he won’t,” I said. “I want you to come with me. That’s why I’m here. I want to take you to Reg.”

  Her outline stiffened against the light. “To Reg?”

  “He’s waiting for you. We want to take you to a place where you’ll be safe.”

  Also I wanted to poke a stick into the hornet’s nest of Novick’s mind. Stir up trouble, as they say. The quick way to find out who your enemies are. Ugly, brutal—and efficient.

  “Will you come with me?”

  “To Reg?” she repeated. She seemed to be breathing hard. “You’ll take me to Reg?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Just a minute.” Moving like a figure in a dream, she shut the door on me.

  While I hesitated, I heard what sounded like a drawer opening, closing. Then she swung the door open again and came down the steps to me. “I’m ready.”

  I could see her better now without the light behind her. She wore the same clothes I’d seen her in earlier—a ratty flannel shirt with only one button, jeans that made her look anorexic, no shoes. If I’d had any confidence at all in what I was doing, I would’ve taken her back inside to get a coat. As it was, however, I wrapped one hand around her thin arm so that she wouldn’t get away and used the light to help me negotiate the trash toward the car.

  Some of the stuff she stepped on must’ve hurt her feet, but she didn’t seem to feel it.

  I felt it for her. I felt the cold for her, too. But mostly I made her hurry because I was afraid that Haskell would drive away if he saw us coming.

  Fortunately, the dark shielded us. We reached the Continental. I jerked open the rear door, steered Gail into the back seat, then strode around to the door I’d left open.

  By the time I got in and shut the door, Gail had her arms around Haskell’s neck over the back of the seat. She made muffled noises, crying into his ear.

  Without light, I couldn’t see Haskell’s face. But his hands strained on Gail’s arms to keep her from strangling him.

  “Axbrewder, you bastard,” he gasped, “you bastard.”

  Grinning maliciously, I snapped on the dashboard lights.

  Her crying changed into words. “Oh, Reg, I love you, I love you, Reg, I love you.” The grip of her arms looked frantic.

  Haskell braced himself. He was about to do something violent to make her let go.

  “Listen to me, Haskell,” I said, putting all the conviction I could muster into my voice. “You helped create this mess, and you’re going to help clean it up. She’s killing herself with malnutrition, booze, and dope, and she hasn’t got enough mental balance left to know it. The clown she lives with would love to put us all in the morgue, and she doesn’t seem to understand that, either. Your name is the only thing I can say to her that she’ll pay attention to.”

  Haskell managed to loosen Gail’s grip so that he could breathe and turn his head. “You bastard,” he repeated softly, “I didn’t cause this. I’m not responsible for her.”

  I ignored that. “She needs professional care. I want to take her to a hospital. But I can’t persuade her to go with me. And nobody can force her to sign herself in for treatment. She has to do that herself.” I faced him like a set of brass knuckles. “You’re going to talk her into it.”

  In the faint glow of the lights, he looked dark, menacing, his face covered with shadows. “How?”

  “I don’t care. Tell her you love her. Tell her she’ll save your life. Tell her any damn lie you want. Just talk her into it.”

  She murmured his name over and over again, desperately pleading for a response.

  He said, “I can’t. I got tired of her months ago.”

  “Fake it!” I snapped. “You like playing people. Play her.”

  For a minute longer, he stared at me with pieces of murder lurking in the shadows on his face
. Then he turned around, reached his arms toward Gail. One hand stroked her hair, the other hugged her shoulder, while he met her feverish kissing.

  “Gail,” he croaked, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

  She clung to him for her life.

  I started the Continental, hit the lights, and headed back up Bosque toward Trujillo. In the direction of San Reno County Public Hospital.

  While I drove, I concentrated on not hearing the way Haskell and Gail mooned at each other. She was out of her mind, and he was too good at it. I would’ve gagged in revulsion, except for the simple fact that I’d forced him into this. After a while his endearments began to fray around the edges. I gritted my teeth and kept going.

  Fortunately San Reno County Public Hospital—affectionately known as SaRCoPH, short for sarcophagus—is in the South Valley, in the marginal area where the respectable part of Puerta del Sol dwindles toward the barrio. The drive seemed to take a week or ten days, but we actually arrived around seven.

