Plague

There were five of them. They were hard-faced and big, and they could only have been off-duty cops. No mugger cuts his hair so neat, nor wears such a well-trimmed mustache. They wore black leather jackets, and they stood around Kenneth Garunisch and Dick Bortolotti so that there was no possible way to escape. 'Are you Garunisch?' said one of them gruffly. Kenneth Garunisch looked from one cop to the other. He was trying to memorize their faces. He kept his arms down beside him, and said, 'What of it?'

'Kenneth Garunisch, the Medical Workers' boss?'

'What of it?'

'Yes or no?'

'Yes. What of it?'

Garunisch had once been a physically hard man but he was too old and slow these days. The leading cop stepped up to him, pulled back his arm, and punched him straight in the face. Garunisch felt his bridge-work break, and he was banged back against the hospital wall behind him. Another punch caught him across the side of the face and fractured his jaw, and then he was kicked in the wrist and the hip.

Tipanski, shouting with rage, tried to attack the cops, but they were too quick and too well-trained. One of them twisted his arm around behind his back, and another one thumped him in the stomach. Tipanski dropped to his knees on the sidewalk, gasping.

Dick Bortolotti got away. He ran down the length of the hospital as fast as he could, crossed 34th Street, and didn't stop running until he reached Second Avenue. He leaned against a building panting for breath, and then slowly and cautiously made his way back to Bellevue. As he crossed back towards the hospital, he had the strangest sensation that everything had changed now, and that life was never going to be the same again. The laws of the jungle had returned, and he was going to have to learn them.

Edgar Paston was lying on his uncomfortable bunk in the jailhouse, reading the weekly Supermarket Report which Tammy had brought him that lunchtime. It appeared that the spread of the plague was hiking up the price of oranges and other citrus fruits, although California growers — in the light of the plague's disastrous effects on the Florida crop — were predicting their most profitable year ever.

Edgar laid down his paper and checked the time from the clock on the flaking wall outside his cell. It was a few minutes past midnight, Saturday morning. He shifted uncomfortably, and yawned. He was exhausted, but he had never been able to get to sleep with the light on, and the cop in charge had refused to switch it off.

He wondered briefly what Tammy was thinking about. She was probably awake, too, lying alone in their quilted double bed under the painting of Yellowstone River in spring, listening to the children breathing in their separate bedrooms and feeling lonesome. The thought of it almost choked him up, and he had to think about something else to stop himself from crying.

He thought, too, about the dead Boy Scout. The cops had questioned him for four hours solid, and they still didn't believe him. The shooting happened again and again in his mind, like a loop of film. He saw himself stepping out of the supermarket door. He saw himself raising the gun. They were laughing — that was the trouble. If they hadn't been laughing, he wouldn't have fired. He saw the dead boy lying on the concrete car park, and someone said, 'Is he dead?'

Edgar was almost dozing off when he heard footsteps. He blinked. The cops were bringing in a new prisoner — he could distinguish voices. Edgar rolled over on his bunk and pretended to be sleeping, in case he got involved in any more pointless conversations. He heard the cop say, 'In here.'

Another voice, younger, said, 'You mean I don't get a cell to myself? What is this?'

'This ain't the Ramada Inn,' said the cop. The cell door unlocked, squeaked open, and then banged shut again. There was a jingle of keys. Edgar kept his eyes shut and faced the wall.

For a while, he heard the new prisoner shuffling around. Then he heard the lower bunk complain as the prisoner sat down on it. Eventually the newcomer stood up again, leaned over him, and shook him by the shoulder. 'Hey man — are you awake?'

Edgar Paston opened one eye. 'I wasn't,' he said Wearily, 'but it looks like I am now.'

'I'm sorry, man. I just thought you might be awake.' Edgar rubbed his face, and sat up painfully. Then he swung his legs over the side of the bunk, and looked at his new cellmate for the first time.

At first, he couldn't believe it. But then he felt his throat tighten, constrict. Just a foot or two away from him, pale and foxy-faced, still methodically chewing gum, was Shark McManus.

Edgar stared at him.

Shark McManus said, 'Do they bring you coffee in this joint?'

Edgar said hoarsely, 'I don't understand.'

'You don't understand what, man?'

'Don't you know who I am?' said Edgar, in a tight voice. 'Don't you recognize me?'

Shark McManus shrugged. 'Sorry, man.'

Edgar said, 'Last night, you and your gang of hoodlums broke into a supermarket out at the crossroads, and wrecked it.'

McManus looked surprised. He screwed up his eyes and said, 'Not me, man. You must've gotten the wrong dude.'

Edgar climbed unsteadily down from his bunk. He faced McManus from only six inches away.

'I don't have the wrong dude, McManus, That store you wrecked was mine.'

McManus chewed steadily for a while, but his chewing became slower and slower, and he finally stopped altogether. He stared at Edgar as if he couldn't grasp what was going on, and he nervously rubbed at the side of his neck.

'You and your kind, you make me sick,' said Edgar, plucking off his spectacles and pacing the floor. He turned on McManus again, 'You're like wild beasts!'

McManus looked uncomfortable. But then he said, in an unexpectedly quiet voice, 'Well, man, you may be right.'

'Right?' snapped Edgar. 'Of course I'm right. You smash, you destroy — you'd kill if you had to. What the hell do you think the world is out there? Some kind of jungle?'

McManus sat down. 'Yes, man,' he nodded. 'You're right.'

Edgar bent over him. 'Don't think you're going to appease me like that. Oh, don't you think you're going to get away with it that easy! If I have anything to do with it, I'm going to make sure that hoodlums like you are torn out of Elizabeth, root and branch. You hear?'

McManus nodded. 'I hear you. I hear you loud and clear.'

Edgar put his spectacles back on and peered at ' McManus close and hard. 'Is that all you can say?' he asked. 'After all that you've done, and all the trouble you've caused, is that all you can say?'

McManus frowned, as if he was thinking, and then gave a small smirk.

'I do have one thing to say,' he said quietly.

'And what's that?'

'It's a question, really. And the question is, if you're so respectable and upright, and if you're going to tear US all out root and whatitsname, then what are you doing in the slammer along with me?'

Edgar stood straight. He took a deep breath. 'Last night,' he said, 'after you wrecked my store, I went after you with a gun.'

'Don't tell me it was unlicensed.'

Edgar shook his head. 'It was licensed, all right. I was going out to find you and I was going to teach you a lesson! The trouble was — '

McManus looked up. 'Yeah?'

'The trouble was — '

Edgar could hardly get the words out. The reality of last night's killing suddenly stuck in his throat like a terrible knotted obstruction.

'You can tell me, man,' said McManus, mock-sympathetically. 'After all, it was me you wanted to shoot.'

Edgar looked grim. 'I went out, and I shot and killed someone I thought was you. It wasn't you at all, and that's what I'm doing here.'

McManus stared at him in disbelief. Then, gradually, a smile began to twitch at the comers of his mouth. He