by Walter Marks
I nodded.
"What's your relationship with Janko like?" I asked.
"Huh?"
"I mean...do you like him?"
"He's a’ight."
"Do you trust him?"
The guard looked amused. "Doc," he replied. "Victor's a con. You can't trust no con. Your con says somethin', he means somethin' else. He does somethin', it's only to git somethin' else. He swears somethin's true, you can lay money it ain't."
"You think that's true of every inmate?"
"Look, if it was you penned up in this place, how would you act?"
“I have no idea.”
"You'd have only two things on your mind," Stevie explained, "Survivin' while you here, and gettin' out soon as you can. Now, in the Slams, honesty sure ain't no help in survivin'. And despite what the Bible says - the truth will not set you free."
We were outside Janko's cell. It had thick, black iron bars across the front, like the lion cage at the zoo. The door was made of metal mesh, its lock set into a steel plate.
The cell had no window. It was furnished with bare essentials; a sink, a toilet, a cot, a chair. Victor Thomas Janko, dressed in a lime green jumpsuit, stood at an easel, painting. I indicated I'd like to observe Janko before going in.
"He ain't gonna notice us, Doc," Stevie said, not even whispering. "He's in his own world when he's paintin'."
I was surprised by Janko's work. I'd expected some abstract blotches or angry scrawls, or something primitive like Grandma Moses. But Janko was an expert Photorealist. He was painting a meticulous depiction of a beach scene, with palm trees. Part of the picture was unfinished - marked off into grid sections like a highway billboard. Every few moments, he looked over and referred to a blow-up of a beach photograph, also marked off with a grid.
Other paintings lined the floor of the cell, propped against the walls. Each was a tropical beach scene, devoid of people. In one corner were more canvases, stacked in a tall pile.
"Why doesn't he hang his pictures on the wall?"
"He ain't allowed no nails," Stevie replied. "A nail could be used as a weapon."
Victor was working so intensely he appeared to be in pain. His tongue lolled out of his mouth, like a dog panting.
I was struck by how ordinary Janko looked. He was a short, plumpish man, with straight sandy hair and pale skin. He wore glasses with heavy clear-plastic frames. His age was listed in the file as forty-three, but he seemed younger. His facial features were soft, babyish, almost unformed. From his appearance, it was hard to imagine him committing an act of murderous violence. Then I remembered Son of Sam.
"Yo, Vic," Stevie called out as he unlocked the cell door. Victor Janko ignored us. The guard shouted — “Victor, you got a visitor."
The prisoner put down his paintbrush and turned to us. I stepped forward. "Mr. Janko. I'm Dr. David Rothberg."
Victor nodded and said nothing.
"I'm sorry to interrupt your work."
Victor didn't reply. His face was expressionless.
"Do you mind if I sit down?"
"Oh, sure," Victor said quietly. Then he leaped up, grabbing a towel and crossed to the chair.
"There's dust on it, though. Lemme dust it for ya."
He dusted the chair carefully, inspecting for every speck of dirt. Then he stood straight up.
"It's funny," Victor said, "You don't realize how many grains of dust there are in the air, till you see a beam of sunlight. And there they are...hundreds and hundreds of 'em...floating around like tiny little...creatures or somethin'. And then...you can't believe you breathe that stuff into your lungs."
He smiled awkwardly. His complexion was so pale I wondered how long it’d been since he'd seen a beam of sunlight. "Okay. Thanks," I said to the guard. "You can leave us alone."
"No can do," he said. "Ad Seg regulations. No visitor in a cell without a guard."
"I'm not a visitor. I'm staff."
"That's the rule, Doc. It's for your own protection. Every man here is considered dangerous."
"Mr. Janko doesn’t seem to me to be dangerous."
"Don't be too sure," Stevie said, "He does have a shank."
The guard stepped over to the easel and picked up Victor's palette knife.
"That's a palette knife," I said. "It can't hurt anybody."
"It can if he sharpens it."
He demonstrated, honing the blade against the cinderblock wall. Suddenly, he whirled and lunged, slashing and jabbing at me in a mock attack. I jumped back, my heart thumping. Stevie smirked. Janko looked down at the floor.
