The Innocent Bystanders

'You take a blade, you sharpen it and sharpen it till it'll split a silk scarf drawn across it. Then one day you drop it on a stone floor. After that it'll still cut bread, but the silk scarves are safe. They stay in one piece.'

'Damn your parables,' said the tall man. 'What about Fisher?'

'He didn't do that to Fisher. He couldn't. Anyway, he told us the truth. He found him.' 'And the girl too?'

'And the girl. She was a Scandinavian type, just like he said. Mai Olsen. Fisher met her-'

'I know all that,' the tall man said, and turned back to Craig. 'What do you think?'

'Of John? He can still fight, still kill if he has to—but he can't cut silk scarves.'

The tall man turned away.

'Get rid of him,' he said.

There were rats. He could hear them scuttering about the floor, running up the legs of the bed, ducking beneath the bedclothes every time he turned his head to see them. He'd never actually seen one, but they were there all right. He could feel them. From time to time they bit him in the arms. Not that it mattered. The bites didn't hurt; they were just reminders that the rats were there. And there was another one—probably a baby he thought— that hid behind the pillow and bit him behind the ear. A baby rat. Brown fur, naked tail, scrabbling paws. He could imagine it perfectly, but it didn't disgust him—only it was a nuisance. Biting like that. The trouble was he couldn't stop it, because his hands were tied. Better to sleep, if the rats would let him.

Suddenly a bell sounded, deferential but insistent. A telephone, he thought, an American telephone. Only there weren't any telephones, not in that room where they'd talked about the pain. The ringing went on, and Craig woke, the rats disappeared, their scrabbling the hum of air conditioning, their bites the ache in his arms and head. As he woke he noticed that his arms and legs were stretched out as if he were still strapped down. Cautiously he reached for the telephone at his bedside, and pain stabbed behind his ear.

'Noon, Mr. Craig,' said the voice of the girl at the switchboard.

'I beg your pardon?'

'It's noon,' said the voice again, acidly patient. 'Twelve o'clock. You left word for a call.'

'Oh yes,' said Craig. 'Thank you.'

'You're welcome,' said the girl. The words meant, 'Jesus. Another lush.'

He rang room service for breakfast and a bowl of ice, and spent a long time bathing, showering, soaking the pain from his body. The mark of the thing they'd clipped to his arm was red and angry, but it would soon go. The one behind his ear was another matter: purple, exotic, and with a lot of life left. He'd have to tell absurd lies about backing into a shelf, or something. Then he remembered the gunman he'd slammed against the wall with the door. The he wasn't so absurd.

The waiter came and he tipped him, wrapped ice in a towel, and put it on the bruise, then ate his breakfast. He found it strange that he could be so hungry, when his life was finished. He was no danger at all, so far as they were concerned. So much so that they hadn't even bothered to kill him. To them, he wasn't even a joke. Doggedly he tried to remember the questions they had asked, but all he could remember was pain, and Laurie S. Fisher, and a fat little man looking at where he too had been hurt. He also remembered a tall man, but that was all. Craig finished his coffee and began to dress and pack. If he really was finished, Loomis would have to know. He booked a seat on a plane for the next night, the first flight he could get, and went back to bed. No rats, no dreams, no arms and legs in a Saint Andrew's cross. When he woke up he felt better, remembering the man he'd hit in the stomach, the way he'd saved Kaplan's life. He remembered, too, the information Kaplan had given him, word for word. There might after all be some point in staying on, in order to find out who had decided that Craig was finished. In tracking them down. After all, the night clerk at the hotel should be able to give him some sort of a lead.

But the night clerk, when he came on duty, knew nothing, except that Craig had come back very late with two friends, and he'd had a little—difficulty in getting up to bed. In fact the two friends had helped. That would be around six in the morning. Must have been some party, Mr. Craig. Sure he remembered the ambulance, but that had been for another guest, two floors below Craig. The way the clerk had heard it, he'd called a doctor, and the doctor had diagnosed a perforated appendix and called a hospital. He didn't know what hospital. No. But the ambulance looked classy. Craig thanked him and gave him ten dollars in hard currency, taxpayers' money, then went back to his problem. The Yellow Pages told him just how full of hospitals and nursing homes New York is. Moreover, there was Loomis to be considered. He'd got Kaplan's information, and Loomis would want to know about that, as well as the fact that he, Craig, was a failure. Craig ate dinner in the hotel and slept for twelve hours.

