Palindrome (16 page)

“Can you get me some coffee?”

“Want something better than coffee?” he asks.

I raise an eyebrow. “I'm listening.”

He leaves me leaning over the nightstand and starts ruffling through his suitcase. My stomach is throbbing slowly, painfully. Zero appetite.

“Think they're looking for us?”

“Maybe, but I'm not particularly worried,” Courtney says from across the room. “Harrison called your cell phone, upset. He apologized for his orderlies' bout of pugilism but is also under the impression we made a move on Dr. Nancy. I don't think he suspects the badges and number are fake, thinks we're just perverts. I asked him to email his incident report and assured him we'd have an internal disciplinary hearing. You had still better cancel that number right away though—­is it in your name?”

“Yeah.”

Courtney breaks from his rummaging to look over his shoulder and deliver a frown of extreme condescension.

“Never get a phone plan under your real name. Cancel it immediately and get a new sim card under a pseudonym.”

“Ugh.”

“Even if they figure out it's all a sham,” Courtney says as he finds what he's looking for and shuts his suitcase, “they'll spend ages tracking that fake license plate. They'll get nothing from those badges, and our disguises were good. Your phone is the only loose end.”

Courtney returns to my stooped form, bearing a Mason jar filled with a reddish-­brown fluid. Looks like beef broth. In his other hand is a small syringe.

“Bend over the bed,” he orders me.

“This doesn't sound better than coffee.”

“I promise it is.”

I wearily oblige. Courtney yanks down my boxers. I'm thinking, this is rock bottom. Or at least, it better be.

“
Whoa
!” I shriek as he plunges the needle into my left buttocks. Instant energy. Blood rushes to my brain. He's right. Better than coffee. “What the fuck is that?” I say, hastily pulling back my underwear.

“My energy mix,” he says, unable to keep the pride out of his voice. “All the B vitamins, plus ginkgo, calcium, potassium and taurine. Delivered instantly to your bloodstream. Nothing better for your immune system.”

There's still pain, but I feel a little more empowered to cope with it.

“I think I love vitamins.” I grin.

“And
now
you get coffee,” Courtney says, tossing the needle in the trash. “Because we have a lot of work to do. And we have to do it fast.”

W
E'RE SITTIN
G IN
the Blue Ribbon Diner, across the street from the motel. In a shopping center between a Laundromat and a CVS. The tabletop between us is a maze of maple syrup stains. The only other patrons in here are a ­couple of truckers sitting at the bar and a family of four, whom I admire for apparently enjoying their backwoods vacation, which they probably keep telling themselves is
rustic
.

Courtney keeps staring out to the parking lot, as if to make sure our car is still there. It is, with its original plates restored, dull grey exterior the same color as the moody sky.

I pop a few Advil. This is like the mother of all hangovers, even with my vitamin boost.

A wide-­hipped woman with red hair up in a bun drops a bucket of coffee in front of me and slams down a sad mug of hot water with a Lipton tea bag for Courtney.

“And what can I get you two gentlemen to eat?” she asks, cheery, unfazed by the cut on my forehead from that stairwell banister and the dark circles under my eyes. Courtney's long face is clear of injuries, but he looks gaunt and pale. The removal of his ponytail and the buzz cut he gave himself in the motel seem to add about five years. He now looks less like a dirty hippie and more like a too-­old Brooklyn barista whose heart just isn't in it anymore. He's wearing a checkered flannel and that decaying scarf. Beside him on the table sits his red duck-­hunting hat.

“I'll get the Western omelet, plus a side of bacon and a short stack of pancakes,” I say.

“Hungry boy.” She smiles. “And you, hun?”

“Could I get the Greek salad?” Courtney asks.

The waitress frowns as she records this, like she's unsure if this item is even on the menu.

“Except without cheese, if you don't mind,” Courtney adds.

“That it?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She sighs. “Gotta eat more than that, sweetie. You're just skin and bones.”

“I'll be fine,” he says and hands her the menu. She scoots off to the kitchen, probably to ask if the line cooks can scrounge up some lettuce. I take a long sip of coffee.

