Dr. Petrie stood up and walked over to the window. Sixteen floors below, the streets were dark, blind and chaotic. He saw red flashing police lights and ambulances, and the smoke from a smoldering store rising almost invisibly into the rainy night sky.
'I sometimes wish it were true,' he said quietly.
'You sometimes wish what were true?' asked Glantz.
Dr. Petrie let the drapes fall, and turned back into the room. 'In Miami,' he said, 'they used to joke about me and call me Saint Leonard. I just sometimes wish it were true.'
Glantz looked at him oddly.
'Don't worry,' said Dr. Petrie. 'I'm not a religious maniac, and I'm not going out of my mind. But I've spent most of my medical life nursing rich old widows, and now I've suddenly seen that there's so much more to medicine than dishing out placebos to dried-up geriatrics with more money than sense.'
Glantz sniffed. 'Don't knock money,' he said. 'Money makes it easier to have scruples.'
Dr. Petrie rubbed his face exhaustedly. 'I don't know whether I want scruples right now.'
'Have another drink instead.'
Ivor Glantz was pouring Dr. Petrie another large dose of Scotch when Adelaide and Esmeralda came in with a hot egg-and-bacon quiche and a fresh salad. The girls laid knives and forks on the glass coffee table, and they all sat down to eat informally.
'Usually,' said Glantz, 'Esmeralda insists that we eat in the dining-room, with starched napkins tucked under our chins. But tonight we'll make an exception.'
Adelaide said, 'I don't know how we're ever going to thank you for this. It's so bad out on the streets, I thought we'd never get out of it alive.'
'It doesn't take people long to revert to the jungle, does it?' Ivor Glantz remarked. 'You only have to pour a few drinks down most people, and they start behaving like apes. That's how alcohol works. Layer by layer, it anesthetizes your civilized mind, until you're nothing but a caveman. Or cave-woman.'
Esmeralda was slicing quiche. She didn't look up, but handed Dr. Petrie a plateful of food. He smiled at her, because he found her attractive. Her long black curly hair was tied with ribbons, and she was wearing a dark brown satin negligee trimmed with lace and bows. She looked a little pale, but it suited her fine profile. He found himself glancing at the soft mobile way her breasts moved underneath the satin, and her long bare legs.
Adelaide was too tired and hungry to notice. She was looking scrubbed and plain, with no make-up at all, and her brunette hair was tied back in a headscarf. She'd borrowed a pink dressing-gown from Esmeralda, and the color didn't suit her at all. Sexual attraction, thought Dr. Petrie, as he ate his flan, is the unfairest urge ever.
Ivor Glantz washed a mouthful of food down with whiskey. 'To some people,' he said, 'this plague is a blessing.'
Dr. Petrie frowned. 'What do you mean by that? I mean — who could ever benefit from a disaster like this?'
'Oh, you'd be surprised. Our next-door neighbor is Kenneth Garunisch from the Medical Workers' Union. He's been pressing for more pay for his members, because of the dangers of treating plague victims. Then there's Herbert Gaines. You remember Herbert Gaines — the actor? Well, he lives upstairs. He's gotten himself into politics now, and his main plank is that blacks and immigrants have caused the plague, and we ought to vote a right-wing Republican into the White House to get rid of them. Then, of course, there's Sergei Forward.'
Dr. Petrie was puzzled. The way that Ivor Glantz had spoken that name — loudly and vehemently — it had seemed that he was speaking to Esmeralda. But Esmeralda still didn't look up, and carried on eating in silence.
Dr. Petrie said, 'Dr. Murray mentioned him. Isn't he the guy you're — '
'Yes,' said Ivor Glantz. He was still looking at Esmeralda, and not at Dr. Petrie at all. 'He's the guy I'm sueing for infringement of patent. Or at least, I was sueing him for infringement of patent. The plague, among other things, has let him off the hook.'
'You must be pretty galled.'
Glantz turned to Dr. Petrie at last. 'Galled?' he said. 'You bet your ass I'm galled. It's a life's work, right down the river. But that's not the worst part.'
Dr. Petrie glanced from Ivor Glantz to Esmeralda. There was some indefinable tension between them. Esmeralda was still holding her knife and fork, but she wasn't actually eating. Her knuckles were white, and she was staring at her plate as if willing it to disappear into the sixth dimension. Adelaide caught the atmosphere, too, and looked up with a frown.
'The worst part,' said Ivor Glantz, 'was losing a life's loyalty, and a life's love.'
There was a long silence. Then Esmeralda stood up, and took her plate out of the sitting-room and into the kitchen. They heard her scraping her supper down the sink-disposal unit.
'Es!' Ivor Glantz called.
She didn't answer.
'Es!' he called again.
She appeared at the kitchen door. 'I'm not very hungry,' she said. 'I think I'll go to bed.'
Ivor Glantz took a deep breath as if he was about to shout something, but then he changed his mind and breathed out again. Esmeralda went off to her bedroom, and, turning to Dr. Petrie, Glantz said, 'How about one more Scotch, doctor? I'm sure you can justify it on medicinal grounds.'
Dr. Petrie passed his glass. He watched Ivor Glantz unstopper the crystal decanter, and pour the drink out.
'Listen, Professor Glantz,' he said gently. 'I don't mean to be personal, but… '
'But what, Dr. Petrie?'
Dr. Petrie shook his head. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'It's none of my business.'
Glantz handed over his Scotch. 'Of course it's your business. You're a guest here.'
'I didn't mean to pry. It just seemed that, well — '
'I know what it seemed like. Well, it's the truth. I've decided to withdraw my action against Sergei Forward. The reason I've decided to do so is because my stepdaughter is being blackmailed. It appears she was rather indiscreet. That's if you want to put it mildly.'
Dr. Petrie sat back. 'Is that the price? Is that what the blackmailers are asking for? Your withdrawal from the case?'
Ivor Glantz nodded. 'Of course. That's why my stepdaughter was set up in the first place. It was a deliberate ploy by Forward to hit me below the belt. I can tell you something, Dr. Petrie — if ever I lay my hands on that Finnish bastard, so help me I'll tear his lungs out and use them for water wings.'
'Surely it wasn't Esmeralda's fault?' said Adelaide. 'If she was set up, how can you blame her?'
Glantz swigged whiskey. 'I blame her because she got herself drunk and she let them do what they wanted. Not once did she think about me, and what could happen if she got involved in something like that. She lives under my roof, I pay for everything she wears, eats, and wipes her ass with. I bought her an art gallery and two hundred paintings to stock it with. I'm a step-father in a million, and all she can do is get herself squiffy on two glasses of champagne. Do you know, Dr. Petrie, how much that bacteriological process means to me?'
'What do you mean? Financially?'
'Of course, financially! What do you think this is — the Alexander Fleming Home for needy bacteriologists? Dr. Petrie — over twenty years, that process could have brought me, in royalties and dues and industrial licences, something in the region of thirty million dollars.'
Adelaide's eyes widened. 'I see what you're talking about. I think I'd be sore, too.'
Ivor Glantz shook his head. 'I'm not sore, my dear. I'm out of my goddamned mind with rage.'
Shark McManus started moaning again. He was lying curled-up on the cold plastic tiles of a travel agency's second-floor office on Third Avenue, shivering and sweating in the darkness. From where he lay, He could see the legs of a desk, and a waste-paper basket, and a half-open door. He still clutched his.38, but his sight kept blurring, and he was hurting so bad that he didn't even know if he could pull the trigger or not. Pains like red-hot rakes stabbed into his groin and his stomach, and every now and then a scalding squirt of diarrhoea soaked into his jeans.
'Paston,' he whispered. 'You still there?'
