Requiem for Ashes Page 8

  “Sounds like some of my roommates. Lucky for me he’s not an ax murderer," said Tewksbury. "You're on this floor?"

  "Down the hall," said Albert, "and over that way a few rooms."

  Albert's eyes had inadvertently fixed on Tewksbury's bandaged wrists.

  "I don't know what made me do it" said Tewksbury. "I was shaving, and nicked my chin." He paused. "It's so easy, I thought. Just a couple of quick cuts across the wrist . . . if it gets me out of the damn cell, away from those other men . . . well, good enough. If it kills me, so much the better." He picked absentmindedly at the bandages. "So, I just did it. Real slow, it seemed. Like a dream. I didn't feel it, really-just watched as the blood pumped out. Like it was somebody else. I just watched." He looked at Albert. "I fainted in no time. Next thing I knew, I was here." He flipped the buckle on the restraining straps. "With these."

  He looked hard at Albert from the recesses of his soul, deep behind his sunken eyes. "Don't put them on me again, Albert. I feel like I'm just holding on to sanity by a thread as it is. If I have to be tied up like that . . . "

  Albert was equipped to release, not to bind.

  "I won't," he said quickly.

  Tewksbury fell to his knees beside the bed and wept silently, like a hopeless man whose final prayer had been answered. Albert stared, wide-eyed, at the bandages.

  "What now?" he said finally.

  "I've got to escape," said Tewksbury through his tears. "I've got to hide. I can't go back to jail, and they say Walpole is worse. Much worse." He searched Albert deeply. "I never imagined what life was like in jail, Albert." He shook his head. "I never imagined." Pause. Shudder. Sniff. "I'd rather die out there somewhere," he nodded toward the world, "than live in prison." He wheezed an ironic sigh. "The worst of it is, I'm innocent. Completely innocent." He raised his eyes from the floor. "You know that, don't you?"

  Albert was emboldened by compassion for his former colleague. "How do we get you out?"

  A spark of hope awoke in Tewksbury's eyes. "Do you mean it?" He shook Albert by the shoulders once or twice. Hard. "Do you mean it? Will you help me get out of here?"

  "You can't stay here . . . like this," Albert replied flatly. "What do we do?"

  "I don't know," said Tewksbury, like the man who'd been playing the lottery for seventeen years, five one-dollar cards every Friday until it became a habit. He no longer thought about winning. It was five dollars he'd spend on beer, otherwise, and he didn't need the weight. Then he won, and had no idea what to do with the money. "What floor are we on?"

  "Second, I think," said Albert. Something was already forming in his mind. He crossed to the window, pulled the blackened shade aside, and lifted the curtain. "There's a roof right below us. Five or six feet." He slid the window open. "It's almost dark."

  Tewksbury had found his clothes in the closet and was almost dressed. "I've been praying, Albert. Can you believe it? Me, praying?"

  Albert surveyed the area below. There was a delivery van of some kind, lots of lights on, but no one in sight. There were several dumpsters.

  "You can go to my place and hide," he said. "There's a key in the planter at the top of the stairs."

  "My agnosticism doesn't run as deep as I’d thought," Tewksbury continued.

  "So I prayed . . . and here you are. Albert the angel."

  "There's some beer in the fridge. And some cereal somewhere, I think," said Albert, not sounding much like a brochure for a bed-and-breakfast. "Cocoa Puffs or Wheaties. Dig around."

  Being familiar with the typical bill of fare atChez Albert, Tewksbury's salivary glands remained dormant. "They'll be 'round any minute with supper," he said. The prophecy was immediately self-fulfilling. The meal cart rattled at the far end of the hall.

  "I'll wrap the sheet around the radiator here," said Albert, "and you climb down it."

  He hadn't finished speaking before Tewksbury was at his side. "Then I'll pull it up and close the window."

  It occurred to Tewksbury before Albert.

  "Then, how areyou going to get out?"

  Something very like panic seized Albert by the solar plexus and gave it a sharp squeeze. Everything had been going so smoothly.

  "I'll have to go out the window, too."

  "And have us both missing? Your house is the first place they'd look!"

  The dinner trays rattled again in the hall, much closer this time.

  "I could go around and come in the front."