  SaRCoPH isn’t the best hospital in the city, but it isn’t the worst, either, even though it looks like a cross between a steel foundry and a vivisectionist’s lab. And it’s the only one where they don’t look at you cross-eyed if you’ve got no visible means of support. Once we got there, however, the tricky part started.

  I didn’t have much trouble with the starched personage on the other side of the emergency admitting desk. She could see that Gail needed help, so she accepted my explanation—that Gail Harmon was spacey with dope and neglect and needed treatment for malnutrition, in addition to psychiatric evaluation—and ignored the information that Haskell and I were friends who had found her half-comatose in her apartment. Probably the nurse considered us a couple of good-time bozos who had picked Gail up, realized she was in worse shape than we thought, and now wanted to get out with as little involvement as possible. Instead of making me feel like a bad liar, she simply filled out the required forms and passed them over for Gail’s signature.

  That was the problem. Gail didn’t seem to have the first idea where she was or why, but in some dim corner of her mind she’d figured out that we were going to abandon her. She kept one arm curled like a C-clamp around Haskell’s right arm. With the other, she pulled at his neck, trying to bring his head down for more kisses.

  “No, don’t leave me here, don’t, please, take me with you, Reg,” she begged softly, “don’t leave me again.” Her eyes somehow failed to focus on his face, giving her a vacant look. The tone of her voice already sounded lost.

  Haskell was near the end of his rope. He didn’t look at her. Instead he faced me with a gleam of desperate fury in his eyes.

  I cocked my fists on my hips and glared back.

  The woman in the starched uniform rustled her papers. “We need your signature on these forms, Miss Harmon,” she said. “We can’t help you without your permission.”

  “Sign them, Gail,” Haskell snapped. The gentleness, the fake affection, was gone. He still didn’t look at her. “I want you to sign those forms.”

  “No,” she pleaded. “You’re going to leave me again. Why are you going to leave me? What’ve I done? I don’t understand. Please tell me what I’ve done. I won’t do it again, I promise, I swear. Please don’t leave me.”

  I couldn’t watch. Hours ago I’d passed into the kind of grim helpless rage that keeps some people swimming long after they should’ve drowned. “Get on with it,” I rasped at him. “We haven’t got all night.”

  At that his face went blank. But I didn’t stop.

  “You’re the expert on getting women to do what you want. You’re the one who wants to prove he can do anything. So prove it.”

  With no expression at all, he glanced down into Gail’s urgent face. Nothing about him gave me any warning.

  Suddenly he swung the arm she hugged, wrenched it away from her so hard that she almost fell. “Stop clinging!” he shouted like the door of a furnace opening. “All you ever do is cling! You suck all the life out of me. You beg and wheedle and whine! You demand everything! You’re going to cling me to death!”

  As full of righteousness and fire as the Wrath of God, he roared, “Sign those papers!”

  Her whole body seemed to cry out to him in chagrin, remorse, contrition. But her face didn’t. It was empty, deserted. Her eyes didn’t focus on anything.

  “Yes, Reg,” she said. “Of course.”

  She went to the desk. The nurse handed her a pen. She signed her name somewhere on the nearest piece of paper.

  Haskell turned his back on her. “You lousy bastard,” he hissed at me. “You’re going to pay for this.”

  For maybe the first time since I’d met him, I felt like I was seeing the real Reg Haskell instead of one of his lies or bluffs or manipulations.

  But I didn’t pay any attention. Gail left the desk, moving toward him—ignoring the starched woman who tried to call her in the other direction—and something started to hum in the back of my mind like a wire in a high wind. At the back door of her house—

  I couldn’t talk this morning, I said, not with Mase here. He wants to kill Reg.

  So do I, she said.

  —I’d heard a drawer in the kitchen open, close.

  She didn’t hurry, but she was so close to him I was almost too late. Somehow I shouldered him aside and caught her wrist as she drove a paring knife at the small of his back.