"Look," I said, "Stand outside if you want. But I need to talk to Mr. Janko alone."
"Unless you got written permission from the Warden, I stay." He stood arms folded, an immovable object.
I turned my attention to Victor's paintings.
"I see you're a Photorealist," I said.
Victor didn't reply.
"Are you using acrylics?"
"Oh. You know about...art?
"A little bit," I said, recalling a Photorealist Show I’d seen at the Whitney. "Y'know, your technique reminds me of Richard Estes, ‘though of course he does city street scenes and you do beaches."
"Have you...did you ever hear of Ralph Goings?"
"I...believe so.”
"He paints ketchup bottles. Heinz 57,” Victor said with intensity. "And diners...y'know, old fashioned diners? He...he's my influence."
"I can see that."
Victor looked away, trying to hide the fact that my interest pleased him.
"I understand one of your paintings was reproduced in Newsweek."
Victor's eyes still avoided me.
"You must’ve been very proud."
Victor shrugged and smiled nervously. I went over to his current painting and examined it closely.
"Don't touch it," Victor shouted.
I pulled away. Victor spoke in a controlled voice. "You...you might smudge it."
"This is a very precise process, isn't it?" I asked.
"You're not kiddin'."
"What happens when you make a mistake?"
"Pardon me?"
"What happens if your brush slips?"
Victor's lips moved for a few seconds before the words came out. "I don't let that happen."
"But sometimes mistakes are unavoidable."
Silence. Victor began to appear more and more uncomfortable. His eyes took on the blank look of a blind man, and he started making soft, tuneless, whistling sounds.
"Is something wrong?" I said.
"Pardon me?"
"Does it bother you to discuss your work?"
"I know why you're here," Victor said abruptly.
"You do?"
"Yeah. Stevie told me — before the parole hearing they always send a shrink. To see if you're...okay in the mental department."
"How do you feel about that?"
"Fine."
"So," I said. "Would you like to tell me a little about yourself?"
Victor looked at me vacantly.
"What else are you interested in, besides painting?"
No answer. Ben was right about Janko's personality being Obsessive-Compulsive. He displayed the classic preoccupation with cleanliness and order, and also a typical Ob-Com defense mechanism - any time he felt anxious or threatened, he’d clam up.
The prisoner started making the whistling sounds again. He took off his eyeglasses and slid them carefully into his breast pocket. I noticed the frames weren't really clear; they had aged to the color of pale urine. I sat down in the chair and watched him. The whistling made me very uneasy. I've always been amazed at how well Obsessive-Compulsives handle the tension they create by being silent. They can almost always tolerate it better than I can.
I decided maybe a tough question would jolt him out of his withdrawal.
"How do you feel about the fact that you killed someone?"
He stopped whistling.
"Pardon me?"
Pardon me. His favorite ev
asive phrase. Was it an unconscious expression of his desire to be forgiven, paroled?
"How do you feel about the crime you committed."
Victor averted his eyes. I pressed him. "Do you feel remorse? Are you sorry for what you did?"
Victor put his glasses back on, then turned and stared directly at me. The glazed look was gone.
"Sorry?" Victor said. "How could I be sorry? Sorry is what you say when you bump into somebody. Or when you're like late for supper. But when you take another person's life...I mean, that's the worst thing anybody can do. It's...a Mortal Sin. And they say I stabbed this lady...while...while her own kid watched. Does sorry mean anything when you do something like that?"
"What do you mean, they say you stabbed her?" I asked. "Are you saying you didn't do it?"
Victor’s eyes closed and opened. "I don't remember," he said, in a flat tone.
"What don't you remember?"
"I don't remember...killing anybody."
Victor removed his glasses again and lowered his gaze. Once more, he began the strange, whistling noises. I tried to wait him out, but it was a no go.
"Well, thank you, Mr. Janko,” I said getting up. ”I'm glad we had this time together."
I signaled Karp I was ready to leave, and the guard unlocked the cell door. As I went out, I called back to the prisoner. "So long."
Victor looked up diffidently. "Pardon me...Doctor? "
I stopped.
