Thrust

by Tom Piccirilli

  "How about Singleton?"

  "At least three years for violating the order of protection and running from the cops, another one or two for endangering his kid. Since he's not considered a violent criminal, he'll get the lighter sentence."

  "I haven't seen anything about his wife. She's not talking to the papers."

  "She's terrified of what Singleton might do, I'd guess."

  "Did he make bail?"

  "No. He'll be off the street until the trial starts in six months. This isn't a cake walk, Grayson. Joe Singleton's gained some points because of his daughter's death. They'll play you as the scapegoat here, but you'll both be held accountable. It evens the books out."

  Chase could understand them hedging their bets. Everybody had to get a touch of satisfaction or the whole thing would just fall apart.

  He got up, listening to sirens shriek down on the street, heading uptown. You could tune in to the soundtrack of your life on occasion, the world outside underscoring everything going on in your soul. A harsh breeze blew and clattered the window in its frame.

  "How'd Singleton kill his friends?" Chase asked. "If it was him."

  Ellis couldn't quite purse his lips, but he made the effort, still trying to get a bead on Chase and decide whether he was asking a smart question or a really foolish one.

  "With a knife. Four inch blade. None of this sloppy slitting-the-throat shit either. One thrust, under the left ribs, directly into the heart. He's a pro."

  Chase had five years to worry about it, and did.

  8

  Isaac Barth collapsed in his bathroom that afternoon and went into the hospital for further testing.

  Chase stopped by for a visit and found Shake already there sitting at Isaac's bedside, reading some of his new poetry.

  And the solitary chicken, like ear-top flamingo stands arcing before the false Rod. O Serling, you who deserve so much more, rise from the Mayo jar of hell and twist your hands about their peppermint throats, the damnable mick Connor and his cotton ball claws of Pandemonium. Swaying with his eyes half-closed. Hands out, snapping his powerful fingers softly, so that they whispered along with him. Get behind me fear. Get the gum drum behind me, black man without dem hang thang! Wear not the pirate togs of linen on your way to heaven. These are the drapings of hell. Forward, forward forever against the steel cage of Triboro. O George! O Jeff! Where are thy loving ministrations?

  Chase wasn't the only one coming a bit unglued. Isaac's injuries had outraged and scared Shake, and thrown him off his own game. It could happen to you, when this kind of affront reached into your own comfortable sphere.

  The room was filled with flowers and gifts, three vases of tulips and irises lining the sill. A foot-high stack of books sat on the night stand. Conrad Rice had sent a porta-potty and signed it on the plastic lid in black marker: The more you toot, the better you feel! Get well soon! A can of beans, a bottle of castor oil, and his latest chapbook peered out from beneath the foam seat.

  Leave it to Conrad. Practical but with just the right touch of propaganda. He must've already sent in impassioned letters to the Village Voice and Greenwich Downturn Weekly about the state of crime in New York. Poor old man can't even take a walk down a city street at three in the morning anymore. The hell's the world coming to.

  Buying ad space to promote the act. Making sure his web site was listed. The slick little hustler was masterful in the way he worked his action.

  Isaac's swollen lips and bruised cheek somehow made him appear younger, even a bit more healthy than usual. He had a thick square bandage taped to the back of his head, with a spot of blood leaking through.

  Isaac smiled at Chase and said, "Don't look so worried."

  So, his face was giving him away again. It took Chase a moment to find his voice. "How are you feeling?"

  "Oh, I'm all right. It's ridiculous they're making me stay here. They just want to tap my insurance company."

  Shake said, "Anybody else, they'd be happy to have a rest in accommodations like this. Firing up the neighborhood, everyone dropping by with chocolates and DVDs and babaganoush. This one, all he does is complain."

  "I don't care for babaganoush."

  "Then I'll eat it."

  "You don't like it either, you said."

  "I'll still eat it, with a few pita bread slices. And I'll take the four-disc set of Pride and Prejudice too."

  "You will not. I quite enjoyed that film version."

