Veil

man's arm up behind his back in a hammerlock. With his left hand he reached into Tompkins's armpit and pressed a nerve that effectively paralyzed the painter's left side.

'I repeat,' Veil said, his voice hoarse from the effort of absorbing the pain from Tompkins's blow, 'I'm not here to spy on or embarrass anyone at the hospice, and I'd appreciate it if you'd keep this encounter to yourself. If and when the time is right, I'll seek you out and explain what I can to you. Under other circumstances, I'd consider it a great honor for you to allow me to sit down and talk with you. I can't begin to tell you how much I admire and respect you and your work. Just trust me for now, Tompkins. And find somebody else's ass to kick.'

Veil released Tompkins's arm, turned, and headed up the trail.

'Kendry!'

Veil stopped and turned back. Tompkins was standing in the middle of the trail, thick legs slightly apart, hands extended toward Veil in a kind of gesture of supplication. His incredibly expressive eyes were filled with pain and yearning that Veil sensed were spiritual and had nothing to do directly with whatever disease was ravaging his body. 'What is it?' Veil asked tightly.

'Fight me, Kendry. Please.'

Veil kicked off his boots, removed his belt and shirt, and started back down the trail toward Tompkins. T his time Tompkins rushed at him like a bull, head down and arms extended out to his sides to grab and maul. Veil waited until the last moment, then took a step to his right, flexed his knees, and came up hard with his left shoulder into Tompkins's left side. The force of Veil's blow combined with Tompkins's momentum sent the big man hurtling into the air at an angle, like a train that had been derailed. Tompkins flipped in the air and landed hard on his back. For a few seconds Veil was afraid he had hurt the other man, but Tompkins had only had the wind knocked out of him. Eventually the man got to his feet and coughed. He took a deep breath, let out a whoop of delight, and charged.

Laughing along with Tompkins, Veil switched from judo to classic karate and aikido techniques, softening and symbolizing the blows but punctuating each strike at the eyes, throat, groin, spine, neck, and solar plexus with a soft hiss to let the other man know that he had been hit. Occasionally he would strike Tompkins a hard, if harmless, blow, for he sensed that the man needed physical pain to drive away, if only for a few moments, his other, more desperate pain.

However, Tompkins's huge fists connected on more than one occasion. With Veil pulling his punches and concentrating on not accidentally hurting the other man, it was inevitable that Tompkins would land a punch from time to time. Finally, with blood running into his eyes and his body sore from pounding, Veil again used judo to flip Tompkins into the air and on his back with more force than he had used before.

'Enough,' Tompkins panted when he was finally able to sit up. 'Thanks, Kendry. I hope I didn't hurt you too badly.'

Veil threw back his head and laughed. Adrenaline was still coursing through his system, making him feel good, intoxicating him. 'You're welcome, and you damn well did hurt me. But I enjoyed it. If you'd like, we'll do it again when I have the time.'

'I'll be long dead before I'm ready for another tussle with you, Kendry,' Tompkins said casually. 'You're too fucking good for me.' 'I'm sorry, Tompkins.'

'About what?'

'The fact that you're dying.'

'Yeah, me too. Dying's a pain in the ass.'

'I can imagine.'

'Anyway, I needed to get rid of some venom. You pulled my fangs for me, then stuck them up my ass. You have no idea how god-awful mellow it is around this place, what with Lazarus People who wouldn't get excited if the mountain fell on them, and future stiffs like me. It's been driving me crazy. It felt damn good to fight, yell, punch, and bleed a little.' Tompkins sighed and held out his hand for Veil to pull him to his feet. 'You drink?'

'I've been known to on occasion.'

'Good,' Tompkins said, putting an arm over Veil's shoulder and steering him off on a trail leading to the right. 'I may not be able to outfight you, but I know damn well I can outdrink you.'

'Well, it will certainly be interesting to see how well your massive ego survives two crushing defeats in one day.'

Veil, showered and draped in a thick terry-cloth robe that was two sizes too big for him, raised his glass to Tompkins as the other man, wearing an identical robe, emerged from the bathroom. 'You certainly don't fight like a man who's dying.'

'Lymphatic cancer,' Tompkins replied evenly as he poured himself a tumbler of Jack Daniel's over ice. 'I've got another five months, maybe six. In the meantime I keep in shape and try to keep going the best I can. Where did you learn to fight the way you do?'

'Here and there.'

'I know a little bit about street fighting, and you didn't learn to fight like that on the streets—not even New York's streets. You must have had some pretty fine teachers.'

'A few.'

'You're not very talkative,' Tompkins said, studying Veil as he swirled the liquid in his glass.

'Let's find something we can talk about.'

Perry Tompkins laughed. 'Good grief, you mean you can't even talk about where you learned to fight?'

'The Army.'

'The Army. That's like saying Hemingway learned to write from his second-grade teacher.' Tompkins paused, and his smile faded. 'Are you sure you're not doing a number on Pilgrim and Dr. Solow?'

'Ask them.'

'Do they know what you're doing?'

'Dr. Solow knows some of it, but not all. Pilgrim will confirm that I'm not up to anything that would bring harm to anyone in the hospice.'

Tompkins considered Veil's answer for a few moments, then nodded absently. He seemed to have reached some kind of decision. 'You've spent a lot of time eyeballing that Army compound down the valley,' he said at last. 'Something over there interest you?'

Now it was Veil's turn to laugh. 'Perry, you're the one who needs a PI license! Why won't you leave it alone?'

'Because I may be able to help you,' Tompkins replied seriously.

Veil slowly sipped his drink, then set the glass down on a nearby table. 'How?' he asked quietly.

'You want to get in there, right?'

Veil thought about it, nodded.

'Come here,' Tompkins continued, motioning for Veil to follow him out onto the cantilevered deck that overlooked the valley. He pointed to the waterfall, a quarter of a mile away. 'The light isn't right now, but when it is, you can almost see through the water. I don't know how the hell you'd get down there without breaking your ass, but I do know there's the mouth of a big cave at the base, just behind the falls.'

Veil studied the broad plume of cascading water, then turned and looked down the valley toward the Army compound, which he judged to be more than two miles away. 'I don't understand,' he said at last. 'What good is a cave behind the waterfall going to do me?'

'I do a lot of walking around here; it's good for the muscle tone.' Tompkins paused and tapped his foot lightly on the hardwood deck. 'This mountain is limestone; it's honeycombed with caves. I know because I keep finding openings in the mountainside. I've never gone into any of them, because I'm not into darkness right now. But the mouth of that cave behind the falls is the biggest I've seen. It just occurred to me that, given enough time, patience, and the right equipment, a man might actually be able to work his way through the mountain, down the valley, and come out somewhere on the other side of that wall. For all I know, you could end up dead or in Boston, but I figured you might want to know just in case you don't come up with any better ideas.'

'Thanks, Perry. Thanks very much.'

Tompkins's lips drew back in a boyish grin. 'Come on, Veil, tell me what's going on. We're friends now, and this is the most interesting thing that's happened to me since the doctors told me I was going to die. You can trust