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In his late thirties, the doctor was a rake of a man with extraordinarily small bones and a face that wore a look of what seemed to be perpetual exasperation. He also found it difficult to communicate without cursing.

“It was a bitch,” he said to us finally, and ground out his cigarette on the floor. “A real bitch. I saved the kid's hands, but he won't even be able to blow his nose or wipe his ass by himself for a long time to come. What was it, a gang fight?”

“We don't know really,” Trippet said. “All we know is that he said that someone slammed a car door on his hands. Twice.”

“Somebody sure had a hard-on for him,” Doctor Knofer said. “Have you talked to the police?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“The hospital's been in touch. They'll probably be around to see you tomorrow.” He yawned and looked at his watch. “Jesus, it's five-thirty and I've got another one at ten. Who gets the goddamned bill?”

“We do,” I said.

“For everything?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I'll fix it with that broad in admittance,” he said. “She was getting ants up her fanny about who was going to pay.” He held out his hands before him and stared at them again. “A real bitch,” he said, “but goddamn, Knofer, you're good.”

“When can we see him?” Trippet asked.

“Tomorrow,” the doctor said. “Around two. Cheer him up, will you? Tell him his hands will be okay. He's a goddamned good kid.”

When the doctor had gone, I turned to Trippet. “I've decided to see the man in Washington.”

He nodded, as if he hadn't expected me to say anything else. “Your new friends are most persuasive.”

“It's not that,” I said. “It's not that at all. Angelo Sacchetti has been on my back for two years. You know all about it. You've seen me freeze a couple of times. Now they say he's alive. I think I've got to find him unless I want to carry him around with me for the rest of my life.”

Trippet was silent for almost a full minute. “I think,” he said slowly, “that it's out of our hands now. I think it's time to let the police handle it.”

“All right.”

“You agree?” Trippet asked. He sounded surprised.

“Why not?” I said. “I don't want to go to Washington, not now, not even in cherry blossom time. But the police have nothing to do with my going. If they can find the goons who smashed Sydney's hands, I'm all for it. But I already know who's ultimately responsible, and he's in Washington, and there's no way in God's world that they can ever pin it on him. But I have something that Charles Cole wants, or thinks he wants, and he also has something that I want and that something's Angelo Sacchetti. And perhaps eventually they'll all pay for Sydney's hands.”

“Which, if not victory, is yet revenge,” Trippet murmured.

“Yours?”

He shook his head. “Milton's.”

“Then you're both wrong,” I said. “It's not revenge I'm after. They just owe me something. They owe me for Sydney—that's first—and they also owe me for two years of the sweats and the shakes. I'd like to collect.”

“How?” he asked.

“I don't know. I won't know until I see Cole in Washington and maybe I won't even know then.”

Trippet chewed on his lower lip for a while and then said: “They must want you most desperately.”

“Enough to do what they did to Sydney. If I say no once more, they won't hesitate to repeat the performance. I don't like hospitals. I don't want to have to come around asking how the cast feels and when are they going to take it off and whether you'll be able to walk again without a cane.”

A nurse entered the waiting room, gave us a curious glance, and disappeared through another door, moving with that no-nonsense stride that most nurses seem to have. Trippet stirred on his chair, as if to relieve a cramped muscle.

“Do you really think you can take on this man Cole in Washington—and all the brethren—by yourself? I don't mean to be rude, Edward, but the fact that you dealt in violence for a number of years doesn't exactly qualify you—” He let the sentence fade away and even seemed a bit embarrassed that he'd made it. As I've said, he was polite.

“What do you think I have in mind? A showdown in the lobby of the Washington Hilton?”

“I'm afraid of something like that, but then I'm an incurable romantic.”

“I didn't deal in violence,” I said. “I dealt in action, or at least that's what they liked to call it It was spurious violence—faked—no more real than the death scenes. This country has a taste for violence, both real and faked, but I think it's having a hard time separating the two. You can switch on a news program and watch a South Vietnamese police chief put a pistol to a VC's head and pull the trigger. Thirty minutes later you can watch a western marshal gun down the visiting bully. Which is more real to the viewer? The police chief or the marshal? I'll put my money on the marshal.”

“But your new friends are real,” Trippet said.

