The Rip-Off (9 page)

"I'm Miss Nolton, Mr. Rainstar. Full name, Kate Nolton, but I prefer to be called Kay."

"Well, all right, Kay," I said, smiling stiffly (and doubtless foolishly). "It seems like a logical preference."

"What?" she frowned curiously. "I don't understand."

"I mean, it's reasonable to call you Kay since your name is Kate. But it wouldn't seem right to call you Kate if your name was Kay. I mean- Oh, forget it," I groaned. "My God! Do you play tennis, Kay?"

"I love tennis! How about you?"

"Yeah, how about me?" I said.

"Well?"

"Not very," I said.

"I mean, do you play tennis?"

"No," I said.

She sort of smile-frowned at me. She picked up my wrist, and tested my pulse. "Very fast. I thought so," she said. "Turn over on your side, please."

She took a hypodermic needle from the sterilizer, and began to draw liquid into it from a vial. Then she glanced at me, and gestured with light impatience.

"I said to turn on your side, Mr. Rainstar."

"I am on my side."

"I mean, the other side! Turn your back to me."

"But that wouldn't be polite."

"Mr. Rainstar!" She almost stamped her foot. "If you don't turn your back to me, right this minute-!"

I turned, as requested. She jerked the string on my pajamas, and started to lower them.

"Wait a minute!" I said. "What are you doing, anyway?"

She told me what she was doing, adding that I was the silliest man she had ever seen in her life. I told her I couldn't allow it. It was the complete reversal of the normal order of things.

"A girl doesn't take a
man's
pants down," I said. "Everyone knows that. The correct procedure is for the man to take the
girl's
-
Ooowtch!
WHAT THE GODDAM HELL ARE YOU TRYING TO DO, WOMAN?"

"Shh, hush! The very idea making all that fuss over a teensy little hypo! Sergeant Claggett told me you were just a big old baby."

"That's why he's only a sergeant," I said. "An upper echelon officer would have instructed you in the proper treatment of wounds, namely to kiss them and make them well."

That got her. Her face turned as red as her hair. "Why, you-you-! Are you suggesting that I kiss your
a
double
s
?"

I yawned prodigiously. "That's exactly what I'm suggesting," I said, and yawned again. "I might add that it's probably the best
o
double
f
offer you'll ever get in your career as an assassin."

"All right," she said. "I think I'll just take you up on it. Just push it up here where I can get at it good, and-"

"Get away from me, goddammit!" I said. "Go scrub out a bedpan or something."

"Let's see now. Ahh, there it is!
Kitchy-coo!
"

"Get! Go away, you crazy broad!"

"
Kitchy-kitchy-coo
…"

"Dammit, if you don't get away from me, I'm going to… going to… going-"

My eyes snapped shut. I drifted into sleep. Or, rather, half-sleep.

I was asleep, but aware that she had dropped into a chair. That she was shaking silently, hugging herself; then rocking back and forth helplessly and shrieking with laughter. I was aware when other people came into the room to investigate. Other nurses, and some orderlies and a couple of doctors.

The silly bastards were practically packed into my room. A couple of them even sat down on my bed, jouncing me up and down on it as they laughed.

I thought,
Now dammit-

My thought ended there.

I lost all awareness.

And I fell into deep unknowing sleep.

I slept so soundly that I felt hung over and somewhat grouchy the next morning when Kay Nolton awakened me. She looked positively aseptic, all bright-eyed and clean-scrubbed. It depressed me to see anyone look that good in the early morning, and it was particularly depressing in view of the way I looked, which, I'm sure, was ghastly. Or shitty, to use the polite term.

Kay secured the usual matchbook size bar of hospital soap-one wholly inadequate for lathering the ass of a sick gnat. She secured a tiny wedge of threadbare washcloth, suitable for scrubbing the aforementioned. She dumped soap and washcloth into one of those shiny hospital basins-which, I suspect, are used for puking in as well as sponge-bathing-and she carried it into the bathroom to fill with water.

I jumped out of bed, and flattened myself against the wall at one side of the bathroom door. When she came out, eyes fixed on the basin, I slipped into the bathroom and into the shower.

I heard her say, "Mr. Rainstar,
Mr. Rainstar!
Where in the world-"

Then, I turned on the shower full, and I heard no more.

