Prelude to a Scream (38 page)

“Careful,” he said gently. “This thing is loaded.”

Sibyl, of the green eyes, was almost up to the challenge.

Never taking her eyes off him, she pursed her lips around the gun muzzle and moved them, ever so slightly, out, in, out…

For the first time in almost two months, Stanley smiled.

Death and lust had haunted him. Now their synthesis lay between the palms of his hands, and he drew strength from it.

She sensed this. Her eyes rounded. For the first time Stanley thought he saw something like fear in them. Marginal and mitigated by contempt, but it was fear nonetheless.

“Tape it there,” he said to the eyes.

“What?” said Jaime, startled.

“What?” said Djell, looking over his shoulder.

“You heard me, Jaime. Tape the gun to her head, and tape my wrist to the gun. Stay where you are, Djell, or your wife's brains will be all over your back.”

Stanley shot a glance at Jaime. “Well? You deaf? Like that neighbor?”

“Wh-who m-me? Deaf? N-not at all. I…”

“Quit fucking around and get on with it then.”

“See here,” said Djell, with a clatter of instruments and a panic in his voice.

“At ease, Djell. Finish your job. Jaime?”

Jaime retrieved the roll of gray duct tape and peeled off a length.

“Longer,” said Stanley.

Jaime made it longer.

“Good.”

Jaime tore it off. Then he made little ineffectual gestures, as if to put the tape one place, as if to put it another, as if he just weren't sure of anything at all.

“Start with the middle of it, on the nape of her neck, below my hand,” advised Stanley. “Cross it under her chin, and complete the loop over my thumb, above the pistol grip.” As Jaime followed his instructions Stanley removed his hand from the back of Sibyl's head. “Now my wrist — not the slide! That's right. A figure eight, see? Good. Wrap the slack around the wrist. Now around the other side. Good. Leave the thumb. Back to Sibyl, except you want to go along the cheek. Good boy…”

In just a couple of minutes, Jaime had expertly secured the business end of a cocked .45 automatic to the kisser of the most beautiful woman Stanley had ever been close to.

And to think it was Stanley's .45.

“Now,” Stanley said huskily. “This isn't half bad, is it?”

Sibyl made a little sound in her throat.

“You should be able to breathe through it,” he said paternally, “like a straw. Might taste of gun oil and burnt powder. But it's not air-tight until it's discharged and the cartridge expands, after which it won't matter. Try it.”

She tried it.

“It works, doesn't it?”

She frowned.

“Okay, Jaime. Now take one last wrap around my lower three fingers and the grip, there. Careful now, this thing has a hair trigger. Be delicate.”

Jaime pulled another length of tape off the roll and held it to the work.

Stanley and Sibyl could see how Jaime's hands were shaking.

Sibyl made a noise in her throat.

Stanley smiled. “Maybe this calls for the hands of a surgeon?”

Djell could see, from ten feet away, how badly Jaime's hands were shaking. “Wait!” he said.

“How about the patient?” Stanley said.

“She'll be fine,” Djell said irritably.

“We'll wait,” Stanley said.

Djell peeled off his mask and hustled over, from one crime scene to another. He started to take the roll of tape and the end of the strip Jaime had peeled off it but still had his surgical gloves on, which were streaked with gore. He swore an oath to Wotan and quickly shucked them off, muttering, “Wait, wait…,” as he threw them to the floor and relieved Jaime of the tape.

“Gently,” Stanley reminded him. “Gently…”

Djell carefully laid the tape's adhesive side against the pedestal of Stanley's thumb, gingerly touching it into place. He wound the length of it around the knuckles of Stanley's pinky, ring and middle fingers, below the trigger guard, and thence over the back of the hand until the tape lapped its beginning, below Stanley's thumb and the pistol's hammer.

They could all hear each other breathing. It was louder than the regular breathing of the anesthetized Iris, louder than the unseen compressor motor or the unseen drip, louder than the dead air coming through the speakers of the silent boom-box.

Djell cautiously touched the tape here and there, until its entire surface adhered to whatever was beneath it.

“Real craftsmanship,” Stanley said.

Balls of sweat were rolling over Djell's forehead into his eyes, and coursing below his temples. The surgical mask clenched between his chin and collar was dark with sweat. Jaime made inadvertent little squeaks, like a cage full of restive finches. Sibyl waited silently, never taking her eyes off Stanley.

“That looks very good,” Stanley said. He picked up the cocaine scalpel with his free hand. “Now here's the deal.”

They all looked at him.

“First, two good, fat lines of cocaine, so I stay awake. Put them on something I can snort off while standing up. Your hand shaking too much for that, Jaime?”

Jaime looked one way, and another. Then he hurried across the room and returned with a CD box. He held it up for Stanley's approval. The glossy square of plastic quivered in Jaime's shaking hand. A shard of light played off it onto the ceiling.

“Perfect, Jaime. Ingenious. Your hands always shake like that?”

Jaime looked at his hands and nodded. “Washed me out of surgical college. But one thing they're good for.…” He indicated the scalpel. Stanley shook his head. “Get another one.”

Jaime quickly did so, and fell to dicing lines of cocaine.

“You got the picture, Doc?” said Stanley.

Green Eyes, unable to look directly at her husband, raised her eyebrows interrogatively.

“I see a man taking unfair advantage of my wife,” Djell muttered sententiously, a tremor in his upper lip.

“I believe you do,” Stanley said. “You love her, of course.”

Djell nodded impatiently.

“Which makes this a perfect setup.”

Djell stopped nodding. “Why?”

