Dead and Gone (4 page)

E
ven in prison, I’d never worked out, except when I was in the bing—solitary. But there was that one crazy time when the Prof was convinced I could make it as a boxer when I got back to the World. So he’d started training me. And, even then, we weren’t working on building muscle; it was flexibility the Prof said he wanted. But in solitary, working out was something you did. Had to do.

So I did it in the hospital. On the sly, careful. Testing each area, seeing where the give was, what held—getting ready for them to open that door.

Every day. Every night. There was a TV in the room, but I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on. No radio. I never asked for one. Just kept working.

But after a while, I realized this was a mistake. So I asked Rich, and he got the TV turned on. “From Central,” he told me.

“Huh?”

“Everything’s on computer,” he said. “In fact, every time you hit that morphine pump, the computer records it.”

“How come?”

“For billing,” he said, a thin smile on his face.

I
worked the needle out … slow and careful; it would have to go back in the same place. I hit the morphine pump. A tiny bit of liquid came out of the needle’s tip. All right.

N
othing on TV. Nothing about me. Nothing about a shootout. Nothing about a kidnapping, a killing, nothing. Plenty of news about crime.
Most
of the news was about crime, like always. But no picture of me; no “Do You Know This Man?” stuff.

I hit the morphine pump again, watching the liquid spray its lie into the computer’s bank ledger.

The cops were down to nothing. I was brain-damaged and didn’t know who I was … or I did, and was waiting to make a break for it. If they thought I still needed the morphine six times an hour, they’d think I was much further away from making a move.

I could walk by then. Even with the pump attached, I could move pretty good. And I could lift the whole thing off the ground with one hand, too. No way to test my legs, not really.

At some point, I realized I didn’t want a cigarette. I wondered if this was a chemical change, or just me getting used to being in solitary again.

E
very time the cops came back, I’d let them see I was a little stronger—it would have made them suspicious if I wasn’t—

but I acted even more anxious about who I was. When was I going to find out? How come my picture wasn’t on the news? Wasn’t anybody looking for me?

“We already know who you are, pal,” one of them told me. “So
we’re
not looking for you. I was you, though, I’d be worried about who
is.”

“That’s enough,” his partner said, a thread of disgust in his voice.

“Hey! I was just telling my man Burke here—”

“Yeah. You told him. Come on. We got other things to do.”

I couldn’t tell if this was another variation of the good-cop/bad-cop routine. Either way, they were wasting their time. Where I come from, “bad cop” is the same word, said twice.

And if they thought they could keep me here with their little games, they were crazier than the people who had padded cells for return addresses on the postcards they wrote in crayon to the radio shows they picked up from the fillings in their teeth.

As if calling me by some stranger’s name was supposed to ring my bell. “Baby Boy Burke” is what they put on my birth certificate, after the teenage whore who dropped me out of her womb disappeared. I guess Burke was the name she gave the hospital, so they passed it along to me. Probably wrapped my low-birth-weight body in yellow crime-scene tape instead of a baby blanket.

Born bad.

I know how it works. They could follow me around, put a guard outside my room, crap like that. But that was a major commitment of manpower. So all I needed was the one card that’s never out of my deck: Patience.

I know all about waiting. It’s my greatest skill. Sooner or later, they’d pull off the guards. Sooner or later, there’s always an opening.

Besides, I was safe where I was. Like the nasty-voiced cop said,
they
knew who I was, so they didn’t need to ask the public. I was logged in as a John Doe. And whoever had tried to take me off the count probably thought they’d gotten the job done.

I wasn’t worried about my place going to hell while I was in the hospital, either. I live in an abandoned building. Off the books, under the radar. The only reason I ever had to go there was to make sure Pansy was …

No!
I couldn’t let that part in—it was more pain than the morphine could ever hope to touch. But I had something I
could
let in, welcome back home. Hate. It filled my veins, building with every circulation my heart pumped, giving me all I needed.

They killed my dog. Killed Pansy.

