Bone

by George C. Chesbro

  "I did not know about this, Doctor."

  "I believe you." The psychiatrist hesitated for a few moments, then began to replace the packet of cards and questionnaires in his desk drawer. "On second thought, I believe we will leave these until next week."

  "You're playing games with me, Doctor," Bone said in a low, tense voice, "and I don't like it."

  "I'm not playing games with you, Bone," Ali replied with uncharacteristic forcefulness as he leaned forward, resting his forearms on his desk. "Now that the subject of the killing has been brought up, you're upset—and that could effect the outcome of the tests. Frankly, I wasn't sure until I said it if I wanted to mention the killing before I gave you the tests. However, as I watched you, it become apparent that, at least from the time you walked into the office, you were not aware that there had been another decapitation murder two nights ago. Waiting a week to take the tests will do no harm; as I said, you seem to be doing quite well on your own. Simply continue what you have been doing. However, I do strongly suggest that you let HRA put you in a permanent residence; it will make things easier for you. But that's up to you."

  "Lieutenant Lightning must be looking for me."

  "I would assume so, but I don't really know; he hasn't contacted me."

  "Is that it for today?"

  "Unless there's something else you wish to talk about, yes."

  "What if I tell you I want to take those tests now?"

  "That is not your province. I don't know what they may reveal about you, but the result would almost certainly be skewed if you took them now."

  Still feeling a strong residue of resentment, Bone rose and walked stiffly to the door leading to the small outer office. He opened the door, then turned back to the psychiatrist, who remained sitting behind his desk, legs once again crossed, watching him.

  "Why don't you tell me what else is on your mind, Doctor?"

  "What's on your mind, Bone?"

  "You were very careful to say that I didn't seem aware of the murder when I walked into your office. The implication is that

  I may have committed that murder, but simply don't remember it."

  "I was simply stating a fact, Bone. I meant to imply nothing.

  "Is it possible that I killed somebody two nights ago, chopped off the head, then went to sleep, woke up and don't remember it?"

  Ali took some time to reply, as if he were giving very careful thought to his words. "Let me put it to you this way, Bone," he said at last. "As bizarre as they may be, there are far more documented cases of people with multiple-personality disorders than there are of people—one person, you—suffering global anterograde and retrograde amnesia and still being able to function perfectly normal in the present. You're a case unto yourself."

  "Then it is possible?"

  "I would say most definitely so."

  Bone took a deep breath, slowly exhaled. Initially, mixed with resentment toward the psychiatrist for withholding the information, there had been elation at the fact that, considering his new state of awareness, he had proof that the stranger was not the serial killer. Now his old anxieties about the stranger had returned, and were multiplied. "What should I do, Doctor?" he asked quietly.

  "You are a free man, Bone. I have no answer for you. I can only address you—or this personality you display to me—to help you search for your answers, your memory. Even if you were to enter a residence, where your movements would presumably be monitored, that would not guarantee anything. If you do have at least one other discrete personality, and that personality is a killer, it's obvious that that personality is very crafty, and cautious. If that personality is a killer, he hides his deeds very carefully—not only from witnesses and the police, but from you; from this personality. It seems to me that there is nothing for you to do but continue doing what you have been doing."

  "What you're saying is that if I . . . if the stranger is a killer, then it's up to me to unmask and catch him."

  "Yes, Bone. That is what I'm saying."

  Bone turned and walked out of the office, closing the door quietly behind him.

  (iv)

  Bette Greer Simpson sighed with contentment, weariness and relief as, after days of walking, she finally arrived home. She pulled the garbage bag containing her few belongings—including a towel, an extra set of underwear and a heavy sweater, all things she had stolen from the sanitarium—under the bench in the middle of the traffic island at the intersection of Broadway and Eighty-second Street, then sat down on the hard and worn, comfortably familiar wood.

  Traffic was heavy today, and cars sped by on Broadway, on either side of her home. Then the light changed, and people began crossing, walking through her home on their way to the other side of the street. Tomorrow, Bette thought, she would confront these trespassers as she had in the past, warn them not to walk through her home. But for now she was simply too tired to get up and yell at them—and she was just happy to be back here on her traffic island, the only place in the world where she felt safe.

  Once, in a time long ago that now seemed to stretch back through the years, she had felt safe in her apartment. If she turned around, Bette knew that she could look directly at the building where she had once lived, could see the windows of the small but comfortable apartment on the fifth floor which once had been hers, before her landlord had put all her belongings out on the street and placed a padlock on her door.

  But looking at the building where she had once had an apartment always made Bette very sad, so she never did; she always sat on her bench in the middle of the traffic island with her back to the building. Somebody else lived in her apartment now. But at least, she thought, she had found another home, here on this bench across the street from her apartment building; she remained in the neighborhood where she had grown up and with which she was familiar; she remained close to the neighbors and shopkeepers who knew her, and who occasionally gave her food and even blankets when it became very cold. And she was usually able to keep people off her island; even though she was old, very old, she had found that people grew afraid of her when she started screaming at them, and then they were content to stay in the street as they crossed it, staying out of her home. This bench on this traffic island was the only home that remained to her, and she would defend it.

