Roger Zelazny: Nine Princes In Amber

The guy was sitting there in a garish bathrobe, at a big shiny desk, going over some sort of ledger. This was no ward room. He looked up at me with burning eyes all wide and lips swelling toward a yell they didn’t reach, perhaps because of my determined expression. He stood, quickly.

I shut the door behind me, advanced, and said:

“Good morning. You’re in trouble.”

People must always be curious as to trouble, because after the three seconds it took me to cross the room, his words were:

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I said, “that you’re about to suffer a lawsuit for holding me incommunicado, and another one for malpractice, for your indiscriminate use of narcotics. I’m already suffering withdrawal symptoms and might do something violent…”

He stood up.

“Get out of here,” he said.

I saw a pack of cigarettes on his desk. I helped myself and said, “Sit down and shut up. We’ve got things to talk about.”

He sat down, but he didn’t shut up:

“You’re breaking several regulations,” he said.

“So we’ll let a court decide who’s liable,” I replied. “I want my clothes and my personal effects. I’m checking out.”

“You’re in no condition —”

“Nobody asked you. Pony up this minute, or answer to the law.”

He reached toward a button on his desk, but I slapped his hand away.

“Now!” I repeated. “You should have pressed that when I came in. It’s too late now.”

“Mr. Corey, you’re being most difficult.”

Corey?

“I didn’t check me in here,” I said, “but I damn well have a right to check me out. And now’s the time. So let’s get about it.”

“Obviously, you’re in no condition to leave this institution,” he replied. “I cannot permit it I am going to call for someone to escort you back to your room and put you to bed.”

“Don’t try it,” I said, “or you’ll find out what condition I’m in. Now, I’ve several questions. The first one’s Who checked me in, and who’s footing my bill at this place?”

“Very well,” he sighed, and his tiny, sandy mustaches sagged as low as they could.

He opened a drawer, put his hand inside, and I was wary.

I knocked it down before he had the safety catch off: a .32 automatic, very neat Colt. I snapped the catch myself when I retrieved it from the desk top; and I pointed it and said: “You will answer my questions. Obviously you consider me dangerous. You may be right.”

He smiled weakly, lit a cigarette himself, which was a mistake, if he intended to indicate aplomb. His hands shook.

“All right, Corey — if it will make you happy,” he said, “your sister checked you in.”

“?” thought I.

“Which sister?” I asked.

“Evelyn,” he said.

No bells. So, “That’s ridiculous. I haven’t seen Evelyn in years,” I said. “She didn’t even know I was in this part of the country.”

He shrugged.

“Nevertheless.”

“Where’s she staying now? I want to call her,” I said.

“I don’t have her address handy.”

“Get it.”

He rose, crossed to a filing cabinet, opened it, riffled, withdrew a card.

I studied it. Mrs. Evelyn Flaumel… The New York address was not familiar either, but I committed it to memory. As the card said, my first name was Carl. Good. More data.

I stuck the gun in my belt beside the strut then, safety back on, of course.

“Okay,” I told him. “Where are my clothes, and what’re you going to pay me?”

“Your clothes were destroyed in the accident,” he said, “and I must tell you that your legs were definitely broken — the left one in two places. Frankly, I can’t see how you’re managing to stay on your feet. It’s only been two weeks —”

“I always heal fast,” I said. “Now, about the money…

“What money?”

“The out-of-court settlement for my malpractice complaint and the other one.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Who’s being ridiculous? I’ll settle for a thousand, cash, right now.”

“I won’t even discuss such a thing.”

“Well, you’d better consider it — and win or lose, think about the name it will give this place if I manage enough pretrial publicity. I’ll certainly get in touch with the AMA, the newspapers, the —”

“Blackmail,” he said, “and I’ll have nothing to do with it.”

“Pay now, or pay later, after a court order,” I said. “I don’t care. But it’ll be cheaper this way.”

If he came across, I’d know my guesses were right and there was something crooked involved.

He glared at me, I don’t know how long.

Finally, “I haven’t got a thousand here,” he said.

“Name a compromise figure,” I said.

After another pause, “It’s larceny.”

“Not if it’s cash-and-carry, Charlie. So, call it.”

“I might have five hundred in my safe.”

“Get it.”

He told me, after inspecting the contents of a small wall safe, there was four-thirty, and I didn’t want to leave fingerprints on the safe just to check him out. So I accepted and stuffed the bills into my side pocket.

“Now what’s the nearest cab company that serves this place?”

He named it, and I checked in the phone book, which told me I was upstate.

I made him dial it and call me a cab, because I didn’t know the name of the place and didn’t want him to know the condition of my memory. One of the bandages I had removed had been around my head.

While he was making the arrangement I heard him name the place: it was called Greenwood Private Hospital.

I snubbed out my cigarette, picked up another, and removed perhaps two hundred pounds from my feet by resting in a brown upholstered chair beside his bookcase.

“We wait here and you’ll see me to the door,” I said.

I never heard another word out of him.

It was about eight o’clock when the cab deposited me on a random corner in the nearest town. I paid off the driver and walked for around twenty minutes. Then I stopped in a diner, found a booth and had juice, a couple of eggs, toast, bacon and three cups of coffee. The bacon was too greasy.

After giving breakfast a good hour, I started walking, found a clothing store, and waited till its nine-thirty opening.

I bought a pair of slacks, three sport shirts, a belt, some underwear, and a pair of shoes that fit. I also picked up a handkerchief, a wallet, and pocket comb.

Then I found a Greyhound station and boarded a bus for New York. No one tried to stop me. No one seemed to be looking for me.

Sitting there, watching the countryside all autumn-colored and tickled by brisk winds beneath a bright, cold sky, I reviewed everything I knew about myself and my circumstances.

I had been registered at Greenwood as Carl Corey by my sister Evelyn Flaumel. This had been subsequent to an auto accident some fifteen or so days past, in which I had suffered broken bones which no longer troubled me. I didn’t remember Sister Evelyn. The Greenwood people had been instructed to keep me passive, were afraid of the law when I got loose and threatened them with it. Okay. Someone was afraid of me, for some reason. I’d play it for all it was worth.

I forced my mind back to the accident, dwelled upon it till my head hurt. It was no accident. I had that impression, though I didn’t know why. I would find out, and someone would pay. Very, very much would they pay. An anger, a terrible one, flared within the middle of my body. Anyone who tried to hurt me, to use me, did so at his own peril and now he would receive his due, whoever he was, this one. I felt a strong desire to kill, to destroy whoever had been responsible, and I knew that it was not the first time in my life that I had felt this thing, and I knew, too, that I had followed through on it in the past. More than once.