Expiration Date (19 page)

“Wish me luck.”

“Good luck. By the way, if you’re caught by the guards, wet your pants and start barking like a dog.”

“You think this is a riot, don’t you.”

“No, I’m serious. That’s the one thing that can get you out of pretty much any situation. Or at least, give you a chance to make a break for it.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

The front lawn of the Adams Institute was manicured to within an inch of its life, and glistening with the humid rain. I strode forward purposefully, unapologetically. I was faking it like you wouldn’t believe.

Inside the main hall there was a reception desk. I blew right past it and continued down a marble-floored hallway. Someone said “hey!” but I turned a corner, looking for a wall-mounted directory. There was a door to my right, then another set of stairs, then another door…which took me outside again, into the rain. Crap.

Not knowing exactly where to go, I darted down the side of the building, feeling the water creep down my collar, until I found a path that led into a group of trees. There were more buildings, two and four stories each, dotting the grounds. Derace could be in any one of them. Or not here at all.

I kept strolling, not too fast to be obvious. By the time I reached the tree line I could see another building off to the left—a 1950s-style, no-nonsense two-story deal. Which one of these things is not like the other? If I were going to run government drug experiments, would I do it in one of the storied old buildings that had been around since the Civil War, or would I use federal money to slap up something new? The name on the building said: the papiro center.

And that was as far as I got before I felt a hand on my good arm.

I half-expected a guard, but instead it was a man in a white robe and slippers. Late fifties, with brown hair combed straight back. His eyes were the most intense I’d ever seen. They practically glowed.

“I remember you,” he said. “I met you when you were a kid. On that boat. Do you remember?”

I had no idea who he was, or what boat he was talking about.

“You and your sister. You were lost. On that boat.”

See, right there were strikes one and two. I was an only child, and I grew up a landlubber. Mom didn’t bring us on any yachts or cruise ships. She didn’t even bring us to the
Good Ship Lollypop
down at Penn’s Landing, like every other kid I knew.

“Sorry,” I told the guy. “I don’t remember.”

He leaned forward and winked at me.

“My name is Dean. But that’s just an alias.”

Dean looked around to see if anyone else was listening. I looked around, too, to see if any armed guards were running toward us. But we were alone. Unfortunately.

Sometimes, though, a reporter can’t be picky about his sources. It was a long shot, but I looked at Dean.

“Do you know a man here named William Derace? Billy Allen Derace?”

Dean’s eyes widened.

“Of course I know that bastard. You should stay away from him—he’s incredibly dangerous. I’ve been trying to collect him for years, but they keep him locked up all the time. Oh, the murders I could solve with that son of a bitch locked in my skull.”

Okay, this guy was probably loony tunes, but it was also possible that he conflated actual reality with his fantasy life. Maybe he really did know Derace.

“Where do they keep him locked up?”

“No,” Dean said. “Can’t tell you that. Too dangerous. You don’t want anything to do with Billy Derace. They keep that menace on sedatives twenty-four/seven. Weird shit happens when he wakes up.”

“Come on, Dean. For old time’s sake.”

“You trying to con an old con? Nothing doing.”

But Dean’s eyes gave it away anyway. They flicked over to his right. Toward that 1950s building I’d spotted. The Papiro Center.

Dean tried cover it up by changing the topic.

“So how’s your sister?”

“I don’t have a sister. I’m an only child.”

“Sure you do—the two of you were together on the
Moshulu
, when you got lost at the Bicentennial. You know, the little blond-haired girl eating the popcorn with you.”

That stopped me cold. Suddenly I knew who he was talking about, but it wasn’t my sister. It had been my mom’s youngest sister, who was only nine months older than me.

We had been down at Penn’s Landing because my father had been hired to play with a band called The Shuttlebums in front of Winston’s Restaurant. And across a pedestrian bridge was a huge clipper ship, since converted to a restaurant, called the
Moshulu.
During the summer of 1976 my dad was working maintenance on that boat.

Mid-gig, I somehow conned my aunt, who was all of five years old, into walking over the bridge and checking out the boat. My parents went insane with worry, but luckily we were picked up by an off-duty cop, who thought it was a little suspicious that two little kids sat themselves down at a small table meant for two—meaning, no room for parents.

“
You’re
the guy who found us?” I asked. “How is that possible? How do you even recognize me?”

“It’s not your face,” he said. “It’s your
soul.
”

Okay then. I thanked him and then excused myself. Leave it to me to get lost as a kid, only to be found by a raving lunatic who could see other people’s souls.

The lights were mostly out in the Papiro Center. The back doors were locked. The front door was locked and controlled by a keypad. Why did I think it would be open? This was a mental hospital.

I stood there, looking up at the building. I’d already trespassed; I’d feel like a moron just leaving without trying
something.

Screw it.

I shouted.

“
BILLY DERACE!
”

This would either work right away, or not. If I saw a light on the ground floor, I’d bolt.

“
BILLY! DERACE!
”

Come on you nutcase. Get up out of bed, come to your window, look down. I’ll know in a second if you recognize me. Which of these windows is yours?

Then, on the left side—movement. No light, just a shadow on shadows. Dark gray on black. A male figure? It was too hard to see.

Behind me I heard a cough. My head whipped around; nobody. I looked back up at the window.

Nothing.

Just the rain, smacking into the grass, the blacktop path leading back to the main building.

Suddenly security lights flickered to life all around me. Crap. The main office knew I was here. I ran back the way I came, figuring that I could slow down my hurried jog at the last minute and just stroll on out of there, clipboard in hand.

