Don't Say a Word

by Andrew Klavan

  But all the same, she hesitated for a long time. She stood for a long time confronting the door as if it were an adversary. She was looking up warily from under her eyebrows at the thing.

  D’Annunzio kept knocking and calling. “Mrs. Conrad? You can open up now. It’s all right.”

  Only after a while, only slowly, did she raise her hand. She watched it rise and move forward as if it didn’t belong to her. She wanted to call out to it, to tell it to stop, be careful. But it rose all the same, gripped the doorknob.

  She turned the knob and pulled it. The door swung open.

  She was looking at a man, a man standing out in the hallway. He was obese; sloppily fat, overflowing with fat as if his body had been crammed full of food until it just couldn’t hold it anymore. Checked shirt and blue pants both ballooned toward her as if they would burst. His jacket dangled at his sides as if it had been blown apart.

  Aggie peered at him. She blinked and squinted, her mouth hanging open, her face turned half away. She saw his round, gnarled face with the hard little eyes in it. She smelled him: his gas, his unwashed sweat, his corruption.

  The man was standing still, but he was breathing as hard as if he were running. He lifted one meaty arm. His jacket rose from his side as he did. He had a badge in his chubby paw, a badge and an ID card.

  “Detective D’Annunzio, Mrs. Conrad,” he said. “The kidnappers have vacated the Sinclair apartment. They’re not watching you anymore. You can come out now.”

  Aggie just stood there. She blinked at him again. “Come out?” she said. Her voice sounded very weak to her. Very weak and far away.

  The fat man nodded. Uncertainly, Aggie stepped toward him. She stepped across the threshold of her apartment. She stepped out into the hall. She turned her head and looked down the hall. She saw the row of brown doors on the right. The elevator doors on the left. She turned back and looked at the fat man.

  She was very close to him now. The smell of his old sweat and his old farts was like a cloud around her. She smelled his breath. It was hot and sour. She looked in his eyes. She knew he was mean and small.

  She took another step and laid her head against his chest. The smell of him surrounded her. It was warm. She closed her eyes.

  She felt D’Annunzio’s chubby hand as it patted the back of her head.

  Then she was sitting in an armchair. There were men all around her, and there were men’s voices. She had a glass of water in her hands. Someone had given it to her and she held it tightly. She liked the cool feel of it against her palm. She sipped at it now and then. She liked the touch of the ice against her dry lips.

  She listened to the burr of the men’s voices. The voices were deep and solid. She found them comforting. They reminded her of when she was a child, when she would sit in front of the TV in the living room and hear the grown-ups talking at the kitchen table. Daddy and Mom and Uncle Barry and Aunt Rose. She would stare at Heckle and Jeckle chasing around before her on the television, and she would hear the low rumble of the grownup voices, and she would sense important events and bask in the serenity of her own helplessness. Whatever it was, she knew, they would take care of it …

  She sipped her water. Her eyes moved vaguely over the men in the room. She watched them talking. She watched their serious lips, and their sharp jaws, the dark shadows of their beards. Two of the men were patrolmen in uniform. They kept coming in and going out. They were both very young, just boys really, but they looked grim and strong and busy. They wore heavy utility belts on their hips and their heavy guns hung from them. All of the other men were wearing jackets and ties, which made them look businesslike and capable. Aggie turned to watch as one of them put his hand on his hip and brushed back his jacket, exposing the gun on his belt.

  Her eyes came to rest finally on D’Annunzio. D’Annunzio was standing by the nursery door. One of his shirttails was almost entirely out of his pants now. Aggie could see a patch of the white skin near his navel. His gold tie was pulled open to reveal a thick, hairy neck. Aggie remembered the stench of him, and the hot damp of his shirt against her cheek. What was he like? A man who smelled like that, who let himself smell like that? She watched him and thought: He did not care. He lived alone and he did not like anyone and he did not care. She imagined that he would do filthy things and not care at all about them: sleep with a whore or steal money. Or even kill someone. He would kill someone and then spit on the ground, she thought.

