‘Well now he’s pushing me around.’ Mr Vitanuova laughed, coughed, look out his cigar and examined it.
‘Look, boss, why don’t I talk to him? If I told him it would ruin you, maybe he’d drop the suit.’
‘Nobody talks to him, I already tried. They got him over there at Mercy Hospital, and these fancy California lawyers won’t let anybody see him or even find out how sick he is. But I don’t know — you could try. You could try.’
He drove Roderick to the hospital in his Rolls-Royce, and talked all the way of destruction.
‘See, I was always in the garbage business, started out with just my brother and one truck. We built up a fleet and lotsa valuable contacts; when the city moved into garbage, we moved into incinerators. Real money was there. But I still didn’t see the big picture.
‘Then one day I met this broad who gave me some million-dollar advice. She said her ex-husband was into incineration too, dropping bombs. A pilot or an astronaut or some damn thing. Then she said, You’re not just in garbage, you’re in the destruction business, just like Luke. And it’s a wide-open, growing field.
‘Destruction, see, that was it! I had contacts in junk, so why not buy into junkyards? And ship salvage? And demolition? Hell, now I’m diversified all over the place, got interests in bottle banks, graveyards, even tried a little asset-stripping — but that was too abstract, I like to see real stuff falling apart. That’s why I acquired Hackme, and I’d really hate to see it go. So here we are, get in there, kid, and fight for us.’
As soon as Roderick asked for Mr Bangfield, the receptionist became very nervous. She pushed a button and then pretended to be looking up the room number. A stack of X-rays slipped to the floor.
‘Let me help,’ said Roderick. Before he could help, however, he was grabbed from behind and his arm twisted into a hammerlock.
‘Peace,’ said someone.
‘Well peace, fine, but — ouch — what is this?’
‘Routine, man, just hold still until we see if you’re clean.’ Hands patted and prodded him. ‘Okay, beautiful.’ His assailant released him and stepped back as Roderick turned. ‘We love you, man.’
‘Who are you two to love me?’ He saw that they were two remarkably healthy-looking men in late middle age, both dressed in the style of a bygone age.
The one who did all the talking wore a shirt printed with tiny flowers in fluorescent colours, white beachcomber trousers and rope sandals. His blond hair was twined with artificial flowers; around his neck were assorted strands of beads and a gold cowbell. He wore a CND button and (just visible inside his open flowing shirt) a Colt .45 automatic.
His partner, who did all the nodding, wore his dark hair streaked, long and fastened up with a white headband. His shirt was buckskin, dripping with bead and fringe, over Levis above moccasin boots. He favoured bearclaw necklaces and silver rings and bracelets mounted with turquoise. His button urged saving the whale, and his weapon of choice seemed to be a Smith & Wesson .38 police special. Both men were as muscled and tanned as possible, and looked as though they spent their days surfing and swilling vitamin cocktails.
‘Yeah hey we oughta introduce ourselfs, I’m Wade Moonbrand and this is like my partner Cass Honcho, we’re like Mr Bangfield’s attorneys. He doesn’t want to see anyone, man. Not in this shastri (that means incarnation). Right, Cass?’
Mr Honcho nodded. Wade Moonbrand spoke again.
‘So unless you like dig sitting around and waiting for like a million light years till he comes around again, forget it, hey? Man who needs trouble? We just want peace and love everywhere without guys like you coming in here to hassle our client, trying to lay some kinda guilt trip on him. There he is, fighting for his life in there, all purple and black aura, here come all you plastic guys to dump your bad karma on him, who needs it? Man like I never like like to get into pushing and authority games, I want everybody to be free, okay? Only your freedom has to stop were our client’s begins, so now we’ll just ask you as a favour, just split?’
Mr Honcho nodded agreement.
Roderick said, ‘I see your point. But maybe Mr Bangfield would want to see me if you told him I was here. I’m an old classmate of his, we went to grade school together in Nebraska. I heard about his accident—’
‘You thought maybe there was some action you could horn in on, try the old school buddy scam and grab what’s going down, eh? We’re not that fucking dumb, man. Anyway listen old buddy Chauncey is like on the nod just now, he don’t want his rems messed up by no fakey school bud. So—’
But Mr Honcho stopped nodding here.
‘What’s the matter? Like Cass man, you can’t mean that? Okay sure I know, it wouldn’t do no harm just to let him see old Chauncey, see him and just walk away? Okay man, be free, have it your way. Everything’s cool. But if this turns into a bad trip then you shoot Plastic Man here and I’ll handle your defence.’
Finally, in the company of a yawning doctor and the two lawyers, Roderick was marched into Intensive Care Unit 9. The place was dim, the only bright areas being the face of the patient and, on the other side of the room, the chair where a nurse stopped filing her nails and looked up. ‘No change,’ she said.
The rest of the room was crowded with dim machines on wheels, machines that clicked and clucked, buzzed and bleeped, showed on their screens moving dots, flickering numbers, or wave forms moving like an endless parade of shark fins.
The doctor yawned. ‘Didn’t expect any change. Let’s get this visit over with.’
Roderick was gripped by both wrists and both arms, and marched to the bedside. He felt as though being asked to identify a corpse at a morgue.
‘That’s Chauncey all right. Of course he’s a lot older now. Er, would it be all right if I woke him?’
The doctor laughed in mid-yawn. ‘Make medical history if you did. Didn’t anybody clue you in? This guy has irreversible brain damage, he can’t wake up. Best thing we could do for him would be to turn off something vital and call in the heartsnatchers.’
Mr Moonbrand said, ‘The doc is exaggerating. Our client—’
‘Exaggerating? Your client would be out in Vitanuova Cemetery right now, only you two won’t let the family sign the release form. Because he’s worth twenty million alive and only eight dead, wasn’t that what you said?’
‘I really don’t need this, man. You make it sound like bounty hunters or something, dead or alive. I mean anyway, who’s to say what death is? Who are you to say if somebody’s dead, anyway? Like orthodox medicine, what do you know, all you know is machines and operations and chemotherapy, like you only treat the symptoms and not the whole holistic, who are you, anyway? Anyway what’s your beef, you guys are getting like a hundred grand a week out of this guaranteed, man life is beautiful all over!’
At his expansive gesture, one of Wade Moonbrand’s necklaces parted, its beads dropping in darkness to become a string of rattling sounds only.
‘Hare Krishna! Hey man can everybody help me these are like these real expensive amber beads. Not that I’m into bread, I’d like to see the whole world free and everybody just take what they need, only I mean like you gotta be a realist in the world like it is, anybody got a flashlight? I — thanks. Beautiful. I mean I like a nice shadowy room like this man but — that’s it, everybody get down and help, real cooperation commune spirit okay maybe I am like too possessive about these beads only they got sedimental value too, I bought them because they reminded me of this great Herman Hesse novel, real fat paperback I had I was gonna read it when I got my head together — Cass, can you reach me that one there, Cass or anybody, there, no there, there you fucking idiot right behind that wire let me get it my — what’s that?’