by James Grady
“The names of the dead.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But you did what you could.”
“So that’s not enough to justify me going crazy?”
“That’s more than enough. But you’ve got to move off of paying for what was possible then to buying what’s possible now. You’ve got to look for that.”
“Or get shocked into seeing it? Like this little ‘blitz therapy’ session, Doc? Shock therapy—sorry, Eric—call it whatever you want, didn’t work. For any of us.”
We stared at the doctor who’d spent two weeks doing his best.
Russell said: “We’re here.”
“And we’ll be here after you’re gone,” said Hailey.
“’Xactly.”
Sunlight streamed through Eric’s invisible notion of space.
“Is that what you want?” asked our shrink. “Don’t you see? You’re set in your situation and thus resist challenging your troubles. You resist working on getting out.”
“I shouldn’t leave,” said Hailey. “I’m dying.”
“We’re all dying,” said Dr. F. “How and when… Who knows?”
“None of you is close to ‘cured.’ I don’t know if you can ever reach that point. But I want you to open your eyes. Who knows what you’ll see—with therapeutic help.”
“Plus getting stoned,” said Russell. “Everybody here must get stoned.”
“Meds are tools,” said Dr. F. “The work is up to you.”
“Bottom line us, Doc,” I said.
“No, that’s your job. Always has been, always will be. No matter how out of control the world is, you’ve got some ability to draw your own bottom line.”
“You’re supposed to be a shrink,” argued Russell, “not a philosopher.”
“Sometimes the only difference between those jobs is that I write prescriptions.”
“And orders to lock people up,” I said.
“Do any of you want me to write an order for your release?”
None of us said a word.
“What I am writing is a strong recommendation that your treatment shift from maintenance to management designed to get you out of our custody.”
“So you’ll get credit for lowering the budget,” said Hailey.
“Do you think I give a shit about the budget? My job is to spot when the emperor is naked and say so. To take risks. And here, that seems appropriate.”
“So what will happen to us?” asked Russell.
“Nothing bad, nothing dangerous, nothing soon,” lied Dr. F. “And nothing that I won’t monitor with your regular staff. Even with my new duties at the NSC, I want you all to feel free to reach out and get in touch with me whenever—”
Eric leaned forward in his chair, his arm stretched toward Dr. F.
Who said: “I mean later, Eric. Via e-mail.”
“Oh sure,” said Russell. “In between Israeli-Palestine clashes, war in Iraq, the atomic bomb in North Korea and who knows where next, narco wars in South America and Burma, evil doer hunting in the hills of Afghanistan, terrorist attacks in Des Moines, genocide in Sudan, Russia rattling empire dreams, resurgent Nazis in Europe, the clear-cut Amazon causing snow storms in L.A., Pentagon budget battles, Congressional inquiries, press scandals and White House state dinners with boob job Hollywood blondes, sure, you’ll find time to check in with us Maine maniacs.”
Dr. F shrugged. “Who wants to talk about this new program?”
Our circle of chairs now had two sides: us, and Dr. F. He felt that too, had known the risk and taken it rather than coasting out easy. Got to give him credit.
“Well,” he said after three minutes of silence, “if I’m the only one who’s got anything to say, we might as well not waste the group’s time.”
The five of us stood as Dr. F said: “The nurse has paperwork for me. I’ll sit here in the Day Room in case any of you want to come back, talk more.”
Without a word, we turned and walked away. Write-offs and walk-aways came easy to us. We were trained and experienced.
Still, I looked back. Saw him sitting there, alone in the Day Room as the nurse walked toward the Ward door. Saw a pile of files on one chair beside Dr. F. Saw him take a fountain pen from inside that tweed sports jacket. Saw him push his gold framed glasses up his nose and turn his emerald eyes toward the file open on his lap.
Inside my room, I shut the door. A moment later, I heard Russell in his room blasting the Barenaked Ladies’ acoustic cut of: “Lying In Bed (Just Like Brian Wilson Did).” Blasting it loud, cranked up so that no one would mistake his playing a ballad about artistic crack-ups as passive aggression.
Then I zoned out. Dr. Jacobsen called it disassociation. Laymen might mistake it for a nap, sitting in a chair, eyes draped, oh so completely gone.
Until abruptly I blasted back.
Was sitting there. My chair. My room. My books. My…
Eric. Standing in front of me, shifting back and forth from foot to foot like an anxious third grader locked out of the bathroom.
My door was open. Eric opened my door! Came in without being told to! Never before, never imaginable before, and now…
Now he stood in front of me. Shifting from shoe to shoe. His face twisted, pale.
“Oh-oh,” said Eric. “Oh-oh!”
5
Dr. Friedman sat on a metal folding chair in our sunlit Day Room.
Dead.
My guts told me that the moment Eric led me into the Day Room, though I wasn’t certain until I pressed my fingers into the rubbery flesh of Dr. F’s neck, found no pulse.
Down in his lair, Russell had moved on to the Beatles’ White Album. The sound of “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide ’Cept For Me And My Monkey” poured into the Day Room where Eric and I stood beside the sitting corpse.
Then I spotted the smudge of blood in Dr. F’s right ear.
