The Madman's Tale

by John Katzenbach

  Lucy did not respond. But she heard what he was implying.

  “That’s my understanding,” Mister Evil continued. “But correct me if I’m wrong.”

  “No, you’re not wrong,” she said, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” These were falsehoods, she knew.

  “I’ll believe that when I see it,” he said. “And, I presume, you intend to continue interviewing patients in the morning.”

  “I do.”

  “Well, we’ll see,” he said. And with the thinly veiled threat hovering in the air, Mister Evil turned and started to the front door. He stopped after a couple of strides, when he spotted Big Black accompanying Peter the Fireman. The psychologist immediately saw that Peter wasn’t restrained, as he had been earlier. “Hey!” he called out, waving at Big Black and Peter. “Hold it right there!”

  The huge attendant stopped, turning toward the dormitory head. Peter hesitated, as well.

  “Why isn’t he in restraints?” Mr. Evans shouted angrily. “That man is not allowed out of this facility without cuffs on his hands and feet. Those are the rules!”

  Big Black shook his head. “Doctor Gulptilil said it would be okay.”

  “What?”

  “Doctor Gulptilil—,” Big Black repeated, only to be cut off.

  “I don’t believe that. This man is under a court hold. He faces serious assault and manslaughter charges. We have a responsibility …”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Well, I’m going to check on it. Right now.” Evans spun, leaving the two men standing in the corridor, as he blasted toward the front door, first fumbling with his keys, swearing when he thrust the wrong one into the lock, swearing louder when the second one failed to work, and then finally giving up, and lurching off down the corridor toward his office, scattering patients out of his path.

  Francis trailed behind the stocky man, as the new resident cut a swath through Amherst. There was something in the way his head was cocked slightly to the side, his lip raised, white teeth displayed, the bend of his shoulders forward and the thickly tattooed forearms swinging at his waist that clearly warned the other patients to steer to one side or the other. A predatory, challenging walk through Amherst. The stocky man took a long look through the dayroom, like a surveyor eyeballing a tract of land. The few remaining patients inside the room shrank to the corners, or buried themselves behind out-of-date magazines, avoiding eye contact. The stocky man seemed to like this, as if he was pleased to see that his bully status was going to be easily established, and he stepped into the center of the room. He didn’t seem aware that Francis was following him until he stopped.

  “So,” he said in a loud voice, “I’m here now. Don’t anybody try to fuck with me.”

  As he projected this, it seemed a little foolish to Francis. And perhaps cowardly, as well. The only folks left in the dayroom were old and obviously infirm, or else lost in some distant and private world. Nobody who might rise to challenge the stocky man was available.

  Despite his voices shouting caution within him, Francis took several steps toward the stocky man, who finally grew aware of Francis’s presence and spun to face him.

  “You!” he said loudly. “I thought I’d already dealt with you.”

  “I want to know what you meant,” Francis said cautiously.

  “What I meant?” The man mocked Francis with a singsong voice. “What I meant? I meant what I said and I said what I meant and that’s all there is to it.”

  “I don’t understand,” Francis said, a little too eager. “When you said ‘I’m the man you’re looking for,’ what did you mean?”

  The man brayed out loud. “Seems pretty damn obvious, don’t it?”

  “No,” Francis said cautiously, shaking his head. “It isn’t. Who do you think I’m looking for?”

  The stocky man grinned. “You’re looking for one mean mother, that’s who. And you’ve found him. What? Don’t you think I can be mean enough for you?” He stepped toward Francis, bunching his hands into fists, bending forward slightly at the waist, cocking his body like the hammer on a pistol.

  “How did you know I was looking for you?” Francis persisted, holding his ground despite all the urgent entreaties within him to flee.

  “Everyone knows. You and the other guy and the lady from outside. Everyone knows,” the stocky man said cryptically.

  There are no secrets, Francis thought. Then he realized that was wrong.

