Then Kurtz got the IV stand on wheels and pushed it out ahead of him into the hallway. Nothing in the universe looked so pathetic and harmless as a man in a hospital gown, ass showing through the opening in the back, shuffling along shoving an IV stand. One nurse, not his, stopped to ask him where he was going.
"X ray," said Kurtz. "They said to take the elevator."
"Heavens, you shouldn't be walking," said the nurse, a young blonde. "I'll get an orderly and a gurney. You go back to your room and lie down."
"Sure," said Kurtz.
The first room he looked in had two old ladies in the two beds. The second had a young boy. The father, sitting in a chair next to the bed, obviously awaiting the doctor's early rounds, looked up at Kurtz with the gaze of a deer in a hunter's flashlight beamalarmed, hopeful, resigned, waiting for the shot.
"Sorry," said Kurtz and shuffled off to the next room.
The old man in the third room was obviously dying. The curtain was pulled as far out as it could be, he was the only occupant of the double room, and the chart on the foot of his bed had a small blue slip of paper with the letters DNR on it. The old man's breathing, even on a respirator, was very close to a Cheyne-Stokes death rattle.
Kurtz found the clothes folded and stored neatly on the bottom shelf of the small closetan old man's outfitcorded trousers that were only a little too small, plaid shirt, socks, scuffed Florsheims that were slightly too large for Kurtz, and a raincoat that looked like a castoff from Peter Falk's closet. Luckily, the old guy had also brought a hata Bogey fedora with authentic sweat stains and the brim already snapped down in a perfect crease. Kurtz wondered what relative would be cleaning this closet out in a day or so and if they'd miss the hat.
He walked to the elevators with much more spring in his stride than he was really capable of, glancing neither left nor right. Rather than stopping at the lobby, he took the elevator all the way to the parking garage and then followed the open ramp up and out into brisk air and sunlight.
There was a cab near the emergency entrance and Kurtz got the door opened before the cabbie saw him coming and then collapsed into the back seat He gave the driver his home address.
The cabbie turned, squinted, and said around his toothpick. "I was supposed to pick up Mr. Goldstein and his daughter."
"I'm Goldstein," said Kurtz. "My daughter's visiting someone else in the hospital for a while. Go on."
"Mr. Goldstein's supposed to be an old man in his eighties. Only one leg."
"The miracles of modern medicine," said Kurtz. He looked the cabbie in the eye. "Drive."
CHAPTER FOUR
CHICKEN WINGS
CHILI
SANDWICHES
DAILY SPECIALS
Kurtz got the extra key from its hiding place, unpadlocked the front door, pulled the board out of his way, stepped in, and locked it all behind him. Only a few glimmers of sunlight came over and under the boards into this triangular main spacethe old lobby and restaurant of the inn. Dust, plaster, and broken boards were scattered everywhere except on the path he'd cleared. The air smelled of mold and rot.
To the left of the hallway behind this space was the narrow staircase leading upstairs.
Kurtz checked some small telltales and went up, walking slowly and grabbing the railing when the pain in his head made him dizzy.
He'd fixed up three rooms and one bathroom on the second floor, although there were hidey holes and escape routes out of all nine rooms up here. He'd replaced the windows and cleaned up the big triangular room in frontnot as his bedroom, that was a smaller room next to it, but as an exercise room, fitted out with a speed bag, heavy bag, a treadmill he'd scavenged from the junk heap behind the Buffalo Athletic Club and repaired, a padded bench, and various weights. Kurtz had never fallen into the bodybuilding fetish so endemic in Attica during his eleven and a half years therehe'd found that strength was fine, but speed and the ability to react fast were more importantbut during the last six months he'd been doing a lot of physical therapy. Two of the windows in here looked out on Chicago and Ohio Streets and the abandoned grain silos and factory complex to the west; the center window looked right into the pockmarked lighthouse sign.
His bedroom was nothing speciala mattress, an old wardrobe that now held his suits and clothesand wooden blinds over the window. The third room had brick and board bookcases against two walls, shelves filled with paperbacks, a faded red carpet, a single floor lamp that Arlene had planned to throw away, andamazinglyan Eames chair and ottoman that some idiot out in Williamsville had put out for junk pickup. It looked like some eighty-pound cat had gone at the black leather upholstery with its claws, but Kurtz had fixed that with electrical tape.
Kurtz went to the end of the dark hall, stripped out of the old man's clothes, and took a fast but very hot shower, making sure to keep the spray off his bandages.