One Endless Hour

2

Two days later one of the nurses in Dr. Mobley's group lingered near my chair during the usual walkthrough of the ward. She waited until the group was huddled around Willie Turnbull and Dr. Mobley was taking bows for the change in Willie's attitude and personality, then hurriedly slipped me a carton of Pall Malls before she rejoined the staff.

I concealed the cigarettes by shoving the carton up the loose sleeve of my robe. I waited until routine had returned to normal in the ward before I left my chair and hid the carton under the pillow on my bed. Cigarettes weren't taboo on the ward, but Spider Kern controlled their appearance. I wanted a carton that Kern hadn't obtained for me.

At night I kept the carton between the coil springs in the bed, removing it each morning after ward inspection and replacing it under the pillow. It was Spider Kern's weekend off-each attendant had. one weekend off in three-and I needed his presence for the next move in my chess game.

Kern was back on Monday, and so was Dr. Mobley. The psychiatrist stopped in front of my chair during his tour of the ward. He was flanked by the usual tight semicircle of doctors and nurses. Mobley seldom got closer than ten feet to the inmate to whom he was speaking. The technique made sense in that it was a preventive against sudden assault by a man roweled by the up-tight monotony of long days in the prison wing of the hospital. There could have been another reason, too. Four days out of five that we saw him, Mobley's nose was cherry-red. I had almost decided that Mobley's standoffish tactics were employed to keep from calling undue attention to his bourbon breath.

"Glad to hear you're finally responding to treatment, Arnold!" the chief psychiatrist boomed at me.

Responding to treatment was a joke, but I had a reason for showing response. "I'm… feeling… better… thank… you," I said.

There was a murmur from the group around Mobley. The majority of them had never heard me speak before. I could see Spider Kern eyeing me speculatively from his position five yards away. Spider hadn't known I was "responding," either. I spoke because I felt I had to demonstrate to Mobley that he wouldn't be wasting the institution's money by okaying plastic surgery for me. From the way he beamed I felt I'd made my point.

Dr. Afzul wasn't with the staff. I hoped it meant he was already en route to New York for the surgeons' convention. Now that matters had started to show progress, I was anxious to accelerate the process.

Spider Kern came back to my chair after Mobley and his entourage had left the ward. I'd been expecting him, and I spoke before he could. "Something… for… you… under… my… pillow," I told him.

He stared suspiciously, but he went away without saying anything. He was too cagey to go directly to my bed. I never did see him go to it, but the next time I looked the cigarettes were no longer under the pillow. In the next couple of days Kern's attitude became markedly more friendly.

I knew he hadn't really changed. He still had it in for me because of what I'd done to his buddy, Blaze Franklin. Nor had my attitude toward Kern changed. The cigarettes for him were intended to make a point. Since Kern controlled the normal channels for introducing merchandise onto the ward, a man who could flash a carton of cigarettes without Kern's assistance couldn't be entirely without friends beyond the locked doors. And if that were true, then the man shouldn't be an open target for the venting of Spider's malice. I could do without Kern's lighted-end cigarette treatments while I was healing from Dr. Afzul's surgery, if and when.

There was Kern's well-known greed, too. He'd figure that if cigarettes appeared mysteriously, perhaps there would be something else for him. If Dr. Afzul didn't fail me, there would definitely be something else for Kern. The broad-shouldered, swaggering little man was an integral part of my escape plan.

Ten days passed, more slowly than usual even, before Dr. Afzul reappeared on the ward. He didn't look in my direction during Mobley's morning tour, but that afternoon I was called to Afzul's office. The first thing I noticed when I sat down was that he was wearing an expensive pair of English brogues, shoes that must have cost eighty dollars. I nodded at them. "I see you had no trouble finding the jar, Doc," I said.

"No." His expression was sober.

"Then I'll take what you brought for me." The little man seemed ill-at-ease. He reached into a jacket pocket of his hospital whites and removed a folded-over wad of bills, which he handed me. I riffled it quickly. There were twenty-two hundred-dollar bills. I put it in a pocket of my robe. "That's not all that was in the jar, Doc."

He shook his head. "I cannot give you the gun."

"We made a bargain." I pressed him, although I had never really expected that he would turn over the weapon.

"When I left here, I doubted the exissstence of the money, even," he said. "Finding the gun with it raised quessstions. Serious quessstions. I am now concerned to what end you would put a new face. It's not that I care what you do to yourself in the pursuit of your goal, whatever it may be, but there will be innocent byssstanders."

"I don't understand your morality, Doc. You took my money, but you don't deliver."

"My morality isss my own affair," he retorted, unruffled. "On the new face, I will deliver. On the gun, no."

"What can I say to change your mind?"