But the door I’d used to get out was locked, trapping me outside.

Trapping me on the grounds of a three-hundred-year-old insane asylum.

Okay, so I freaked out a little. I ran in the opposite direction, toward the fence near Adams Avenue, where we’d parked. At the very least, I thought I could yell to Meghan and let her know what happened before they tackled me to the wet grass and wrestled me into a straitjacket. Meghan’s dad was a powerful lawyer. I’m sure he could get me out of this place. Eventually.

There were voices behind me. I ran faster. You never realize how much you depend on your arms for balance until you lose feeling in one of them. I felt like I was going to tip over at any minute. Which would make it much easier to wrestle me into a straitjacket.

As I approached the gate, I saw that Meghan was out of the car, waiting for me. Her hair was dripping wet, and she urged me forward with her hands.

“Hurry!”

I skidded to a halt and almost slammed into the gate.

“They’ve got me surrounded. Look, go call your dad and tell him you have a dumbass for a friend who thought it would be funny if he—”

“Give me your foot.”

I looked down. Meghan was reaching through the bars, fingers intertwined, making a little step for me.

“No way. I’m too heavy. And I’ve only got one functioning arm.”

“Will you just give me your foot? I’ll push you over the fence.”

I didn’t have the chance to have a talk with my father about women; he died before I’d reached puberty. But even I knew that when a beautiful woman is standing in the pouring rain, offering to help lift you over the black metal fence outside an insane asylum, you take her up on the offer.

I stepped into Meghan’s hands, then reached up for the top of the fence. I could tell immediately that she’d grossly underestimated my weight. Her hands felt like they were attached to rubber cables, ready to snap at any moment. I wanted to stop and apologize—
sorry I’m so heavy, Meghan. It’s all of the beer I’ve been drinking.
But there wasn’t time. Meghan summoned some kind of inner Incredible Hulk–style gamma ray strength and pulled her arms up, lifting me to where I could just grab the top of the gate with the three good fingers on my left hand.

I held on as tightly as I could, then swung my left foot up to the top of the fence. The rubber soles of my shoes clung to the metal for a fraction of a second, and it was enough time for Meghan to give me another superhuman push, and for me to pull myself up and over.

I was over the fence.

And then I was falling.

The good news was that I’d managed to not land on top of Meghan—she’d scurried out of the way the moment my foot left her hands. But as I landed, my right foot twisted. I had a fleeting moment of
wow, I actually managed to land on my feet
before I completely went down.

Meghan helped me up, asked if I could put any weight on it. I tried. I told her no. She told me to stop being a pansy, and then helped me limp back to her passenger seat. The water ran down through my hair and onto my face. I eased back into the seat, used my good hand to pull my bad leg into the car, then we took off, rocketing down Adams Avenue.

“Thank God you were by that fence.”

I looked over at Meghan. Her hands were gripping the steering wheel tightly, and her arms were shaking. Probably from the exertion, the worry, the adrenaline.

She looked at me.

“I presume that was you, shouting the name ‘Billy Derace’?”

“The doors were locked. What else could I do?”

She didn’t respond. By the time we’d cleared about three blocks, there were no sirens, no pursing vehicles, no spotlights. We’d gotten away clean.

Which is what probably emboldened me to suggest something really stupid.

“Slow down and go back around.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Go back and park on the other side of the grounds. I’ve got an idea.”

“You can barely walk.”

“I don’t plan on walking.”

I reached into my overcoat pocket and pulled out a single white pill. I’d tucked one in there, just in case.

Meghan got it right away—there are no dull forks in her silverware drawer. Still, she thought it was a really stupid idea.

“What good is it for you to sneak into that place back in 1972? Billy Derace’s only twelve years old, and he’s living at home. He’s not going to be placed here until years later.”

“The Papiro Center is the place listed on DeMeo’s letterhead. His office might be on Frankford Avenue, but he works out of this building, too. Maybe we couldn’t find any notes about his experiments because he kept them all here.”

“So you’re just going to pass out on the front seat on my car. What am I supposed to say to the cops when they pull over to check out what I’m doing here? And you
know
they’re going to pull over and check it out.”

“Keep driving, then. Just don’t go too far.”

We used her car key to cut the pill in half. I figured that dosage should give me enough time to slip through the gates, through the front door and into that building.

At first I wasn’t even sure it worked—the place looked exactly the same now as it did back in 1972. This was a well-maintained loony bin, and always had been. But then I realized I was sitting in the middle of the street on a cold dark night, and the cars around me were all vintage models. Meghan’s Prius was nowhere to be seen.

I slipped right through the asylum gates—which weren’t locked now. Guess security wasn’t a big concern back in 1972.

There were sodium lights dotting the grounds, casting wide ovals of yellow light on the lawn. I stuck to the dark patches.

When I reached the front door I grit my teeth and closed my eyes and just went for it.

Then I was inside.

Past the reception area, the doctors’ offices and up a narrow row of concrete stairs and into the main quarters…

Which were empty.

Nothing. Just gurneys, completely stripped of everything except their thin mattresses.

Wasn’t this where the experiments were supposed to be happening right about now? Did I miss them? Did I have the wrong building, after all?

I spent time back downstairs in the offices, rooting through filing cabinets, but they were empty, too.

By the time I thought to slip across the grounds and try another building, I could feel the dizziness starting again, and my grip on everything slipping away.

I woke up groggy. Throbbing. Taste of sour metal in my mouth. Sweat all over my face, and nostrils full of a gamey scent that I quickly realized was
me.