Out Like a Light by Randall Garrett and Laurence M. Janifer (best ereader for epub .txt) π
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The important thing was the car itself. Malone jerked a little under the doctors calm hands, and swore subvocally.
"Hold still," the doctor said. "Don't go wiggling your head around that way. Just wait quietly until the demijel sets."
Obediently, Malone froze. There was a crick in his neck, but he decided he could stand it. "My head still hurts," he said accusingly.
"Sure it still hurts," the doctor agreed.
"But youβ"
"What did you expect?" the doctor said. "Even an FBI agent isn't immune to blackjacks, you know." He resumed his work on Malone's skull.
"Blackjacks?" Malone said. "What blackjacks?"
"The ones that hit you," the doctor said. "Or the one, anyhow."
Malone blinked. Somehow, though he could manage a fuzzy picture of[Pg 23] a car reaching out to hit him, the introduction of a blackjack into this imaginative effort confused things a little. But he resolutely ignored it.
"The bruise is just the right size and shape," the doctor said. "And that cut on your head comes from the seams on the leather casing."
"You're sure?" Malone said doubtfully. It did seem as if a car had a lot more dangerous weapons around, without resorting to blackjacks. If it had really wanted to damage him, why hadn't it hit him with the engine block?
"I'm sure," the doctor said. "I've worked in Emergency in this hospital long enough to recognize a blackjack wound."
That was a disturbing idea, in a way. It gave a new color to Malone's reflection on Greenwich Villagers. Maybe things had changed since he'd heard about them. Maybe the blackjack had supplanted the guitar. But that wasn't the important thing.
The fact that it had been a blackjack that had hit him was important. It was vital, as a matter of fact. Malone knew that perfectly well. It was a key fact in the case he was investigating.
The only trouble was that he didn't see what, if anything, it meant.
The doctor stepped back and regarded Malone's head with something like pride. "There," he said. "You'll be all right now."
"When?" Malone said.
"You're not badly hurt," the doctor said reprovingly. "You've got a slight concussion, that's all."
"A concussion?"[Pg 24]
"Sure," the doctor said. "But it isn't serious. Just take these pillsβone every two hours until they're goneβand you'll be rid of any effects within twenty-four hours." He went to a cabinet, fiddled around for a minute and came back with a small bottle containing six orange pills. They looked very large and threatening.
"Fine," Malone said doubtfully.
"You'll be all right," the doctor said, giving Malone a cheerful, confident grin. "Nothing at all to worry about." He loaded a hypojet and blasted something through the skin of Malone's upper arm. Malone swallowed hard. He knew perfectly well that he hadn't felt a thing, but he couldn't quite make himself believe it.
"That'll take care of you for tonight," the doctor said. "Get some sleep and start in on the pills when you wake up, O.K.?"
"O.K.," Malone said. It was going to make waking up something less than a pleasure, but he wanted to get well, didn't he?
Of course he did. If that Cadillac thought it was going to beat him....
"You can stand up now," the doctor said.
"O.K.," Malone said, trying it. "Thanks, doctor. Iβ"
There was a knock at the door. The doctor jerked his head around.
"Who's that?" he said.
"Me," a bass voice said, unhelpfully.
The Emergency Room door opened a crack and a face peered in. It took Malone a second to recognize Bill, the waffle-faced cop who had picked him up next to the lamp post three years or so before. "Long time no see," Malone said at random.
"What?" Bill said, and opened the door wider. He came in and closed it behind him. "It's O.K., Doc," he said to the attendant. "I'm a cop."
"Been hurt?" the doctor said.
Bill shook his head. "Not recently," he said. "I came to see this guy." He looked at Malone. "They told me you were still here," he said.
"Who's they?" Malone said.
"Outside," Bill said. "The attendants out there. They said you were still getting stitched up."
"And quite right, too," Malone said solemnly.
"Oh," Bill said. "Sure." He fished in his pockets. "You dropped your notebook, though, and I came to give it back to you." He located the object he was hunting for and brought it out with the triumphant gesture of a man displaying the head of a dragon he has slain. "Here," he said, waving the book.
"Notebook?" Malone said. He stared at it. It was a small looseleaf book bound in cheap black plastic.
"We found it in the gutter," Bill said.
Malone took a tentative step forward and managed not to fall. He stepped back again and looked at Bill scornfully. "I wasn't even in the gutter," he said. "There are limits."
"Sure," Bill said. "But the notebook was, so I brought it along to[Pg 25] you. I thought you might need it or something." He handed it over to Malone with a flourish.
It wasn't Malone's notebook. In the first place, he had never owned a notebook that looked anything like that, and in the second place he hadn't had any notebooks on him when he went for his walk. Mine not to question why, Malone told himself with a shrug, and flipped the book open.
At once he knew why the cop had mistaken it for his.
There, right on the first page, was a carefully detailed drawing of a 1972 Cadillac. It had been painstakingly colored in with a red pencil.
Malone stared at it for a second, and then went on to page two. This page carried a list of names running down the left margin.
Ramon O.
Mario G.
Silvo E.
Felipe A.
Alvarez la B.
Juan de los S.
Ray del E.
That made sense, of a kind. It was a list of names. Whose names they were, Malone didn't know; but at least he could see the list and understand it. What puzzled him were the decorations.
