Vicious Circle

As I got off the bike and walked toward him, he glanced in my direction and then took a longer, harder look. Because of the bike he’d had me pegged as a stranger, but I saw the doubt appear in his face and I saw him tense. By that time I was close enough for him to hear me without me having to raise my voice too much. I took the helmet off and kept on walking.

“Hey, Paul,” I offered.

He thrust out his lower lip in a look of truculent puzzlement. “Hey, Castor. I thought you were meant to be on the run from the police.”

I nodded easily, strolling up beside him and resting one shoulder against the ambulance, the helmet tucked casually under my arm and my free hand thrust into the pocket of Sallis’s leather jacket. “That’s right,” I said, flicking the helmet with the tip of my thumb. “Hence the cunning disguise.”

“Armed and dangerous, is what I heard.”

“Armed, yes.” I showed him the handgun, put it away again fast. “I’d only be dangerous if I was organized. How’s Rafi?”

Paul took a drag on his cigarette, blew out some more smoke. The gun had brought a pained look to his face, but he wasn’t surprised or intimidated by it. “He’s good,” he said. “Rafael is good. Best he’s ever been. You want to know the truth, I can hardly believe he’s the fucking same person.”

“You want to know the truth, he isn’t. Paul, I need to get in and see him.”

He chuckled softly and shook his head, grinning as if in appreciation of a good joke. “Not gonna happen, man,” he said. “They got your face on the TV—everyone inside is talking about it. The ones who reckon you always had shifty eyes are kind of winning right now.”

“They don’t have to see my face.” I held up the motorcycle helmet. “Just get me inside, Paul. It’s important. And afterwards you can say I had a gun on you.”

“Have you, Castor?”

“Have I what?”

He looked me in the eye, calm and cold. “Got a gun on me?”

I winced. “Fuck, no. I didn’t kill anyone, Paul, and I’m not planning to start now. But I need to speak to Rafi, and I thought you could help. If you don’t want to, then I guess all I can ask you to do is to hold off on raising the alarm for a while.”

He dropped the last inch of his cigarette onto the asphalt and trod it out. “This is going to upset Dr. Webb,” he observed. “Make him look all kinds of stupid.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.” I was working out distances and odds. If I just walked in off the street and headed for the annex where Rafi’s cell was without going through reception first, the nurse on duty would hit an alarm. I could get to Rafi, but could I get into the cell without a key? And could I get out again afterward?

“Bound to,” Paul pursued, meditatively. “Bound to ruin his day. A wanted man walks in off the street, gets through all his security, and then walks out again. That kind of thing is real hard to explain to the board of trustees.”

He squared his shoulders, like a man walking back into the fray after a short, well-needed rest.

“So let’s do it,” he said.

Paul went first, hands swinging at his sides, looking bored and indifferent. I followed, helmet on and visor down, holding one of the film canisters because it was the only prop I had to hand.

The nurse on reception looked up, saw that it was Paul, then as she was about to return to her novel saw the other, unfamiliar figure looming behind him. She stared at me, and at what I was holding, with a quickening of interest.

“Where’s Dr. Webb, Lizzie?” Paul asked her. “This guy”—hooking a thumb over his shoulder—“needs a signature for something, and it’s got to be the boss man’s.”

“I think he’s in his office,” the nurse said, glancing back to Paul again. “Shall I page him?”

“Nah, I’ll take him through. You sign in first though,” he said to me severely. “This is a stupid time to be making a delivery in any case. Come on, move it up. Some of us have got work to do.”

The nurse held out a pen and I signed the day book as Frederick Cheney LaRue, a name that had stuck with me after I read that Woodward and Bernstein book about Watergate.

“It’s this way,” Paul said, ambling away along the corridor. I waved to the nurse, the helmet making the gesture look more paramilitary than civil, and followed him. I wanted to look back but made myself keep right on going. I hoped for my sake that whatever chapter Lizzie was on in her book was more interesting than a weird stranger walking in out of the night to take a movie reel to her boss.

Webb’s office was off to the right when you reached the annex. We went left, toward the secure cells. Paul used the Judas window to check exactly where Rafi was—a touch of caution born of long experience—and then unlocked the door for me. I stepped inside, and he followed close on my heels, swinging the door to. When I looked a question at him, he shrugged. “How’m I going to say you had a gun on me if I’m out there keeping lookout, Castor?”

“Fair point,” I admitted.