  She hoped he would not leave her. She wanted to be able to see him. It made her feel a little calmer to have him near.

  D’Annunzio was talking to another man, a tall man in a black suit. That was the special agent, she remembered. Special Agent Calvin. She remembered he had introduced himself and asked her questions. He had been very intelligent and grim, but he was a little too pretty. He had wavy blond hair and a cleft, jutting jaw that seemed chiseled from stone. D’Annunzio was talking to him and she imagined D’Annunzio was telling him how things were.

  And then someone inside the nursery took a picture. A flash went off as Aggie watched. She saw an arc of the rainbow she had painted on the wall starkly illuminated. For a moment, her anxiety broke through again. It washed over her. It choked her. Maybe the kidnappers were still watching, she thought, maybe they saw what she’d done, how she’d called the police and maybe …

  She bent forward a little and shuddered and fought for breath.

  Oh, Jessie. Oh, Nathan, our poor baby.

  She let her breath out slowly. She straightened. She lifted her water glass to her mouth. The rim of it pattered against her teeth as her hand trembled. She sipped the water. She listened to the men’s voices. She let the low, strong murmur of them envelop her, the steady hum that only sometimes broke into words:

  “ … his bare hands?”

  “ … what the doctor said.”

  “ … some kind of monster …”

  “ … looked just like the Sinclair case. I remember they were saying that …”

  “Look what we found.”

  This last was a little louder than the rest. Aggie lifted her eyes toward the voice. There was a young man standing in the doorway. He was holding up a small plastic bag with something inside it.

  “It’s a transmitter. It was hooked up in the box downstairs,” he said. “Has the phone been dusted? Try the phone.”

  One of the other men picked up Aggie’s phone. He listened. “Yeah, it’s working now.”

  “Can’t even trace it,” said the man in the doorway. He chuckled with wonder, shaking his head. Then he moved away, down the hall, out of sight.

  “Mrs. Conrad?”

  She knew by the sour smell that it was D’Annunzio. She turned to him, smiling dimly.

  The fat man was trying very hard to kneel by her chair. He was wheezing with the effort. Finally, his face was level with hers. She looked into the gnarls and crags of it. D’Annunzio had a slim notebook opened in one of his hands. He looked down at it. As he did, she saw his marbly eyes flick over her breasts and then away quickly. She felt something rise in her throat.

  “Uh … listen, uh, ma’am,” he said. “Do you know a doctor by the name of, uh, let’s see: Jerald Sachs? He’s the … director at Impellitteri Psychiatric Facility.”

  Aggie nodded. “Yes. Nathan knew him. He knows him. Why?”

  “He was a friend of your husband’s?”

  “No. No, Nathan didn’t … doesn’t like him. He’s too … political, he said.”

  “What about a woman named … here it is: Elizabeth Burrows? Ever hear of her?”

  She shook her head.

  “A patient at Impellitteri.”

  “No,” she said. “I mean … well, Nathan doesn’t tell me patients’ names. But it … I don’t know, it does sound familiar somehow.”

  “Yeah. You probably read it in the papers.”

  “That’s right. That’s right. A murder in the newspapers.”

  D’Annunzio’s round head bobbed up and down. He stroked his chin
with one hand, looked down at the notebook. “I don’t know what any of this means, all right? But I’ll tell you what’s happening up to this point. Dr. Sachs was found about a half hour ago. He was tied up under a bed at Impellitteri. The bed was assigned to this Elizabeth Burrows woman, in the forensic ward, where they keep the prisoners. Sachs had been knocked unconscious, with a chair it looked like. And your husband was seen leaving the hospital with Miss Burrows …” He turned his arm and looked at the watch squeezed around his thick wrist. “It’s after eleven now so it was over two hours ago.”

  Aggie shook her head again. “Nathan wouldn’t hit someone with a chair. He wouldn’t hit anybody.”

