Read Online Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith - Free Book Online Page B

Carter. Palmer had needed some cash in a hurry that day, and had asked Carter to pick it up for him, as Carter had to go to the bank anyway for himself. And the prosecution, the school board with its unlimited funds for tracker-downers and its unlimited wrath for having been exploited by crooked contractors and engineers, had managed to find Miss McVay, who remembered what Carter had done that day with the check from Wallace Palmer. Carter had cashed it and pocketed the money. The check had been a perfectly legitimate paycheck, but it looked as if Carter were being paid off. It had made a strong impression on the judge and jury.
    There was a clatter at the elevator, cries for Dr. Cassini, and, sitting up in bed, Carter saw two guards with a bleeding, half-conscious inmate standing in the hall outside.
    The wounded man was young, with curly blond hair. He had been stabbed in the throat, and there was also a cut on his head from which most of the blood was coming. Dr. Cassini, in the little room off the end of the ward called the “operating room,” stitched up the boy’s head. The doctor said the throat cut had not hit the artery, but blood came out of the boy’s mouth every few seconds, and it looked bright red to Carter. The neck wound was a jagged shiv cut, the second Carter had seen. The shivs were made from mess-hall spoons, and Dr. Cassini said there were plenty of shivs in the cell blocks, despite the efforts the guards made to see that every man tossed a spoon back with his tray. Dr. Cassini stitched the neck wound, too, and Carter clipped the sutures for him.
    They got the boy into a bed and gave him a needle, but Carter had hardly got back into his own bed when the boy sat up and screamed, fighting his invisible assailants.
    “Dr. Cassini!” Carter yelled.
    Dr. Cassini came back, disgruntled, tying the belt of his robe. “Ah, these queens. Where’s the needle?”
    Carter and the guard held the boy down, the guard at his head and Carter sitting on his feet.
    “Jesus, nothin’ like peace and quiet,” somebody said from one of the beds.
    “If you don’t like it, go back to your zoo and get a shiv in your neck like this fellow!” Dr. Cassini yelled back.
    The boy began to quieten down, and finally he was only gasping, relaxing. Carter stood up. The guard dismissed himself with a wave.
    Carter walked to his own bed and stood beside it, squeezing his eyes shut. The dim, yellowish purple light from the hall door was a perfect light for his state of mind, he thought, like a sick, false dawn.
    Dr. Cassini slapped him on the shoulder, laughing softly, and Carter recoiled. Emergencies, suffering, blood seemed to put Dr. Cassini in a crazily chipper mood.
    “I’ve seen this guy many a time,” Dr. Cassini said. “His name is Mickey Castle. Older than he looks. The queens know how to hang on to their youth. Ha! He gets cut up every few months. C-zoo, a nasty zoo.”
    A man down the line of beds groaned aggressively, annoyed by Dr. Cassini’s chatter.
    Carter sank down on his bed, and the doctor went back to his room down the hall. It was twenty past 3. The night seemed endless.
    A wild scream roused Carter from his pillow. Mickey was up again, stumbling from his bed, punching with sleepy fists at the air.
    Carter walked toward him. “Take it easy, Mickey! You’re in the hospital ward!”
    Carter hurried to the hall to call Dr. Cassini and the guard—who must have gone to the toilet, because he wasn’t there—and Mickey came at him. Carter heard him and sidestepped, and Mickey crashed against the doorjamb and sank to the floor. By now the ward was in an uproar, and Dr. Cassini came down the hall at a run.
    The guard and Dr. Cassini got Mickey on to his bed again. This time the boy had knocked himself out.
    “He’s bleeding at the throat again,” Carter said.
    “Oh, that’s not too serious. I’ll take care of that in the morning,” said the doctor.
    The morning was only forty-five minutes off, so Carter