were much less elaborate than in the initial stages.
'Right. How are we coming?'
'I've been thinkin' about it,' he said. 'I'll be back after lights out when we can talk.'
For the balance of the evening I sat immobile in my chair in the alcove. I ignored Spider Kern, but I watched Rafe James. Twice as he moved about the ward James turned his mean-looking eyes in my direction. The expression upon his long, mournful-looking features could only be called speculative. It was the indicator as far as I was concerned. Whatever Spider Kern was setting up for me, Rafe James was to play a part in it.
It was just after midnight when Kern came to my bedside. Officially he had just gone off duty. 'Let's go out to the sun deck,' he muttered. I got out of bed and followed him to the silent solarium. He sat down and lit a cigarette before speaking again. I could have predicted his first words. 'You've got the cash?' he asked.
'I'll have it.' I didn't want him thinking he could shake me down close to the deadline and find it on me.
'No mistakes,' he warned.
'There'll be none.'
He took a long drag on his cigarette. 'You're talkin' pretty good now, huh? Been puttin' us on all this time?'
'Would you be getting five grand if I hadn't?'
He grinned. 'Guess not. When you plannin' on handin' over the packet?'
'When you deliver me to the main highway.'
He nodded. 'I been thinkin' the same way. I want you off the grounds when the blowoff comes.'
'I'll need clothes, shoes, and a hat. And the gun.'
'Okay.' He frowned, considering. 'It works out,' he decided. 'When we're set, I'll bring you the stuff and you can dress in the john. We'll walk out the ward door here together. I'll take you down the corridor to the side door that'll let us out onto the parkin' lot. From there I'll drive you to the highway in my car.'
'It sounds fine.' I pretended to agree. 'I'll be picking up the cash alongside the driveway between the hospital and the highway.' I stopped as though I'd said more than I intended.
I could see him changing gears while he thought that one over. The critical moment for me would be when Spider Kern thought I had the cash in my hands. I was sure that it was his intention to gun me down as an escapee at that moment. 'All right,' he said after a moment. 'When's it gonna be?'
'How about a week from tonight?'
'That soon? No reason why not, though.' He was studying me. 'You're pretty sure of yourself, ain't you? Pretty cool?'
'I'm just leaving everything up to you.'
'Yeah, that's the way. Okay, anything else we need to know or do?'
'Make sure the hat's a broad-brimmed one.'
'Right. I'll pick up a straw sombrero. We'd better make the move around eleven P.M. so I can get back on the ward before the shift changes at midnight. I want your disappearance discovered on the owl shift, not on mine. Okay, let's pack it in.'
I went back to bed but not to sleep.
Despite Spider Kern's question about my coolness, I felt far from cool after the months of inactivity.
All during the final week I paid close attention to the manner in which Dr. Afzul rebandaged my head after each session with the aerosol spray can in his office. There was less bandaging necessary each time. Mornings in his office I would unbandage myself while he was making his preparations. At night in bed I practiced unbandaging and rebandaging myself following Afzul's patterns until I was sure I could do it alone.
I still hadn't seen myself. There was no mirror in the doctor's office, and all my practicing was done in the dark. If Dr. Afzul ever noticed anything different in the arrangement of the bandages when I walked into his office mornings, he never said anything.
'You'll be getting a package in the mail one of these days with no return address on it,' I told him on the morning of what I hoped would be my next-to-last day in the institution. 'Don't open it until you're alone.'
He knew what I meant. It would be the balance of the twenty thousand I'd promised him for the face job. I said it casually, as though it were still something a long way in the future. There were ways he could have helped my getaway, but I didn't ask. During the hours he'd worked over me I'd probed him sufficiently to be sure in my own mind that he wasn't flexible enough to help actively in my escape. I had no intention of jeopardizing the half loaf I had for a potential whole one.
Then something happened that made me wonder if I hadn't bought more of Dr. Afzul than I'd realized. For the first time in our association, he went out of his office and left me alone in it. I didn't waste time worrying about whether he suspected that my leave-taking was imminent. I hurried to his cabinet and removed a flat packet of gauze and a roll of tape, which I shoved into a pocket of my robe.
There were a stack of makeup kits in the cabinet, and I moved the top layer aside and opened the bottom kit. I took from it two tubes of a facial cream that Afzul had explained to me some time before would improve my appearance during the healing process. I put everything back so that no one could tell there had been tampering until the bottom kit was opened. I passed up the chance to take the entire kit. It was too bulky.
I would have liked to say goodbye to little Dr. Afzul when he returned to his office, but I didn't trust him that much. He had carried his share of the load, and I didn't want to rock the boat. Back on the ward I put gauze, tape, and makeup under my mattress. The aerosol cans were already there.
I had had to move my twelve hundred dollars several times during the months of plastic surgery. Each time the case of toilet tissue got down to the next-to-last layer, I removed my cash and stashed it temporarily until a new case went into the closet and I could hide the bills in the bottom layer again. I didn't think Kern was going to do anything to derail the situation now that he undoubtedly had a plan for taking care of me, but it didn't hurt to be careful.
It was a long day. I had made all my preparations, and there was nothing to do but wait. I didn't have a foolproof plan by any means. A major weakness in it was the timing, but I'd been unable to find a way around it. Kern and James went off duty at midnight, which meant my escape had to be made before then.
This timing meant that I'd have only a short period from the moment I reached the outside until the midnight change of shift. If anything happened to Kern and James during my escape, and there was almost no way as I saw it that nothing could happen, they would be missed at midnight. There would be an immediate bed-check, I'd be found missing, and the alarm would sound.
Aside from the short lead time, the advantage was with me. The options of Kern and James were limited by the fact they had to coddle me until they had the cash. When they did, I was expendable. They would never intend for me to return to the ward alive. A dead escaping prisoner told no stories.
My own options were flexible. My first plan was to kill Kern on the ward, take his keys, and let myself out of the place and take his car in the parking lot. A drawback was that although I knew which key on his key ring opened the ward door, I didn't know which one opened the side door to the parking lot. Even near midnight I could hardly stand at the door trying a succession of keys without risking observation and questioning by someone.
There was another fact. An overriding factor, the more I considered it. From his conversations with me, Kern planned to take me to his car and drive me to the point between the hospital and highway at which I would presumably hand over the money. Almost surely Spider would want Rafe James along on the expedition so that when the moment came no mistakes would be made in disposing of me.
James could hardly be waiting in Kern's car, though, since even a supposed dimwit like me might reasonably be expected to balk at two-to-one odds at such a critical moment. That meant Rafe James in another car, following us. The more I thought about it the more sure I was that was the way it had to be.
And the more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea.
Properly handled, it would give me the chance I needed to add to my lead time following my escape.
3
The final hour of waiting was the worst.
