Margaret Maron - The Right Jack

Charmed, Sigrid bought one, thinking it might amuse Commander Dixon. As she paid. Knight emerged triumphantly from the rear of the store with a small plastic hand fastened to quite a long bamboo stick and a kaleidoscope.

"I always liked these," he confessed, looking more like five than twenty-five and making Sigrid smile.

As it was now nearly two o'clock, Schmitt was encouraged to double-park at the

corner of Eighth and West Fiftieth and hop out for a round of frankfurters from a pushcart.

"Sauerkraut or onions, ma'am?" he asked.

"Sauerkraut, please."

"Onions for me, Schmitty," said Knight, "and get yourself a couple, too."

Sabrett frankfurters are the smell of New York and their redolence filled the car as Alan Knight waxed nostalgic about Southern hot dogs, the buns stuffed with chili, cole slaw, and finely chopped raw onions. "Took me a long time to get used to pickled cabbage on my franks."

"I've eaten what the South calls a frankfurter," Sigrid said. "Fire-engine red, limp and mushy, no snap to the casing. Give me these any day."

An amiable argument about the merits of regional foods lasted almost to the hospital. It served as well as anything else to distract them from the interview that lay ahead, but both had fallen silent by the time Petty Officer Schmitt pulled up to the entrance of a grim, soot-stained building erected in the twenties.

Alan Knight lagged behind as Sigrida pproached the main desk to ask directions.

"I'll be back in a minute," he said.

It was more than a minute and Sigrid was becoming impatient when he returned from the gift shop with a small, prettily wrapped box.

"Perfume," he said as they rode up in the elevator. "Just in case she needs to be reminded that she's still a beautiful woman."

And she was. Even with the cuts and bruises and the deep black circles under her eyes, the slender woman who lay sleeping on the steel-framed hospital bed possessed a more than average beauty. There was strength in the small pointed chin, intelligence in the sweep of her brow. She was said to have had short white hair that curled all over her head-'A nest of stork feathers,' was the way Vassily Ivanovich had put it-but smooth bandages now encased her head, reminding Sigrid of the white line band that nuns used to wear under their black veils to hide their hair.

She wore a bleached and faded hospital gown and the sight of it made a slow anger against Molly Baldwin begin to burn. Somehow Sigrid sensed how much Commander Dixon would hate that gown. Lacy lingerie and pretty negligees were Sigrid's secret self-indulgence, so surely a woman as feminine as Ivanovich and Tillie had described would have dozens of frilly gowns and bed jackets. Someone should have brought her her own things instead of sentencing her to this ugly cotton shift.

Damn that girl!

The gown had wide short sleeves and the bandaged stub could be clearly seen. Commander Dixon's arm ended halfway between her elbow and shoulder.

No elbow joint, Sigrid thought numbly. She had hoped the surgeons had saved it. Without the elbow, any prosthetic device would probably be clumsier and bulkier.

She glanced at Alan. He was white-faced. "Maybe we ought not to wake her," he whispered.

Sigrid would have liked to run away,t oo, but she steeled herself and approached the bed. "Commander Dixon?"

A frown furrowed the woman's smooth features. Her eyes opened, blankly at first, then awareness filled them as if she were coming back from a long distance. She looked at Sigrid without curiosity.

"Doctor?" she murmured.

"No, Commander. I'm Lieutenant Harald, New York City Police."

"Police?" Her gaze fell on Alan Knight's blue uniform with its two gold stripes on the sleeve. "Lieutenant?"

"Alan Knight, ma'am. ONI."

"Yes… of course." She tried to push herself more erect on the pillows and grimaced with the pain of the effort.

"Shall I crank you up?" Knight asked anxiously, bending for the handle at the foot of the narrow bed.

"Just a little, please," she whispered. Her eyes went to her bandaged arm and a low moan escaped her lips.

"Every time I wake up, I keep hoping it's been a bad dream."

Anguish hung in the room like an almost palpable miasma and Sigrid could feel herself stiffening. "If you'd rather,

Commander, we can come back another time."

"No. I'm all right."

"Can you talk about Friday night?"

"Friday." The frown reappeared. "What's today?";

"Monday."

"That's right. The nurse told me that at-breakfast? Lunch? I'm sorry. Everything keeps getting muddled."

She spoke with some effort and her voice was low, but there was a musical undertone that was very appealing and it reminded Sigrid that Haines Froelick said that he and Zachary Wolferman had been equally enchanted by the commander's voice.

"Commander, do you remember the cribbage tournament?" Sigrid asked.

"Yes… Vassily and I… the Hotel Maintenon. We had drinks and there was a nice old gentleman and his cousin. We talked and then-"

Her voice broke off and she looked at them in mute appeal.

"Was anyone else badly hurt?" she whispered. "They said two men were killed and the man I was playing against

– a policeman-was seriously hurt but they didn't mention any women."

"Your cousin is fine," Sigrid said bluntly, guessing what lay behind her question. "She was at the far side of the room and wasn't hurt at all."

"You know about Molly?"

Her head sank deeper into the pillows and tears seeped out around her closed lids. "I've been so worried," she whispered. "And I couldn't ask. She said not to and I didn't know if she was in trouble… or what. You're sure she's all right?"

"We're sure," Knight said.

She opened her eyes and looked at them gratefully. "Then why hasn't she come?"

"I'm sure she has," Sigrid lied impulsively. "You were probably too groggy to remember."

"Yes, that's it. That must be it."

"Commander," said Alan Knight, "you mentioned Vassily Ivanovich. Could you describe your relationship with him?"

Commander Dixon turned her head on the pillow and smiled faintly at him. "Isn't he a love? He and my dad were friends once. He rememberss o much about Dad that I had forgotten. Hellraisers., both of them."

"There's been some suggestion that perhaps Ivanovich's visit here isn't quite as innocent as it appears," said Knight.

Her eyes widened. " Who suggested?"

"After all, ma'am, with your job and security clearance-"

"I forgot you were Intelligence," she said and her bell-toned voice held the first hint of amusement. "Always looking for spies under the bed. Forget it, Lieutenant. I don't talk about my job to anybody, not even to long-lost friends of my father. Anyhow, Vassily's never asked. I don't think he would. Even if they told him to. I know it's hard to understand, but he really does love Americans. My father pulled him out of the water himself. He'd never do anything to hurt my father's child."

The words had tired her, but she seemed compelled to make him understand. "Some things go beyond ideology, Lieutenant."

"But, ma-am-"

"No buts, Lieutenant," she said softly.

He let it drop for the moment andh elped Sigrid lead her through what she had observed Friday night. It added nothing to what they already knew. No, she had noticed no one hovering around Table 5 before they were asked to take their places; no, she hadn't paid any attention to the cribbage board at the next place. It was the first time that she'd realized that Zachary Wolferman was one of the dead men and her eyes misted.

"What about his cousin? Mr.-Froman?"

"Froelick," Sigrid told her. "He wasn't hurt."

"That's good."

Her attention drifted towards the packages they had placed on her bed table. "Are those for me?"