“That’s okay, as long as his pants weren’t hanging on the bedpost when the pocket got picked.”
“Walter, you know me better than that.” She slapped her forehead with her hand again. “Walter! For God’s sake, your face!”
“Huh?”
“What did you do to your face?”
“This? Oh, that’s an experiment.” What he had done was take a teaspoon, the one out of the medicine glass on the table by the bed, and place the edge of the handle across his cheek about where the picture showed the scar to be. Then he had lain on the spoon handle. He had been lying on the spoon handle nearly an hour, and it had made a groove in his face. “Let me have the mirror out of your purse, so I can check on the results.”
“Walter, why did you do that?”
“You took your time noticing it. Let’s see the mirror.”
She fished in her purse, found the mirror, and he held it in front of his face, moving his head from side to side to view the results of his experiment. There was a deep crease on his cheek. It looked somewhat like a scar. He was stunned at the resemblance he now bore to the picture.
“I wish you hadn’t fooled with your face, Walter.”
“This really makes me the double for the guy in the picture, though, don’t it? That’s what I wanted to find out.”
Vera Sue began to walk around the room. “I’m not so sure. You may have fouled things up.”
“How is that?”
“A man’s here.”
“Who? Your guy from Kansas City?”
“No, a man from New York. A new man. Mr. Brother, he said his name is.”
“Mr. Brother? I don’t know anybody by that name.”
“Well, he’s here now.”
“How in the name of creeping Jesus did he happen to show up, and what does he want?”
“That John What’s-his-name, the city policeman, sent him a telegram.”
“Oh, that. The O-Negative Blood Foundation thing. Twenty-five bucks reward for everybody connected with getting that blood except the guy who needed it, which is me. The cop was supposed to telegraph to get the reward. If you ask me, it’s as cockeyed as the rest of this. You say this Mr. Brother is here? Here at the hospital?”
Vera Sue nodded quickly. “He’s in the waiting room now.”
“Right outside?”
“Yes.”
“Oh what a stupid trick, bringing him here now.”
Vera Sue’s face became sullen. “Don’t call me stupid.”
Harsh was angry that she hadn’t consulted him. If she were standing a little closer, he thought, he would give her one with his fist, smack her across the room. He would teach her to talk over a move with him before she made it. Then he felt shaky inside, realizing he was helpless here in bed, and if Vera Sue walked out on him, he would really be up the creek.
“Vera Sue, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you dumb. I guess I said it because I’m sick.”
She took the mirror away from him and put it in her purse. “You’re a no good son of a bitch, did you know that?”
“Yes, I’m no good, and I’m sorry and I love you.”
“The hell with you, Walter.” She adjusted her new hat. “I’m going to bring in Mr. Brother.”
Just wait until he got up and around, he thought, and he would show her a couple of things.
Brother was a soft-looking man in an extremely neat brown suit. He had a straight slender nose with no flare at the nostrils, a nose like a hatchet blade. He had thick lips, oversize brown eyes. His skin was tanned a trifle lighter shade of brown than his suit, which was a ripe tobacco leaf. He carried a leather briefcase, the folder type without a handle that closes with a zipper. He kept the case under his right arm.
“Mr. Harsh?” He had a pronounced accent which Harsh identified at once as Spanish.
“That’s me.”
The man stepped to the bedside and took a close look at him. The effect on him was violent. His hands tightened convulsively on the briefcase. Harsh got the impression the man wanted to leap upon him and strike him, that the man hated him utterly and irrationally at first sight.
“Mister, the scar ain’t real, if that’s what startled you.”
Presently the man stepped back and hauled out a tan silk handkerchief of unusual size. By the time he had blotted his hands, lips and forehead, he had regained some control. He turned to Vera Sue. “Will you step outside, Miss, in order that Mr. Harsh and I may be alone?”
Vera Sue looked so disappointed that Harsh wanted to laugh. She had been going around doing as she damn pleased, he thought, and missing out on this talk was going to brown her off good. Vera Sue finally went out, but left the door open.
Brother closed the door, came back to the bed, seized the sheet and gave it a jerk, exposing Harsh in the altogether. “Hey! What’s the idea, Mister?”
“Turn over.”
“Mister, just who do you think you are, coming in here and yanking the covers off me and ordering me ass up and belly down? Who the hell do you think you are?” When he got that much said, Harsh wished he had kept still. It was the look that came into the man’s eyes. It made the hair on the back of Harsh’s neck turn cold, as if a frosty- footed mouse had walked across his spine. Harsh turned over on the bed as directed. The way he was lying then, he could not see the man’s face, but the effect of the stare stayed with him. Jesus, was the guy nuts? “Mister, I got this bum arm and lying this way it don’t feel too hot. How about turning back the way I was?”
After an uncomfortable few moments longer, Harsh felt the sheet come back down over him. He rotated onto his back once more.
“The young lady indicated she would tell you who I am,” Mr. Brother said.
“She said a man named Mr. Brother was here to see me. She didn’t say anybody would come in here jerking the covers off me.”
“Who told you to put that mark on the side of your face?”
“Nobody. I just laid the wrong way, something under my face.”
“You are lying to me, Mr. Harsh.” There was a carefulness about the way he formed his words that indicated he did his thinking in another language—either that, or that he was straining to hold back a monumental temper.
“Fine. I saw a photograph of a face looked something like mine, only it had a scar. I wanted to see how such a scar would look on me, so I laid down on the spoon handle. And you happened to show up before the marks went away.”
The man didn’t respond—it was as if he hadn’t heard. Everything Harsh said or did seemed to be beneath contempt to him. He whipped out a sheet of blank paper, folded it precisely, uncapped a fountain pen.
“Mr. Harsh, how would you like to earn twenty-five dollars? I will pay you five dollars each for five names. The five names are to be of people who have known you within the last few years.”
“How is that? You mean you want references of some sort—but you want to
The man looked at Harsh as if he was considering spitting on him. “I wouldn’t think a man like you does much without being bought.”
“Look, goddamn you, I can be run over just about so far.”
The man’s face became calm, but his eyes glittered. “Mr. Harsh, the only way I will deal with you is to buy you. I do not care to work with you on any other basis. I buy you or nothing. You are a cheap man, so buying you will not be expensive. Get it straight—I buy you, or I have nothing to do with you.”
Harsh lifted himself on his good elbow. “Look, I don’t know why you should be such a crock, but if you want references, I’ll give them to you for nothing. I won’t sell them, though. I got some pride too.”
