“The bottom line,” finished Crichton hollowly.
The bottom line. If the insurance company refused to pay Klenhard’s running medical expenses, the hospital would transfer the old man to a county-run facility that Crichton regarded as little better than a snake pit. He sighed in resignation.
“He has to agree to the spinal tap.”
“Okay. But right now. Before that wife of his gets back.”
The two men stared at one another with cordial mutual loathing. Crichton sighed and turned away. Hawkins smiled at his back. The old woman was the steel in the combination. With her out of the way, the old man would be putty in his hands.
The nurse had finished both Staley’s sponge bath and that amazing nurses’ feat, changing his sheets with him still in them.
Crichton dismissed her, said gently, “We’ve been discussing your case, Mr. Klenhard. We want you to submit to a spinal tap.”
“What’s that?” Staley was looking apprehensively from face to face for those answers not found in words alone.
“I draw fluid from your spinal cord to test whether—”
“Draw? What’s that, draw?”
“Siphon off,” put in Hawkins impatiently.
“Like with a needle?”
“Yeah.”
“A big needle?”
“Yes,” said Crichton suddenly, “a very big needle.”
“It’s gonna hurt, ain’t it? A lot?” Staley’s chin had gotten determined and his eyes had gone mule-stubborn. “I ain’t gonna do it, I can’t stand no more pain.”
“Mr. Klenhard—”
“No.”
Staley looked straight ahead as if alone in the room. Crichton took Hawkins to the window. Outside, April showers had come their way to bring the flowers that bloom in May.
“You heard. He can’t stand any more pain.”
“He wouldn’t have known about any more pain if you hadn’t tipped him off,” snarled Hawkins. “A little needle prick—”
“Have you ever had a spinal tap, Mr. Hawkins?”
“No, but—”
“I thought not. I sincerely hope I get a chance to give you one. Meanwhile, I can’t chance it over his objections.” He amended, “I won’t chance it. With his sensitivity to any added pain, the tap could result in further permanent injury.”
“Further? I’m telling you, Doc...” The adjuster paused for a moment. Then he said in a low voice, “Okay, I’ll accept reflex tests if administered right now in my presence.”
“The same objection applies,” said Crichton in equally low tones. “Any added pain—”
“If he’s as bad off as he’s claiming, he won’t feel a thing. If he does inadvertently show pain, Doc, either we got us a miracle right here in River City... or he’s been faking it all along. Right?”
Crichton hesitated. There had seemed no way Klenhard could profit from faking serious injury, but now the store manager had brought in his insurance company with the possibility of a settlement. Might not a destitute septuagenarian looking at a penniless old age be motivated to attempt insurance fraud?
“Okay,” Crichton said abruptly, “I’ll go along with it.”
They turned from the rain-streaked window back to the bed, where Staley seemed to have fallen asleep again.
“Mr. Klenhard.” No reaction. Louder. “Mr. Klenhard.”
Staley stirred and opened his eyes. “Mama?”
“No. It’s Dr. Crichton. We won’t have to do the spinal tap after all, Mr. Klenhard, but we are going to have to perform some alternative tests on you right here in your bed.”
“Like the last time? Bendin’ an’ standin’ an’—”
“No. This will be with... sharp instruments.”
“Needles?”
“Little needles. Like straight pins. And scrapers.”
“See if I feel ’em, huh?” said Staley surprisingly, then added, more surprisingly, “Okay, if it’s gonna help...”
Crichton put down the covers and bared Staley’s legs and feet. He scraped them, seeking reflex reaction. Then, at Hawkin’s insistence, he jabbed needles into the soles of the feet. Through it all, Staley lay on his back, motionless and relaxed, staring at the ceiling. He finally spoke.
“You can start anytime you want, Doc. I’m ready for it.”
“We’re finished,” said a triumphant Crichton. He added to Hawkins, “Faking it, huh?” as Lulu appeared.
“What you doing to my Karl?”
Hawkins addressed a rude word to both of them and walked out without responding to either. Three minutes later, after reassuring Lulu that they had not harmed her husband in any way, Crichton also departed. Lulu sat down in the chair beside the bed with her purse on her lap.
“Did I stay away long enough, Liebchen?”
“Perfect,” said Staley.
“Any trouble with the needles?”
“There never is if you know they’re coming.” In his youth, accidental falls had been his specialty; he knew all about how to control his reaction to the needle jabs of reflex testing.
“The spinal tap?”
Staley groaned very loudly. They both laughed.
The spinal tap that might have exposed their scam, because the fluid would have been clear, was safely behind them. Lulu opened her purse and took out some Nestle’s chocolate bars with bits of almond and toffee in them, Staley’s favorite.
As he munched one of them, Lulu said, “That insurance man is gonna make us a nice offer in a few days.”
“And you’ll make him make us a lot nicer offer a few days after that.”
Staley said it complacently, with not a little pride in his voice at his wife’s abilities. He finished the bar and licked his fingers and started on a second one.
“I think tomorrow, maybe, you start word to the rom that I’m sinking fast. Prob’ly ain’t gonna last out next week...”
“I think that’s best,” agreed Lulu comfortably. She stole a sidelong look at her lord and master, and added slyly, “Think it’s maybe time for a Queen of the Gypsies again? I been hearing good things about that Yana out there in San Francisco...”
“I don’t know, my dumpling,” said Staley judiciously. “I’ve been following the career of young Rudolph Marino...”
Marino and the other three sat in a semicircular window booth with a curved red leather seat, their backs to the glass. The maître d’ had RESERVED signs on the flanking booths and on the tables in front of them. A balding man’s waterfall fingers cascaded Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue from a piano against the mirrored sidewall that was framed in thirty-foot-high red plush drapes. He had outlived his youthful self on the placard outside by a quarter-century, although his hair had not. Marino, against the others’ objections to meeting in the Garnet Room, had said the piano would jam any listening devices pointed their way.
Redheaded Shayne, Hotel Security, smeared out his half-smoked Marlboro and fired up another.
“Your meeting, your agenda, Grimaldi.”
Marino paused for a moment. They hadn’t panicked and gone to the authorities, or by this time relay teams of Secret Service interrogators would be sweating him under bright lights in some anonymous federal office building downtown. But they hadn’t accepted Angelo Grimaldi’s offer yet, either; and the President was due in a couple of days.
So, another turn of the screw. He made his face devoid of expression and spoke from the corner of his mouth, tight-lipped.
“Assassination plot.”
That almost did it. Harley Gunnarson went white around the mouth. If something happened to the President in a hotel he was managing... He had to clear his throat to speak.