Frank Herbert

by Frank Herbert

  Panic flooded Ellis’s brain, clearing away the drug haze. He fumbled for the gun beside him. It eluded his grasp. There, there it was! He held it, hidden by the blanket.

  The door opened long enough for a white figure to slip in, closed again. Nurse? No, a doctor.

  A tall doctor—much taller than Dr. Greenleaf.

  Ellis’ mind went torpid again. There was something he should do; he couldn’t think what it was. Why did that doctor look so familiar—even in the half-light of the room? He clenched for the gun, but it slipped out of his fingers.

  Horror filled his mind. He knew just what was happening, and he couldn’t move a muscle.

  The white figure crossed to the bed, reached for the bell-push, and placed it behind the bed, out of reach.

  Ellis fought to move his hand and failed.

  There was danger, his mind told him, terrible danger. But it was like playing with ideas of panic. His muscles would do nothing about it.

  All he could see of the man was a white blur of face and uniform near his bed. Ellis tried to call out—no sound came.

  The man crossed to the table, picked up something Ellis couldn’t see. He heard a match strike and the sound of a cigarette being lit.

  Ellis smelled cigarette smoke and something like gasoline. Lighter fluid?

  The tall figure bent over the bed and said clearly, “You stupid jerk. I tried to warn you.”

  Ellis knew that voice. Onstott!

  A quick glow from the cigarette lit Onstott’s face, ridiculous yet evil over the white doctor’s coat. Onstott bent down, placed the cigarette carefully just beyond the reach of Ellis’ hand—as though the damn thing had rolled there—beside his suspended leg.

  I’ve had it, Ellis thought. He’s setting fire to the bed—and there’s nothing I can do! He willed his hand to move toward the gun. Nothing happened.

  Ellis wondered how close the glowing coal was to the lighter fluid he smelled.

  Onstott expelled a contemptuous puff of smoke in one gulp. Ellis felt it sear his lungs. He heard Onstott move across the room toward the door.

  With a racking, choking gasp, Ellis coughed. The pain of his broken rib scorched his mind.

  Pain jerked him awake, drove back the drug for a precious instant.

  Ellis’s hand clutched at the gun, lifted it across his stomach. He fired toward the door. Once, twice. Then sank back—plummeted into unconsciousness by the drug.

  A voice was saying, “Coddington.” He heard the name distinctly, over and over. What did it mean? “Coddington. Coddington. Coddington.”

  Ellis laughed sleepily. It was his own voice. His eyes opened, and he saw McCoy standing beside his bed. God, that sunlight was bright, streaming through the window. His eyelids closed. Sunlight? Carefully, he opened his eyes again. “Where’s Captain Coddington?” he asked.

  “Right here, Barnie,” Coddington said from the chair by the window.

  Ellis smiled drowsily. He’d made it through the night. He came suddenly awake. “Is—is Onstott dead?”

  “No, but he might as well be. He’s in jail and singing like a bird. I understand he said enough to hang himself and get Tonelli, too. With a murder rap facing him, Onstott got real talkative.”

  Ellis pulled himself up as far as he could. “Jane? Where’s Jane?”

  “Safe at her mother’s with your kids,” said Coddington. He pulled his bulk out of the chair and crossed slowly to the bed. Ellis noted fatigue lines creasing the captain’s face. “The police will keep an eye on them till Tonelli’s trial—but there’s no real danger. The whole mess is out in the open now.”

  Ellis took a deep breath, was sorry when the pain from his broken rib pierced him. “Did I hit Onstott when I shot?”

  Coddington wheezed his short laugh. “All you hit was that traction device over the bed. It’s a wonder you didn’t shoot your own toe off.”

  “Then how—” Ellis began.

  Codding waved a pudgy hand toward the young fireman. McCoy flushed. “You’ll have to thank McCoy here. He spotted Onstott in his doctor getup.”

  “It took me too long to catch on,” McCoy said. “I passed Onstott as I went down the back stairway to the maternity floor, but he was partly turned away, and I just got a glimpse of his face. I knew that doctor looked familiar, but I didn’t think of Onstott right away. I expected trouble to look like a scrubwoman—not a doctor.”