“Very real.”

“And you think I might be their next target if you refused again—or would it be Ramón or Jack?”

“There's somebody else,” I said.

“Who?”

“Your wife.”

For the first time since I had known him, Trippet almost lost his poise. He ran a hand nervously through his long, grey hair. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose they are capable of that. I hadn't thought of it.” He paused for a moment, then rose, turned to me, and made a small, almost apologetic gesture. “I say, would it be terribly inconvenient for you to give me a lift home?”

CHAPTER VII

There was a reception committee for me that late afternoon or early evening when I landed at Dulles International Airport and rode the doodlebug contraption from the plane to the lobby of the soaring terminal building that somehow seems a little lonely sitting out there all by itself on the edge of the Virginia hunt country. It was a committee of one who introduced himself as John Ruffo and nobody could fault him on his manners. He insisted on collecting my bag and carrying it out to the longest, blackest six-door Cadillac that I've ever seen except for one that's owned by a certain Los Angeles funeral parlor. At the car the bag was almost snatched from Ruffo by a uniformed chauffeur who opened one of the two rear doors for us, saw to it that we were tucked safely inside, and then stowed the bag away in what must have been a cavern of a trunk.

“Mr. Cole is delighted that you could come,” Ruffo said. “Did you have a pleasant flight?”

“I'd already seen the picture,” I said, “but the Scotch was excellent.”

“Yes,” Ruffo said, drawling the word as if my remark had been particularly profound. “We've taken the liberty of booking you into the Sheraton-Carlton. It's not the Century Plaza, but it's quite comfortable, I assure you.”

“I like older hotels,” I said. “Their employees are usually older, too, and that makes for better service.”

The envelope had been waiting for me at the United desk at Los Angeles International, just as Salvatore Callese had promised it would be. It contained a round-trip, first-class ticket to Washington, ten one-hundred-dollar bills, fairly new, and a typed, unsigned note which read:

“Mr. Charles Cole's car will meet you at Dulles International Airport.”

The car that met me was now gliding down a four-lane highway that seemed almost deserted and my escort, the well-mannered Mr. Ruffo, explained that it was a direct access route to the airport which no other traffic was allowed to use. “Unfortunately,” he added, as if he really cared, “Dulles didn't draw all the air traffic that its planners thought it would, but it has been picking up lately, I understand.”

“That's most interesting,” I said, determined to match Ruffo's politeness. “When do I get together with Mr. Cole? That's Mr. Charles Cole, isn't it?”

“Yes,” he said again, as if still convinced that I was the wise man from the West. “Mr. Cole thought it might be nice if you could join him at his home for dinner this evening.”

“That might be nice,” I said, “but it might be even nicer if I knew what the agenda was going to be.”

Ruffo laughed in what I suppose was meant to be a well-bred, yet deprecatory way. “I'm afraid that is something that Mr. Cole will have to discuss with you.”

“You just run the pickup and delivery service.”

“Something like that, Mr. Cauthorne,” Ruffo said and laughed another laugh that matched his J. Press suit and his Eastern seaboard accent. “I suppose you could say that I do something like that.”

Thirty-five minutes after we left Dulles Airport the chauffeur steered the oversized Cadillac into the semicircular driveway before the Sheraton-Carlton at 16th and K Streets and the doorman hopped to it when he saw the car. “Good evening, Mr. Ruffo,” he said as he opened the door and I noticed that Ruffo didn't tip him. The doorman probably got one of those fairly new hundred-dollar bills every Christmas just to remind him to say, “Good evening, Mr. Ruffo” a half-dozen or so times a year.

The chauffeur transferred the bag to the doorman who transferred it to a bellhop who seemed to think it was a privilege. Ruffo, slightly preceding me, demanded the key to my room from an alert clerk who handed it to the bellhop with the admonition to see to Mr. Cauthorne's comforts.

Then Ruffo turned to give me the benefit of an exceedingly white, exceedingly deferential smile. “I thought I'd give you an hour or so to get settled and relax,” he said. “I'll call for you around—” He looked at his watch. “Say around seven-thirty. Will that be satisfactory?”

“Perfectly.”

“I had some Scotch and soda sent up to your rooms,” he said. “If there's anything else you need, just ring for it.”

