The Devil in Silver

by Victor Lavalle

  Huey answered for him. “As far as our records indicate.”

  Staff members noted this in their paperwork as well. All those pens writing on the tabletop at the same time sounded like a skateboard’s wheels on pavement.

  “I want my lawyer,” the big man said. Wasn’t that what he should tell them?

  Huey squeezed the big man’s shoulder. The silver diver’s watch appeared in his eye line. The big man blinked rapidly, as if the cop was about to conk him. Instead the cop explained, “It don’t work that way. You haven’t been charged with a crime yet so an attorney isn’t your right.”

  The big man pulled at the handcuff attached to his right wrist. The metal thunked against the armrest. Even the orderly looked up now. Inside New Hyde this orderly counted as the muscle, the one to hold a thrashing patient down, separate two patients fighting over a kid-sized carton of milk. (Nurses did the same, but that was not what they’d been hired to do.) Now the orderly sized up the big man, tried to figure if he could handle the new admit once the cops, and their handcuffs, were gone. The big guy wore cheap khaki slacks and a button-down light blue long-sleeved shirt. Both in sizes you only find in Big & Tall stores. The new guy had size to him, no doubt, but it was the kind of bulk you find on bouncers at shitty bars; the kind of guys who wear overcoats to hide the fact that their bellies are bigger than their chests. A big man but not a hard man. He’d probably do more damage falling on you than punching you. The orderly came in a smaller package, but was made of denser material. He’d been a wrestler in high school and stayed in good shape. He felt sure he could maintain control later on. Threat assessed, he looked back down to his screen.

  The big man pleaded, “If I’m not charged with anything, then you can let me go.”

  Dr. Anand shook his head faintly. “Unfortunately, no. You’re categorized as a ‘temporary admit.’ Which means the police leave you in our custody for seventy-two hours.”

  “Three days? I’m not staying here three more minutes!” He bucked in his chair. Dewey and Louie had their hands firm on his shoulders in an instant, keeping him seated.

  Nearly the whole room scribbled notes after that. And instantly the big man saw that his usual headfirst routine wasn’t going far. Can’t bulldoze through this. He knew what he had to do then. Stay calm enough to convince them of the truth.

  Dr. Anand leaned forward in his chair. “You’ll be with us for three days. That’s the law. It’s Thursday night. You’ll be with us until Monday morning. And in that time we’ll evaluate your mental state.”

  “I can tell you my mental state.”

  Dr. Anand nodded. “Let’s hear it.”

  “I’m pissed.” Being mellow had never been one of his talents.

  From the back of the room the orderly rose as high as he could in the chair. “Language, my man.”

  The big man took him in. “You watching music videos or porn on your phone?” he asked.

  Dr. Anand looked at the orderly.

  “It’s off!” he said, as he fumbled with the device.

  The big man grinned and said, “I’m going to call you Scotch Tape. ’Cause I see right through you.”

  The orderly said, “Look here.…”

  But Dr. Anand caught the orderly’s eye. If this was a contest of power, you can guess who won. The other staff members studied their laps, and silence choked the room. The orderly pulled his chair forward and set the cell phone on the tabletop, facedown.

  A moment after that, the big man heard a snorting noise from the back of the room. It sounded like the radiators in his apartment. They would snort and hiss, too, at odd hours. Sometimes they produced heat, other times they just made a racket. The snorting stopped. The room didn’t get any warmer.

  Dr. Anand returned his attention to the big man. He didn’t look angry, more like exhausted. “Why don’t we just start with a name. What should we call you?”

  Huey had the big man’s wallet. He handed it to the doctor.

  “You’ve got my name,” the big man said. His brown pleather wallet, old and overstuffed, carrying more ATM receipts than currency, sat in the doctor’s hand.

  Dr. Anand shook the wallet. “I’m not asking what it says on your license. I’m asking what you like to be called.”

  Why was this doctor talking to him like that? Like he was a dun-sky? He spoke so slow it seemed like another language. Being treated like a newborn only riled the reptile in the big man’s brain.

