Honey in His Mouth

TWENTY-THREE

After Harsh had been in the hospital nine days, he was removed from the hospital and placed in jail. The inquest had been held while he was in the hospital, and they had taken him somewhere on a litter for his share of that, but he did not remember much about it. Just some stuff about five people dead, an automobile crash and some shooting. Then some words he did not know, such as extradition. Harsh lay on the litter swathed in burn dressings. His mind was relaxed from the dope they had shot into him to ease the pain of the burns. He had not cared much what happened.

When he had been in jail three days, Vera Sue Crosby paid him a visit. With Vera Sue was a solidly built man with a heavy face and foxy eyes. He sat near Vera Sue back of the glass window in the interview room. There was no opening in the glass panel between Harsh and Vera Sue, only a mechanical diaphragm that passed their voices back and forth.

“Who’s this bird?” Harsh did not like the looks of the heavy-bodied man.

“This is Mr. Arnick, my attorney.” Vera Sue was wearing new clothes, a crisp grey tropical suit and she had a fresh permanent.

Harsh swallowed nervously. “Is he going to represent me, too?”

Lawyer Arnick shook his head. “I think not. Miss Crosby happens to be my client, and your interests and her interests are not exactly identical.”

“What does that mean, shyster?”

Vera Sue leaned toward the diaphragm in the glass panel which separated them. “You listen to me. I waited in that hotel in Miami. But you didn’t show up. Then I heard about Mr. Arnick being a good attorney from a fellow I had a few drinks with, and I went to see Mr. Arnick. We had a nice talk and I hired him.”

Harsh looked at her bitterly. “You split the jewelry with him to pay him for keeping you out of it. That right?”

Lawyer Arnick cleared his throat. “There was no jewelry.” His eyes glittered over a faint smile. “We never heard of any jewelry.”

Vera Sue nodded. “That’s right.”

“God almighty.” Harsh felt the life draining out of him. “You can’t do that, you got to help me, Vera Sue.”

She smoothed the new tropical suit with her hands. “From what I hear tell, nobody can help you. Not where you’re going.

“What do you mean?”

Arnick leaned forward. “Surely you must have heard. They’re going to extradite you to South America to stand trial in your own country.”

“My own—”

Arnick smiled smugly. “For crimes against the state and against your people.”

“My people! What are you talking about? Who do you think I am?” The answer dawned on him as he shouted the question. “No. No—I’m Walter Harsh. I’m Walter Harsh! Vera Sue, tell him. Tell him who I am!”

“Everyone knows who you are,” Vera Sue said. “It’s been on all the television stations the past two weeks. I don’t see how you could expect anyone to believe you’re someone else—your Excellency.” There was the faintest hint of a smile on her lips before she spoke the last two words, but she erased it as quickly as it had come.

“No, you can’t do this, Vera Sue. El Presidente’s body, it was in the car—”

Arnick cut him off. “Maybe you should ask them to bring you the newspapers for the last few days. Then you would know that all the bodies in the car were burned beyond recovery or recognition. Your own burns were quite serious, too, I understand—but not to a comparable degree, and they didn’t prevent your identity from being conclusively established. Your facial scar, fingerprint records, dental records, the passport you were carrying, the monogrammed gun. Even down to your blood type, O-negative—not exactly common, you know.”

Harsh felt his throat closing up.

“Don’t do this, Vera Sue. Don’t let them do this. You know who I am.”

She stood up. Her voice when she spoke was low and vicious. “Sure, I know who you are. You’re a nasty son of a bitch. How could I forget that?”

Harsh watched Lawyer Arnick take her arm and they walked away together. He was sure he would never see her again.

The cell window through which the intense South American sun poured in had four bars on it. But the figure four did not fit in with anything else. Harsh lay on the bunk and tried to associate the figure four with something, with anything, but without success. The digit did not fit in with anything, it did not fit in with fifty thousand dollars which had burned, nor with sixty-five million, nor did it fit with seven, the number of people involved, Mr. Hassam and Doctor Englaster and Brother and Miss Muirz and El Presidente and Vera Sue and himself. Ten persons if you counted D. C. Roebuck and the two house servants at Brother’s place, or twelve if you included the two Highway Patrolmen who had arrested him, thirteen if you threw in the judge down here who had sentenced him to hang. Thirteen was a hot number. He guessed he would have to throw in Attorney Arnick and make it fourteen. There, he finally had something with four in it.

One thing for damn sure, he thought, Mr. Hassam had been wrong. Mr. Hassam had told him that he could never grasp how much sixty-five millions was, could not grasp such magnitude. Well, Hassam had been dead wrong, because Harsh could figure out how much sixty-five millions was. He could do that, all right. If he paid out one dollar for each breath he took, that would be paying out about fifteen dollars a minute, wouldn’t it? He counted his own breathing through what he estimated to be one minute. He timed the minute by counting chimpanzees the way he did in the photographic darkroom, “One chimpanzee, two chimpanzee,” and so on. One minute, fifteen breaths. All the minutes in one hour were sixty, which times fifteen was nine hundred dollars an hour. That times twenty-four for one day, that was how much? Nine hundred times twenty-four was twenty-one thousand and six hundred dollars. That was one day. In dollars. All the days in the year were three hundred and sixty-five if you didn’t screw around with leap year, and this times twenty-one thousand and six hundred dollars per day was still only, what, seven or eight million? He lay back. His breath came and went with such dryness it parched his lips. So sixty-five million was all the breaths you could take in five, six, seven, eight years, with change left over. It was a lot of honey for no one to taste, ever. That was sure.

If he had it, maybe he could use it to buy those eight years. But he didn’t have it, not a penny of it, and he didn’t have any eight years either. Or eight months or eight weeks or eight days. Outside the cell window he heard the stamping feet of the descamisada, the shirtless ones. He remembered enough of the Spanish Mr. Hassam had taught him to know they were calling for his blood.

Eight minutes—how much would that cost? He counted desperately on his fingers. Hundred twenty dollars. It would take four or five sales calls with his camera to earn that. His camera. He wondered what had become of it.

Eight seconds? Could he even buy eight seconds more of life? It would only cost a dime or so. One thin dime. Surely he had that much on him somewhere!

He was still feeling of his pockets when they came to his cell to collect him.

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