The Little Friend

Then a horrible idea occurred to her. What if policemen were watching the Trans Am? Wasn’t the car a crime scene, like on television? Wouldn’t cops and photographers be standing around it, keeping guard? And sure, the car was parked a good bit away from the tower—but would Hely have the sense to avoid a crowd, if he saw it? For that matter—would he be able to get near the tower at all? There were the warehouses, sure, closer to where the car was parked, and probably they’d look there first. But eventually they’d spread out toward the tower, wouldn’t they? She cursed herself for not warning him to be careful. If there were a lot of people, he’d have no choice but to turn around and come home.

Around midmorning, the doctor interrupted these worries. He was Harriet’s regular doctor, who saw her when she had red throat or tonsillitis, but Harriet didn’t like him much. He was young, with a heavy drab face and prematurely heavy jowls; his features were stiff and his manner cold and sarcastic. His name was Dr. Breedlove but—partly because of the steep prices he charged—Edie had given him the nickname (grown popular locally) of “Dr. Greedy.” His unfriendliness, it was said, had kept him from a more desirable post in a better town—but he was so very curt that Harriet didn’t feel she had to keep up a false front of chumminess and smiles as she did with most adults, and for this reason she respected him grudgingly in spite of everything.

As Dr. Greedy circled her bed, he and Harriet avoided each other’s eyes like two hostile cats. Coolly he surveyed her. He looked at her chart. Presently he demanded: “Do you eat a lot of lettuce?”

“Yes,” said Harriet, although she did no such thing.

“Do you soak it in salt water?”

“No,” said Harriet, as soon as she saw that no was the answer expected of her.

He muttered something about dysentery, and unwashed lettuce from Mexico, and—after a brooding pause—he hung her chart back on the foot of her bed with a clang and turned and left.

Suddenly the telephone rang. Harriet—heedless of the IV in her arm—grabbed for it before the first ring was done.

“Hey!” It was Hely. In the background, gymnasium echoes. The high-school orchestra practiced in folding chairs on the basketball court. Harriet could hear a whole zoo of tuning-up noises: honks and chirps, clarinet squeaks and trumpet blatts.

“Wait,” said Harriet, when he started talking without interruption, “no, stop a second.” The pay phone in the school gymnasium was in a high-traffic area, no place to have a private conversation. “Just answer yes or no. Did you get it?”

“Yes, sir.” He was talking in a voice which didn’t sound at all like James Bond, but which Harriet recognized as his James Bond voice. “I retrieved the weapon.”

“Did you throw it where I told you?”

Hely crowed. “Q,” he cried, “have I ever let you down?”

In the small, sour pause that followed, Harriet became aware of noise in the background, jostles and whispers.

“Hely,” she said, sitting up straighter, “who’s there with you?”

“Nobody,” said Hely, a little too fast. But she could hear the bump in his voice as he said it, like he was knocking some kid with his elbow.

Whispers. Somebody giggled: a girl. Anger flashed through Harriet like a jolt of electricity.

“Hely,” she said, “you’d better not have anybody there with you, no,” she said, above Hely’s protestations, “listen to me. Because—”

“Hey!” Was he laughing? “What’s your problem?”

“Because,” said Harriet, raising her voice as far as she dared, “your fingerprints are on the gun.”

Except for the band, and the jostles and whispers of the kids in the background, there was no sound on the other end at all.

“Hely?”

When finally he spoke, his voice was cracked and distant. “I—Get away,

” he said crossly, to some anonymous sniggerer in the background. Slight scuffle. The receiver banged against the wall. Hely came on again after a moment or two.

“Hang on, would you?” he said.

Bang went the receiver again. Harriet listened. Agitated whispers.

“No, you—” said someone.

More scuffling. Harriet waited. Footsteps, running away; something shouted, indistinct. When Hely returned, he was out of breath.

“Jeez,” he said, in an aggrieved whisper. “You set me up.”

Harriet—breathing hard herself—was silent. Her own fingerprints were on the gun too, though certainly there was no point in reminding him of that.

“Who have you told?” she demanded, after a cold silence.

“Nobody. Well—only Greg and Anton. And Jessica.”

Jessica? thought Harriet. Jessica Dees?

“Come on, Harriet.” Now he was being all whiny. “Don’t be so mean. I did what you told me to.”

“I didn’t ask you to tell Jessica Dees.”

Hely made an exasperated noise.

“It’s your fault. You shouldn’t have told anybody. Now you’re in trouble and I can’t help you.”

“But—” Hely struggled for words. “That’s not fair!” he said at last. “I didn’t tell anybody it was you!”

“Me that what?”

“I don’t know—whatever it was you did.”