William Kienzle - Deathbed

“You what!” all three exclaimed simultaneously.

“Hey, what’s goin’ on here, anyway?” A burly guard rapped his knuckles on their table. “You wanna hold it down, or what? You get loud like that again and this visit’s over. You’ll get outta here, Whitaker. And the three of you’ll go down with a recommend that y’ll be put in the box and forgot. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“Perfectly clear, Captain,” the Fourth Man said.

“Okay, then.” The guard walked away and resumed his post against the wall not far from their table.

“Bruce,” the Fourth Man said, “do I understand you to say that you mistook curtain hooks for IUDs? How in God’s name did you do that?” His knuckles were white from gripping the table’s edge.

“It was an honest mistake—”

“It was a stupid mistake.”

“Honest.”

“Stupid!” the Third Man insisted. “Incredibly, supremely, unforgivably stupid! IUDs look nothing like curtain hooks!”

“How was Į to know? I’ve never seen an IUD. Besides, I’ll bet these curtain hooks look like an IUD. They were S-shaped and made of strong metal.”

“That doesn’t make any difference. They were curtain hooks! Goddam curtain hooks!”

“Watch your language,” the First Man cautioned.

“And,” Whitaker continued, “they were in the drawer reserved for IUDs.”

“That’s different,” the Fourth Man said. “That provides a logical explanation for why you might have confused them. Why didn’t you tell us this in the beginning?”

“You didn’t give me a chance. You jumped all over me when I told you I made an honest mistake. Now do you see how honest that mistake really was?”

“All right,” the Fourth Man said in a conciliatory tone. “Tell us what happened so we’ll be better able to plan for the future.”

Whitaker began recounting the events of the night on which he successfully attacked the curtain hooks. He reached the point where he was almost detected by the guard.

“You mean you were seen! You could be identified?” the First Man challenged.

“Well, no, not really. At that point something else happened.”

“What?”

Whitaker’s face broke into a beatific smile. “A miracle.”

‘A miracle!”

“A miracle. Remember that nurse’s aide I told you about? Well, she helped me. She happened to be in the hospital at the same time. She saw me sort of sneaking down the main floor corridor and she noticed the guard was about to intercept me . . . and she . . . uh . . . . intervened.”

“Intervened?”

“She said she . . . distracted him.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. However she did it, she saved me from being discovered. That’s the important part. Not how she did it.”

“I don’t like it,” the Third Man said.

“Why not? Did you want me to get caught?”

“Frankly, I’m beginning to care less and less whether you get caught. Probably the worst that could happen is that you’d be thrown back in here, or DeHoCo, or Jacktown. I’m worried about us. We’ve only got a bit left. I don’t want ‘all day’ time added to what we’ve got. Or to have to go back to Jacktown.”

“What does Ethel have to do with all this?” Whitaker was getting defensive.

“Oh, it’s Ethel, is it?” the Third Man said. “All right then, Ethel. I don’t like the fact that she just ‘happened’ to be at the same place at the same time as you were when you were carrying out our mission. Or trying to carry it out. And I don’t like that she knew you were sneaking around at night. And I don’t like that she got involved. Just how much does she know about you? About us?”

“Okay, she doesn’t know anything at all about you, about us. And she knows next to nothing about me. We’ve just eaten together a few times and went on a date. But she doesn’t know anything about us or our mission.”

“Are you sure?” the Fourth Man asked.

“Absolutely.”

“So you went on a date,” the First Man said.

“You as much as told me to. You told me to get acquainted with her. And I did. And I have.”

“All right,” the Fourth Man said. “But be careful. It’s vitally important that she doesn’t find out about us or our mission.”

Everyone nodded agreement.

The Fourth Man continued. “How about the rest of the people at the hospital? Do they know about the curtain hooks?”

“Yes.”

“Have they associated them with you?”

“No. They think it was a manufacturer’s error.”

“All right, then,” the Fourth Man said. “What happened after your friend . . . uh . . . distracted the guard?”

“Then the way was clear to the clinic—wait ... no; I almost forgot the old nun.”

“The old nun?”

“Sister Rosamunda. She was sneaking along the hallway ahead of me.”

“What is this, a Mack Sennett comedy?”

“No. She went into the clinic ahead of me. Then I went in and was able to see what she was doing. But she never saw me. Do you know what she did?”

He had their attention.

“She took some bottles out of a cabinet after she unlocked it.”

“She stole!” the First Man exclaimed. “An old nun stole! Is nothing sacred? What was it? Did you get a chance to check it out—Lourdes Water or something like that?”

“It was Terpin Hydrate Elixir . . . whatever that is.”

“Whatever that is!” the Third Man exclaimed. “What did you do with your time in here anyway? They call that GI Gin. It’s potent. Got lots of codeine in it. And alcohol. A few slugs of that and you’re out. Either that nun has got one hell of a cold or she’s bending the old elbow.”

“You mean she’s an alcoholic! An alcoholic old nun! Nothing is sacred,” said the First Man.

“She has to be,” the Third Man affirmed. “She’s not picking up GI Gin with a prescription. She’s stealing it. She’s a lush. Just an old religious lush.”

“Very interesting,” the Fourth Man observed. “We’ll have to keep that in mind. It may help us somehow. You never can tell. All right, then, after the nun, you made your . . . honest mistake. And that was all there was to it? There was no further incident?”

“None.”

“All right, then. What we have is a failure . . . albeit an honest mistake. But no other harm done. We can go on from here.”

“What about that newspaperwoman?” the First Man asked. “The one you said came to do the story on St. Vincent’s?”

“I can’t figure that out at all. I went out of my way to personally make sure she saw the clinic. And she did see it. And she saw the evil things that are going on there. And I know that she knew they shouldn’t be going on in a Catholic hospital. And because it’s such a little hospital and rumors get around pretty quickly, I know that she had a couple of meetings with Sister Eileen. But nothing came of it.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. Well, not so far, anyway. It’s probably too soon to tell for sure . . . but she was back the next day having lunch with the staff as if nothing had happened. I don’t know why, but it looks to me as if she isn’t going to do an investigative story on the clinic after all. Maybe Sister Eileen talked her out of it . . . although that seems hard to believe. But whatever the reason, it just doesn’t seem that she’s going to follow up on that situation.”

“Unless we force the issue,” the Fourth Man said pensively. “I’ve been spending some time in the library. They’ve got a good collection of old newspapers from around the country. I’ve been looking through them for hospital stories. You don’t have to look far. The papers are running stories all the time about things going wrong in hospitals. If you put all these stories together, why, hospitals are simply filled with accidents.”