Next morning he felt better than ever, and had found a way to solve his problem. He would call on Thaddeus Cooke, and have another fight. If he won, he would stay on. If he lost, he would report back to Loomis.

Cooke beat him three times in seven minutes, and looked almost as horrified as Craig.

'Mr. Craig,' he said, 'you must have got problems since I saw you last. Why, man, I tell you, they've even got down into your feet. You got to solve them, Mr. Craig, or you ain't goin' to be no good at this game any more. I tell you honest, the way you're doing now, you couldn't even lick Blossom. At least'—he thought it over, and made one concession—'not if Blossom was set for you. You go on home—get those problems licked. Or take up golf.'

Craig went. Not home, not immediately. There was plenty of time for the plane. But he had to see the Kaplans again. There was a good man looking after them, and there'd be others backing up and all that, but the Kaplans didn't know. It was true that Marcus Kaplan had seen a man killed in the Boldinis' apartment, but they didn't, either of them, know Fisher was dead, or what had been done to him before he died. It was up to Craig to tell them that these things happened; that people got hurt, or were even destroyed, and yet were allowed to go on living.

The doorman was off duty when Craig arrived, but the apartment building seemed quiet enough, not at all the kind of place where a man had been killed. No cops, no spectators, no crowds of sightseers. Perhaps that was just the heat. (If Lady Godiva rode down Fifth Avenue in July nobody would watch, said Loomis. The sight of that poor horse sweating would kill them.) He went up to the Kaplans' floor. The Boldinis' door was unguarded, but Craig moved on more quickly and rang the Kaplans' bell. Nothing happened, so he kept on ringing, over and over. Hetherton wasn't going to keep him out.

But it wasn't Hetherton who stood there. It was a girl. A small girl, long-legged, brown-eyed, swathed in the most enormous sable coat Craig had ever seen. Just to look at her made Craig melt in sweat, but she looked happy enough about it and hugged the coat to her body with her arms. What she was not happy about was Craig, whom she apparently cast as an intruder, maybe even a prowler.

'I called to see Mr. Kaplan,' said Craig. 'My name's Craig.'

'I'm sorry,' the girl said, 'he's not at home right now.'

She made to close the door, and Craig did not try to stop her, but said quickly: 'When will he be back?' The girl hesitated.

'Three weeks—maybe a month,' she said. 'He and Aunt Ida are on a vacation trip.' So that was all right. The CIA could move when they had to. They'd taken the Kaplans away.

'Thanks,' said Craig, and turned to leave. He'd taken three steps down the corridor when the girl called out: 'Just a minute.' He went back to her.

'You've hurt yourself,' the girl said. 'Behind your ear.'

'Miss-?'

'Loman,' said the girl.

'Miss Loman—I know it.'

'Sort of a crazy place to hurt yourself.'

'It happens,' said Craig. 'I stumbled and banged my head on a shelf.'

The brown eyes looked puzzled and faintly amused, nothing more.

'You'd better come in for a minute,' she said. 'You look awful.'

She led the way to the Kaplans' living room and sat, still wearing the coat. The air conditioning wasn't on; Craig looked at her again, and began sweating seriously.

'You know why I asked you in?' she asked. 'I figured you couldn't be a prowler. You have a British accent. So it's okay. Can I get you something?'

'No thanks,' said Craig. 'But I'd like to ask a question. Two questions.'

'Go ahead,' the girl said.

'Is Mrs. Kaplan your aunt?'

'No,' said the girl. 'Just an old friend of the family— so I call her Aunt Ida. What's the other one?'

'Why are you wearing a fur coat?'