The Losers (36 page)

A nurse came into the chapel, her starched uniform rustling crisply. “Mr. Taylor?”

“Yes?” Raphael answered tensely.

“Mr. Flood has regained consciousness. He’s been asking for you.”

Raphael got up quickly and reached for his crutches. “ ‘Bel?” he said.

“No. You go ahead. I don’t think I’m really up to it.” Raphael nodded and followed the nurse out of the chapel and down the long hallway. “How’s he doing?” he asked her. “He’ll be fine.”

“Lady,” he said, stopping, “I’ve spent too much rime in hospitals to buy that.”

She turned and looked at him. “Yes. I guess you have.”

“It won’t go any further, but I need to know.”

She nodded. “His condition is critical, and they can’t take him to surgery until they can get him stabilized.”

“He’s not going to make it, is he?”

She looked at him without answering.

“Okay, I guess that answers that question. Lead the way.”

ix

Even though Raphael was used to hospitals and was familiar with the stainless-steel and plastic devices used to maintain life, he was unprepared for Flood’s appearance. The dark-faced young man was swathed in bandages, and tubes ran into him from various bottles and containers suspended over his bed. Flood’s face, what Raphael could see of it, was greenish pale, and his eyes were dull with pain and drugs.

A youngish man wearing a business suit sat in a chair a little way from the bed. He was obviously not a doctor, but seemed to have some official status. He looked at Raphael, but he did not say anything. Raphael crutched to the side of the bed and sat down in the chair that was there. “Damon,” he said. “Damon.”

“Raphael.” Flood’s voice was thick and very weak, and his eyes had difficulty finding Raphael’s face.

“How are you doing?” Raphael asked, knowing it was a silly thing to say.

“Excellent,” Flood said dryly with a spark of his old wit. “How do I look?” “Awful.”

“You ought to see it from in here.”

“ ‘Bel’s here,” Raphael told him, “and your father’s on his way. He should arrive anytime now.”

“Terrific,” Flood replied sardonically. “That’ll be a touching reunion.” His eyes closed, and Raphael thought that he had drifted off. Then the eyes opened again, filled with pain.

They were silent for several minutes. The machines that were attached to Flood shirred and whooshed softly.

“Why did you come to Spokane, Damon?”

“It wasn’t finished yet,” Flood said, his voice almost a whisper. Raphael recognized the tone. Flood had almost been stunned into insensibility by the drugs.

“Couldn’t you have just let it go?”

Flood’s eyes took on some of their old glitter. “Oh no. You don’t get away from me that easily, Gabriel.” He seemed a little stronger.

“Damon.” Raphael ignored the slip. “I didn’t even try.”

“Of course not. They never do.” Flood caught his breath and twisted slightly on the bed.

“I’ll call the nurse.” Raphael reached for the buzzer at the head of the bed.

“Get your goddamn hand away from that thing. You always have to be helpful, don’t you? Saint Raphael, friend of man.” “Hasn’t this gone about far enough?”

“It’s
never
enough.” Flood’s eyes were flashing, and his breath was coming in short, bubbling little gasps. He half raised his head, and then he slumped back on the bed, his eyes closed.

Raphael reached quickly for the buzzer.

“Why does it always have to be Gabriel?” Flood mumbled, his voice barely a whisper. “Why can’t it be me—-just once?”

“Take it easy, Damon.”

Flood’s eyes opened then. “You didn’t even feel it. What kind of a man are you, anyway? You didn’t feel any of it, damn you. Haven’t you got any feelings at all?”

“I felt it.”

“I
hate
you, Angel.”

“I know. Is that why you did this?”

“That’s why I do
everything.”

“But why?” Raphael pressed. “I’m not Gabriel. None of them were ever Gabriel. What have you really accomplished?”

A startled look came into Flood’s eyes. Then he laughed—a faint, wheezing sound. “Very good, Angel,” he said. “You always were the best. It’s a damn shame you have to look like that. We could have been friends.”

“We are friends, Damon. You might not believe it or understand it, but we’re friends.”

“Don’t be stupid. Don’t disappoint me at this stage of the game.”

