Whispers (32 page)

He hung up and limped into the kitchen.

Frank Howard was still sprawled on the floor, in the garbage. He had managed to roll onto his back, but he hadn't gotten any farther.

Tony knelt beside him.

Frank opened his eyes. "You hurt?" he asked weakly.

"No," Tony said.

"Get him?"

"Yeah."

"Dead?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

Frank looked terrible. His face was milk-white, greasy with sweat. The whites of his eyes had an unhealthy yellowish cast that had not been there before, and the right eye was badly bloodshot. There was a hint of blue in his lips. The right shoulder and sleeve of his suit coat were soaked with blood. His left hand was clamped over his stomach wound, but a lot of blood had leaked from under his pale fingers; his shirt and the upper part of his trousers were wet and sticky.

"How's the pain?" Tony asked.

"At first, it was real bad. Couldn't stop screaming. But it's starting to get better. Just kind of a dull burning and thumping now."

Tony's attention had been focused so totally on Bobby Valdez that he hadn't heard Frank's screams.

"Would a tourniquet on your arm help at all?"

"No. The wound's too high. In the shoulder. There's no place to put a tourniquet."

"Help's on the way," Tony said. "I phoned in."

Outside, sirens wailed in the distance. It was too soon to be an ambulance or a black-and-white responding to his call. Someone must have phoned the police when the shooting started.

"That'll be a couple of uniforms," Tony said. "I'll go down and meet them. They'll have a pretty good first aid kit in the cruiser."

"Don't leave me."

"But if they've got a first aid kit--"

"I need more than first aid. Don't leave me," Frank repeated pleadingly.

"Okay."

"Please."

"Okay, Frank."

They were both shivering.

"I don't want to be alone," Frank said.

"I'll stay right here."

"I tried to sit up," Frank said.

"You just lay there."

"I couldn't sit up."

"You're going to be okay."

"Maybe I'm paralyzed."

"Your body's taken a hell of a shock, that's all. You've lost some blood. Naturally, you're weak."

The sirens moaned into silence outside of the apartment complex.

"The ambulance can't be far behind," Tony said.

Frank closed his eyes, winced, groaned.

"You'll be okay, buddy."

Frank opened his eyes. "Come to the hospital with me."

"I will."

"Ride in the ambulance with me."

"I don't know if they'll let me."

"Make them."

"All right. Sure."

"I don't want to be alone."

"Okay," Tony said. "I'll make them let me in the damned ambulance even if I have to pull a gun on them to do it."

Frank smiled thinly, but then a flash of pain burned the smile off his face. "Tony?"

"What is it, Frank?"

"Would you ... hold my hand?"

Tony took his partner's right hand. The right shoulder was the one that had taken the bullet, and Tony thought Frank would have no use of that extremity, but the cold fingers closed around Tony's hand with surprising strength.

"You know what?" Frank asked.

"What?"

"You should do what he says."

"What who says?"

"Eugene Tucker. You should jump off. Take a chance. Do what you really want with your life."

"Don't worry about me. You've got to save your energy for getting better."

Frank grew agitated. He shook his head. "No, no, no. You've got to listen to me. This is important... what I'm trying to tell you. Damned important."

"Okay," Tony said quickly. "Relax. Don't strain yourself."

Frank coughed, and a few bubbles of blood appeared on his bluish lips.

Tony's heart was working like a runaway triphammer. Where was the goddamned ambulance? What the hell was taking the lousy bastards so long?

Frank's voice had a hoarse note in it now, and he was forced to pause repeatedly to draw breath. "If you want to be a painter ... then do it. You're still young enough ... to take a chance."

"Frank, please, for God's sake, save your strength."

"Listen to me! Don't waste any more... time. Life's too goddamned short ... to fiddle away any of it."

"Stop talking like that. I've got a lot of years ahead, and so do you."

"They go by so fast ... so fucking fast. It's no time at all."

Frank gasped. His fingers tightened their already firm grip on Tony's hand.

"Frank? What's wrong?"

Frank didn't say anything. He shuddered. Then he began to cry.

Tony said, "Let me see about that first aid kit."

