Уильям Макгиверн - Summitt

The knocking sounded again. Selby turned down the television and opened the door, his body filling the doorway.

A bellboy stood in the corridor. He looked up at Selby and tried to peer around him, a slender youngster with a pointed face and knowing eyes.

Selby said, “I guess you heard it too.”

“Heard what, sir?”

“I’m not sure,” Selby said. “It was like somebody fell. The ceiling shook. I was going to call the desk.”

“I guess it was on the next floor then,” the bellhop said.

“Could’ve been a drunk. What’s your name?”

“Karl, sir.”

Selby took out his wallet and gave him two twenty-dollar bills. “We’ll need room service in about an hour, Karl, a bottle of bourbon. Will you take care of us?”

“You bet. Any particular brand?”

“I’ll leave that up to you, Karl. About an hour, okay? No hurry.”

“Yes, sir.”

Selby closed the door, locked it and slipped the night chain into place.

He sat on the footstool in front of the television set and watched a plump lady who chuckled indulgently at the cartoon figure of an armored knight holding a floor waxer like an upraised lance.

Loosening his tie, he took out a handkerchief and patted his forehead where Aron had hit him; the broken skin stung when sweat touched it.

“You gents have me at a disadvantage,” he said. “This is your kind of action, not mine.”

“Something else,” Ben Cadle said. “We’re expecting calls. Lorso will check in, so will Davic. If you plan to hold us here, you got real problems—”

“Let me finish. You’re the professionals, with police-band radios, guns, surveillance equipment. But there’s something else that’s more important.” He watched the blood come from Aron’s lips, crimson blisters that filled up and popped with the rhythm of his slow, heavy breathing. “What’s important is for you to realize that this fight’s over and you guys lost. All that can happen now is for you to get hurt even more—”

“Tell Dom Lorso that, you creep,” Ben Cadle said. “And Slocum and—” “You’ll find out about hurt... I promise you...”

“I think I’m wasting my time,” Selby said. “But I’ll keep trying... breathe slow, Aron. It won’t hurt so bad—”

“It’s my ribs,” Aron said, “they’re killing me...”

“I know... sit quiet, you’ll be okay for a while. One of them splintered when I hit you, maybe a couple of them. Your lungs are filling up with blood now.”

Selby took a sheaf of papers from his pocket and smoothed out the creases. “You’re drowning, Aron.” He handed Emma Green’s deposition to Ben. “Read that,” he told him. “Read it to yourself. I’ve been through it one time too many. Hold it, ” he said as Ben Cadle started to crumple the deposition. “Please don’t do that. You’ve only got a few loose teeth, Ben, but if you press me...” He shrugged. “So start reading. Your brother is hurt. I know about things like that. Players do the real damage to themselves after they’re hit. Macho bullshit about getting taped up and back in the game. First time they take a lick, they’re gone for the season. Maybe for life.”

“You crazy fucker, call a hospital,” Ben said. “You gonna sit and watch Aron bleed to death?”

“Emotional reaction to injuries tend to aggravate them,” Selby said. “A team doctor told me that. Ethnic and national characteristics also play a part. Italians, for instance, you can’t keep them on the bench hurt unless you nail them there. Blacks will play hurt if it’s a close game, but not for show. That’s what the good doc told me—”

“I’m German,” Aron Cadle gasped. “So is Ben.”

Selby nodded. “Good. The Germans I played with were very sensible. Followed instructions very well. All right... Ben, talk to me. I want everything Davic knows. Don’t leave anything out.”

“Suppose I tell you to go fuck yourself—?”

“Then we’ll sit here and watch your brother drown in his own blood.”

“Jesus, tell him,” Aron said softly, his breath whistling over his blood-flaked lips.

It didn’t take Ben long. When he was through, Selby said, “Now call Mr. Davic and read Miss Green’s deposition to him. When you’re through I’ll talk to him. If he asks about me, if he wants to know, for instance, if I’m in a violent or reckless mood, I suggest you give him an honest estimate. He’s entitled to that. So are you.”

Selby picked up a pillow, put it against Aron Cadle’s chest and carefully folded the man’s thick arms around it. “Hold it close to you and breathe very slowly,” he told him. “We’ll call an ambulance after I have a word with Counselor Davic.”

It was after midnight when Selby got to Dorcas Brett’s. Winds off the Brandywine mill-race rocked the trees and caused shadows to leap away from the iron streetlamps.

From behind the heavy door her voice was low and tense. “Yes?”

“It’s all right, it’s me, Harry.”

Tumblers fell, a chain came unlatched. She opened the door. A log burned in the living room fireplace. She wore a tan robe with yellow piping over dark velour pajamas. The sofa was made up with blankets and a pillow. A book was on the floor.

Her phone was off the hook, he saw, the receiver lying beside the cradle. He had tried to call her twice before leaving Philadelphia. Now, even above the crackle of the logs, he could hear the faint beat of the busy signal.

She watched him anxiously as he took off his coat. “What’s the matter, Harry? What happened to you? Your forehead’s bleeding.”

“I bumped my head in a phone booth.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“Everything is fine, everything is great. Relax.”

“Sure. You just happened to be driving by and noticed my lights...”

He lifted the receiver from the desk and placed it in the cradle. “I can’t promise you’ll never get a wrong number, or your sister won’t call to tell you a poodle had pups, but I promise you won’t hear from the Cadle brothers again.”

She stared at the phone, as if testing its strange silence. “You’re sure? You talked to them then?”

“In a phrase from a century when they did things better, I called on them.”

“You know Davic intends to move for a disqualification?”

“I knew that, yes.”

“And you know why?”

“Yes.”

Her dark hair and the firelight made her face seem unnaturally pale, made her high cheekbones stand out.

“Then I guess you know my whole story, Harry...”

“No, because I don’t know what you plan to do.”

“Well, haven’t you at least guessed? That would have been a vote of confidence, of sorts.”

“All I knew is what you told Shana. It was a flip of the coin then.”

“Well, I’ve decided not to run a convenient fever.”

“I’d have taken the odds on it.”

She smiled. “Thanks. I told Lamb — after a speech about team spirit and loyalty and some less subtle crap from Slocum, that I wouldn’t quit. If I don’t take Allan Davic’s flak tomorrow, if I crawl away from it, it would make a lie out of everything I’ve let Shana be put through. So don’t worry... or maybe you should be... but I’ll be in court with her in the morning.”

“I wasn’t worried. Not about you.”

She looked at him, not altogether convinced. “Look, Harry, I’m worried, and scared, and tomorrow Davic’s going to turn the lions loose on us... You’ve been in a fight, it’s obvious. Please don’t give me any more stuff about bumping into yourself in a phone booth. Tell me all of it. Please. You talked to Davic, didn’t you?”

“Yes. First he told me if I tried to pressure him with Emma Green’s deposition I’d be personally subject to serious legal reprisal. His very words. Second, he said that the deposition was inadmissible in this case. I told him I knew that. I told him you d explained it to me. I also told him the matter wasn’t negotiable. I quoted what he’d told me himself about Poland in another context.”