  “Well … you know … Well … okay,” said D’Annunzio. He flipped the notebook closed. He stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Cleared his throat, brushed back his hair. “The thing is, this Sachs character is refusing to talk, won’t tell us a fuh … uh, you know, anything. He’s still pretty punchy but … I mean, he’s already looking to get himself lawyered-up, you know? So there’s not much chance we’ll get anything out of him tonight, you see what I’m saying? I don’t …”

  His voice trailed away. He was silent for a moment. Then, with a deep grunt, he hoisted himself to a standing position.

  “You mean, you think Nathan helped her escape?” Aggie said suddenly.

  “Well, we don’t …”

  “You think they took Jessie so that Nathan would help a murderess escape?”

  D’Annunzio shrugged his big shoulders. “What can I say? Could be. We don’t know.”

  Aggie looked up at him. She caught his eyes flicking away from her chest again. She held his eyes with her own and he looked at her. He looked, she thought, as if he knew something about her.

  “He would, you know,” she told him quietly.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Hit a man with a chair,” she said. “If he had to. He would kill him, if he had to, or anything. He would do anything.”

  D’Annunzio nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “D’Annunzio.”

  It was Special Agent Calvin, calling from the nursery door. His eyes were sharp and bright. He beckoned D’Annunzio over. The fat man waddled over to him.

  Aggie turned away. She sank away from him into herself. She sat still, trying not to shiver, trying not to let the fear break through again. She held her glass of water tightly. She listened to the voices of the men: ceaseless, deep, hypnotic.

  “ … the super around the corner …”

  “Yeah, he was sweating like a pig.”

  “Get this. He says, ‘I thought they were only drug dealers.’”

  “ … one sorry mick, I’m telling you …”

  “ … help Dr. Conrad …”

  “ … you hear about that … ?”

  “ … found another stiff downtown …”

  “ … was it, downtown … ?”

  “ … just on the radio …”

  “ … got to help him—Dr. Conrad …”

  “ … they think it’s connected with this. The girl, the patient …”

  “You’ve got to help Dr. Conrad.”

  “ … and the guy is crying, can you believe … ?”

  “ … really cut up …”

  “ … Dr. Conrad. Help him.”

  “ … the dead one … ?”

  “ … under a Dumpster …”

  “ … who says there’s a connection …”

  “Someone has got to help Dr. Conrad! You’ve got to help him! Please!”

  The men’s voices ceased altogether. The shrill cry hung in the air. It was a woman’s cry. It brought Aggie’s face up, made her look around, startled, through the figures of the men.

  “Please,” the woman cried to them again. “Please. Please listen to me. Someone has to help him. Dr. Conrad. They took his daughter. And now they’re trying to take my mother out. Please.”

  Then Aggie saw her. She was passing among them like a specter. Staggering forward stiffly, ghostly, step by step. The men stood where they were, struck silent, unmoving. They stared at her as she walked through the middle of them as if down an aisle. Her hands were held as if bound behind her. Her eyes were so large and white they seemed to take up most of her face. And there was blood, Aggie saw now. Blood all over her. Drenching and staining the wrinkled pink shift she wore, streaked down her cheeks, matting clumps of her strawberry-blond hair.

  “You’ve got to. Got to help him. Please. Someone—you’ve got to help Dr. Conrad. It’s Terry. He’s real. He’s going to take out my mother. Please.”

  “Hey, miss—damn it—hold on just a minute there.”

  The command—the deep male sound of the voice—seemed to wake the room up. The murmur of voices began again.

  “What’d you bring her in here for?”

  “Hold on there, miss.”

  “Hold on to her. Someone get her.”

  “Hey, you can’t just come in here.”

  The aisle that had seemed to open for her closed suddenly. Men moved in on either side of her, taking her by her bare and bloody arms. Her hands still behind her, she struggled against their grips. Aggie saw the handcuffs around her wrists.

  The woman cried out. “No! You’ve got to listen! You’ve got to help him.”

  “All right, all right, just take it easy, lady. Just hold on.”

  “Hold her.”

  “Please!” The cry seemed to have been torn from deep in her throat. Her arms held fast by men on either side, she threw her head back and howled at the ceiling. “Please.”

