Lights Out

by Peter Abrahams

  “Keep guessing,” Raleigh said and walked out the door, passing the attendant without leaving a tip. Her eyes were on Eddie.

  “He didn’t even wash his hands,” Eddie said.

  “Ninety percent of them don’t,” the attendant replied. “I wrote a poem about it.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “It’s long,” said the attendant, “but it starts, ‘You stupid fucking fuckers / with piss-dripping dicks / and silver-dripping pockets / divine Manhattan Judases, artists of betrayal / so careful with every scheming breath / why do you forget to wash your pissy digits?’ ”

  Quite different from the poem Eddie knew best, but he liked it. “I like it,” he said.

  “You do? You’re not in publishing, by any chance?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you know someone in publishing? A university press will do.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Shit.”

  The door to one of the toilets opened. A man came out, short and fat, wearing a dark suit. It was Senor Paz. He went to the sink beside Eddie, washed his hands. They were plump pink hands with manicured nails; not what Eddie pictured as a surgeon’s hands. Eddie started to back away, thinking that Paz hadn’t recognized him. Then Paz spoke.

  “Young lady,” he said, “will you leave us for a moment, please?”

  She went out. Things came together in Eddie’s mind, and he realized where he was.

  “I thought you were calling it Neuron.”

  Paz smiled. “Or Synapse. But our consultants on Madison Avenue came up with Brainy’s. More impudent, they said, as though impudence were somehow desirable. What do you think?”

  “I like Neuron better.”

  “As do I,” said Paz. “You strike me as an intelligent man.” He sighed-theatrically perhaps, yet what wasn’t theatrical in a place like this? — and looked melancholy. “But isn’t there an English expression about being too smart for one’s own good?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “We’ll explore the subject of what it all means in good time,” said Paz. “Let’s just say some of us are very disappointed.” He glanced over Eddie’s shoulder.

  Maybe it was the pearly light, or possibly the rounded surfaces. Both disorienting: dulling the fifteen-years-honed edge on Eddie’s alertness. He didn’t spin around, or start to spin around, until it was too late to avoid the first blow, that brought him to his knees, and the second, that sent him into unconsciousness.

  Outside: Day 5

  21

  A woman said, “One-twenty over eighty.”

  Eddie opened his eyes, looked up into a blue-white glare. He saw a white ceiling with powerful lights hanging from it. He tried to turn his head to see more but couldn’t. He couldn’t move his head, couldn’t move any part of his body. He started to say something stupid, like “What the hell?” but found he couldn’t open his mouth. Something was clamped tight under his chin. All he could do was make an angry noise in his throat. He made it.

  Soothing music played in the background. Massed violins. The woman’s face came into view. She wore a surgical mask. Her eyes looked into his. There was something familiar about her.

  “Pulse-eighty-two,” she said.

  “Remove the gown,” said a man he couldn’t see.

  Eddie recognized the speaker: Senor Paz.

  The woman’s face withdrew, and Eddie found himself looking again into the blue-white glare. He felt a draft around his groin. Then something sharp and silver came gleaming into view: a scalpel. It came close to his eyes. The hand holding it was pink and plump, with manicured nails.

  Eddie tried to get up, tried to move, tried to struggle against whatever bound him. He couldn’t even squirm. He made a noise in his throat, a raw noise, as loud as he could. The soothing music played on. The scalpel turned, inches from his eyes. Even as it did, he recognized the tune: “Malaguena.”

  The scalpel moved away, down across his chest and out of sight. After a few moments, he heard Paz say, “Right there.”

  Eddie tried to make a noise in his throat. Now he couldn’t even do that, although nothing was stopping him. Time passed. He didn’t feel anything, didn’t see anything but blue-white glare, didn’t hear anything but “Malaguena” played soothingly on countless strings; yet he sensed work going on around him.

  He heard Paz grunt. Then the pink, plump hand swung up into his view; the pink, plump hand now spattered with blood. In the manicured fingers dangled a little pouchlike object Eddie couldn’t identify at first. And then he did: it was a severed scrotum, with testicles still inside.

  Something stung his arm. Everything went white, then black.