  “Who told you?” Francis asked suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Who told you?”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Who told you I was looking?” Francis said, his voice rising in pitch and picking up momentum, driven forward by something utterly different from the voices he was so accustomed to, forcing questions out of his mouth when every word increased the danger he was facing. “Who told you to look for me? Who told you what I looked like? Who told you who I was, who gave you my name? Who was it?”

  The stocky man lifted a hand and placed it directly under Francis’s jaw. Then he gently touched Francis with the knuckles, as if making a promise. “That’s my business,” he said. “Not yours. Who I speak to, what I do, that’s my business.” Francis saw the stocky man’s eyes widen slightly, as if opening to some idea that was elusive. He could sense that any number of volatile elements were mixing in the stocky man’s imagination, and somewhere in that explosive concoction was some information that he wanted.

  Francis persisted. “Sure, it’s your business,” he said, changing his tone to a slow pace, as if that might help. “But maybe it’s a little bit of mine, as well. I just want to know who it was that told you to single me out and say what you said.”

  “No one,” the stocky man replied, lying.

  “Yes, someone,” Francis countered. The man’s hand dropped away from Francis’s face, and he saw electric fear in the stocky man’s eyes, hidden beneath rage. It reminded him, in that second, of Lanky, when he fixated on Short Blond, or earlier, when the tall man had fixated on Francis. A total absorption with a single notion, an overwhelming tidal wave of a single sensation, all set loose deep within, in some reach and cavern that even the most potent medication had difficulty penetrating.

  “It’s my business,” the stocky man persisted.

  “The man who told you, he might be the man I’m searching for,” Francis said.

  The stocky man shook his head. “Screw you,” he said. “I’m not helping you with anything.”

  For an instant Francis stood directly across from the stocky man, not willing to move, thinking only that he was close to something and that it would be important for him to find it out, because it would be something concrete that he could take to Lucy Jones. And, in the same moment, he saw the machinery of the stocky man whirling faster and faster, anger, frustration, all the ordinary terrors of being mad coalescing, and in that volcanic moment, Francis suddenly realized that he had pushed something just a bit too far. He took a step backward, but the stocky man followed him.

  “I don’t like your questions,” the man said low and cold.

  “All right, I’m finished,” Francis replied, trying to retreat.

  “I don’t like your questions and I don’t like you. Why did you follow me in here? What are you trying to make me say? What are you going to do to me?”

  Each of these questions hammered forth like blows. Francis glanced right and left, trying to spot somewhere to run to, somewhere he might hide, but there were none. The few people in the dayroom had shrunk away, concealing themselves in corners, or else staring at walls or ceiling, anything that might help them to will themselves mentally to some far different place. The stocky man pushed his fist into Francis’s chest and knocked him back a stride, slightly off-balance. “I don’t think I like you getting in my face,” he said. “I don’t think I like anything about you.” He pushed again, harder.

  “All right,” Francis said, holding up his hand. “I’ll leave you alone.”


  The stocky man seemed to tighten in front of Francis, his whole body growing taut and stretched. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said, growling, “and I’m going to make sure of it.”

  Francis saw the fist coming and managed to just lift his forearm enough to deflect some of the blow before it landed on his cheek. For a moment, he saw stars, and he spun back trying to keep his balance, stumbling slightly over a chair. This actually helped him, because it threw the stocky man’s second punch astray, so that the left hook whistled just above Francis’s nose, close enough so that he could feel its heat. Francis thrust himself backward again, sending the chair slamming across the floor, and the stocky man jumped forward, this time landing another wild blow that caught Francis high on the shoulder. The man’s face was red with fury, and his rage made his attack inaccurate. Francis fell back, hitting the floor with a breath-stealing crash, and the stocky man leapt onto him, straddling his chest, looming above him. Francis managed to keep his arms free, and he covered up, and started kicking ineffectually, as the stocky man started to rain wild, freewheeling blows down onto Francis’s forearms.

  “I’ll kill you!” he cried. “I’ll kill you!”

