The Devil in Silver

by Victor Lavalle

  “Hurry now,” Loochie muttered. The blood from her wounded hand had soaked her shirtsleeve and half her back.

  And the Devil?

  It stopped bucking. It almost seemed to wilt. Its legs went limp and the head stopped twisting. The Devil actually whimpered. A quiet little bleat, like a sheep. Not even a sheep. Like a lamb.

  Kofi spoke to himself as he approached it. “I came all this way. I came all this way.” He looked at the Devil. “I can go a little farther.”

  The front door of the unit thumped even louder now. The strain on the lock could be heard. It creaked, almost in tune with the Devil’s bleating. Both about to break.

  Finally Dorry came out of her slumber. Just as the secure door flew open. She heard the cops—a tactical squad—clomping down Northwest 1. They’d be on the group soon. Dorry looked around, still slightly dazed. What to do? What to do? Dorry had the clipboard. No other weapon in hand.

  “Hold them off!” Pepper shouted to her.

  “Just another minute!” Loochie said.

  The Devil kept bleating, a kind of pleading. Dorry lifted the clipboard over her head. Her best chance of delaying the cops was probably to cause pure confusion. No one was going to shoot an old woman, right?

  She saw the black uniforms of the tactical force. They were carrying guns, though she could hardly discern them. They were just figures—phantoms—filling the oval room. The Devil’s cries rose behind her, even louder, desperate. Dorry ran. Waving the clipboard. But she wasn’t racing toward the cops.

  She moved down Northwest 4. A dozen steps. Until she was behind Kofi. Then she slammed the clipboard against the back of Kofi’s head.

  Dorry hit him once. Twice.

  Loochie shrieked.

  And Kofi turned toward his attacker. Such confusion on his smooth round face. He held the syringes up but no longer seemed sure of how to use them. Or who to use them on.

  “I can’t let you kill him!” Dorry shouted. “I can’t!”

  Kofi opened his mouth to ask the question—Why?—but she bashed him with the clipboard for a third time.

  “He’s mine!” Dorry moaned, desperate and inconsolable.

  The Devil bleated again, a babe calling out for protection.

  “He’s my son.”

  By then the tactical force had reached Northwest 4.

  And what did they find? Kofi waving two large gauge syringes at Dorry.

  An old white woman fighting off an armed black attacker? That’s not a difficult equation to solve. You can do it at home, without a calculator.

  Kofi saw it happening. Time moved more slowly for him than for all the rest.

  One of the officers ran forward and tackled the old woman out of the way. The rest fired on the crazed man. Him.

  Kofi thought, Why have you forsaken me?

  Then the cops fired forty-one shots.

  The assailant was hit nineteen times.

  Kofi Acholi died of his wounds later that night.

  22

  WELL, FUCK.

  The black guy did die first after all.

  (Excluding Sam and, possibly, Sammy, yes. Amiable white folks that they were.)

  Coffee’s death was reported in the New York Post and Daily News, only a day after it happened. Small items. Not even a quarter of a page. The day after that, the Daily News ran a longer feature that highlighted the poor supervision at New Hyde. There was mention of how the suspect (listed as Kufi Acholi) assaulted two staff members before menacing a fellow patient. This second, longer article included a photo of Kufi looking absolutely homicidal. Where had they found the picture, buried in an abattoir? It made Coffee (or Kofi or Kufi, poor guy) resemble, at least in spirit, that famous old woodcut of a wild man: on his knees and wearing rags, a baby in his mouth and a woman’s severed head in the background. The woodcut is of a man who believes he’s a werewolf. That’s how the photo in the Daily News article made Coffee seem. Like something inhuman, too bizarre to be real. The kind of monster any sane person would hope to see killed in a thunderstorm of gunfire. Good riddance. Coffee’s photo inspired only one emotion. Horror.

  Not that Pepper and Loochie and Dorry had the luxury of pondering such an injustice to their friend’s memory. The direct aftermath of the takeover was arrest. Once Josephine and Scotch Tape were freed, they fingered the other three as coconspirators. While Coffee was wheeled into the emergency room of NHH, the others were handcuffed and placed into three separate cruisers.

