CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Just like electroconvulsive therapy.” Robert had backed away from Sarah, far enough to give him a few precious moments in case she attacked.
“What?” Her voice still had an edge, not sharp enough for surgery, but still dangerous.
Robert moved a tentative step closer. Women had so many ways to hurt a man. They could lay you low with a look. They could wound you with a word. They could strip you of your senses with an unspoken promise. Robert recognized the collection of conflicting emotions dominating his thought processes. Clarity—God, how he hated clarity.
“Watching you,” he said. “Listening to your voice. It’s like electroconvulsive therapy, only without the memory loss and the headache.”
Sarah responded with a blank look and a shrug.
“Take it as a compliment,” he told her. “Maybe I’m cured. Between you and Hashilli’s mushroom dust.” He took a moment to sort through his core values. Less than ten seconds, a depressingly small inventory.
“Nope,” he said. “Still crazy.” He started to smile, but thought better of it. Crazy people don’t get to the dentist very often. He’d check on the status of his front teeth later on. Concern about his appearance was a sure sign of returning sanity. Damn it. He was getting better.
“Don’t you want to be . . . normal?”
“I can’t be normal, but I can fake it,” Robert said. “The wind taught me how normal people talk.” He did a couple of one-sentence imitations: a cop dressing down a youthful offender, a restaurant manager who didn’t allow crazy people in his establishment. Perfect execution. He knew it even before Sarah applauded.
“The wind is a good teacher,” she said. “Think you can do a lawyer. A quien es mas macho kind of guy who drinks straight whiskey, files frivolous lawsuits, and talks dirty.”
Robert stood silently in the breeze of his oscillating fans and considered
the possibilities.
“Sure. The wind is full of lawyer talk, and I’ve watched hours of Law and Order and Judge Judy.
Robert understood immediately. The mental health establishment was more afraid of lawyers than psychopaths. They couldn’t drug attorneys into submission, and lobotomy was out of the question. A nasty lawyer with press connections might make the Flanders administrators give Dr. Moon up, even if it meant losing a sizable slice in the hospital’s budget.
“Pigs crowded around a government trough,” Sarah said. “They won’t talk with their mouths full, until the slaughterhouse truck is in the parking lot.”
“I can’t drive a truck,” Robert said, “But it always looked like fun, being a lawyer.”
Sarah stood in front of him. She placed her right hand on his head and recited pseudo-Latin phrase she had read on the wall of the lady’s room of the Student Union at the University of New Mexico.
“Illegitimi non carborundum. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” She tapped Robert on the left shoulder then the right and then crossed herself. “By the power vested in me by the state of Pandemonium, I declare that Robert Collins is an attorney for the day.”
She retrieved her cell phone and punched in the Flanders number. “How many anthropologists have committed a mental hospital’s number to memory?”
A rhetorical question. Robert was familiar with the concept, but this was the first one he’d ever recognized. Dear God, another sign of sanity.
Sarah’s transformation to the personality-lite legal secretary of Robert’s imaginary law firm was instantaneous and complete. Faint traces of a Hispanic accent colored her voice as she winnowed her way through the bureaucratic obstacle course and finally made it to an administrator allegedly responsible for admissions and discharge.
“Hold, please.” Sarah muffled the phone under her arm. “Sounds like the personnel manager I just talked to. I don’t think this is going to work.”
Robert had only been a lawyer for a few minutes, and he wasn’t going to miss his big opportunity. He extended his hand, made a grabbing motion with his fingers. Sarah handed him the telephone. She mouthed the words, “Be careful,” as Robert embarked on his brilliant legal career.
At that moment Robert knew exactly quien es mas macho.
“This is attorney at law Robert Mariah speaking,” he said, before the personnel manager could introduce himself. “My firm has been retained by Sarah Bible to secure the discharge of Ms. Bible’s mother, Marie Ferraro, from Flanders Mental Hospital.”
The call would be recorded to assure no one’s rights were violated. “Do you understand?”
The administrator didn’t answer right away, but he breathed into his telephone like an obscene caller. “I guess so. Look, maybe you should be talking to the hospital’s legal counsel.”
Robert told him that was probably going to happen, “Unless we can straighten out our business here and now and save everyone a bushel basket full of trouble.” He’d heard that colloquial metaphor on the one and only episode of Matlock he had ever seen. It had worked for Andy Griffith, and it seemed to break the ice with this mid level bureaucrat.
“First of all,” Robert said, “I need you to state your name for the record.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“If I have to come over there, mister, I will get your name all right. It will be printed in big bold letters on a subpoena; then, unless I miss my guess, it will be printed on a pink slip that explains why you lost your job.”
The administrator said his name too quickly for Robert to understand, then added, “You can call me Tim.”
“Well Tim, perhaps you can tell me why our court-appointed shrink is having such a tough time arranging an interview with Ms. Ferraro.
“I wasn’t aware—”
“You fuck with me, Tim, and my head will be so far up your ass, you’ll have Brylcreem on your breath.”
“Really, I—”
“Think long and hard, Tim. A little dab’ll do ya. Know what I mean?”
“I don’t think—”
“You have three seconds to tell me where the lady is, Tim, and if you don’t, it will be my pleasure to come over there and rub your nose in the biggest pile of legal shit you have ever seen. Am I making myself clear, or do I have to put that in layman’s terms.”
“Marie Ferraro has been removed from the hospital by one of our contract psychiatrists. He did it without authorization, and we don’t know where she was taken.”
“That contract psychiatrist would be the famous Dr. Moon, wouldn’t it Tim?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Anything else you would like to tell me? For the record, I mean.”
“Well, sir.” Tim sounded like his vocal chords might be having a second bout with puberty. Robert wondered if intense harassment might be the key to eternal youth.
“I’m waiting, Tim.”
“Well, sir.” Tim took the time to swallow a bolus of saliva the approximate size and texture of an egg yolk. “Just please don’t come over here.”
Robert ended the call with the push of a button. He didn’t say goodbye.
Over the years, Robert had occasion to meet quite a number of administrators of mental hospitals. Tim was the first one to call him sir.
“Being mean was sort of fun.”
Sarah said, “You might have been a little over the top.”
“Fuck yeah!”
“I can almost smell bourbon on your breath.”
“Fuck yeah! Four fingers of Wild Turkey, neat.”
“You can drop the tough guy routine now Robert.” She turned a fan in his direction. It disturbed his hair, but soothed his personality.
“Sorry. Any idea what our next step should be?”
“Archie Chatto,” Sarah told him. “As much as I hate to admit it, Archie Chatto might be our only hope.”
She was right. Robert could feel it in the depths of his borrowed soul.
Owl Dreams Page 25
