Chapter 11: Forgetting the Wadding Leads to Doctor’s Bills
After learning that Yad had vacated his apartments, Eugene had not known where to turn next. Phoenix Arizona and New York city were his two obvious choices, but there was no way to know which one was right. Or if either of them were correct at all, when he was dealing with an unstable character. Not getting any reply from the airport about Professor Daye, he was left with one option which stuck out like a sore thumb. Procrastination.
And he procrastinated very well, for most the rest of the day. Then he walked around the town, hoping to find any sign of the missing professor. Still finding nothing, he decided that the best thing to do was get a simple job in the neighborhood and stick around until either Daye came back, or Eugene figured out where to find him. But before all that, he had to find something to eat.
Luckily, both the finding something to eat and getting a simple job went right together. There was a little Italian restaurant in the heart of town, set directly across from a prestigious bank and beside a medium-sized hotel. Stopping in, Eugene was able to work his touch of Italian blood to an advantage, getting a free meal and promising to earn the next ones daily. He was also given small but adequate wages and a place to sleep in the back.
“You look like a good’a kid, despite the fantasy hook-hand thing,” the stout, quick-fingered owner told him, “you clean the tables, sweep the floor and get things ready for me in the morning, besides doing a bit of waiting, and Papa Constali will take care of you, see?”
“Thank you, Papa,” Eugene replied, watching the piles of gleaming noodles get put on a plate for him, then dolloped in rich red sauce with large meatballs nestled in it. He was looking forward to this dinner more than any other he could remember in his life, besides maybe two. And when he took the first bite of spicy, steaming spaghetti, he knew that it was worth it.
Later that evening, after having cleaned up for the night, he was shown his room in the back. It was a narrow, cement-floored space, with a metal cot on one side of it. Above the cot was a tall, thin window with divided panes. There was little else in the room, besides a crate that was missing most of the boards on two sides.
“It’s not much, but it’s a place to sleep,” Constali shrugged, “better than you would get on the streets. Now, I’ve had a little problem with someone stealing money from the till, even while it was locked up for the night. You hear someone out there, you chase them off, see?”
“Yes, sir,” Eugene saluted, moving over to sit on the sagging cot, “I’ll keep my ears open.”
“You do that,” Constali gave him a firm nod of approval before leaving for the night. Throwing off his boots, the thief fluffed up the pillow with a few slaps of his hand and rolled the two thin blankets down to the edge of the bed. The cushion underneath was grayish and dirt-smudged from the last person who had slept there, not much better than what he had in prison. Eugene made a face at it, but could not complain too much.
At least here he was free to come and go as he pleased, a freedom which he valued highly. In fact, they had never managed to stop him in the prison, not altogether. He had a way of taking what freedoms were not given to him.
He fell into a weary sleep and did not awake until sometime deep in the night. Then his senses snapped him alert telling him that something was wrong. Reaching over, he pulled the cord which turned on the sim light bulb hanging from the roof. Blinking in the aftermath, he sat up, pulling his boots on when he remembered what Constali had said about burglars.
But what exactly had awoken him? Pausing, he closed his eyes and listened. There was no sound from within the little restaurant, no stealthy shoes on the floor or fluttering hands on the register. Whatever had snapped him out of sleep, it was not something inside his domain.
After a minute he heard it, the sound of a car idling on the sidewalk outside.
Eugene sighed, wondering how many times in a night cars might pull over on the side of the road. He was in a city, where people came and went frequently. Just because they pulled over did not mean that they were trying to steal anything.
But he couldn’t shake the nervous feeling that something was happening out there. Telling himself that it was better to be safe than sorry, he listened for the car to pull away again. He waited about five minutes without anything happening, then got up, shut off the light and moved stealthily through the darkness into the dining room of the restaurant. Here the room was almost entirely dark, with small gleams of light coming in under the curtains on the front windows. Eugene stepped over to raise one side of a curtain with his hook, peering out into the night through the large pane of glass.
