At End of Day

by George V. Higgins

  “Ah, no, thanks,” Rascob said, watching her get up and leave her desk and go into the office behind her, her buttocks working in her jeans. When she had disappeared from sight he stood up and started for the studio. Through the big window he saw Sexton using both hands to remove the headphones, the small black plastic device he used to enable him to speak sticking out of his right hand above his head. He was looking straight at Rascob.

  Inside the sound-deadened studio, the padded door on its piston closing silently behind him, Rascob said “Hey, Tim,” his greeting sounding oddly muffled to his own ears. He walked over to the control desk as Sexton used his left forearm to push the chair away from it, shifting the prosthesis to his left hand before he extended his right hand to shake.

  “Max,” he said, now holding the device to his throat as he shook Rascob’s hand, his voice electronic and magisterial but also disappearing at once into the white composite-tile walls, “always good to see you—even if I do catch you, ever’ time you come in here, lookin’ at my wife’s perfect ass, thinkin’ about fuckin’ her again.”

  “I never fucked your wife,” Rascob said, uncomfortable but trying not to show it. Depending on Sexton’s mood, that kind of talk could be a bad omen, the run-up to his poisonous routine about making her “available to special friends. And not just men friends, either. If I tell her to go down on another woman, she’ll do it, eat her out. She’ll give you a blow job, if I tell her to. Or fuck you, doesn’t matter. Everybody wonders how I got her, why she stays with me. That’s why. For the excitement. She never knows what I’ll make her do, she’ll have to do next. I’ve got the power over her, total, absolute, complete power. She has to do what I say—anything.

  “I told her that the night we first went with each other. ‘The only way I’ll let you come with me is if you become my slave. Because the only way you’ll ever be happy with a factory reject like me is if you accept me as your master. If you promise me you’ll always do what I say, anything I tell you. Absolutely anything. Because the minute that you don’t, the first time you tell me “No, I’m not gonna do that,” that’ll mean the spell is broken. What’s between us will be gone.’ And she agreed to that, accepted it, you know? Became subject to my will. She made me that promise.”

  Repelled but also fascinated, Rascob had repeated the routine to McKeach. “That’s pure bullshit,” McKeach said immediately. “Cheap-sick, fuckin’ bullshit. We gotta get you laid more often. He can see how horny you are and he’s a bored sick puppy. Don’t get out much. So what he does’s jerk your chain. Fuckin’ with your mind. Either something happened to his balls, same time as his legs, so his own dick’s useless, or else he’s been crippled up so long his fuckin’ brain got warped. Prolly gets off talkin’ like that, poor sick twisted bastard.”

  But nonetheless ever since hearing Sexton’s claims, Rascob each time he had gone there had found himself simultaneously musing that he could have her for the asking and despising himself for believing it was so.

  There was a black tweed swivel chair behind Sexton and Rascob went behind him to pull it out and around in front to face him. He was sitting down as Theresa entered the studio with two tall glasses of iced tea.

  “You hear that, honey?” Sexton said, sounding from afar, accepting one of the glasses. “Max’s just admitted he studies your National Landmark ever’ last time he comes to see us. Thinks about jumpin’ your bones.”

  “Good,” she said, resting her buttocks on the desk and sipping the iced tea. “Keep you from takin’ me for granted.”

  “But as gorgeous as your ass is, dear, Max is a busy man,” Sexton said. “He don’t drive all the way out here just to look at it. Whatcha got on that mind of yours, Max?”

  “I hate talking business, rooms with microphones,” Rascob said. “Man’d shoot me, he saw this. ‘I didn’t teach you nothin’? Bad enough when you just think a place might be miked. Must be nuts, talk like you did, they’re right in front your eyes.” ’

  Sexton laughed, making a sweeping gesture with his left hand. The prosthesis didn’t look like a box at all. It reminded Rascob of the container-applicator of Kiwi Elite black liquid polish that he used on his dress-up loafers when they became badly scuffed. The top end, about an inch and a half long, was at an oblique angle to the vertical handle, about four inches long. It contained the batteries and the small oval speaker mounted in the bottom end. When Sexton held it away from his throat, as he did when he laughed, his convulsing mirth was soundless except for deep wheezing sounds that made Rascob fear he was choking.

