The Losers (35 page)

The tiny red lights continued to wink, fingering the air, searching the night for misery and violence and despair, and Raphael sat listening alone.

viii

He sat tensely in a chair in the waiting room, a loungelike place just off the emergency admitting area at Sacred Heart Hospital. The night was long and filled with confusion. Much of the human wreckage of the city passed through the wide doors of Sacred Heart emergency, and their cries and moans made the night hellish. The families and beloved of the wounded and the slain hunched in gray-faced shock in the waiting room, wearing mismatched clothes thrown on in moments of crisis.

Raphael did not know Flood’s father, and the family telephone number in Grosse Pointe was unlisted. In desperation he finally tried to call Isabel Drake. Her phone rang three times, and then the recording came on. “I’m not at home just now,” her voice told him. “Please leave a message at the tone.”

He was not really ready when the insistent beep came over the wire. “Uh—’Bel—this is Raphael. Damon Flood—Junior—has been in an accident. He’s at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane. I’m here, too. You’d better call me.”

After he had hung up the telephone, he realized that he hadn’t given her a phone number or much of anything else. He thought of calling back to add more detail, but could not bring himself to talk to a machine again.

And then he waited, and because he was tired and emotionally wrung, he dozed fitfully in his chair. At four in the morning a crisply starched nurse came into the waiting room and woke him. “Mr. Taylor, you have a phone call—long distance.” There was no hesitation in her voice. She knew who he was. He was marked as one of their own—deserving that special kind of courtesy the medical profession gives to those who have survived its most radical ministrations.

“Of course,” he said, shaking off the sleep instantly. He rose and followed the nurse through the now-quiet admissions area.

It was Isabel. “Raphael,” she said, “I just got in and found your message on my answering machine. What happened?” It was strange to hear her voice again.

“It was an automobile accident,” he told her. “He’s in critical condition. I tried to get hold of his
family,
but I can’t get through.”

“I’ll call his father. How bad is it?”

“They’re not talking about it. I think you’d better hurry.” “Have you seen him?”

“No. I understand that he isn’t conscious. Please hurry, ‘Bel. I know quite a bit about hospitals, and the signs aren’t too good.”

“Oh, dear God! I’ll call his father right now.”

Raphael held the phone in his hand for a long time after ‘Bel hung up, then, on an impulse, he called Denise.

“Hello?” Her voice was warm and sleepy.

“It’s me.” He felt a bit foolish for having awakened her for no reason.

“Did he … ?” She left it hanging.

“No. I just wanted to hear your voice. Hospitals scare me a little. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Her voice was almost contented. “I’ve never had anybody wake me up in the middle of the night before. It’s kind of nice.”

“Nice?”

“You know what I mean.”

They talked for a while, and then Raphael went back to the waiting room.

At ten in the morning ‘Bel arrived. She was dressed in a dark suit and carried a small overnight case. She stopped hesitantly just inside the wide glass doors to emergency, and Raphael went out to meet her.

“How—” she started, and then broke off. “No change,” Raphael replied.

In a single glance she took in the crutches and the vacant space where his left leg should have been. She half reached out to touch him, but let her hand drop. “Is there someplace where we can get some coffee?” she asked to cover the moment.

“The hospital cafeteria.”

“Can we leave word here?”

“I’ll take care of it.” He turned and went smoothly to the desk. He spoke briefly with the nurse and then led ‘Bel to the elevators.

“J.D.’s on his way,” she told him in the elevator. It was a moment before he realized that she meant Flood’s father.

“I’m a little surprised,” Raphael said. “From the way Damon talked—talks—I get the impression that he and his father are barely on speaking terms.”

“That’s nonsense. You should never believe anything Junior says.”

“I’ve noticed.”

They had coffee and looked out through the huge windows in the cafeteria at Spokane, spread out in the valley below them in the morning sun.

“Pretty little town,” she said.

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“Don’t be cryptic, Raphael. That can develop into a very annoying habit.”

He smiled then. The tone was so familiar that it seemed as if the time that had intervened since their last meeting had simply dropped away. He was surprised to discover that he was not uncomfortable with her. He smiled at her familiarly then, knowing all the lush, creamy opulence that lay beneath her trimly tailored suit.