"Are you...will you be coming back again?"
"Would you like me to?"
"It’s okay with me."
I nodded noncommittally and left with the guard.
Karp stopped at the stairway and turned to me. "Doc," he said, "I think I should tell you somethin'. Victor was lyin'. He was lyin' to you about the murder."
"What do you mean?"
"He knows damn well he killed that lady. He told me about it lots o' times. Like he was boastin'... y'know, tryin' to show off what a bad dude he is."
"But why would he lie to me with you right there in the cell? He'd have known you’d contradict him."
"I don't know why, Doc. Maybe he forgot he told me. Maybe he forgot I was standin' there. Maybe he figured I'm his friend, so I won't rat him out. Maybe he's just nuts."
He paused for a moment. "I'd vote for nuts."
I didn't respond. I started down the stairs, but as I took my first step, Karp spoke. "Doc."
I turned.
"You gonna let him outta here?" he asked.
"It's not up to me."
"Come on, Doc. The man's a model prisoner. Victor is Mister Good Behavior. Plus, his paintin' counts real heavy as rehab. Parole Board got no basis keepin’ him in here. Not unless you say he's a bad risk. Fact is, Doc - you're all that stands between Victor Janko and freedom."
"So you believe he should be kept in prison?"
"I wouldn't let him out on a bet," the guard said. "Them quiet types are the worst. They can crack without any warnin'. One minute he be fine, next minute he be back carvin' up some woman."
I said nothing.
"Lemme ask you a question," Stevie went on. "Would you be willin' to send your sister or your mother down a dark alley, knowin' Victor Janko was lurkin' in the shadows?"
I turned and walked down the steel stairway. Karp's footsteps echoed behind me.
"Listen,” he said. “This here’s a bad place, Doc, with a lotta bad people in it. You hang ‘round any length of time, that bad gonna rub off on ya. So you best be careful, hear?”
CHAPTER 6
The next day my office was painted, but the paint was still wet and the room was fumy. So I worked out of Ben’s office.
He asked if I wouldn’t mind going into his computer to reorganize his files. I booted it up, took one look and said I couldn’t.
“Why not?”
“I can’t re-organize them because they weren’t organized in the first place.”
“Wha’d’ya mean?”
“Well, for one thing — files go into folders, folders don’t go into files.”
Ben pointed across the room. “You see my file cabinet?”
“Yes.”
“Inside ain’t nothin’ but folders. I rest my case.”
This man who trusts life-and-death decisions to a computer is a closet Luddite.
I spent part of the morning trying to make order out of his chaos. Then we did rounds together.
Later I signed in a new patient, who insisted I call him Six which was short for 6847-30-31, “‘cause a number is all I am in this shit-hole.” Six was a beefy African American with a shiny shaved head who looked like a black Mister Clean. He was bipolar, in an intense manic phase. Not only did he speak loud and fast, but also in a string of rhyming hip-hop phrases, accompanied by finger snaps.
“Din’t do no felony/Don’t even know da melody/In for twenny/Help me, Savior/Lemme out on Good Behavior...”
He’d been here before and I checked his chart. Under Diagnosis Ben had written “Definitely has his Ups and Downs”. Then in parenthesis — (Bipolar 1, Rapid Cycling — for you DSM-5 freaks.)
He’d been on lithium. I decided to try an anti-convulsant, Depakote. They led him away rapping.
“Man be takin’ me off da lith/ Put me on some other shit/Don’t make me no never mind/I’m manic-depressive so I feels fine...I gon’ shine...all the time...”
In the afternoon I sat in on another group therapy session. Then I played chess with Nigel Penrose and he whipped my ass.
At seven I was back in Ben’s office, typing up notes on my laptop. Ben came in and said he was heading home. He showed me a white cardboard container.
“Kung Pao chicken. I’m gonna heave it, ‘less you want some.”
I’d been too busy for lunch so I said great. It was cold, but it was food and I was starved. I chowed down while I finished up.
At eight I quit working. I realized I shouldn’t leave Ben’s office unlocked, but I had no key.
I went down to the nurses’ station. The night nurse was just coming on duty. I saw by her ID badge her name was Kim Cavanagh, and I introduced myself.