  "Then why not lie back and I'll put it in? Seriously, the nurses said you were supposed to rest." Shake patted the back of the old man's hand, acting the Jewish mother, even quarreling like a biddy.

  Chase said, "What happened?"

  The cloying aroma from the irises filled the small room. Isaac seemed hesitant to talk. "After the mugger cracked my tooth my dentist put me on Percocet. It didn't go well with my after-dinner glass of wine. I must have passed out on my way to the bath. If it wasn't for Jasper Cox, I might have lain there wedged under the toilet all night."

  Chase couldn't help himself. He looked over at the porta-potty. Was Conrad busting a joke there too?

  "What was Jasper doing at your place?"

  "He'd come by with some chicken soup. Apparently his mother sent him over for a visit. Lovely woman. She's overprotective with the boy, as some single mothers tend to be, but he's making progress in getting out from beneath her shadow."

  Chase thought about the kid, depressed and quiet but usually hyper too, sort of bopping in his seat and bursting with excitement to read his poetry. Doing the rap patter about his father.

  The dead Dads of the world never let go.

  Shake had been drinking, and the odor of Jack Daniels made Chase cringe. That tickle in the center of his chest began to act up again. You found your satisfaction wherever you could.

  Shake glanced over, plucking at his chin. "What did you think?"

  "About what?"

  "The new piece."

  You had to either lie or criticize very carefully. Chase wasn't much good at either, but he made the effort. "It's got verve."

  Shake drew back, cocked his head like he'd heard a funny sound. "What did you say?"

  "Uhm… verve."

  "Uh huh." Shake toyed with the edges of his mustache, watchful. Shake always took his reviews too seriously. "Why don't you explain that for me?"

  "The words sort of… you know… absolved and redeemed me."

  In the days when Shake was still Babawanda Mugwanda, he would've swung out of his seat and stood proudly in his dashiki and turban, maybe blown a tune on his kudu antelope horn. Something to show the injustice of having to suffer such narrow-minded reproach.

  But now Shake Sunshine Jr. frowned at the small notebook in his lap, the pages covered with scratchy words that didn't look like his own handwriting. When he wrote about George and Jeff you knew he was coming unstrung.

  "I have a half bottle of Haldol if you want a few."

  "I don't need that shit," Shake said with a tremble in his throat.

  Isaac resettled himself in the bed. "I found the verse quite provocative."

  "Oh bullshit, old man, don't patronize me."

  "Fine, then let's watch Pride & Prejudice and everyone can relax."

  "Tell me about the mugging," Chase said.

  Pulling a face, Isaac looked away. "There's nothing much to tell you, really."

  "This happened right after we spoke at the Palace last night?"

  "About a half hour later. I was walking home. I sensed a presence moving in behind me."

  "And?"

  "And before I could look my head exploded. That's what happens when you get mugged. Have you ever been mugged?"

  "No."

  "That's what happens. I've been mugged four times in the last thirty-five years."

  Now Shake was staring at Chase, cool, indifferent, but with his real feelings percolating beneath. A sliver of suspicion, some of that true dread you feel when the sneaking possibility slithers and whispers that your friend
s might be more than mischievous, they might be criminal.

  Chase knew how it must've looked. Isaac explaining to Shake how the discussion had gone down with Chase in his office. The way Chase had been a little hostile, distraught. Sort of an argument but not really. And Shake sitting there thinking, yeah yeah, wondering about it all. Trying hard not to believe the worst but too afraid not to take it under some consideration. You always had to be ready for anything.

  "Did you get a look at him?" Chase asked.

  "No, nothing."

  "Any sound you can remember? Did he say anything to you?"

  "No. I didn't realize anybody was there until I was already down on the sidewalk. Then, the bastard kicked me. That I felt a remote kind of anger. It pissed me off like nothing else in my life. He kicked me again and I blacked out."

  "What is it?" Shake asked.

  Chase turned to him. "What do you mean?"

  His voice was still calm, even. "All the questions. You sound like a cop. Like you want to go out after the guy."

  "If I knew who to go after I would."

  "That's idiot talk, seriously."