  “Wait.” Aggie tried to set her water glass down. It tipped over on the side table. It rolled off the table, smashed on the floor. “Stop that, for Christ’s sake!” she said. She was on her feet. She was holding her hand out. “Stop.”

  The sound of her voice, the shattering glass, stopped everything again. The room went quiet. The men’s faces turned. Aggie felt their hard eyes on her. She glanced at D’Annunzio. He was looking at her too, waiting.

  She looked at the others, at all of them. “Well, let her talk,” she said to them softly. “Let her go. Let her talk.”

  The men turned from Aggie to the other woman. Slowly, the hands on her arms relaxed. The men released her, stepped back a little. The woman stood swaying on her feet, her head still thrown back, her eyes still raised toward the ceiling.

  Then her chin came forward. Her face lowered. She looked through the men. She looked straight at Agatha.

  Agatha brushed the hair out of her own face, looked across the room at the other woman. The woman stared at her with wild confusion, her mouth open, her head shaking.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  Agatha answered gently, “I’m his wife. Who are you?”

  The woman shook her head another moment. Then she said, “I’m his Elizabeth.”

  And she collapsed to the floor.

  Eddie the Screw

  The Correction Department cruiser bounced against the Hart Island pier. Sport went over the side with the line and held the boat close. The machinery man came out on deck. He climbed over the rail unsteadily. When he was standing on the pier next to Sport, Sport threw the line back onto the cruiser. The guard waved down at him from behind the wheel. He called out to Sport in a harsh whisper.

  “Eleven-ten at the latest, Sporty. Gotta be back for the change of shift.”

  Sport waved back at him. “An hour and a half. I’ll be here. No sweat.”

  The cruiser pulled away from the dock. It turned in the water and buzzed back toward City Island. A minute later, the mist closed over it. The sound of its engine faded.

  It was quiet on the island, except for the plash of waves against the beach.

  Sport took a flashlight out of his windbreaker pocket. He played its beam briefly over the area around. In the distance, beyond a stand of trees, he could just make out the silhouette of the modules: the old gray barracks sitting behind a barbed-wire fence. In the old days, when Sport had been here, the prisoners wh
o volunteered to work the island had lived in those modules around the clock. Now, the city saved money by driving them out here from Rikers every day.

  Now, at night, Hart Island was completely deserted.

  A thin asphalt road wound away from the pier. Sport and the machinery man started along it. Autumn trees, rattling their last leaves in the wind, quickly grew thick at the road’s edges. Massive old buildings, their brickwork crumbling, hunched amid those trees, peered out through the branches. Sport’s flashlight played over the jagged glass in their empty windows.

  “Spooky shit,” he said.

  The machinery man said nothing.

  They walked on under the trees.

  Sport knew the way to the graveyard. This place was written on his memory—as his home ground was, like the streets of Jackson Heights. The jungly summer heat among the trees, the bitter winter wind off the water—he could feel these sometimes, like a memory in his flesh. He could see the heavy-hanging sky—misted and colorless by day, starless by night—he could see it pressing down over the long trenches, the white headstones. He could see the skells, the prisoners in their greens, shambling from their gray barracks to meet the latest load of coffins at the pier. He could hear them laughing among themselves, glad to be out in the open air. Glad to be free of Rikers and the boredom and the stench of sweat and the prospect of stone. Hell, they were the privileged few, these gravediggers—you had to be inside for under a year and have no outstanding warrants to get this spot. Yes, these guys were privileged to be hauling the pine boxes from the truck to the trenches; to be piling up the bodies of broke whores and homeless drunks, of newborns who’d bought it in foaming seizures ’cause their mommies pumped their wombs too full of drugs … . They were honored and privileged, happy and proud to be here.

  But not Sport. Sport wasn’t any of those things.

  This had been the bottom of his life, this place. This place and Rikers. He had reached the very rock bottom here. With no training but years of imitating the Frank Sinatra cassettes he played on his Walkman, this was the only decent job he could get. And he could only get this job because his mother had a friend (the walking penis who’d been giving her booze money for the last five years) who worked for the city Correction Department.