  Though an NYPD tactical unit had been called in, Loochie, Dorry, and Pepper were held on the New Hyde Hospital campus. The hospital’s security chief was completely ineffective when it came to preventing a mess, but he was better at sweeping up afterward. All he had to do was make sure the trio was driven from Northwest to New Hyde’s main building. There, he handed them over to actual officers employed by the New York City Department of Health and Hospitals Police. (The main building was operated by the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, a city agency, so it was entitled to a security detail made up of NYPD officers. But Northwest—along with two other units—was operated by a private organization called the New Hyde Health and Hospital Corporation. Its security was contracted out to a low-budget security firm that would have trouble guarding a Waffle House.)

  When Loochie, Dorry, and Pepper were taken to the main building’s detention “center” (two conference rooms and an out-of-order bathroom), they were officially being handed over to police custody but without—here’s the important part—without having to leave the New Hyde campus. How do you keep a family problem within the family? You don’t let the children out. Only Loochie had a short detour when she was taken away to have her hand cleaned, stitched up, and bandaged. By the next day, all three patients would be returned to the custody of Northwest’s security detail. They’d be driven four minutes across campus and returned to the psychiatric unit. Most systems barely work, but those same systems cover their asses much more successfully.

  And Coffee? His body went to the emergency room. Then, briefly, to the Intensive Care Unit. Then, last, to the hospital’s morgue, a place the staff called the “Rose Cottage.”

  Loochie and Dorry were originally supposed to spend the night together in one of the two detention rooms. But if they were in the same room, Loochie made a habit of trying to tear Dorry’s head from her neck. Dorry didn’t fight back, either. So the cops had to separate the pair. Loochie spent the night in one room and Dorry in the other. (Neither room had beds, so they slept in chairs.) Pepper had to spend the night in the out-of-service bathroom. Which actually wasn’t as terrible as it sounds. It had been out of service so long that the place was cleaner than either detention room.

  Once alone, Loochie and Dorry fell into fitful sleep.

  Kofi was at rest in the Rose Cottage.

  Pepper sat on the toilet in that bathroom. He couldn’t get comfortable enough to drift off, so instead, all night, he remembered: Pepper and Loochie had gone flat on the floor when the cops started shooting. They were handcuffed only moments after Kofi fell.

  The police left the Devil to itself. They didn’t touch it. They moved around the body. Peeked at it and, just as fast, averted their eyes.

  It lay on the floor, facedown. It didn’t move, or even seem to breathe. Pepper and Loochie entertained the wish that it had died somehow. A stray bullet maybe. Could that happen? Could the Devil die? But when Josephine and Scotch Tape appeared, it moved again. It whimpered. Seeming to call out for their help.

  The cops watched quietly as Josephine and Scotch Tape checked the Devil for injuries. Scotch Tape and Josephine helped the Devil to its feet and walked it back to its room. Josephine pulled the silver door open and all three shuffled inside. Soon Josephine and Scotch Tape returned to the police, who were grouped by the nurses’ station. Pepper and Loochie sat on the floor, surrounded by them. Pepper’s hands were bound behind him. Loochie held up her torn right hand as if signaling a waitress to bring the check. Dorry had been walked to the
other side of the nurses’ station where she’d collapsed. A young cop sat with her and held her hand tenderly because he thought she looked just like his great-aunt.

  The cops and the staff milled around, still coming down from the chaos. A tall cop pointed toward the silver door and asked, What’s wrong with that one? Scotch Tape frowned and shook his head regretfully. He said, That’s the sorriest case we got. Doctors don’t know what to do for him.

  How could Scotch Tape talk about the Devil like that? Pepper wondered. As if it was just another patient and not the thing they’d seen. Could anyone work so hard to deny reality that he’d mistake the Devil for a man?

  In a way it felt better to focus on such questions than to remember his friend, Kofi, being shot to death. A pair of syringes in his hands. What had he really planned to do with them? They weren’t knives or swords. Was he going to poke the Devil into submission?