When his eyes had adjusted he saw the shape of a car parked on the curb in front of the restaurant, stereo light glowing a faint neon green. No one was in the vehicle, though a large figured appeared to be slinking into the shadows around the bank on the far side. This personage disappeared with a glint of light from the swinging glass door, engulfed by the walls of brick. After a moment, a gleam of light so small that Eugene could barely make it out could be seen moving inside the building, before it, too, was swallowed up and gone.
“Ha, so it is a burglary,” Eugene commented under his breath, “they’ve just got bigger fish to fry than we thought. Well, as long as they aren’t bothering me I won’t snitch on them.”
Curious to see how it would be carried out, he shrugged himself under the curtain more comfortably. He did not think that there was anyone in or around the car at all to see him, so he even went so far as to press his face against the glass to watch. It was cool against his nose, hard on his forehead.
For a time nothing appeared to be happening around the bank. Eugene knew that no one with precisely ‘good’ intent would be sneaking around the bank at night, so he waited. He was just stifling a yawn in his left hand when there was a sudden flash from the building across the street, followed almost instantly by an ominous rumble. The flash came from the side of the building, where the wall bulged out for a split second, before crumbling across the lawn in a heap of broken bricks. Like a dummy in a cheap movie, a shape was ejected out of the bank along with the rest of the rubble and blown against a tree about five yards away. The light of a streetlamp nearby illuminated his wild hair and dark, leather clothes.
Eugene felt a lump jump up into his throat. “It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be.”
He stayed at the window for only a moment longer, as a smaller figure hurried out of the front door of the bank, glanced around hectically and jumped into the car to speed away. Then Eugene was moving, darting swiftly out of the door, down the steps and across the pavement to come to a stop a few feet away from the man laying on the ground. Those last few feet he walked stealthily, moving so that he was just outside the ring of light from the lamp, which had its edge on the fallen figure.
The still form’s face was scraped and battered, blood running down it from a wound on his forehead. One arm was twisted under him at an odd angle, while the other still convulsively clutched a remote controller of some sort with broken wires trailing from it. His clothes were torn and covered in white dust from the broken wall. Yet it could not be mistaken for anyone but Maniac. He was sitting there unconscious, with nothing to say to excuse himself. Smothers might have laughed.
Sirens were beginning to go off somewhere in the city. Eugene knelt beside the exploded figure, no even sure if he was alive. Eugene didn’t know what to do at all. Survival instincts told him to just walk away and forget about it (Oh, a dead guy. Too bad it was Maniac) while his fear of pain and violence told him to hide his head in his hand. But in his honest, conscious mind he knew that he could not abandon his friend lying there like that and ever forgive himself.
He heard the sound of a vehicle coming to a stop beside them. Looking up, he was not really surprised to see a man in a dark cloak jump out and move toward them, green eyes glowing out of shadows. Eugene only said accusingly, “I thought he was indestructible.”
“So did I,” Leaflow joined him, reaching out a hand to touch their comrade’s throat, “And perhaps he is. His vitals are still functioning. For now.”
“Gee, you’re cheerful,” Eugene snapped, “but the cops are on the way and what are we going to do?”
“Rule number three of first aid treatment; find someone who knows what they’re doing. Pronto,” Leaflow jerked a thumb at the car, “let’s load him up.”
Which was easier said than done. With only one hand Eugene had a hard time getting a grip on Maniac’s legs. He didn’t want to spear him with the hook, which was sharpened on the tip, so he had to stick it through the cuff of his pants like a pin and hope that the fabric didn’t rip. To add to that, Maniac was no light weight to lug around. Leaflow had all he could do to support his upper half without twisting his shoulder further, while Eugene fought to keep a grip on his lower half.
They struggled and staggered their way over to the car, where they dumped him in the back seat as lightly as they could. Eugene climbed in to pillow his head, while Leaflow took off with the flashing lights of emergency vehicles cutting into the night just behind them.
“Where are we going?” Eugene shouted, as they bumped up onto a curb, cut across a lawn and shot out in a road just beyond.
“First escape the police, then find a doctor,” Leaflow turned his head back towards them to answer. The thief squeezed his eyes shut, expecting to hit into a frighteningly solid object at any moment.
