All But a Pleasure

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  * * * *

  Forgotten, the recorder continued turning its spindles round and round in the silent interrogation room until the wire ran out and the machine tabbed itself off.

  * * * *

  Kim Little Bird kept most of her mind on driving. With the part left over, she was thinking, And the Old Woman always insists she stickles to the guiderules! By the guiderules, M. Whitcomb was still a suspect under arrest. Nurse or not, by the guiderules, she should be back in her cell. Or, at least, back in handcuffs while outside the station. The guiderules were so far behind them now, they’d be lucky to catch up by Hallowe’en.

  “Visiondust,” the Old Woman was saying, as if they were still in Interrogation. “So that’s what you gave him, M. Whitcomb?”

  “It’s usually very safe, Sergeant. Functionally, its effects wear off in about three hours. But physiologically, enough of it lingers in the system to react with Slumbersound—with a whole list of other meds—for up to forty-eight hours. If this is anyone’s fault, Sergeant, it’s mine. I should have thought to warn you.”

  “Or I should’ve warned the front desk,” Kim put in from the driver’s seat. “I took M. Whitcomb’s statement, Sergeant. I knew what she’d given him. It just never occurred to —”

  “I read her statement, Officer. And I took M. Davison’s myself. I knew what he told me he’d had, and I know what we keep at the station. I was just clarifying. We’ll divvy up the blame later. There’s plenty to go all around. M. Whitcomb. Will he live?”

  “Yes, if they caught it in time. It’s a good thing Angela was in there keeping an eye on him. Sergeant, Visiondust is probably the safest stuff of its kind you can get.”

  “Except as a mixer,” the Old Woman commented.

  “It’s legal for us Cinnamons,” Kim said unnecessarily. “Decriminalized for everybody else.”

  “Ever taken it yourself, Officer?”

  “Once, Sergeant. Traditional coming-of-age ceremony. Never again.”

  “The experience tends to be rather intense, Sergeant,” said M. Whitcomb. “Even when not guided. Physically, it’s non-addictive. Emotionally, most people never feel the desire to take it a second time.”

  “All very jolly. ‘Shamanic.’ You said the stuff’s ‘functional’ effects wear off in about three hours?”

  “Pyschomystically speaking, he was back in full command of himself by the time we went to second level. Otherwise, we would never permit any candidate to go beyond level one in the first session, under no matter what circumstances.”

  Having taken M. Whitcomb’s statement, Kim understood pretty much what they were talking about. She hoped she’d get to read the other floaters’ statements.

  * * * *

  The hospital waiting room was as pleasant as a hospital waiting room could be, which was like talking about “the easiest room in Hell.” Between Faith Lutheran in Boca Raton and Mother of Mercy here in Forest Green, Angela had seen too many hospital waiting rooms, visitors’ lounges, and cafeterias this week. Purgatorio? These Dante’s Delight people were only playing at it! The real Purgatory on Earth was a hospital waiting room…your heart in those back regions where they were working on someone you’d trade places with in a heartbeat, if you only could!

  “Oh, Dave, Dave!” She couldn’t quite think of him as “Detective Clayton.” She hadn’t had that much contact with him socially, but it was more than she’d had with him in his official workline, even including this long, long, very long, very strange day. “Dave, will he…?”

  “I’m no medic, Angie.” Dave put his cup down on the magazine table, sat beside her on the overstuffed couch, and took her cold hand between both of his. “But from what I’ve seen of your floater, he’s pretty…to use a word he might like himself…resilient. He bounces back.”

  “Was it…anything they did to him? Those ‘Purgatorio’ people?”

  Dave shook his head. “I took Sam’s statement. If he was telling the truth, Corwin didn’t get anything up there this afternoon that all the rest of them haven’t been through at least once, most of it every couple of weeks, and come up smiling. Julie’s a nurse, Paul and Curly paramedics, they know how to keep things from getting out of hand.”

  “Then…could it have been…oh, Holy Mother Mary! Could it have been the sleeping pills I gave him? Oh, Dave, Dave…”

  “Hey, hey, Angie.” He had his arm around her shoulders, like a brother. “And who gave you those pills, huh? Not your fault. If anything…”

  She glanced up, saw him trying to grin.

