by Lamb, Wally
She took another drag. Gave her cigarette a dirty look and stubbed it out, half smoked. “I gave these things up on Jesse’s last birthday,” she said. “She wanted two things: for us to go to Disney World and for me to stop smoking. I couldn’t exactly swing the Magic Kingdom, so I got her a Carvel cake and a Rainbow Brite doll and let her flush my cigarettes down the toilet to the tune of ‘Happy Birthday.’ A whole carton of them. And now, tonight, I’m going to go pick her up smelling like cigarettes.” She started to cry, then stopped herself with a laugh, a shrug. “Oh, well, my credibility’s shot to hell, anyway. Right?”
“Did my brother assault the cowboy? Is that what you’re telling me?”
She shook her head. “Oh, god, no, Dominick. Is that what you . . . ? No.”
The guy who’d strangled Taylor confessed that same night, she said. A patient in one of the other units—she couldn’t tell me his name. It was probably all going to come out in the papers, anyway, though. Unless the hospital could keep it hushed up, there was going to be so much garbage flying around, people would have to duck. The “official version” of Taylor’s assault—the one the administration was now circulating—was that the vendetta had started over a pint of tequila. Taylor and a friend of his—a guard named Edward Morrison—had apparently been running a black market business. Alcohol and cigarettes. Pills. “That much the hospital’s willing to cop to,” Sheffer said. “According to the version the hospital’s floating, Taylor had collected money for the tequila and then reneged. But it wasn’t about booze. It was about sex. . . . Well, power. Rape.”
The word made me tense up. “What’s this got to do with Thomas?” I said.
She rested her chin against her propped-up hand. Looked at me with defeated eyes. “Hopefully, nothing,” she said. “From what I heard today, it was mostly the younger kids that Taylor went after—guys in their twenties. But I don’t really know the whole story yet, Dominick. I don’t think I know anything anymore.” For the next several seconds, we sat there, saying nothing, Sheffer’s cigarette smoke swirling around us.
“Let me ask you something,” she said. “How many times over the past several months would you estimate I’ve reassured you about your brother’s safety? Twenty-five times, maybe? Thirty? Now multiply that number by my caseload. Twenty-five or thirty reassurances times forty prisoners’ families. . . . God, I just can’t believe how naive I’ve been. How stupid.” She thrust her tiny, shaking hand across the table. Grabbed my hand and shook it. “How do you do?” she said. “I’m Lisa of Sunnybrook Farm.”
She drew cigarette after cigarette out of her pack—snapped each in half, throwing the refuse into her mangled coffee cup. “Guess what else I found out today?” she said. “Through the grapevine, of course—not through our ever-responsible leadership. I found out that as much as a quarter of the population at Hatch may be HIV-positive. That we’ve got an epidemic down there, Dominick, and the administration’s just been looking the other way. Sitting on the statistics. Can’t have any bad PR now, can we?”
Dr. Yup accompanied me to Hatch on Monday afternoon, examined my brother, and drew blood samples which she transported personally to the testing lab her clinic used. The results of both the hospital’s and Dr. Yup’s tests were the same: Thomas was HIV-negative. But Dr. Yup’s report also cited the presence of anal warts, contusions, and other indicators of rectal penetration.
As a result, my brother was wanted for questioning in the ongoing state police investigation of Duane Taylor and Edward Morrison. I asked to be in attendance during these interviews and was, at first, denied. But Thomas dug his heels in and insisted to both the police and the hospital administration that he would speak to no one unless his brother was there. The cops met his condition. During the four interviews that followed, I sat by Thomas’s side.
This was weird: one of his inquisitors—the head of the investigation, actually—was State Police Captain Ronald Avery. I recognized him immediately: one of the two cops who’d caught Leo and me smoking reefer out by the trestle bridge that night and hauled us in for questioning. Avery had been young back then—dark-haired and lean, probably not even thirty. He’d been the most decent of the three cops who’d grilled us that night. Now his hair was gray, his body droopy. Looked like he was maybe four or five years away from retirement. But he’d held onto his decency—his sense of fair play. He was patient with Thomas throughout the interviews—as nonthreatening as possible, given what the cops needed to find out.