  "That might seem a little suspicious, don't you think? A patient wandering in off the street, all dressed for bed?"

  It would. Albert looked around the room frantically. "I could hide in the bathroom. If they came in and saw you gone, and the window open . . . "

  "They'd look. They'd look." Tewksbury, too, was scanning the room. "I've got it! The ceiling!"

  Albert looked blankly at the ceiling, which looked blankly back. He leveled his gaze at Tewksbury. Perhaps the restraints had been on too long already.

  Tewksbury climbed up on a chair by the bathroom door and gave one of the ceiling tiles a push. To Albert's amazement, it lifted, revealing a space about eighteen inches deep between the old original ceiling and the new.

  "It's a drop ceiling," said Tewksbury excitedly, his eyes flashing with rekindled spirit. The dishes rattled across the hall. The guard could be heard exchanging words with the nurse's aid.

  "Quick! Climb up there!"

  Tewksbury got off the chair.

  "It won't hold me, will it?"

  "No. But the old plumbing is still up there. Grab on, pull yourself up and hang there till the coast is clear."

  Albert had never hung anywhere ‘till the coast was clear.’ He had never hunkered or slunk or shadow-to-shadowed. He'd never played hide-and-seek, perhaps for fear that nobody would look for him. There was nothing in Albert's repertoire of emotions with which to compare his feelings as he climbed awkwardly onto the chair.

  "I'll call you at my house," he said. "I'll let it ring three times, then hang up and call again." Paganini was dueling the devil on his heartstrings. Exhilaration raced through his being like a five alarm fire.

  "Okay, okay," said Tewksbury. "Climb!"

  Albert pulled himself through the hole and wrapped himself around the pipes. One of them was very warm. He hung there like a bat as Tewksbury pulled the panel back in place.

  "Albert," said Tewksbury. "Thanks."

  There was another rattle in the hall. The guard would be inspecting the tray. Tewksbury dropped the panel back in place, leaving Albert suspended in the dark with only his heartbeat for company.

  He heard Tewksbury lift the chair back into place, click off the light, then tie the sheet to the radiator. His breathing was labored as he let himself down. No sooner had his feet lighted on the gravel of the roof below than the door opened.

  "Here we go, Professor," said a young lady. One of the pipes to which Albert clung was no longer warm. It was hot, scortching the length of his pajama-clad body. The nurse hadn't noticed the escape at once; Tewksbury must have lowered the black curtain over the window. A second later, though, a click of the headboard light prefaced a sharp scream that nearly shook Albert loose from his roost. He held tighter.

  He could feel his flesh searing against the pipe. He grit his teeth and held on for dear life.

  "He's gone!" said the nurse as the guard rushed in. Albert followed the sound of the ensuing search, first to the bathroom, as Tewksbury had prophesied, then under the bed—that had been Albert's second idea. Then to the window.

  "He got out here! Look! He used this sheet." The guard reported the escape into his walkie-talkie. Albert wondered if he'd be betrayed by the smell of his burning flesh. The guard signed off.

  "I don't understand," said the nurse. Her voice came from directly below Albert.

  "What?"

  "How did he get out of these? They're not cut, or ripped. They didn't come loose, I did them myself. They're just laid aside. Like the Shroud of Turin."

  "Well, i
t's not your fault," said the guard. He realized at the same time that if it wasn't her fault, it was his. "You couldn't help it," he added. "We've got to find him."

  They left the room. Albert let out a sharp sigh of anguish, pulled the ceiling tile up and aside and dropped to the floor. It was a long fall, and his paper-slippered heels smacked loudly against the old wood floor. He pulled out the chair, climbed up, readjusted the tile, and jumped down.

  For half a second he considered going out the window. It was still open. The sheet was still there, but the sound of voices coming up from outside made up his mind. With one last glance at the ceiling to make sure the tile was straight, he left the room.

  Already there was excitement in the hall. Elevator doors were opening and closing. An army of officials rounded the corner just as Albert stepped into his room and shut the door behind him.

  "Well?" said Jeremy Ash excitedly. "What happened? What's all the noise? I thought they caught you!"

  Albert stumbled back to bed. "He escaped," he said.

  "Escaped!" said the boy. It was hard to tell which was wider, his mouth or his eyes. "He tricked you?"

  "No," said Albert.

