Strachey's Folly - Stevenson Richard - Страница 6

From outside the open front door came three loud pops. Then we heard the revving engine of a car speeding away down E Street, followed by silence.

Seconds later, when we reached Maynard—sprawled on the brick sidewalk next to his car, his blood pumping out of his body—he was still breathing, but only faintly. Timmy knelt by Maynard and began to speak softly to him as he searched for the correct pressure points to push against, and I raced back into the house.

Chapter 3

The George Washington University Hospital trauma center was where the Secret Service had rushed Ronald Reagan after John Hinckley Jr. shot him, along with James Brady, a Se­cret Service agent, and a D.C. policeman on the sidewalk along­side the Washington Hilton in 1981. Nancy Reagan later told reporters that as the Gipper was wheeled into the emergency room, he had cheerfully quoted W. C. Fields to the effect that, given a choice, he'd rather be in Philadelphia. But in fact, Rea­gan was lucky he had been shot in the District of Columbia, just blocks from GW. This hospital's emergency staff specialized in treating the thousands of gruesome gunshot wounds arriving each year from various points, mainly in the Northeast section, of one of the world's bloodiest capitals outside the Balkans.

Maynard was not jocular on his arrival at GW, he was un­conscious. Timmy had been allowed to ride with him in the am­bulance, and I followed soon in a cab. Maynard's wounds, one abdominal and one to the head, were so serious that he was quickly evaluated and moved directly to an operating room.

Timmy and I settled into a lounge outside the recovery unit where Maynard would end up if he lived. "He's in tough shape" was all we'd been told by an ER resident, and we both under­stood what that meant.

"It's just too ironic," Timmy said miserably. Even though we were both charged and alert from having drunk too much Ethiopian coffee, Timmy looked exhausted, haunted, suddenly older. It was an indication of how wounded he was that he seemed only dimly aware that his shirt and khakis were stained—caked in some places—with Maynard's blood. I had held Timmy's hand for some minutes but automatically let go when two elderly black women entered the waiting room and seated themselves.

"What's ironic?" I asked.

"You know."

"That Maynard survived Africa and Asia, but he might not survive Washington?"

Timmy grunted. Mounted on the wall across from us was a television set tuned to what looked like a self-esteem-industry in-fomercial. A muscular man rapturous with self-confidence was pumping up an audience whose faces were full of yearning for an end to self-doubt. The man's tapes, they wanted to believe, would bring clarity into their lives, and perhaps belief. The pitch­man had a good thing going and he looked as if he knew it.

I said, "Maybe Maynard will make it. It's not over yet. You've been telling me for years how resilient he is."

Timmy sat slumped to one side of his chair, slating into space, his Irish eyes vacant and ringed, his ordinarily silky blond wave—he was the only man I knew with a kind of naturally art deco hairstyle—wet with sweat against his skull. He grunted again and shook his head hopelessly.

A gaunt, hollow-eyed man with both eyes and hair the color of lead and a sport coat of nearly the same shade entered the room and peered around. The two DC Metropolitan PD patrol­men who had responded to my 911 call had not asked many questions about the shooting, and something told me that this was the detective assigned to the case tracking us down. He walked over to Timmy and me.

"Are you the two that came in with Maynard T. Sudbury?" the man asked tonelessly.

"Yes," Timmy said. "How is he?"

"That I couldn't tell you." He continued to gaze at us with eyes that were cold and unrevealing.

"Are you a police officer?" I said.

The man produced his wallet, flipped it open and shut, put it back in his jacket pocket, and said, "Ray Craig, Detective Lieu­tenant, MPD." He looked at me, then at Timmy, then back at me. He made no move to extend his hand, and unsure of how to react to Craig's chilliness, or just rudeness, neither of us of­fered ours.

Timmy said, "We're really worried about Maynard. The res­ident said he was in tough shape. 'Tough shape' were the words he used."

Ray Craig did not reply. He studied Timmy and me for a moment longer. Then he turned and dragged a molded-plastic chair up to us, its metal legs snagging bits of carpet as it moved, and seated himself in front of us, his knees nearly touching ours. He leaned forward, and now I was within range of his powerful odor, stale nicotine and tar. Had I once smelled like this? I knew I had.

"Which one of you is Callahan?" Craig said dully.

Timmy said, "I am."

Then Craig looked over at me and said, "You're Starch?"

"Starch? No."

Craig got out a small notepad and read, "S-T-A-R-C-H, Donald."

"It's Strachey. S-T-R-A-C-H-E-Y. As in Lytton."

"Lyndon?"

"Lytton. L-Y-T-T-O-N. Lytton Strachey, the brilliant English biographer and fey eccentric. There was a so-so flick about him and his sort-of wife last year called Carrington. Maybe you caught it."

I felt Timmy tense up beside me, but Craig just colored a lit­tle, which suited him. He stared at me appraisingly for several seconds. Then he said, "Tell me exactly what happened on E Street tonight." He leaned back a little—a mercy—and contin­ued to look at me as if I were the one who needed airing out.

I explained to Craig that Timmy, Maynard, and I had dined at an Ethiopian restaurant in Adams-Morgan and that from around ten on we had been hanging around Maynard's house watching television news and talking. I said Maynard had left something in his car, he had gone out to get it, and seconds after he went out the front door, Timmy and I heard sounds that could have been gunshots. We also heard a car speed away. We ran outside and discovered Maynard bleeding and unconscious on the sidewalk alongside his car. I said I immediately went in­side and telephoned the police while Timmy tried to stanch the flow of blood from Maynard's body.

Craig continued examining me in a way that felt both hos­tile and somehow prurient. I was not touching Timmy, but I was aware that his respiration had increased.

Craig said, "So, what'd Sudbury go out to his car to get?"

"Maynard went out to bring in a name written on a piece of paper," I said. "We had all gone to the AIDS quilt display during the afternoon. We ran into an acquaintance and wrote her phone number on a Names Project brochure Maynard was carrying. He had left the phone number in his car and had gone out to re­trieve it when he was shot."

Craig seemed to roll this information around in his mind. Then he shifted, shot Timmy a surly look, and said, "What's your connection with Sudbury? You don't live around here. You live in New York State." His tone suggested that anybody residing outside the District of Columbia might be of a different species from those residing within the District and whose associations with Washingtonians went against nature.

Timmy croaked out, "Maynard and I are old Peace Corps friends. We were in the Peace Corps together in the sixties. Don­ald and I stay with Maynard whenever we come to Washington. We're—we're just old Peace Corps buddies."

Timmy might as well have announced to Craig that he and Maynard had been members of the corps de ballet of the 1965 Fonteyn-Nureyev Giselle tour. Craig sniffed once, then looked Timmy up and down in the way he had just looked at me. He said, "Talk to me about your . . . buddy." He gave buddy a pro­nunciation that was somewhere between a sneer and a leer. "Does Sudbury have enemies?" Craig asked. "If so, who?"