“Keep your eyes on the road!”
The answer was lost in a squeal of wheels as the little blue convertible slid sideways onto the street, and a roar of engine as Leaflow gunned it. The sirens also blared louder, and Eugene looked over his shoulder to see a police car jump the same curb they had while coming after them. He cursed under his breath, trying to keep Maniac on the seat without poking his eye out with the hook. It was too bad, he thought briefly, that he could not use Maniac’s nose as a handle to hold him in place. The metal studs would have added excellent grip.
A second later they were skidding around another corner, the thief and his patient almost being flung out of the back by the suddenness of it. Eugene sunk his hook into the upholstery of the seat then, solving both of his problems at once. It anchored him in and could not stick his friend, though Leaflow might not be pleased if he saw the hole it made.
As they flew around one corner and then the other, Maniac began to make a peculiar snorting noise. Worried that he might be choking to death (or something else horrible) Eugene shouted up at the driver, “Leaflow, what are the other two rules of first aid?”
“There are many rules. But rule number one is: First, do no harm. The second is: Make sure that the patient cannot do any either.” The cloaked man told him, removing a hand from the wheel to count them off on his fingers.
“I think we botched the first one,” the young man muttered, clinging on as they went around yet another high-powered curve, “and the third one you told me earlier isn’t coming along any better.”
But the siren was getting a little more distant behind them and, turning in to a dark driveway, Leaflow shut the car off. Quickly hopping out, he pulled the hood up over Eugene’s head and fastened it to the windshield. Then he crawled back into the front seat and ducked down, disappearing below the edge of the window.
“Do you think that we’ve lost them?” Eugene whispered, copying his stooped position.
“Perhaps. We shall see,” Leaflow returned quietly. Maniac had stopped sounding like a steam engine by now and in the dimness Eugene saw the gleam of his eyes come open a fraction.
“Where are we?”
“Hiding from the cops,” the thief told him, feeling a surge of hope at having heard him speak.
“Even here?” Maniac grumbled, before his eyes closed again and he snorted a few times for good measure before breathing more evenly.
Soon they saw the police car creep past on the road, lights still flashing though the siren was turned off. They went on by without stopping, the blue convertible being beyond the reach of their headlights. A few minutes later they past again, flashing lights off as they headed back the other direction. The police had lost their quarry and since they did not even know for sure if it was the robbers, they dropped the issue right there.
“Let’s find a doctor now,” Eugene said, sitting back up with a shaky sigh, “Maniac’s still a mess. What a night this has been.”
“Nothing entirely out of the ordinary,” Leaflow returned carelessly, sitting back up to grasp the wheel and restart the car, “though I am glad I found you again. Yad wasn’t at home.”
“I know,” Eugene shook his head sadly, “but I found a clue as to where he might have gone. Or a riddle, more like. I’ll show it to you when we have time.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
After a second of thought, he looked down at his right arm and added, “at least Maniac didn’t lose a limb.”
“As long as we could pick it up in one piece, it probably wouldn’t matter,” the driver told him, “they can sew almost anything back on and make it work, in this time as well as mine.”
They drove more cautiously through the early-morning city until they came to a section where private doctors of various sorts had their houses or businesses, all conveniently labeled with brass plaques. The adventurers took their chances on the first one which claimed to be an M.D. and pulled to a stop in the driveway. It was a large house with the doctor’s office in front, so that he only had to walk from one room to the next to commute in the mornings.
Eugene and Leaflow once again struggled to pick up their companion, tripping over each other and the shrubbery beside the walk before they finally got him up to the house. There, Eugene propped his burden’s feet on a tall plant pot with a fake palm in it so that he could use his hand to ring the doorbell.
“Hurry up, he’s slipping,” Leaflow warned, trying to keep Maniac from falling on the cement doorstep.
“I can’t make the doctor wake up any faster!” The thief snapped, “it’s two o’clock in the morning!”
