The Devil in Silver (25 page)

With that, Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly walked off.

Pepper returned to the room and posted himself at the two large windows and surveyed the land before him. It seemed even more urgent that he work out his route if, already, some of the others were talking to patients freely. How long before word made its way to the staff? Rather than panic, he planned.

The fence line around the basketball court had a barbed-wire buffer at the top, and the parking lot of New Hyde Hospital was (nominally) manned by an (underpaid) guard. So if he did get that secure door open, it would be smarter to slip around to this side of the
building, pad through the grass in front of his windows, climb the sweet-gum tree right near the fence, inch out on a branch, and drop down to the sidewalk. Leave New Hyde Hospital and disappear into Queens. Maybe it would be smart to have his file tucked under his arm when he left. But how would he get it? Where to even look?

All this planning turned Pepper a bit distracted, so he didn’t notice Coffee had entered the room until Coffee came to his side and set his precious blue binder down on the sill.

“You told those old guys a lot,” Pepper said.

Coffee looked out the window, too.

“I’ve been making contacts, morning and night, on the pay phones. I haven’t even had time to sleep. So I sure wasn’t talking with anyone.”

“Did you burn out my card?”

Coffee reached into the breast pocket of his pajama top. The “gold” card was really more of a muddy yellow. He dropped it on the windowsill.

“All done. But it was useful.”

Outside, the sun shone brightly and Pepper wondered at how good the air must feel. He put his hand to the pane and enjoyed the chill.

Coffee said, “I tracked down his number.”

Pepper nodded, not really listening, still imagining the fresh air.

“
His
number,” Coffee said quietly.

That broke Pepper’s spell. He looked at his roommate. “Come on.”

“Well, not really his, but his social secretary’s. The private line.”

“You want to get invited to a party at the White House? I hear you can just crash if you look like you’ve got money.”

Coffee rolled his eyes at Pepper. “Don’t bring me gossip and tell me it’s news. I have the number for a real
someone
, not just that stupid switchboard. I’m not going to yell. I’m going to be clear. I know I can do that now. Without all the meds. I’ll explain our situation and then you’ll see what
He
does for us.”

“I already know what’s going to happen,” Pepper said.

Coffee looked up at Pepper wearily. His eyes narrowed. “You don’t know,” Coffee said. “But you will never admit that.”

Pepper could see Coffee wouldn’t be swayed by anything he had to
say, so he knocked on the cover of Coffee’s blue binder. “Why didn’t you bring this to Book Group?”

“I don’t need it anymore,” Coffee said.

“Because you have that new number?”

Coffee shook his head. He placed his hand on the cover of the binder. “I have all these numbers. Memorized. I’ve called each one so many times. But until we stopped taking the pills, I couldn’t remember even one. Now, they’re all here.”

Coffee pressed two fingers against his temple.

“The numbers come to me fast, fast, fast now. I wouldn’t have had the courage to do it alone. I don’t think Dorry and Loochie would have, either. So I have you to thank for that. And I mean it.”

Pepper did feel good to hear it. To know the lucidity in Coffee’s eyes was, at least in part, due to him. Vanity? Of course. But that’s okay. No one here was a martyr or a saint.

Lunch and dinner passed without event. Pepper sat in the television lounge and read some of Van Gogh’s letters. He found he could drown out the television if he concentrated on the page hard enough. He liked being in the lounge, around others, instead of alone in his room. He had nothing more to say to Coffee. Not to Dorry or Loochie, either. They were only waiting for the overnight shift to begin.

By eight thirty, all four members of the small conspiracy sat in the television lounge, though they weren’t together. Dorry and Loochie and Coffee and Pepper, each at a different table.

Scotch Tape and Josephine were on the night shift. This was much to Josephine’s surprise. She was meant to be relieved by Miss Chris, but Miss Chris had walked out that front door earlier and hadn’t returned. When Josephine used her cell phone to call Miss Chris around dinnertime, the call went straight to voice mail. As did Josephine’s next five tries. To put it plainly: The old lady had bounced. Leaving Josephine to work a double until the next shift change, around four a.m. Josephine sure didn’t like this, but what could she do? Leave Scotch Tape alone?

(Yes!)

No.

At nine, Dorry rose from her seat and beckoned the other three toward her. When they were together, Dorry said, “I think it’s time. Don’t you?”

The words seemed to rest on each of their shoulders like a heavy cloak. They all stooped forward slightly from the weight. Dorry saw the burden and nodded. She was dressed just like she had been at Book Group. Well,
almost
the same. Pepper realized her sweater was on inside out.