“Eric: go get all the others! Now! And only them!”
Two minutes later, five of us stood staring at the slumped body of our therapist.
“Gone before he thought,” said Russell.
“Look at this,” I said, pointing to the blood smudge in Dr. F’s right ear.
Zane held his long white hair back, leaned over and looked. “There it is.”
“Somebody went to school,” said Russell. “Sorry Dr. F.”
Hailey said: “What is it?”
“DAST,” said Russell.
DAST—Defense Against Subtle Termination. A secret training program run jointly by the Pentagon and the Agency. Trouble Boys like Russell, Zane and I cycle through for training. Like the military’s DAME program—Defense Against Mechanical Entry—DAST obscures what it teaches. DAME may teach how to defend against mechanical entry, or as you might call it, burglary, but it for sure turns out lock pickers and safe crackers. DAST teaches “defense” against “subtle termination.” Learning tricks the opposition might use to kill you in Bangkok gives you a better chance of getting in and out of such a town alive. Of course, knowledge you pick up along that educational path… Assassination is illegal for U.S. spies.
“Not a perfect job,” said Russell. “Whatever was rammed through Doc’s right ear up to his brain pan kept its path open long enough to let blood trickle out. Maybe in the boonies this could be passed off as a stroke, but here, the coroner will know the score.”
“’Xactly,” muttered Zane.
“He’s not the one who’s supposed to die,” said Hailey.
“Logic says one of us killed him,” I said.
“Means, motive, and opportunity,” said Russell.
“He wanted to change everything,” said Zane. “He told us so.”
“Him sitting down here,” I said. “Alone. We all had the chance.”
“None of us wanted what he did,” said Hailey.
“Well Dr. F,” sai
d Russell. “Looks like you won. Everything’s changed.”
The pat Russell gave the dead man’s shoulder was meant to be congratulatory.
Dr. Friedman tumbled out of his chair to sprawl on the floor.
“Sorry!” Russell gave us his shit-happens shrug.
“What a brilliant murder,” I said. “We’re trapped here as the perfect fall guys. We’re certified dangerous and crazy. Nobody will believe we’re innocent.
“So did we kill him?” I asked.
I stared at their faces—Russell, Zane, Hailey, Eric. They stared at mine.
Together we said: “Nah!”
“So,” said Hailey, “if we didn’t do it, who did?”
“Here’s the more urgent question,” said Zane. “Are we targeted, too?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “If the CIA buys the killer’s frame and calls us guilty, they’ll bury us. If we miraculously convince the Agency that we’re not guilty, then someone else is—and we’re witnesses, extreme liabilities to the killer or to a cover-up.”
“Oh boy,” said Eric. “Oh boy.”
We whirled to look at the Ward door. Locked shut.
Zane said: “One hour to dinner.”
“Meatloaf,” said Eric.
From Russell’s room came: “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
“We are,” said Zane, “in trouble.”
“Exposed,” said Hailey. “Endangered.”
“You know what else?” I said. “Pissed-off. Some hitter wrecked our Ward, set it up so Admin will blunder around like a herd of elephants. Chain us up. Transfer us. Dope us more. Sure, a killer here means some spy has penetrated America’s top secrets. That’s a huge security risk, but what pisses me off is that a mechanic nailed our Doc.”
Hailey asked: “Was it something we said?”
“If it was,” said Zane, “even worse. Then they’re truly after us.”
“Ghosts.” I shook my head. “They always get you.”
Russell said: “The inmates won’t run this asylum anymore.”
“Whatever happens will be terrible,” said Hailey. “Won’t respect who we are. What happened to us. What’s going on with us. Our fate.”
“Whatever the big bad is, it’s coming for us,” said Zane.
“They promised safe here,” said Eric.
“Big surprise,” said Russell. “They lied.”
In physics, critical mass is obtained when the minimum number of individual elements to create a transforming process coalesce in one time/space continuum.
Consider us. Five maniacs. Spies. Trained, experienced professional paranoids who’d been programmed to Do Something. Scarred beyond repair, but still, Once Upon A Time We’d Been Somebody. Forces with which to reckon. Now locked in a castle. With the corpse of a guy who’d earned our respect. Whose murder we were set up to take the fall for. With Keepers scheduled to catch Our Whole Situation in less than an hour. We had nothing to gain but all that we had left was on the line to lose.
Physicists, psychiatrists and snipers talk about the trigger. The event that starts the chain reaction. When I think about our trigger, I hear the sudden wave of silence rushing into the Day Room that April Tuesday afternoon as Russell’s CD player shut off.
There we stood.
Five maniacs staring down at a corpse.
With no theme music.
“Two choices,” I said. “We either stay here and suffer what gets done to us…”
“Or?” said Russell.
“We bust out of this place.”
6
“Wild,” said Russell. “But we gotta take the Doc with us.”
“He’s dead!” I yelled.
Zane said: “Nobody gets left behind.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Well,” said Hailey, “technically… yeah.”
“Think of it as poetry,” argued Russell. “A great lyric. You can’t just walk away from a killer line because it’s inconvenient.”
