“Mr. Paget,” he said, ignoring the guard, “I’m Ralph Loring.” He had a thin nose and a lightly pocked face, partly covered by a neat beard. The brown eyes had a liquid, volatile quality as if about to change into some unstable element. Sensitive, but not quite right. Psychiatrist’s eyes, I thought.
I shook his hand and walked with him through the second doors. “I appreciate being received,” I said. “Your man out there had me at bay.”
It was intended as a light remark. But he gave me a sideways, troubled gaze. “I’m sure you understand our security problems.”
I thought maybe I did. Loring had resumed the downcast hunch. I looked at him. He was thinner than he’d first appeared, but not wiry, just bony. His skin was pale and seemed almost translucent.
Loring led me to an office on the right corridor. It was wood paneled and fairly plain: a couple of framed diplomas and two prints by the guy who paints the children with big eyes. I didn’t like the pictures much and looking at Loring I liked them less. His eyes were something like that.
I took a chair. Loring sat behind his desk, legs crossed and hands folded. He eyed me uneasily, as if I were a threat to some delicate balance in the environment.
“I’m told that you have identification,” he ventured.
I took out my plastic card and slid it across his desk. He took it with two fingers, eyes half-closed, the odd reluctant gesture of a man who has just drawn to an inside straight. Then he looked down at it for an overly long time, as if it could tell him something.
He looked up. “What do you want here, Mr. Paget?”
I gambled. “Peter Martinson.”
His eyes flickered for an instant. “I’m not sure I understand.”
I decided to go all the way. “Martinson’s a witness in an investigation. The case involves fraud, murder, and your leading patron, William Lasko. I know that Martinson is no crazier than you or I and that he didn’t volunteer for this rest cure. Which puts you in a crack.”
I could have been wrong. And he could have said that I was delusional, or just ordered me out. The last idea seemed to flash through his eyes, then leave, along with his chance to play innocent. “Mr. Martinson is a patient of mine.” The voice held a weak man’s stubbornness.
“I’d like to see him.”
“I’m sure you would,” he said with a spurt of righteous sarcasm, as if I were the neighborhood bully, torturing an animal. Loring, the protector. He’d probably played that role long enough to believe it.
I said nothing. He blurted into the silence. “In my opinion, seeing you would do Mr. Martinson no good.”
“Would do who no good?”
He flushed slightly. “I can’t entrust the mental health of one of my patients to you.”
I decided to give Loring a dose of reality. “You have at least kept him alive?”
“Of course,” he said with real indignation.
“Bully for you, Doctor. The last one in Martinson’s position ended up deader than your rotten paintings.”
He snapped upright. “You’re not a very pleasant young man.”
“This isn’t a very pleasant subject. And I’m tired of sparring.”
He picked up my ID card, as if something on it might help him. It gave me a chance to decipher the list on his desk, upside down.
“Christopher Kenyon Paget,” he was reading. “Wasn’t Christopher Kenyon a railroad owner in California in the last century?”
I was still decoding. “My great-grandfather, if that concerns you.”
Somehow that placed me within his frame of reference. “As I recall, he sent out armed guards to kill some strikers. Nine men died, I think. Is that what makes you tick, Mr. Paget? Overcompensation, perhaps.”
I was through. “You know,” I said evenly, “I get tired of jerks who want me to apologize for having a middle name instead of an initial and a great-grandfather I didn’t ask for. I’m especially tired of jerks who do it for a living. And I never heard that the old man fronted for other people’s murders. Which is what you’re doing.” I snatched the list off his desk. “Now, Doctor, I’d like to see Martinson.”
His hand jerked in a futile grab for the list. He suddenly broke down. “You must realize that I need money for our work,” he stammered. “This hospital would have to close.”
The list said that Martinson was in Room 19-W. I looked back at Loring. The hand was still outstretched, pleading now. “Never mind, Doctor,” I said, and started to leave.
He stepped after me. “Do you have a search warrant?”
I turned back. “No.”
“Then you’re trespassing.”
That was true. I felt as if somewhere between Lehman and here I’d stopped being a lawyer and become someone I didn’t know. I pushed all that aside. “If you’re so confident of your legal position, call the police. As an accessory to kidnapping you’ll have their fullest sympathy.”
His shoulders stooped at that. He stood in front of his desk, wet eyes seeing some inevitable disaster. I thought he looked like a man in a bomb shelter would look when he heard the first siren. I left and went hunting for Martinson.
The west wing was in the opposite corridor. It was the same green, but the dim lighting gave it a sort of restrained ghastliness. Ahead I saw doors and before that a broad beam of light coming from a nurses’ station. An older nurse peered out, puzzled. I nodded, smiled, and walked on. I heard voices behind me, a woman’s, then a man’s. Then footsteps scrambling in the other direction. It reminded me of the lump on my head. But I didn’t look back. 19-W was at the end of the corridor. It surprised me. No guard. Just a simple latch which locked the door from the outside. I turned the latch and opened the door.
Twenty-Eight
Martinson sat in an armchair, reading a copy of Sports Illustrated. He half-dropped the magazine, and stared at me with fearful unrecognition. His eyes asked who I was, but his mouth couldn’t form the words.
“I’m Christopher Paget, from the ECC. I’ve been looking for you.”
“My God,” he exclaimed, and his tone wasn’t grateful. I looked him over then. Tracy’s picture was a good likeness. He was tan and wiry, with black curly hair and chiseled features. The plaid slacks and oxford cloth shirt went with the expensive loafers. A well-preserved college boy from the early sixties, catnip for gullible women. What was wrong in him began in the myopic foxiness of the green eyes and bled subtly into his features, making them spoiled and vaguely weak.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he blurted.
I hadn’t expected this. I remembered the running footsteps in the corridor. “Why don’t you tell me on the way out?”
“Where are we going?”
“To the police.”
He shook his head. “Look, if I keep my head down, I won’t get hurt.” The words mixed fear and calculation. “You’re the one who got me into this mess.”
Tension raised my voice. “We’ll argue that later. Come on.”
Martinson’s hands clamped the chair as if it were a life raft. “They’ll kill me. They’ve already killed Alec Lehman.”
That stopped me for a moment. But there wasn’t time for questions. “Then you’re in a jam,” I said, “because now that I’ve found you, they’ll do just that.”
He hesitated, stiff with fear and resentment. I grabbed his forearm and pulled him up. He stumbled with me out the door, gaping at the bleak empty corridors. His voice was a savage whine. “Did Tracy tell you where to look?” I nodded and pulled him with me. “Stupid bitch,” he mumbled.
My grip tightened. “You know, Martinson, rescuing you is a real disappointment.” But I understood, in a way. He was a frightened man. I was frightened too.
The walk up the corridor seemed treadmill slow. The nurses’ station was empty. I looked quickly around. Except for Martinson, the wing was vacant.
Then I heard a drum roll of footsteps. A clump of figures appeared suddenly at the end of the corridor. I picked out Loring and the guard and two large men I didn’t know. The other man was tall and broad-built. Lasko. Whatever Martinson knew had flushed him out.