  Eddie awoke in a pleasant room. There were books, soft lights, pictures on the walls. The curtains were drawn. It might have been any time at all, but it felt like night.

  He lay on a hospital bed. He couldn’t move his arms or his legs, but he could raise his head. He raised it, looked down at his body. He was naked except for the bandages wrapped around him from just below the rib cage to midthigh. His wrists and ankles were bound to the safety bars along the sides with hard rubber restraints. He felt no pain, but he remembered everything. He lost control of his face. It began to crumple, like the face of a baby about to bawl.

  The door opened. Senor Paz came in, glancing at his watch. “How’s the patient?”

  Without thinking, Eddie tried to burst up off the table. He didn’t budge. At least he got control of his face.

  “Quite pointless,” said Paz.

  Eddie spat at him, a gob of spit that landed far short.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” said Paz. “Apart from the vulgarity, it’s unhygienic.”

  Eddie tried again to burst free, tried even harder. Again, he got nowhere with the restraints; but he felt the end of one of the safety bars, the end near his right hand, giving slightly. Be smart. He stopped struggling. He couldn’t possibly free himself while Paz was watching.

  “That’s better,” said Paz. “It won’t do any good, you know.”

  Be smart, Eddie told himself, but he couldn’t stop his voice. “I’m going to kill you,” it said. “And the nurse and anyone else I can find.”

  Paz nodded. “Understandable. The pity is you brought it all on yourself. You didn’t factor in the sort of people you were playing your little tricks on. I find that strange, considering that you must be some kind of survivor, given your history.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Paz sucked impatiently on his teeth. “I can’t believe you still want games. I’m talking about the C-note, of course.”

  Eddie’s voice took off again, up and out of control. “I gave it to you, you stupid fuck.”

  Paz shook his head. “You gave us one hundred dollars. But it wasn’t the right bill. How did you imagine you’d get away with that?”

  It wasn’t the right bill? What did that mean? He’d had two of them, of course, the first rolled in El Rojo’s cigarette, the second won from Bobby Falardeau.

  “It wasn’t the right bill?”

  “Don’t pretend you haven’t known that all along,” said Paz. “It was never a question of the money. We wanted the bill itself. As I’m sure you know.”

  Eddie’s voice rose once more. “You …” He couldn’t say it, couldn’t make it real with words. “You did that to me because I mixed up two bills?”

  “Mix-up?” said Paz. “I don’t think so. Now, to prevent additional … procedures, why don’t you tell me where to find the C-note Senor Cruz gave you?”

  Eddie felt a laugh, wild and insane, building inside him. He didn’t let it out because he was afraid of the pain that might come. He squeezed all that wildness and insanity into contempt, and said: “I used it.”

  Paz came closer. His hands curled around the safety bar.

  “A lie, and not particularly inventive.”

  Eddie was silent. Paz slapped him across the face with the back of his hand; the way Jack had long ago at Galleon Beach. Then
he took a deep breath, as though trying to compose himself. “More games,” he said. “You used the money. Where?”

  Eddie remembered where: at the restaurant in Connecticut where he’d eaten with Karen. He even remembered the name: Au Vieux Marron, although he didn’t know what it meant. But why tell Paz the truth? Why give him a chance to recover the bill? He wasn’t going to let Eddie out alive, no matter what happened.

  “Suppose,” said Paz, “you really did spend the money. If you tell us where, you can leave.”

  Eddie let some time pass, as though he were making up his mind. Then he said: “Do I have your word on it?”

  “I give you my word.”

  The insane laugh rose again. Eddie stuffed it back down and said: “Grand Central Station.”

  Paz grasped the safety bar. A vein pulsed in his forehead, jagged, like a lightning bolt. “Grand Central Station?”

  “At the newsstand.”

  “You’re lying. You don’t believe I’ll keep my word.”

  “I know goddamned well you won’t. Because if you do I’ll come back and kill you, and the nurse, and whoever else I can find.”

  Paz smiled. “I don’t think you’ll want to do that.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  Paz leaned closer. Eddie could smell his breath: it smelled like meat going bad. “Just for the sake of argument, what did you buy?”

