… wall of air… smoke… debris… burning Bang!.. ear-splitting…
… halfway down the stairs, bounced… rolled like a giant pinwheel
… smashed a wall on the floor down…
I knew an explosion when one hit me. How many times at sea in the war? Exploding, the whole ship and out into black water…
A thing, smoking and burning. At the top of the stairs. A man?… One arm, half a face, half of one leg, smoking cloth hanging in pieces, strips… a ‘thing’ falling… one enormous eye with a look that wasn’t pain or hate or anger or…
… Oh… the pain… Oh…
There were dreams.
A burning man with half a face and one eye with a mild look, reproachful. ‘Now what did you want to go and do that to me for, world? It’s not fair, you know?’ Did I know that half-face?
A heavy face, florid, and thick shoulders bent over to look into my eyes. ‘Fortune… Fortune… What…’
Something blue… dark blue… something white… wail of sirens… black slickers…
Dreams-and my mind clear the instant I opened my eyes.
Clear, crystal sharp.
I had been bombed. Yes. I was in a hospital room. Yes. I had been blown up. Yes.
Marty sat reading a book in the dim light. I watched her. Awake, my mind clear. Clear in terror. I whimpered.
‘Dan?’ Marty put down her book.
I said, ‘Tell me.’
‘What darling! Tell you what, Dan?’
She stood beside the bed, touched my right shoulder. Why? Why not hold my… hand?
‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘My… my…’
‘It’s all right!’ She understood. ‘It’s all right, Dan.’ I felt her fingers on my hand. ‘Your arm is fine, Dan.’
It was there. My arm. My one arm. My one-and-only-thank-God-arm! Sweat poured into my eyes. I giggled. I shook. I laughed. Someone called for a nurse…
The second time I woke up sunlight blinded me.
‘Close that damned shade.’
Sunlight cut off. Orange juice, and my face and throat seemed to be all there. I wondered what hospital it was? I didn’t really give a damn.
‘Drink it all now, that’s a good boy.’
The juice went. I lay back and closed my eyes. I thought of all the hospitals I’d been in. How nice it was to lie and think of the other men out on the cold seas with storms, and submarines, and mines, and sharks, and weary work. I dozed. I felt peaceful.
There were two doctors and three nurses.
‘Well, how do you feel?’ one doctor said.
‘Pleasant,’ I said. I decided to spend my life in bed.
‘Don’t you want to know what day it is?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘They always want to know that first,’ the doctor said.
‘Okay. What day is it?’
‘Friday afternoon. Two days, but you’re okay now.’
I don’t know when they left. I was thinking how nice it was to doze and not have to do anything, think of anything.
On Saturday I ate breakfast and lunch and saw the city outside. Time came back. It always does.
‘What’s the report, Doc?’ I asked.
‘A concussion, no fracture. A wound on your head. Two broken ribs, torn ligaments and muscles in your left leg. Bruises all over. Some wood splinters. All-in-all, lucky. You should go home on Monday or Tuesday.’
‘Have I had visitors besides Miss Adair?’
A nurse said, ‘A Captain Gazzo, and a Joe Harris.’
‘Who was killed by the bomb?’
‘Two people, I think,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m not sure.’
I dozed. I’m one of those people who bring books to a hospital, but never read. I go over in my mind all the places I’ve been in my life, places that are always alive for me. Maybe because in a hospital death has to be kept away.
But death, like time, comes back, and with it all the busy, important schemes and tactics and drives of life.
That bomb had not been meant for me.
Chapter Twenty
A bomb meant for Emory Foxx, alias Emory Foster. I thought about it all Sunday morning.
When health returns, all the needs return, too: good and bad. Maybe the only time in his life that a man sees what is really important is when he’s sick, or dying-sun, time, and being alive with everyone else alive. I was feeling normal, back in the world with my today-and-tomorrow desires, demands. I wanted Ricardo Vega guilty of something. Now I was sure he was. That bomb had been intended to kill Emory Foxx.
I thought about it all morning, fiercely, and in the afternoon Marty came. She had a tall, fair, handsome man with her. A man I didn’t know, who wore good, quiet clothes, and had a nice smile.
‘Hello, baby,’ Marty said. ‘Kurt came along; we’re doing some scene work. Dan Fortune, our director Kurt Reston.’
Kurt Reston had a firm grip, but not too firm since I was a sick man. He made easy small talk, then faded into the background. A confident man. Probably good at his work.
‘You scared me this time, Dan,’ Marty said.
‘Who was killed?’ I asked.
‘Sean McBride, and a Mrs Emory Foxx.’
So I really had known the half-faced ‘thing’ at the top of those stairs. Sean McBride, wondering in his last seconds why the world had gone and done such a thing to him. And Mrs Foxx, sure: the innocent bystander, who, from the glimpse I’d had of her, had died inside a long time ago from standing by while Emory Foxx hated Ricardo Vega. Now she’d taken his bomb.
‘They’ve arrested Vega,’ Marty said. ‘We’ve suspended.’
‘What’s Vega charged with? Did they arrest Emory Foxx?’
‘That’s all I know, Dan. We’re being paid while we wait. George Lehman’s running things. Kurt has a new show for next year I may have a part in. We’re working on it.’
‘Very good, baby,’ I said.
She talked some more about what she was doing, and kissed me before she left. Kurt Reston held the door for her. He had the manners not to touch even her arm while I could still see them. My one and only real friend, Joe Harris, came in next. We talked about nothing for an hour. Joe is that kind of old friend. He was just glad I was alive.
Captain Gazzo finally arrived about 5:00 p.m. He had a two-day growth of whiskers on his tender face, and his eyes had that steel surface that comes from long sessions of talking around and around a case.
He lighted a cigarette. ‘Ten seconds earlier and you’re dead. Homemade bomb, a stinking fuse job. The damn fool.’
His hands shook on the cigarette. It had to be fatigue; Gazzo has no nerves.
‘Sean McBride took the bomb there?’
Gazzo nodded. ‘We found the makings in his room. Bomb squad tells it like this: McBride wore a messenger’s uniform, had the bomb in a package. Must have told the wife he had to see Emory Foxx in person, and waited. Foxx