  "He beat you up?" That wouldn't have been hard.

  "No."

  "You didn't . . . did you . . . did you let him go?" Jeremy said with rising enthusiasm.

  "I helped him," Albert replied softly.

  "You helped him!"

  "Shhh! I couldn't leave him there like that." Pause. Consider. "He knows about Etruscans." That had made more sense in his brain than in his mouth.

  "This is intense, man! I'm like . . . I never knew you were gonna let him go!"

  "I'm tired," said Albert. He was also in pain. A wide red stripe marked his body in several places. "I'm tired." The wave of adrenaline subsided, beaching its musical flotsam on the linen shore.

  "Let him go! Geez!" The words wrapped themselves around Albert's advancing dreams where they would alternately commend and condemn him throughout the night.

  Chapter Seven

  It was just after five in the morning and still dark when Albert awoke. He reached for the phone, dialed Directory Assistance, got the number of the phone in his apartment and called. He began counting the rings.

  "Albert?" said Tewksbury in a whisper.

  "You weren't supposed to answer yet," said Albert. The best laid plans . . .

  "I know, I know," said Tewksbury. "But I knew it was you. Who else could it be?" There was a pause during which Albert didn't answer. "Besides, I couldn't sleep."

  "Is everything okay?"

  "Fine. Fine. What happened after I left? I take it they didn't find you."

  "No."

  "Good! How long did you hang up there?"

  "Everything went okay." Beat. "I burned myself on the pipes."

  "Hot water . . . I forgot about that," said Tewksbury. "Sorry." He was. "Don't you have any cigarettes?"

  "Look around."

  "I'm not that desperate. What happened?"

  Albert told him. "What now?"

  "I don't know," said Tewksbury. "It's all happened so fast. I need time to think. When will you get out?"

  Albert hadn't thought about it. One day they'd tell him, and he'd go. "I don't know."

  "Well, find out. You need some groceries . . . and fungicide."

  Albert slammed the receiver down in response to some stirrings on the other side of the curtain. Unfortunately his finger was in the cradle at the time. It worked well as a mute.

  "Professor?" said Jeremy Ash. "You talkin' to me?"

  "No," said Albert with his fingers in his mouth.

  "Tewksbury?"

  Albert said nothing.

  "Where is he?"

  Albert shrugged on his side of the curtain.

  "Your place?"

  Albert sighed.

  "Escape! Geez! I can't believe it! And I helped! That makes me an accessory." There was a half-second's silence. "How'd you do it?"

  Albert replayed the details, step by step, omitting nothing. By the time he'd finished he'd won a new place in the boy's estimation.

  "Geez! You could go to jail for that!" Jeremy said breathlessly. "I mean, I'm like . . . not many people would do that for somebody, you know?"

  Jail? For freeing a trapped animal? It was ludicrous; a possibility that hadn't occurred on the most distant horizon of Albert's imagination. Scolding, yes. But . . .

  "Jail?" he repeated beneath his breath.

  For the remaining hours ‘til breakfast he dozed on and off, his thoughts wandering the foggy realm of semi-consciousness; half-shaped dreams stumbled into one another, colliding in stillborn ballets at the wobbly edge of his reason. Unrelated elements orchestrated by the distant sounds of the waking world and joined by a single common thread: jail.

  A wave of relief swept over him when he awoke to find the dreams weren't real, followed by a wave of bleakest misery at the possibility that they could be.

  Somebody had to find Glenly's killer.

  The rattle of the breakfast cart over the threshold made him salivate. He sat up and drew the lap table in front of him. Worry was hungry work.

  "Ah, good morning, Professor."

  It was a strange voice. Albert put on his glasses and brought the speaker slowly into focus. It was a man in a suit; a gray suit that matched his eyes, a white shirt that matched his teeth, and a dark tie that matched . . . darkness. Either the shirt or the tie was much too big for the man, Albert couldn't tell which.

  He was probably over forty. Maybe fifty. Or sixty. His black hair came to a sharp point in the middle of his head, but retreated some distance on either side. He was about Albert's height but powerfully built, with a straight, lipless mouth and restless eyes that searched the room like a gerbil looking for the toilet paper roll. He took off his overcoat and folded it over the footboard.

  "How are you feeling this morning?"