  Ellis nodded. “Yet it’s the same gimmick. A scrubwoman is a common sight in a public building late at night, but in a hospital, a doctor’s even better. And with that shot in me, they didn’t need a bucketful of smoke.”

  “After I made sure Marianne was okay,” McCoy said, “I got to thinking about that doctor—wondering where I’d seen him before. It took me a long time to realize the last time I’d seen him was in your office, and that you’d introduced him as an assistant DA.”

  Coddington chuckled. “McCoy ran up from the second floor. He got here just as Onstott was leaving your room. Your shots blasted out. It caused quite a sensation when McCoy came sprinting down the hall and tackled a doctor.”

  McCoy grinned. “That bossy nurse was sure she was next on my list.”

  “I wish she had been,” Ellis said, remembering the hypo.

  McCoy nodded. “About that time, the cops I’d called came galloping up. Onstott almost managed to talk his way out of it until smoke started curling up from your bed!”

  “That cop guarding me was as useful as a rubber crutch,” Ellis said. “When I really needed him, the stupid jerk was on a coffee break.”

  McCoy said, “Onstott told him to play it cool. That you had demanded protection but there wasn’t much danger in the hospital.”

  “Christ!” said Ellis. “Onstott sure had me going. What did the hoods have on the poor SOB? Gambling debts?”

  “Hell, no,” wheezed Coddington. “It was out-and-out greed. He was the syndicate’s man from way back.” He cleared his throat. “If gambling debts were all that scum needed …” His voice trailed off.

  McCoy noticed Coddington’s embarrassment, broke in. “They owned Onstott lock, stock, and legal decree. He originated the arson trick, of course.”

  Ellis looked up at McCoy. “You were right from the beginning,” he said. “You spotted arson when the rest of us might have missed it.” Then Ellis remembered why McCoy had come to the hospital in the first place. “How’s your wife—and the new baby?”

  “A boy?” Coddington asked.

  McCoy grinned. “A nine-pound, day-old fireman,” he said.

  Ellis faked a groan. “Will you do me a big favor, McCoy?”

  “Sure. What?”

  “Tell your kid never to phone me before ten in the morning,” Ellis said.

  The Little Window

  The sense of danger came over Angelo Serafim while he was levering his stiff old legs down the seven concrete steps from the sidewalk to his shoe repair shop. One moment he was savoring the spring day—still a taste of lunch on his tongue, a chill nip to the air, woodsmoke grey of concrete around him, grit underfoot—a distant door slam and hurrying feet.

  Then … this touch to the heart that he knew must come from something seen but not noticed.

  He looked back up—past the impatient face of his nephew, Paul—saw that a black sedan had rolled to the curb beyond the iron rail. On the near side sat a fat man who stared at him across dumpling cheeks, eyes glaring like two spots of black lava.

  “Come on, Uncle, unlock the door,” said Paul. The young man moved down a step, one hand up, absently picking his teeth.

  Angelo pulled himself around, but he still saw those eyes. He fumbled with the key in the lock. Those eyes! Here or in the old country—the same: Killer! Why does killer look at me?

  All the fresh feeling of rebirth had gone out of the spring day.

  Lock tumblers clicked. Creaking hinges echoed in the concrete stairwell. Angelo sniffed at the pungency of new leather stirred up by the door’s motion.

  Could it
be thieves? he wondered. He wanted to look back, found his muscles unwilling. Those eyes! Something is wrong …

  Paul pushed past, shoving the door with a sullen hunch of shoulders. The young man skirted the front counter, and his sleeve brushed its dusty linoleum top. He went to the bench in the rear corner, beneath the shallow window that looked out at the feet of people passing on the side street.

  Angelo clocked the switch beside the door. Yellow light from four metal-shaded bulbs filled the shop. He straightened a chair beside the window, still afraid to look outside. A bank of cubbyhole shelves extended along the left wall behind the counter. Angelo stared at them, saw the rows of paper-wrapped shoes as lumpy, brown creatures crouched in their lairs. The shop oozed menace. He sensed peril even in the way Paul walked—soft on the balls of the feet, holding something in like a cat stalking its prey.

  “Did you finish those shoes for Mrs. Krantz?” asked Paul.

  Angelo cleared his throat. He caught himself listening for a car door, for steps. “Yes,” he said. “I finish. She say come today.”

