The Devil in Silver: A Novel

by Victor Lavalle

  She asked how he was doing. Pepper didn’t tell his mother where he was. He asked how she liked Maryland. She told him that everyone in the family had his or her own room with a few more rooms left over.

  “I know I’m supposed to like it,” his mother said. “But all I do is worry if they can afford it. With the economy and the housing market. It’s always on the news. You know. Where are you living now? Still in the same apartment?”

  “Still in Queens,” he said. This was true.

  “Still moving furniture?”

  “I gave that up for a little while.”

  “Trying something else?”

  He pulled away from the wall. Soon enough it would be time to take his evening meds. He didn’t want his mother to hear them calling him for that.

  “You sound tired, Peter.”

  “Maybe I’m a little tired,” he admitted.

  His mother breathed on the line, in and out, and the next voice he heard was the damn electronic drone telling him to give more coins, but he was out.

  “Mom,” he said so quietly it sounded weaker than a whisper. “I’m going to have to go.”

  “Do you want to go?” she asked.

  “No, but I’m out of money.”

  “Are you at this new job now? Why don’t you give me the number and I’ll call you back? Ralph gets long-distance free.”

  The number was right there under the phone’s cradle. He read it to her. A moment later they were disconnected.

  Pepper set the receiver back down and waited. He counted to himself and hoped his mother had written the digits down correctly. When the phone rang he snatched it up.

  “Anyway,” his mother said, as if they hadn’t been cut off, as if her son weren’t keeping all the particulars in his life mysterious. “I want to tell you a little story.”

  Pepper leaned to the right, the receiver still to his ear, and saw the patients forming a line in front of the nurses’ station. As soon as those folks had been dosed, one of the staff would come looking for him. He’d rather hang up on his mother, in the middle of a sentence, than to let her get some clue about the state he was in.

  “When your father and I still had the video store,” his mother began, “we used to take inventory of the tapes at the end of each week. You remember?”

  “Siesta Sundays,” Pepper said, smiling faintly. Pepper and Ralph would have twenty dollars to spend on whatever dinner they pleased. Did Nehi orange soda and Rolos count as dinner? They did on Siesta Sundays.

  “Raymond and I would close up at nine and spend three hours checking to make sure all our videos were accounted for. We were meticulous about keeping track. On the week I’m thinking about, you must’ve been about fourteen or fifteen, we discovered two tapes missing.” She made a faint humming noise as she tried to remember the titles.

  Pepper leaned back again, the line of patients was moving forward. Half as long as it had been only a minute ago.

  “Tales from the Buttside,” his mother said. “And … Chesty Murphy, Double-D Detective.”

  “Ma!”

  She laughed on the line. “You remember.”

  He felt suddenly exposed. As if his mother and father were in the alcove with him and he had no pants on.

  “Your father wanted to turn your room upside down to find them,” his mother said. “Do you know how much the adult tapes were worth to us? This is before the Internet. Nothing made bigger profits for us.”

  “I can’t believe you’re telling me this,” Pepper said. But he could believe it. His mother, bless her, had always enjoyed giving her sons a little hell.

  Outside the alcove, he heard a staff member call out. “Who’s left?”

  His mother, meanwhile, just kept raconteuring. “Raymond would’ve torn your and Ralphie’s room apart, and taken you to small claims court. But I told him to wait a week.”

  “Where’s Loochie?” Scotch Tape called out.

  “I’m here!” Loochie shouted. “I’m coming.”

  “A week later Tales from the Buttside and …”

  “Stop saying the titles, Ma, please.”

  His mother chuckled again. “A week later those two films were right back where they were supposed to be.”

  He brought one hand over his eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”

  She cleared her throat. “I don’t know what you might be going through right now, Peter. I wish you’d tell me, but I can’t make you. So I told you that story because there’s something I want you to always remember. You took those tapes, but you put them back.”

  “Come on,” Pepper said. “What does that prove?”

  “It told me something about your character, Peter. It might sound silly to you, but even those small indiscretions reveal so much.”

  “We got one more missing!” Scotch Tape called out. “Don’t make me come looking for you.”

  Pepper spoke softly into the receiver, looking over his shoulder for an orderly or nurse. “I had to return those tapes, Ma. I wasn’t being noble. I stole them from you and Dad. Anyone would’ve put them back.”

  “Really?” His mother laughed quietly. “Because Ralph never did.”

  38

  PEPPER LEFT THE alcove feeling like gold bullion. So good that he didn’t mind taking the meds. As soon as he was done, Redhead Kingpin and Still Waters crowded around him. Standing so close they could’ve picked his pockets. (If his pajamas had pockets, that is.)

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  Redhead Kingpin looked at Still Waters. “Show him,” she said.

  Still Waters carried her manila folder, “No Name” on the flap. She opened it.

  “I don’t want to know,” Pepper said. They were carrying the terrible folder that only housed the terrible news. Whatever they were going to pull out from there would only wreck his mood. He moved around them and started toward Northwest 2. If he made it to the threshold of the men’s hall, the pair, and their news, would be left behind.

  But the pair double-teamed him. Redhead Kingpin squaring off in front of him, while Still Waters dug through the crowded folder. Before he could bob and weave around the redhead, Still Waters had found the article in question.

  “Read,” she said.

  Pepper scanned the top of the page. This one had been torn out of the newspaper quickly. One edge uneven and ragged. It was from The New York Times. The byline read “Nina Bernstein.” It was accompanied by a picture of two women sitting in a train car.

  Reluctantly, Pepper read aloud.