I came back into my room with a towel wrapped around me. Kay popped a thermometer into my mouth.

"Now why did you do that anyway? I had everything all ready to-
Don't talk! You'll drop the thermometer!-
give you a sponge bath! You knew I did! So why in the world did you-
I said, Don't talk, Mr. Rainstar
! I know you probably don't feel well, and I appreciate your giving me a job. But is that any reason to-
Mr. Rainstar!"

She relieved me of the thermometer at last. Frowned slightly as she examined it, then shrugged, apparently finding its verdict acceptable. She checked my pulse, and ditto, ditto. She asked if I needed any help in dressing, and I said I didn't. She said I should just go ahead then, and she would bring in my breakfast. And I said I would and I did and she did.

Since she was now officially my employee, rather than the hospital's, she brought coffee for herself on the breakfast tray. Sat sipping it, chatting companionably, as I ate.

"You know what I'm going to do for you today, Mr. Rainstar? I mean, I will if you want me to."

"All I want you to do," I said, "is shoot me with a silver bullet. Only thus will my tortured heart be at rest."

"Oh?" she said blankly. "I was going to say that I'd wash and tint your hair for you. If you wanted me to, that is."

I grinned, then laughed out loud. Not at her, but myself. Because how could anyone have behaved as idiotically as I had? And with no real reason whatsoever. I had stepped on Jeff Claggett's toes, making a commitment without first consulting him. He hadn't liked that naturally enough; I had already stretched his patience to the breaking point. So he had punished me-warned me against any further intrusions upon his authority-by expressing serious doubts about Kay Nolton. When I overreacted to this he had hastily back-watered, pointing out that he would not be leaving me in her care, if he had had any reservations about her. But I was off and running by then. Popping off every which way, carrying on like a damned nut, and getting wilder and wilder by the minute.

Kay was looking at me uncertainly, a lovely blush spreading over her face and neck and down into her cleavage. So I stopped laughing and said she must pay no attention to me, since I, sad to say, was a complete jackass.

"I'm sorry as hell about last night. I don't know why I get that way, but if I do it again, give me an enema in the ear or something. Okay?"

"Now, you were perfectly all right, Mr. Rainstar," she said stoutly. "I was pretty far out of line myself. I knew you were a highly nervous type, but I teased you and made jokes when I should have-"

"-when you should have given me that enema," I said. "How are you at ear enemas, anyway? The technique is practically the same as if you were doing it you-know where. Just remember to start at the top instead of the bottom, and you'll have it made."

She had started giggling; rosy face glowing, eyes bright with mirth. I said I was giving her life tenure at the task of futzing with my hair. I said I would also give her a beating with a wet rope if she didn't start calling me Britt instead of Mr. Rainstar.

"Now that we have that settled," I said, "I want you to get up, back up and bend over."

"B-bend over-
oh, ha, ha
-W-why, Britt?"

"So that I can climb on your shoulders, of course. I assume you are carrying me out of this joint piggyback?"

She said, "Ooops!" and jumped up. "Be back in just a minute, Britt!"

She hurried out of the room, promptly hurrying back with a wheelchair. It was a rule, it seemed, that all patients, ambulatory or not, had to be wheeled out of the hospital. So I climbed into the conveyance, and Kay fastened the crossbar across my lap, locking me into it. The she wheeled me down to and into the elevator, and, subsequently, out of the elevator and into the lobby.

She parked me there at a point near the admitting desk, Admitting also being the place where departing patients were checked out. While she crossed to the desk and conferred with the registrar-or un-registrar-I sat gazing out through the building's main entrance, musing that the hospital's bills could be reduced to a level the average patient could pay if so much money had not been spent on inexcusable nonsense.

A particularly execrable example of such nonsense was this so-called main entrance of the hospital, which was not so much an entrance-main or otherwise-as it was a purely decorative and downright silly integrant of the structure's facade.

Interiorly, it consisted of four double doors, electronically activated. The exterior approach was via some thirty steep steps, each some forty feet in length, mounting to a gin-mill Gothic quadruple archway. (It looked like a series of half-horseshoes doing a daisy chain.)

Hardly anyone used this multimillion-dollar monstrosity for entrance or egress. How the hell could they? People came and went by the completely plain, but absolutely utilitarian, side entrance, which was flush with the abutting pavement, and required neither stepping down from nor up to.

