The Devil in Silver (41 page)

“Loochie,” he said. “Will you do me a favor?”

She turned in her chair. “Why should I do anything for you?”

“It’ll piss off Dr. Anand.”

A grin tugged at Loochie’s lips, there under her towel. “Tell me.” She listened.

Pepper whispered, “Will you shut the door and keep them out?”

“That’s going to get us in some shit,” she said.

“Probably.”

Loochie grabbed the towel and pulled it tight around her scalp, tying it up as if she’d just stepped out of the shower. It was a surprise for Pepper to see her face again, unobstructed. To be reminded that he had just talked a child into committing another infraction.

Loochie stood up and jiggled her head from side to side. Limbering up. Then she picked up her chair with one easy motion and walked right up to the three-quarters closed office door. She kicked that bad boy closed.

Dr. Anand still had his hand on the knob, so when it slammed, he yelped with surprise. The cop next to him watched this in dumb paralysis. The door shut and they heard something jostling on the other side.

“They’re locking you out?” the cop chided.

Dr. Anand reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out his set of keys. “The door only locks with one of these.”

But Loochie hadn’t tried to lock it. She’d wedged her chair under the handle and braced her shoulder against the door. A makeshift barricade.

Pepper didn’t waste the opportunity. He jumped from a seated position and onto Dr. Anand’s desk. It didn’t even seem like he rose to his feet. One moment he sat and the next he flew. Landing on top of Dr. Anand’s paperwork with his big boots.

“That was pretty good,” Loochie said, admiringly.

“Lucretia!” Dr. Anand shouted from the other side. “
Open
this door!”

The cop’s police radio frazzled and bleeped. The cop said, “This is a violation, miss. Miss, you can’t do this.”

“A violation of what law?” Loochie said through the door. “You name the law I’m breaking.”

The cop said, “Unlawful trespass.”

“Dr. Sam invited me into his office!”

The cop was quiet a moment. “Just open the
goddamn
door, miss.”

One of them rattled the doorknob. Not with any force. Just testing.
Loochie had her right shoulder against the door. She grabbed the knob with her left and held it tight.

Pepper picked up the phone. He held the receiver to his ear.

Loochie said, “You have to dial pound-nine-three first.”

Pepper was surprised that Loochie remembered what Dorry told Coffee on that Saturday night, but, of course, she’d been there, too.

Pepper dialed the code first and then the ten-digit number Coffee had written on the last page of his binder. By now Pepper had memorized it.

Someone in the hall heaved against the door. The sound was loud enough, the force heavy enough, that it had to be the cop or maybe Scotch Tape. Loochie didn’t believe Dr. Anand had that much gunpowder in his shell.

No more begging. It was time for battering.

But Loochie held steady.

“You better hurry,” Loochie said.

Pepper crouched on the desk, holding the receiver to one ear. He cupped his free ear with his other hand to drown out the banging at the door.

A dial tone.

Ringing.

A woman’s voice answered.

“Hello?” the woman said.

“Do you have a sister named Xiu?”

This time, Pepper pronounced her name perfectly.

A long pause, then, “Yes.”

“Would you like to save her?” he asked.

Xiu’s sister, Yun, cried on the phone. At first, it sounded like she was sneezing. Pepper didn’t interrupt right way, even though he was in a hurry. She asked him to explain so he did—quickly—and Yun was relieved. At first she’d assumed Pepper had kidnapped her sister. (It happens.) Pepper told her about the judge in Florida, Sue’s stay in immigration jail and the denial of her medication, her escape, her
recapture in New York, her stay at New Hyde Hospital, and then being pulled out of Northwest yesterday. Every few seconds, Yun muttered to herself quietly, using her little sister’s pet name, saying,
“My girl, oh, my poor A-Xiu.”
When Pepper had told Yun everything, she said she must hurry and she hung up immediately. Didn’t even say good-bye. Pepper understood.

He set the receiver back down in its cradle.

Sure, one could wonder if Yun would be able to find help for her sister in time. First step would be to find a lawyer. A lawyer in California? (Where Yun lived.) One in Florida? (Where Sue had been sentenced.) Or one in New York? (Where she had most recently been held.)