“The game’s all played out.”

“I got you, though, didn’t I? I finally got you.”

“All right, Damon. You win.”

Flood smiled briefly then and lapsed into unconsciousness again.

It was sometime later when he opened his eyes once more. “I’m afraid, Angel,” he whispered weakly.

Without thinking, Raphael reached out and took his hand. He sat for a long time holding Flood’s hand, even for quite some time after Flood had died. Then, gently, he laid the hand back on the bed, got up, and slowly crutched his way out of the room.

x

It happened because he was tired and sick and in a hurry. All Raphael wanted to do was get upstairs, call Denise, and then bathe the hospital stink off and fall into bed. When he came around the front of his car, the tip of one crutch caught the curb, and he fell heavily to the sidewalk.

Because he had not had time to catch himself, the fall knocked the wind out of him, and he lay for several minutes gasping, his cheek resting on the gritty cement. At first there was anger—at himself, at the curb, at the crutch that had so unexpectedly betrayed him—then there was the cold certainty that on this street of all the streets in the city, no one would help him.

He heard a light step behind him.

“Could you give me a hand, please,” he asked, hating the necessity for asking, not even turning his head, ashamed of his helplessness and half-afraid that whoever stood there would simply step around him and, indifferent, walk away.

And then a pair of strong hands slid under his arms and lifted, and he was up, leaning against the front fender of his car.

It was Patch.

At close range his face seemed even more darkly somber than at a distance. There was a kind of universal melancholy in that face, a sadness that went beyond any personal bereavement or loss and seemed somehow to reflect the sum of human sorrow.

The Indian bent, picked up the crutches, and handed them to Raphael. “Are you all right now?” he asked, his voice very soft, and his single dark eye searching Raphael’s face.

“Yes,” Raphael said. “Thanks.”

“Are you sure?”

Raphael drew in a deep breath. “Yes. I think everything’s fine now. I just got careless, that’s all. I should know better.”

“Everybody falls now and then,” Patch said in his soft voice. “It’s not just you. The important thing is not to let it throw you, make you afraid.”

“I know. It took me a long rime to figure that out, but I think I’ve got it now.”

“Good. You’ll be okay then.” The brown hand touched his shoulder briefly, and then Patch turned and silently went on down the street.

Raphael stood leaning against his car watching that solitary passage until the dark-faced man was out of sight and the street was empty again.

If the subpoena had come a week or two later, they might have been gone. The leaves had turned, and Raphael wanted to be away before the first snow. Denise was unhappy about his being summoned to testify, and they came as close to having a fight about it as they did about anything now.

“It’s absurd,” she said the morning of the hearing. “I don’t see why you want to bother with it.”

“I have to go. If I don’t show up, they’ll send a couple of eight-foot-tall policemen to get me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! All you have to do is pick up the telephone. We can get out of things like this anytime we want to. That’s one of our fringe benefits. We don’t owe anything to their grubby little system. We’re exempt.”

“No. I won’t do that. That’s the kind of thing a cripple would do, but I’m not a cripple anymore. Besides, I want to get it all cleared up. Just for once I want to explain who Flood really was.”

“Who cares? The judges don’t care; the lawyers don’t care; the police don’t care—nobody cares. They’ve all got their neat little categories. All they’re going to do is stuff him into one of their pigeonholes and then forget about it. That’s the way they do things. Nobody cares about the truth, and if you tell them something that doesn’t fit their theories, all you’ll do is make them mad at you.”

“People have been mad at me before.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Will you come along with me?”

“No,” she said tardy. “I’ve got packing to do. If we’re ever going to get out of this town,
one
of us has to be practical.”

“You’ll be here then?” he asked her, looking around at the clutter of boxes in her apartment.

“Where else would I be? What a dumb question.”

“It’s just that I get jumpy when I don’t know where you are.”

She smiled suddenly and then kissed him.