  Pepper had seen Kofi’s face just before the shooting began. A thought seemed to pass across his friend’s eyes. Pepper wished he might know what that thought was. Had it been something ridiculous? Maybe wishing he had one last quarter, even after all that had proved so damn useless. What was that last thought? Sitting on the inoperable toilet, Pepper feared he might fall into a loop. One where he wondered about Coffee’s last thoughts for hours and days and weeks. Until he might drive himself screwy trying to grasp at one last connection with the man he’d come to know. Better to think of anything else. Something concrete, tangible, real.

  Kofi’s blood traveled up to the fluorescent lights when he was shot.

  Now Pepper couldn’t get that image out of his head.

  Kofi’s blood, up there, on the ceiling.

  The next the morning Loochie and Dorry and Pepper were returned to Northwest, much to the staff’s unhappiness. When the security officers left, the staff put each patient into restraints. Dorry had been in her own room for years. Loochie was moved to a room of her own as well. Loochie’s previous roommate, the Haint, hardly waved good-bye as Loochie took her stuff out. And Pepper was returned to his room.

  Where Coffee’s messy, empty bed looked like an open grave.

  Though Pepper lay in restraints, he curled his head back as best he could because he kept wishing, praying, he’d catch sight of Coffee once again. When the pipes in the bathroom rattled, Pepper forgot and called out for Coffee, asked if he’d share a can of soda. But of course Coffee never answered.

  The day after that, each member of the revolution had long meetings with Dr. Anand. Debriefings. Pepper was the last.

  They sat him down in conference room 2. Dr. Anand was already at the table. Miss Chris sat in attendance. And a man whose gray flannel suit was more memorable than he was. He had an iPad propped up on the table. This guy didn’t look at Pepper. He just tapped at the screen with one finger. (He was there to make notes for any potential legal actions that could be brought against the hospital at some future date.)

  Dr. Anand placed both hands on the table and didn’t bother with any introductory talk. “Pepper, we’re looking for some kind of explanation for what happened.” He put up one hand before Pepper could respond. “We’ve already met with Dorry and Loochie, so we’re looking for a simple and clear explanation. Simple and clear, please.”

  Pepper nodded, but what could he tell the man? Did he believe what Dorry had said? He’s my son. Coffee thought he’d been searching the Internet telepathically. And look how that part turned out. He’d thought those digits would save his life, but they were just a wrong number in Oakland. Good work, Kofi! How’s that for clear? Pepper saw no way of summarizing all this, so he said nothing.

  Dr. Anand looked disappointed. He sat back in his chair. He said, “Miss Chris will need to take some blood and check your blood pressure.”

  Miss Chris rose. The blood-pressure strap in one hand. “Doctor says I to do it and you gone let me do it, hear?” She spoke as if Pepper was a dog, but there was something desperate in her voice. “You hear?” she repeated.

  Miss Chris was scared of him. They probably all were. He didn’t feel pressed to reassure them. He felt like seeing them squirm.

  “ ‘In the mist dark figures move and twist,’ ” Pepper said to her. “ ‘Was all this for real or some kind of hell?’ ”

  Dr. Anand took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, exhausted. Even the uninvolved legal rep peeked up from his tablet screen.

  Miss Chris put one hand on her hip. “That from the Bible?”

  “That’s Iron Maiden,” Pepper said.

  Miss Chris frowned, now more confused than fearful. Pepper decided to stop talking and let the woman do her job.

  Dr. Anand leaned across the table, slid a few strips of newsprint toward Pepper. “This is how the incident has been reported so far.”

  As Miss Chris pulled up Pepper’s pajama sleeve and slapped the blood-pressure strap around him, he focused on the terrible picture of Kofi.

  “That’s no glamour shot,” Pepper said.

  “That’s how Coffee looked when he first came to us,” Dr. Anand said. “We’d made a lot of progress.”

  Pepper wriggled his arm as it went slightly cold below the strap. Miss Chris stopped pumping and air hissed as it leaked out.

  “You got him to cut his hair and take a bath.”

  Dr. Anand shook his head. “We got him off the street. We got him to maintain his hygiene. We taught him how to contact government agencies so he could get the benefits he was entitled to upon his release.”