  The first time he was present when Sexton did it, Rascob had made a mistake and showed he found the sight unsettling. Sexton had been gratified and explained more than he meant to. “Like watching a man laugh on TV after you hit the Mute button, ain’t it?” he’d said viciously, revealing that it was a tactic he used to prevent the visitor from getting through the encounter without revealing revulsion for afflictions. “ ’Cept you didn’t, and I’m not on TV—I’m right here, in front your eyes. Ain’t normal, is it? Isn’t natural. Crippled man should be satisfied with that, just to be a helpless cripple—not act like he’s gonna up an’ dah right in front of you, on top of it. But that’s what it sounds like, all right—doesn’t sound like I’m havin’ fun, it sounds like I’m gonna die.”

  Rascob still found the display disturbing now as Sexton held the prosthesis away from his throat and laughed at him for admitting fear that he might be being taped, but he no longer winced. Concealing disappointment, Sexton put the appliance back against his throat. “When the mikes’re out where you can see ’em, Max,” he said, “you can be sure you’re safe.

  “So—the stuff. I know the quality’s all right, finest money can buy. FDA-approved, bonded-warehouse-certifed, absolutely pure. Honest dollars can’t buy better, for real human pain. So that can’t be the problem. What is it brings you out?”

  “Quantity,” Rascob said. “Guy who handles for us says he needs more product.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Sexton said, “how’s the man think I’m gonna do that?”

  “Don’t believe he has,” Rascob said. “Thought about it, I mean. That’s not his style, thinking how someone’s gonna do something he wants done. Doesn’t waste his time on logistics. His style’s more just to tell ’em, say, ‘This’s what I want, and when I want it by.’ Then come back when he said he expected it to be there. Only gets mad if it isn’t.” He paused. “More like that, you know?”

  “Because, Jesus Christ,” Sexton said, the Lord’s name chinking unnoticed into the sound-deadened studio like a small metal tool dropped onto a carpet far away, “the reason why what we’ve got works so good is because we took the time, make it work that way.” He frowned. “And we kept it small, only people that we’ve known a long time, and we know we can trust. Question is, can we expand it so it still works just as good, and stays just as safe, but brings in a lot more stuff?

  “See, the secret’s in the paper and the way that we present it,” he said. “Most people with bogus prescriptions look like party animals out foragin’ for supplies, next block party in their neighborhood, the next rave on Long Island, race week in Laconia—because that is what they are. Mean and dirty, maybe, but if you don’t count the STDs, the runny eyes and open sores, bleeding gums and lesions, just as healthy as can be.

  “We look like legitimate patients. We are. And the reason we don’t set off the alarms, we go in the stores to buy stuff we’re gonna sell the Man, ’s because we go into them so often anyway, just for what we really need. Knowin’ the procedures in the places where you’re buyin’. Knowin’ the kind of forms they use; how many hoops they make you jump through, stop you from doin’ what it is we wanna do. That’s how you keep ’em from stallin’ you around an hour or so, givin’ you the hairy eyeball while they wait for the cops to get there.

  “This state and Rhode Island, also Connecticut, I think, ten, eleven others—what they did a few years ago is go to this three-part form, all right?
The doctor makes it out, say, for Dilaudid. Narcotic analgesic, very popular among people who genuinely need it, really have a lot of pain which ain’t gonna go away—’cept when they finally do themselves.

  “Like someone has, say, bone cancer. In the early stages, the doc is gonna gradually go from the two milligrams every six hours, eight migs a day, to four milligrams every four hours, twenty-four migs a day, as the pain gets worse and worse—which is what it always does; it doesn’t go away until the reaper comes. So what the doc is essentially doing’s pain management, all right? That’s all, all the poor bastard can do, matter how sorry he may feel for you—nothing he can do’ll make you get better. And nowadays the doc’s’ll do it faster, deal with pain, get to triple doses, ’cause where the thinking used to be you didn’t want to get the guy addicted, never mind that he was dying, fuckin’ agony, now it’s ‘Jesus Christ, this guy’s in pain, if he could he’d shoot himself. So who gives flyin’ fuck if he’s hooked when they put his best suit on him and and put him in the casket?’