He looked at Loochie, who wore a bright red scarf tied around her head. He hated to admit it, but he felt relieved by this. The site of her patchy scalp had been depressing. He knew it was selfish, but he was happy she’d covered it. Then her right hand floated up and two fingers slipped under the red scarf. Loochie hardly seemed aware of the action. Then, as if waking up from a bad dream, her eyes shifted and she caught herself and pulled her hand back down to her side again.

“Once we take care of the staff,” Coffee began, “each of us has a choice to make. I’m using the staff phone to make my call. After that, I’ll support whatever the group wants to do.”

Dorry said, “Why don’t we try working
together
on this. First, Coffee gets his phone call. Then, I have a talk with the man behind the silver door. Then, Loochie gets to … What do you want to do, Loochie?”

Loochie’s eyes had trailed off to the lounge’s windows.

“Loochie?” Dorry asked again. “What do you want to do?”

“I just want to be a girl,” she said quietly.

Pepper almost laughed. “You
are
one!” he said.

Her eyes drooped. She looked soul-tired for a moment. “I haven’t been a girl since I was thirteen. I’m just a diagnosis.”

Dorry raised one hand for peace. “Loochie, I’m sorry, but that’s probably not something we can fix tonight.”

Coffee sensed that they might be about to spin off into some grand philosophical conversation that would derail any concrete action. And he was ready to act. “It’s time,” he reminded them. “We’re ready enough.”

He moved. Loochie got in step beside him. Dorry came around
the table and pinched Pepper out of a moment’s paralysis. They hadn’t asked him what he wanted to do. Maybe they didn’t really want to know.
Find my file. Find my way out
. That’s what he would’ve said.

Josephine sat at the nurses’ station. With paper and pen she filled out a complaint against Miss Chris. She wasn’t even looking up as Dorry, Loochie, Coffee, and Pepper entered the oval room. Scotch Tape was in Northwest 1, pushing the meal rack, and all those empty dinner trays, into the conference room that had long ago been repurposed as the storage room.

Coffee knocked on the nurses’ station desktop and said, “I need to use the phone.”

Josephine didn’t even look up. She was in the middle of writing the word
negligence
and had lost herself in the pleasure of using it to describe Miss Chris.

While they waited on Josephine to look up, Pepper said, “Hey, Coffee. How did you get the social secretary’s private number? You never said. I’m sure the White House switchboard didn’t just give it out.”

In the storage room, Scotch Tape slid the meal rack to its usual place near the back of the room. If he didn’t keep it far from the hallway door, the rats (he believed it was actually only
one
enormous, graying rat; he’d seen it so often he felt familiar with it), the rat might be tempted to slip into the hall and then it would be sprinting down Northwest 1 openly, causing panic among patients. And who would be sent to try to kill it again? Him. Clarence Green. (He didn’t refer to himself as Scotch Tape, obviously.) He’d been sent on that mission before, dropping poison pellets all over the abandoned second floor, and learned his lesson. That rat had the run of this building, more than any other living thing. (
But what about the freak on Northwest 4? What about the …? Shut up with that, Clarence. Shut up with that, right now
.) Scotch Tape got the rack to the back of the storage room and switched off the light and pulled the door closed. He locked it and returned to the nurses’ station.

Where he heard Coffee’s answer to Pepper’s question.

Coffee said, “I went online. That’s how I got the social secretary’s number.”

Josephine looked up from her complaint form.

“Coffee, you know patients make all calls on the pay phones.”

Coffee pouted. “But I don’t have enough coins for a long-distance call, and Pepper’s card is maxed out. I don’t think he had very good credit.”

Pepper said, “Hey!”

Scotch Tape entered the oval room, saw four patients crowding around the station and said, “What’s going on over here?”

Dorry ignored the question, imploring Josephine. “It’ll only take a minute, sweetheart.”

But by this time of night, Josephine couldn’t muster any more goodwill. “Pay phone, Dorry,” she growled.
“Pay phone.”

Scotch Tape came around the station so he could see the group’s faces and they could see his. “I asked you all a question.”

Loochie brushed him away with one hand. “Go mind your own business.”

Scotch Tape roared with laughter. “My business is
you
. Now you can make it pleasant business … or unpleasant business.”

Pepper touched Coffee’s shoulder. “Wait. How did you go online?”