“Because, as of now, I don't care what happens,” Stanley said. “After Iris, what I've done to Iris, I got nothing more to lose. Whatever I had going when I came in here has changed forever. It's gone. You, Doctor, on the other hand,” he indicated Green Eyes and the gun, “as of now, you have everything at stake.”

Using his gun hand, he pulled Sibyl's head towards him, and pushed it away; towards him and away, towards him and away; a rocking motion. She moved with it like a good dance partner.

Djell went as pale as his wife's skirt. “Stop that.”

“Do you, Djell? Have a lot to lose, I mean?”

“Please,” Djell managed to say. “Yes…”

“Please?”

“Don't do that.”

“Don't do what?” Stanley said, stopping. He looked at Sibyl, looked at Djell, then started to rock her head with the gun arm again. “You mean this?”

“No!” Djell hissed. “Please…”

“Okay.” Stanley stopped. “Back up a couple of feet.”

Djell did so.

“First, make a bed for Iris. Out of the way, but close enough so Jaime can monitor her condition. Then, put this gurney —” He brought his knee up against the underside of the gurney, still parked between himself and everyone else. The gurney jumped with a loud bang. Everyone else jumped, too. “Whoa. Don't be jumping around like that, Sibyl. You damn near pulled the trigger on yourself.”

“Please!” Djell begged. “Please.…”

“Shut up, and roll this gurney to the far side of the operating table, parallel to it. Maybe clean the dope off it first.”

Djell nodded stupidly.

“Now, Jaime, you're going to have to keep a close eye on Iris over there, you hear? She's made a tremendous sacrifice and we don't want anything else to happen to her, do we?”

“Y-y-y…”

“Do we?”

“N-n-n…”

“I'll take that as an affirmative, Jaime. Can I take that as an affirmative?”

“Y-y-y…”

“You through chopping on that stuff?”

Jaime dropped the scalpel as if it were red hot and held the CD aloft.

“Okay. A couple more steps back, Doc. Don't want any accidents. Arm's length please, Jaime. Pretend you're lighting a firecracker with a short fuse. That's the stuff.”

Jaime placed the straw parallel to the scalpel in Stanley's free hand, and backed away as far as he could, holding the CD box under Stanley's nose at arm's length. Stanley inhaled two arctic caterpillars of cocaine, one in each nostril. Within seconds he began to feel the first intimations of a powerful jolt to his metabolism, and seconds after that, the throbbing in his right eye socket began to diminish, like the bass beat in a passing automobile.

“Damn, Doc,” he said. He dropped the straw onto the gurney and scrubbed his face with his free hand. “You're going to have to give me your connection's phone number when this is all over.” He grinned stupidly. “I'm not going to pass out for a while, now, am I?”

The truth was, Stanley was now stoned enough to think he felt fine about every wonderful little thing.

Djell stood stock still, as rigid as a statue to Hippocrates in a burning hospital.

Stanley cocked his good eye and called Jaime. Jaime nodded his head like a wind-driven yard widget.

“After you move Iris and make her real comfortable, you prepare whatever you need to administer a local anesthetic to my T-6 vertebrae. My current reading informs me that a local to the T-6 will probably do the trick. Like I'm having a baby and the labor's gone on too long. Do you agree?”

The lure of territory at last familiar to Jaime damped the nodding of his head, until it almost stopped.

“I might experience a little discomfort. But the trick is, see,” Stanley explained patiently, “the trick is, I've got to stay conscious the whole time. Understand? Because if I pass out or fall asleep or lose consciousness, well…” He jerked his bandaged eye at Sibyl.

A drop of his blood fell on the gurney between them.

Sibyl's eyes got large and rolled toward Jaime.

“Well. It's very damn reasonable to conclude that if I lose consciousness — or even my concentration — this cannon will go off in Sibyl's mouth. Highly probable. It's practically as certain as a law of physics. Got that Jaime? Sibyl? Doc? Everybody agreed on that?”

Nobody said a word.

“Just breathe through the barrel, honey,” said Stanley. “And everything's going to be all right. You don't mind if I call you honey? Answer me.”

Sibyl hummed into the gun barrel.

“That's the stuff. Okay. Now. Everybody understand what's going on? If I lose consciousness, Sibyl gets killed. It'll be a mess, too, for Dr. Djell most of all. It's true your personal life will be negatively impacted, Dr. Djell: but think of your business. Where would you and Jaime be without Sibyl? It's going to be hard enough to pick up the pieces without good old Vince and good old what's his name, Sturgeon, there.” Stanley moved his chin toward the carnage beyond the foot of the operating table. “But Sibyl's irreplaceable.”

Djell regarded his wife sadly. Jaime sighed loudly.

“So we're agreed on that? Sibyl's irreplaceable? Jaime?”

Jaime nodded.

“Can't hear you, Jaime.”

“Sibyl's… irreplaceable.”

“Doc?”

Djell nodded.

“Can't hear you, Dr. Djell.”

“My wife is —.”

“My wife Sibyl.”

“My wife, Sibyl, is irreplaceable.”

As Djell spoke Jaime moved his lips, like a furtive Catholic trying to blend into an Episcopal antiphon.

Stanley sighed loudly. “We have a consensus. That's a load off my mind. If not, we'd have to take a whole different approach to this situation.”

Nobody spoke.

“Sibyl lies on the gurney, parallel to the operating table, with this gun grafted to her mouth. A little tricky to set up, but I'm confident we'll get through it. I receive my local anesthetic, and plenty of blow to keep me awake. That's straightforward. And while all this is going on…” Stanley cocked his good eye at Djell. Jaime and Sibyl looked at him, too.

“…when everything's in place,” Stanley continued calmly, “Doctor Djell installs my brand new kidney…”

“Shit,” breathed Jaime.

“…the one kindly donated by Iris, over there…”