He followed this statement by pounding on the door with his fist and pushing the doorbell three more times, which he felt somewhat undermined his argument but was still the best thing to do. It seemed like a long time before the door finally opened a crack and a tousled, gray head peered out.
“Yes, what do you want?” A wavering, anxious voice inquired.
“We have a hurt friend here,” Eugene told him, inserting his hook into the opening in the door so that it could not be closed again, “we really need some help. Are you the doctor?”
“Ye-es,” the face told him warily, “Doctor Fredric Pellmonte. What happened to your friend?”
“He fell off of a nearby cliff,” Eugene returned with his usual swift and none-too-accurate invention, “see?”
He gestured back at the limp form, hoping that the doctor did not pay too much attention to Leaflow meanwhile. The wrinkled, round old face in the door peered shortsightedly at Maniac for a minute, before commenting, “well, he does look like he’s in need of medical aid. Please come in. But if there’s any funny stuff, I’m warning you, I’ll call the police.”
“We aren’t here to do anything but get a doctor for our friend,” Eugene assured him, sighing with relief. The doctor opened the door wide, letting them carry Maniac in. He led them down a brightly-lit hall into the surgery. With a flick of his hand he turned on an even more intense light, showing a space lined with shelves of medical equipment. Sweeping off the sheet from the operating table, he had them lay their cargo on it.
“Hmm, yes, yes,” Dr. Pellmonte inspected the wound on Maniac’s head, looked at his arm and gently prodded his chest, “concussion, dislocated shoulder, broken ribs. What appears to be burns on his hand, here. This man looks like he was in an explosion more than anything else.”
“He bounced off of a few rocks on the way down,” Eugene explained, “and it was no short fall. Um, you know how things get after a party, late at night.”
“And the rocks created friction which burned his hands,” Leaflow put in gravely.
The doctor cast him a doubtful glance. “I see. A masquerade party, I suppose?”
“One that never ends.” The cloaked man confirmed, making a mask shape with his hands and holding them up to his hood so that they ringed the glowing orbs inside.
Eugene stepped viciously on his foot to shut him up before adding soothingly, “You can understand that we’re a bit shaken up after all that, doctor. Our friend has no relatives, but don’t worry; we’ll pay his bills in full. Just give him the best that you can, alright?”
“Of course, of course,” Pellmonte shook his head as if to cast off his doubts, gray hair sticking out to all sides and waving around him, “he should be fine once I straighten everything out. Let me just call for my wife; she is an excellent nurse.”
He poked his head out of the room, shouting down the corridor, “Nelly! We have an emergency patient to deal with!”
Then he turned back to dismiss the other two out of his way, pulling on his doctor’s coat over the pale, faded pajamas which he was still wearing.
Eugene and Leaflow went out into a small waiting room, where a large clock ticked repetitively on the wall. They turned on the light and sat in the stiff, leather chairs, prepared to wait until they were called again. Eugene readied himself by sprawling sideways in one of the chairs, draping his legs over one arm while his back was against the other. His boots he rested on a magazine table, while he supported his head with his crossed arms and appeared to promptly fall asleep. Leaflow sat very straight and upright in a seat nearby, hands folded in his lap and eyes gazing down at the floor.
Th clock continued to tick softly. One or two vehicles passed by on the street, wheels shushing against the pavement. Eugene spoke sleepily, “Leaflow, how did you come to be right at the bank, just then?”
“I was looking for a hotel that is down that street and happened to see the explosion. Curiosity led me closer,” Leaflow told him, “it was coincidence.”
“It must have been, for you to be looking for a hotel at that time of night,” the young man returned mildly.
They didn’t say anything else until, a little more than an hour later, the doctor told them that their friend was awake now and they could talk to him. They trooped into the room to find Maniac laying on the bed propped up with pillows, his head and chest bandaged profusely. But he was looking much better than when they had last seen him and gave a weak, toothy grin when they came in.
“Ah, my two old pals. You must both have an instinct for showing up when a guy needs you most.”
Eugene smiled, “as Leaflow just said, it was coincidence. What were you up to, trying to send yourself to oblivion on a fireball?”
