The Dayroom was placid even with all the patients loaded in there. Saul marvelled at how much less insane they were on bingo night. There was a focus, a common purpose, or maybe it was just that everybody wanted to win. The lack of seating forced him next to Georgina, within range of the flailings of her elbows. Frieda, a tense, dead-eyed nurse, sat to the left of Georgina's wheelchair to place her pennies for her, sure to raise serious questions of fairness if she ever won, which she never did because she was terminally unlucky. All she'd ever seen was spoons shoved toward her and TV she'd never understand and someone dropping pennies on a card of nonsense in front of her. Saul read her mind for a moment and it made no more sense than the babblings of a child. He'd have room for her at his apartment, but he didn't know how to care for her, to change and feed her, and this saddened him.
Suddenly, the sphere of wire commenced churning the numbered balls. The Assassin was cranking the handle, grinning to the crowd like a Caesar. They locked eyes. Saul almost quit right there; he knew the Assassin would never let him win.
“Eye-thirty-seven. Eyeeee, thirteeeee, sevennnn ⦔ he said, holding the first ball aloft, appraising it like a jewel.
Saul had I-37 and placed his first penny.
After that, Saul knew each number the Assassin was going to pick before he picked it. He and the Assassin were communicating telepathically. It was a covenant. Luis wanted Saul to win. And he did. He had the next three numbers after thatâincluding the free spaceâand was first to get a line.
“Bingo,” Saul said, and Luis checked his card.
“We
have
a winner!” he said, shaking Saul's hand with vigour. The first prize of the night was little bottles of shampoo and a new toothbrush.
“Keep it coming,” Saul said, and cuffed Luis playfully on the shoulder. Luis winked and brandished his huge, beautiful teeth.
Saul was next to get two lines, then a plus sign, which earned him a hairbrush and some new black socks. The other patients grew suspicious.
“You win too much, Saul,” Tina said from a few chairs over.
“The fix is in the house coat of arms,” Drew said.
“About time,” Saul said, returning to his seat with a foam goblet of decaf coffee for the final round. He was an athlete on a streak, an accidental millionaire, the king of one of those microscopic countries you can't find on a map but know are somewhere.
“Okay, ladies and germs, this one is called Blackout, and it's for the whopping cash prize of five bucks,” Luis said, turning the handle, hamming it up like a showboat caller. His entire demeanour had changed. It seemed inconceivable to Saul that Luis was once the sort of man who'd pitch someone from a helicopter. Perhaps he'd fallen out with Dr. K., or maybe he really was a psych nurse.
Luis called every number on Saul's card except for I-25, which he remembered as two of the numbers on his apartment door, so he wasn't worried. Then Luis spoke some numbers Saul didn't have. Saul wasn't concerned; he only needed one. Saul began broadcasting
I-25
with his mind and could see blue brainwaves bending the air between them.
Luis called more bad numbers. Then more.
The grids of the other cards were filling with pennies.
Saul felt a blackness gathering in the room. “I-25!” he heard his voices threaten all at once.
“Would you sit down, Saul?” Kim said.
Luis regarded Saul and shrugged. There were only about six balls left. He pulled another and read it.
“Oingo bingo bango!” someone called from behind him. Saul thought it was his voices again until Drew came gamely jogging to the front like this was
The Price Is Right.
Then every face in the room ripened and turned from Drew to Saul like a field of pasty, deranged weather vanes, and it was fitting because, after all that had happened today, Saul felt he deserved the attention, he should be the contestant whose card Luis was now checking. Saul felt an itchy vibration in his chest and throat and found he was already in the act of describing luxuriously the day's events: the prophetic
Columbo
episode; Jacob's capture; the discovery of the apartment; his sobering realizations with respect to Ada Plinth and Kraepevic; and this new conclusion that Luis was not an Assassin at all but an ally, who was strangely not following through with what he promised. Then Saul saw his own fingers prying open the ball-tumbler. He just wanted to see if ball number I-25 was in there, while someone was repeating his name and a bunch of other words of minimal importance, until he heard amidst the din of voices the former Assassin say, “Drew didn't win, he only had three numbers, we have to keep playing.”
Saul sat back down.
He watched Luis pull another ball. Saul didn't have to look to know it was I-25.