Following each name was a queer-looking squiggle. Each was slightly different, and each bore some resemblance to a stick-figure, a geometrical figure or just a childish scrawl. The whole parade reminded Malone of pictures he had seen of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
But the names didn't look Egyptian, and, anyhow, nobody used hieroglyphics any moreβdid they?
Malone found himself thinking: Now what does that mean? He looked across at the facing page.
It contained a set of figures, all marked off in dollars and cents and all added up neatly. One of the additions ended with the eye-popping sum of $52,710.09, and Malone found that the sum made him slightly nervous. This was high-powered figuring.
On to page three, he told himself. Drawings again, both on that page and on the one facing it. Malone recognized an outboard motor, a store-front, a suit of clothing hanging neatly on a hanger, a motor scooter, a shotgun and an IBM Electrotyper. Whoever had done the work was a reasonably accurate artist, if untrained; the various items were easily recognizable and Malone could see a great deal of detail.
That, of course, was fine. Only it made no more sense than the rest of the notebook.
Malone riffled through a few more pages, trying to make sense of the contents. One page seemed to be a shopping list, with nothing more revealing on it than bread, bacon, eggs (Β½ doz.), peaches (frz.), cigs., & ltr., fluid.
There was another list, farther on. This one said: Hist. 2, Eng. 4, Math. 3, Span. 2. What for Elec.?
That cast the first glow of light. Whoever owned the notebook was a student. Or a teacher, Malone[Pg 26] thought; then, looking back at the handwriting, he decided that the owner of the notebook had to be in high school, certainly no farther along.
He went on flipping pages. One of them said, in large black capitals: HE'S BLUFFING!
A note passed in class? There was not any way of making sure.
Malone thought about the hypothetical student for a minute. Then something in the riffling pages caught his eye.
There were two names on the page he'd stopped at.
The first was: Lt. Peter Lynch, NYPD. It was followed by two little squiggles.
The second was: Mr. Kenneth J. Malone, FBI.
There were no squiggles after his own name, and Malone felt oddly thankful for that, without knowing exactly why. But what did the names mean? And who hadβ
"Uh ... Mr. Maloneβ" Bill said tentatively. "That is your notebook, isn't it?"
"Oh," Malone said. He looked up at the cop and put on his most ingratiating smile. "Sure," he said. "It's mine. Sure it is. Just checking to see if I'd lost any pages. Not good. Losing pages out of a notebook. Never. Have to check, you know. Procedure. Very secret."
"Sure," Bill said uncertainly.
Malone took a deep breath. "Thought I'd lost the notebook," he said. "I appreciate your returning it."
"Oh," Bill said, "that's O.K., Mr. Malone. Glad to do it."
"You don't know what this means to me," Malone said truthfully.
"No trouble at all," Bill said. "Any time." He gave Malone a big smile and turned back to the door. "But I got to get back to my beat," he said. "Listen, I'll see you. And if I can be any helpβ"
"Sure," Malone said. "I'll let you know. And thanks again."
"Welcome," Bill said, and opened the door. He strode out with the air of a man who has just been decorated with the Silver Star, the Purple Heart and the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Malone tried a few more steps and discovered that he could walk without falling down. He thanked the doctor again.
"Perfectly all right," the doctor said. "Nothing to it. Why, you ought to see some of the cases we get here. There was a guy here the other night with both his legs all mashed up by aβ"
"I'll bet," Malone said hurriedly. "Well, I've got to be on my way. Just send the bill to FBI Headquarters on Sixty-ninth Street." He closed the door on the doctor's enthusiastic: "Yes, sir!" and went on down the hallway and out into the street. At Seventh Avenue and Greenwich Avenue he flagged a cab.
What a place to be, Malone thought as the cab drove away. Where but in Greenwich Village did avenues intersect each other without so much as a by-your-leave?[Pg 27]
"Statler-Hilton Hotel," he said, giving the whole thing up as a bad job. He put his hat on his head and adjusted it painfully to the proper angle.
And that, he thought, made another little problem. The car had not only hit him on the head; it had removed his hat before doing so, and then replaced it. It had only fallen off when he'd started to get up against the lamp post.
A nice quiet vacation, Malone thought bitterly.
He fumed in silence all the way to the hotel, through the lobby, up in the elevator and to the door of his room. Then he remembered the notebook.
That was important evidence. He decided to tell Boyd about it right away.
He went into the bathroom and tapped gently on the door to Boyd's connecting room. The door swung open.
Boyd, apparently, was still out painting the townβMalone considered the word red and dropped the whole phrase with a sigh. At any rate, his partner was nowhere in the room. He went back into his own room, closed the door and got wearily ready for bed.
Dawn came, and then daylight, and then a lot more daylight. It was streaming in through the windows with careless abandon, filling the room with a lot of bright sunshine and the muggy heat of the city. From the street below, the cheerful noises of traffic and pedestrians floated up and filled Malone's ears.
He turned over in bed, and tried to go back to sleep.
But sleep wouldn't come. After a long time he gave up, and swung himself over the edge of the bed. Standing up was a delicate job, but he managed it, feeling rather proud of himself in a dim, semiconscious sort of way.
He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and then opened the connecting door to Boyd's room softly.
Boyd was home. He lay in a great tangle of bedclothes, snoring hideously and making little motions with his hands and arms like a beached whale. Malone padded over to him and dug him fiercely in the ribs.
"Come on," he said. "Wake up, Tommy-boy."
Boyd's eyes
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