Maniac checked to make sure that the doctor had withdrawn, before beckoning them closer, “I was trying to break into a bank vault. But I forgot a very important part of the procedure and blew myself up instead. You understand?”
Both of them nodded, remembering times in the past when delicate procedures had gone awry and left them in a fix. They both asked him the usual questions about how he was feeling and if he needed anything, after that. To which he replied that he was as happy as a hummingbird, under the circumstances.
“Poor Smothers,” Leaflow commented, “he didn’t do anything worse than you and got blamed for it.”
“How do you know?” Maniac frowned, “you weren’t there to see what he did. It was far more stupid than forgetting the wadding!”
Eugene gave Leaflow a peculiar look. “Yes, how did you know? Were you working on the break-in with Maniac?”
“No, I told you, I was looking for a hotel down that street,” the cloaked one shrugged, though his eyes were beginning to glow with a mischievous light. The thief squinted at him thoughtfully, as if trying to unravel a mystery.
Maniac looked between them for a moment before saying, “well, perhaps we should tell each other what we’ve been up to this last week. It might clear things up a bit.”
Eugene nodded, “I agree. In fact--”
Just then the door opened and the doctor came back in, interrupting him to say that the patient needed rest, it was still early in the morning, and they would have to leave for now.
“Maybe next time, Hook,” Leaflow told the young man with a wink, getting up to leave. Eugene followed, frowning as he muttered between his teeth, “definitely next time, Granny.”
They went out into the first gray light of predawn, where they separated ways after agreeing that they would have to both find work to pay off Maniac’s doctor bill and support themselves while they were staying there. It was an unspoken agreement between them, all three of them really, that they would not abandon their injured comrade now though they had broken up in anger not so long ago.
Eugene walked back to the Italian restaurant, staying carefully out of the way of the cleanup crew around the bank. He toyed, briefly, with the idea that the bank vault was probably blown open inside the building and that it would not be hard to walk in and take whatever he wanted.
But he dismissed that idea after just a little thought. The police stationed around the bank would be on the lookout for just such an attempt, besides the fact that the money might be stained with ink or shredded by the safety mechanisms inside the vault. It would not be worth the risk to saunter down there and filch a few hundred, though it was tempting.
Luckily, Constali had not returned to his restaurant yet. Slipping in the front door, Eugene went back to his bedroom and made it look as if he had been asleep there all night, flopping himself heavily on the cot with the blankets pulled up around his ears. An hour later the owner came in, awoke him with a great hustle and set him to work preparing the restaurant for breakfast.
Tables had to be set out on the patio, breadsticks set to rise, the floor swept for the morning and the windows washed. By the time he was done with all that, it was serving time for the first customers of the day.
Carrying plates of Italian pastries, breakfast pizzas and glasses of fresh orange juice, Eugene wondered when he would get an opportunity to visit Maniac again. Probably not until the evening, if then. But the doctor would not want him to show up in the middle of the night once again, so he would have to wait until the next day. And on the next day he was sure there had to be tables to clean, dishes to wash and plates to serve. It seemed like it would be a long time before he could check on Maniac, or squeeze the true story out of Leaflow.
He was silently complaining to himself on this point when all thought of his troubles were brushed out of his mind by magic. Or by a woman, more accurately.
There, sweeping into the restaurant with an older man right behind her, was Irene Rillcoe. And if the thief was not mistaken, the man was her father.
He gulped, did an about-face carrying a plate of eggs with sausage and walked swiftly back toward the kitchen. After his last goof as a waiter, he could not face Irene in the same guise again. Especially if her father was with her.
Putting on a limp, he came hobbling into the kitchen, leaning with is hook pressed against the wall as if for support.
“Whats’a wrong with you?” Constali asked, looking around in surprise.
“I twisted my ankle,” Eugene grimaced, “luckily I saved the plate by dropping it on a table, but I think the ankle’s sprained now. Don’t worry, it should pass in a moment. I won’t slow things up.”
“Hmm,” the chef looked at him for a moment more, before scooting a stool over in front of the stove, “you sit here, boy. I’ll serve for a little bit; you just make sure that this tomato sauce doesn’t burn. Stir it real good.”