"Nothing," he said flatly. "There is self-preservation to be considered, you see. You will be gone, but I will remain. And you might not get clear away, in which case there would surely be an exhaustive invessstigation." He was silent for a moment. "You will have to make up your mind that the new face I will consstruct for you will be worth your invessstment in me."

"All right." I shrugged it off. The gun would have helped, but the cash was next best. "What's the program now?"

"We will begin on your face next week. A few quessstions now, please. You are a good healer? Or perhaps a cut heals slowly?"

"It heals quickly."

He nodded. "I will take blood sssamples. You should know there is a choice in the type of skin graft possible. With the dermatome, a skin-slicing machine, we are able to cut extremely thin slices of skin from a wide area. The choice comes in the thickness of the skin removed. We can take the top two layers, known as the epithelium and the deeper corium, which would conssstitute what is known as a full-thickness graft. Or we can take a thinner slice including only half the corium, a partial-thickness graft."

"What's the difference, Doc?"

"All transssplants contract and change color after healing. The thicker the transssplant, the less change, which is important in connection with the face. Conversssely, though, the thicker the transssplant the more difficulty in getting it to take permanently. A partial-thickness graft is sometimes more efficient though less esssthetic."

I held out my stiffened hands to him, showing him the encrusted burn scars. "The hands are more important than the face, Doc. I've got to get good usage from them again. Couldn't you do these first? That way we'd know more about how I heal before you get into the tough part of things." I had a better reason than the one I was using. I wanted all the healing time possible on my hands to restore suppleness.

"Your point has merit," Dr. Afzul acknowledged. "Except that in the case of the hands the procedure is different. I will cut loose flaps of skin in your chest, known as pedicules, and insert your hands inside until the skin of your chest grows to the backs of your hands. Then a series of incisssions will detach your hand from your chest while new skin is growing underneath. One hand at a time in this process, of course."

"What about the face?"

"Two different techniques will be involved. For the forehead and the nose, I will probably peel flaps of skin down from your scalp, since you will have to wear a hairpiece anyway. For the rest, mobile transplants from arms, back, and thighs. Not everything we attempt will be successful." He pursed his lips. "One thing I will tell you now. Do not get burned again, at least not in the same areas. What I do this time, no one can do a second time."

I was only half listening. "How long will all this take?"

"With trial and error, ten months. Perhaps longer."

I'd hoped for something quicker, but he was the doctor. Literally. "Okay. Blow the starting whistle anytime."

He took the blood samples before I left the office.

That night I slipped out of bed after everyone in the ward was asleep and Kern and James were having coffee in the galley. I walked to the John and opened the closet door where they kept the brooms, mops, and disinfectants. There was a case of toilet tissue in one corner of the closet. I had looked it over good a week before. The case contained ninety-six rolls of tissue, packed eight across and twelve deep. Only about a third of the rolls were gone from the case.

I dug down into the case, removing'a roll from each layer until I reached the bottom. I took the bottom roll out entirely. From the pocket of my robe I removed twelve hundred-dollar bills, which I rolled loosely and stuffed into the cardboard core of the toilet tissue roll. I put it back in the bottom of the case, covered it up with the rolls I had lifted out and set aside, and went back to bed. The remaining thousand dollars was still in the pocket of my robe. When the next-to-last layer of toilet tissue was reached, I'd slip into the John again at night and transfer the hidden money elsewhere.

It was late the next afternoon when I was able to manage a confrontation with Spider Kern when no one else was present. I was sitting in my usual place, looking out over the hospital grounds, when Kern came into the alcove to close the Venetian blinds. I beckoned to him when he turned to leave.

He paused, staring at me as if unsure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. I beckoned again. He approached me warily. "What the hell d'ya want, Arnold?" he rasped.

I took the thousand dollars in bills from my pocket and handed it to him. "For… you," I said. His hard-looking mouth was already open to snap something at me when the feel of the crisp bills in his hand sank into his consciousness. His mean-looking little eyes bulged as he saw the denomination on the outside bill. He thumbed the wad rapidly, then jammed it into his pocket. "Where'd you get-" he started to bluster.

"More… later," I cut him off. "We'll… talk."

"Yeah," he agreed avidly. "Okay, okay. We'll talk." I could see that curiosity was consuming him.

"No… hurry," I said.

"Okay," he said again. He glanced around the alcove to reassure himself that no one had witnessed the transfer before he left me.

I was under no illusion about what I'd bought from Spider Kern. A little time, that was all. A little healing time during Dr. Afzul's remaking of my face. Leopards like Spider Kern didn't change their spots overnight. He'd still plan his revenge for what I'd done to his buddy, Blaze

Franklin, but first he'd wait to see if there were any more hundred-dollar bills around.

As I expected, during the night the thought came to Kern that he might not have to wait. While we were at breakfast, Spider staged one of his periodic ward shakedowns, searching for "contraband." I could tell that my bed and the area around it had received special attention, but it hadn't done Kern any good.

