Laffter started around the table, but stopped. His pale-blue eyes bulged and a dark-red flush spread across his face and it twisted itself into pure pain. He clapped his right hand to his chest and bent forward. He began to sag then and tried to support himself on the table with his left arm and hand, but they refused to cooperate. He crumpled and would have fallen if Harry the Waiter hadn’t rushed over, caught him, and lowered him gently to the floor.
Harry the Waiter looked up at Dill. “Tell the Greek to call the paramedics for the old fool,” he said.
“I’ll do it,” Anna Maude Singe said. She rose and hurried toward the bar.
“You ain’t gonna die on me, old man,” murmured Harry the Waiter, as he ripped off Laffter’s greasy gray tie. “You ain’t gonna die in my place.”
Harry the Waiter shook the old man’s shoulder and yelled, “You all right?” at him. There was no response, but he seemed to expect none. He put his left hand under the old man’s neck, lifted up, and pushed down on the now sweaty forehead with his right hand. The old man’s mouth came open. Harry the Waiter bent to listen and then shook his head, almost in disgust.
“I’m gonna have to kiss you on the mouth again, old man,” Harry the Waiter muttered. He kept his left hand under Laffter’s neck, still lifting it up, and with his right hand pinched Laffter’s nostrils until they closed. Harry the Waiter took a deep breath, opened his own mouth as wide as it would go, placed it over the old man’s mouth, and blew into it. Dill could see the old man’s chest rise. Harry the Waiter removed his mouth, checked to see if the old man’s chest was falling, and seeing that it wasn’t, blew four full quick breaths into Laffter’s mouth. This time the old man’s chest rose, fell, and then stopped.
Harry the Waiter got to his knees and checked the carotid artery in Laffter’s neck next to the voice box. “Goddamn you, old man,” he said. He placed the heel of his left hand an inch or so down from the tip of the sternum at the xiphoid, interlocked the fingers of his hands, leaned over Laffter, and pressed down. The old man’s chest seemed to sink two inches. Harry the Waiter rocked back, came forward, and repeated the process. He repeated it fifteen times and then bent down quickly and blew twice into the old man’s mouth.
A woman’s voice behind Dill said, “Isn’t that disgusting?” He looked around and saw that a small crowd of curious diners had gathered.
Harry the Waiter looked up at Dill. “Can you blow in him?”
“Sure,” Dill said and knelt beside Laffter. “Just tell me when.”
“When I hit five again,” Harry the Waiter said and began counting his compressions aloud. When the waiter reached five, Dill inhaled deeply, covered the old man’s mouth with his own, and blew.
“Again,” Harry the Waiter said.
Dill inhaled and blew again. The old man’s mouth tasted of stale tobacco smoke and cognac. And probably Polident, Dill thought as he forced himself not to gag.
“Again on five,” Harry the Waiter said.
“Right,” Dill said.
After the waiter again made a fifth cardiac compression, Dill again blew breath twice down into the old man’s lungs. They were both still at it a few minutes later when the fire-department paramedics arrived and took over. The paramedics put Laffter on oxygen, lifted him onto a gurney, and rolled him toward the front of the club. Dill and Harry the Waiter went with them. The onlookers went back to their drinks and dinners.
“He gonna make it?” Harry the Waiter asked one of the paramedics.
“Yeah, I think so. You hit him pretty good with your CPR again, Harry. Thanks.”
When the paramedics were gone, Dill asked Harry the Waiter, “You did CPR on him before?”
“Twice.”
“Jesus.”
“I told the old fool time and again he ain’t gonna die here in my place. He’s gonna die at home in bed all alone. That’s how and where he’s gonna die. Not here in my place. You really say you were gonna sue him?”
Dill nodded.
Harry the Waiter shook his head and grinned. “That’d set him off. That’d set him off for sure. You know who the old fool’s gonna leave all he’s got to?”
Dill could only stare at Harry the Waiter with utter disbelief.
Harry the Waiter went right on grinning. “That’s right. Me. Ain’t that something?” He ran his tongue over his lips and grimaced. “And don’t that old man taste bad?”
Chapter 26
Dill found Anna Maude Singe at the small end of the L-shaped bar huddled over a glass of something that looked like vodka on the rocks. He told the Greek he would have the same, whatever it was. Levides poured the drink and indicated the silent woman. “I told her it really wasn’t anything you two said or did, but she’s not buying it.”
Dill nodded and drank. It turned out to be vodka. He looked at Singe. She continued to stare into her glass.
“I told her the old guy’s seventy-three,” Levides went on, “and that he puts away at least a fifth a day and smokes three packs of Pall Malls and eats grease and junk and walks maybe fifty or sixty steps a week, if that, and that’s what did it to him before and that’s what did it to him tonight. Not anything anybody said.” He paused. “Christ, you and Harry the Waiter saved his life.”
“If he lives,” Dill said.
“So? He’s seventy-three.” Levides paused. “Damned old fool.”
“I want to get out of here,” Anna Maude Singe said, still staring down into her drink.
Dill put a ten-dollar bill on the bar, picked up his drink, finished it in three swallows, shuddered, and said, “Let’s go.”
She silently got down from the bar stool and started for the door. Dill was picking up his change when Levides, looking somewhere else, asked in his too casual offhand voice, “What’d you say to old Chuckles anyhow?”
“I said I was going to sue him for libel.”
“No shit,” Levides said as Dill turned and went after Anna Maude Singe.
Dill drove south on TR Boulevard toward downtown. Anna Maude Singe huddled against the right-hand door. Dill glanced over at her and said, “I don’t suppose you’re hungry.”
“No.”
“Me either.”
“I’d like to go home.”
“All right,” he said. “You mind if I stop at a drugstore?”
“For what?”
“Mouthwash. I can still taste him.”
Dill stopped at a drugstore whose digital temperature and time sign said it was 9:39 and 89 degrees. He bought a small bottle of Scope, came out, uncapped the bottle at the curb, rinsed his mouth out, and spat into the gutter, which was something he could not remember ever doing before — at least not since he was a child.
He got back into the car, started the engine, and pulled out into the street. Singe said, “You couldn’t wait to get home to do that?”
“No,” he said, “I couldn’t. I could still taste him.”
“What’d he taste like?”
“Like old death.”
“Yes,” she said, “that’s what I figured he’d taste like.”
When they neared the Van Buren Towers Dill started looking for a place to park. “Don’t bother,” she told him. “Just let me out in front.”
“Okay.”
He pulled up in front of the building and stopped. Anna Maude Singe made no move to get out. Instead, staring straight ahead, she said, “I don’t think I want to be your friend anymore. I’ll be your lawyer, if you want, but I don’t want to be your friend.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t have all that many friends.”
“Nobody does.”
“Was it the old man almost dying?”
She looked at him then and slowly shook her head. “You weren’t trying to kill him.”
“You’re right. I wasn’t.”
“If I went on being your friend, and not just your lawyer, I’m afraid two things might happen.”