Eugene protested weakly, but his ankle apparently hurt every time he touched it to the floor. Constali insisted, taking the plate from him so that there could be no mistaking the order to rest. With a grateful sigh that was not faked, Eugene took the stool and sat upon it, picking up the wooden sauce spoon in his one hand. With awkward strokes he stirred the thick red paste around, steadying the pot with his hook now and then. If Mr. Rillcoe had seen him, he would have just sunk into the floor and disappeared. Especially if Irene had pointed him out and laughed.
“She wouldn’t laugh, would she?” Eugene asked a spoonful of sauce, before plopping it back in the pot. The only answer he received was a thin spatter of liquid from a bubble bursting in the boiling cauldron.
“Ew,” he wiped it off of his face with a sleeve, reaching for a breadstick so that he could make sure that the sauce had enough salt.
---
While Eugene continued his job as cook’s help to a stout Italian, Leaflow had found his way back to a particular park in the city. There he met with a dark-haired, mysterious woman who was waiting for him on a bench.
“Well?” she said, almost gruffly, “do you have proofs?”
“I don’t have it, because I was not able to complete the mission,” Leaflow explained, giving her a half-bow that was far too mocking to be courteous.
“And why not?” The woman snapped.
“Well, it is rather a long story.” He told her, warily eyeing the purse she clutched in one hand, “but to cut things as short as possible, I was on my way to find the target at his hotel when I noticed a friend of mine in great need and was obliged to help him. That took the rest of the night, so I had no time to complete my mission before daylight. But, from what you said, your blackmai--our target should be there tonight as well.”
His 'slip’ in speaking was obviously intentional, but the woman ignored it. Rising, she gave him a slanted, piqued glance. “You don’t seem to care. Perhaps I should find someone else to help me. They might enjoy the five grand more than you. Or at least work for it harder.”
“Man reposes, while nature grows roses,” Leaflow shrugged, speaking the nonsense as if it were the deepest philosophical remark that could be made on the subject, “if you think that you can get someone better than me before tonight, that is your choice. But as tonight is the last one when he will be in the city, you might run out of time and have been better off showing a little patience.”
He started to turn away as if to head back to his car, but the woman stepped forward hastily and snatched at his sleeve before he could go far. He twitched it away without her fingers touching the cloth.
“Yes?”
“You’re right,” she admitted, if that word can describe the hurried, rough tones of her voice, “I don’t have much other choice. You can have the job, but it must be completed tonight. If he still has the proofs tomorrow he’ll find that I don’t have the money and use them against me. I’ll be thrown in prison, or worse.”
“It might make an improvement,” Leaflow muttered under his breath, before speaking aloud, “very well. Though I still think that it would be easier to assassinate this fellow than steal the papers from him. If I have your leave?”
“You don’t, not to kill him,” The woman slapped her forehead, turning to walk away, “I’m not a murderer. Same place tomorrow, same time.”
Leaflow watched her leaving, before shaking his head and climbing back into his car. How did he always get himself mixed up in this sort of thing? It was Eugene’s hobby to be the thief. He should go ask the boy to do it right now.
But the young man might balk, or ask for more money, or say that he was busy working in a restaurant. It was easier for Leaflow to attempt the job himself. And if he could sneak into a hotel room to poison or knife a fellow, how much harder could it be to steal a few papers from him?
Then, with the money, he could pay Maniac’s doctor bill and start them on their quest after Yad again.
The rest of the day he spent in doing nothing in particular. Not just a careless, half-hearted job of doing nothing, either. He found a place to park his car in the shade and sat outside of it for hours, watching the pattern of leaves against sky or turning his thoughts inwards.
In the evening, he dropped by to make sure that Maniac was being taken care of and promised to try to get Eugene there in the morning so that they could all three talk. Afterwards he bought a pizza (which is just bread and cheese in a different form) and ate it slowly until the sun went down.
Little did he know that he would soon be bringing Eugene to the doctor for an entirely different reason than to visit Maniac.