Guild tried not to think about the water bottle Victor had drunk from, but of course he had already begun to suspect what had happened. He thought of a woman whose brother had been given poison. Her brother had been a boxer, as had his killer.
They moved slowly back through the bleachers and along the rope fence and to the business office.
Guild said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Stoddard trailed along. He seemed barely able to pick up his feet. He said nothing.
They put Sovich on the rubdown couch. Dr. Fitzgerald checked him again. He shook his head.
The room smelled of liniment and trapped heat.
Guild got a cigarette going. He was watching John T. Stoddard sink into memories of his son when Sovich’s trainer appeared holding a glass bottle half filled with water. “Here’s what we’re looking for.”
Guild took the bottle and sniffed it. “Can’t smell anything.” He held it up to the light. “Looks clear.”
“There are a number of poisons we can’t detect right away,” Dr. Fitzgerald said. “Not being able to see them or smell them doesn’t mean anything.” He looked at Stoddard heaped in the comer and said, “Mr. Stoddard, I’m going to pour you a glass of whiskey. I want you to drink it. Then I want you to get out of your wet clothes and lie down on that cot in the other room. Whether you know it or not, you’re in a state of shock.” He nodded for the trainer to help Mr. Stoddard into the other room.
Stoddard came suddenly and violently back to life. He jerked his arm away from the trainer’s hand. “Mr. Guild here doesn’t approve of me,” he announced in a formal, almost theatrical way. He sounded as if he were right on the edge of tumbling into insanity. “He didn’t think I was good enough for him, and he didn’t think I was good enough for my son. He has a pretty goddamn high opinion of himself.”
“Why don’t you go in and lie down, Stoddard?” Guild said.
“Are you happy I’m ruined, Leo? Are you going to get drunk and tell all the men in the bar that John T. Stoddard is ruined?”
“Come on now,” Dr. Fitzgerald said. “You go with the trainer and lie down and get a nap for yourself.”
“He thinks it’s funny,” Stoddard said. “He thinks it’s funny that I’m wiped out.”
The tears were coming again. They were hard, bitter tears, and he might never recover from them. But they were better than his silence.
The trainer eased him out of the room and into the next. He got the door closed, but Guild could hear Stoddard’s sobs.
Dr. Fitzgerald handed Guild a folded piece of paper. The faded bloodstains told Guild what it was. “Have you read this, Mr. Guild?”
“Yes.
“The poor kid.
“Yes.”
Dr. Fitzgerald nodded to the door. “Is he really ruined?
“I suppose.
“You don’t like him, huh?
“No.
“He’s in a bad way.
“He deserves to be in a bad way.
“You’re kind of a hard son of a bitch.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew how he’d treated the kid.”
“Sometimes we treat people we love pretty badly.
“I guess so.”
Dr. Fitzgerald looked at the door again. “No matter how much you hate him, Mr. Guild, right now he hates himself a whole lot worse.”
The doctor’s remarks cooled Guild’s anger. Stoddard was probably not the villain Guild had turned him into. He was probably just as helpless and pathetic as Guild himself, living with his remorse over his son just as Guild lived with his remorse over the little girl.
The door from the hallway slammed open. A young man with freckles and a soaked gray suit stood there. “Didn’t you hear it?” he said to Guild.
“Hear what?
“The gunshot.
“Not above the rain.”
“Somebody shot the nigger.”
“Rooney?
“Yeah. Rooney.
“Jesus,” Guild said. “Jesus.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Guild recognized the man right away, the tall, frenzied man in the ministerial frock coat and the insane dark eyes. He sat in a comer. Reverend Feely. The fat deputy stood next to him. The deputy said, “In this town you’re in trouble even if you shoot a colored.”
“He killed a white man. Coloreds have gone far enough. Don’t you agree?”
“Whether I agree or not don’t matter none. They still put you behind bars in this town when you shoot somebody.”
“Even a colored?”
“Even a colored.”
“I tell you they’ve gone far enough, and we’ve got to put a stop to it.”
“This is the gun you shot him with?”
“You think I’m ashamed of shooting him?”
“No. I s’pose not.”
“And I ain’t going to be ashamed when I go before a judge, neither.”
Guild knocked on the door that led to the interior room being used for dressing. When the door opened, he stepped back so Dr. Fitzgerald could step inside first.
Rooney lay on the training cot. In his black face his white eyes bulged. Silver sweat stood in cold beads on his face. His big hands favored the massive hole in his chest.
His trainer said, “We got the guy, Rooney. Deputy’s got him outside.”
Rooney seemed not to hear. He just stared up at the ceiling with those bulging eyes. Guild wondered what he was thinking about.
Dr. Fitzgerald went over and started examining him. Once Rooney moaned, as if enduring intolerable pain. He started crying soon after. “I’m gonna die, ain’t I, Doctor?”
“You’re going to be fine.”
“You’re lying and you know it. I’m gonna die. I beat Sovich and a white man shoots me. It ain’t fair.”
“You lie there now and let me have a closer look at that wound.”
“It ain’t fair.”
Guild watched Rooney’s eyes. They were quick now with panic and fear.
As Dr. Fitzgerald bent over him, Rooney said, “They got a priest around here?”
“Lie still now. I don’t think they have a priest.”
“I got to tell somebody what I did.” He writhed then with his pain. He was delivering death just as a birthing woman delivered life. Rooney looked over at Guild. “I poisoned this man, this nigger. He was a boxer. I shouldn’t ought to done that. I just wanted to get ahead, was all. That was all.”
His entire body jerked. His bulging eyes bulged even more. His body jerked again. His eyes closed, white eyes replaced by dark lids.
“He was lucky to make it this long,” Dr. Fitzgerald said.
Chapter Thirty-Three
An hour and twenty-two minutes later, Guild stepped off the streetcar. His clothes were dry. He needed a shave. He was shaking and he wasn’t sure why.
He stood on the street comer, letting well-dressed pedestrians swirl by him on their way to the opera house and the vaudeville parlor. He stared for a long time at the hotel. He wondered which floor she was on. He wondered if she’d left.
Dropping his hand instinctively to his.44, he crossed the street, waiting for a hansom cab to pass by, sleek and black in the streetlight. He liked the fresh smell of the city following the rain. It felt as though it had been purged of something foul.
In the lobby he went up to the desk. He asked the clerk if Clarise had checked out.
“No, she hasn’t, sir.”
“You’re sure?”
“She was going to. Said she changed her mind.”
“Thank you.” He started away from the desk. “Oh. I need her room number.”
“Four-oh-six,” the clerk said without looking it up. His blue eyes said that he’d been smitten, and smitten most seriously by Clarise.
On the carpeted stairs Guild passed more people in evening dress going out. In his rumpled clothes, he seemed to elicit both amusement and disgust.
On the fourth floor he went down a long hall. At 406 he leaned forward to see if he could hear anything. Nothing.
He knocked.
Still he heard nothing. He glanced around the hallway and at the same time took his.44 from its holster. He tried the doorknob. Open.