The Right Jack

"Don't worry, Lieutenant," he said, leaning back into the pillows. "I'll be out of here soon."

They went down a modern hallway painted turquoise and white, but the smells were old-fashioned regulation hospital, a blend of disinfectants, antiseptics, and floor wax.

"I hate these places," said Knight.

"Morgues are worse," Sigrid told him.

Commander Dixon's hospital lay across town and while Petty Officer Schmitt made child's play out of mid-day traffic,

Alan Knight fretted about arriving empty-handed.

"We ought to take her something," he said for the third time. "What about magazines?"

"Hospital volunteers provide them. What about flowers?"

"Flowers are a cliché."

"Clichés don't become clichés unless a lot of people like them," Sigrid observed calmly.

"You were just in the hospital. What did you miss most?"

"I wasn't in long enough to miss anything, but I was laid up at school once with a broken leg and someone brought me a back scratcher. You know, one of those little hands carved out of a long piece of rattan or bamboo? It was the most practical thing they gave me. I could even slide it down inside the cast."

Knight leaned forward. "There's a Japanese place off Fifth Avenue," he told Schmitt. "Two more blocks and hang a left."

"Yes, sir."

While Alan Knight rattled around at the rear of the store for a back scratcher, Sigrid discovered a shelf of snow domes, those crystal balls usually filled with flecks of white that children love to shake, then watch as the flecks settle over a wintry scene like falling snow. These were like none she'd ever seen. Instead of a fir tree or a snowman, the glass ball held a miniature cherry tree in full bloom; and when she shook it, tiny flecks of pink swirled like drifting blossoms.

Charmed, Sigrid bought one, thinking it might amuse Commander Dixon. As she paid. Knight emerged triumphantly from the rear of the store with a small plastic hand fastened to quite a long bamboo stick and a kaleidoscope.

"I always liked these," he confessed, looking more like five than twenty-five and making Sigrid smile.

As it was now nearly two o'clock, Schmitt was encouraged to double-park at the

corner of Eighth and West Fiftieth and hop out for a round of frankfurters from a pushcart.

"Sauerkraut or onions, ma'am?" he asked.

"Sauerkraut, please."

"Onions for me, Schmitty," said Knight, "and get yourself a couple, too."

Sabrett frankfurters are the smell of New York and their redolence filled the car as Alan Knight waxed nostalgic about Southern hot dogs, the buns stuffed with chili, cole slaw, and finely chopped raw onions. "Took me a long time to get used to pickled cabbage on my franks."

"I've eaten what the South calls a frankfurter," Sigrid said. "Fire-engine red, limp and mushy, no snap to the casing. Give me these any day."

An amiable argument about the merits of regional foods lasted almost to the hospital. It served as well as anything else to distract them from the interview that lay ahead, but both had fallen silent by the time Petty Officer Schmitt pulled up to the entrance of a grim, soot-stained building erected in the twenties.

Alan Knight lagged behind as Sigrida pproached the main desk to ask directions.

"I'll be back in a minute," he said.

It was more than a minute and Sigrid was becoming impatient when he returned from the gift shop with a small, prettily wrapped box.

"Perfume," he said as they rode up in the elevator. "Just in case she needs to be reminded that she's still a beautiful woman."

And she was. Even with the cuts and bruises and the deep black circles under her eyes, the slender woman who lay sleeping on the steel-framed hospital bed possessed a more than average beauty. There was strength in the small pointed chin, intelligence in the sweep of her brow. She was said to have had short white hair that curled all over her head-'A nest of stork feathers,' was the way Vassily Ivanovich had put it-but smooth bandages now encased her head, reminding Sigrid of the white line band that nuns used to wear under their black veils to hide their hair.

She wore a bleached and faded hospital gown and the sight of it made a slow anger against Molly Baldwin begin to burn. Somehow Sigrid sensed how much Commander Dixon would hate that gown. Lacy lingerie and pretty negligees were Sigrid's secret self-indulgence, so surely a woman as feminine as Ivanovich and Tillie had described would have dozens of frilly gowns and bed jackets. Someone should have brought her her own things instead of sentencing her to this ugly cotton shift.

Damn that girl!

The gown had wide short sleeves and the bandaged stub could be clearly seen. Commander Dixon's arm ended halfway between her elbow and shoulder.

No elbow joint, Sigrid thought numbly. She had hoped the surgeons had saved it. Without the elbow, any prosthetic device would probably be clumsier and bulkier.

She glanced at Alan. He was white-faced. "Maybe we ought not to wake her," he whispered.

Sigrid would have liked to run away,t oo, but she steeled herself and approached the bed. "Commander Dixon?"

A frown furrowed the woman's smooth features. Her eyes opened, blankly at first, then awareness filled them as if she were coming back from a long distance. She looked at Sigrid without curiosity.

"Doctor?" she murmured.

"No, Commander. I'm Lieutenant Harald, New York City Police."

"Police?" Her gaze fell on Alan Knight's blue uniform with its two gold stripes on the sleeve. "Lieutenant?"

"Alan Knight, ma'am. ONI."

"Yes… of course." She tried to push herself more erect on the pillows and grimaced with the pain of the effort.

"Shall I crank you up?" Knight asked anxiously, bending for the handle at the foot of the narrow bed.

"Just a little, please," she whispered. Her eyes went to her bandaged arm and a low moan escaped her lips.

"Every time I wake up, I keep hoping it's been a bad dream."

Anguish hung in the room like an almost palpable miasma and Sigrid could feel herself stiffening. "If you'd rather,

Commander, we can come back another time."

"No. I'm all right."

"Can you talk about Friday night?"

"Friday." The frown reappeared. "What's today?";

"Monday."

"That's right. The nurse told me that at-breakfast? Lunch? I'm sorry. Everything keeps getting muddled."

She spoke with some effort and her voice was low, but there was a musical undertone that was very appealing and it reminded Sigrid that Haines Froelick said that he and Zachary Wolferman had been equally enchanted by the commander's voice.

"Commander, do you remember the cribbage tournament?" Sigrid asked.

"Yes… Vassily and I… the Hotel Maintenon. We had drinks and there was a nice old gentleman and his cousin. We talked and then-"

Her voice broke off and she looked at them in mute appeal.

"Was anyone else badly hurt?" she whispered. "They said two men were killed and the man I was playing against

– a policeman-was seriously hurt but they didn't mention any women."

"Your cousin is fine," Sigrid said bluntly, guessing what lay behind her question. "She was at the far side of the room and wasn't hurt at all."

"You know about Molly?"

Her head sank deeper into the pillows and tears seeped out around her closed lids. "I've been so worried," she whispered. "And I couldn't ask. She said not to and I didn't know if she was in trouble… or what. You're sure she's all right?"