  Francis squirmed, shifting right and left, doing his best to avoid the flurry of punches, aware only peripherally that he hadn’t really been hit hard, knowing that if the stocky man took even a microsecond to consider the advantages of his assault, he would be twice as deadly.

  “Leave me alone!” Francis cried, uselessly.

  In the narrow space between his arms, deflecting the attack, Francis saw the stocky man rise up slightly, gather himself, as if suddenly realizing that he needed to organize the assault. The man’s face was still flushed, but it suddenly took on a purpose and rationale, as if all the fury collected within him had been channeled into a single flow. Francis closed his eyes, yelled, “Stop it!” one last helpless time, and realized that he was about to be hurt severely. He shrank back, no longer aware what words he was screaming to make the man stop, knowing only that they meant nothing in the face of the rage steaming toward him.

  “I’ll kill you!” the stocky man repeated. Francis had little doubt that he meant it.

  The stocky man let out a single, guttural cry and Francis tried to avert his head, but, in that second, everything changed. A force like a huge wind slammed into the two of them, crashing together in a frenzied tangle. Fists, muscles, blows, and cries all gathered together, and Francis seemed to spin aside, aware suddenly that the weight of the stocky man was suddenly off of his chest, and that he had been cut free. He rolled over once, then scrambled back to the wall, and saw that the stocky man and Peter were suddenly entwined, knotted together in a pile. Peter had his legs wrapped around the man, and had managed to pin one hand with his own gripped around the man’s wrist. Words disappeared in a cacophony of shouts, and they spun together like a top on the ground and Francis saw Peter’s face set in a fierce rage of his own, as he twisted the stocky man’s arm toward some breaking point. And, in the same moment, another pair of missiles suddenly flashed into Francis’s vision, as the white-jacketed Moses brothers launched themselves into the fray. For a moment, there was an orchestra of screaming, shouting anger, and then Big Black managed to grab the stocky man’s other arm, while at the same time throwing his own massive forearm across the man’s windpipe, while Little Black pulled Peter away, slamming him awkwardly against a couch, while the larger brother wrapped the stocky man in a stifling embrace.

  The stocky man screamed obscenities and epithets, choking, spittle flying from his lips, “Fucking nigger goons! Let me go! Let me go! I ain’t done nothing!”

  Peter slid back, so that his back was against the couch, his feet out in front of him. Little Black released him, and sprang to his brother’s side. The two men expertly twisted the stocky man, so that he was beneath them, hands pinned, legs kicking for a moment, until they, too, stopped.

  “Hold him tight,” Francis heard coming from his side. He looked up and saw that Evans, brandishing a hypodermic syringe, was hovering in the doorway. “Just hold him!” Mister Evil repeated, as he took a bit of alcohol impregnated gauze in one hand, and the needle in the other, and approached the two attendants and the hysterical stocky man, who resumed twisting and struggling and shouting angrily, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

  Mister Evil swiped a bit of skin and plunged the needle into the man’s arm, in a single, well-practiced motion. “Fuck you!” the man cried again. But it was the final time.

  The sedative worked quickly. Francis wasn’t sure how many minutes, because he had lost track of the steady passage of time, replacing it with adrenaline and fear. But within a few moments, the stocky man relaxed. Francis saw his wild eyes roll back, and a loose-fitting sort of unconsciousness take over. The Moses brothers relaxed as well, letting their tight grip loosen, and they moved back as the man lay on the ground.

  “We’ll need a stretcher to transport him to isolation,” Mister Evil said. “He’s going to be out cold in a second.” He pointed at Little Black, who nodded.

  The man groaned, twitched, and his feet moved like a dog’s that dreams of running. Evans shook his head.

  “What a mess,” he said. He looked up, and saw Peter where the Fireman was still lying out on the floor, catching his breath and rubbing his own hand, which had a red bite mark on it. “You, too,” Evans said, stiffly.

  “Me, too, what?” Peter asked.

  “Isolation. Twenty-four hours.”

  “What? I didn’t do anything except pull that son of a bitch off C-Bird.”

  Little Black had returned with a folding stretcher and a nurse. He maneuvered over to the stocky man and started to put the drugged patient into a straitjacket. He looked up, as he worked, toward Peter and he shook his head slightly.

  “What was I supposed to do? Let that guy beat the shit out of C-Bird?”

  “Isolation. Twenty-four hours,” Evans repeated.

  “I’m not …,” Peter began.

  Evans arched his eyebrows upward. “Or what? Are you threatening me?”

  Peter took a deep breath. “No. I just object.”

  “You know the rules for fighting.”

  “He was fighting. I was trying to restrain him.”

  Evans stood over Peter and shook his head. “An intriguing distinction. Isolation. Twenty-four hours. Do you want to go easy, or, perhaps, with a little more trouble?” He held the syringe up for Peter to see. Francis saw that Evans truly wanted Peter to make the wrong choice.

  Peter seemed to control a surge of his own anger with great difficulty. Francis saw him grit his teeth together. “All right,” he said. “Whatever you say. Isolation. Lead the damn way.”

  With that, he struggled up to his feet and dutifully followed Big Black, who, along with his brother, had loaded the stocky man onto the stretcher, and were maneuvering him out the dayroom door.

  Evans turned to Francis. “You’ve got a bruise on your cheek,” he said. “Have a nurse take a look at it.”

  Then he, too, pushed out of the dayroom, without even glancing at Lucy, who had taken up a position by the door, and who took that moment to fix Francis with a searing, inquisitive look.

  Later that night, in her tiny room inside the nurse-trainees’ dormitory, Lucy sat alone in the dark, trying to see progress in her investigation. Sleep had eluded her, and she had pushed herself up on the bed, back to the wall, staring out, trying to discern familiar shapes in the area around her. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the absence of light, but after a moment she could make out the unmistakable form of the desk, the small table, the bureau, the bedside stand and lamp. She continued to concentrate, and recognized the lump of clothes that she’d tossed haphazardly onto the stiff wooden chair when she’d come in earlier and prepared for bed.

  It was, she thought, a mirror of what she was going through. There were things that were familiar, and yet they remained hidden, distorted, concealed by the darkness inside the hospital. She needed to find a w
ay of illuminating evidence, suspects, and theories. She just couldn’t see precisely how.

  She leaned her head back and believed she’d done much to make a mess of things. At the same time, despite the lack of anything concrete to point to, she felt more persuaded than ever that she was dangerously close to achieving what she had come to the hospital for.

  She tried to picture the man she was hunting, but found that just like the shapes in the room, he remained indistinct and elusive. The hospital world simply did not lend itself to easy supposition, she thought. She recalled dozens of moments, where she sat across from a suspect, either in a police interrogation room, or later, in a courtroom, and she had observed all the tiny details, the wrinkles on the man’s hands, the furtive look in his eyes, perhaps the manner in which he held his head, all of which blended together into a portrait of someone narrowly defined by guilt and crime. When they sat across from Lucy, it always, she thought, seemed so obvious. The men she’d seen through arrest and prosecution had worn the truth of their actions like so many cheap suits of clothes. Unmistakable.

  Continuing to stare into the night, she told herself that she had to think more creatively. More obliquely. More subtly. In the world she came from, there had been little doubt in her mind whenever she’d come face-to-face with her quarry. This world was the exact opposite. There was nothing except doubt. And, she wondered, feeling a chill that didn’t come from the open window, she might even have been face-to-face with the man she hunted. But here he owned the context.

  She lifted her hand to her face and touched her scar. The man who’d attacked her had been a cliché of anonymity. His face had been obscured by a knit ski mask, so that she only saw his dark eyes. He wore black leather gloves on his hands, jeans, and a nondescript pullover parka of the sort available in any number of outdoors equipment stores. On his feet had been Nike running shoes. The few words he spoke were guttural, rough, designed to conceal any accent. He didn’t really need to say anything, she remembered. He let the glistening hunting knife that had sliced her face speak for him.