  “If anything,” he went on, “you’ve got the grounds for a whopping big lawsuit against the Forest Green P.D.”

  “And what good—what good on earth would that do?” Her handkerchief was sodden through. She pulled a paper one out of the tissue holder on the lamp table at her side of the couch. “How would a lawsuit…?”

  “Oh, no! Look, Angie, look—I never meant—people who survive can bring lawsuits, too —”

  “What’s this about lawsuits, Detective?” the voice of Sergeant Lestrade cut in.

  She had just arrived, along with Julie and the young Native American officer. Dave stood up on seeing them. So did Angela.

  Julie exchanged one nod with Dave and hurried on through to Emergency. The Cinnamon officer followed her. Angela remembered that Julie was a nurse at this very hospital; the polly must need to keep an eye on her because she was still under arrest.

  Sergeant Lestrade came over to Dave and Angela. “Any news on his condition?”

  Dave shook his head. Angela said, “Not yet,” and took his hand again, for comfort and strength.

  They sat down and waited, Angela and Dave on the couch, Sergeant Lestrade in an armchair catacorner to them. They waited in silence. After several minutes, Sergeant Lestrade said, “M. Whitcomb tells me it’s an interaction between the sleeping pills we keep at the station and the hallucinogen he took earlier today.”

  “Oh!” Angela exclaimed softly. “Then it was—I did—What hallucinogen?”

  “It’s a no-fault, no-blame situation, M. Garvey. Either of those is harmless in itself. And neither you nor the desk officer who gave you the Slumbersound was aware he had had Visiondust. Or that the two things could still interact after eight or nine hours.”

  “Visiondust?” said Dave. “We wouldn’t even run a pureblood Vanilla in for possession.”

  Then they relapsed into silence. The seat cushions were incongruously soft. Angela thought they should be hard. That would fit the “no-fault” situation better.

  After forty-nine minutes, Julie came back out to the waiting room. “It’s all right,” she told them. “He’s going to be fine. He’s up in room forty-three now, sleeping. Officer Little Bird decided to go up and mount surveillance.” She looked toward Sergeant Lestrade. “Sergeant, it’d be best if you could let him finish the night here and take him back to jail after breakfast. I’m ready now.”

  “No.” Sergeant Lestrade stood up, shaking her head slowly. “Hold him here awhile. All this gives me an idea. You can stay here, too, M. Whitcomb. Just let Officer Little Bird keep an eye on you, too.”

  Angela said, “I want to stay, too. I want to stay with him, right in his room.”

  Julie said uncertainly, “Hospital policy is, spouses only.”

  “I’m his fiancee.”

  Sergeant Lestrade said, “That should count. Let the hospital bend a few guiderules for once, keep the F.G.P.D. company. Detective Clayton, you come with me. We’ve got plans to lay.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Wednesday, October 4

  Oh seven thirty, and morning light finding its way through the blinds. Angela had finally fallen asleep on the long couch against the far wall. Julie, now in the nurse’s uniform she’d had in her locker here at the hospital, was sitting on watch, reading a paperback history of Sumeria, when she heard Corwin sleep-mumbl
e something that sounded like, “Rosemary nodding on the grave.” She looked up in time to see him opening his eyes. He blinked several times and stared around at the view from the pillow, a frown line deepening between his eyebrows. She stood up and bent over.

  “Julie? Is Angela here? Or did I only dream…?”

  “She’s fast asleep on the couch over there. All tuckered out, poor dear.”

  “What is’t—as they say in Shakespeare—o’clock?”

  “Oh seven thirty-three.”

  “How odd! That this hour of the morning should find Angela asleep and me awake. Julie, I thought…did I dream this, or were we arrested yesterday?”

  “Oh, we’re still under arrest, boy. Don’t worry your head about that. Sergeant Lestrade phoned your landlady—M. Florsheim?—to feed your cat and canary and goldfish. Can she be trusted?”

  “With my bonsai, at least temporarily. Remarkable woman, Sergeant Lestrade. Then that, also…” A frown passed across his face—pain? embarrassment?—to be replaced with a rather lopsided grin. “A very remarkable woman, indeed. With a rare gift… Has the Blarney Stone any equivalent when it comes to bestowing the opposite ability?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Is today Wednesday?”

