Smoke was filling the bedroom now, almost totally obscuring my vision. Soon, I thought, one of my neighbors was going to smell it, if that hadn't happened already, and call the fire department. Unfortunately, I'd be long gone by the time anybody reached me. Ironically, the burning bed beneath me formed a kind of baffle for the thick smoke, affording me a pocket of relatively clean air. But it was only prolonging the agony; flames were shooting up all around me, and the mattress on which I lay was growing very hot.
Sayonara, I thought with something approaching an air of resignation. I'd read somewhere that people who'd been burned at the stake usually died of suffocation before the flames finally reached them. I fervently hoped that was true, and that the same principle applied in bed as at stake. The litter of lives Garth had mentioned had finally been used up. My night visitors had nailed me quickly, and they'd nailed me good. I was going to die, and I would never know the reasons for it.
It was the last thing I thought before finally passing out from heat and lack of air.
5
I woke up coughing. To my considerable surprise it appeared that I wasn't dead-only slightly singed and short of breath, with lungs that felt as if they'd been painted with the drippings at the bottom of a barbecue pit and a mouth that tasted the same. There was a soft hissing sound that seemed to come from all around me, and after a few moments I realized that what I thought was badly blurred vision was due to the fact that I was looking at the walls of an oxygen tent. I started hacking again, brought up dark phlegm. As if on cue, a flap of the tent was pulled back and a reasonably attractive nurse appeared with a metal bowl to contain my own drippings. The large, familiar, and comforting figure of my brother loomed up behind the nurse, peered down at me over her shoulder. When I tried to speak and could only manage a huge yawn, I realized I was pretty well doped up on analgesics, expectorants, whatever. I finished hacking and spitting, then lazily waved to Garth and drifted back to sleep.
When I did finally come around for an extended stay, I had a splitting headache. My mouth still tasted like a furnace, and my lungs felt like leather, but it was considerably easier to breathe. When I took a physical inventory, I found that I was burned on various parts of my body, primarily the lower parts of my arms and legs. However, even though the burns were covered with light gauze, I was fairly certain that they weren't severe. My feet and legs, and particularly my knees, throbbed from the pounding the younger man had given my soles, but he hadn't broken anything. Incredibly, I was not only alive, but not even seriously hurt. Considering the fact that the last thing I remembered was passing out on a bed that was going up in flames, I considered my present condition most peculiar, if not downright miraculous. Try as hard as I might, I could not come up with any kind of plausible scenario that could explain my survival.
I pushed back the flap on the oxygen tent, pushed myself up into a sitting position and swung my legs over the side of the bed, groaned when pain shot through my body and pounded in my skull. Garth, who had been sitting in a chair near the foot of the bed, quickly rose, came to me, and very gently wrapped me in his arms.
'Thank God,' Garth said quietly, then tried to push me back under the oxygen tent.
'I'm all right,' I said, pushing back. 'Just let me sit up for a time. How the hell did I get here?'
Garth pulled the chair up to the side of the bed, sat down, and lightly rested his hand on my arm. 'What do you remember?' he asked quietly.
A very dangerous question, I thought as I looked at Garth. I thought I was beginning to understand at least a few of the reasons why Veil had reached out for my help in such a maddeningly problematic and circuitous manner, and now I was in a position where I had to be very cautious about how I did things. I believed I had convinced my torturers that Garth was a totally disinterested party who hadn't even seen Veil's mysterious painting, and that we hadn't had any discussions about the matter other than those the men had monitored on the telephone. If the men hadn't been convinced of this, I was convinced that I would have survived the fire only to be told that my brother was dead. I had myself a dilemma witli no means to resolve it, no loft to leave open and no lights to leave burning. The circumstances surrounding Veil's disappearance were now most definitely a matter for the police to investigate, but the price of telling Garth what had happened could well be his life. I wasn't certain what I should do, and I wanted time to think about it.
'At the moment, all I remember is a lot of smoke and flame,' I said carefully, watching my brother's face. 'Who got me out?'
'It must have been a fireman, although I was never able to find out which one,' Garth said in an odd tone of voice that went with the odd way he was looking at me. 'I responded to the original call when I heard the fire was in your apartment building. As a matter of fact, I was the one who found you unconscious on the sidewalk where somebody had dropped you. You were wrapped in soaked drapes from your living room. Whoever got to you first had a lot of presence of mind; he was cool, quick, and gutsy.'
Indeed, I thought. Also, whoever had broken through the apartment door, assessed the situation, torn down the living room drapes and soaked them in the kitchen sink, then waded under that life-saving shroud through a sea of flame to cut me free and carry me out, had to have been very close by-like virtually in the hallway outside my apartment. Even so, I considered it quite possible that my rescuer had been more badly burned than I was.
'What about the other people in the building?' I asked.
'The whole floor was gutted. Five people died-two of them children.'
'Oh, my God,' I whispered.
'You'll stay at my place until you find another one of your own,' Garth said. His tone had gone from merely odd to almost cold. He turned slightly, nodded toward a stack of boxes piled up next to the window. 'I brought you a few changes of clothes.'
'Thank you.'
'I've got a couple of other items for you, as well,' Garth said, rising from the chair and walking to the window. He selected a box, came back and sat down again. Resting the box on his knees, he took off the top and brought out two handguns-a nickel-plated Beretta in a shoulder holster and a palm-sized Seecamp with an ankle holster. He placed the guns, along with a box of cartridges for each, on the bed next to me. 'These will replace the ones you lost. You'll find copies of your city and state carry permits in the shoulder holster. It makes me very nervous to think of you going around unarmed, even in a hospital room.'
I checked the magazine and trigger action of the Beretta, shoved it back into its holster. The weapons of death looked out of place in this room inside a house of healing. 'Thanks again, Garth. You've really been taking care of business.'
'Yeah. You say all you remember is waking up and finding yourself surrounded by smoke and flame?'
'Uh… something like that.' I was beginning to feel decidedly uncomfortable.
'Something like that? Let me see if I can refresh your memory.' Once again he reached into the box. This time he brought out four lengths of rope, each frayed at one end and sliced cleanly with a knife at the other. He tossed the ropes into my lap. 'I'll bet a month's salary that the widths of those ropes match the friction burns on your wrists and ankles,' Garth continued coldly. 'They should, because that's where I found them tied. God knows how you got those bruises on your heels and soles; they're black. Do you always beat the soles of your feet and tie yourself up before you go to sleep?'
I'd run out of thinking time. 'Garth, I-'
'What the fuck's the matter with you?!' Garth snapped, his brown eyes flashing with anger. 'Five people died in that fire! Why the hell are you playing games with me?!'
'I'm sorry, Garth. I thought maybe I had a good reason for keeping my mouth shut. I can see now that I didn't.'
'The fire that destroyed that floor started in your apartment, didn't it?'
'Yes.'
'Very good. It sounds like your memory is improving.'
I proceeded to tell Garth what had happened, finished by explaining why I had considered keeping the story to myself.
'Dumb, Mongo,' Garth said, shaking his head in exasperation. However, his face had softened, and the chill was gone from his voice. 'I appreciate your concern for me, as misplaced as it was, but don't really understand