It was actually the only one the hospital needed. The other was not only extravagantly impractical, it also had a kind of vertigo-ish, acrophobic quality.

Staring out on its stupidly expensive expanse, one became a little dizzy, struck with the notion that he was being swept forward at a smoothly imperceptible but swiftly increasing speed. Even I, a level-headed unflappable guy like me, was beginning to feel that way.

I rubbed my eyes, looked away from the entrance toward Kay. But neither she nor the admitting desk were where I had left them. The desk was far, far behind me and so was Kay. She was sprinting toward me as fast as her lovely, long legs could carry her, and yet she was receding, like a character in one of those old-timey silent movies.

I waved at her, exaggeratedly mouthing the words, "What gives?"

She responded with a wild waving and flapping of both her arms, simultaneously jumping up and down as though taken by a fit of hysterics.

Ah-ha! I thought shrewdly. Something exceedingly strange is going on here!

There was a loud
SWOOSH
as one of the double doors launched open.

There was a loud "
YIKE!"
as I shot through it.

There were mingled moans and groans, yells and screams (also from me), as I sped across the terrazzo esplanade to the dizzying brink of those steep, seemingly endless stone steps.

I had the feeling that those steps were much harder than they looked, and that they were even harder than they looked.

I had the feeling that I had no feeling.

Then, I shot over the brink, and went down the steps with the sound of a stuttering, off-key cannon-or a very large frog with laryngitis:
BONK-BLONK-BRONK
. And I rode the chair and the chair rode me, by turns.

About halfway down, one of the steps reared up, turned its sharp edge up and whacked me unconscious. So only God knows whether I or the chair did the riding from then on.

I could barely see around it, but I got a glimpse of Kay sitting at the side of the door. Her attention was focused on the doctor and Claggett, who stood in the doorway talking quietly. So I focused on them also, relatively speaking, that is.

"… a hell of a kickback on the sedatives, Sergeant. A kind of cumulative kickback, I'd say, reoccurring over the last several days. You may have noticed a rambling, seriocomic speech pattern, a tendency to express alarm and worry through preposterous philosophizing?"

"Hmmmm. He normally does a lot of that, Doctor."

"Yes. An inability to cope, I suspect. But the sedatives seem to have carried the thing full circle. Defense became offense, possibly in response to this morning's crisis. It could have kept him from being killed by the accident."

My head suddenly cleared. The gauzy fogginess which had hung over everyone and everything was ripped away. And despite the enormous burden of my nose, I sat up.

Kay, Claggett and the doctor immediately converged on my bed.

I held up my hand and said, "Please, gentlemen and lady. Please do not ask me how I feel."

"You might tell us?" the doctor chuckled. "And you don't want to see us cry."

"Second please," I said, and I again held up my hand. "Please don't joke with me. It might destroy the little sense of humor I have left. Also, and believe you me, I'm in no damned mood for jokes or kidding. I've had my moments of that, but that's passed. And I contemplate no more of it for the foreseeable future."

"I imagine you're in quite a bit of pain," the doctor said quietly. "Nurse, will you-"

"No," I said. "I can survive the pain. What I want right now is a large pot of coffee."

"Have it after you're rested. You really should rest, Mr. Rainstar. "

I said I was sure he was right. But I'd prefer rest that wasn't drug induced, and I felt well enough to wait for it. "I want to talk to Sergeant Claggett, too," I said, "and I can't do it if I'm doped."

The doctor glanced at Claggett, and Jeff nodded. "I won't let him overdo it, Doc."

"Good enough, then," the doctor said. "If he can make it on his own, I'm all for it."

He left, and Kay got the coffee for me. It did a little more for me than I needed doing, making my over-alerted nerves cry out for something to calm them. But I fought the desire down, indicating to Claggett that I was ready to talk.

"I don't think I can tell you anything, though," I said. "I didn't realize it at the time, but I think I was in a kind of dream state. I mean, everything seemed to be out of kilter, but not in a way that I couldn't accept."

"It didn't jar you when you were shoved forward? That seemed okay to you?"

"I wasn't aware that I had been shoved forward. My feeling was that things had been shoved away from me, not me from them. I didn't begin to straighten out until I shot through those doors, and I wasn't completely unfogged when I went down the steps."