  Julie nodded.

  “Vermeer day. Arnheim reposes in good hands…should I ever see it again. Where are we now?”

  “Mother of Mercy Hospital. The Slumbersound they gave you at the station interacted with the Visiondust I gave you yesterday.”

  He took a few seconds to chew on this. “Then it was not in nightmare that I underwent the interesting experience of having my stomach pumped?”

  “No, that was real, too.”

  “You might consider that as an appropriate supplementary apparatus for the Purgatorio. In substitution, perhaps, for the Tantalusian teasing of binding the penitents’ arms to their chairs during luncheon.”

  It did not escape her notice that he used “you” and not “we.”

  “Are you hungry now?”

  “I could eat. Copiously.”

  “Copiously, we won’t allow you. Not just yet. How about an egg, toast, and tea?”

  “All contributions gratefully accepted. Julie—why did the Visiondust not interact with the sleeping preparation you had given me to swallow the evening before?”

  “That one was a sugar pill.”

  “It was?” He sounded astonished. “But it sent me into so deep a slumber that not even the chiming of Angela’s telephone call awakened me.”

  “Placebo effect. It was your own exhaustion that put you to sleep and kept you there, once you thought you’d taken a strong sleeping pill, and relaxed into it.”

  “You left something to chance.”

  “Not really. I figured that if the placebo didn’t work, you’d be too tired to go through with it next day, and we’d salvage your promise to Angela.”

  “The other two pills? The afternoon sedative and evening laxative?”

  “Oh, they were real. But blameless of any interaction.”

  “All in all,” he observed, “this has been a very peculiar week.”

  Julie went out and reported to Kim Little Bird, who was stretched out on a rollaway in the corridor. Taking the whole surveillance thing very casually by now, Kim went with her to get breakfast trays for all four of them. When they returned, Angela was sitting beside the bed, reading Corwin the history of Sumeria.

  After breakfast, he went back to sleep, while Angela sat and watched him with a blissful smile. Julie and Kim went to the visitors’ lounge two doors away and chatted over second cups of coffee.

  * * * *

  Judge Al (for Aloysius) Farquhar was a sprightly, elfin little man with a twinkle in his eye, and well aware of all these facts. At seventy-two, he was still going strong. Retirement held no fascination for him and, fortunately, his workline would not force him into it until he was obviously non compos mentis, which might never happen. Doctors had it almost as good that way, but Al Farquhar had never liked the sight either of blood or of people’s squishy pink inner surfaces—tongues and suchlike—when viewed up close. Hence, the Law and, finally, after decades of work, the Judgeship.

  He heard Lestrade through and shook his head. “All very nice, Rosie. Even plausible. Stamped tattoos, placement of. Tattoo artist lined up in your crosshairs. All maybe just a little pat, wouldn’t you say yourself? Still circumstantial. Youngster, would you sign a search warrant on that, if you were me?”

  “Look. We’ve got five floaters probably to certainly innocent of anything but gross stupidity and over-enthusiastic playacting. But who don’t stand the chance of a lame kitten in a forest fire if this thing ever sees a courtroom. Over against one looking guilty as hell, even if so far it’s circumstantial. On the arithmetic alone, isn’t it worth your signature?”

  “Hmm.… No, Rosie, almost, but no kewpie doll.”

  “All right,” she said, “what about…” and outlined her plan.

  He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Mm-hmm. I have seen scifi screenshows in which that might, just possibly, be called ‘entrapment.’”

  “We aren’t talking scifi, Judge. We’re talking plain here and now. With you right on the spot to witness it.”

  “Hmm-mm,” he repeated. The notion had its appeal. “All right, then, let’s try it. They say a floater’s never too old for a little rolegaming.”

  * * * *

  Lestrade arrived with Clayton, ushering in Judge Farquhar, about 1130 hours, in time for her to overhear Whitcomb telling somebody in the visitors’ lounge, “The whole trick is learning to put it out of your mind the rest of the week.”