  They might take her away, Bette thought, because she was too weak to fight back when the men pinned her arms to her sides and carried her away. They might put her in places where she did not feel safe, but she somehow always managed to find her way back to her home. Nobody seemed to be able to understand why she kept slipping away from places where she was given food, a bed to sleep in and medical care; they did not seem to be able to understand that this traffic island, this bench, was her home. She preferred to be here, even if life sometimes became difficult.

  "Oh, Bette! a woman's voice called from behind her. "I don't believe this! Are you back again?!"

  Bette was happy to hear the voice; it belonged to a friend, somebody who truly cared about her. But she did not turn, for then she would have had to look at her former apartment building.

  Anne walked around to the other side of the bench, squatted down in front of the old woman and took both her hands. In Anne's bright hazel eyes was a mixture of affection, frustration and pity. She brushed a strand of gray-streaked brown hair away from her eyes, shook her head and sighed.

  "Aren't you going to talk to me, Bette?"

  "Nothing to talk about today," Bette replied, her voice characteristically shrill, her words clipped. "Like some food, if you got it."

  Anne nodded, patted Bette Greer Simpson's hands, then , walked back around the bench to the blue van parked at the curb with its motor running. She took a sandwich and a carton of orange juice from Hector Gozando, the young, bespectacled, fresh-faced Hispanic who was her new partner, then returned to the old woman, gave her the food.

  "Where's the heavy guy who's always with you?" Bette asked in a sullen tone as she greedily bit into the sandwich, then took a s
ip of juice.

  Anne again squatted in front of the woman, rested one hand lightly on Bette's knee, which trembled with palsy. "Barry? He's working up in the Bronx. I have a new partner now, a very nice young man named Hector. I'm not going to introduce him to you right now, because I know you don't like strangers—and, frankly, I'm afraid you'll scare him. But you'll like him a lot when you get to know him."

  "Don't like nobody."

  "Oh, come on, Bette. You like me. And I know how much you liked Barry; if you didn't you wouldn't have asked after him."

  "Don't like nobody."

  "Bette," Anne said with a deep sigh as she gently pressed the woman's trembling knee, "what on earth are you doing here? Somebody at the nursing home was supposed to bring you in to the hospital for a checkup last night. I went to the hospital to say hello, but you weren't there."

  "Got away."

  "You left?"

  "Got away."

  "Obviously. But why, Bette? You have no idea how long it took for Barry and me to find that nursing home for you, and how much trouble we had getting them to agree to take you for what the city could afford to pay. We thought that home was perfect for you—nice people, trees, even a lake for you to look at and walk around."

  "Didn't like it. Wanted to come home. Want to stay here, and want you to leave me alone."

  Anne bowed her head, took a deep breath, then looked up again into the old woman's face. "Bette, you can't stay here. In January you lost two toes and three fingers to frostbite. You could have died of gangrene, and you're lucky you didn't lose your left hand and your right foot; the doctors worked very hard to save them."

  "This is my home. I want to stay here."

  "If you'll come along in the van right now with Hector and me, maybe we can just take you back to that nursing home and all will be forgiven. Whoever was supposed to bring you to the hospital and keep an eye on you may have lost his job because you walked away."

  "Wanted to come home."

  "You know what's going to happen if you don't come with us. Dr. Hakim is going to come and talk to you—"

  "I'll kick him and spit at him, just like I did the last time."

  "—and then you're going to be taken someplace anyway, whether you like it or not. And the next place might not be anywhere near as pleasant as the nursing home you just left."

  "Don't like Dr. Hakim. He makes me leave my home."

  "It's because he cares about you, Bette. We all care about you." Anne paused, again took the woman's frail hands with their missing fingers in hers. "We just don't want you to suffer. But you have to cooperate with us. If you keep sneaking back here every time you get a chance, one day something may happen to you that we can't prevent. You could even be killed."

  "Leave me alone!" Bette shouted, snatching her hands away from Anne's and cringing on the bench. "Get out of my home!"

  Anne, recognizing the warning signals and not wanting to goad the old woman into a screaming frenzy, straightened up and took a step backward. "I'm going now, Bette. It's all right. Calm down. Maybe I'll stop by later to see how you're feeling. Okay?"

  "Go away! Get out of my home!"

  Anne walked around the bench, to the van, then turned back. "Bette?" she said softly, tentatively. "I don't want to upset you any more, but I would like to ask you one question. Have you seen the man who sometimes used to sit here with you and keep you calm when there were a lot of people on the streets? We called him Bone. I know you liked Bone, or you wouldn't have let him sit with you in your home."

  "Don't like anyone!"

  "But have you seen him?"

  "Just got here, stupid woman! Go away!"

  Then Bette Greer Simpson struggled to her feet, turned toward Anne and began to spit. She continued to scream and spit until the social worker climbed back into the van, and the van pulled away and disappeared into traffic.

  Bette collapsed back onto the bench, exhausted. All she wanted was to be left alone, she thought. She couldn't understand why people couldn't just let her be, and why they couldn't learn to stay out of her home.

