Drive in the front gate and follow the circular gravel driveway to the right. Turn left at the first intersection. The third headstone on the right will have the name Mallory on it. Twelve feet behind the stone you'll find the jar.'
'Suppose the gate is locked?' Dr. Afzul asked when he finished writing.
'There's no gate as such. Just an arched entranceway. The township has a newer cemetery but still maintains the old one after a fashion. How long will you be in New York?'
'Ten days.' He said it absently. He was thinking of something else. 'Dr. Mobley has approved your facial re- conssstruction.'
'Then we're in business.'
'I have proposed to Dr. Mobley that in the interest of furthering my technique I do a full-scale rebuilding job. He is consssidering it.' He hesitated for a moment. 'Even if he agrees, it will be tedious and painful,' he warned. 'It will take a long time.'
I refrained from stating the obvious. 'Have a nice visit in the big city, Doc.' I rose and went to the door of his office. I turned and looked back at him. 'Send a carton of cigarettes onto the ward for me with one of the nurses,' I said casually. 'Pall Malls.'
I moved out into the corridor.
The cigarettes were a test.
I didn't know if I'd sold Dr. Afzul. If he dug into his own pocket for the cigarettes, he was at least partially sold. If he didn't, it was time I began looking for another boy.
I'm not the worst judge of human nature, though, and on the way back to the ward I couldn't help feeling that for the first time in a long time I was once again in at least partial control of events.
2
Two days later one of the nurses in Dr. Mobley's group lingered near my chair during the usual walkthrough of the ward. She waited until the group was huddled around Willie Turnbull and Dr. Mobley was taking bows for the change in Willie's attitude and personality, then hurriedly slipped me a carton of Pall Malls before she rejoined the staff.
I concealed the cigarettes by shoving the carton up the loose sleeve of my robe. I waited until routine had returned to normal in the ward before I left my chair and hid the carton under the pillow on my bed. Cigarettes weren't taboo on the ward, but Spider Kern controlled their appearance. I wanted a carton that Kern hadn't obtained for me.
At night I kept the carton between the coil springs in the bed, removing it each morning after ward inspection and replacing it under the pillow. It was Spider Kern's weekend off-each attendant had. one weekend off in three- and I needed his presence for the next move in my chess game.
Kern was back on Monday, and so was Dr. Mobley. The psychiatrist stopped in front of my chair during his tour of the ward. He was flanked by the usual tight semicircle of doctors and nurses. Mobley seldom got closer than ten feet to the inmate to whom he was speaking. The technique made sense in that it was a preventive against sudden assault by a man roweled by the up-tight monotony of long days in the prison wing of the hospital. There could have been another reason, too. Four days out of five that we saw him, Mobley's nose was cherry-red. I had almost decided that Mobley's standoffish tactics were employed to keep from calling undue attention to his bourbon breath.
'Glad to hear you're finally responding to treatment, Arnold!' the chief psychiatrist boomed at me.
Responding to treatment was a joke, but I had a reason for showing response. 'I'm… feeling… better… thank… you,' I said.
There was a murmur from the group around Mobley. The majority of them had never heard me speak before. I could see Spider Kern eyeing me speculatively from his position five yards away. Spider hadn't known I was 'responding,' either. I spoke because I felt I had to demonstrate to Mobley that he wouldn't be wasting the institution's money by okaying plastic surgery for me. From the way he beamed I felt I'd made my point.
Dr. Afzul wasn't with the staff. I hoped it meant he was already en route to New York for the surgeons' convention. Now that matters had started to show progress, I was anxious to accelerate the process.
Spider Kern came back to my chair after Mobley and his entourage had left the ward. I'd been expecting him, and I spoke before he could. 'Something… for… you… under… my… pillow,' I told him.
He stared suspiciously, but he went away without saying anything. He was too cagey to go directly to my bed. I never did see him go to it, but the next time I looked the cigarettes were no longer under the pillow. In the next couple of days Kern's attitude became markedly more friendly.
I knew he hadn't really changed. He still had it in for me because of what I'd done to his buddy, Blaze Franklin. Nor had my attitude toward Kern changed. The cigarettes for him were intended to make a point. Since Kern controlled the normal channels for introducing merchandise onto the ward, a man who could flash a carton of cigarettes without Kern's assistance couldn't be entirely without friends beyond the locked doors. And if that were true, then the man shouldn't be an open target for the venting of Spider's malice. I could do without Kern's lighted- end cigarette treatments while I was healing from Dr. Afzul's surgery, if and when.
There was Kern's well-known greed, too. He'd figure that if cigarettes appeared mysteriously, perhaps there would be something else for him. If Dr. Afzul didn't fail me, there would definitely be something else for Kern. The broad-shouldered, swaggering little man was an integral part of my escape plan.
Ten days passed, more slowly than usual even, before Dr. Afzul reappeared on the ward. He didn't look in my direction during Mobley's morning tour, but that afternoon I was called to Afzul's office. The first thing I noticed when I sat down was that he was wearing an expensive pair of English brogues, shoes that must have cost eighty dollars. I nodded at them. 'I see you had no trouble finding the jar, Doc,' I said.
'No.' His expression was sober.
'Then I'll take what you brought for me.' The little man seemed ill-at-ease. He reached into a jacket pocket of his hospital whites and removed a folded-over wad of bills, which he handed me. I riffled it quickly. There were twenty-two hundred-dollar bills. I put it in a pocket of my robe. 'That's not all that was in the jar, Doc.'
He shook his head. 'I cannot give you the gun.'
'We made a bargain.' I pressed him, although I had never really expected that he would turn over the weapon.
'When I left here, I doubted the exissstence of the money, even,' he said. 'Finding the gun with it raised quessstions. Serious quessstions. I am now concerned to what end you would put a new face. It's not that I care what you do to yourself in the pursuit of your goal, whatever it may be, but there will be innocent byssstanders.'
'I don't understand your morality, Doc. You took my money, but you don't deliver.'
'My morality isss my own affair,' he retorted, unruffled. 'On the new face, I will deliver. On the gun, no.'
'What can I say to change your mind?'
'Nothing,' he said flatly. 'There is self-preservation to be considered, you see. You will be gone, but I will remain. And you might not get clear away, in which case there would surely be an exhaustive invessstigation.' He was silent for a moment. 'You will have to make up your mind that the new face I will consstruct for you will be worth your invessstment in me.'
'All right.' I shrugged it off. The gun would have helped, but the cash was next best. 'What's the program now?'
'We will begin on your face next week. A few quessstions now, please. You are a good healer? Or perhaps a cut heals slowly?'
'It heals quickly.'
He nodded. 'I will take blood sssamples. You should know there is a choice in the type of skin graft possible. With the dermatome, a skin-slicing machine, we are able to cut extremely thin slices of skin from a wide area. The choice comes in the thickness of the skin removed. We can take the top two layers, known as the epithelium and the deeper corium, which would conssstitute what is known as a full-thickness graft. Or we can take a thinner slice including only half the corium, a partial-thickness graft.'