“You’ve matured, Raphael,” she said, catching the look and arching one eyebrow at him.

Later, back in the waiting room again, because his reserve was worn down by exhaustion, because he needed to talk with someone, and because ‘Bel of all people would understand, Raphael began to talk—randomly at first, and then more and more to the point. “I suppose it’s my fault, really,” he admitted finally. “Damon asked me a dozen times to leave here. If I’d gone—if we’d gone to San Francisco or Denver or Seattle the way he wanted to in the middle of the summer, none of this would have happened.”

“Don’t beat yourself over the head with it, Raphael,” she told him. “You can’t go back and change things, and this—or something like it—has been waiting for Junior all his life. You could almost smell it on him.”

A sudden thought occurred to him. “ ‘Bel, who is Gabriel?”

She gave him a startled look. “He actually mentioned Gabriel to you?”

Raphael shook his head. “He lets it slip from time to time. I don’t think he was even aware that he said it, but several times he’s called me Gabriel. For some reason I get the feeling that if I can find out just exactly who this Gabriel is, I’ll be able to understand Damon a lot better.”

“Didn’t you get my letter?”

“Yes, but I didn’t open it. It came at one of those times when—” He let that drop. “I’ve still got it, though. I’ve been meaning to read it.”

“You should have,” she told him quite firmly. “Last spring I had to go back to Grosse Pointe to attend a family funeral. I found out some things about Junior—things I didn’t really want to know—but I heard enough to realize that it was something
you
really ought to know about. In some ways I suppose I’m not very admirable, but I do feel a loyalty to my friends.” She laid her hand affectionately on his. “I spent a week or so asking questions, and I had the whole story when I came back. I called the college to get your address and found out that Junior had dropped out and left a Seattle forwarding address. I knew that your home was in this state, and I thought he might be following you. That’s why I wrote you the letter. I wanted to warn you.” She looked around. “Is there someplace where we can talk?”

“The hospital chapel’s usually deserted.”

She threw back her head and laughed. “How perfectly appropriate. All right, Raphael, let’s go melt down a few plaster saints.”

Raphael told the duty nurse where they were going and got directions.

The chapel was dimly lighted and quite religious. Sacred Heart is a Catholic hospital, after all. They seated themselves, and Isabel began. “You shouldn’t feel any guilt about what’s happened to Junior, Raphael,” she said quite firmly. She gestured at the inside of the chapel. “You’re in the right place. You should fall down on your knees—” She broke off. “I’m so sorry, Raphael. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s only an expression, ‘Bel. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“All right. You should thank God that it was Junior and not you.”

“Me?”

“That’s why he really came here—to destroy you—maybe even to kill you, for all I know.”

“Kill?”
He was startled at that.

“You’ll understand more as we go along. I saw a little bit of this myself, but I got most of it when I went back to Grosse Pointe.”

“All right, who’s Gabriel?”

“Junior’s cousin,” she answered. “Did Junior ever tell you very much about his family?”

“Not really. Bits and pieces mostly. I gather that there’s money and that he and his father don’t get along too well. You know Damon—he exaggerates a great deal.”

“That’s a clever way to put it. There
is
money—a great deal of money. Old J.D.—everybody calls him that—hit upon a very simple idea when they were developing one of the newer components in all cars. It’s the simplest thing in the world—or so I’m told—but a car won’t work without it, and J.D. has the patent.”

“No kidding? Damon never said a word about that.”

She nodded. “Maybe he considers it beneath him. It’s hard to know about Junior. Did he ever tell you about his cousins?”

“I think he mentioned them once—something about a large number of girls.”

“There are plenty of girls, all right. The Floods are prolific, but they seem to have trouble producing male children. There’s only one other aside from Junior—Gabriel. They grew up together, and Junior hates Gabriel to the point of insanity.”

“Hate? Damon?”

“Oh, my dear Raphael, yes. Hate may even be too timid a term. You see, Junior’s mother died when he was about four, and J.D. buried himself in the business. It happens sometimes, I guess. Anyway, Junior was raised by servants, and he grew up to be a sullen, spiteful child, delighting in tormenting cats and puppies and his legion of female cousins.