  As soon as I stopped her, she went wild. Screaming like a demented cat, she tried to repeat what she’d done to my face earlier. I should’ve been able to hold her, but she seemed to have more arms and legs than I could keep track of. Fortunately, the nurse had enough presence of mind to call for help fast, and a couple of orderlies came running. They got Gail off me with my clothes and most of my skin intact.

  Haskell didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. I wanted to hit him so bad that my arms felt like they were going to fall off. And I couldn’t bear to look at Gail Harmon’s betrayed face as the orderlies wrestled her away. The woman in the starched uniform was the only person nearby who didn’t resemble an accusation, so I talked to her.

  “I know none of this makes sense.” I gave her one of Ginny’s business cards. “Call us in the morning. We’ll tell you everything we can. By then we should be able to put you in touch with her parents.”

  The nurse just nodded. No doubt she’d seen people crazier than me in her time. She dismissed me by going back to her paperwork. I turned away.

  One hornet’s nest stirred up. One more to go—a subtler one. I closed a fist around Haskell’s arm so that I wouldn’t take a swing at him and steered him out into the cold toward the car.

  I felt him watching me sidelong while we walked, gauging me. After a minute he demanded, “Say something, Axbrewder. I did what you told me. I got her to sign.”

  Maybe he was proud of himself. For some reason I didn’t think so. I thought he was trying to cover up the fact that he’d lost control for a moment.

  When I didn’t respond, he started to sneer. “I hope you like the results. I imagine this is how you assuage your guilt. You put on your Good Samaritan suit and ‘help’ people who are too far gone to stop you. Well, congratulations. You’ve just cost her what was left of her sanity.”

  Without quite meaning to, I ground my fingers into his arm until he gasped. “Just remember this, Haskell. You’re the one she tried to kill. At this point, your life is just a list of people who want you dead.”

  He didn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t have an answer. Or maybe his arm was about to snap. Gritting my teeth to take up the slack, I forced myself to relax my fingers.

  A thin sigh leaked up out of his chest. Other than that, he kept his composure.

  We got back into the Continental. It started so easily that I didn’t trust it Such instant ignition made me think of sparks and gas tanks. Haskell was right. I hadn’t done Gail Harmon any real favors. Fortunately, he’d exhausted his reserves of social conversation. Slumping a bit more than usual, he tried t
o rub his arm without letting me see him do it while I took the beltway up into the Heights toward the Territorial Apartments.

  He didn’t question our destination. He must’ve assumed we were on our way back to his house.

  Gusts of wind hit us head-on as we climbed the long grade, making the car shudder slightly like it was too well bred to work this hard. Bits of snow came crazily down the tunnel of the headlights. Cars going the other way lit the almost horizontal slash of the flakes. The snowfall looked thicker than it was, however. I had trouble seeing through the reflection, but I didn’t need to turn on the wipers.

  And off the beltway the visibility improved. Buildings broke up the straight blast of the wind. There wasn’t much traffic. The sane daytime population of the Heights had apparently decided that this was a good night to stay home. I found the way to Eunice Wint’s apartment easily enough.

  Before we got there, Haskell realized where we were headed. He straightened up in his seat. The faint light of the dash made his face look stiff as a mask.

  When I parked in front of the Territorial Apartments, he turned to look at me. Like his face, his voice didn’t have any expression I could read. “Your last stop was a roaring success,” he said. “What do you have in mind this time? Do you think Eunice is working with el Senor? If you loan me a gun, we could go in shooting. We might catch them red-handed.”

  I bit back an impulse to ask him what el Señor’s name was. Ginny and I weren’t ready to spring that on him yet. Shrugging his sarcasm aside, I gave him as much of an answer as I could stomach.

  “I want to ask her a few questions about Jordan Canthorpe. You aren’t any good at keeping your infidelities secret. She’s terrible. The people you work with know exactly what’s going on. And jealous fiancés have been known to carry things to extremes.

  “Canthorpe has motive, opportunity, and means. But Ginny and I don’t know if he’s the kind of man who would go that far.”

  That didn’t ruffle Haskell, but at least it made him stop splashing acid on me. In a steady tone, he asked, “So why bother Eunice? She’s really just a kid. Ask me. I can probably tell you more about Jordan’s character than he knows himself.”