The Impossibles Read online

casing."

  "You're sure?" Malone said doubtfully. It did seem as if a car had alot more dangerous weapons around, without resorting to blackjacks. Ifit had really wanted to damage him, why hadn't it hit him with theengine block?

  "I'm sure," the doctor said. "I've worked in Emergency in thishospital long enough to recognize a blackjack wound."

  That was a disturbing idea, in a way. It gave a new color to Malone'sreflection on Greenwich Villagers. Maybe things had changed since he'dheard about them. Maybe the blackjack had supplanted the guitar.

  But that wasn't the important thing.

  The fact that it had been a blackjack that had hit him _was_important. It was vital, as a matter of fact. Malone knew thatperfectly well. It was a key fact in the case he was investigating.

  The only trouble was that he didn't see what, if anything, it meant.

  The doctor stepped back and regarded Malone's head with something likepride. "There," he said. "You'll be all right now."

  "A concussion?"

  "Sure," the doctor said. "But it isn't serious. Just take thesepills--one every two hours until they're gone--and you'll be rid ofany effects within twenty-four hours." He went to a cabinet, fiddledaround for a minute, and came back with a small bottle containing sixorange pills. They looked very large and threatening.

  "Fine," Malone said doubtfully.

  "You'll be all right," the doctor said, giving Malone a cheerful,confident grin. "Nothing at all to worry about." He loaded a hypojetand blasted something through the skin of Malone's upper arm. Maloneswallowed hard. He knew perfectly well that he hadn't felt a thing buthe couldn't quite make himself believe it.

  "That'll take care of you for tonight," the doctor said. "Get somesleep and start in on the pills when you wake up, okay?"

  "Okay," Malone said. It was going to make waking up something lessthan a pleasure, but he wanted to get well, didn't he?

  Of course he did. If that Cadillac thought it was going to beat him...

  "You can stand up now," the doctor said.

  "Okay," Malone said, trying it. "Thanks, Doctor. I--"

  There was a knock at the door. The doctor jerked his head around.

  "Who's that?" he said.

  "Me," a bass voice said, unhelpfully.

  The emergency-room door opened a crack and a face peered in. It tookMalone a second to recognize Bill, the waffle-faced cop who had pickedhim up next to the lamp post three years or so before. "Long time nosee," Malone said at random.

  "What?" Bill said, and opened the door wider. He came in and closed itbehind him. "It's okay, Doc," he said to the attendant. "I'm a cop."

  "Been hurt?" the doctor said.

  Bill shook his head. "Not recently," he said. "I came to see thisguy." He looked at Malone. "They told me you were still here," hesaid.

  "Who's they?" Malone said.

  "Outside," Bill said. "The attendants out there. They said you werestill getting stitched up."

  "And quite right, too," Malone said solemnly.

  "Oh," Bill said. "Sure." He fished in his pockets. "You dropped yournotebook, though, and I came to give it back to you." He located theobject he was hunting for and brought it out with the triumphantgesture of a man displaying the head of a dragon he had slain. "Here,"he said, waving the book.

  "Notebook?" Malone said. He stared at it. It was a small looseleafbook bound in cheap black plastic.

  "We found it in the gutter," Bill said.

  Malone took a tentative step forward and managed not to fall. Hestepped back again and looked at Bill scornfully. "I wasn't even inthe gutter," he said. "There are limits."

  "Sure," Bill said. "But the notebook was, so I brought it along toyou. I thought you might need it or something." He handed it over toMalone with a flourish.

  It wasn't Malone's notebook. In the first place, he had never owned anotebook that looked anything like that, and in the second place hehadn't had any notebooks on him when he went for his walk. _Mine notto question why_, Malone told himself with a shrug, and flipped thebook open.

  At once he saw why the cop had mistaken it for his.

  It had his name in it.