Thomas’s account of his involvement with Morrison and Taylor kept changing. Morrison had assaulted him but Taylor never had, my brother said. Then he claimed both had. Then, neither. During the last interview, Thomas insisted that Taylor had smuggled him out of Hatch one night and flown him in secret to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with the CIA. Vice President and Mrs. Quayle had attended. The Quayles had been involved in Taylor’s cover-up from the beginning and were also behind the lacing of Sudafed with cyanide that had killed those people out in Seattle. Now that he was letting that cat out of the bag, Thomas told Captain Avery, he was probably a walking dead man.
As I sat there listening to Thomas, exchanging looks with Avery and Dr. Chase, the hospital liaison, I thought about something Dr. Patel had said several months before. Two brothers are lost in the woods. One of them may be lost forever.
But lost or not, Thomas could still walk. Could still be sprung from Hatch.
The second unexpected phone call I received from Ralph Drinkwater came a few weeks before the story about Morrison and Taylor hit the papers. “I have something for you,” he told me. “Something you might be able to use.”
“Use how?” I said.
“That’s up to you. Just keep my name out of it. You coming to see him in the next couple days?”
I told him I could get down there by midafternoon the next day.
“That works,” he said. He told me I should park at the far end of the visitors’ lot. Leave my car unlocked.
What was this—Watergate? Drinkwater as Deep Throat? Why was he doing this?
After my visit with Thomas the next afternoon, I got back in the Escort. Looked in the glove compartment, under the seats. Nothing. But on the drive home, I thought of the sun visor. And when I flipped it down, a piece of paper fell into my lap: a memo from Dr. Richard Hume to a Dr. Hervé Garcia, stamped “Confidential.”
He was a cynical bastard, Hume. That much was obvious. Whatever his reasons had been for entering the healing profession, he’d lost his way in the woods, too. In the memo, he advised Garcia against Hatch’s “trumpeting these numbers to Hartford” but asked, rhetorically, whether “John and Joan Q. Public” wouldn’t silently approve of the HIV stats if they ever were released—the “weeding out of the population,” courtesy of AIDS.
Social Darwinism, I thought. Mr. LoPresto rides again. Jesus. I was beginning to understand, I thought, how Drinkwater fit into all this. Future casino millionaire or not, Ralph still needed to take a whack at the oppressor. He was still looking for justice.
Well, for whatever reason Ralph had stuck that stolen memo under my visor, I had him now: Hume. If I played it right, that confiscated memo was the key that could spring the lock. Get my brother out of there. La chiave, I thought. Here it is, Ma. This is what we’ve been waiting for.
The first two attorneys I talked to declined to represent me on ethical grounds. The third one didn’t seem to understand what I needed. “We’ll sue as a group,” he said. “The families of the infected inmates. They might pay millions to make this go away.”
“My brother’s not infected,” I reminded him.
He nodded. I’d be an “unofficial” member of the families’ group, he said. A silent partner. The terms could be discreetly hammered out beforehand. He wouldn’t be representing me per se, but because I’d provided the memo, he’d make sure I ended up sitting just as pretty as the rest of them.
I stood up, shaking my head. “You know something?” I said. “You’re like every
sleazy lawyer joke I ever heard rolled into one. Go fuck yourself.” For emphasis, I kicked his wastebasket on the way out of there, sent his trash flying every which way but loose.
“Constantine Motors. Leo Blood speaking. How may I help you?”
I asked him if he still had that fancy suit of his.
“My Armani? I’m wearing it as we speak, Mr. Birdseed. Why do you ask?”
“Because I need an actor in a fancy suit.”
He was resistant at first: Leo, who had taken stupid risks his whole life. Who’d thrived on asshole stunts like the one I was proposing. It was illegal, wasn’t it? Posing as an attorney? What if this Dr. Hume recognized his picture from the car ads?
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Like you’re some big celebrity.”
“Well, what about Gene? If he ever found out about a bag job like this, he’d fire my ass on the spot, son-in-law or no son-in-law.”
“Best thing that could happen to you,” I said. “Come on, Leo. You don’t have to say you’re an attorney; you just have to imply you’re one. This is the role of a lifetime.”
