“Blackmail,” he said, “and I’ll have nothing to do with it.”
“Pay now, or pay later, after a court order,” I said. “I don’t care. But it’ll be cheaper this way.”
If he came across, I’d know my guesses were right and there was something crooked involved.
He glared at me, I don’t know how long.
Finally, “I haven’t got a thousand here,” he said.
“Name a compromise figure,” I said.
After another pause, “It’s larceny.”
“Not if it’s cash-and-carry, Charlie. So, call it.”
“I might have five hundred in my safe.”
“Get it.”
He told me, after inspecting the contents of a small wall safe, there was four-thirty, and I didn’t want to leave fingerprints on the safe just to check him out. So I accepted and stuffed the bills into my side pocket.
“Now what’s the nearest cab company that serves this place?”
He named it, and I checked in the phone book, which told me I was upstate.
I made him dial it and call me a cab, because I didn’t know the name of the place and didn’t want him to know the condition of my memory. One of the bandages I had removed had been around my head.
While he was making the arrangement I heard him name the place: it was called Greenwood Private Hospital.
I snubbed out my cigarette, picked up another, and removed perhaps two hundred pounds from my feet by resting in a brown upholstered chair beside his bookcase.
“We wait here and you’ll see me to the door,” I said.
I never heard another word out of him.
2
It was about eight o’clock when the cab deposited me on a random corner in the nearest town. I paid off the driver and walked for around twenty minutes. Then I stopped in a diner, found a booth and had juice, a couple of eggs, toast, bacon and three cups of coffee. The bacon was too greasy.
After giving breakfast a good hour, I started walking, found a clothing store, and waited till its nine-thirty opening.
I bought a pair of slacks, three sport shirts, a belt, some underwear, and a pair of shoes that fit. I also picked up a handkerchief, a wallet, and pocket comb.
Then I found a Greyhound station and boarded a bus for New York. No one tried to stop me. No one seemed to be looking for me.
Sitting there, watching the countryside all autumn-colored and tickled by brisk winds beneath a bright, cold sky, I reviewed everything I knew about myself and my circumstances.
I had been registered at Greenwood as Carl Corey by my sister Evelyn Flaumel. This had been subsequent to an auto accident some fifteen or so days past, in which I had suffered broken bones which no longer troubled me. I didn’t remember Sister Evelyn. The Greenwood people had been instructed to keep me passive, were afraid of the law when I got loose and threatened them with it. Okay. Someone was afraid of me, for some reason. I’d play it for all it was worth.
I forced my mind back to the accident, dwelled upon it till my head hurt. It was no accident. I had that impression, though I didn’t know why. I would find out, and someone would pay. Very, very much would they pay. An anger, a terrible one, flared within the middle of my body. Anyone who tried to hurt me, to use me, did so at his own peril and now he would receive his due, whoever he was, this one. I felt a strong desire to kill, to destroy whoever had been responsible, and I knew that it was not the first time in my life that I had felt this thing, and I knew, too, that I had followed through on it in the past. More than once.
I stared out the window, watching the dead leaves fall.
When I hit the Big City, the first thing I did was to get a shave and haircut in the nearest clip joint, and the second was to change my shirt and undershirt in the men’s room, because I can’t stand hair down my back. The .32 automatic, belonging to the nameless individual at Greenwood, was in my right-hand jacket pocket. I suppose that if Greenwood or my sister wanted me picked up in a hurry, a Sullivan violation would come in handy. But I decided to hang onto it. They’d have to find me first, and I wanted a reason. I ate a quick lunch, rode subways and buses for an hour, then got a cab to take me out to the Westchester address of Evelyn, my nominal sister and hopeful jogger of memories.