  “Cigarettes.”

  “With a hundred-dollar bill?”

  “It didn’t bother them.”

  “What kind of cigarettes?”

  “Camels.”

  Without another word, Paz left the room. Eddie knew what he was doing: searching through his clothes for corroborating evidence. It was there: the half-full pack left in the pocket of Jack’s corduroy pants.

  Paz returned in less than a minute with the cigarettes. He shook them out of the pack; some fell on Eddie’s chest. He even peered inside, as though the bank note might be there. Then he studied the writing on the outside of the pack. Eddie foresaw the direction Paz’s thoughts would take. If he could prove that the cigarettes came from the newsstand at Grand Central, then Eddie was probably telling the truth and the C-note was gone, back in circulation. If he could prove that the cigarettes hadn’t come from there, then Eddie was lying and he probably still had it. There was also the possibility that he couldn’t prove it either way.

  Eddie reached that point a half second before Paz. Paz frowned, slipped the empty pack inside his jacket, and said: “We shall see.” He went out.

  Eddie lay still for a few moments. Then he threw up all over himself.

  Rage began to grow inside him, so fast and strong he felt his chest would split. He wanted to release some huge sound but couldn’t, not without bringing Paz. Control, Nails, control. That’s how you got Louie and the Ozark brothers, that’s how you’ll get him. Nails. Yes. Now there was no escaping that identity. The future was clear: red and short.

  Eddie pushed against the safety bar with his right arm, pushed as hard as he could. Something slipped a little inside the joint where the bar met the bed frame. He pulled back the other way, suddenly and with all his might. That brought the sound of shearing metal and then a clink, as though a bolt had fallen down a hollow tube. Eddie jerked against the safety bar. The end sprang out of the bed frame.

  He slid the restraint off the bar, reached across to the restraint on his left arm and unbuckled it. A few seconds later he was free.

  Eddie sat up and put his feet on the floor, but he didn’t get up right away. He was afraid of igniting the pain. Move, Nails. Slowly, pushing off with his hands like an invalid, Eddie rose. He felt no pain at all. The painkillers were still working.

  He used the sheets to clean himself, glancing down at his bandages as he did. The sight of them made him light-headed; he had to bend down, hands on knees, to keep from fainting.

  Eddie went to the door, listened, heard nothing. He opened it and looked out. He was at one end of a corridor. There were several doors leading off it; at the other end, stairs. He stepped silently into the corridor. Paz. Then the nurse. Then anyone he could find.

  The first door on the right was open. Eddie looked in, saw a simple room with no one in it. It had a bed with a bare mattress; wheeled up beside it was a metal device that resembled a dentist’s x-ray machine. On a radiator in the corner lay the clothes he’d borrowed from Jack; the corduroy pants had slid to the floor.

  Eddie moved toward the radiator. On the way he passed the metal device, saw that there was no x-ray tube suspended from it, but a metal helmet with a chin clamp at the bottom. He stopped, examined it. Then he swung the helmet around and stuck his head inside. It fit him perfectly.

  First there was only blackness and silence. Then a woman spoke. “One-twenty over eighty,” she said. After that came a blue-white glare. Through the glare he saw a white ceiling with powerful lights hanging from it. Music played: “Malaguena.” He saw a woman’s face. She wore a surgical mask, but he recognized her: the mermaid-waitress from Brainy’s.

  “Pulse-eighty-two.” Her voice sounded in his ears.

  “Remove the gown,” said Paz, somewhere out of sight.

  Then came the blue-white glare again, the scalpel, the pink and plump hands with the manicured nails. The scalpel rotated, giving him a good look at it, then disappeared from view.

  Paz again: “Right there.”

  Pregnant pause.

  Blue-white glare.

  “Malaguena.”

  Paz grunted. A nice touch. Then up came the pink, plump hand, red with blood or dye number two, with the dangling pouch in the manicured fingers.

  A prop, or a cadaver’s pouch, or a live one, but not his. Eddie ripped off the helmet, tore at the bandages. Not mine, not mine, not mine. Eddie’s mind repeated those words, but he couldn’t be sure, wasn’t sure, until the bandages fell in a heap and he saw himself, intact.

