The Madman's Tale

by John Katzenbach

  I wanted to flee. A chorus within me sang loudly that nothing right was happening. My voices were an opera of self-preservation, warning me to get out, get away, to run and hide and save myself.

  But how could I? The hospital was locked. The walls were high. The gates were strong. And my own illness barred me from flight.

  How could I turn my back on the only two people who had ever thought that I was worth anything?

  “That’s right, Francis. You couldn’t do that.”

  I had crept down and huddled in a corner of the living room, staring over at my words, when I heard Peter speak. Relief flooded me, and I pivoted about, searching the room for his presence.

  “Peter?” I replied. “You’re back?”

  “I didn’t really leave. I’ve been here all along.”

  “The Angel was here. I could feel him.”

  “He will be back. He’s close, Francis. He will get closer still.”

  “He’s doing what he did before.”

  “I know, C-Bird. But you’re ready for him this time. I know you are.”

  “Help me, Peter,” I whispered. I could feel tears flowering in my throat.

  “Oh C-Bird, this time it’s your fight.”

  “I’m scared, Peter.”

  “Of course you are,” he said, with the matter-of-fact tones that he sometimes used, but always had the quality of being nonjudgmental. “But that doesn’t mean it’s hopeless. It only means you need to be careful. Just like before. That hasn’t changed. It was your caution, the first time that was critical, wasn’t it?”

  I stayed in my corner, my eyes darting around the room. He must have seen me, because when I spied him, leaning up against the wall opposite me, he gave a little wave of his hand, and broke into a familiar grin. I could see that he was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit, but it had faded through use and was ripped and torn and smeared with dirt. He held a shiny silver helmet in his hands, and his face was streaked with soot and ash and lines of sweat. He must have seen me staring, because he gave a little laugh, a wave of the hand, and shook his head. “Sorry about the rough appearance, C-Bird.”

  I thought he looked a little older than I remembered, and behind his grin I could see some of the harsh inroads of hurt and trouble. “Are you okay, Peter?” I asked.

  “Of course, Francis. It’s just I’ve been through a lot. So have you. We always wear the clothes that the fates dress us in, don’t we, C-Bird? Nothing new about that.”

  He turned over to the wall and his eyes ran up and down the columns of words. He nodded in agreement. “You’re making progress,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “Every word I write seems to make the room get darker.”

  Peter sighed, as if to say that he’d anticipated this. “We’ve been through a lot of darkness, haven’t we, Francis. And some of it together. That’s what you’re writing about. Just remember, we were there with you, and we’re here with you now. Can you keep that in mind, C-Bird?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Things got a little complicated that day, didn’t they?”

  “Yes. For both of us. And Lucy, too, because of it.”

  “Tell it all, Francis,” he said.

  I looked over at the wall, and saw where I had left off. When I turned back to Peter, he had disappeared.

  chapter 20

  It was Peter who suggested that Lucy proceed in two distinct directions. The first path, he emphasized, was to not stop interviewing patients. It was critical, Peter said, that no one, either patients or staff, know that they had uncovered a piece of evidence, because precisely what it meant, and where it pointed, was as yet unclear to any of them. But if the news got out, they would lose control over the situation. It was a by-product of the unstable world of the mental hospital, he told her. There was no way of anticipating what unrest, even panic, it might cause among all the fragile personalities that made up the population. This meant, among other things, that the bloody shirt had to be left where it was, and that no outside agencies should be involved, especially the local cops who’d taken Lanky into custody, even if they risked losing it as a piece of evidence down the road. And, he added, people in the Amherst Building were beginning to get accustomed to the steady stream of patients entering from other buildings at the elbow of Big Black in order to be questioned by Lucy, and there might be a way of working that routine into an advantage. The second suggestion Peter had was slightly harder to bring about.

  “What we need to do,” he said to Lucy quietly, “is get that big guy and his things transferred over to Amherst. And we need to do this in a way that doesn’t draw much attention to the change.”

  Lucy agreed. They were standing in the corridor, static amid the early afternoon ebb and flow of patients through the building, as therapy groups and crafts classes were getting under way. The usual haze of cigarette smoke hung in the still air, and the clattering of feet mingled with the hum of voices. Peter, with Lucy and Francis, seemed to be the only people not moving. Like rocks in a fast-running river, activity bubbled around them. “Okay,” Lucy said. “I think that makes sense. He bears watching. But beyond that?”

  “I don’t know. Not precisely,” Peter replied. “He’s the only suspect we have, and C-Bird here doesn’t think he’s the real suspect anyway, an observation that I think I subscribe to. But exactly how he fits into the greater scheme of things we’re going to need to find out. And the only way to do that—”

  “… is to keep him close enough to watch. Yes. This makes as much sense as anything,” she said. Then she lifted an eyebrow, as if an idea had occurred to her. “I think I know what to do. Let me make some arrangements.”

  “But quietly,” Peter said. “Don’t let anyone know …”

  She smiled. “Peter, I can manage this. Being a prosecutor is all about making things happen in precisely the way you want them to happen.” Then she added, as if to underscore a bit of a joke: “More or less.” Lucy looked up and saw the Moses brothers making their way down the corridor. She nodded to them. “Gentlemen, I think we need to get back on track. I wonder if I could have a word with you quietly, before Mister Evans returns from wherever he is.”