And this would have to be a lawyer who was willing to work for
nothing
because Yun was a cashier at an Albertsons supermarket in Oakland.

Then that lawyer would have to contact the courts in time.

File the proper paperwork to delay the extradition.

Head down to Florida and petition the court for Xiu’s release. (Or would it be handled in a New York court?)

The lawyer might propose that Xiu be released into Yun’s custody so the two could return to Oakland. But what if they had to appear before the same petty dictator who’d sentenced Xiu to deportation? How likely was it that such an unreasonable prick would be reasonable now? (Although bullies like that usually act a whole lot nicer when the bullied person has retained counsel. Probably just a coincidence.) But even with a (free) lawyer, that judge would still have to turn over his original order. Or another judge would have to contest the Florida ruling.

There were so many steps to Xiu’s rescue. Even with Pepper’s phone call, there were a dozen more chances for it to fail.

But if two mental patients at New Hyde Hospital could commandeer a doctor’s office and dial out while police tried battering down the door and if they actually reached the right person using a phone number that a third mental patient pulled out of his ass (or from the vast Internet computer cloud with his brain), if all those steps worked
out, well, shit, maybe the others would, too. It could happen. They’d just have to practice patience now. Take the long view. Success is airmail, not email.

Loochie looked back at Pepper when he hung up. Though her body rattled as she held the door, her face burned with pyrotechnic brightness.

Pepper looked as luminous as Loochie just then. Maybe it was the sunlight streaming through the office windows, but for a moment, the man’s aura glowed a triumphal red.

Pepper hung up the phone and told Loochie she could let them in. She kept her shoulder to the door for a minute more. She hadn’t barred the way just for Pepper’s sake.

Loochie didn’t know the Chinese Lady, so it wasn’t for her, either. She’d be the last to admit it, but this whole time she’d been picturing her mother and brother on the other side of that door. Loochie held it closed for that last minute.

Then she stepped back and pulled the chair away.

Loochie felt disappointed when the door opened and the cop and Dr. Anand didn’t fall into the room. She’d been hoping they’d spill across the floor, a little slapstick for the midday show. Instead, the door banged open and the two men stood there, huffing and glaring. Behind them stood two more officers in plain clothes, concerned but confused.

Funniest part? The pair in the second row were two of the three officers who’d brought Pepper to New Hyde. Huey and Louie. Pepper felt a shock because he hadn’t really expected them to come back for him. Yet here they were. Was it finally time for him to go before a judge? Receive his sentence? Huey and Pepper locked eyes and Pepper waited for some reaction.

Zero recognition.

Louie looked at Pepper and his demeanor was the same. Blank. Nothing.

“Where’s Dewey?” Pepper asked. He didn’t mean to say it, the words just came out. Of course, he regretted it—it was like he was trying to remind them who he was.

The question sounded completely random, nutty, so they ignored
Pepper. (Dewey was actually back in the parking lot, waiting in the Dodge Charger. He’d refused to come inside the building, no matter what.)

“We done here?” Huey asked the cop in the uniform. It clearly galled the detective to have to ask the patrolman anything.

“Sorry,” said the pudgy one. He barked the same question to Dr. Anand. “We done?”

Dr. Anand stormed inside. He found Pepper sitting again, but remained suspicious. He checked his desk, every drawer. He checked the file cabinets in the corner. What had they been doing in here? What had been taken? What had been defiled? To Pepper’s great satisfaction Dr. Anand never even peeked at the telephone.

Dr. Anand surveyed his desk a second time. He noticed Pepper’s big boot print on the papers. But what did that prove? That Pepper had been stomping on his desktop? In a way, this actually calmed the doctor. They’d just been acting out, venting. A pair of monkeys who’d gotten loose. And, in a way, it had been the doctor’s fault. Samuel Anand chastised himself. He never should’ve left them alone. He’d spoken much too freely, feeling frazzled and forgetting himself, and that had led him to be lax. He must always be wary. He looked at Pepper, and then at Loochie, who had taken her seat again, too. The four cops crowded the doorway.

“You did
something
,” Dr. Anand said to them.

Loochie said, “We washed the floors for you, Dr. Sam.”

And do you know the four cops actually peeked at the tiles? All four. (Oh, if only Loochie had seen them do it. She would’ve grinned for a week.)