"Damn!" Claggett frowned at me. "But people were passing all around you. You must-"

"No," I said, "they weren't. Almost no one comes and goes through that front entrance, and I'm sure that no one did during the time I was there…"

Kay said quickly, a little anxiously, that my recollection was right. I was out of the way of passersby, which was why she had left me there in the entrance area.

Claggett looked at her, and his look was extremely cold.

Kay seemed to wilt under it, and Claggett turned back to me. "Yes, Britt? Something else?"

"Nothing helpful, I'm afraid. I know that people passed behind me. I could hear them and occasionally see their shadows. But I never saw any of them."

Claggett grimaced, said that he apparently didn't live right. Or something.

"Everything points to the fact that someone tried to kill you, or made a damned good stab at it. But since no one saw anyone, maybe there wasn't anyone. Maybe it was just an evil spirit or a malignant force or something of the kind. Isn't that what you think, Nolton?"

"No, sir." Kay bit her lip. "What I think-I
know
-is that I should have taken Mr. Rainstar with me when I went to the admitting desk. You warned me not to leave him untended, and I shouldn't have done it, and I'm very sorry that I did."

"Did you see anyone go near Mr. Rainstar?"

"No, sir. Well, yes, I may have. That's a pretty busy place, the lobby and desk area, and people would just about have to pass in Mr. Rainstar's vicinity."

"But they made no impression on you? You wouldn't remember what they looked like?"

"No, I wouldn't," Kay said, just a wee bit snappishly. "How could I, anyway? They were just a lot of people like you see anywhere."

"One of 'em wasn't," said Claggett. "But let it go. I believe I told you-but I'll tell you again since you seem pretty forgetful-that Mr. Rainstar has been seriously harassed, and that an attempt might be made on his life. I also told you-but I'll tell you again-that Miss Aloe is not above suspicion in the matter. We do not believe she would be directly responsible, although she could be, but rather as an employer of others. Do you think you can remember that, Miss Nolton?"

"Yes, sir." Kay bobbed her head meekly. "I'll remember."

"I should hope so. I certainly hope so." Claggett allowed a little warmth to come into his frosty blue eyes. "Now, you do understand, Nolton, that you could get hurt on this job. You'd represent a danger or an obstacle to the people who are out to get him, and you could get hurt bad. You might even get killed."

"Yes, sir," said Kay. "I understand that."

"And you still want the job?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why?"

"Sir?"

"You heard me, Nolton!" Claggett leaned forward, his eyes stabbing into her like blue icicles. "Jobs aren't that hard to get for a registered nurse. They aren't hard to get period. So why are you so damned anxious to have this one? A first-class chance to screw yourself up? Well, what's the answer? Why-"

"I'm trying to tell you, Sergeant! If you'll just-"

"You some kind of a bum or something? A nut? Too dumb or shiftless to make out on a regular job? Or maybe you're working an angle, hmmm. You're a plant. You're going to do a job on Britt yourself."

Kay was trembling all over. Her face had turned from white to red to a mixture of the two, and now it was a beautiful combination flushed cream and reddish-streaked pastels.

Her mouth opened, and I braced myself for a yell. But she spoke very quietly, with only a slight shakiness hinting at the anger which she must have felt.

"I want the job, Sergeant Claggett, for two reasons. One is that I like Mr. Rainstar. I like him very much, and I want to help him."

"Thank you, Kay," I mumbled-I had to say something, didn't I?-stealing a glance at Claggett. "I, uh, like you, too."

"Thank you, Mr. Rainstar. The second reason I want the job, Sergeant Claggett, is because I'm not sure I belong in nursing. I want to find out whether I do or not before it's too late to change to another field. So…"

So she wanted to take what would probably be the toughest job she would ever encounter as a nurse. If she could measure up to it, fine. If not, well, that was also all right. She would either make or break quickly. Her mind would be made up for her, and without any prolonged wavering, any mental seesawing,

"Those are my reasons for wanting the job, Sergeant Claggett. I hope they're enough, because I can't give you any others."

Kay finished speaking, sat very straight and dignified in her chair, hands folded primly in her lap. I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her. But I had felt that way before, with results that were not always happy for me. Except for that pleasant weakness, I would not be where I was now, with a nose which I could barely see around.

Claggett scrubbed his jaw thoughtfully, then cocked a brow at me. I cocked one at him, making it tit for tat. He grinned at me narrowly, acknowledging my studiously equivocal position.