That brought him back to me. "What's on your mind?" He came directly to the point when he had maneuvered us into a private tete-a-tete. A saliva-saturated toothpick danced in one corner of his mouth with each word.

I almost smiled. A week previously Spider Kern wouldn't have admitted that I had a mind. "I… want… a… gun," I said.

He blinked. He hadn't expected anything that blunt. "Well, now, you know that's-" he began to bluster.

"For… five thousand dollars," I cut him off.

His lips pursed in a soundless whistle as he stared at me.

I didn't have five thousand, but then I wasn't going to get a gun from Spider Kern, either. Not while he knew anything about it, anyway. With visions of a possible five thousand filling his mind, though, my healing period should remain uninterrupted. Kern wouldn't get me a gun, but with his eye on the money he would pretend to get it.

"When do you want it?" he asked me.

I was pleased to see that the train of thought he'd been pursuing for himself was just what I'd programmed for him. I touched my face. "When… finished."

He nodded. "Time enough. Okay, for five thousand." He paused as though considering all aspects. "C.O.D."

"C… O… D.," I repeated.

That concluded our conversation.

It also concluded the first step in setting up Spider Kern's pratfall.

The next ten and a half months I'd just as soon forget. Not that there was anything excruciatingly painful about Dr. Sher Afzul's sophisticated techniques. It was nothing like having a.38 slug rip through an arm, for instance. Mostly it was the awkwardness and inconvenience of the flesh-to-flesh transfers. Plus the accompanying boring monotony. I spent a lot of time in bed because it was too much trouble to do anything else.

Twice I thought we were finished, but little Dr. Afzul would have none of it. "I can increase the degree of naturalness," he said both times, and patiently began another complicated transplant. My own patience was just about gone.

He didn't let me see the result of any of his efforts except those upon my hands, which had healed nicely. "It would upset you too much," he insisted while he was still working on my face. "Better that you should see it all at once. Luckily you have most of your eyelashes. A hairpiece you can buy, and eyebrows I can give you, after a fashion, but eyelashes gone are gone forever.

He talked continuously all the time he was working on me, explaining in detail what he was doing. If I'd paid attention, I could probably have done a fair job of plastic surgery on someone else's face. I had the full course. I was so damned impatient to have the job finished, though, that at the end I wasn't listening at all.

"When will the bandages come off for good?" I asked him on the day he assured me the final transplant had taken and we were in the last healing stage.

"Ten days to two weeks," he answered.

That was sooner than I had expected.

It was time I got back to Spider Kern.

I wanted to blow the joint after the surgery was completed but before the bandages were removed. That way no one would know what my new face looked like. Neither would I, for that matter, but I could wait.

I couldn't make up my mind if Dr. Afzul recognized my intention or not. I'd already swiped from his office two cans of the liquefied spray he used after bandages were removed so I could use it on myself. If he missed them, he didn't say anything.

Kern was ready for me when I approached him. "Gettin' close?" he asked, eyeing my facial bandages, which were much less elaborate than in the initial stages.

"Right. How are we coming?"

"I've been thinkin' about it," he said. "I'll be back after lights out when we can talk."

For the balance of the evening I sat immobile in my chair in the alcove. I ignored Spider Kern, but I watched Rafe James. Twice as he moved about the ward James turned his mean-looking eyes in my direction. The expression upon his long, mournful-looking features could only be called speculative. It was the indicator as far as I was concerned. Whatever Spider Kern was setting up for me, Rafe James was to play a part in it.

It was just after midnight when Kern came to my bedside. Officially he had just gone off duty. "Let's go out to the sun deck," he muttered. I got out of bed and followed him to the silent solarium. He sat down and lit a cigarette before speaking again. I could have predicted his first words. "You've got the cash?" he asked.

"I'll have it." I didn't want him thinking he could shake me down close to the deadline and find it on me.

"No mistakes," he warned.

"There'll be none."

He took a long drag on his cigarette. "You're talkin' pretty good now, huh? Been puttin' us on all this time?"

"Would you be getting five grand if I hadn't?"

He grinned. "Guess not. When you plannin' on handin' over the packet?"

"When you deliver me to the main highway."

He nodded. "I been thinkin' the same way. I want you off the grounds when the blowoff comes."

"I'll need clothes, shoes, and a hat. And the gun."

"Okay." He frowned, considering. "It works out," he decided. "When we're set, I'll bring you the stuff and you can dress in the john. We'll walk out the ward door here together. I'll take you down the corridor to the side door that'll let us out onto the parkin' lot. From there I'll drive you to the highway in my car."

"It sounds fine." I pretended to agree. "I'll be picking up the cash alongside the driveway between the hospital and the highway." I stopped as though I'd said more than I intended.