  On the very first page were two names, written out in a careful,semieducated scrawl:

  _Mr. Kenneth J. Malone, FBI_ _Lt. Peter Lynch, NYPD_

  The rest of the page was blank. Malone wondered who Lieutenant Lynchwas, and made a mental note to find out. Then he wondered what hisname was doing in somebody else's notebook. Maybe, he thought, it wasa list of people to slug, and the car had made it up. But he hadn'theard of anybody named Lynch being hit on the head by a maraudingautomobile, and he couldn't quite picture a Cadillac jotting thingsdown in a notebook for future reference. Besides, he had an idea thata Cadillac's handwriting would be more formal, and prettier.

  He turned the page. On the next leaf there were more names, eight ofthem. The first one was written in red pencil and the others were inordinary black. Malone stared at them:

  _Mike F._ _Ramon O._ _Mario G._ _Silvo E._ _Alvarez A._ _Felipe la B._ _Juan de los S._ _Ray del E._

  All the names except Mike F. sounded Spanish, or possibly PuertoRican. Malone wondered who they were. Juvenile delinquents? Otherpeople to slug? Police officers?

  Maybe they were all the names of Spanish-speaking Cadillacs.

  He blinked and rubbed at his forehead with one hand. His head stillhurt, and that was probably why he was getting such strange ideas. Itwas obvious that, whatever the notebook was, it hadn't been written byan automobile.

  He turned the page again.

  Here there was a carefully detailed drawing of a car. Malonerecognized it as a 1972 Cadillac without any effort at all.

  And it had been carefully colored in with red pencil.

  Wow, Malone asked himself, _What the hell does that mean?_

  He couldn't find an answer. He turned the page, hoping for some morefacts that might make some sense out of what he had been seeing, butthere was nothing more. All the rest of the pages in the notebook wereblank.

  He looked up at the cop and the doctor with a bland, blank face."Thanks a lot," he told Bill. "I thought I'd lost this book. Iappreciate it."

  "Oh, that's okay, Mr. Malone," Bill said. "Glad to do it."

  "You don't know what this means to me," Malone said truthfully.

  "No trouble at all," Bill said. "Any time." He gave Malone a big smileand turned back to the door. "But I got to get back to my beat," hesaid. "Listen, I'll see you. And if I can be any help--"

  "Sure," Malone said. "I'll let you know. And thanks again."

  "Welcome," Bill said, and opened the door. He strode out with the airof a man who has just been decorated with the Silver Star, the PurpleHeart and the Congressional Medal of Honor.

  Malone tried a few more steps and discovered that he could walkwithout falling down. He thanked the doctor again.

  "Perfectly all right," the doctor said. "Nothing to it. Why, you oughtto see some of the cases we get here. There was a guy here the othernight with both his legs all mashed up by a--"

  "I'll bet," Malone said hurriedly. "Well, I've got to be on my way.Just send the bill to FBI headquarters on 69th Street." He closed thedoor on the doctor's enthusiastic "Yes, _sir!_" and went on down thehallway and out into the street. At Seventh Avenue and GreenwichAvenue he flagged a cab.

  It was a hell of a place to be, Malone thought as the cab drove away.Where but in Greenwich Village did avenues intersect each otherwithout so much as a by-your-leave?

  "Hotel New Yorker," he said, giving the whole thing up as a bad job.He put his hat on his head and adjusted it painfully to the properangle.

  And that, he thought, made another little problem. The car had notonly hit him on the head, it had removed his hat before doing so, andthen replaced it. It had only fallen off when he'd started to get upagainst the lamp post.

  _A nice quiet vacation_, Malone thought bitterly.

  He fumed in silence all the way to the ho
tel, through the lobby, up inthe elevator, and to the door of his room. Then he remembered thenotebook.

  That was important evidence. He decided to tell Boyd about it rightaway.

  He went into the bathroom and tapped gently on the door to Boyd'sconnecting room. The door swung open.

  Boyd, apparently, was still out painting the town--Malone consideredthe word _red_ and dropped the whole phrase with a sigh. At any rate,his partner was nowhere in the room.

  "The hell with it," Malone announced