  “So, where it used to be that the schedule ruled the patient—‘Don’t give him the next dose until the clock says it’s time, never mind how bad he hurts, kindah names he’s callin’ you’—now it’s, ‘What the hell’re we savin’ the stuff for, if he’s hurtin’ this bad and we know it’ll help him, the pain?’ Which, having been here while the change was goin’ on, I can tell you as a patient I know which way’s the one I like. And most doctors, they will tell you, they like it better this way too.

  “So this’s now the system, and we know because we’re in it. Seventeen of us now, in this group we put together, play the system carefully—we know how to do this, right? That’s how we all got to know each other—all of us belong support groups, for the problems we have got.

  “Dennis from MCBT in Wakefield gets paper, special watermark and so forth, so that when we take it to the store and they hold it up the light, looks like what they’re used to seeing.

  “Lou from Southern NE Stoma runs a little print shop out of his basement. He’s got all the computer equipment, scanner, state-of-the-art everything down there you could possibly imagine. Once we decide how much we wanna get this time for resale, we go to him for the scrip pads. He makes them up down there. Also the VA insurance cards and the HMO stuff; all the IDs we need.

  “So all right, now let’s say it is Dilaudid we’re after. We’re gonna be gettin’ it from stores where we haven’t been before, naturally—have to branch out our network some ’cause you said we need more product. Whole idea of doin’ this the way we do it is to do it ’thout gettin’ caught. Since the best way to stop a guy from findin’ out you’re buying for the street’s to look like you need it yourself—that’s what we’re tryin’ to make it look like.

  “First time the druggist sees me, I look like I’m comin’ in for meds I need myself. Which I do, of course, but I’m already gettin’ them legitimate, somewheres else, under my own name, where I’ve been for years now. New druggist doesn’t know this, so he’s not suspicious—he gives me what the scrip says. The next time I come in’ll be when I normally would, a refill, I was taking those meds myself.

  “Okay, so here I am now, first-time patient for this store up in East Bumfuck, Vermont. Scrip says my name is Clyde Standish. Pharmacist never saw me before—don’t know me from a load of goats. But he’s gonna get to know me—every month from now on until maybe February, next year, I’m gonna bring in a prescription for a month’s supply, thirty days’ Dilaudid.

  “When the druggist looks at me, see if I look like a Clyde who needs Dilaudid, he’s gonna see this guy, a wheelchair, with a thing so he can talk. So he’s immediately gonna think, ‘Guy’s got cancer,’ which I did, in my throat, but I don’t now. ‘Of the bone,’ which I do not and never did—reason I’m inna chair is because just like a perfect asshole I fell off a staging we were puttin’ up for a USO show, I was in Vietnam, broke my fuckin’ back. But this guy doesn’t know that. ‘And he’s got it through and through.’

  “As many real sick people as he sees all the time, this guy will not be able tah help himself from feeling sorry for me—there I am, a fifty-year-old guy with cancer, hasta use a wheelchair, get around, and then another thing to talk?. They gotta be tough, look people over very carefully ’fore they give them stuff, because they know there’s a market. But at the same time, they don’t wanna do what they call ‘get hardened’ to the human suffering they see all the time. So very few pharmacists’ll argue a prescription with a guy who needs a gadget like I got to have to talk with. This druggist isn’t gonna be surprised a bit when he reads my prescription and sees my doctor, Stephanie Roper, M.D., thinks it’s okay if I have the max recommended dose, twenty-four migs every day, seven-twenty migs a month.”

  “What if he decides to call Doctor Roper and make sure there really is a Doctor Roper and she really wrote that prescription?” Rascob said.

  “Doctor Roper’ll answer and say she did,” Sexton said. “When we go out to break in a new drugstore, the doctor’s phone number Lou prints on the script pad’s for one of our cell phones. Druggist calls it, he gets Terry or someone else workin’ with us, and she verifies the scrip. The code on the pad for the doctor’s license is the actual number for an actual doctor’s federal license to dispense narcotics. It’s not Doctor Stephanie Roper’s—but druggists never check that far, ’less you do something, practically screams at them ‘This paper is a phony.’