“So you're proposing we go back to the center in different disguises and break into his cell?”

Courtney shrugs and dunks his tea bag into his steaming mug. “Unless you have a better idea.”

“Pretty nuts . . .” I say. “What do you think the odds are that Silas has the tape in his cell?”

“If it exists, that would sure be the logical place for it to be.”

I nod slowly and say, “There has to be a tape. There are too many trails leading to it.” I stare at the swinging kitchen doors longingly. My stomach is really starting to grumble. “Orange lets us walk out of his den unscathed, only because he thinks we give him a
chance
at a listen. Dr. Nancy totally tightened up when I mentioned it—­maybe Silas told her about it in therapy? Greta Kanter is shelling out $350K to have it in her gloved hand . . .” The waitress bursts through the saloon doors, proudly displaying a tray filled with steaming eggs and meats.

“Here's yours,” the waitress smiles, unloading the trays in front of me. “And yours, dear. No cheese, like you asked. You want any dressing or anything?”

“I'm fine, thank you,” Courtney smiles. “Just some more hot water would be great.”

She laughs and moves on to the family.

“Something is weird about Silas too,” I hiss. “He kills his parents, and then doesn't kill again for, what, twenty-­two years? That's one hell of a hiatus for these voices in his head. I'm thinking maybe there's more victims out there. Maybe even more tapes.”

Courtney nods in agreement.

I dig into my omelet and shovel a forkful of ham, egg, Swiss and pepper into my mouth. “Oh Lord. This is the best thing I've ever tasted.”

Courtney glares at me.

“Sorry,” I say before inhaling a bacon strip. “Does me eating meat offend you?”

“I do find it a little barbaric,” he says, toying with his salad, inspecting a rubbery black olive. “But it's your choice. It just confuses me, truthfully. I like you. You're a generally empathetic person, so I don't understand how you can eat another creature with such callous disregard.”

“Because they're fucking delicious.”

“It's an animal that
feels,
” Courtney says. “That was alive. Doesn't that mean anything to you?”

I stop eating and stare at my food, trying to really internalize what Courtney is saying. But I find it nearly impossible to think of my meat as anything but just food.

“Tell you what,” I say. “Say we find that tape, and it turns out—­I don't know how—­but it turns out that we have eternal souls or something. Which means maybe animals do too. If we find that tape in Silas's cell, or wherever, I'll consider becoming a vegetarian.”

Courtney puts his fork down and stares at me seriously. “You mean it?”

“Yeah.” I crack my knuckles and extend a tender hand. “Shake on it.”

“And what if Sadie wants to keep eating meat. Will you let her?”

“We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. At that point we'll probably be vacationing at some remote Italian villa, so that will be a good time for you to bring it up with her.”

“Me?” Courtney asks in surprise.

“You're not coming?” I ask in mock seriousness. “C'mon, if we break into that place, get the tape, and Greta pays us what she said she would, or even if she bails and we have to sell it to Orange at a steep discount, the three of us are going to fucking Sicily tomorrow. How does that sound?”

“Fine.”

I take a bite of omelet, avoiding any ham on this forkful. That tape could put Sadie through in-­state college, or I could open a café to escape from this lifestyle. Just being around ­people like Orange makes me miserable; reminds me of the depths of depravity to which the human animal can sink. Not to mention, I've taken five serious beatings over the last ­couple years, including yesterday . . . and I won't be able to keep that up forever.

But there's more. I want to find this thing, listen, and make sure it's bullshit. Because otherwise this little nagging homunculus who came to life sometime this past week—­the same voice that's surprising me by taking Courtney's anti-­carnivorous criticism to heart—­is going to keep wondering if Savannah Kanter really did see something in her final moment on earth. And I'm not sure he'll shut up until he gets an answer, one way or another.

“We can't break into his cell if they know we're there,” I say slowly. “Even assuming we could somehow get away from whoever was escorting us, they'd be watching us on camera. Especially now, after ‘Ben and Leonard.' ”

Courtney listens, rapt. I scratch my chin.

