Aaron Elkins: A Deceptive Clarity

It was too much to think about. Instead, I found myself sleepily and contentedly absorbed in the neon ceiling lights whizzing by like the lights of local train stations seen from a night express, and in the warm, lovely sensation of giving myself entirely into the competent, responsible hands of others.

I was at the Air Force hospital for two days, much of it passed in a dopey haze that I barely remember, while white-coated people took X rays, stuck more needles in me, and prodded me with cheerful insistence. "Does this hurt? No?… Does it hurt now?… Now?" Sooner or later they got their way, and then left me to doze until the next one turned up.

At one point-sometime during the first afternoon, I think-I wafted out of a soft, drugged haze to hear someone greet me in what seemed to be Japanese.

"Dr. Norgren? Hariguchi."

"Hariguchi," I replied sleepily, and forced up leaden eyelids. A thin, bearded, somewhat shabby, and altogether occidental man was in a chair at my bedside. He looked at me quizzically for a moment, and then he spoke again.

"Harry," he said. "Gucci. My name. Like the shoes."

"Oh. Hi."

"Hi. How're you doing?"

"Not bad. Who're you?"

"Harry," he began again. "Gucci. Like the-"

"No, I mean… I mean…" I'd forgotten what I meant.

"I'm with OSI-Office of Special Investigations." He put a card in front of my eyes and held it patiently there for me to read, which I blearily pretended to do, although it could have been his Safeway card for all I knew. Or cared.

"They said you'd be able to answer some questions. OK?"

"Sure, if they said so." For myself, I doubted it. I felt as if I were floating ten feet off the ground, bumping lazily against the ceiling like a helium-filled balloon.

"Great." From a pocket in his shapeless, shawl-collared cardigan he produced a small dog-eared notebook stuffed with protruding bits of paper and held together with a thick rubber band. He touched the tip of a mechanical pencil to his tongue. "All right. For starters, can you tell me anything about those two bozos in the storage room? The guard never got a good look at them."

"The two-"

"What'd they look like?"

"Oh. Pretty ugly."

I think he repressed a sigh. Things were going to be harder than he'd anticipated. "Anything else? Were they tall? Short? White? Black? Did they say anything? Call each other by name? Were they skinny? Fat? American? German?"

That took concentration, and it was a while before I replied. "Uh, white. Definitely white. And they didn't say anything. And… uh… what was the rest?"

'Tall? Short?" He was very good-humored, very pleasant, not at all impatient.

"One of them was short. But husky. Strong as a gorilla. Built like a, like a…" I was beginning to drift off again. The sheets were luscious: cool and clean and smooth.

"How short? Five feet? Five two?"

"Mm… maybe five seven, five eight. Little guy. But strong. Mean. Dangerous." I barely knew what I was saying.

"Moderate height," Gucci said dryly, writing in his notebook and rearranging his five feet six inches or so in the metal chair.

"Sorry," I said. "No offense."

He laughed. "What about the other guy?"

"I don't know. Mean face. He had some kind of little steel whip-"

"I know." He grinned. "Smarts like hell, doesn't it?"

"It sure does. What was it?"

"It's called a sipo; a thin, flexible steel spring with a weighted knob on the end. You carry it telescoped, but it opens in a flash. Doesn't do much real damage, but if you know how to use it, it can really hurt. A single flick can make a guy helpless. So they tell me."

"You've been correctly informed."

"We found it outside on the stairs. No usable prints. Made here in Germany, but you can get them in the States from those lousy paramilitary magazines. Fourteen dollars and ninety-five cents."

"Mmm."

"Hey, don't go to sleep on me. Did you notice anything else about them? Glasses, wristwatch, ring? Unusual shoes?"

"Unusual…" In my fuddled state, it struck me as funny, and I'm afraid I snickered. "No, I didn't see any unusual shoes." My voice seemed to be someone else's, coming from a long way off. I giggled some more, I'm sorry to say, and let my eyes close. I was floating slowly up into a gauzy, warm, welcoming mist.

"Mister…?" I said, and started at the sound of my own voice. "I seem to be drifting off."

"That's OK; no problem. And make it Harry."

"OK, um, Harry… I wanted to ask you something."

"Sure, shoot."

But I couldn't remember. I tried halfheartedly to claw my way out of the fog, but I was sailing away, no longer bobbing against the ceiling, but far up out of reach. "Oh… yeah-the pictures-did they

…" I drifted and dozed for what seemed like a long time, but when I squeezed my eyes briefly open again, he was still there, smiling patiently.

"Did they get away with anything?" I managed to ask.

Whatever he answered, I never heard it.

A couple of mornings later I was pronounced fit to leave the hospital. The verdict, delivered by a birdlike, whimsical Indian doctor, was that I had gotten off lightly: an "insignificant" concussion and a fracture of the right nasal bone- "Just as well left unset, in my opinion, unless you cannot bear the idea of a small, mm, ah, kink in your nose." (I could bear it.) Also two bruised ribs and a few abrasions of little consequence (to Dr. Gupta). Thanks to a sturdy constitution and two codeine tablets every four hours, I felt remarkably fine.

I looked better than I had any right to look, too. My face, though puffy and amusingly colored around the eyes, was well on its way back to its usual appearance-which, I have been told, is nice but not unusually so.

By Bev, in fact. Right after the first time we made love, in fact. We had been lying side by side, on the floor, as it happened, and she had been relaxedly studying my face, running a finger over my lips, that sort of thing.

"Do girls generally tell you you're sexy?" she asked.

"Many times each day. It gets pretty boring."

"Well, you're not." She giggled. "Your face, I mean. It's, you know, a nice guy's face-open, pleasant… but not very remarkable."

"Too kind."

"No, I'm serious. You look like the kind of guy a girl feels safe with. What I mean is, you don't radiate this animal sexuality, the way some guys do. You're not insulted, are you? I'm just being honest, Chris."

So she was. I suppose I should have known then that things weren't going to work out in the end.

By 10:00 a.m. I was in my room at Columbia House. A message for me to call Corporal Jessick, the army clerk assigned to the show, had been left for me at the reception desk, and as soon as I'd made myself a cup of coffee in the electric percolator on a shelf over the bathroom sink, I dialed 2100.

"Dr. Norgren? Hey, I'm glad you're out, sir. I heard what happened. That's awfull How're you feeling?"

"Fine, thanks."

"That's wonderful. Listen, Colonel Robey flew in from Heidelberg this morning. He's been trying to get ahold of you at the hospital-"

"I checked out at nine."

"-but they checked you out at nine, so then he tried to call you in your room here at the O Club, but you weren't there."

"I just got here this minute."

"You must have just got there."

"This minute," I said. "Did he leave a message?"

"He wants to know if you feel able to make a meeting of senior staff at eleven o'clock."

"Sure."

"Great. It's in Room 1102, a couple of doors down from the Clipper Room."

I made another cup of coffee and wandered restlessly around the room-suite, actually: big well-furnished living room, writing area, bedroom, well-stocked minibar in the refrigerator. It was all comfortable enough, but I was at loose ends. I'd been cooped up for two days, and what I needed was a walk in the cold air, not a sit-down meeting. For a while I stood at the window, looking grumpily down on the leafless trees, the gray-green plaza, and the soaring, three-pronged monument to the airlift. An intelligent, evocative piece of work, that monument; and that is high praise from someone who sneers at abstract sculpture on principle.