"Don't leave me. I'm afraid."

"I'll only be gone a minute."

"Don't leave me." Tears streamed down his cheeks.

"Okay. I'll wait. They'll be here in a few seconds."

"Oh. Jesus," Frank said miserably.

"But if the pain's getting worse--"

"I'm not ... in much pain."

"Then what's wrong? Something's wrong."

"I'm just embarrassed. I don't want anyone ... to know."

"Know what?"

"I just ... lost control. I just. ..I... peed in my pants."

Tony didn't know what to say.

"I don't want to be laughed at," Frank said.

"Nobody's going to laugh at you."

"But, Jesus, I peed ... in my pants ... like a baby."

"With all this other mess on the floor, who's going to notice?"

Frank laughed, wincing at the pain the laughter caused, and he squeezed Tony's hand even harder.

Another siren. A few blocks away. Approaching rapidly.

"The ambulance," Tony said. "It'll be here in a minute."

Frank's voice was getting thinner and weaker by the second. "I'm scared, Tony."

"Please, Frank. Please, don't be scared. I'm here. Everything's going to be all right."

"I want ... someone to remember me," Frank said.

"What do you mean?"

"After I'm gone ... I want someone to remember I was here."

"You'll be around a long time yet."

"Who's going to remember me?"

"I will," Tony said thickly. "I'll remember you."

The new siren was only a block away, almost on top of them.

Frank said, "You know what? I think ... maybe I will make it. The pain's gone all of a sudden."

"Is it?"

"That's good, isn't it?"

"Sure."

The siren cut out as the ambulance stopped with a squeal of brakes almost directly below the apartment windows. Frank's voice was getting so weak that Tony had to lean close to hear it. "Tony ... hold me." His grip on Tony's hand slackened. His cold fingers opened. "Hold me, please. Jesus. Hold me, Tony. Will you?"

For an instant, Tony was worried about complicating the man's wounds, but then he knew intuitively that it no longer mattered. He sat down on the floor in the garbage and blood. He put an arm under Frank and lifted him into a sitting position. Frank coughed weakly, and his left hand slid off his belly; the wound was revealed, a hideous and unrepairable hole from which intestines bulged. From the moment Bobby first pulled the trigger, Frank had begun to die; he had never had a hope of survival.

"Hold me."

Tony took Frank into his arms as best he could, held him, held him as a father would hold a frightened child, held him and rocked gently, crooned softly, reassuringly. He kept crooning even after he knew that Frank was dead, crooning and slowly rocking, gently and serenely rocking, rocking.

***

At four o'clock Monday afternoon, the telephone company serviceman arrived at Hilary's house. She showed him where the five extensions were located. He was just about to begin work on the kitchen phone when it rang.

She was afraid that it was the anonymous caller again. She didn't want to answer it, but the serviceman looked at her expectantly, and on the fifth ring she overcame her fear, snatched up the receiver. "Hello?"

"Hilary Thomas?"

"Yes."

"This is Michael Savatino. Savatino's Ristorante?"

"Oh, I don't need reminding. I won't forget you or your wonderful restaurant. We had a perfect dinner."

"Thank you. We try very hard. Listen, Miss Thomas--"

"Please call me Hilary."

"Hilary, then. Have you heard from Tony yet today?"

Suddenly she was aware of the tension in his voice. She knew, almost as a clairvoyant might know, that something awful had happened to Tony. For a moment she was breathless, and fuzzy darkness closed in briefly at the edges of her vision.

"Hilary? Are you there?"

"I haven't heard from him since last night. Why?"

"I don't want to alarm you. There was some trouble--"

"Oh, God."

"--but Tony wasn't hurt."

"Are you sure?"

"Just a few bruises."

"Is he in the hospital?"

"No, no. He's really all right."

The knot of pressure in her chest loosened a bit.

"What kind of trouble?" she asked.

In a few sentences, Michael told her about the shooting.

It could have been Tony who died. She felt weak.

"Tony's taking it hard," Michael said. "Very hard. When he and Frank first started working together, they didn't get along well. But things have improved. The past few days, they got to know each other better. In fact they'd gotten fairly close."