“I don’t know, Dominick. I’d like to help you out, but—”
“Look, I need you, man,” I said. “Tommy needs you. This is our only shot.”
It was the first day of April when we finally “communicated directly” with Hume. I’d made three appointments by then; his secretary had called at the last minute and canceled every one of them. “Fuck it,” Leo said after he stood us up the third time. “Let’s ambush the prick.” By then, I think he’d convinced himself he had passed the bar exam.
We waited across the highway from the state hospital’s main entrance. “I just hope it doesn’t backfire on Thomas,” I said.
Life had backfired on Thomas, Leo reminded me. All we were trying to do was start a little forward motion for the guy.
When Hume’s silver Mercedes left the grounds, I started the car, pulled into traffic behind him. Tailed the lead-footed bastard down the John Mason Parkway, onto 395, and then to I-95. “This asshole related to the Andrettis or something?” Leo said.
“I just hope we’re not making a mistake,” I said.
Leo told me to stop thinking and just follow the bastard.
Hume exited the highway in Old Saybrook, drove along Route 1 for a couple of miles, and then pulled into the parking lot of some little seafood restaurant. Soon as he got out of the car, the doors of a red Cherokee parked a couple of cars away swung open. A young couple approached Hume—early twenties, maybe. The girl was a dead ringer—had to be his daughter. There were hugs and kisses, a slap on the back for what looked like the boyfriend. “So how’s Yale treating you two?” I heard Hume ask.
I told Leo this was a bad idea—that we should just go. We could catch up with him at Hatch. He couldn’t keep canceling appointments.
“Look, Dominick,” Leo said. “I been wearing this stupid suit to work three days in a row now. Even I’m getting sick of it. Come on. It’s showtime.”
Briefcase in one hand, the other outstretched toward Hume, Leo led the way. “Dr. Hume? Excuse me, sir. If we could have a minute?” He introduced himself as Arthur verSteeg. Pumped Hume’s daughter’s hand, the boyfriend’s. “Arthur verSteeg. Pleasure to meet you. Arthur verSteeg. And this is my friend Dominick Birdsey.”
That was when the smile dropped off of Hume’s face. He told the two Yalies to go inside and order him a Glenlivet on the rocks.
He stood there, scanning the memo for a couple of seconds, scowling. Then he ripped it up. Sent the pieces fluttering into the breeze coming off Long Island Sound.
“Go ahead, there, Doctor,” Leo said. “Do your thing. We got plenty of copies.”
“What is it you’re after?” Hume said. “Money?”
“Justice,” I said. “The only thing I want from you is—”
Attorney verSteeg cut me off. “Why don’t you let me handle this, Mr. Birdsey?”
On April 11, 1991, the Psychiatric Security Review Board, meeting in executive session, reversed its decision of the previous October and transferred Thomas to the custody of his family, effective at once. The Board strongly advised, however, that Thomas be placed immediately in a fully staffed, fully secured nonforensic psychiatric hospital.
“Well, congratulations,” Sheffer said, shaking my hand in the hallway outside the conference room. “I don’t know how you did it—and hey, I don’t want to know how—but it worked. You got him out of here.”
I nodded, not smiling. “Be careful what you wish for. Right?”
Sheffer warned me that after six months in maximum security, freedom was going to be a shock to my brother’s system. That as tough as it had been for him at Hatch, there had been a kind of safety in all that surveillance, regimentation, and predictability. He was apt to feel unmoored, unsafe—too free. And it had happened so abruptly; she’d never seen such expediency. There’d been no time to prepare Thomas, emotionally, for his release.
Or to get him placed.
She was doing some “fancy footwork,” she said. Settle, Thomas’s old stomping ground, was out of the question. With the facility definitely closing later that year, they weren’t admitting any new patients. They were transferring people out of Settle. No exceptions. Her second choice, Middletown, was still a possibility. She had a call in to admissions there; she’d try to get me an answer by the end of the day. All of them, she said—she, Dr. Chase, Dr. Patel, the nurses—advised against Thomas’s staying with me. It just wasn’t safe, she said.
“Hey, my cooking’s not that bad,” I told her.
Sheffer didn’t return my smile. “Dominick, I’m going to say something to you that you’re probably not going to appreciate. But I’ll say it anyway.”
