His head was splitting. A violent, vicious headache driving him into consciousness. He groaned, and moved, and felt a hard, rough surface grate beneath him.
He squeezed open his eyes, and an inch away there was the jagged texture of concrete. He moved and felt the concrete against his body, and knew he was lying face down on concrete. In semi darkness, at night, with electric lighting somewhere not too close.
His head was grinding as though his brain had been cut in half and a piece of sandpaper was struck between the two halves and the halves were rubbing against it. He felt as though his skull were cracked from the top of his nose up over his forehead and across the top of his head and down to the back of his neck. The pain was so sharp it was keeping him awake and threatening to knock him out again at the same time.
He couldn’t just lie here like this. He struggled until his hands were under his chest, and then he pushed upward, and shifted, and cringed against the redoubled pain in his head, and finally got himself to a sitting position.
There were black brick walls around him. Down to the right there was an open space, and beyond that a street light shining on a stretch of empty sidewalk and some parked cars.
What was that stink, sweet and pulpy ? He grimaced away from it, his head grinding again at every movement, and then he realized the smell was on his clothes. They were damp and slightly sticky.
Sneaky Pete. Cheap port wine, wino’s blood. It had been poured over him like a baptism; he stank of dollar-a- gallon wine.
His mind was confused. He remembered everything, but when he tried to think about it, put the elements together, his head would start to grind again.
Drugged, he’d been drugged, and this was the aftereffect.
If only it was still raining. The water would help to soothe his head and wash the stink off his clothes. But it had stopped long enough ago so that the concrete around him was dry.
What time was it? He moved slowly to look at his watch, and it was gone. He patted his pockets and they were empty. He’d been stripped clean. He was lucky he still had his shoes.
Using the wall for support, he struggled to his feet. He threatened to pass out again for a second, but the nausea and dizziness faded grudgingly and he made it to his feet. Keeping one hand against the wall of the alley, he moved heavily and unevenly out to the street.
There was a theater marquee just to the left, dark, with a title on it in French. Past the streetlight in the other direction was an intersection and a traffic light. As he watched, the light switched to red in his direction and two cars went across the intersection from right to left.
He moved slowly down the street to the intersection, keeping close to walls for support. This was a main street here, wide and empty. He looked at the street signs and it was Sixth Avenue— Avenue of the Americas, the sign said— and he was way downtown. Even farther than Brock’s record store and apartment.
Up that way was his car, but he didn’t have the keys to it now. There was another set in the hotel room, but that wasn’t going to do him any good till he got there.
An empty cab came up Sixth, he flagged it. It veered toward him, and then veered away again and sped by. He stepped back and leaned against a telephone pole and looked down at himself and saw that no cabdriver was going to pick him up. He looked like a bum and a drunk, he staggered, his clothes were a stained and wrinkled mess, and he looked big enough to be dangerous.
And he had no money.
He was staying at a midtown hotel. The only thing to do was to walk it, two and a half miles up Sixth Avenue. He pushed away from the telephone pole and started to walk.
A little later he passed Downing Street. Brock’s apartment was just around the corner, but he was in no shape to do anything about Brock now. There’d be time for that.
It was irritating to have to walk right by his own car. He could have broken in maybe, crossed the wires, but his nerves were too unstrung for any delicate work now; his hands were shaking. And it would be stupid to have a cop come by and grab him for breaking into his own car. By the time he got done explaining the cop would just be getting interested.
There were almost no other pedestrians, very little traffic. A clock in the window of a dry cleaners he passed said four twenty-five. It was the closest thing to a dead time in New York, the bars closed and the straight people not yet out and moving.
Every once in a while as he walked a police prowl car would roll slowly by, and each time he could sense the cops in it giving him the once-over, but he just kept moving. He knew he looked and acted like a drunk, and he knew New York City cops didn’t bother drunks unless they got troublesome or wandered into the wrong neighborhood.
It took him an hour and ten minutes to get to his hotel, and then the night clerk looked at him with repugnance and disbelief.
“I was mugged and rolled,” Parker said. “My room key was stolen. I need another one. The name’s Lynch, room seven three three.”
“One moment,” the clerk said and made no secret of checking his cards to see if somebody named Lynch was really checked into room 733. Parker knew the stink of cheap wine was still rolling off him and he knew what the night clerk was thinking, but there was nothing to be done about it.
The clerk shut his little file drawer and came back to the desk. “Yes, Mr. Lynch,” he said. He made no move to get a key. “You say you were robbed?”
“I say I was mugged and rolled,” Parker said, “and a bottle of wine was poured on me.”
“Have you reported this to the police?”
“What’s the point? You ever see anybody get picked up for mugging in this town?”
The clerk made a small move toward the telephone on the desk. “Shall I phone them for you?”
