I couldn't remember now who had won that baseball game. Cardinals or
Dodgers? It had probably mattered greatly then; it mattered now not at all.
I felt myself begin to dissolve. I frowned. I concentrated on looking up the Pike at the oncoming headlights. It would be harder to spot me if I keeled over. It would be harder to spot me as it got darker.
I looked down the road after Gerry Broz. I couldn't see him. The turnpike curved fifty yards ahead and he was around the curve now. I holstered the
Browning. Gerry wouldn't have the energy to circle back and jump me. Nor, probably, now that he was alone, the balls. I remembered that once; I had seen Jackie Robinson steal home. Pigeon-toed, elbows pumping, under the tag.
He was dead now. Been dead a long time. Died a young man. He lit up the sky, my Uncle Bob used to say. The headlights blurred in the mist. Except there wasn't any mist. The rain had stopped an hour ago. The first time Robinson had taken the field, Red Barber had said in his soft Southern voice on the radio, He is very definitely brunette. One pair of the blurred headlights swept over me. A car swung up onto the shoulder. The door opened and Hawk got out.
'You are very definitely brunette,' I said.
Then Hawk blurred too.
I heard myself say, 'Take the dog.'
And then I didn't hear anything. Or see anything, except darkness visible.
CHAPTER 28
SOMEONE said, 'Where's the dog?'
Somebody else said, 'In the car with a soup bone.'
'On the leather seats?' someone said.
'You bled all over them already,' someone else said. 'Figured it didn't matter anymore.'
My eyes opened. Hawk was standing at the foot of the bed, wearing a black leather jacket over a black turtleneck. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the bed rail and I could see the butt of his gun under his arm where the jacket fell open.
'How come you were out riding around on the Pike in western Mass?' I said.
It had been me speaking all along, but I just realized it.
'Paul told me what happened,' Hawk said. 'I looked at a map, figured you'd get in the woods and loop for the highway. What I woulda done.'
'So you been cruising it,' I said.
'Un huh. Lee exit to the New York line and back, two tanks of gas.'
'Paul's okay?'
'He at your place. So's his momma and her honey.'
'My place?'
'You not using it,' Hawk said. 'Had to stash them someplace.'
I shifted in the bed. There was an IV in the back of my left hand, held in place by tape. The tube ran to a drip bottle on a stand. My leg felt sore, but it wasn't throbbing anymore, and it didn't feel distended. I looked around the room. It was private. There was a silent television on a high shelf opposite, and the usual hospital apparatus on the walls, blood pressure gauges, and oxygen outlets, and spigots for purposes unclear to the lay public.
'I'm in a hospital,' I said.
'Wow,' Hawk said.
'I'm a trained observer,' I said. 'Where?'
'Pittsfield,' Hawk said.
'Susan?'
'I called her,' Hawk said. 'She on the way, bringing you some clothes.'
I was wearing a hospital johnny. I glanced at the night table.
'Wallet's in the nightstand,' Hawk said. 'Got your gun.'
'How am I?'
'You not going to die, you not going to lose the leg, your personality not going to improve.'
'So, two out of three,' I said.
'Some people say none out of three,' Hawk said. 'Where's Gerry?'
'Left him on the turnpike,' I said. 'Walking toward Stockbridge.'
'Want to tell me about it?' Hawk said.
I did.
'Been about thirty hours,' Hawk said. 'Figure Gerry be home by now.'