  He said, “You can call me ‘Ed the Head.’ ”

  Two staff members actually wrote this down, the others just looked confused.

  Scotch Tape couldn’t control himself. From the back of the room he shouted, “I am not calling you no ‘Ed the Head!’ ”

  The big man nodded. “Then call me … ‘Blackie Lawless.’ ”

  Scotch Tape leaned forward and snatched up his phone as if it was the big man’s neck. “Watch it, white boy!”

  Blackie Lawless was the lead singer of an eighties band called W.A.S.P., but the big man didn’t have time to give Scotch Tape a history lesson in heavy metal.

  The cops shifted in their stances. They wanted to be done. Dr. Anand seemed the least exasperated by all this. He opened the wallet, pulled out the driver’s license, and read the name to himself.

  “Your name’s not Edward. And it sure isn’t Blackie!”

  The big man felt foolish. What was he really doing here? Giving a little shit to an orderly? Confusing a doctor? But to what end? He couldn’t think past the anger caught in his throat. In other places, his taste for pointless conflict made him seem a bit wild, lippy, a guy who wouldn’t back down. He liked that. But that’s not how they’d see it in a psychiatric unit. These people at New Hyde were evaluating him. He had to remember that.

  Just breathe. Be calm. Speak to the doctor for real.

  “Pepper,” the big man said in a subdued voice. “Everyone calls me Pepper.”

  “Why do they call you Pepper?” Dr. Anand asked.

  “Because I’m spicy.” He couldn’t help it, the words just came out. Now he looked at the doctor to see if this would earn a demerit, too. But Dr. Anand didn’t seem bothered.

  The snorting began again. This time it seemed closer, no longer playing in the back of the room. It came from under the conference table. And it no longer sounded like a radiator. More like a living thing, but not human. A bull. The snorting grew louder. Pepper watched the table. He felt confused but refused to show it. What could he say that wouldn’t make him look like a grade-A lunatic? Then, once again, the sound abruptly cut out.

  Dr. Anand put the license back into the wallet and balanced it on Pepper’s thigh. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “I get to keep that?”

  “This isn’t prison,” Dr. Anand said. “You have rights.”

  “Except the right to walk out of here tonight,” Pepper said.

  Dr. Anand nodded. “Except that one.”

  The doctor turned in his chair again and spoke to the staff, but stared directly at the orderly. “Let’s all remember Pepper’s name.”

  Scotch Tape wanted to howl but he also wanted to avoid getting written up again. Dr. Anand would probably already make a little note about the business with the phone. And it was 2011. If there was ever a year to be cavalier about employment, well, this sure wasn’t it. So Scotch Tape nodded and said, “Pepper.”

  The snort came for a third time. It was even closer now. Immediately to his right. As if the animal had crept right up to his ear. Even worse, there was a smell. Musky and warm, like old blood. It made his throat close, and he wanted to wretch. The hospital’s staff members sat around the conference table taking notes, or watching him. Not one of them seemed to notice anything. How could they not smell that stink?

  Pepper cut his gaze to the right, but was almost afraid to do it. What would be worse? Seeing a snorting, stinking beast there or nothing at all? All he found was one of the cops. Dewey. There was something strange about the cop’s face, though. H
is face was flushed. His nostrils flared. His stance was tense. Surreptitiously he, too, was peeking to his right. The snort came again. Dewey heard it! Had to be. Pepper almost cheered with relief. Then Dewey caught Pepper looking at him. Instantly he lost his fearful expression. He looked straight ahead, doing his best impression of tranquility. The snorting faded, along with the smell.

  Dr. Anand said, “I think we’re ready to transfer him, officially.”

  The cops undid Pepper’s handcuff, and Dr. Anand filled out some forms right there in front of everyone. Pepper tried to catch Dewey’s eye.

  “You …” Pepper began.

  “I didn’t hear nothing,” Dewey said, cutting him off.

  But when Dr. Anand opened the door, Dewey practically stampeded to get out first. The other two cops and some of the staff watched him with quizzical expressions. Then the doctor escorted Huey and Louie out the door. When they’d all left the room, the staff didn’t even look at Pepper. They pulled out their cell phones and clicked or tapped or viewed or listened to messages.