I don’t know how that would sound to a citizen. But since I’ll never be one, why would I care? I’d never needed a jury to tell me I’d been judged at birth. I was back to where I was as a young man, that “don’t mind dying” train I rode until I got lucky and landed in prison instead of Potter’s Field.

But I wanted to die like my partner had … with the blood of my enemies in my mouth.

So, every day, every way, I got stronger.

And waited.

A
guy came up to my room. He said there was a Rehabilitation Institute attached to the hospital. If I kept improving like they expected, I’d be transferred down there soon.

He gave me a few tests to see how my strength was coming along. I deliberately held back, but he told me I was doing great. Another week or so, I’d be transferred.

I asked him a lot of questions, all wrapped around the only ones I cared about. When he told me that there were no private rooms in the Institute, that they had one of the highest staff-patient ratios in the country, and that the entire day was “activity-scheduled,” I knew I couldn’t make a break from there as easy as I could from where I was.

Time was tightening. But still nobody came for me.

A
few days later, Rich told me my lungs were perfectly clear.

“You did a great job,” he said, smiling approval. “You must have worked very hard.”

“I’ve been working just as hard in my head,” I told him. “Trying to bring it back …”

His face turned sad. “Don’t worry about it. That part, it has to come on its own. And it will, as soon as it’s ready.”

“You’re sure?”

“No question about it. I’ve seen it a hundred times.”

“Thank you,” I said. Meaning it.

He said “Sure,” and walked out, waving his hand to hide his face. But I’d already seen the tears. He had a good heart, that kid. But he was a lousy liar.

T
he floor outside my room was a rectangle, with a nurses’ station near each end and a bank of elevators in the middle. A full lap around the perimeter took me almost an hour the first time I tried it. Now I could do a couple of dozen without stopping to get my breath. I’d been off the morphine for ten days, but I’d kept the billing computer happy. And anybody watching wouldn’t see I was disconnected. I moved slow, taking my laps. Just like on the Yard—eyes down, but always watching.

If cops were watching the door to my room, I couldn’t see them. Or any of those little dots that tip you to a minicam.

But I couldn’t see what was at the bottom of the elevator’s ride, either. And I couldn’t leave the floor to find out.

There had to be a reason why none of my people had come. The cops had all their faces, but Michelle had gotten through once. Why …? Sure! That was
before
the cops made their move on me, before the whole private-room game. That had to be it.

Maybe the cops had some patience of their own, figuring they could outwait my people.

No matter how I played it out, it came up NFG all the way. No Fucking Good. If my people came for me, the vise would close. And if they didn’t … Ah, no use in thinking about that. They
would
. They were waiting, but they wouldn’t wait forever.

Well, fuck that: the State had made me into a lot of things during my life, but it wasn’t going to turn me into a goddamn Judas goat.

“W
here are my clothes?” I asked Rich when he came on duty.

“Your clothes?”

“I must have clothes. I mean, I was driving in the car before it … happened. I must have been dressed, right?”

“Oh. I see what you mean. They’re probably right over here in the closet.…”

The “closet” was a free-standing wardrobe. Rich opened the door. Turned to me with a puzzled expression. “There’s nothing here,” he said. “Give me a few minutes, I’ll see if I can find out where they put your stuff.”

I already knew where it was—in a forensics lab being vacuumed for evidence to help them put me back where they knew I belonged. Or in an NYPD evidence locker, waiting to nail the coffin they were building for me. But I kept my face blank and confused, watching him leave.

It took him about an hour to return. “Apparently, there’s some sort of rules for a person who was … assaulted. The police—”

“But what do I
do
?” I asked him, depression leadening my voice. “I have to get dressed
sometime
, don’t I? I mean, if I’m ever going to get better? So I can find my—”

“Of course you do,” he said. He was trying to be soothing, but I could feel the anger beneath the surface. He was in the right profession, caring for other people. I wondered how long he’d last, working next to people who didn’t.

“This … thing,” I said, plucking at the hospital gown. “It’s embarrassing to walk around in. Even if I just had a pair of pants, I could maybe …”

“I’ll find you something,” he said.