  Chase shrugged off the comment, leaned in on Isaac a little more. "What did the police say?"

  "What could they say? Or do? Nothing was even taken from me."

  So then, it had been personal.

  Was Joe Singleton making his move already and coming at Chase like this? From the side, keeping his malice off the stage.

  "Grayson?" Isaac said. "Would you like a nice plate of babaganoush with some pita bread?"

  "Jasper's mama makes a mean pot of chicken soup," Shake told him. "None of that consommé shit."

  Isaac's wiry, steel-gray hair was on fire, the bald patches bubbling with blisters that burst and turned black.

  The skin kept frying, the reek of broiling flesh wafting into Chase's face.

  O George. O Jeff. Where were your loving ministrations?

  "No," Chase said. "I need to get going."

  Shake aimed his forked beard forward and his eyes grew distant until he looked the same way he did the day Chase met him on the ward. Somebody had offered Shake a piece of gum and Shake had instantly gone catatonic. It flipped him over the big edge because he couldn't chew gum thirty-two times and be finished with it. Something that small shattered the pattern.

  "Are you feeling well enough to perform at the Palace tonight?" Isaac asked.

  So here was the old man, after a mugging and caroming his head off a toilet, lying in a hospital bed with bandages on his ancient coconut, burning down to the bone, asking if Chase were capable enough to read his poems.

  "Yes," he said, keeping the sting out.

  Shake nodded and said, "I'll check in with you later. We'll have a good show tonight."

  "Sure."

  Chase walked into the corridor as the smoke began to throb against his knees, rising to twine against his throat, nuzzling, almost loving.

  The walls swung down around on him and he was back in the Falls.

  Turning, staring around, looking down and seeing—yep, he was wearing the blue cotton jammies and slippers.

  The psychiatric facility had its own history, going back nearly sixty years to when the World War Two vets came home shell-shocked and smashed.

  Back in the early 50s the facility had housed eleven thousand patients. Now there were fewer than two thousand faces up there behind the leveled rows of cube windows. Mostly drunks, coke fiends, nervous breakdowns, and a few masturbation addicts who had to be watched when they went outside or they'd drop in the mud and screw a wet gopher hole.

  Garden Falls. It was the thing to do, when you were a kid, to head down those back roads bordering the grounds and watch how the twining shadows cut into the skyline and carved alongside the moon. Teenagers performed primitive ceremonies of passage, knocking down barbed-wire fences in pickup trucks.

  The empty stunted woods that bordered the large fields cut straight swathes against the tree line. The parkways crossed half a mile away, the well-maintained lanes so neat and prim as the commuters passed by heading into the city. Chase used to cruise by at midnight and look for escapees running off in their rags.

  The Falls continued to rise into the darkening sky, silhouetted in the lustrous moon as black and silver clouds roiled onwards. Looking up at the buildings, it didn't take a serious leap of imagination to believe every rumor you'd ever heard about the place must be true.

  Chase watched a lot of television his first couple of days in the Falls, between his group therapy sessions and remedial treatment, while he dried out cold turkey and took his meds and did his best not to start licking the walls.

  He checked the other patients around him—no, scratch that, the psychiatric industry liked to call consumers. Nobody was a patient anymore, the emphasis was no longer on illness. They were all merely consumers of health care resources. You had to be fed, cleaned, diagnosed, deloused, given a bed, guarded, tranqued, spanked, and banked.

  His fellow consumers were made up of ladies in pink pjs who sat quietly and wept while they paged through photo albums or met with their families. Gray men in blue robes who had slipped their gears after their third divorce was finalized, their fourth kid graduated college, their second heart attack hit.

  These were the target groups, the clients, the shoppers. Chase prowled the halls and kept expecting to see lobotomy scars, ultra-intelligent killer rats, and folks smearing themselves with their own feces. But everywhere he turned he saw only the sad and the lonely. The angry and the fired. The beat, the bitter, and the stained. Christ, was he really the craziest person here? Well, besides Arlo Barrack.

  Singleton's ex-wife came for a visit when he'd been there about two weeks.