  “He’s over talking with the big doc,” Little Black said cautiously. He turned to Peter and made a little waving gesture with his hand, which was, in effect, a question. Peter nodded.

  “I told her,” he said. “Does anyone else …”

  “I told my brother,” Little Black said. “But that’s it.”

  Big Black edged forward. “I’m not seeing that dude as the guy we’re looking for,” he said stolidly. “I mean the man can barely feed hisself. Likes to sit around and play with dolls. Maybe watch the television. I don’t see him as a murderer, unless you get him so riled up he takes a swing at somebody. Boy is strong. Stronger than he knows.”

  “Francis said more or less the same thing,” Peter said.

  “C-Bird’s got instincts.” Big Black laughed.

  “So for the time being, nobody else gets told anything, okay?” Lucy interjected. “Let’s try to keep it that way.”

  Little Black shrugged, but rolled his eyes, as if to say that in a place where everyone seemed to be filled with the secrets of their past, keeping a secret about their present was well-nigh impossible. “We’ll try,” he said. “One other thing. C-Bird, Gulp-a-pill wants to see you now.”

  Then the large attendant turned toward Peter. “You, I’m supposed to get a little later.”

  Peter looked intrigued. “What do you think …,” he started, but both the attendants shook their heads.

  “Not speculating,” Little Black said. “Not yet.”

  While his brother escorted Francis through the main entryway to Amherst en route to Doctor Gulptilil’s office, Little Black trailed Peter and Lucy into the interview room. The prosecutor immediately went over to the box of patient files that she had accumulated, and removed the one belonging to the hulking retarded man from the top of the pile. Then sh
e rapidly checked through her handwritten master list of potential suspects, until she found one that she thought would do the trick. She thrust the file across to Little Black, and said, “This is the guy I want to speak with next.”

  He glanced down at the file and nodded. “I know this man. Short-fused son of a bitch,” he said. Then he stammered in embarrassment. “Pardon my language, Miss Jones. It’s just I had a run-in or two with this guy. He’s one of the bad-news types around here.”

  “All the better,” she said. “Considering what I have in mind.”

  Little Black looked quizzically at her, and Peter slumped into his seat, smiling. “Miss Jones seems to have an idea,” he said.

  Lucy picked up a pencil and rolled it around her fingers while she examined the patient’s file. The man in question was an institutional fixture, having spent much of his life either in prison for a garden-variety of assaults, robberies, and burglaries, or in various mental health facilities, complaining of auditory hallucinations and suffering from manic rages. Some of each, she guessed, were invented. Some were real. What was perhaps most real, of course, was that he had psychopathic, manipulative qualities, which were more or less ideal for what she had in mind. And an explosive anger.

  “How has this guy been a problem?” she asked Little Black.

  “He’s just one of those men, always wants to push the limits, you know what I’m saying? Ask him to move one way, he goes the other. Tell him to be here, he shows up over there. You try to push him a bit, he cries that you’re beating him and files a formal complaint with the big doc. Likes to get into the face of other patients, too. Always hassling one or the other. I think he steals stuff from folks behind their backs. Just a sorry excuse for a human all around, if you ask me.”

  Lucy said, “Well, let’s bring him in, and see if we can’t get him to do what I want.”

  Beyond that, however, she wasn’t willing to explain, although she noted that Peter seemed to concentrate carefully on what she was saying, and then relax in his chair, as if he perceived something behind what she designed, like a delay switch on a mechanical device. Lucy guessed that this was true, and thought it was a quality that she would probably come to admire. Then, when she considered it a bit further, realized that she had seen several qualities in Peter that she was beginning to admire, which only made her even more curious as to why he was where he was and had done what he had done.

  Miss Luscious took charge of Francis as soon as Big Black ushered him into the medical director’s office. As always, the secretary wore an unfriendly scowl, as if to say that any disruption in the carefully plotted daily routine that she had established with iron-fisted organization was something she personally resented. She handed Big Black a message to meet his brother at the Williams Building, and then she quickly half pushed Francis through the office door, saying, “You’re late. You need to hurry.”

  Gulp-a-pill was standing by his window, staring out across one of the quadrangles. He seemed to linger for a moment, keeping watch on whatever he could see. Francis moved into a chair across from the doctor’s desk, and stared out the same window, to try to see what the physician found so intriguing. He realized that the only times he’d looked out a window that wasn’t barred or grated was in the medical director’s office. It made the world look far more benign than it really was.

  The doctor turned abruptly. “A fine day, Francis, don’t you think? Spring seems to have taken hold quite firmly.”

  “Sometimes, inside where we are, it’s hard to get a sense of the season changing,” Francis said. “There’s a lot of grime and dirt on the windows. If we had the windows washed, I bet it would help people’s moods.”

  Gulptilil nodded. “This is an excellent suggestion, Francis, and one that displays some insight. I will mention it to the building and grounds workers, see if they can’t add some window scrubbing to their duties, although, I suspect, they are overburdened already.”