T
he next night, Rich gave me two pairs of light-green, bleached-out pants with a drawstring instead of belt loops. I knew where they must have come from. When I told him I didn’t know how to thank him, I was telling the truth.

A
bout one in the morning, the hospital floor was nearly as dead as some of its patients. I started my walk. A janitor with a huge square bucket on wheels stuffed with spray bottles of cleanser shuffled past, not looking up. The nurses’ station nearest my end was quiet—only two of them, absorbed in conversation. One glanced my way for a second. Curiosity, not concern.

After all those weeks of shuffling by, I had every room in the corridor catalogued. I knew what I needed, but it was still a crapshoot. I was completely unconnected from the machines by then, but I still pulled the morphine pump along with me. You’d have to be real close to see the tubes were loose and dangling under my hospital gown.

I told myself, if it didn’t work tonight, then tomorrow night. No panic. Breathed slow, through my nose, shallow and steady.

The first room I wanted was a four-patient unit. I slipped inside. Machines made their noises. Somebody was asleep, breathing through an oxygen mask. I parted the curtain, found the call button for the nurses’ station, and hit it a couple of times. Then I stepped to the door, looked back. All clear.

I moved again, quick now, all the way around to the other side of the corridor, shielded by the bank of elevators. Found the other room I wanted. A private room. Young man inside. Life-support systems kept him from crossing over. The room was empty, but his closet wasn’t. I grabbed a red pullover, a denim jacket, and a pair of fancy basketball sneakers. Stepped over to his door. Peeked out. It was as empty as before. Maybe one of the nurses had responded to the call button, maybe not. I was betting they’d take their time, the way they always had with me.

I walked to the staff elevator, still dragging the morphine pump, the stolen stuff bundled under my other arm. Hit the switch. Heard the motors engage. Waited.

The car was empty. I stepped inside, hit the button for the first floor, shoved the morphine machine into the far corner and draped the hospital gown over it. Then I stepped into the sneakers, slipped on the pullover, and put my arms into the denim jacket.

When the doors opened on the first floor, there were a lot of people moving around. A pair of interns brushed past me, impatient to get somewhere. But no cops—if they were on watch, they’d be on the other side, at the visitors’ entrance.

I stepped into the crowd, followed the signs to the ER. Nobody paid the slightest attention to me as I walked through that frantic, noisy, bloody mess and continued right on through to the exit.

A couple of bluecoats were standing outside, smoking. They gave me cops’ glances. I didn’t look at them, just limped away, the bandages around my head all the evidence they’d need that I’d just been “treated and released.”

As soon as I turned the first corner, I realized I wasn’t in the Bronx. I could see the FDR in the distance, so I was in Manhattan, on the East Side. A wave of panic welled up inside me. A setup? Would they be waiting? I breathed deep through my nose, steadied myself. If it
was
a trap, they’d be watching—I had to keep playing my role.

My hands were shaking. My fingers wouldn’t work right. I couldn’t tie the damn sneakers, and I was afraid of tripping. I sat on the curb and pulled the laces out. The sneakers were too big—they flopped when I walked, and I had to move slow, arching my feet deeply to keep from losing them.

But I
had
to move. I could make a collect call, but the cops might know about the pay phones at Mama’s. I could call the Mole—his number was off their radar—but the cops would be checking every pay phone around the hospital once they found out I was gone. It wouldn’t take a computer long to run all the numbers within a certain time frame, and that could open doors the Man never knew even existed.

All right. No calls. And going to Mama’s was out. The Mole’s junkyard was in the Bronx. The Prof and Clarence cribbed in Brooklyn. Michelle changed hotels like she changed hairstyles. All too far to go unless I could bum some change for the subway. And at way past midnight, I didn’t like my chances.

I kept moving east, toward the river. Under the FDR, there’d be all kinds of places to hide. From the cops, anyway.

But I was weaker than I’d thought. Every step was slow. I passed a homeless man, asleep in a doorway. Maybe I could just find a spot like that, become part of the landscape.…