"Where's Tony now?"

"His apartment. The shooting was at eleven-thirty this morning. He's been at his apartment since two. I was with him until a few minutes ago. I wanted to stay, but he insisted I go to the restaurant as usual. I wanted him to come with me, but he wouldn't. He won't admit it, but he needs someone right now."

"I'll go to him," she said.

"I was hoping you'd say that."

Hilary freshened up and changed clothes. She was ready to leave fifteen minutes before the repairman had finished with the phones, and she never endured a longer quarter-hour.

In the car, on the way to Tony's place, she recalled how she had felt in that dark moment when she'd thought Tony was seriously hurt, perhaps dead. She nearly had been sick to her stomach. An intolerable sense of loss had filled her.

Last night, in bed, awaiting sleep, she had argued with herself about whether or not she loved Tony. Could she possibly love anyone after the physical and psychological torture she had suffered as a child, after what she had learned about the ugly duplicitous nature of most other human beings? And could she love a man she'd known for only a few days? The argument still wasn't settled. But now she knew that she dreaded losing Tony Clemenza in a way and to a degree that she had never feared losing anyone else in her life.

At his apartment complex, she parked beside the blue Jeep.

He lived upstairs in a two-story building. Glass wind chimes were hung from the balcony near one of the other apartments; they sounded melancholy in the late-afternoon breeze.

When he answered the door, he wasn't surprised to see her. "I guess Michael called you."

"Yes. Why didn't you?" she asked.

"He probably told you I'm a total wreck. As you can see, he exaggerates."

"He's concerned about you."

"I can handle it," he said, forcing a smile. "I'm okay."

In spite of his attempt to play down his reaction to Frank Howard's death, she saw the haunted look in his face and the bleak expression in his eyes.

She wanted to hug him and console him, but she was not very good with people in ordinary circumstances, let alone in a situation like this. Besides, she sensed that he had to be ready for consolation before she dared offer it, and he was not.

"I'm coping," he insisted.

"Can I come in anyway?"

"Oh. Sure. Sorry."

He lived in a one-bedroom bachelor apartment, but the living room, at least, was large and airy. It had a high ceiling and a row of big windows in the north wall.

"Good northern light for a painter," Hilary said.

"That's why I rented the place."

It looked more like a studio than like a living room. A dozen of his eye-catching paintings hung on the walls. Other canvases were standing on the floor, leaning against the walls, stacks of them in some places, sixty or seventy in all. Two easels held works in progress. There were also a large drawing table, stool, and artist's supply cabinet. Tall shelves were jammed full of oversized art books. The only concessions to ordinary living room decor were two short sofas, two end tables, two lamps, a coffee table--all of which were arranged to form a cozy conversation corner. Although its arrangement was peculiar, the room had great warmth and livability.

"I've decided to get drunk," Tony said as he closed the door. "Very drunk. Totally smashed. I was just pouring my first drink when you rang. Would you like something?"

"What are you drinking?" she asked.

"Bourbon on the rocks."

"Make it the same for me."

While he was in the kitchen preparing drinks, she took a closer look at his paintings. Some of them were ultra-realistic; in these the detail was so fine, so brilliantly observed, so flawlessly rendered that, in terms of realism, the paintings actually transcended mere photography. Several of the canvases were surrealistic, but in a fresh and commanding style that was not at all reminiscent of Dali, Ernst, Miro, or Tanguy. They were closer to the work of René Magritte than to anything else, especially the Magritte of The Domain of Arnheim and Ready-Made Bouquet. But Magritte had never used such meticulous detail in his paintings, and it was this realer than real quality in Tony's visions that made the surrealistic elements especially striking and unique.

He returned from the kitchen with two glasses of bourbon, and as she accepted her drink she said, "Your work is so fresh and exciting."

"Is it?"

"Michael is right. Your paintings will sell as fast as you can create them."

"It's nice to think so. Nice to dream about."

"If you'd only give them a chance--"

"As I said before, you're very kind, but you're not an expert."

He was not at all himself. His voice was drab, wooden. He was dull, washed out, depressed.