Then I remembered the splinters from my doorjamb. The shots and Theodore’s saddle, which saved my life. It sounded like a cap gun. A .22 caliber, probably a pistol, with low velocity, not enough to rip through hard leather.
I remembered a young German woman, twenty-two if she was a day. Kissing my forehead and learning English, asking me did I have chocolate and sewing needles. I gave her both and then he shot me. No. The girl was a long time ago. I was shot and then I slipped in my own blood . . .
I sat up in the hospital bed, in the warm room. I was alone. My left biceps felt like it was ripping open every time I moved. There was a lamp on the table to my left. I had to twist around and turn it on with my right hand.
Also on the table there was a crayon drawing next to a glass of water. It was a crude green-and-blue picture of a man in a bed with three people standing beside him. My little family had been there. Feather would be in my life for many years. She would love me and I would love her long after all the pain I felt was over.
In the drawer of the table Bonnie had left me a clean change of clothes. I knew it would be there. In the pants pocket was my letter from Gerald Jordan but Bonnie had taken my wallet. She knew that no one would steal a letter but money was another thing.
Who shot me?
It was a man with a pistol who waited for me to come to my office. Somebody who knew me and was afraid of me. A killer who wasn’t used to firing a gun. No one who was serious shot at you from that far away with a small- caliber pistol. Then again, nobody with any sense ran at a man shooting at him.
I had three bandages and not too much pain except in my arm.
It had to be Harold. Harold with the same gun he had used to shoot Nola in her dead eye.
After I was dressed I lay back down and closed my eyes. I fell asleep and dreamt of a German girl sewing up my wounds. She was Sylvie, and Theodore was lurking at the bombed-out doorway with a pistol in his hand.
I jerked upright and bounced on the springy bed to get to my feet. It wasn’t bad. Somebody had shot me less than a day ago and I could already get to my feet. I was a soldier, not some citizen or bystander. I had to go out now and find Harold and make sure that he couldn’t get at anybody else ever again.
IT WAS VERY late. More than forty-eight hours had passed since Jordan had laid down his ultimatum. Nobody in the hospital hall was moving. At the nurse’s desk a small Asian woman, Japanese I think, was sitting reading a magazine. When I came up to her she jumped from her chair, gasping.
“You shouldn’t be out of your bed, sir,” she told me.
“Pay phone,” I said. “Where?”
“You have to get back to bed.”
“Got to make a call. Pay phone.”
She scurried to my side and took my arm. I pushed her away and lurched down the hall toward a door marked EXIT. I staggered down the stairs until there were no more and then I pushed open a door.
Across the street from Mercy Hospital was a phone booth. The operator gladly connected the collect call.
“Hello?” she said.
“Will you accept a collect call from Easy?” the operator asked.
“A collect . . . ? Yes, operator. I will.”
“Hey, Jewelle,” I said. I could hear the thickness in my throat.
“Is that you, Easy?”
“Yeah, baby. How you doin’?”
“Fine. It’s four in the mornin’. What’s wrong?”
“I been shot.”
“What?”
“I’m okay. I mean, not perfect but not bleedin’ no more neither.”
“Do you need a doctor?”
“Uh-uh. I’m across the street from Mercy Hospital. What I need is a ride. I was wonderin’ if Jackson could come get me.”
“He’s ’sleep,” Jewelle said. “And you know he has to be at work tomorrow.”
“Already?”
“They need good computer people, Easy. They wanted him today. I’ll come get you.”
“I didn’t mean to get you outta bed, JJ,” I said. “It’s just —”
“I’ll be there, Mr. Rawlins. You just wait.”
She hung up and I sat down in the phone booth, feeling the morphine and revenge slithering under my skin.
47
It was a little after five by the time Jewelle parked across the street from the hospital. She had put on a pink dress and dark makeup. I remembered when she was just sixteen, in jeans and in love with my property manager, the grumpy Mofass. Now he was gone and she was a woman.
