He found himself reliving bits and pieces of his childhood in individual sights and stinks and sounds, the tired houses with broken steps, the refuse and offal in the streets, the savage screams of children, a cracked window with a heartbreaking tomato-can planter on the sill.

What had become of fat-thighed Fay Hartnett, Petey and Ted Simpson, Tommy White, Fats McKenna?

If he had the power to see the people who had made up the fabric of his childhood—as they were right now, at this moment—would he want to?

He knew he would not.

They were likely to be dead or worse: whore, pimp, pusher, junky, human flotsam known in the records of the Police Department, almost certainly caught up in, if not killed by, the easy escape offered by drugs.

A little nappy-haired boy came barreling around the corner and swivel-hipped like a running back to avoid him, brushing past with a short, mocking curse. He stood and watched with a sad smile as the boy scuttled away.

No matter how fast you run, sonny, he thought, unless you meet a Calvin J. Priest of your own you’re a fly caught in hot tar, already in the shadow of the steamroller. Calculating the odds against escape, he looked around him with fresh, frightened awareness of his own miraculous deliverance.

When he returned to the hospital he checked for mail and found only a free catalogue from a pharmaceutical manufacturer, which he opened in the elevator and sampled as the old car fought against the pull of gravity.

There was someone waiting in the hallway outside his room, a short redfaced man in a black overcoat with a velvet collar, carrying, he noted with disbelief, a derby hat.

“Dr. Robinson?”

“Yes.”

The man held out an envelope. “This is for you.”

“I just picked up my mail.”

The man chuckled. “Special delivery,” he said. Spurgeon took the envelope, noting that it bore no stamp. He groped for a coin, but the man replaced the derby and turned away, smiling. “I’m not a messenger,” he said. “Deputy sheriff.”

Deputy sheriff?

Inside, Spurgeon sat on the bed and opened the envelope.

COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS

To Spurgeon Robinson of Boston, within our County of Suffolk. Whereas Arthur Donnelly of Boston within our County of Suffolk has begun an action of Tort against you by writ dated February 21, 1968, and returnable in the Superior Court holden at Boston within our County of Suffolk on Monday the twentieth day of May, 1968 in which action damages are claimed in the sum of $200,000.00 dollars as follows:

TORT AND/OR CONTRACT FOR MALPRACTICE

as will more fully appear from the declaration to be filed in said Court when and if said action is entered therein: