Cawley sighed. “I have buckets all over my house catching water. The attic is done, wrecked. So’s the floor in the guest bedroom. My wife’s going to be beside herself. Her wedding gown was in that attic.”
“Where is your wife?” Teddy said.
“Boston,” Cawley said. “We keep an apartment there. She and the kids needed a break from this place, so they took a week’s vacation. It gets to you sometimes.”
“I’ve been here three days, Doctor, and it gets to me.”
Cawley nodded with a soft smile. “But you’ll be going.”
“Going?”
“Home, Marshal. Now that Rachel’s been found. The ferry usually gets here around eleven in the morning. Have you back in Boston by noon, I’d expect.”
“Won’t that be nice.”
“Yes, won’t it?” Cawley ran a hand over his head. “I don’t mind telling you, Marshal, and meaning no offense—”
“Oh, here we go again.”
Cawley held up a hand. “No, no. No personal opinions regarding your emotional state. No, I was about to say that your presence here has had an agitating effect on a lot of the patients. You know—Johnny Law’s in town. That made several of them a bit tense.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Not your fault. It was what you represent, not you personally.”
“Oh, well, that makes it all okay, then.”
Cawley leaned against the wall, propped a foot there, looking as tired as Teddy felt in his wrinkled lab coat and loosened tie.
“There was a rumor going around Ward C this afternoon that an unidentified man in orderly’s clothes was on the main floor.”
“Really?”
Cawley looked at him. “Really.”
“How about that.”
Cawley picked at some lint on his tie, flicked it off his fingers. “Said stranger apparently had some experience subduing dangerous men.”
“You don’t say.”
“Oh, I do. I do.”
“What else did Said Stranger get up to?”
“Well.” Cawley stretched his shoulders back and removed his lab coat, draped it over his arm, “I’m glad you’re interested.”
“Hey, nothing like a little rumor, a little gossip.”
“I agree. Said Stranger allegedly—and I can’t confirm this, mind you—had a long conversation with a known paranoid schizophrenic named George Noyce.”
“Hmm,” Teddy said.
“Indeed.”
“So this, um…”
“Noyce,” Cawley said.
“Noyce,” Teddy repeated. “Yeah, that guy—he’s delusional, huh?”
“To the extreme,” Cawley said. “He spins his yarns and his tall tales and he gets everyone agitated—”
“There’s that word again.”
“I’m sorry. Yes, well, he gets people in a disagreeable mood. Two weeks ago, in fact, he got people so cross that a patient beat him up.”
“Imagine that.”
Cawley shrugged. “It happens.”
“So, what kind of yarns?” Teddy asked. “What kind of tales?”
Cawley waved at the air. “The usual paranoid delusions. The whole world being out to get him and such.” He looked up at Teddy as he lit a cigarette, his eyes brightening with the flame. “So, you’ll be leaving.”
“I guess so.”
“The first ferry.”
Teddy gave him a frosty smile. “As long as someone wakes us up.”
Cawley returned the smile. “I think we can handle that.”
“Great.”
“Great.” Cawley said, “Cigarette?”
Teddy held up a hand to the proffered pack. “No, thanks.”
“Trying to quit?”
“Trying to cut down.”
“Probably a good thing. I’ve been reading in journals how tobacco might be linked to a host of terrible things.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Cancer, I’ve heard, for one.”
“So many ways to die these days.”
“Agreed. More and more ways to cure, though.”
“You think so?”
“I wouldn’t be in this profession otherwise.” Cawley blew the smoke in a stream above his head.
Teddy said, “Ever have a patient here named Andrew Laeddis?”
Cawley dropped his chin back toward his chest. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“No?”
Cawley shrugged. “Should it?”
Teddy shook his head. “He was a guy I knew. “He—”
“How?”
“What’s that?”
“How did you know him?”
“In the war,” Teddy said.
“Oh.”
“Anyway, I’d heard he went a little bugs, got sent here.”
Cawley took a slow drag off his cigarette. “You heard wrong.”
“Apparently.”
Cawley said, “Hey, it happens. I thought you said ’us’ a minute ago.”
“What?”
“’Us,’” Cawley said. “As in first-person plural.”
Teddy put a hand to his chest. “Referring to myself?”
Cawley nodded. “I thought you said, ’As long as someone wakes us up.’ Us up.”
“Well, I did. Of course. Have you seen him by the way?”
Cawley raised his eyebrows at him.
Teddy said, “Come on. Is he here?”
Cawley laughed, looked at him.
“What?” Teddy said.
Cawley shrugged. “I’m just confused.”
“Confused by what?”
“You, Marshal. Is this some weird joke of yours?”
“What joke?” Teddy said. “I just want to know if he’s here.”
“Who?” Cawley said, a hint of exasperation in his voice.
“Chuck.”
“Chuck?” Cawley said slowly.
“My partner,” Teddy said. “Chuck.”
Cawley came off the wall, the cigarette dangling from his fingers. “You don’t have a partner, Marshal. You came here alone.”
19
TEDDY SAID, “Wait a minute…”
Found Cawley, closer now, peering up at him.
Teddy closed his mouth, felt the summer night find his eyelids.
Cawley said, “Tell me again. About your partner.”
Cawley’s curious gaze was the coldest thing Teddy had ever seen. Probing and intelligent and fiercely bland. It was the gaze of a straight man in a vaudeville revue, pretending not to know where the punch line would come from.
And Teddy was Ollie to his Stan. A buffoon with loose suspenders and a wooden barrel for pants. The last one in on the joke.
“Marshal?” Cawley taking another small step forward, a man stalking a butterfly.
If Teddy protested, if he demanded to know where Chuck was, if he even argued that there was a Chuck, he played into their hands.
Teddy met Cawley’s eyes and he saw the laughter in them.
“Insane men deny they’re insane,” Teddy said.
Another step. “Excuse me?”
“Bob denies he’s insane.”
Cawley crossed his arms over his chest.
“Ergo,” Teddy said, “Bob is insane.”
Cawley leaned back on his heels, and now the smile found his face.
Teddy met it with one of his own.
They stood there like that for some time, the night breeze moving through the trees above the wall with a soft flutter.
“You know,” Cawley said, toeing the grass at his feet, head down, “I’ve built something valuable here. But valuable things also have a way of being misunderstood in their own time. Everyone wants a quick fix. We’re tired of being afraid, tired of being sad, tired of feeling overwhelmed, tired of feeling tired. We want the old days back, and we don’t even remember them, and we want to push into the future, paradoxically, at top speed. Patience and forbearance become the first casualties of progress. This is not news. Not news at all. It’s always b
een so.” Cawley raised his head. “So as many powerful friends as I have, I have just as many powerful enemies. People who would wrest what I’ve built from my control. I can’t allow that without a fight. You understand?”
Teddy said, “Oh, I understand, Doctor.”
“Good.” Cawley unfolded his arms. “And this partner of yours?”
Teddy said, “What partner?”
TREY WASHINGTON WAS in the room when Teddy got back, lying on the bed reading an old issue of Life.
Teddy looked at Chuck’s bunk. The bed had been remade and the sheet and blanket were tucked tight and you’d never know someone had slept there two nights before.
Teddy’s suit jacket, shirt, tie, and pants had been returned from the laundry and hung in the closet under plastic wrap and he changed out of his orderly clothes and put them on as Trey flipped the glossy pages of the magazine.
“How you doing tonight, Marshal?”
“Doing okay.”
“That’s good, that’s good.”
He noticed that Trey wouldn’t look at him, kept his eyes on that magazine, turning the same pages over and over.
Teddy transferred the contents of his pockets, placing Laeddis’s intake form in his inside coat pocket along with his notebook. He sat on Chuck’s bunk across from Trey and tied his tie, tied his shoes, and then sat there quietly.
Trey turned another page of the magazine. “Going to be hot tomorrow.”
“Really?”
“Hot as a motherfucker. Patients don’t like the heat.”
“No?”
He shook his head, turned another page. “No, sir. Make ’em all itchy and whatnot. Got us a full moon too coming tomorrow night. Just make things a whole lot worse. All we need.”
“Why is that?”
“What’s that, Marshal?”
“The full moon. You think it makes people crazy?”
“I know it does.” Found a wrinkle in one of the pages and used his index finger to smooth it out.
“How come?”
“Well, you think about it—the moon affects the tide, right?”
“Sure.”
“Has some sort of magnet effect or something on water.”
“I’ll buy that.”
“Human brain,” Trey said, “is over fifty percent water.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. You figure ol’ Mr. Moon can jerk the ocean around, think what it can do to the head.”
“How long you been here, Mr. Washington?”
He finished smoothing out the wrinkle, turned the page. “Oh, long time now. Since I got out of the army in ’forty-six.”
“You were in the army?”
“Yes, I was. Came there for a gun, they gave me a pot. Fought the Germans with bad cooking, sir.”
“That was bullshit,” Teddy said.
“That was some bullshit, yes, Marshal. They let us into the war, it would have been over by ’forty-four.”
“You’ll get no argument from me.”
“You was in all sorts of places, huh?”
“Yeah, I was. Saw the world.”
“What’d you think of it?”
“Different languages, same shit.”
“Yeah, that’s the truth, huh?”
“You know what the warden called me tonight, Mr. Washington?”
“What’s that, Marshal?”
“A nigger.”
Trey looked up from the magazine. “He what?”
Teddy nodded. “Said there were too many people in this world who were of low fiber. Mud races. Niggers. Retards. Said I was just a nigger to him.”
“You didn’t like that, did you?” Trey chuckled, and the sound died as soon as it left his mouth. “You don’t know what it is to be a nigger, though.”
“I’m aware of that, Trey. This man is your boss, though.”
“Ain’t my boss. I work for the hospital end of things. The White Devil? He on the prison side.”
“Still your boss.”
“No, he ain’t.” Trey rose up on his elbow. “You hear? I mean, are we definitely clear on that one, Marshal?”
Teddy shrugged.
Trey swung his legs over the bed and sat up. “You trying to make me mad, sir?”
Teddy shook his head.
“So then why don’t you agree with me when I tell you I don’t work for that white son of a bitch?”
Teddy gave him another shrug. “In a pinch, if it came down to it and he started giving orders? You’d hop to.”
“I’d what?”
“Hop to. Like a bunny.”
Trey ran a hand along his jaw, considered Teddy with a hard grin of disbelief.
“I don’t mean any offense,” Teddy said.
“Oh, no, no.”
“It’s just I’ve noticed that people on this island have a way of creating their own truth. Figure they say it’s so enough times, then it must be so.”
“I don’t work for that man.”
Teddy pointed at him. “Yeah, that’s the island truth I know and love.”
Trey looked ready to hit him.
“See,” Teddy said, “they held a meeting tonight. And afterward, Dr. Cawley comes up and tells me I never had a partner. And if I ask you, you’ll say the same thing. You’ll deny that you sat with the man and played poker with the man and laughed with the man. You’ll deny he ever said the way you should have dealt with your mean old aunt was to run faster. You’ll deny he ever slept right here in this bed. Won’t you, Mr. Washington?”
Trey looked down at the floor. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Marshal.”
“Oh, I know, I know. I never had a partner. That’s the truth now. It has been decided. I never had a partner and he’s not somewhere out on this island hurt. Or dead. Or locked up in Ward C or the lighthouse. I never had a partner. You want to repeat that after me, just so we’re clear? I never had a partner. Come on. Try it.”
Trey looked up. “You never had a partner.”
Teddy said, “And you don’t work for the warden.”
Trey clasped his hands on his knees. He looked at Teddy and Teddy could see that this was eating him. His eyes grew moist and the flesh along his chin trembled.
“You need to get out of here,” he whispered.
“I’m aware of that.”
“No.” Trey shook his head several times. “You don’t have any idea what’s really going on here. Forget what you heard. Forget what you think you know. They going to get to you. And there ain’t no coming back from what they going to do to you. No coming back no how.”
“Tell me,” Teddy said, but Trey was shaking his head again. “Tell me what’s going on here.”
“I can’t do that. I can’t. Look at me.” Trey’s eyebrows rose and his eyes widened. “I. Cannot. Do. That. You on your own. And I wouldn’t be waiting on no ferry.”
Teddy chuckled. “I can’t even get out of this compound, never mind off this island. And even if I could, my partner is—”
“Forget your partner,” Trey hissed. “He gone. You got it? He ain’t coming back, man. You gotta git. You gotta watch out for yourself and only yourself.”
“Trey,” Teddy said, “I’m locked in.”
Trey stood and went to the window, looked out into the dark or at his own reflection, Teddy couldn’t tell which.
“You can’t ever come back. You can’t ever tell no one I told you anything.”
Teddy waited.
Trey looked back over his shoulder at him. “We agreed?”
“Agreed,” Teddy said.
“Ferry be here tomorrow at ten. Leave for Boston at eleven sharp. A man was to stow away on that boat, he might just make it across the harbor. Otherwise, a man would have to wait two or three more days and a fishing trawler, name of Betsy Ross, she pull up real close to the southern coast, drop a few things off the side.” He looked back at Teddy. “Kinda things men ain’t supposed to have on this island. Now she don’t come all the way in. No, sir. So a man�
�d have to swim his way out to her.”
“I can’t do three fucking days on this island,” Teddy said. “I don’t know the terrain. The warden and his men damn sure do, though. They’ll find me.”
Trey didn’t say anything for a while.
“Then it’s the ferry,” he said eventually.
“It’s the ferry. But how do I get out of the compound?”
“Shit,” Trey said. “You might not buy this, but it is your lucky day. Storm fucked up everything, particularly the electrical systems. Now we repaired most of the wires on the wall. Most of them.”
Teddy said, “Which sections didn’t you get to?”
“The southwest corner. Those two are dead, right where the wall meets in a ninety-degree angle. The rest of them will fry you like chicken, so don’t slip and reach out and grab one. Hear?”
“I hear.”
Trey nodded to his reflection. “I’d suggest you git. Time’s wasting.”
Teddy stood. “Chuck,” he said.
Trey scowled. “There is no Chuck. All right? Never was. You get back to the world, you talk about Chuck all you like. But here? The man never happened.”
IT OCCURRED TO Teddy as he faced the southwest corner of the wall that Trey could be lying. If Teddy put a hand to those wires, got a good grip, and they were live, they’d find his body in the morning at the foot of the wall, as black as last month’s steak. Problem solved. Trey gets employee of the year, maybe a nice gold watch.
He searched around until he found a long twig, and then he turned to a section of wire to the right of the corner. He took a running jump at the wall, got his foot on it, and leapt up. He slapped the twig down on the wire and the wire spit out a burst of flame and the twig caught fire. Teddy came back to earth and looked at the wood in his hand. The flame went out, but the wood smoldered.
He tried it again, this time on the wire over the right side of the corner. Nothing.
He stood down below again, taking a breath, and then he jumped up the left wall, hit the wire again. And again, nothing.
There was a metal post atop the section where the wall met, and Teddy took three runs at the wall before he got a grip. He held tight and climbed up to the top of the wall and his shoulders hit the wire and his knees hit the wire and his forearms hit the wire, and each time, he thought he was dead.
He wasn’t. And once he’d reached the top, there wasn’t much to do but lower himself down to the other side.
Shutter Island Page 22