To: Marty S.
Czar of Mentals
The Province of Greeting Cards
From: Saul Plinth, Master of Columbo and Fine Dining
Lots cooking way out here at Riverboat Hospital Marty the most specifically is this Assassin I detected has turned out to be a
bingo emancipator
a co-conspirator a guardian angel of some kind a real magnificent associate if you can locate my meaning. It's also come clear that my derangement may in truth be a PSYCHIC SHAM constructed with the help of Darko Kraepevic by yours truly to scare the bejesus out of himself for psychological reasons
unknown
(keep you posted on said reasons).
In fact I suspect my entire caged life so far has been something of one great Columbo episode of which we are only now reaching the electrifying conclusion. My bumbling veneer is SHED and I grow
more and more
powerful by the microsecond. Did I tell you already Martin? I found a little nook to call my own. Yes Martin big changes are on the way don't send authorities they arent needed. Before I go here are the charges I'm laying against you and your stooge Kraepevic:
In the care of the Riverboat Gulag, Saul Columbo-Plinth, The Desperate Grammophone, The Triumphant Detective, The
King
of Remnants has been the victim of:
Glass assault, contempt of courtroom, note-scribbling, phantom-limb amputation, mail fraud, skimming of the books, mail terrorism, social security fraud, cyber-stalking, unreasonable bingo dabbery, medication management, puzzle piece apprehension, building code violations, copyright infringement, mind mapping, mind mastication, injury to wildlife, non-smoking, various war crimes, petty scheduling, land piracy, grave-robbing, tax fraud, price-gouging, hunting without a license and fratricide.
May I in closing tell you to fess up on your own GUILT surrender your position and do the only honourable thing by throwing yourself upon your silver sword.
With Fierce Sincereness,
King Saul Plinth-Columbo,
Eminent Fingerpainter, Majestic Vestibule
A gorgeous wash of time had passed when Kraepevic called him into his office.
“Saul, there is an old story my abnormal-psych professor once told of a schizophrenic patient who was hooked up to a lie detector and asked by his psychiatrist if he was Napoleon. And to this, the patient replied, âNo,' and the detector said he was lying.”
“So,” King Saul said.
“What exactly do you mean by âSo'?”
“What if he was?” “Lying?”
“No,” King Saul said.
Kraepevic exhaled deeply and theatrically in the self-important manner of all doctors and lurched forward in his chair. “Saul, I just don't want to find the condensed
Art of War
written on your walls again.”
King Saul neither feared nor loved the doctor. He pitied him. Kraepevic had dedicated his life to convincing the meek that they were to blame for their misery, that their brains lacked a chemistry they would never manufacture. The old Slavic fool had filled his own head with so much nonsense he was certainly too dull to grasp the majestic plan Saul and Luis had incubated in secret for the past few weeks.
“I never was dangerous, Darko,” King Saul said, a regal timbre riding in his voice. “Not until now.”
“Okay. May I ask why you are wearing that bathrobe and that pair of pyjama bottoms wrapped around your head?”
“You might want to consult the literature,” King Saul said, gesturing to the red, blocky DSM-IV parked on the doctor's walnut-tinged shelf, a sort of Sears catalogue of ways the human being could malfunction. Saul vowed to burn it the day of the Electrifying Conclusion.
“Saul, I didn't want to do this, and I don't enjoy it, but I'm going to have to revoke your passes for the time being, as well as temporarily upping your dosages while you present yourself this way.”
The doctor thought keeping Saul from his apartment and upping his dosages could stop it. But the apartment had only been
a prop. He'd been back and found that the TV and stereo were fake, the taps didn't work and there was no electricity, but the remembrance of Ada had opened his eyes. He'd seen the selfishness of ignoring the plight of the other patients. The maligned, the ruined, the shot to shit, the perennially confused, the monstrous slack-jawed head-bangers, the unfit for community, the grotesque drooling legions with blown fuses in their eyes, they were his subjects. King Saul saw them for what they were: a people ripe with an untapped greatness. And if he, their Sovereign, didn't care for them, who would?