The courthouse in Spokane is a very large, sprawling building with a high, imitation-Renaissance tower looming above it. It makes some pretense at reflecting civic pride while ignoring the human misery that normally fills it. As luck had it on the morning of the hearing, Raphael found a parking spot directly across the street from the main entrance on Broadway. He hated parking lots. They were always filled with obstacles that seemed sometimes deliberate. That luck made him feel better right at the start. There was that word again, however—luck. More and more he had come to know that it was a meaningless word. There was a perfectly rational explanation for why the parking place was there. He didn’t know what it
was,
but it was certainly rational.

He went up to the intersection, waited for the light, and then crossed. The courthouse lawn was broad and well cared for and was raised above the level of the sidewalk with a stone retaining wall. There was about the whole thing a kind of self-important aloofness that Raphael secretly found amusing. Slowly, step by step, he went up the stairs and into the building.

Frankie was waiting for him just inside the door. Her face was determined, and her dark eyes were flashing. “It’s about time you got here,” she snapped, looking up at him.

“The hearing isn’t for another half hour, Frankie.”

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to call you all morning.”

“I’m shacked up with a girl.”

She actually blushed. “That’s
really
crude, you know.” “Sorry.”

“I have to talk to you, Raphael. It’s important.” She led him to a room a few doors away.

“Are we allowed to go in there?” he asked dubiously as she opened the door.

“It’s one of the places we have here in the building. They have to give us rooms to conduct our business in, because most of the rime we’re more important in the courtroom than the lawyers. Give us a few more years, and we’ll be able to eliminate the lawyers altogether.”

They went into the room, and she closed the door. “We’re laying for you, Raphael,” she warned him. “We’ve got a couple of crack troops in that courtroom. We’ve got a lot of rime invested in that motorcycle gang. If those hairballs go to prison, three caseworkers and a supervisor are going to be out of work, so watch what you say in there. I know how you feel about us, but watch your mouth when you get on the stand. Those two girls have all the compassion of a pair of meat grinders. They’ll hang you out to dry if you screw up things for us. They’ve been literally sleeping with the defense attorney—who’s also a girl, which makes for a
very
interesting situation.”

“You’ve got a dirty mind, Frankie.”

“What else is new? Anyway, the defense is going to try to lay all this on your friend. He was the one with the gun, after all. Did you know that he killed two people that night?”

“I’d heard.”

“The defense is going to try to picture him as a Detroit hoodlum who led these poor, innocent young local boys astray. If you say anything that damages their case, my colleagues will cream you.”

“Why are you telling me this, Frankie?”

“Because I gave notice yesterday morning. I’m quitting. I’m changing sides.”

“Hell, babes, don’t do that. You’re one of the
good
ones.”

“Not anymore. You peeled my soul raw when you told me

about how Jane Doe got away from us. I didn’t realize how much the people we’re trying to help really hate us. I can’t live with that, Raphael. I cried for three days. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

“Aw, Frankie.” He half reached for her.

“None of that. If you start groping me now, you’ll get us both arrested.”

He stared at her, not comprehending. “You lost me on that one, kid.”

“I’ve got a letch for you, you dumb klutz. If you put your hands on me, I’ll peel you like a banana right here on the spot, and I don’t have a key, so I can’t lock that door.”

He had to put a stop to that. “Francesca,” he said firmly, “don’t even talk about things like that. You know it’s out of the question.”

“I have enormous self-confidence, Raphael.”

He suddenly realized that she was about half-serious.

She sighed. “You’ve saved three of us, do you know that? You saved yourself, you saved Jane Doe, and you saved me. You got the three of us out of the goddamn system. That may be the only victory for our side in this whole freaking century. That’s why you have to be very careful in that courtroom. Don’t let them rattle you enough to make you get mad and start running your mouth. Keep it all strictly business, because if you start ranting and raving, and if the wrong judge is sitting on the case, those two girls will have you committed before you ever get out of the courtroom. You watch your ass, Raphael Taylor. Jane Doe and I won’t be able to have much of a victory celebration if our glorious leader’s in the loony bin.”

“They can’t do that to me, Frankie,” he scoffed. “Like hell they can’t. If you get the least bit excited, they’ll have you out at Medical Lake before the sun goes down.”

“Maybe I should call in sick.” She actually had him a little worried.