  "Fine," said Albert. The nurse took the covers off the breakfast plates and set them in front of him. Albert looked hungrily at the food, then worriedly at the man who had now pulled up a chair, seated himself next to the bed, and was staring at him.

  "Go on, Professor. Eat your breakfast," said the man. He produced a leather folder from his inside coat pocket, opened it, and held it out. It was a badge. "I'm Detective Naples."

  "Inspector?" Albert said.

  “Detective.”

  “Mm.” To Albert, there was no distinction. Inspector Naples was fixed in his brain like a burdock, and so he would remain, world without end, amen. He took the wallet from the policeman and studied the badge carefully, at the same time trying not to betray his vain attempts to swallow the knot that had tied itself in his throat. "Number 564."

  Naples was momentarily nudged off-center by this curious new animal. He took his badge back.

  "I'd like to ask you a few questions, if you're up to it. Won't take a minute. Are you going to eat that bacon?" Albert proffered the bacon, which Detective Naples crunched noisily as he spoke. It must be very crisp. Just the way Albert liked it.

  He had the presence of mind to know that if he tried to drink his coffee or juice he'd spill it. He nibbled some toast.

  "You know Tewksbury escaped last night?"

  The dry toast settled like dust on the knot in Albert's throat.

  He wanted a drink, but his hands were shaking.

  "There was a lot of noise in the hall last night," he said. "I heard them yelling."

  "You were here when all the excitement was going on, then? Here in bed?"

  Albert moved his head in a sort of circular nod.

  "Because one of the orderlies said he happened to look in and you weren’t in bed. Don't you like grapefruit?"

  Albert pushed the tray toward the inspector.

  "He was in the bathroom,” said Jeremy Ash.

  Naples folded the curtain back. Anticipating the policeman’s predatory tendencies, Jeremy had crammed most of his breakfast in his cheeks, to be consumed later. Otherwise h
e was as cool as hospital coffee.

  "And you are . . . ?"

  "Fine, thanks," said the boy through his breakfast.

  “I mean your name.”

  “Jeremy Ash,” said Jeremy Ash, dispersing partially masticated fragments of breakfast on the bedspread.

  "You say the Professor was in the bathroom?"

  The boy took his time chewing and swallowing his food. "Off and on, he was. He gets, like nauseous from his headaches, y'know? He barfs a couple of times a night. If he was anywhere, he was in there."

  Naples smiled lengthwise and turned his attention once more to Albert and the grapefruit. Albert had managed a sip of coffee during the preceding exchange.

  "You're friends with Tewksbury, I understand."

  This was one question Albert was ready for. "I know him. He's a colleague. He visited me sometimes."

  "That's it?"

  "Yes."

  "Mmm." The inspector held the empty grapefruit up and squeezed the juice down his throat. Albert winced. "The guard said you tried to visit him.”

  “I saw him in the hallway.”

  “You saw Tewksbury in the hallway?”

  “I thought we were talking about the guard.”

  Something unpleasant flashed in the Inspector’s eyes. “I was talking about Tewksbury."

  "Oh. Yes, I did try to get in to see him," said Albert. He was breathing easier. “But the guard wouldn’t let me.” He braved another sip of coffee quite successfully. "He's a colleague. Ancient History. I heard what he did . . . You know." He pointed at his wrists. The inspector nodded with his eyes. "I thought well, if it was me . . . "

  The inspector helped himself to some toast and jelly. "What happened to your face?"

  "My face?" Albert's hand went immediately to the red racing stripe along his cheek. His mind was going a million miles a minute, leaving his mouth hopelessly behind. "My face?"

  "Your face. That's a burn, isn't it?"

  "Yes, I . . . I burned it somehow."

  "Your hands, too," said the inspector.

  Albert sat in the presence of a Discerning Brain.

  As if on cue, a gush of warm, word-heavy air from the hall heralded the arrival of Miss Moodie and Professor Lane.

  "You see, Lane?" Moodie was saying. "That nurse was as balmy as a night in Bermuda. We needn't've awakened that elderly gentleman in the body cast." She turned to Albert. "Well, you don't look any the worse for . . . well, here we are." She thrust an oversized bouquet of flowers at him. "This will speed the recovery. Flowers. From the school. The faculty."