Peter Abrahams - Lights Out

Paz sucked impatiently on his teeth. “I can’t believe you still want games. I’m talking about the C-note, of course.”

Eddie’s voice took off again, up and out of control. “I gave it to you, you stupid fuck.”

Paz shook his head. “You gave us one hundred dollars. But it wasn’t the right bill. How did you imagine you’d get away with that?”

It wasn’t the right bill? What did that mean? He’d had two of them, of course, the first rolled in El Rojo’s cigarette, the second won from Bobby Falardeau .

“It wasn’t the right bill?”

“Don’t pretend you haven’t known that all along,” said Paz. “It was never a question of the money. We wanted the bill itself. As I’m sure you know.”

Eddie’s voice rose once more. “You…” He couldn’t say it, couldn’t make it real with words. “You did that to me because I mixed up two bills?”

“Mix-up?” said Paz. “I don’t think so. Now, to prevent additional… procedures, why don’t you tell me where to find the C-note Senor Cruz gave you?”

Eddie felt a laugh, wild and insane, building inside him. He didn’t let it out because he was afraid of the pain that might come. He squeezed all that wildness and insanity into contempt, and said: “I used it.”

Paz came closer. His hands curled around the safety bar.

“A lie, and not particularly inventive.”

Eddie was silent. Paz slapped him across the face with the back of his hand; the way Jack had long ago at Galleon Beach. Then he took a deep breath, as though trying to compose himself. “More games,” he said. “You used the money. Where?”

Eddie remembered where: at the restaurant in Connecticut where he’d eaten with Karen. He even remembered the name: Au Vieux Marron, although he didn’t know what it meant. But why tell Paz the truth? Why give him a chance to recover the bill? He wasn’t going to let Eddie out alive, no matter what happened.

“Suppose,” said Paz, “you really did spend the money. If you tell us where, you can leave.”

Eddie let some time pass, as though he were making up his mind. Then he said: “Do I have your word on it?”

“I give you my word.”

The insane laugh rose again. Eddie stuffed it back down and said: “Grand Central Station.”

Paz grasped the safety bar. A vein pulsed in his forehead, jagged, like a lightning bolt. “Grand Central Station?”

“At the newsstand.”

“You’re lying. You don’t believe I’ll keep my word.”

“I know goddamned well you won’t. Because if you do I’ll come back and kill you, and the nurse, and whoever else I can find.”

Paz smiled. “I don’t think you’ll want to do that.”

“Are you crazy?”

Paz leaned closer. Eddie could smell his breath: it smelled like meat going bad. “Just for the sake of argument, what did you buy?”

“Cigarettes.”

“With a hundred-dollar bill?”

“It didn’t bother them.”

“What kind of cigarettes?”

“Camels.”

Without another word, Paz left the room. Eddie knew what he was doing: searching through his clothes for corroborating evidence. It was there: the half-full pack left in the pocket of Jack’s corduroy pants.

Paz returned in less than a minute with the cigarettes. He shook them out of the pack; some fell on Eddie’s chest. He even peered inside, as though the bank note might be there. Then he studied the writing on the outside of the pack. Eddie foresaw the direction Paz’s thoughts would take. If he could prove that the cigarettes came from the newsstand at Grand Central, then Eddie was probably telling the truth and the C-note was gone, back in circulation. If he could prove that the cigarettes hadn’t come from there, then Eddie was lying and he probably still had it. There was also the possibility that he couldn’t prove it either way.

Eddie reached that point a half second before Paz. Paz frowned, slipped the empty pack inside his jacket, and said: “We shall see.” He went out.

Eddie lay still for a few moments. Then he threw up all over himself.

Rage began to grow inside him, so fast and strong he felt his chest would split. He wanted to release some huge sound but couldn’t, not without bringing Paz. Control, Nails, control. That’s how you got Louie and the Ozark brothers, that’s how you’ll get him. Nails. Yes. Now there was no escaping that identity. The future was clear: red and short.

Eddie pushed against the safety bar with his right arm, pushed as hard as he could. Something slipped a little inside the joint where the bar met the bed frame. He pulled back the other way, suddenly and with all his might. That brought the sound of shearing metal and then a clink, as though a bolt had fallen down a hollow tube. Eddie jerked against the safety bar. The end sprang out of the bed frame.

He slid the restraint off the bar, reached across to the restraint on his left arm and unbuckled it. A few seconds later he was free.

Eddie sat up and put his feet on the floor, but he didn’t get up right away. He was afraid of igniting the pain. Move, Nails . Slowly, pushing off with his hands like an invalid, Eddie rose. He felt no pain at all. The painkillers were still working.

He used the sheets to clean himself, glancing down at his bandages as he did. The sight of them made him light-headed; he had to bend down, hands on knees, to keep from fainting.

Eddie went to the door, listened, heard nothing. He opened it and looked out. He was at one end of a corridor. There were several doors leading off it; at the other end, stairs. He stepped silently into the corridor. Paz. Then the nurse. Then anyone he could find.

The first door on the right was open. Eddie looked in, saw a simple room with no one in it. It had a bed with a bare mattress; wheeled up beside it was a metal device that resembled a dentist’s x-ray machine. On a radiator in the corner lay the clothes he’d borrowed from Jack; the corduroy pants had slid to the floor.

Eddie moved toward the radiator. On the way he passed the metal device, saw that there was no x-ray tube suspended from it, but a metal helmet with a chin clamp at the bottom. He stopped, examined it. Then he swung the helmet around and stuck his head inside. It fit him perfectly.

First there was only blackness and silence. Then a woman spoke. “One-twenty over eighty,” she said. After that came a blue-white glare. Through the glare he saw a white ceiling with powerful lights hanging from it. Music played: “Malaguena.” He saw a woman’s face. She wore a surgical mask, but he recognized her: the mermaid-waitress from Brainy’s.

“Pulse-eighty-two.” Her voice sounded in his ears.

“Remove the gown,” said Paz, somewhere out of sight.

Then came the blue-white glare again, the scalpel, the pink and plump hands with the manicured nails. The scalpel rotated, giving him a good look at it, then disappeared from view.

Paz again: “Right there.”

Pregnant pause.

Blue-white glare.

“Malaguena.”

Paz grunted. A nice touch. Then up came the pink, plump hand, red with blood or dye number two, with the dangling pouch in the manicured fingers.

A prop, or a cadaver’s pouch, or a live one, but not his. Eddie ripped off the helmet, tore at the bandages. Not mine, not mine, not mine . Eddie’s mind repeated those words, but he couldn’t be sure, wasn’t sure, until the bandages fell in a heap and he saw himself, intact.

Intact. Relief flooded through him like the best drug on earth. Intact.

Eddie got dressed. He went into the corridor, walked to the end. All the doors were open, all the rooms empty. Eddie went down six flights of stairs, all the way to the bottom. He found himself in a big basement; naked bulbs spread pools of yellow light. There was a steel door at the far end. He went toward it, passing mounds of sand, stacks of plush divans, Persian rugs, papier-mache date palms, and a disassembled minaret made of whitewashed plywood.