  Lestrade looked in. The somebody with Whitcomb was Officer Little Bird, who sprang up and snapped to attention as soon as she saw the detective sergeant. Whitcomb also stood, more slowly and gracefully.

  “No,” Lestrade told them, with a dismissive wave of her hand, “I don’t even want to know what you two were talking about. So, Officer Little Bird, you decided it was safe enough to leave your post?”

  “Not very far, Sergeant, ma’am.”

  “Mmf. All right, we won’t worry about it. This time. He awake?”

  “M. Garvey is with him, Sergeant,” said Little Bird.

  Whitcomb added, “We left them deep in the history of ancient Sumeria. Among other things.”

  “How much have you told him about the plan?” As Lestrade had outlined it to them and Clayton before leaving to persuade the Judge into it.

  “We haven’t told him anything, Sergeant,” Whitcomb answered sweetly. “We thought we should leave that to your silver tongue.”

  The detective sergeant gave her a look that would have quelled any uniform on the force—Little Bird shrank out of its way quickly enough—but Whitcomb acted unfazed. Lestrade decided it wasn’t worth the effort to follow up.

  “Sergeant Lestrade,” Judge Farquhar inquired curiously, “what will happen if the lad refuses to play along?”

  “If I know anything at all about this floater, he’ll crawl all over himself for the chance to play along. If he doesn’t, maybe the shock value of seeing the two women will do the trick. Otherwise, apologies for wasting your time, and we owe you a good lunch.”

  Lestrade led the way two doors down and into Room 43. M.’s Garvey and Davison were apparently more interested in snuggling than Sumeria. They looked a little like the Babes in the Wood, about to fall asleep with sibling arms around each other. Aloud, Lestrade commented, “Cozy. Well, M. Davison, how’d you like to get that stamped tattoo, after all?”

  While M. Garvey scrambled to her feet, looking slightly embarrassed (for what?), Davison moved his line of sight around from Lestrade to Whitcomb, Clayton, Little Bird, the judge, and back to Lestrade and Whitcomb. “To what will it commit me?”

  “Nothing, beyond a little charad
e this afternoon, and a chance to clear all your names.” In a few words, she explained her hopes and plans.

  His face cleared at once. “An opportunity to redeem myself in some small degree? My duty—to be saved? Oh, let us not linger! To cite the Venerable Edgar in new and revised context. I have been told that I can scream very entertainingly on command.”

  “We don’t want ‘entertaining,’ M.… Poe,” Lestrade told him. “We want convincing. Nurse Whitcomb can coach you while we’re gone. All right, Detective Clayton.”

  Clayton brought out the stamp they had taken Imani—not bothering with handcuffs—to get from its bank safety deposit box. Unwrapping it, Clayton handed it to Whitcomb and told her, “Sam says, all loaded and ready.”

  The nurse looked at the sergeant. “Where?”

  “Anywhere,” Lestrade told her, “that’s far enough away from where you’ve got yours.”

  “Over my heart?” Davison asked eagerly. Leaving the sheet and blanket up to his waist, he started working himself free of the hospital gown to bare his smooth torso.

  “Lie back,” said Julie.

  He lay back.

  “Right about…here?” she went on, touching the place.

  He nodded, and reached for M. Garvey’s hand. Sitting down in her bedside chair again, she wove her fingers between his. Whitcomb positioned the stamp, made one sharp downward press. Davison winced slightly, but lay still. Whitcomb lifted the stamp away. Lestrade grunted approval at the neat blue whirligig symbol.

  Her approval was nothing to Davison’s. Hoisting himself high enough for a look down at his own chest, he told M. Garvey, “Now, with a certain amount of imagination, we can say that at last Raggedy Andy has his own candy heart.”

  Must be some private lovers’ joke, Lestrade decided, watching them continue wiggling each other’s fingers.

  * * * *

  So now Al Farquhar was getting to roleplay a medic. In his borrowed white coat, with his borrowed name tag, and borrowed stethoscope, he stood at the ledge beside the hospital room sink, his back to the bed but positioned so that he could steal sidewise glances without looking too obvious about it. While waiting, he spread the search warrant out in front of him, and arranged a few medical-looking charts and papers on top of it. He was enjoying himself immensely.