  The old man’s chest pained him—not the heart pain, but something more basic. He asked himself, What if killer is here for Paul? What if Paul is in some trouble with that no-good Carlos? How do I know what Paul does when he says he goes to night school?

  Paul made a clattering noise at the bench. “We still have lots of work here,” he called. “Better get started.”

  Angelo nodded, not answering, not consciously hearing, but concentrating on the way Paul walked. You can tell much from how people walk, he told himself. The young man’s stride had been getting tighter and tighter these past few weeks. And Paul was only four months out of uniform. He still should move with that long pack-on-the-back swing.

  Sounds of a car motor flared outside, faded. Angelo closed the door, darted a glance out the dusty front windows and up the stairwell. The car and its shark-eyed occupant were gone. Maybe I am wrong, he thought. But he still could feel tension. Automatically, he flipped the “Out to Lunch” sign on the door.

  Paul dropped a hammer.

  Angelo whirled, then: “You getting clumsy, Pavlos?”

  The young man’s face darkened. “Uncle, I’ve asked you not to call me that! Over here my name’s Paul.”

  Angelo lapsed into Greek: “What is wrong with the name Pavlos? It is a good Greek name.”

  Paul thought, Here we go again! And he answered in English, “But we’re in America now.”

  Angelo shrugged. “Hokay. But you speak Greek. You want to be lawyer. Fine. You be lawyer for Greek people in America.”

  Paul threw down an awl. “No! I’ll be a lawyer for anyone who needs a lawyer!”

  “Sometimes I don’t understand you, Pavlos,” said Angelo.

  “Paul!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Angelo. “But I got big empty in head where I forget.”

  Paul ran a hand through his curly black hair, went back to work.

  Seeing the gesture reminded Angelo of the way his own hair had looked before it had turned white and brittle. There was much of the Serafims in his sister’s boy—the sharp nose, dark eyes under thick brows and high forehead. Even the clear wedge shape of the face spoke of endless Serafims descended from Serafims. It was the mouth that had come from the Heropolis boy, the father—full and firm, almost grim.

  Angelo looked down, patted his paunch, and thought of his own youth gone to fat and a skin as leathery as the hides hanging from a side wall of the shop. He shook his head.

  “Ah, well …” he said.

  “It’s Wednesday,” said Paul. “We have to finish this stuff early. I have extra classes tonight, you know.” He snapped on the buffer, bent over it. The humming racket filled the shop.

  Does he really go to classes? Angelo wondered. He raised his voice. “Every week it comes all over Wednesday for extra classes. Is that what you do? You really go to classes?”

  The sound of the buffer stopped in midsentence, and the shouting of his own voice momentarily shocked Angelo.

  Paul glared at him. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I just wonder,” said Angelo. “You in some kind of trouble?”

  And Paul thought, Uncle Angie all day! Prof Emory on contract law for half the night! It’s too much! He threw a boot at the bench. “Yeah! I’m in trouble! I’ve got to listen to your crazy yak all day! Then I’ve got to study half the night! Isn’t that trouble enough?”

  “You don’t like to hear what your own uncle say, hokay.” Angelo wiped an eye.

  “And you’re sure taking a long time getting back to work,” snapped Paul. “It’s after one.”

  “That is right,” said Angelo. He scratched his head, took off his coat, put on an apron. He saw that Paul was back at the bench, working on the half Wellingtons for Mr. Filmore. “First I grab middle of my day,” Angelo called. “Don’t get good grab on middle—back end get away.” He advanced into the shop.

  Footsteps could be heard coming along the sidewalk from the south—a familiar dragging hesitancy. That would be Mr. Mullhausen, Angelo knew. Everyone who passed here regularly, he knew them by the sound of their feet and the look of their shoes through the little window above the bench. For many, he knew names because they were customers. But they seldom became faces—just familiar feet.

  A chipped yellow clock with a cracked crystal sat on the end of the bench. Angelo set the alarm, saw that Paul was attacking the work with concentrated fury.

  “I ask you like they ask in this country,” said Angelo. He brushed leather chips off the end of the bench. “What is bugging you, man?”