  He sat down behind his desk, gathered himself, and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the surface, lifting his arms to form an inverted V and placing his chin at the juncture of his hands. “So, Francis, do you know what day it is?” he asked.

  Francis answered rapidly. “Friday.”

  “And how is it that you are so sure?”

  “Tuna fish and macaroni on the luncheon menu. Standard Friday fare.”

  “Yes, and why would that be?”

  “In deference to the Catholic patients, I would suspect,” Francis answered. “Some still feel it necessary to eat fish on Fridays. My own family does. Mass on Sundays. Fish on Fridays. It’s the natural order of things.”

  “And you?”

  “I don’t think I’m as religious,” Francis said.

  Gulptilil thought this was interesting, but did not follow up on it. “Do you know the date?” he asked.

  Francis shook his head. “I believe it is either the fifth or sixth of May,” he said. “I’m sorry. The days seem to blend together in the hospital. And usually I count on Newsman to fill me in on current events, but I haven’t seen him today.”

  “It is the fifth. Can you remember that for me, please.”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you recall who is the president of the United States?”

  “Carter.”

  Gulptilil smiled, but barely moved his chin from its perch on his fingertips. “And so,” the medical director continued, as if what he were about to say was a logical extension of the prior conversation, “I have met with Mister Evans, who reports to me that although you have made some progress in socialization and in understanding your illness, and the impact that it has upon yourself and those close to you, that he believes despite your current course of medication that you continue to hear voices belonging to people who are not present, voices that urge you to act in specific fashions, and that you still have fixed and settled delusions about events.”

  Francis did not reply, because he did not hear a question. Within him, whispers ricocheted about, but they remained quiet, hard to hear, almost as if they were all afraid that the medical director would be able to hear them as well, if they raised their tones.

  “Tell me, Francis,” Gulptilil continued, “do you think that Mister Evans’s assessment is accurate?”

  “It’s hard to respond,” Francis said. He shifted about a little uncomfortably in his seat, aware, in that second, that any action he made, every word he spoke, every inflection, every mannerism, might be fodder for the doctor’s opinion. “I think Mister Evans automatically considers something that one of us patients says that he disagrees with to be a delusion, and so it is hard to know what to say in answer.”

  The medical director smiled, and finally leaned back. “That is a cogent and organized statement, Francis. Very good.”

  For an instant, Francis started to relax, but then, as quickly, he remembered to not trust the doctor, and especially not to trust a compliment tossed his direction. There was a murmuring of assent deep within him. Whenever his voices agreed with him, it gave Francis confidence.

  “But Mister Evans is also a professional, Francis, so we should not discount what he says too rapidly. Tell me, how is life in Amherst for you? Do you get along with the other patients? The remainder of the staff? Do you look forward to Mister Evans’s therapy sessions? And, tell me, Francis, do you think you are closer to being able to go home? Has your time here so far been, shall we say,profitable?”

  The doctor moved forward, a slightly predatory motion that Francis recognized. The questions hovering in the air were a minefield, and he needed to be cautious in his replies. “The dormitory is fine, Doctor, although overcrowded, and I believe I am able to get along with everyone, more or less. It is sometimes difficult to see the value in Mister Evans’s therapy sessions, although it is always helpful when the discussion turns to current events, because I sometimes fear that we are too isolated here in the hospital, and that the world’s business continues without our engagement in it. And I’d very much li
ke to go home, Doctor, but I’m unsure what it is that I have to prove to you and to my family that will allow me to.”

  “None of them,” the doctor said stiffly, “has deemed it necessary or worthwhile to come visit you, I believe?”

  Francis looped some coils of control over emotions that threatened to erupt. “Not yet, doctor.”

  “A phone call, perhaps? A letter or two?”

  “No.”

  “That must cause you some distress, does it not, Francis?”

  He took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said.

  “But you do not feel abandoned?”

  Francis was unsure what the right answer was, so he said, “I’m okay.”

  Gulptilil smiled, not the bemused smile, but the snakelike one. “And you are okay I suspect because you still hear the voices that have been with you for so many years?”

  “No,” Francis lied. “The medication has erased them.”

  “But you acknowledge that they have been there in the past?”

  Within him, he could hear echoes no, no, no, don’t say anything, hide us, Francis!

  “I’m just not precisely sure I know what you mean, Doctor,” he replied. He didn’t imagine for an instant that this would put the doctor off his pursuit.

  Gulptilil waited for several seconds, letting silence flow throughout the room, as if he expected Francis to add something, which he did not.

  “Tell me this, Francis. Do you believe that there is a killer loose in the hospital?”

  Francis inhaled sharply. He hadn’t expected this question, although, he understood, it would have been fair to say that he hadn’t expected any question. For a moment, he let his eyes race around the room, as if he was looking for a way out. His heart was pounding and all his voices were silent, because they all knew that hidden within the doctor’s question were all sorts of important notions, and he had no idea what the right answer would be. He saw the doctor lift an eyebrow quizzically, and Francis knew that delay was as dangerous as anything.