I could see him changing gears while he thought that one over. The critical moment for me would be when Spider Kern thought I had the cash in my hands. I was sure that it was his intention to gun me down as an escapee at that moment. "All right," he said after a moment. "When's it gonna be?"

"How about a week from tonight?"

"That soon? No reason why not, though." He was studying me. "You're pretty sure of yourself, ain't you? Pretty cool?"

"I'm just leaving everything up to you."

"Yeah, that's the way. Okay, anything else we need to know or do?"

"Make sure the hat's a broad-brimmed one."

"Right. I'll pick up a straw sombrero. We'd better make the move around eleven P.M. so I can get back on the ward before the shift changes at midnight. I want your disappearance discovered on the owl shift, not on mine. Okay, let's pack it in."

I went back to bed but not to sleep.

Despite Spider Kern's question about my coolness, I felt far from cool after the months of inactivity.

All during the final week I paid close attention to the manner in which Dr. Afzul rebandaged my head after each session with the aerosol spray can in his office. There was less bandaging necessary each time. Mornings in his office I would unbandage myself while he was making his preparations. At night in bed I practiced unbandaging and rebandaging myself following Afzul's patterns until I was sure I could do it alone.

I still hadn't seen myself. There was no mirror in the doctor's office, and all my practicing was done in the dark. If Dr. Afzul ever noticed anything different in the arrangement of the bandages when I walked into his office mornings, he never said anything.

"You'll be getting a package in the mail one of these days with no return address on it," I told him on the morning of what I hoped would be my next-to-last day in the institution. "Don't open it until you're alone."

He knew what I meant. It would be the balance of the twenty thousand I'd promised him for the face job. I said it casually, as though it were still something a long way in the future. There were ways he could have helped my getaway, but I didn't ask. During the hours he'd worked over me I'd probed him sufficiently to be sure in my own mind that he wasn't flexible enough to help actively in my escape. I had no intention of jeopardizing the half loaf I had for a potential whole one.

Then something happened that made me wonder if I hadn't bought more of Dr. Afzul than I'd realized. For the first time in our association, he went out of his office and left me alone in it. I didn't waste time worrying about whether he suspected that my leave-taking was imminent. I hurried to his cabinet and removed a flat packet of gauze and a roll of tape, which I shoved into a pocket of my robe.

There were a stack of makeup kits in the cabinet, and I moved the top layer aside and opened the bottom kit. I took from it two tubes of a facial cream that Afzul had explained to me some time before would improve my appearance during the healing process. I put everything back so that no one could tell there had been tampering until the bottom kit was opened. I passed up the chance to take the entire kit. It was too bulky.

I would have liked to say goodbye to little Dr. Afzul when he returned to his office, but I didn't trust him that much. He had carried his share of the load, and I didn't want to rock the boat. Back on the ward I put gauze, tape, and makeup under my mattress. The aerosol cans were already there.

I had had to move my twelve hundred dollars several times during the months of plastic surgery. Each time the case of toilet tissue got down to the next-to-last layer, I removed my cash and stashed it temporarily until a new case went into the closet and I could hide the bills in the bottom layer again. I didn't think Kern was going to do anything to derail the situation now that he undoubtedly had a plan for taking care of me, but it didn't hurt to be careful.

It was a long day. I had made all my preparations, and there was nothing to do but wait. I didn't have a foolproof plan by any means. A major weakness in it was the timing, but I'd been unable to find a way around it. Kern and James went off duty at midnight, which meant my escape had to be made before then.

This timing meant that I'd have only a short period from the moment I reached the outside until the midnight change of shift. If anything happened to Kern and James during my escape, and there was almost no way as I saw it that nothing could happen, they would be missed at midnight. There would be an immediate bed-check, I'd be found missing, and the alarm would sound.

Aside from the short lead time, the advantage was with me. The options of Kern and James were limited by the fact they had to coddle me until they had the cash. When they did, I was expendable. They would never intend for me to return to the ward alive. A dead escaping prisoner told no stories.

My own options were flexible. My first plan was to kill Kern on the ward, take his keys, and let myself out of the place and take his car in the parking lot. A drawback was that although I knew which key on his key ring opened the ward door, I didn't know which one opened the side door to the parking lot. Even near midnight I could hardly stand at the door trying a succession of keys without risking observation and questioning by someone.

There was another fact. An overriding factor, the more I considered it. From his conversations with me, Kern planned to take me to his car and drive me to the point between the hospital and highway at which I would presumably hand over the money. Almost surely Spider would want Rafe James along on the expedition so that when the moment came no mistakes would be made in disposing of me.

James could hardly be waiting in Kern's car, though, since even a supposed dimwit like me might reasonably be expected to balk at two-to-one odds at such a critical moment. That meant Rafe James in another car, following us. The more I thought about it the more sure I was that was the way it had to be.

And the more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea.

Properly handled, it would give me the chance I needed to add to my lead time following my escape.