Quinn sat in his bed, doing nothing. He wore a night shirt which was split down the back and his hands looked bony and his arms were thin. Not really thin, thought Whitfield, but rather lean, because there are all those muscles.
Quinn crossed his legs and leaned on his knees. He watched Whitfield come in and said nothing.
Empty eyes, thought Whitfield, but then he changed his mind. I’ll be damned if they don’t look innocent.
“Eh, how do you do?” said Whitfield.
Quinn nodded.
“I’m Whitfield. We met, you know. You don’t remember? We met at your-uh-resurrection.”
“I couldn’t see too well.”
“Yes. A blinding day.”
“You the one that hit me?”
“Oh no. I’m the one whom you choked.”
“Oh.”
When Quinn did not say anything else Whitfield, unexpectedly, felt embarrassed. He took care of that by thinking of Quinn as an idiot. The way he stares, he thought, and then of course that thick hair. All the idiots I’ve known have invariably had this very thick hair. All this while Whitfield smiled, but when Quinn did not smile back or say anything else, Whitfield went to the window as if to look out. He could not look out because of the sun shutters, so he looked at the window sill. There was some sand lying along the edge of the frame.
“Some blow we had there, wasn’t it?” and he turned back to the bed.
As expected, Quinn was looking at him. Talk of the weather, thought Whitfield, and now I feel like an idiot.
“Are you from the police?” Quinn asked.
“Police? Oh no, nothing of the sort. They have been here, haven’t they?”
They had been by Quinn’s bed several times, and only afterwards had it struck Quinn how docile he had felt towards them and that somehow cop hadn’t meant cop to him, the way he had been used to it in the past. I’m still a little bit weak, he had explained to himself, not quite myself. And he had started to answer everything: name, James Quinn; occupation, lawyer; residence, New York.
Then, the matter with the box. At that point, Quinn had slowed down. His hands under the sheet had started to tremble a little, but it had not been the thought of the box so much as the thought of Ryder. So he had left Ryder out, and told them the box thing had been an act of revenge, something cruel dreamt up by a man who, however, was dead now. Quinn had wished this were true.
“How do you know this, Mister Quinn?”
“He was dead before, before I left.”
“Who was he?”
“You wouldn’t know him. Besides, there were several.”
“Are you trying to confuse us, Mister Quinn?”
“I’m confused.”
“Of course. Understandable. Tell us, Mister Quinn, is this type of-uh-punishment usual in your circles?”
“What circles?”
“You are a criminal, aren’t you, Mister Quinn?”
“I have no record.”
“Hm. A very good criminal then, eh?”
Quinn thought that with no record he was either a very good criminal or no criminal at all, and perhaps it came to the same thing. He had not been very much interested in deciding on this because other things meant more to him. Whether he had been smart or stupid, for example, and here the decision was simple. He had been very stupid with Ryder, but that, too, was a little bit dim, since he, Quinn, was here and Ryder was not. Maybe later, more on this later, but now first things first.
He sat up in bed and said, “I’m here without papers. Illegal entry and no identification, you told me. And that is all the business you have with me, isn’t it?”
He wondered what had made them ask if he was a criminal.
“Did I talk in my sleep?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“We understood very little, except perhaps the word racket. We understood that.”
“I told you I’m a lawyer.”
They had just smiled and then one of them had said, “We’ve asked around, of course, and have learned about this box method. It even has a name, doesn’t it, among criminals?”
Quinn had not answered, and not all the vagueness on his face had been faked. Only the simplest things did not make him feel vague.
“You must get papers, and then you must get out.”
“Yes. And I need clothes.”
They were pleased he was tractable, and then they had left.
Now Quinn looked up from his hands at Whitfield, who was the first stranger since the police had been there. I think he smells of gin, Quinn thought.
“Feel up to a little trip?” asked Whitfield.
Quinn thought for a moment and then he said, “I don’t have any papers.”
True enough, thought Whitfield, and for that matter you don’t have any pants either, and so forth. And not much brains left, is my feeling, and I must say a sad shock you are to me and my cinema knowledge of an American gangster.
“You don’t have any papers,” he said, “which is why I am here. Ah, the clothes.”
The nurse Marie brought a suit, shirt, and the other things and put them on the bed. She smiled at Quinn and held it a while, wishing that he would smile back. She has a sweet girlish face, thought Quinn, and a lot of old- fashioned hair. How does her little cap stay on? But he did not smile back at her.
“These are not the clothes in which you came,” she said. “These are not cut like your own, but I hope you won’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
He was easier to look at when he was asleep, thought Marie, and when she left the room she wished he might stay a while longer and sleep here again.
Quinn got out of bed, took his nightshirt off, and started to dress. Whitfield said nothing. He is definitely not an official, thought Quinn, and he looks a little bit dreamy.
“Did you want something from me?” Quinn asked suddenly.
“Uh-want? Oh, no. Quite the opposite,” and Whitfield giggled.
Quinn buttoned his pants which took him some time. He was used to a zipper.
“And you’ll get me papers?”
“Well, it’s like this. I’m going to drive you to the American consul so that you can start getting your papers. We’ll drive to Tripoli.”
“Why Tripoli?”
“Because Okar is too small for a consul.”
“And you are with the consulate?”
At last, thought Whitfield. I myself would have asked that question first.
“No,” he said. “It’s like this. I run the pier-I’m with the company at whose pier-how to put this? — where you were unloaded.” Whitfield smiled again, but Quinn was looking down. “This circumstance,” said Whitfield who suddenly felt he could not stop talking, “this event, you see, gives me a sort of proprietary feeling about you, don’t you know? I mean, if you’ll picture the circumstance, you being delivered to me.” Whitfield had to giggle again.
I have rarely felt so uncomfortable in my life, thought Whitfield with distraction, natural of course, with a man who has no sense of humor. Apt to happen, of course, when boxed. I will cultivate a note of compassion. But then this thought was startled right out of Whitfield when Quinn said the next thing. Quinn did not look up from buttoning his shirt when he talked and perhaps this helped startle Whitfield. For the first time it struck Whitfield that Quinn was talking to him without looking him straight in the face.