“Now there’s a surprise,” I told her.
“You’re arrogant, Dominick. You’re a real good guy and everything. I know you’re trying hard to do what’s best for him. But . . . well, I just hope your arrogance doesn’t end up putting him at risk. Just be careful.”
It was arrogant for a guy to want to keep his brother safe? If I hadn’t managed a little arrogance, he’d still be stuck down there indefinitely. But I didn’t want to get into it with her—it wasn’t the time or the place. So I smiled, thanked her for all she’d done. Hugged her back when she held out her arms to me.
If Sheffer thought I was arrogant, she ought to read that thing of my grandfather’s.
When I walked with Thomas through Hatch’s front security gate and out into the sunlight, he stopped at the top of the stairs and squinted. Looked up at the sky, the swaying trees. He moved a step or two closer. Slipped his stump into the pocket of his jacket.
“Well,” I said, “you’re a free man.”
“I’m a walking target,” he said.
Dr. Chase had changed his medication the week before the hearing—some new psycholeptic the FDA had just approved. If there was going to be any improvement, it would take a couple more weeks to kick in. But I was hoping to avoid having to hear who was after Thomas now—hoping to savor one afternoon’s worth of victory. It was only later that I realized how scared he must have been walking out of there—how terrifying all that sudden open space would be to someone who saw the enemy behind every tree, every steering wheel.
“You want to go over to my place and watch some TV?” I said. “Stop over and see Ray? . . . You hungry? Want to get something at McDonald’s or someplace?”
He wanted to go to the Falls, he said.
“The Falls? . . . Yeah, all right. Sure. You’re a free man now. You can do whatever you damn want to. We got the whole afternoon to celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?” he said.
“Your freedom,” I said.
He snickered. Mumbled something I didn’t catch.
“What’d you say?”
But he didn’t answer me.
I pulled into the little six-car lot adjacent to the Indian cemetery. Together, we passed the graves on the way to the path that led up to the Falls.
“Remember her?” Thomas asked. He had stopped—was pointing at Penny Ann Drinkwater’s small stone.
I nodded. Saw Penny Ann’s body going over the Falls, the way it had in my nightmares. Saw Eric Clapton’s son dropping from the sky like Icarus. . . .
“You, uh . . . you seen much of her brother while you were down there?”
“Who?”
“Ralph Drinkwater. Her brother.” The guy that got you out of there, I thought. The guy who gave me the ammunition I needed to make you safe again. “He’s on the maintenance crew. Remember? You told me you saw him once down there.”
“Down where?”
“At Hatch.”
He looked over at me. Looked me in the eye. “We’re cousins,” he said.
What was he talking about? “We’re brothers, man.”
“Her cousins,” he said. He nodded toward Penny Ann’s gravestone.
“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “Come on. Let’s go check out the river.”
We trudged up the dirt-packed path at the far end of the graveyard. It was a muddy mess from that two-day deluge we’d had. Thomas was out of shape—winded from the sloping incline. A breeze tossed the boughs of the pine trees, the bare branches of the pin oaks. My emotions were all over the place.
When we got to the mountain laurel grove, I told Thomas something I’d never told anyone before, not even Dessa: that we were standing at my favorite spot. “Another couple of months and these bushes’ll explode with flowers,” I said. “Early June, it happens. I’ll bring you back here. I come out every year.”
Thomas told me that mountain laurel leaves were poisonous. Had he mentioned that there’d been several attempts to poison him while he was at Hatch? He was pretty sure the Republicans were behind it.
I didn’t answer him. Some celebration, I thought. Started hiking again toward the sound of spilling water.
When we got to the clearing—the waterspill—we stood there, side by side, watching the river drop over the edge and down. It was roaring something fierce that day—spring thaw, plus all that rain we’d had. I looked over at Thomas, studied his grooved, joyless face. It showed, out there in the sunlight: all the wear and tear of the past six months, the twenty-odd years before that. He looked older than forty-one. Old. Part of me was scared to death about what the next weeks and months were going to entail. But another part of me was happy, in partial disbelief, still. He’s here, I remember thinking. He’s with me, Ma. I got him out of there.