He did try to relax and have some fun, as Burris had suggested. But he didn't seem to be able to get his mind off the case.
Boyd, after the first little while, had no such trouble. He entered the social life of the city with a whoop of joy and disappeared from sight. That was fine for Boyd, Malone reflected, but it did leave Malone himself just a little bit at loose ends.
Not that he begrudged Boyd his fun. It was nice that one of them was enjoying himself, anyway.
It was just that Malone was beginning to get fidgety. He needed to be doing something—even if it was only taking a walk.
So he took a walk and ended up, to his own surprise, downtown near
Greenwich Village.
And then he'd been bopped on the head.
3
The patrol car pulled up in front of St. Vincent's Hospital, and one of the cops helped Malone into the emergency receiving room. He didn't feel as bad as he had a few minutes before. The motion of the car hadn't helped any, but his head seemed to be knitting a little, and his legs were a little steadier. True, he didn't feel one hundred per cent healthy, but he was beginning to think he might live, after all. And while the doctor was bandaging his head, a spirit of new life began to fill the FBI agent.
He was no longer morose and undirected. He had a purpose in life, and the purpose filled him with cold determination. He was going to find the robot-operated car—or whatever it turned out to be.
The doctor, Malone noticed, was whistling Greensleeves under his breath as he worked. That, he supposed, was the influence of the Bohemian folk-singers of Greenwich Village. But he put the noise resolutely out of his mind and concentrated on the red Cadillac.