  “We don’t. Which is why, two or three months from now, maybe a little sooner, it won’t surprise the druggist that I’ve now got trained when I come in for a refill and he sees that Doctor Roper’s started writing me what the book says is an overdose—six migs six times a day—because he’ll’ve seen me looking like I’m getting smaller, shrinking. Which he will, because I’ll now be wearin’ a shirt that’s way too big for me; some of Terry’s make-up on, puts big black bags under my eyes. I’ll look like a man who needs ten-eighty milligrams a month. Just so he can maybe sleep.

  “Every time I go to see him, right from the beginning, we’ll have some conversation. Regular-guy stuff. This time of year, I first go in, some talk about the Red Sox, spring training, how they look. Or Bill Clinton with his dick out alla time. Never this disease that’s killing me by inches, how much time have I got left. That I bear it all with fortitude, trust in Jesus—never talk about it. Idea is so he gets to know me, poor Clyde Standish, and he gets so he admires my courage, all the suffering I have. I’m dyin’, absolutely. And I keep gettin’ weaker and paler, paler and thinner, month after month, until by the end of next winter he won’t be surprised at all that I stop coming in and my daughter or my son-in-law that I’ve told him I’m staying with has to come in for my prescriptions every month.

  “And then they’ll stop coming in,” Sexton said, his artificial voice rising and eyes shining. “They won’t come in any more, either, because of course brave old Clyde’s time finally came—he either died or else it got so hard for them to take care of him at home he hadda to go inna hospice. Because the way you do this without getting caught is to make it realistic—and then keep it that way. What this druggist now assumes must’ve happened to Clyde is what really happens to cancer patients who need that much painkiller—the pharmacists know the docs’re giving it to them because they’re dying, and that’s why Clyde now has to die. In the natural course of things, dying people die. And the pharmacist never suspects a thing.

  “It’s funny, actually. The hardest part of this racket, hardest thing to do, is kill off this character that works so well. You feel like you’ve become him—you get so you think he exists too, actually kinda like him. And make the druggist who’s been helping him through his sad last days feel bad, too, he realizes Clyde is gone. But you have to do it. Act’s too good to let him live.

  “You keep a dying man dying on a fifty percent overdose of Dilaudid for too long, more’n two or three months, say; pretty soon the pharmacist is gonna get suspicious. ‘This guy’s holding on
too long. Dilaudid alone should’ve killed him by now.’ Then he will start making phone calls, and that’s the last thing that you want. The way you can tell you played a string out too long is that nice scruffy-lookin’ guy at the counter waitin’ for them to mix some pink cough syrup for his poor little kid turns out to be from DEA—and you gotta setta cuffs on.

  “It don’t matter what you’re getting,” Sexton said. “If you’re scoring Darvon, say, which’s nowhere near as strong, your max daily dose’s sixty-five migs every four, three-ninety every day. Give them a month’s scrip for fifteen thousand migs or keep going back too long and you’ll light up the switchboards in every cop house around. The benzoes, everybody’s favorites—Halcion and Valium’re both not over sixty migs a day, habit forming as can be. You start presenting at that level, eighteen hundred a month, you run up red flags. Demerol—max nine hundred migs a day. Xanax—absolute max is ten migs a day, five tabs. Not supposed to be a permanent part of your diet. Go over two months and you make the man in Walgreens think your problem’s not anxiety or panic—you’re just not happy in this world. Paxil you can have up to fifty migs a day; over fifteen hundred a month and you’re asking for it.

  “What we have to do is figure out how one person can get a lot of more of this stuff than a person who’s about as sick as you can get, but not dead yet, or no more’n normally fucked up, ’d ever need to stand the pain or craziness, okay? The opioids like Dilaudid, any of the stuff that does for you what morphine does—not supposed to be for recreation. They’re for pain, like when the cancer’s eating your jaw away, or your spine, like that. Or for real bombed-out craziness, all right—you’re so fucked up in your own mind that you’d rather die ’n face another day. They are not for having fun with, and the government don’t like it, that’s what people use ’em for. That’s why they’re so hard to get, and so expensive when we get ’em, and why this’ll take some time.”