  Miss Chris removed the strap and searched for a suitable vein in the crook of Pepper’s elbow.

  “And when was that going to be?” Pepper asked.

  Dr. Anand spoke plainly. “Release depends on so many variables.”

  The doctor sighed. He looked as tired as Pepper had ever seen him.

  “We do everything we can to find solutions,” Dr. Anand said. “But we only discover greater mysteries.”

  Miss Chris slipped a needle into Pepper’s vein. He hardly felt it go in. She pulled back the stopper on the needle and all of them—Pepper, Miss Chris, Dr. Anand, even the legal rep—watched Pepper’s blood fill the vial.

  After Miss Chris finished taking blood, Dr. Anand had a few more questions. None of them seemed concerned with understanding why the four of them had revolted, only to record the order of events should a timeline ever be needed for a legal proceeding. After all that, Dr. Anand said, “There’s still time for you to get lunch.”

  Pepper felt surprised. “I thought you were going to put me back in restraints.”

  Dr. Anand’s face turned red (reddish brown) and looked at the nearly catatonic representative. He said, “No one wants to use restraints on you at all.” Then he looked at Miss Chris and said, “Do we?”

  Miss Chris smiled at the legal rep. “No, doctor.”

  Which wasn’t the same as saying they hadn’t used them. Or wouldn’t.

  Now both staff members looked at Pepper cautiously. Maybe this was his moment to testify to the man with the iPad.

  But the rep defused the situation. “I’m sure a staff as qualified as ours only uses restraints within the limits of existing laws. I have no doubts.”

  With that, the man returned to the screen. Tapped a few more times, then shut the black case that held the spiffy device. “We’re all done,” he said.

  Pepper and Miss Chris walked down Northwest 1 until they reached the nurses’ station. There were four staff members on duty besides Miss Chris and Dr. Anand. Two more nurses and two orderlies. Extra muscle. The uprising had been good for one thing: overtime pay for the underpaid staff.

  Miss Chris brought Pepper to the counter, and the other nurse brought out his small white cup of pills. They hadn’t changed the medications, not even the doses, but when he put the pills in his mouth all five staff members watched him closely.

  “No cheating,” Miss Chris taunted.

  After he swallowed she said, “Pop your mouth.”

  Pepper opened his mouth. He had swal
lowed the pills. Nevertheless, Miss Chris pulled on a latex glove, rose to her toes, stuck one finger between his lips and gums and checked.

  “Tongue,” she said.

  He lifted it and her finger felt around faintly, almost tenderly. It was the gentlest moment the two of them had ever shared. She slipped her finger out and pulled the glove off with a snap. She said, “Lunch then.”

  Miss Chris walked behind Pepper down Northwest 5 and he felt like she was leading him to his execution. A shot in the back of the head. Maybe he’d even find the bodies of Dorry and Loochie and Coffee already there. Four corpses left in an empty room. New Hyde’s headache relieved that easily.

  But slow down, Pepper. You ain’t Lorca! You’re not even Tommy from GoodFellas. The only punishment awaiting him was a lunch tray.

  The other patients had been eating for a while. When Pepper entered the lounge, they watched him. He couldn’t be sure if they seemed sympathetic or accusatory. As the pills began to numb him, he found he didn’t much care. He sat alone at a table and looked down at his food. He felt both hungry and repulsed by the idea of eating.

  Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly were at one table. Neither man looked at Pepper. At another table he saw another familiar couple. Sam and Sammy! But then he focused and realized they were two different women, new patients, similar but decades older than Sam and Sammy had been. Japanese Freddie Mercury sat at a table alone and it took Pepper a moment to wonder where his pal, Yuckmouth, might be. But really, who cared?

  Who cared? Who cared? Who cared?

  Pepper ate but tasted nothing. He blinked and breathed.

  When Pepper finished lunch, Miss Chris and two orderlies appeared. They surrounded him. They walked Pepper back to his room. They looped the restraints around Pepper’s ankles and wrists. They left him there.

  23

  NOW THAT THE legal rep had gone, Pepper’s every meal was served in his room. His meds were brought to him. Loochie and Dorry were treated the same way.