"Well, now, young woman," he said, "a fine speech like that must have taken a lot out of you. Suppose you take a relief or have lunch, and come back in about an hour?"

"Well"-Kay stood hesitantly. "I really don't mind waiting, Sergeant. In fact-"

"I want to talk to Mr. Rainstar privately. Some other business. We'll settle this job matter when you get back."

"I see. Well, whatever you say, sir."

Kay nodded to us, and left.

Claggett stretched his legs in front of him, and said he was glad to get that out of the way. "Now, to pick up on your accident-"

"Just a minute, Jeff," I said. "You said we had that out of the way. You're referring to Nurse Nolton's employment?"

"Let it ride, will you?" He gestured impatiently. "I was going to tell you that I dropped in on PXA this morning. Just a routine visit, you know, to tell them about the accident to their favorite employee?"

"Well?" I said.

"Pat was pretty shook up about it. Reacted about the same as he did on my first visit. Kind of worried and angry, you know, like he might get hurt by a mess he wasn't responsible for. Then he turned sort of foxy and clammed up. Because-as I read him-he knew we'd have a hell of time proving anything against his niece, even though she had ordered the hit."

"Yes?" I frowned. "How do you mean?"

"She's in the hospital, Britt. Saint Christopher's. She's been there since just before midnight last night. Two highly reputable doctors in attendance, and they're not giving out any information nor allowing any visitors."

I gulped, blinked at him stupidly. I moved my nose out of the way, and had a small drink of water.

"Quite a coincidence, wouldn't you say, Britt." He winked at me narrowly. "Kind of an unusual alibi, but she's kind of an unusual girl."

"Maybe she really is sick," I said. "She could be."

"So she could," Claggett shrugged. "It's practically a cinch that she is, in that hospital with those doctors. But that doesn't keep it from being a very convenient time to be sick. She could set the deal up, then put herself well out of the way of it with a nice legitimate sickness."

"Oh, well, yeah." I nodded slowly. "A fake attempt at suicide. Or an appendicitis attack-acute but simulated."

"Possibly but not necessarily," Claggett said, and he pointed out that Manny had been under a great deal of nervous stress. She had concealed it, but this itself had added to the tension. Finally, after doing that which only she could do, she collapsed with exhaustion.

"It's my guess that she did pretty much the same thing, after her husband's death. About the only difference is that she needed more time to recuperate then, and she went into seclusion."

I said that killing her husband would certainly have put a lot of strain on her. But where was the evidence that she had killed him? He was only one of many who had died during the hurricane.

"Right," said Claggett, "but the other deaths were all from drowning or being buried under the wreckage. Her husband apparently was killed by flying timbers; in other words, he was out in the open at the time the hurricane struck. Of course, he could have been, and might have been. But…"

He broke off, spread his hands expressively. I wet my lips nervously, then brushed a hand against them.

"I see what you mean," I said. "She could have battered the hell out of him, beaten him to death. Then, dragged his body outside."

"That's what I mean," said Claggett.

From the hallway, there came the muted clatter of dishes, the faint aromas of the noon meal. They were not exactly appetite- stimulating; and I had to swallow down nausea as Claggett and I continued our conversation.

"Jeff," I said at last. "I just don't see how I can go through with this. How the hell can I, under the circumstances?"

"You mean, seeing Miss Aloe?"

"Of course, that's what I mean! I can't do the pamphlets without seeing her. I'll have to confer with her more or less regularly."

"Well…" Claggett sighed, then shrugged. "If you can't, you can't."

"Oh, hell," I said miserably. "Naturally, I'll go through with it. I've got no choice."

"Good! Good," he said. "Let's hope you can get out of here within the next few days. The doctors tell me that aside from your nose, and your nerves, and-"

"There's nothing they can do for me here that can't be done at home," I said. "And I want to get out of here. No later than tomorrow morning. This place is dangerous. It makes me nervous. A lot of people die in hospitals."

Claggett chuckled knowingly. "Here we go again, hmm? You just take it easy, my friend. Calm down, and pull yourself together."

I said I wasn't being nutty, dammit. The hospital
was
dangerous, which had damn well been proved in my case. There were too many people around, and it was simply impossible to ward them off or to check on all of them.