“At any rate, the shining light of the entire family was Gabriel. Because he and Junior were the only two boys, comparisons were inevitable. Gabriel was everything that Junior wasn’t—blond, sunny, outgoing, athletic, polite—the kind of little boy people just naturally love. Junior, on the other hand, was the kind of little boy that you send away to military school. I gather that for a great number of years about the only thing old J.D. ever said to Junior was, ‘Why can’t you be more like Gabriel?’ I understand that it all

came to a head when the boys were about nine—at Christmastime. Junior had been tormenting one of the girls—as usual—and Gabriel came to her rescue. Old J.D. caught them fighting and made them put on boxing gloves. Then, in front of the entire family, Gabriel gave Junior a very thorough beating, and old J.D. rooted for him all the way.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Oh yes. The Floods are a vicious family. After that there was no hope of reconciliation. J.D. told them to shake hands when it was over, and Junior spat in Gabriel’s face. From then on he not only hated Gabriel, but his father as well. It was about then that he started being sent away to school.”

Raphael thought about that. “What kind of person is Gabriel?”

“He’s an insufferable prig. He’s been trained since babyhood to butter up old J.D.—the rest of the Floods know where the money is. He graduated with honors last year from Dartmouth—J.D.’s old school—and he’s now busily backstabbing his way up the ladder in the family company.”

“Good group. I can see now why Damon wanted to get away from there. But what’s all this got to do with what happened here in Spokane?”

“I’m coming to that. This is all a little bit complicated, and you have to understand it all before it makes any sense.” “Okay. Go ahead.”

“Anyhow,” she continued, “at school Junior continued his charming ways, spending most of his time trying to bully smaller boys and usually getting soundly beaten up for it by older ones. Since the schools he attended are little WASP sanctuaries, more often than not the boys who thrashed him were blond, Nordic types—replicas of dear Cousin Gabriel. So, by the time Junior was fifteen or so, he’d developed a pretty serious kind of attitude.

“The turning point, I suppose, came at prep school when Junior set out quite deliberately to ‘get’ the school’s star athlete—a blond, curly-headed half-wit who was almost a carbon copy of Gabriel. Junior charmed the young man into accepting him as his best

friend—Junior can be
very
charming—and then he planted some cocaine in the boy’s room. An anonymous tip to the school authorities, and the boy was expelled.”

“Flood?” Raphael said incredulously.

She nodded firmly. “Junior Flood. After the first time he did it again—and again—not always with drugs, naturally. He turned a promising young halfback into a sodden alcoholic. He introduced another boy to the joys of heroin. A brilliant young mathematician now has the cloud of possible homosexuality hanging over him. One boy went to jail. Another killed himself. Junior’s been a very busy young man. He’s made a lifelong career of destroying young men who look like his cousin Gabriel. I suppose that in time he might even have worked up the nerve to go after Gabriel himself.”

“And I … ?”

“Exactly, Raphael. You look more like Gabriel than Gabriel himself—and of course there’s your name. The coincidence was just too much for Junior. He
had
to try to get you. I suppose that’s where I came in. I was part of whatever he had in mind, but probably not all of it. Whatever it was going to be, it was undoubtedly fairly exotic. Junior was—is—quite creative, you know.”

“It doesn’t hold water, ‘Bel. Why did he bother to come to Spokane, then? Wasn’t this enough for him?” He passed his hand through the vacancy where his left leg had been.

She turned her head away. “Please don’t do that, Raphael,” she said, her tone almost faint. “It’s too grotesque.”

“You haven’t answered me.”

“I don’t know,” she said helplessly. “Who knows what’s enough for someone like Junior? Maybe it was because it was an accident and he didn’t make it happen; maybe he wanted to gloat; maybe a hundred things. And then I suppose there’s always the possibility that he genuinely likes you. Maybe after the accident you no longer threatened him, and he found that you could really be friends. I really don’t know, Raphael. I have enough trouble sorting out my own motives—and God knows
they’re
elemental enough.”