“We'll have to go over the wall,” I say.

His eyes go wide and he sits up straight.

“What about the guard towers?”

“We'll go in the morning. There will already be inmates out in the yard for them to keep an eye on, plus hopefully they'll be tired from the night shift. Anyways, they're not worried about ­people breaking
in
.”

Courtney's eyes glow. His thumbs start twitching.

“Over the wall,” he repeats breathlessly, unable to contain the excitement in his voice. Bright eyes fixed on me, he raises his mug of steaming tea to his mouth. Recoils the moment the scalding water touches his lips, then nearly drops the mug.

“If we're caught,” he says, once he's composed himself, “we'll get much more than a beating.”

“True. Though there's not much legal precedent for breaking
into
a loony bin.”

Courtney taps his fingers on the tabletop like he's typing up a pros and cons list into an invisible computer.

“You're already thinking too much,” I say. “Just gotta do it. Like pulling off a Band-­Aid.”

I can't tell if I'm trying to convince Courtney or myself.

“So . . . you're in, right?” I ask.

He puts both hands behind his head, leans back and stares at the ceiling of the shabby diner.

“Yes,” he sighs. “I suppose I am.”

A
QUARTER TO
seven the next morning, we park the Honda a half mile away from the Berkley Clinic, at the start of a long dirt driveway that leads to what looks like an abandoned farmhouse. Don't think anyone will be disturbing it. Besides, that's truly the least of our concerns.

We're both wearing cheap parkas over our white scrubs and boots for this trudge, with sneakers in our packs to change into for the climb. It's fucking freezing out here; wet, cold wind cutting right to the skin. My long johns—­final line of defense—­are not equipped to deal with this magnitude of cold, but we wouldn't be able to climb in real coats.

The pale yellow sun seems like he's taunting us, hanging low in the east behind thick fog, like he's still deliberating between showing his face and warming up this barren tundra, or just hitting snooze and pulling the covers over his head for another hour.

I also happen to be terrified, which makes me feel even colder than I am. I've never broken into government property. My joints are still stiff and locked up from the beating. Woke up after a miserable three hours of restless sleep with my jaw sore from grinding my teeth. I'm still taking shallow breaths, because the deep ones hurt my ribs a lot. At least I didn't have any more dreams.

“Seven fifteen we start climbing,” Courtney says, mostly to himself. I feel like I'm gonna throw up every time I think about what we're doing. Just have to keep telling myself that my plan makes sense. And that Courtney wouldn't have agreed if it was boneheaded.

No ski masks. We have to blend in. There are over a hundred orderlies at this place, which hopefully means that nobody will question our presence there. Ideally, this includes Dennis, Luke, Dr. Nancy, Dr. Pollis and Harrison, who saw us in senior citizen gear. I figure we should be in and out in forty-­five minutes.

I instruct my feet to keep walking. Don't think, just act.

We arrive at the eastern brick wall—­the one closest to Sachar—­after a twenty-­minute march. The sentry towers are located in each corner of the complex, plus one between each along the four walls, eight in total. We walk until we figure we're three-­quarters of the way along the eastern wall: the most distance from guard towers possible.

We move in silence. Courtney unclips his backpack and I do the same. We chuck our hiking boots away and slip on sneakers—­what all the orderlies seemed to be wearing. Plus, not bad for running.

Next comes the daisy chain—­superthin camping twine that can support like five hundred pounds. Courtney looks around. There are no trees growing close enough to the wall to tie the chain around. That would have made things easier, but he's prepared for this eventuality.

He whips out a minidrill, the kind rock climbers use to secure bolts. My heart tightens as he bores into red brick, the whine of the drill shattering the cold stillness. I imagine the guards suddenly pouring over the walls, a horde of blind rats honing in on the sweet drone.

But then he's done. No guards. I exhale. The only sounds around us are the distant buzzing of cars on the highway, the occasional morning cry of a bird overhead.

I stuff the drill into my backpack, and he hammers a steel bolt into his newly drilled hole, clips on a carabiner, then clips on two lengths of daisy chain.