  Walking all night, combined with her sudden outburst, had drained all of Bette Greer Simpson's energy; she slumped over on the bench, promptly fell asleep. She remained semiconscious, drifting in and out of deep sleep, all day long, and into the night. She was aware of many people tramping over her traffic island, but she just didn't have the energy to get up and chase them away.

  And she dreamed. She dreamed of what it had been like as a little child growing up in this neighborhood, and she dreamed of how beautiful she had been as she grew into womanhood; and then all the dreams and all the years jumbled together as she got old and sick and she couldn't pay her rent any longer and her landlord had thrown her out into the street.

  Bette Greer Simpson dreamed of how her father had once picked her up in his strong arms—as he was doing now in this dream that wasn't a dream. The sudden lifting of her body caused her to open her eyes, and she saw that her cheek was nestled against someone's bright orange skin which felt rubbery against her own flesh. This was a strange dream, she thought, but she did not want to wake up; this bright orange, rubbery figure was not her father, but the strength and gentleness of the arms carrying her reminded her of him. It was a pleasant sensation, and she did not want it to end. She drifted back into deep sleep, and never felt the touch of the razor that sliced through her neck.

  (v)

  The black man Ali Hakim had called Zulu had not been on the sidewalk in front of St. Thomas Church when Bone had gone back after his meeting with the psychiatrist. He had not been there the next day, or the day after that.

  Now Bone sat in a carrel in the main reading room of the New York Public Library on Forty-second Street poring over the various volumes on archaeology and anthropology he had, with the help of an attractive, stern but patient, young librarian, ordered up from the institution's vast subterranean stacks. He knew what he was looking for, but was not certain where to look—or even if the information he sought had been recorded.

  For a year, he had walked around with a fossilized bone that was centuries old. According to Lieutenant Perry Lightning the bone was that of an American Indian, and Bone assumed it must have come from some ancient burial site, someplace underground. If he could find a recorded site somewhere near any of the areas Anne had marked on the maps, he felt he might have a better idea of precisely where to continue his search for the stranger's identity.

  He gave up after three hours; there was considerable information on Indian burial sites, but they were all a considerable distance away from any of the places where the stranger had been sighted.

  Next he turned to texts on what lay beneath New York City—and was amazed to find that there was, in effect, what amounted to another vast city in the darkness under the sidewalks.

  Public and private utilities had provided underground facilities in New York City since the 1700s. There were literally hundreds of miles of subway tunnels, water, steam and sewer mains—some so large that two trucks could easily drive through them side by side. In the city's history there had been three separate water systems, each with its own system of drains. There were ancient aqueducts underground near the Wall Street area, where the first settlers had established themselves; there were wells, high- and low-pressure mains—some going as deep as two hundred and eighty feet below the surface, through solid rock and vast underground bogs of quicksand. There were eighty thousand miles of electric, telephone and traffic cables, gas mains, rapid-transit structures, police and fire alarm systems. Shallow excavation techniques had been used to construct some systems, deep bore tunneling for others. Beneath Grand Central Terminal, near where he had experienced his panic attack, there were seven levels, each radiating snaking railroad tunnels. Beneath the Hudson River were the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, linking New York City and New Jersey. And beneath Penn Station there were more levels, more tunnels.

  He could have been in any of these places, Bone thought—or none o
f them. Indeed, perhaps he had simply picked the bone out of some trash can, for no logical reason whatsoever. This was, after all, New York, and he was rapidly learning that New York was a huge, bizarre city where virtually anything could happen. He was convinced now that he wouldn't find the answers he sought in books; he must continue to search the city, try to experience it the way the stranger had.

  The Empire Subway Company was mentioned frequently in regard to the work they did in exploring and mapping the underground systems for the utility and construction companies. Bone made a note to himself to speak to Barry Prindle, whom Bone remembered had once worked for this company, and then he returned the books and walked out of the great stone building into the warm New York evening. He turned left, then headed down Sixth Avenue; he would go to the church across from Penn Station, where there was a soup kitchen.

  Suddenly he found that he was lonely, and he picked up his pace, as if by doing so he could somehow outdistance the chasms of emotion and need that kept yawning open unexpectedly in his heart.

  (vi)

  Harry Boniface sat, his head lolling back and forth, in a drunken stupor at the curb on the Bowery, just above Fourth Street. He wanted to cry—and finally did; tears rolled down his cheeks, and sobs racked his body. The bottle which he had counted on to last him through the night had just tipped over and was lost somewhere in the darkness of the gutter at his feet, its precious contents spilling out into the street. He knew that without the bottle he would realize before too much longer that he hadn't eaten, and he would begin suffering hunger pangs; without the bottle he would be cold, but he had nothing else to give him warmth. There was no way they were going to allow him into the Men's Shelter, for he was drunk; he had known that when he'd started drinking early in the morning, but he hadn't cared; he'd had money, a pocketful of quarters given to him by motorists who, trapped at the red light on the corner, had tipped him for wiping—or for not wiping—their windows with the filthy rag he carried in his pocket for that purpose. He couldn't drink and expect to get into the Men's Shelter at night, but he preferred to drink. He always preferred to drink, preferred drinking to anything. He had long ago ceased to care about anything but the need to come up with money for his next bottle.