  Then Dr. Anand returned and the phones were set facedown on the table, while the nurse walked over to take Pepper’s belt and the laces from his work boots. Pepper let her have all three items because he couldn’t quite believe the police had actually left him here.

  Dr. Anand took the same plastic seat in front of Pepper. “Now what we want you to do is tell us a little about your family. Treat this like a celebrity interview. We’re the paparazzi and we want to know all about you.”

  Scotch Tape chided him. “Act like you’re on TMZ!”

  Pepper wondered if that paparazzi pitch worked on other people. Maybe younger ones. It sure didn’t mean much to him. But he talked about himself anyway. He talked so he wouldn’t hear the snorting. His shoulders remained so tense they would be a little sore in the morning.

  He told them about his parents, Maureen and Raymond, who ran a video store in Elmhurst. Raymond died not long after VHS tapes did, and Maureen sold the business and lived alone for eight years. She stayed in Maryland with Pepper’s brother, Ralph, now. Ralph had a wife and son, and Maureen took care of the kid so the parents could work. Pepper couldn’t remember his nephew’s name just then and felt bad about that. Pepper graduated from John Bowne High School in Flushing and spent one semester at Queens College. His brother, Ralph, had the business sense of their father and owned a Wendy’s in Gaithersburg. Pepper had inherited his mother’s work ethic, a facility for the regular grind; she was the one who’d actually kept the family’s video store running day to day. Pepper figured that if he told them as much as he could they might realize the truth: He didn’t belong in here. He only didn’t tell them where he worked, figuring they might actually call. He couldn’t afford to be fired again.

  “And what about relationships?” Dr. Anand asked. “Not with your family. Personal ones.”

  “There’s a woman in my building,” Pepper admitted.

  “And what’s her name?” the doctor asked.

  “Mari.”

  “And where is Mari now?”

  “She’s probably in her apartment, with her daughter. Isabelle.”

  “Is Mari your girlfriend?”

  The word sounded so silly in Dr. Anand’s mouth. And even sillier applied to Pepper, a man of forty-two. “It’s early still,” he said.

  What he didn’t add was that Mari was actually the reason he was in here. It sounds a little old-fashioned, but he’d been trying to protect her honor when it all went so badly so fast. She didn’t even know where the cops had taken him. He wanted to let her know where he was and even more, he wanted to hear that she was okay. And how was he supposed to be of any good to her trapped in here? Pepper didn’t say all this out loud. They’d ask him what he did, and why it all went badly, and the story would only make him seem even rowdier.

  Never mind, though. Dr. Anand had plenty of other questions.

  But the more Pepper told them the less he seemed to matter. He might’ve been relating the inventory of the truck from yesterday’s job. Dr. Anand and his staff weren’t listening, only gathering the necessary information to refine his classification. After forty-five minutes he was a case history; a new admit awaiting diagnosis; a subject.

  After an hour Pepper was, officially at least, a mental patient.

  2

  WITH PEPPER’S INTAKE meeting finished, Dr. Anand walked him out of the conference room and back into the hall. Pepper expected some ceremonious next step, but the doctor just pressed him back against the hallway wall, as if he was about to use a pencil to mark Pepper’s height.

  “Stay here,” Dr. Anand said, already turning away. “A nurse will be by quickly. She’ll take you to your room.”

  And just like that, the doctor returned to the conference room and shut the door. Pepper felt like a fridge left out on the sidewalk.

  The walls in this hallway were eggshell white like those in the conference room. The floors were cheap beige linoleum tiles. On the wall, right beside him, at shoulder level, hung a framed landscape painting. There was another across the hall. An empty beach by his shoulder; a path through empty woods across the way. Soothing images, by reputation. In truth, Pepper felt more comfortable around apartment buildings and even on subway platforms—maybe not beautiful, but his natural habitat. Not just his, but likely that of nearly every damn person associated with this hospital, from the staff to the patients to the cops who’d brought him in. So why decorate the walls with someone else’s dream of peace? Maybe they were just feeding that most natural human appetite, the hunger for somewhere else. A yearning Pepper could relate to just then.