  Intact. Relief flooded through him like the best drug on earth. Intact.

  Eddie got dressed. He went into the corridor, walked to the end. All the doors were open, all the rooms empty. Eddie went down six flights of stairs, all the way to the bottom. He found himself in a big basement; naked bulbs spread pools of yellow light. There was a steel door at the far end. He went toward it, passing mounds of sand, stacks of plush divans, Persian rugs, papier-mache date palms, and a disassembled minaret made of whitewashed plywood.

  Eddie opened the steel door. It led to a short set of cement steps, smelling of stale beer. At the top was a bulkhead door, locked from the inside with a bolt. Eddie slid it back, pushed open the door, and climbed out onto the street.

  He’d been wrong about the time. It was day. A cloudy day, dreary and dark, probably, but bright enough to make him blink. Eddie let the bulkhead door fall shut and started to move away. A woman on a mountain bike screamed, “You fucking idiot,” and almost ran him down.

  22

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” said the maitre d’ of Au Vieux Marron. “C’ est ferme jusque a cinq et demi.”

  “Knock it off,” said Eddie.

  “Pardon?”

  They stood in the doorway of the restaurant, Eddie outside in the cold rain, the maitre d’ inside, warm and dry. It was about three o’clock and the restaurant was empty. The maitre d’ hadn’t yet put on his jacket and tie. He wore a white shirt, black pants, black vest, and a puzzled smile.

  “Is it part of your job, speaking French all the time?”

  The maitre d’s smile changed to an expression that reminded Eddie of Charles de Gaulle. “I am in the food business, monsieur. French is the language of food.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Then may I ask to what we owe this visit?”

  “I was here last night,” Eddie said, thinking that the maitre d’ spoke better English than he did.

  “Armagnac, avec et sans glacons,” said the maitre d’, recovering his smile; a knowing one.

  “That’s me,” said Eddie. “I want my C-note back.”


  “Pardon?”

  “C-note. It means-”

  “I know the meaning of C-note. What was your complaint?”

  “No complaints,” said Eddie. “I don’t want the actual money. Just the C-note.” Eddie produced the $350 roll and peeled off two fifties. “Here.”

  The maitre d’ eyed the money but made no move to take it. “It’s a rare bill, perhaps?”

  “No. Call it a lucky charm.”

  The knowing expression grew stronger. The maitre d’ began to resemble Claude Rains. “The tables?” he said. “Or the horses?”

  “You’re reading my mind.”

  “I am something of a gambler myself,” said the maitre d’. “Have you been to Atlantic City?”

  “Not yet.”

  The maitre d’ was shocked. “Not yet! And so nearby!” He shook his head. “Atlantic City, quel …” Words failed him in two languages.

  The maitre d’ led Eddie past the kitchen, into the office. A framed autographed photo of Julia Child hung on the wall. The maitre d’ removed it, revealing a small safe. He glanced at Eddie, smiled again, then turned to block his view as he spun the dial. On the desk lay a half-eaten hot dog with ketchup and relish.

  The maitre d’ took out a cash box, carried it to the desk, opened it. Inside were checks, credit-card slips, money. The maitre d’ fingered through it. He picked out a hundred-dollar bill. Then another. And another. He laid the three of them on the desk, Benjamin Franklin side up, flipped them over, then over again.

  “Which is the lucky charm?”

  Eddie studied the bills. There had to be a reason why Paz wanted the bill, had to be a reason why El Rojo had tried to smuggle it to him; something that made it different from the other bills. Invisible ink? Should he take all three, examine them under ultraviolet light? Eddie doubted that El Rojo had that kind of writing material in his cell.

  One of the bills was crisp and unwrinkled; as though fresh from the mint. Eddie concentrated on the other two, holding each up to the light. He looked for clues in Franklin’s prosperous image, in the leafy scene on the back, in the clock tower of Independence Hall, where the time appeared to be 1:25. He checked the margins and the other open spaces for handwriting, but found none. None, unless you counted the tiny numbers inked here and there on the more wrinkled of the two bills.