“Think of it as strategy,” said Zane. “We take him with us, we fuck with The Bad Boys’ set-up. What could be smarter than that?”
“Or more fun?” said Russell.
Hailey sighed. “Victor: if it was you lying there, what would you want?”
In a blink, I saw it.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “You’re right. We’ve got to take Dr. F. We need him to get past security.”
And I told them how. Said: “Get your GODS, link up back here in 15 minutes.”
“Wait,” said Russell.
“Now what?”
“You forgot.” Zane’s eyes pointed up through the ceiling.
Eric nodded as Hailey told me: “Good people say good-bye.”
7
RAVENS Castle has five floors.
First Floor is Administration, doors with electronic locks, the Keepers’ lounge, the Computerized Monitoring System installed before the secret black money that creates the Castle’s budget started being siphoned off to fuel the war in Iraq.
Second Floor is the Medical Unit with an operating room where you can get a face switch, a fingerprint graft, a bullet removed. You can stay on Second Floor and never know about your upstairs neighbors.
Third Floor belongs to Wards Able, Bravo, and Crazyville.
Able is for short timers. The temporary hysterics. Spy Plane/Jungle Crash crispy critters adjusting to burn scars they can never tell the truth about. Pentagon Apocalypse Bluesboyz haunted by mushroom cloud/plague dreams. Able Ward houses the just passing throughs who the doctors will be able to recycle.
Bravo is for the broken but bandageable. Battleground Beirut Bravehearts who went batshit but who can get by after six months or so of Castle therapy. Bravo veterans take their bandaged act home and lead “a productive life” sitting in their living room clothed in cover lies, waiting for their cried-out wife to finally walk out for good and leave them watching flickers of the TV or their NSA monitored computer, leave them waiting for the mailman to deliver their secret pension check.
Crazyville is our country. All the Wards have locked doors, but to get out of Crazyville takes knowing extra keypunch security codes. Took the five of us days to spy out those codes. Pros like us should have busted the codes sooner. But don’t forget, we were crazy. Functional but so far gone nobody figured we were ever coming back.
Fourth Floor is Main Street. The dining room with its serving line. Main Street has a “cyber room” to let you surf the Internet—our Keepers track every wave. Russell had “a thing” in 2003 with a Security Monitor who got so intrigued by the list of songs he snagged through file sharing programs that she finessed a security review to meet him, and fell into the darkness of his sunglasses. She cried when Admin caught her, swore the sex was consensual, that she’d never known the slamming surge of being bent over her desk by anyone except Russell, but still they shipped her out to sanitizing duty at an Alaskan NSA listening post. Next to the cyber room is a gym with weights, Eric’s treadmill, and Hailey’s mirrored ballet studio that Russell, Zane and I used for gung fu.
Fifth Floor of our Castle is a long corridor of locked doors.
My black shoes stepped with nary a sound on the Fifth Floor’s sunlit green tile. I eased my way down the corridor from the stairwell exit. Scents of ammonia and tears floated around me as I pressed against Door Number Six and oh so softly, tapped it with our secret knock, slid open the observation slot. He’s one of those people who even his lovers call by his last name, so I whispered: “Malcolm!”
Wait for it. Wait/NO TIME GOTTA EVAC OR THEY’LL—Wait.
Finally, unseen, he said: “You’re Victor.”
“Right.”
“Last visitor was the woman. Hailey. Two breakfasts ago. I had a lemon poppy seed muffin went purple smoke.”
“We meant to visit more often.”
“No excuse.”
“But true. You were the first. Snuck up here. Took me, oh, awhile to figure you were real—did not eat yours! Before you, was decades of secret lonely. Thanks.”
“Yeah, well it was good for us, too.” Locked alone in that padded room, he couldn’t see me smile. “Sneaking up here kept us sharp. Kept us us. Plus, we could have been you. Always gotta remember that. We could be you.”
“Does that work the other way around?”
“Sure,” I lied. Switched back to true. “Besides, we like you.”
“I’m such a charmer.”
“Malcolm, we’ve got to go.”
Silence of a dozen heartbeats. I leaned on the locked steel door.
Then he said: “Who?”
“The five of us. Hailey. Zane. Russell won’t be able to sneak his Walkman up here to play you more songs. Eric, I wish we could have let him come up here alone so you could have gotten to know him better, but we didn’t dare because, ah, because…”
“Because in a freak I might have triggered him.”
“Yeah. Listen, we got dropped into a hit—or it got dropped onto us.”
“How many down?”
“One—so far.”
“Seven bodies fell on me. The first time. Do you remember 1974? Nixon?”
“I was still wearing diapers. Sorry about this, but we got a run.”
“You mean a mission, not flee. He’s talking to me! Put your tits away! When?”
“We’re all but on the road.”
“I did seven runs. Really six, because that first one wasn’t supposed to exist but—Was too my fault! And the airport bathroom! Victor?”
“Yeah?”
“Run hard.”
“Hang in there, Condor.”
“They took my belt away when they locked me up.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes we do worms and Sten gun! Can I help?”
In 40 minutes, the understaffed Keepers were scheduled to head toward Ward C so they could escort us to the elevators for the ride up to Main Street’s meatloaf.