  No nurse appeared, and for fifteen minutes Pepper just repeated the same words to himself: seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours. You can stand anything for seventy-two hours.

  The loud voices playing from a TV somewhere down the hall, deeper inside the unit, had changed to loud explosions. Maybe someone had switched the channel, or the show had come to a moment when the world starts blowing up. Pepper knew it was just a television show, but the sounds seemed to grow as they traveled from wherever the TV sat to where Pepper still stood in the long, empty hall of closed doors. The howl of human beings, the victims of those crashing sounds, played louder and louder. Like the people themselves were about to come flooding into view. Maybe not even people, but people’s parts. A wave of blood. Dismembered limbs breaking the surface of that wave like sharks’ fins.

  Pepper knew this couldn’t happen, but his chest felt tight.

  He looked to his right and focused on that secure ward door. What if Dr. Anand hadn’t locked it behind the cops? What if all Pepper had to do was give a little push?

  Seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours.

  He couldn’t stand this for that long. He couldn’t even make it twenty minutes before he tried to escape. Pepper lurched toward the big door.

  He grabbed the handle and pushed lightly. But of course the door didn’t open. He pushed harder. He tried to turn the knob. It didn’t shimmy. He let go of the handle now and pressed both his meaty hands against the door and leaned into it. He set his broad, laceless boots down flatly, repositioned his large hands, and now he powered against that door, straining like a bull. But the damn door stayed secure.

  Finally he pressed his face to the shatterproof window. There were little lines embedded in the plastic, like chicken wire. He’d been on the other side less than two hours ago. Two hours before that, he’d been on the other side of Queens! He’d been trying to help Mari by having words with her ex-husband, a man who wouldn’t leave Mari be. And yet here Pepper was, locked away. He pressed his face to the window, fucking confused. There was nobody on the other side. He closed his eyes.

  “Better not let them see you doing that.”

  Pepper opened his eyes, expecting—not hoping, but expecting—to find himself on the E train, having fallen asleep and only now waking to learn he’d dreamed up New Hyde Hospital. Instead he found himself still staring through the plastic
window.

  “If you understand English, then step away from the door,” the voice continued.

  But Pepper didn’t move fast enough. Before he could stand up, stand back, and turn around, he felt fingers grip his wrist.

  After having three cops wrestle him to the ground in a high-school parking lot, then being handcuffed to a chair, Pepper really wasn’t in the mood to get hemmed up one more time. No more hands on him tonight. He turned and yoked the person grabbing him. He actually pulled off a pretty sophisticated move, mostly through momentum and a great weight advantage. He yanked his wrist free from the person’s grip, turned and enveloped the body behind him, and lifted it into the air.

  When it was over, Pepper had a seventy-six-year-old woman in a bear hug.

  And before he could apologize, or loosen his grip, or set her back down on her feet, what did the old woman do?

  She kissed him right on the mouth.

  He dropped her and she landed harder on one foot than the other, yipping like a dog whose tail has been caught.

  Now Pepper bent to cradle her on instinct, in case she’d been badly injured. But the old woman threw her arms out to stop him.

  “You like it a little too rough for me,” she said.

  The door of the conference room finally opened and Dr. Anand’s round head peeked out. He watched them both for a moment. Pepper and the old woman turned their attention to him.

  “I see you’ve met Dorry,” the doctor said. “She’s our unofficial ambassador.”

  “Hello, Captain.” She saluted him, any hint of leg pain hidden.

  Dr. Anand tipped his head toward her slightly, then looked back down the hall, deeper into the unit, toward the TV sounds.

  “Miss Chris is late again,” Dr. Anand said.

  Dorry patted her chest. “She deputized me.”

  She looked up at Pepper. “I can take him to his room.”

  She jabbed Pepper in the belly. The new admit looked comically large next to Dorry, like a sheepdog beside a shih tzu.

  Dr. Anand looked down the hallway once more, but Miss Chris made no appearance. He said, “Take him to his room, Dorry, but don’t go in his room.”