Josephine pushed her chair back so she could stand as well. Feeling edgy because of what Loochie had said to Scotch Tape. Her move left the staff phone unguarded on the desk. Boldly, Coffee grabbed the receiver.

“Coffee!” Josephine shouted.

Pepper shouted now, too. Repeating himself. “How did you go online, Coffee?”

Coffee looked back at Pepper. “The mind was the first computer!”

A line that silenced everyone for a moment.

Finally Pepper said, “Well, what the fuck does that mean?”

“The mind is technology beyond anything human beings have invented so far,” Coffee said. “Without all those meds in my bloodstream, I could access the Internet with my
will
. From anywhere. I only had to shut my eyes and concentrate. I have full use of my mind’s power now. You see?”

And this is the moment when Pepper thought of Dorry’s sweater, inside out; of Coffee discarding his binder; even Loochie’s fingers
slipping under her red scarf. Each person slightly different from the healthier picture presented only two days ago. Maybe these folks were on psychiatric medications because they actually needed them. Why hadn’t Pepper seriously considered that before now?

Two words slipped out of his mouth. Pepper said, “Oh, shit.…”

But it was too late for turning back.

Scotch Tape grabbed Coffee’s wrist. He looked like he’d tear Coffee’s hand off just to get the receiver back.

Dorry shouted, “Wait! Wait! We can talk this out!”

“Talking is done,” Scotch Tape growled.

Loochie said, “You got that right.”

Then she punched Scotch Tape square in the throat.

Scotch Tape went down easier than Josephine. The guy straight-up
collapsed
after Loochie yapped him.

That isn’t meant to clown Scotch Tape, or make him seem weak. Really. One punch from Loochie Gardner could topple small governments. The man simply found himself overmatched. As Pepper had been when he made the mistake of giving Loochie’s mother (and brother) the bum rush.

By comparison, Josephine was much luckier than Scotch Tape; she only faced Pepper and Coffee and Dorry.

In light of what happened to Scotch Tape, Josephine didn’t hesitate. She scrambled. Over the nurses’ station. Climbing on the low desk and vaulting right over the higher counter. She fled. But when she landed on the other side she slipped and nearly fell. Pepper and Coffee caught her. To them, this looked like gallantry, but from Josephine’s perspective, two
wild men
had just grabbed her arms.

And then Josephine just freaked.

She hollered, yes, but that was actually the least of it. Her arms went stiff and her hands balled into fists and her legs dropped out from under her so fast that Coffee and Pepper nearly went to the floor themselves. It was like her lower half fainted.

Meanwhile her mouth continued to wail.

Boy, did it.

Pepper became annoyed instantly. Maybe she thought they were going to rob her? Rape her? She acted like they were going to cut open her belly and feast on her organs. All this after he’d just borrowed a copy of Van Gogh’s letters! Funny to say it, but Pepper’s feelings were really hurt just then.

But here’s the thing: Pepper had it wrong. Josephine wasn’t thinking about them when she snapped. Not really. She didn’t scream just out of fear for herself in that moment. It was also a deeper terror. When Loochie punched the orderly, Josephine felt a raw, cold shock, of course. But when the two men grabbed her, she felt
the fear
.

Because she thought of her mother. Lorraine Washburn.

Who lived with Josephine, the only child, in a two-family house out in Rego Park. Her mother hadn’t been able to take good care of herself anymore and moved in with Josephine in 2009. And Josephine had welcomed her mother. Because, even though she was young, Josephine had spent the last few years cultivating little more than her own loneliness. Then here came her mother, Lorraine, a woman who’d been quite independent herself once, but couldn’t manage it any longer. And Josephine received the woman as the wick welcomes the match. Josephine appreciated her mother’s company, now that she was becoming a woman and no longer a girl. So when Pepper and Coffee grabbed Josephine, she screamed, and struggled, from a place beyond self-preservation. Josephine saw Lorraine waking up tomorrow morning to find her daughter hadn’t returned home. Josephine saw Lorraine mystified by this sudden change in their soothing routine; saw her mother retreating to the living-room couch out of fear; sitting there, unable to imagine who else she might rely on. Unable to recall even a cousin’s phone number. Paralyzed and puzzled. So scared she might not even eat, as was her way. Starving from
fright
. Dying on the second floor of the two-family house after days of confusion and despair. (The first floor reserved for the home owners, Mr. and Mrs. Martinez-Black.) Josephine was going to leave her mother to
that
? A woman who’d raised her so decently? No. No. No.