“That was very thoughtful of you,” I said.

“Not at all. Just part of the pickup and delivery service.” He smiled again, that nice white smile, but he neglected to put any grin into it and I noticed that the olive skin, the neatly trimmed black hair, the dimpled chin, and the six feet or so of what appeared to be supple muscle failed for the first time to disguise the contempt that his dark brown eyes flicked over me for only a second. In the polite Mr. Ruffo's social book I was nothing. Perhaps a little less than nothing.

The bellhop followed me into the elevator with my bag where another septuagenarian fiddled with the controls and we wheezed up to the sixth floor.

“Six-nineteen,” the bellhop said. He was a kindly looking little man who probably was fond of his grandchildren. “This way, sir.” I followed him down the corridor and he unlocked the door and ushered me into a two-room suite.

“John L. Lewis always liked this suite,” the bellhop said as he put the suitcase on a rack and pulled back the curtains. “He liked it because of the view.” Obediently I walked over to the window and looked out. By craning a bit I could see Lafayette Park and beyond that the White House.

“He probably wanted to keep a check on what was going on,” I said and handed him a dollar. The bellhop liked that and said so. After he left, I inspected the bathroom whose fixtures were newer than the hotel and then unlatched my bag and hung a suit in the closet. When you've done all that there's not much else to do in a hotel room except have a drink or call somebody. Convinced that nobody in the White House cared whether I was in town or not, I decided to have a drink and went in search of the Scotch that Mr. Ruffo had promised.

It was in the sitting or living room which contained some club chairs, a couple of divans, a writing desk and a coffee table which held a bucket of ice, six glasses in case I had company, a bottle of soda and a fifth of Chivas Regal which proved to me that Mr. Ruffo was indeed thoughtful even if he didn't like my manners.

I put three cubes in a glass, poured in some Scotch, and then journeyed to the bathroom to fill it up with water. On the way back to the sitting room I started to sweat and I managed to get the glass back down on the coffee table before the shakes came. It lasted for no longer or shorter a time than usual. Angelo Sacchetti fell in slow motion again, still clutching his cutlass, and his face turned up to me and he winked again, that grotesque Sacchetti wink that screwed up the entire left side of his face. Then it was over and I downed the drink and took some small comfort in the knowledge that I wouldn't see Sacchetti's face again for at least twenty-four hours. After the drink I showered, decided to hell with shaving, and did Mr. Charles Cole the honor of brushing my teeth and putting on a fresh shirt. I was halfway through my second drink when the telephone rang and the ever-polite Mr. Ruffo said that he would await me in the lobby.

The ride to Mr. Charles Cole's residence on Foxhall Road took about twenty minutes and along the way Mr. Ruffo pointed out some of the Washington sights that he thought might prove of interest. They didn't really, but he seemed to think it was part of his job and for all I knew it may well have been.

Foxhall Road in northwest Washington is where the rich live. They live other places, too, I understand. In Georgetown and Virginia and Maryland. A Vice-President once lived in an $89,000 cooperative apartment in southwest Washington because it was convenient and he sometimes liked to walk to work. He moved into the apartment after the President decided that a separate mansion for a Vice-President would cost the country too much money. The Vice-President wasn't rich and I doubt that he could have afforded Foxhall Road. I know he couldn't have afforded the house that belonged to Charles Cole.

It looked as if it were located on at least ten acres of wooded ground, but then I'm city oriented and an acre remains a dimly defined area. But in Los Angeles the grounds would have composed a good-sized city block. There was a bluegrass lawn that grew right up to the trunks of the pines, the oaks, and the maples and I knew just enough about horticulture to realize that all that required a full-time crew of skilled gardeners. There were a few magnolias and some dogwood. They lined the crushed oyster-shell drive that wound leisurely up to what at first glance looked like Tara. There were eight white columns that went three stories high to support a Federal arch. Each side of the main house boasted a two-story wing that seemed large enough to house the full staff of the Portuguese Embassy. The windows were flanked with white wooden shutters that apparently really worked and the entire structure was built of soft, red used brick which was supposed to make it look old and almost succeeded. There was no garage that I could see and I assumed that it was discreetly out of sight in back along with the swimming pool and the servants' quarters.