“What happened, Debby?” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
She wasn’t asleep; her eyes were open, reflecting the thin sunlight in tiny points. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” she said. “I couldn’t — think of anywhere else.”
“That’s okay.” He snapped on the bedside lamp. She turned her face from the light. “Don’t do that,” she said.
“Debby, tell me what happened.”
She still wore the black cocktail dress, the gold sandals. There were ugly brown patches in her bright hair, and her face, the half of it that wasn’t bandaged, was very pale.
“Max did it,” she said. “After I came back last night. He threw coffee in my face.” She began to cry weakly. “The big bastard. The big bastard. He doesn’t care what he does to people.”
“You’ve seen a doctor?”
“They took me to one, I guess. I woke up this morning in a room next to his office. I got up and walked out and came here. I... I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Turn off the light, Bannion. Please.”
“All right, Debby.” He snapped off the light and picked up the phone. He told the operator, a cool and sensible woman, that he wanted another room on this floor for a friend of his, and a doctor.
“Can’t I stay with you?” Debby said, when he put the phone down.
“Yes, I’m getting you a room.”
“I want to stay with you. You’re not afraid of him, are you, Bannion?”
“No, I’m not afraid of him,” Bannion said. He took off his hat and coat and put them on a chair. She wanted sympathy now, protection, he thought, going into the bathroom for a glass of water. That was just dandy, except that he had no sympathy left for anyone.
The doctor got there ten minutes later, a plump balding man with a no-nonsense manner, and strangely kind, worried eyes. Bannion helped him get Debby into the adjoining room. They undressed her and put her into bed. The doctor gave her a sedative, and started changing the bandages on her face. She pushed at his hands, and said. “Don’t look, Bannion. Please.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, and went back to his own room. He made himself a drink and raised the shade to let in some light. He sipped his drink, and stared out the window at a row of uniformly dull office buildings, and beyond them the switching tracks of the Reading. His thought turned slowly about Lagana, Max Stone, and finally, Deery. Thomas Francis Deery. The automatic little cog who handled the police department’s paper work, who lived with a cool, detached blonde, and had had his fling with a blonde, a gay likable blonde, Lucy Carroway. What was so damn odd about that. Not much.
Deery had had a place in Atlantic City years ago; had he been taking a little cut then? Deciding, for some reason, to go straight, he had sold the place, and settled into an uneventful sort of life, enlivened only by his arm-chair traveling? Was that the way it had worked out? You desert the reality of Atlantic City and the pay-off for the unreality of Spain and the Fiji Islands. It was a nice, simple equation.
The doctor came in, looked Bannion up and down, and said, “I’ve got two prescriptions here to be filled. Who did that to her?”
“Her boy friend, which I’m not,” Bannion said. “How is she?”
“Well, she’s comfortable now,” the doctor said, the coldness gone from his voice. “She should sleep.”
“How about scars?”
“Probably. It’s pretty hard to say.” He put the prescription form on the bedside table. “See that she takes these according to the instructions. I’ll be back tomorrow morning to take a look at her.”
“Thanks, Doctor.”
The doctor put on his overcoat and hesitated at the door. “Who’s the boyfriend, by the way? This is a police matter, if she’ll prefer charges.”
“I don’t know,” Bannion said.
“He shouldn’t get away with this.”
“Well, something may happen to him someday,” Bannion said.
The doctor glanced at him curiously, and then cleared his throat and said, “Yes, yes of course. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Bannion went in to see her after the doctor had gone. The tension of pain had faded from her forehead, and her hands rested palely outside the covers.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said. “You probably feel better already.”
“That’s the dope he gave me working,” she said. “How’ll I look, Bannion? Did he tell you?”
“He said you can’t tell yet,” he said.
“You talked to him about it, didn’t you? Will I be scarred?”
“Settle down, Debby.”
“Oh, sure, that’s easy. What did he say?”
“There might be a scar. But that’s not definite.”
She was silent, her fingers playing restlessly on the covers. “A scar isn’t so bad,” she said. “Anyway, it’s only on one side. I can go through life sideways.” She turned her face to the wall. “He told you I’m messed up for good, didn’t he?”
He lit a cigarette, and frowned slightly. She surprised him by saying, “You don’t give a damn, I know. You’re a real tough guy.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” he said. He knew she was right; he was too cold and empty to care about anyone. He didn’t care about her face, he wouldn’t care if she solved her problems by jumping out the window. He wouldn’t even be relieved; it simply made no difference.
“You can’t live that way,” she said. “Not caring about people, I mean. Not about me, but about someone. You ought to at least get a dog.”
“Don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about anything, Debby. You’ll be okay. Get some sleep now.”
“I’ll be okay when I get Stone,” she said. “I’ll get him, don’t worry.”
“Forget him, Debby.”
“No, I won’t forget him.” Her voice was drowsy. “He’ll wish I had, though, someday.”
When she was asleep Bannion turned off the light and locked her door. He picked up his things from his own room, and the prescriptions, and went downstairs to the desk.
“This is important,” he said to the desk clerk. “The girl in the room next to mine is sick. I want you to get these prescriptions filled for me, and don’t let anyone go up to her room. Get that? I don’t care if they claim to be her father, her mother, or her parish priest. Nobody sees her. If anyone tries to, you pick up the phone and yell for the cops. Use my name. Bannion. They’ll know it, I think.”
“Certainly. We’ll be careful.”
“Thanks very much.”
Bannion left the desk and walked toward the revolving door. He was halfway there when a voice said, “Hey, Dave, wait a minute.”
He stopped, turning, and saw Furnham, the Express reporter, and a tall, stooped, gray-haired man coming toward him; they had been sitting in a sofa at the side of the lobby. Their hats were still on a nearby chair.
“We were waiting for you, Dave,” Furnham said. “This is my boss, Emmet Lehto, managing editor of the Express. He wanted to meet you.”
Bannion shook hands with Lehto, who had a thin shy face and a pleasant smile. “Not only meet you, I want to talk to you,” he said.
“I’m pretty busy now.”
“Would you sit down long enough to have a cigarette?” Lehto said.
“All right.”
They walked back to the sofa. Furnham collected the two hats and put them on a table. Bannion took the straight chair. “Well, what is it, Mr. Lehto?” he said.
“Have you been following the papers this week?” Lehto said.
“No, I haven’t had time.”
“Well, as editorial writers say, the administration has been under heavy fire,” Lehto said, smiling slightly. “But it’s probably not going to be enough to affect the elections. Something more dramatic is needed, I’m afraid. You know how people are. They see things, and still don’t see them. They know about the politician-hoodlum tie-up in the city. They know that city contracts go to hoodlum-controlled contracting companies, who cheat the tax-payer with sub-standard materials, and whose only thought is to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the job. They understand that ten or fifteen years of this causes the city’s parks, schools, roads and public buildings to depreciate more than they would in fifty years of normal care and up-keep. Still they do nothing about it. Maybe they feel they can’t; maybe they aren’t angry. Our intention is to get them angry, Bannion.”