Karl Wagner - Why Not You and I?

And the more she danced and whispered and sang, the worse his vertigo became, and he was dizzy and falling, and he was clutching at her blue skirt to keep from falling, and she kept dancing away from him, and he cried out to her to come back…

He didn’t understand…

But he had to understand…

“Come back!” he screamed. His voice was a tortured rasp.

The blue light became a lance of blue flame, searing his brain. And her hands of coldest ice pierced through him and seized upon his soul, and the blue lady was drawing him away, pulling him through the darkness…

Dimly, through the haze of throbbing pain, Mandarin became aware of the man bending over him.

Gritting his teeth, he forced his eyes to focus. It was hard. A bright beam of light bored into his face.

“Christ! He’s coming around, Sid!”

The light swept away.

Mandarin struggled to rise — groaned and fell back. Bright flashes of pain rippled from the numbing ache of his skull.

“Just stay put, buddy. Jesus! We thought you were…”

Russ’s vision was clearing. Blotchy green afterimages swam across his eyes. But he saw the patrolman’s uniform, and the rising wave of panic subsided.

“Neighbor says she knows who he is, Hardin.” The other voice drifted from farther away. “He’s a friend of the guy who owned this place. Drops by every week or so.”

Russ dully recognized the floor of Stryker’s side porch spread out around him. It was damp and sticky. He could hear a woman’s voice speaking from the kitchen, though he couldn’t follow her words.

“I think the bullet must’ve just grazed the top his forehead,” the first man called out. “There’s blood all over the back of his head, but it looks like he just busted his scalp open falling back against the post here. You’re one lucky hard-headed bastard, buddy.”

His partner was examining Russ’s billfold. “Name’s Dr Russell Mandarin. He’s that shrink friend of Lieutenant Saunders, I think. Hope that’s the ambulance I hear coming. He’s been out a damn long time.”

“I’m all right,” protested Mandarin without conviction. He tried again to rise, made it to his knees. The porch seemed to whirl and pitch. He shut his eyes hard and waited.

An arm steadied his shoulder. “Maybe you better stay down, buddy. You got blood leaking all across the back of your head.” Doggedly Mandarin got his feet under him, lurched onto a porch rocker. The chair almost tipped, then steadied. With careful fingers he touched his forehead, found pain there. His hair was clotted with blood. Squinting across the narrow porch, Russ saw the support post opposite the back door. He remembered a gunshot, and falling backward. He must have bashed his head against the oak pillar.

“Dr Mandarin? Are you all right?”

Russ recognized Mrs Lieberman, Stryker’s closest neighbor. Russ had often kidded Stryker that the widow had designs on him, and Stryker would always reply that only a cad tells.

“I heard that loud old car of yours turn into Mr Stryker’s driveway,” she was saying. “And then I heard a shot. I thought it must be a gang of burglars, and so I called the police.”

“And it’s good you did, ma’am. They might have finished the job on your friend here otherwise.”

The one called Hardin looked down the driveway. “Here’s the ambulance — and our back-up, now that we don’t need it.”

“I think I heard them miss the turn-off twice,” his partner replied.

“What’s happening?” Mandarin asked, recovering enough to become aware of his situation.

“You been shot, Doc, but you’re going to be all right now.”

“Shot?”

“Reckon you busted in on whoever it was that’d broke into the house. Can’t see that anything’s taken, but the place is sure a mess.”

Saunders was waiting for him when Mandarin got out of x-ray. Russ had insisted on viewing the films himself, after making enough of a scene that the radiologist seemed a little disappointed to find no evidence of fracture or subdural. Russ let them wheel him back down to the ER, where a nervous resident began to patch him up.

“I am goddamn glad to see you here,” was Saunders’ first comment.

“Same to you, sideways,” Russ said. “Did you know those two clowns of yours had radioed me in as DOA? Damn lucky I didn’t bleed out waiting.”

“Damn lucky you got a thick skull and a hippie haircut. Somebody bounced a bullet off your head, and if they’d aimed an inch or so lower, it’d’ve gone between your eyes instead of parting your hair. I hear you busted loose a porch rail banging it with your head afterward.”

“Nothing much hurt but my good looks,” Russ allowed. “They want to keep me overnight for observation, but I’m heading home from here. I can damn well observe myself — no point in being a doctor if you can’t change your own oil. And don’t tell me the one about ‘… has a fool for a physician.’”

Saunders was serious now. Too serious.

“Russ, I’m going to tell you that the only reason you’re not headed from here to the station is because you were lying there DOA on Stryker’s porch at the same time Brooke Hamilton was being murdered.”

Mandarin decided he was still suffering the effects of his concussion. “What’s that about Hamilton?”

Saunders was looking for a cigarette, then remembered he couldn’t smoke here. “Just came from his place. A boyfriend let himself in around midnight, found Hamilton tied to a chair, throat had just been cut. And he’d been cut up pretty good elsewhere before he got his second smile. After that business this afternoon, I was afraid it was you I’d be bringing in. I was at your house when word came in that you were dead at the time of the murder. Reckon we’ll hold his boyfriend now instead.”

“Jesus!” Russ muttered. It was all coming too fast for him. “These queers do some weird shit when they have their love spats,” Saunders informed him. “Likely high on pot and LSD.”

“I didn’t know Hamilton was gay”

“No? Well, he looked queer. I can spot them. Anyway, if you hadn’t been busy getting shot in the head at Curtiss’s house at the time Hamilton was last seen alive, you’d be in worse trouble now.”

“I think I want to go home.”

“I’ll see that you get there,” Saunders said. “Only this time you stay put.”

“Scout’s honor.” Russ held up three fingers.

Saunders watched him without amusement. “And when you get there, you can help fill out a report. Tell us if anything’s missing.”

“Missing?”

“Somebody’d broke into your house right before we got there.”

Mandarin had a bottle of Percodan tablets for pain — contraindicated, of course, in the presence of recent head injury — and he prescribed himself a couple and washed them down with a medicinal glass of Jack Daniel’s. He supposed he should sue himself for malpractice. After all, he’d only been permitted to leave the hospital after signing an “against medical advice” form. A fool for a physician.

Was it possible for a head to ache any worse than his did? He had a gash above his forehead where the bullet had grazed his scalp, a lump across the back of his skull from his fall, and a terminal hangover. Russ almost wished his assailant had aimed lower. Saunders’ people hadn’t turned up any brass, and Saunders was of the opinion that Russ’s attacker had got off a lucky shot with a junk.22 revolver — probably one of his hippie dope-fiend patients. Typical of the times, Saunders judged, and with our boys dying in Viet Nam while scum like this dodged the draft.

Three break-ins in one night — not to mention the burglary of Stryker’s office the day before — hardly seemed random, Mandarin had argued. Saunders had pointed out that these were only a few of the dozens of break-ins that took place each night, and that it was all due to drugs, and that if certain psychiatrists would stick to shrinking heads and let the police go about their business, a lot of this sort of thing would be stopped.