“You’re new, right?” she said.
“Yep. Have you got a key to Dr. Caldwell’s office?”
“Sure,” she said.
“I’d like to lock it tonight. I’m leaving my laptop.”
“I’ll do it for you. Have a nice evening, Doctor.”
She was kind of pretty. Her face was a bit bland, but probably because she wasn't wearing makeup.
Bet that’s because she’s working in this male-infested zoo.
Her day-shift counterpart had less of a problem. She looked like Nurse Rachit.
Hidden beneath Kim’s starched white uniform my practiced eye could discern a righteous bosom.
She was just the type I’d’ve had a thing with when I was at Bellevue. After I got my MD, I went through a phase — working my way through a succession of nurses, candy stripers, and paramedics. Then I settled down with Bronwyn Silver, a sexy, intelligent X-ray technician. It was good until she started pushing me to sell the houseboat and get a real apartment like a grown man so we could have a regular life. After the breakup she called to say she was marrying an anesthesiologist — “Better hours, higher pay.”
Then came the incident with Melissa, and I decided to put my libido on hiatus. For half a year now it’d been just me and Ninja.
“If anything comes up tonight,” I said to Kim, “Call my cell — 917-846-2325.”
“Let me write that down,” she said, leaning over her desk.
34Cs.
“Are you staying close to here, in case there’s an emeergency?”
“Bates Motel,” I said.
“Bates Mo...” She laughed. “Oh, yes, I knew Norman. He was in my high school class ‑ a real mama’s boy.”
“Actually, it’s the Hospitality Inn,” I said.
“Over on Route 101? Yeah, it does look kinda spooky. Be careful in the shower.”
We made major eye c
ontact and I left.
I passed the fortress-like building where Victor Janko was locked up. I was dying to go in and see him again, but that would mean going against Ben’s orders.
Driving back to my motel, I couldn’t get Janko off my mind.
"Are you...will you be coming back?"
"Would you like me to?"
"It’s okay with me."
I'd made a connection. It wasn't much, but it was a start. If my job is to figure out if Janko is dangerous, how can I just walk away now? I promised myself I would do things right at Vanderkill — do all I could to help my patients. And the moment I walked through Victor's cell door, he became my patient. He’s not just some convict — automatically to be labeled a menace to society. He’s a person, a troubled person with a ton of psychic baggage.
What kind of life did he have now? — fifteen years in solitary, with almost no human contact? How did his confinement affect how he saw the world, the way he behaved towards me? He must’ve been disturbed before his imprisonment, so being here could only have exacerbated his emotional problems...
I’d just stopped at a traffic light, when the aura struck. I saw flashes of light and color. My face tingled. My right hand felt suddenly larger than my left - the "Alice in Wonderland" syndrome, the migraine specialist had called it. I pulled over and reached into my briefcase to get the sumatriptan injector I always carried. Shit. I'd left it in my suitcase back at the motel.
I swung my car onto the road as the dull pain started on the left side of my head. I drove quickly, but I'd screwed up. The sumatriptan only worked if I took it at the earliest onset of symptoms. It’d be twenty minutes before I could give myself a shot. I was in for a Lulu.
The headaches started about six months ago, and I was seen by Dr. Stanley Ramone, a neurologist at Bellevue Hospital Center. Dr. Ramone was called "Ramone the Drone" by his medical students, because of his monotonous lectures on the central nervous system. His specialty was headache research; he was a founder of the American Council for Headache Education (ACHE). Ramone was a consciousness-raising type, who called migraine sufferers "migraineurs", as if adding a French suffix to their disease could make them feel better.
I told him I felt my headaches were related to an emotional problem I was going through. He advised me to discard my ingrained, rigid psychiatric mind-set. What I had to remember was that migraine (the word comes from the Greek hemikrania, meaning half the skull) was a genuine medical disorder, not something caused by psychological stress. Stress could underlie the headache, but couldn't cause it. Dr. Ramone's sophistry and condescension was a migraine-trigger in and of itself, right up there with paint fumes, red wine, chocolate, foods containing sodium nitrite, MSG...