Huey nudged the patrolman.

“We got this other thing here,” the doughy cop said. Then jerked his head down the hallway. Meaning the reason they’d been called in. Because Dorry’s neck had snapped. Over in the smokers’ court. Where the old woman’s blood soaked the concrete.

Dr. Anand gave Loochie and Pepper the once-over. “You can go back to your rooms,” he said. “We’ll decide what to do with you later.”

“After the cops are gone,” Loochie said quietly.

“Yes,” Dr. Anand said. “Once we have you to ourselves again.”

Pepper and Loochie looked at the pudgy cop.

“You heard that?” Pepper asked. “He’s threatening us.”

The cop rubbed his shirtsleeve across his sweaty forehead and said, “Probably.” Then he and the other officers left the room.

Dr. Anand stooped forward, resting his knuckles on the desk. “Was it worth it?” he asked. “Are you going to keep causing me trouble?”

Pepper felt himself flush with honesty. He couldn’t lie.

And, “Yes,” he said, “yes. I will. Yes.”

AFTER PEPPER AND
Loochie left Dr. Anand’s office, the doctor made a phone call to a member of New Hyde Hospital’s board of directors. He’d been dreading this moment since he got the call about Dorry. He stood while he talked. He wondered if they would finally fire him. He didn’t think he’d mind.

Pepper and Loochie entered the hall and walked toward the nurses’ station. As they entered the oval room, they saw patients scuttling all over. The unit was abuzz.

The sounds of running showers could be heard from Northwest 2 and 3. The rumbling of dresser drawers in people’s rooms sounded like bowling balls rolling down multiple lanes. Then the drawers slammed shut and it sounded as if every patient had just hit a strike.

Loochie and Pepper reached the nurses’ station. Miss Chris sat in front of the computer; only a very short stack of paper files on the desk. Miss Chris wore a pair of glasses down near the tip of her nose, and she tilted her head backward to see through them. Pepper and Loochie leaned against the high counter of the station.

“What’s going on?” Pepper asked.

“Is someone else dead?” Loochie asked.

Miss Chris sucked her teeth to dismiss Loochie’s question. She
looked up at them, over the top of her glasses. “You’re leaving,” she said.

Pepper gestured to him and Loochie. “The two of us?”

The nurse frowned. “All of you.”

“Leaving where?” Loochie asked.

“We’re taking you out. So the police can work without any nonsense.”

Loochie and Pepper recoiled at the suggestion. It was the sound of that sentence:
You’re leaving
. It’s what Pepper and Loochie wanted, of course, but they both realized they were a little scared by the idea. They’d been to the courtyard but now they were being promised the mountaintop. Outside. Pepper had only been here for three months, Loochie for ten, but already both had kind of forgotten what
outside
really meant. Right now it sounded like sudden peace at the end of a long and delirious war. The thing everyone had been hoping for even as they stopped believing the day would ever come.

Loochie’s mouth went dry. “Where are we going?”

Pepper leaned almost over the nurses’ station counter, as if pulled by some magnetic force. His lips parted with muted surprise.

Miss Chris took some pleasure in keeping the answer to herself. “You’ll see,” she said. “Soon, soon.”

So many of the patients were showering that there wasn’t even any hot water by the time Loochie and Pepper reached their rooms. That didn’t stop either of them. It didn’t matter how frigid the water temperature, the thrill of stepping outside had started a fire inside. Curiosity fed the furnace. They each had a core temperature of 180 just then. If those showers were cold, they barely noticed.

Those patients who hadn’t worn their outside clothes in years, yes
years
, pulled them on no matter how tight or semi-tattered or out of style. Women and men brushed or combed or picked their hair. Pepper even tried to get the crinkles out of his shirt by rubbing it back and forth against the edge of his door, working the wood like he held a saw.

He must’ve really been putting some energy into smoothing his shirt. The door vibrated, causing some of the ceiling tiles to bump and shake. The tile with the stain, which had never been changed, even sprinkled a handful of flakes to the floor. The sight of the ceiling cracking caused such a visceral panic in Pepper that he dropped his shirt and jumped into the hallway shirtless and shaking. He stood there watching the ceiling, expecting a monster to come crashing down.