  Paul shrugged without breaking the rhythm of his work. And he thought, That damn accent! Why does he have to make everybody think he’s just the ignorant foreigner? Wearing that pose like a mask! Over here more than thirty years and still talking like a fresh-off-the-boat vlakas! Not even a good Greek accent! I might accept that.

  “You know what wrong with you?” asked Angelo. “You need wife. Get good wife, two-three kids. Nice little apartment. Then you don’t go reaching out all time for things too big for you.”

  “Nothing’s too big for me!” snapped Paul.

  “Lots of room for good Greek lawyer over here,” said Angelo. “Fix contract. Write will. Sometimes somebody get in trouble …” He nodded. “Be important man. People come to you. Lots friends.”

  Paul sniffed, thinking as he had many times since arriving in America six years before, that Angelo had no real friends—only acquaintances and customers. Sure! Lots of friends! Won’t even put in a telephone! Why? Who would call?

  Angelo took down the English-style brogans he had made two years before for Mr. Levy, the garment manufacturer. They needed new soles and heels, but the uppers still were in sound condition. He glanced at Paul, tried another approach. “Why does that Carlos hang around you all time?”

  “How do I know?”

  “He is no good,” said Angelo. “Why all time he comes in here for see you?”

  “Maybe he’s lonesome!” snapped Paul. “My God! The guy lives in the same building with us!”

  “I wish he moves,” said Angelo. “No good! In jail two-three times.”

  “So he’s a punk,” said Paul. “I don’t encourage him, but I’m not going to be nasty, either.”

  Angelo put a hand in one of the brogans, felt the stitching—no breaks.

  Paul worked furiously, silent.

  Angelo misinterpreted Paul’s stillness. “You are twenty-two, time you stop acting like little boy,” he snapped. “Why you think I bring you this country?” He rapped a knuckle on the bench. “Six years ago I bring! What you think? I want for cheap helper? You should inherit business when I am gone, hah?”

  Paul said: “Look, Uncle, I appreciate every—”

  “Appreciate! You think is what I want?”

  “Oh, skip it!”

  “Hah!” Angelo went back to the brogan in his hand. “You talk good English.” Two strokes of his knife slashed away old stit
ching from a sole. He pulled back the worn leather. “Me, I just learn from school in old country and what I stuff in head here. But you study hard. Fine. Now you want be lawyer. Fine. Before my sister die, when she say you should come this country for—”

  “What do you want me to say, Uncle?” Paul put down his work, glared at Angelo.

  “Say anything you like—or don’t say it. That’s what it is in this country!” Angelo nodded. “Freedom from speech!”

  “Oh, brother,” breathed Paul. He went back to his work.

  “I got forty-three more years from you,” said Angelo. “Next June I got sixty-seven years. Old man—that’s me.”

  “And when you’re gone, you want me to have the money from the business,” intoned Paul. “You’ve told me!”

  Angelo glanced at his nephew, shrugged. “That is right. You take money, let rest die with me. Fine. I what they should say: ‘They don’t make shoes anymore like they make when old Angelo is alive.’ But you should be lawyer. Fine. Lawyer is better from shoemaker.”

  Paul put down the boot, spoke without turning. “Please stop the lecture, Uncle.”

  “Lecture?”

  Paul faced Angelo. “All I said last night was I’d like to ditch the school sometimes, get out with people my own age, have a good time. Make friends. That’s all I said. It won’t hurt to miss a few classes.”

  Angelo’s hands trembled. “Does it hurt if you miss few nails or few stitches in boot?”

  “It’s not the same!”

  “We got full life,” said Angelo.

  Paul’s eyes opened wide. “You call your life full?”

  “Sure. Got work, got nice apartment, got teevee.” He nodded. “Got good radio. Got good books.”

  “But no telephone,” said Paul.

  “Telephone?” Angelo frowned. “I tell you we don’t need telephone. Costs money. Anyway, who calls us?”

  “That’s just it,” said Paul. And for a moment, he had the sensation that he could feel his youth slipping away from him, that he was growing suddenly as old as Angelo. It was like awakening on a roller coaster to find the cold wind blowing in his face. He took a trembling breath, said, “It’s not just that you don’t have a telephone. It’s what that means with you. You have no friends—nobody to call and ask you out for an evening.”