  He watched her hobble in, using a cane, chaperoned by one of the attendants. He'd never seen her before but knew it was Annie Singleton because she looked so much like her daughter Stacy.

  Blonde hair curled and coiling in clumps over her forehead, the same small space between her front teeth. He'd read that she was only twenty-nine, but if he had to guess he'd say she was pushing against forty and forty was shoving back a lot harder. Ashen crows feet corrugated the corners of her eyes.

  Okay, so here it comes.

  Plant yourself, get ready.

  The harsh repetitive noise of the cane thumping pounded into Chase's head as she moved towards him. He reared back, trying to hold on, but knowing he was this close to making a run for it.

  How do you look into the eyes of the woman whose daughter you've murdered. Criminally negligent homicide boffo.

  What a way to give up the game. He had to force himself to breathe.

  Somebody shoved a seat under his ass and violently pressed him down into it. He turned and saw the severe face of Arlo Barrack sort of grinning at him, realizing what was going on and making sure he squeezed every ounce of pleasure from it.

  Barrack said, "Make yourself comfortable, Killer. If she takes a swing at you, you'd better not lift a finger. I'll snap your neck if you so much as back a step away."

  Well then.

  Chase sat at this little table where some other consumer had scratched in the words

  GOD ISNT WATCHING

  BUT HE LISTENS TO YOUR SCREAMS

  Chase had always believed that anyway.

  Annie Singleton, led by the attendant, approached. Petrified of what she might say, and knowing it would only confirm every icepick of self-loathing he had, he imagined the jagged taste of scotch cutting down his throat. Maybe he could fake himself out, get drunk on delusion.

  But it wasn't working. Leave it to his schizophrenia to run out on him when he needed it most.

  Annie Singleton sat heavily in the small metal chair across from him. Beads of sweat slid though the soft creases just under her left ear, weaving along her jaw line. The bruises on her face had almost completely faded. She did a fair job of concealing the dusting of crows feet beneath her eye shadow. She must've been very pretty just a few years ago.

&nb
sp; He waited for her to rail at him.

  He wouldn't lift a finger. He wouldn't so much as back a step away. God might not have been watching but he was certainly listening in, waiting for the whimpering.

  "Hello," she said.

  Now the hallucinations came into play, as Stacy stepped up behind her mother and smiled at Chase, her mouth still drawn into that thoughtful smile.

  He blinked and she broke into a loose tapestry of colors and reformed again, the pink barrettes growing brighter. The rust-colored splash of blood over her right ear remained, and her dead, forgiving gaze pinned Chase in place.

  "Are you all right?" Annie Singleton asked. "Mr. Chase?"

  "Yes," he whispered. The world blurred and he kept blinking, the six-year-old girl splintering and coming back. It took him a while to understand that he was crying.

  So here's the mother of the little girl you killed, or helped to kill anyway, and Stacy is right there staring at you too, and you don't lift a finger, and you wait for your end.

  "Mr. Chase? Grayson?"

  "Ms. Singleton…let me—"

  "Call me Annie."

  The shivering grew worse as he spoke her name, his tongue having trouble framing the word. "Annie." Chase knew he sounded like a frightened boy. How the hell was he ever going to survive prison? They'd be pulling trains on him every five minutes.

  She reached out and took his hand across the table, patting him, rubbing her thumb against his knuckles. Friendly, all of it just part of the set-up for when she let him have it with both barrels. He tightened his belly, trying not to flinch and failing.

  Stacy came around and stood next to him, jerking his attention so that he had to look. She was trying to smile but couldn't pull it off.

  "Please," he said. "I'm sorry."

  Annie Singleton continued stroking his hand, the way his mother used to do when she read to him at bedtime. His pulse battered in his wrists and an awful knot formed in his chest, stabbing.

  So, was this how it goes? After everything, you crap out from a heart attack?

  "It wasn't your fault, Grayson," Annie Singleton said. "You don't deserve to go to prison. That's wrong." The lines around her eyes weren't wrinkles after all, but matted scar tissue. Her grip grew firmer. "I don't blame you. Do you understand?"