Michael Palmer - Silent Treatment

'So they say. What about the sedan thatwent over with us?'

'They're hauling that up right now.'

'Any survivors?'

Dickinson shook his head.

'None.'

'How many were in there?'

'Dunno. I'll be looking into that and intowho they were later today. I'm going to wait until after you're taken care ofto get a statement from you, so you'll have some time to put together a realdoozy. Your file in the office is already three inches thick with fairy tales.I ought to tell you that we know where that monster mobile home came from. TheJersey police will be paying your brother a visit as soon as our DA tells themwe want to press aiding and abetting charges, which we do.'

Harry adjusted the oxygen prongs in hisnose and wondered if the detective was trying to provoke him on purpose just tosee what a full-blown coronary looked like.

A nurse came in with a syringe.

'What's that?' Harry asked.

'Just some Demerol to keep you relaxedduring your catheterization. The cath lab people will be up for you in aminute.'

'No medicine, please,' Harry said. 'I'llbe calm. I promise.'

'Okay,' the nurse replied. 'But I'll haveto notify Dr. Zane.'

'This man is under arrest, Miss,'Dickinson said. 'If he goes anywhere, an officer must go with him.'

The nurse's expression suggested that shewas not nearly as taken with Dickinson's importance as he would have liked.Harry asked her for the phone.

'One call,' Dickinson reminded him.

Harry swallowed back a dozen or socomments on the policeman and his ancestry. Then he called his brother collect.Phil had just heard about the accident and was getting set to drive to thehospital. As Harry would have predicted, he made light of the loss of theelegant mobile home.

'Hey, that was going to be yourfiftieth-birthday present anyway, Harry. I was just waiting to have itwrapped.'

He was, however, concerned about Harry'scardiac situation.

'Sounds like you just worried about thatcurse and worried about it until it came true,' he said.

'Maybe so.'

Phil promised to find out what he couldabout Maura and to see Harry in a couple of hours. Moments later, a gurney waswheeled in by a stoop-shouldered man with horn-rimmed glasses and a grayingmustache. He was wearing surgical scrubs beneath a loose surgical gown. Hetransferred Harry's IV bags to a pole on the gurney and then grabbed the sheetbeneath Harry's head. Two nurses on opposite sides of the bed grasped the samesheet at hip level.

'Hey, don't just stand there,' one of themsaid to Dickinson. 'Grab this sheet beneath his feet and help us lift him.'

Dickinson complied, but looked revolted.

'Okay,' the other nurse said. 'One, two,three.'

The four of them swung Harry on to thegurney as if he were weightless. The landing caused a twinge in his upper armand perhaps something, real or imagined, in his chest.

'How long is this going to take?'Dickinson asked.

The nurse shrugged.

'One to two hours,' she said, setting aportable cardiac monitor/defibrillator between Harry's feet. 'Depends on whatthey find and what they do. He may end up in the OR for a bypass.'

The nurses hooked a small oxygen tank toHarry's prongs and floated a sheet on to him. Then Dickinson followed thestretcher and one of the nurses out of the room.

'Take a break,' he said to the uniformedpolicemen. 'I'll go down with him. I'll call you up here in half an hour andtell you what's what.'

With the nurse on one side of the gurneyand Dickinson on the other, Harry was wheeled to the elevator. The monitorbetween his feet silently charted out his heartbeats. Facing cardiac surgery,he felt detached, surreal, and very mortal. But in truth, he had felt that waymost of the time since the night he walked back on to Alexander 9 with a milkshake for Evie. The gurney was pushed on to the elevator by the man from thecath lab. Dickinson and the nurse squeezed in alongside it. There was a secondset of doors beyond Harry's feet, opposite the one through which they hadentered. Harry heard the doors behind him glide close. He heard a key beinginserted in the control panel so that their trip could be made with no stops.

'Hey,' the nurse said, 'what are youdoing? The cath lab's on the eighth floor, not the subbasement.'

At that moment, her expression turned toterror. Dickinson, looking with wide-eyed surprise at the old man from the cathlab, was fumbling inside his coat for his gun when Harry heard the soft spit ofa silenced revolver from just beside his ear. The nurse spun 180 degrees,slammed into the metal door, and dropped. Dickinson, clearly beaten, loweredhis hand in a gesture of surrender. The silenced revolver spit again andcreated an instant hole in the white shirt over his left breast. For twohorrified seconds he stared at the wound. A halo of crimson appeared around thehole. He looked at Harry, his expression a mix of astonishment and utterdismay. Then his eyes rolled up and without a word, he crumpled to the floor.

Harry was too shocked and horrified tospeak. The heart rate on the screen between his feet was one seventy. Heexpected any moment to see the beating stop entirely.

'I told you you should have killed me whenyou had the chance,' Anton Perchek said dispassionately. 'Now, you must getready for your great escape.'

The elevator stopped at the subbasement,but Perchek kept the doors from opening.

'You'll never make it,' Harry said.

'I made it this far, didn't I?' Perchekboasted. 'A brief stop for some things at my Manhattan apartment, and I arrivedhere to begin preparation just a few hours after you did. They couldn't havechosen a better hospital for my purposes. I have several different excellent IDbadges from here. And having handled a number of cases here for The Roundtable,I know my way around the place pretty well.'

'You're insane.'

'So, then, Doctor. We must get a move on.I have a laundry hamper waiting just outside the door. It's Saturday so thelaundry is almost deserted. A little IV Pentothal for you and we should be ableto roll right past the pressing machines and out of this place.'

'Why don't you just kill me?' Harry asked.

The Doctor circled around the gurney sothat Harry could see the loathing in his eyes. . and the glee.

'Oh, Harry, the idea is not to kill you,'he said. 'The idea is to have you beg me to kill you.'

Harry cast about for something, anything,he could use as a weapon. There was not going to be any abduction and torture.It was going to end for them right here, right now. He fixed on the DoorOpen button near his right foot. The laundry was through the door behindhim. Something, possibly an equipment supply room or the power plant, had to beon the other side of this one. If he could just get there, he had a chance. Atthe very least, Perchek would have to decide whether to pursue him or flee.

The sling was loose enough to allow somemovement. Shielded by the sheet, he slid his right hand across his body. Thepain in his shoulder grew more intense with every millimeter, but he ignoredit. Finally, his fingers closed on the only weapon he could think of — theone-and-a-half-inch needle in his IV hookup. Carefully, he eased it free fromthe infusion port and shifted it to his left hand.

Perchek released the door behind Harry'shead.

'There's our hamper, right where I leftit,' he said, setting the silenced revolver down as he pulled the gurney outfar enough to drop the side rail. 'Now, just the right amount of Pentothaland-'

At that moment, the nurse crumpled on thefloor moaned loudly. Perchek turned.

Now! Harry screamed to himself.

He gripped the needle tightly and drove itto the hilt in the soft spot just below The Doctor's right ear. Perchekbellowed with pain and surprise, and reeled backward, pawing the spot. Harrypushed himself off the stretcher and swung backhand as hard as he could,connecting with Perchek's left cheek and sending him sprawling to the concretefloor next to the hamper. Then he whirled and hit Door Open on the paneljust above where Albert Dickinson lay. He could sense Perchek stumbling to hisfeet as the other set of elevator doors glided open. Head down, Harry racedacross a small, enclosed waiting area, burst through a set of swinging doors,and charged straight into hell.