On, Off

and that improvement in itself is an advance.”

He’s huffy, intolerant and patronizing as well as neurotic was Carmine’s opinion, which he didn’t voice. Instead he asked mildly, “Do any of them ever threaten you?”

Forbes looked shocked. “No, never! If you’re after patients who threaten, then you should be seeing surgeons, not physicians.”

“The Hug doesn’t have any surgeons.”

“Nor any threats from patients” was Forbes’s stiff reply.

From Dr. Walter Polonowski he found out that a malabsorption syndrome meant a patient couldn’t tolerate what Nature had intended as food for everyone, or else had developed a liking for substances Nature hadn’t intended as food for anyone.

“Amino acids, fruits or vegetables, lead, copper, gluten, all kinds of fats,” said Polonowski, taking pity on him. “If you see enough patients, the list of substances is almost endless. Honey can cause anaphylactic shock, for instance. But what I’m chiefly interested in are the group of substances that cause brain damage.”

“Have you any patients who resent you?”

“I guess any doctor must, Lieutenant, but personally I can’t recall any instances. With my patients, the harm has been done before ever they get to see me.”

Yet another worn-looking Hugger, Carmine thought.

Dr. Maurice Finch looked much worse.

“I blame myself for Dr. Schiller’s attempted suicide,” said Finch desolately.

“What’s done is done, and you can’t say that you were the cause, Dr. Finch, you really can’t. Dr. Schiller has a lot of problems, as I’m sure you know. Besides, you saved his life,” said Carmine. “Blame the person who put Mercedes Alvarez here. Now take your mind off Dr. Schiller for a moment and try to remember if any of your patients have ever threatened you. Or if you have ever heard a patient utter threats against the Hug itself?”

“No,” said Finch, looking bewildered. “No, never.”

An answer he also received from Dr. Charles Ponsonby, though Ponsonby’s face became alert, interested.

“It’s certainly a thought,” he said, frowning. “One forgets that that kind of thing happens, but of course it must. I will put my thinking cap on, Lieutenant, and try to remember on behalf of my colleagues as well as myself. Though I’m just about a hundred percent sure that it’s never happened to me. I’m too harmless.”

From the Hug Carmine walked down Oak Street in the teeth of a bitter wind to the Chubb Medical School, where he negotiated the usual maze of corridors and tunnels such institutions specialize in, and at last found the Department of Neurology. There he asked to see Professor Frank Watson.

Who saw him immediately, clearly reveling in the Hug’s misfortunes, though he did remember to deplore the murders.

“I hear that it was you who gave the Hughlings Jackson Center its nickname, Professor,” said Carmine, smiling a little.

Watson swelled like a toad, stroked his thin black mustache and lifted one mobile black eyebrow. “Yes, I did. They hate it, don’t they? Ab-so-lute-ly hate it. Especially Bob Smith.”

How you enjoy playing Mephistopheles! Carmine thought. “Do you hate the Hug?”

“With a passion,” the Professor of Neurology said candidly. “Here am I, with just as many brilliant people on my team, and I battle for every single cent of research money I can find. Do you know how many Nobel Prize winners there are in this medical school, Lieutenant? Nine! Imagine it – nine! And none of them is a Hugger. They’re in my camp, existing on beggarly grants. Bob Smith can afford to buy equipment he uses once in a blue moon if at all, while I have to count the number of gauze swabs I use! All that money was the ruin of Bob Smith, who might otherwise have discovered something neurologically significant. He doesn’t work, he languishes. A poseur.”

“Hurts that much, huh?” Carmine asked.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Frank Watson said savagely. “It’s pure, unadulterated agony!”

A trip back to Cedar Street revealed that Francine Murray’s jacket had yielded no clues apart from its presence in the locker, which also failed to help. From Silvestri he learned that Travis had survived the day thus far; there had actually been more trouble at Taft High, whose student intake included the Argyle Avenue ghetto. What they all need, he thought, is some sane political direction, but at least there’s one good thing about Mohammed el Nesr and his Black Brigade: start on drugs, even something as innocuous as pot, and you’re out of his organization. He wants his soldiers clear of mind and firm of purpose. And that’s good, no matter what his purpose might be. Thank God for Silvestri and the Mayor: as long as the Black Brigade do nothing more than drill up and down Fifteenth Street with broomsticks over their left shoulders, they’re not hassled. Only what kind and how many armaments have they got behind those mattressed walls? One day someone will talk, and then we’ll get the warrant we need to take a look.

December first…Our man will strike again around the end of January or the beginning of February, and we’re as far from catching him as Mohammed el Nesr is from convincing the bulk of Holloman’s black population that revolution is the way to go.

He picked up his phone, dialed. “I know it’s not Wednesday, but any chance I could come pick you up and take you out for Chinese or something else with me?” he asked Desdemona.

He looked, she thought, extremely uncomfortable, though he smiled when she slid into his Ford and tried to make small talk until he bolted out of the car, into the Blue Pheasant, and out again with an armload of cardboard containers.

Then it was silence, even after he had done his finicky transferring of the food to covered white bowls and seated her at the table.

“You do make work for yourself,” she said, piling food on her plate and inhaling the aromas blissfully. “I’d be happy to eat it straight out of the boxes, you know.”

“That would be an insult,” he said, but absently.

Because she was hungry she said nothing more until the meal was finished, then she pushed her plate away and, when he reached to take it, grasped his arm firmly. “No, sit down, Carmine, and tell me what’s the matter.”

He looked down at her hand as if surprised at something, then sighed and sat. Before she could take her hand away he put his own over it and kept it there.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to remove your guards.”

“Is that all? Carmine, it’s been weeks since anything has happened. I’m sure whoever it was grew bored ages ago. Did it not occur to you that perhaps all this has been because sometimes I do embroidery for the Catholic church? After all, the only thing that was cut up was a priest’s vestment – it might be that whoever it was thought Chuck Ponsonby’s piece was suspicious but not definitely religious – it did have that long, narrow altar look to it. Sideboard cloths do.”

“It occurred to me,” he admitted.

“So there you are. I now do commissions for household napery only – tablecloths and serviettes – oops, napkins.”

“Commissions?”

“Yes, I charge for my work. Very heavily, as a matter of fact. People with means get tired of the same old cross-stitch or eyelet stuff they churn out by the bucketful in countries with cottage industries. What I do is unique. People love it, and my bank balance grows considerably.” She looked guilty. “I haven’t declared it – why should I, when I pay full taxes yet can’t vote? It doesn’t matter to you as a policeman, does it?”

His fingers had been moving over the skin of her forearm as if they liked the feel of it, but now they stopped. “Sometimes,” he said gravely, “I have attacks of deafness. What was that you said? Something about not voting?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She took her hand away, looking self-conscious. “We’ve solved the major matter, which is the removal of my guards. I am relieved, quite honestly. Though there are solid doors between me and them, I never feel really private. So good riddance to them, I say.” She hesitated. “When?”

“I’m not sure. The weather may be your best friend. In case you didn’t notice, the wind’s getting up and the chill factor will fall way below freezing tomorrow. That drives everyone indoors.” He rose from the table. “Come and sit over here, get nice and comfortable, have a cognac, and talk to me.”

“Talk to you?”