King Saul sculpted some sounds into words Kraepevic wanted to hear and exited the office, acting the role of the freshly strapped schoolboy. They would have to speed preparations. Outside he saw Kim sullenly navigating the hall. Saul had described the Electrifying Conclusion to her on Pizza Night earlier that week and she'd seemed, at first, a touch concerned before growing duly inspired when he assured her the staff would be unharmed. They would surrender or they would be humanely executed with med overdoses, and this had impressed her so much she'd gone to bed.
“Feel like checkers, Saul?” she said, glancing with apparent awe at his Intuitional Headwrap. He considered describing to her how the Wrap amplified his thinking, but doing so would force him to use upside-down words so he was silent. He'd so far avoided inflicting the infinite wattage of his brain on Kim and those sixty-four squares, fearing that a defeat as crushing as he'd administer could be ruinous to her already fragile mental constitution.
“I'm sure you'd be victorious, Kim,” King Saul said, “but it is I alone who can provide the leadership that those broadcasters pine for nightly on their evening news.”
“Okay, Saul,” she said, carrying on, and Saul was fortified by her enthusiasm.
He found Luis in the bathroom across from the laundry, sprinkling a pink powder that smelled like bubble gum chewed by the fetid jaws of the devil himself.
“Got you on cleanup, have they?”
“Georgina had an accident,” said Luis.
“Your talents are wasted here, friend.”
“Oh, I don't mind,” he said. “It's just smelly. Somebody has to do it. Hey, I'm done here. Why don't you come talk to me while I do lunchtime meds?”
Saul trailed him from the bathroom across the Dayroom to the med window. Luis ducked behind the counter and started popping pills from blister packs.
“So ⦠what's the outfit?” he said.
Luis was many thingsâco-conspirator, guardian angel, emancipator, sidekickâbut genius he was not. Saul overlooked his question so as not to cudgel him with his ignorance.
“Luis, I met with Kraepevic and he suspects something.”
“Dr. Kraepevic is a great psychiatrist. I thought you liked him. He's really worried about you right now, and I think we all are. Your behaviour has been, well, bizarre lately. Here,” he said, depositing a paper cup of pills on the counter, “this is your new dosage. And Saul, when I was cleaning the bathroom this morning, I found a pill behind the toilet, melted enough that I couldn't identify it. I'm not saying it was you, but I'm going to need to make sure you take these meds today. Okay?”
The poor fool's allegiances were so skewed that King Saul couldn't rebuke him. He could even forgive this lingering fealty
to Kraepevic. The doctor had him on the same leash he'd used on Saul for the last thirty years, a barbed tether that had required every gram of his strength to break.
“There is no stopping it, Luis,” Saul said, drawing the cup of meds to his lips. It held two of the same orange pills and a new capsule that was green and white, the markings of a deadly snake.
“Good,” Luis said, exhaling. “This afternoon we âre doing crafts. You could write some letters or put some more art on your head scarf if you wanted.”
Saul scuttled the pills onto his tongue, sipped the water, and for the first time in what seemed like years, he swallowed. He opened his mouth as wide as it would go, twisting his tongue in a circle.
“All gone. Satisfied?”
“You bet, Saul. Thanks for making my job easy,” Luis said.
As he returned to the Dayroom, Saul could feel the medication's tingle of dissolution in his throat, preparing for its short journey upriver to the palace of his mind. He would grow duller, meeker and less capable by the minute, and King Saul knew that if it was to begin, it must begin at this moment.
He went to the TV Room, where he found Tina basking in the gangrenous glow of her train movie, burrowed into the couch for all eternity if he failed to act. A videotape was actually much more difficult to snap in half with bare hands than one would think, and King Saul resisted the urge to put it over his knee because he'd pictured doing it in the air, over his head, his thumbs pressed at its centreâmuch more epic, statuesqueâand he did this while expounding to Tina the new life offered her, after the Electrifying Conclusion had freed them all from bondage. There was a choked
screech and she came at him with all of the glory and elegant fury of a wild beast. He twisted the glossy coils of tape around his forearms like a boxer readying himself for the fight of the century. Her small, hard fists bit into his shoulders and neck and her wailings were musical and ignorant of syntax. “Let it out,” Saul sang, and he leaned into her, accepting her blows as one would a handmade gift, or Christ did his thorny crown.