  “ ‘Holding tight to her sister’s hand in the bustling streets of Oakland’s Chinatown, Xiu Quan Hong looked a little dazed, like someone who has stepped from a dark, windowless place into a sunny afternoon.’

  “ ‘In a sense, she has. For a year and a half, Ms. Hong, a waitress with no criminal record and a history of attempted suicide’ ”—Pepper stopped there a moment, then began again—” ‘was locked away in an immigration jail in Florida and then held in a psychiatric unit in Queens, New York.’

  “ ‘With no lawyer to plead for asylum on her behalf, she had been ordered to be deported to her native China, which her family had fled when she was only four years old. She was trapped in an immigration limbo: a fate that detainee advocates say is common in a system that has no rules for determining mental competency and no obligation to provide anyone with legal representation.’ ”

  Pepper found his hand was shaking, but he read on.

  “ ‘Then, through a fluke, her sister discovered her whereabouts in New York only three days before her deportation order was to be executed. Her sister, Yun Hong, a cashier at a supermarket in Oakland, found Theodore Cox, a New York immigration lawyer, through an Internet search and convinced him to take her sister’s case for free.’

  “ ‘Now Ms. Hong, 41, is free on bail and living with her sister in Oakland.’ ”

  That’s where he stopped.

  He looked up at the picture again. Two women sitting in a train car. He didn’t know the woman on
the right. He knew, but didn’t recognize, the one on the left. “That’s Sue?” he whispered.

  Her hair had been cut short and now framed her face, where before, her face had been hidden. She didn’t look at the camera but her head was held up. She seemed to be looking out the window behind the photographer. She wore a pink short-sleeved T-shirt and black slacks. In her lap sat a big stylish yellow purse. The woman on her right, her sister, was caught in profile because she looked at Sue. In the snapshot she had one hand up and was gently fixing Sue’s hair.

  Still Waters pulled the paper away from Pepper’s face.

  At least that’s what seemed to happen next.

  In reality Pepper had staggered backward and came to a stop only when his back touched the wall behind him. And his legs trembled, they were about to give out, so he slid down the wall until he smacked the floor.

  Now Ms. Hong, 41, is free on bail and living with her sister in Oakland.

  Pepper spread his legs and lifted his knees and leaned forward so his head faced the floor. His shoulders trembled, and, to his great surprise, he sobbed openly. It sounded like he was choking. He felt Redhead Kingpin and Still Waters come down to the floor and surround him. Still Waters actually put one hand on his back and patted him there.

  “We knew you’d be happy to see that,” Redhead Kingpin said.

  He looked up into their faces and could see that, if they weren’t crying now, they had been very recently.

  “It’s really true?” Pepper asked.

  They stayed there with him as other patients passed through the room, as staff members logged in files at the computer. If anyone noticed the trio there on the floor, it was only to walk around them.

  “You can keep the article if you want it,” Redhead Kingpin said.

  Pepper looked at Redhead Kingpin, who grinned tightly and nodded. Then at Still Waters who clutched the paper and kept her head down.

  “But you need it for your files, don’t you?” he asked.

  Still Waters looked up at him with a broad smile of relief.

  The women stood up when Pepper clambered to his feet.

  In the article he’d been downgraded to a “fluke.” But Pepper didn’t even notice. Pepper’s part wasn’t the bulletin. Nor Sue’s sister’s efforts. The kindness of the lawyer. The diligence of the reporter. All incredible, but secondary. Sue was safe. That was the lead. Sue was safe.

  Is there ever any good news in this world?

  Yes.

  Then Mr. Mack had to go and change the subject.

  He entered the oval room and walked right up to Pepper, Redhead Kingpin, and Still Waters. He moved around them, on his way into the phone alcove.

  But just before he passed them, he hissed, “Tonight.”

  “How will we know when?” Pepper asked.

  Mr. Mack had one foot in the alcove already.

  “I’ll come knocking on your door,” he said.

  39

  AND THE OLD man wasn’t lying. Pepper had just finished separating the beds in his room. (What did that matter now?) He put on the street clothes Dr. Anand gave him. He pulled his boots on. Then a faint rapping began. Rapping, tapping at his door. But when Pepper opened the door to his room?

  No one was there.

  He peeked into the hallway and saw that every other door to every other room in Northwest 2 was shut. Down at the nurses’ station, Miss Chris and Nurse Washburn and Scotch Tape were on night duty. All three sitting or standing in there, looking serene. Probably a first for them on the unit. Everyone seemed to have gone to sleep. Not even the late-night crew of Heatmiser, Redhead Kingpin, and Still Waters were up. Quiet rooms were good. Logging files into the computer was all they had to do now. The clacks of the keyboard were audible. Pepper ducked his head back into his room.

  But before he could shut the door, he heard the faint knocking again. It was coming from the wall, where his dresser had once been. From the door that had been painted over, sealed shut.

  For the third time he heard the knocking.

  Pepper brought his face to the wall. (Door?) “Mr. Mack?”

  From the other side, a harsh whisper. “Hush!”

  Then came this chipping and chopping sound from the other side of the wall. It seemed to go on so long, though really it was only minutes. That rust-colored ceiling tile, the site of the leak, quivered each time the door in the wall was hit. More small cracks appeared up there. Pepper thought it would almost be funny if all Mr. Mack’s work caused the ceiling to cave in.

  Then a few bits of paint fell from the wall on his side. A small hole, no bigger than a dime, appeared at waist height. A moment after that, a piece of metal poked through. The business end of a flathead screwdriver.

  The screwdriver blade stayed still in the hole for a moment, but then, slowly, it turned.

  “Push,” Mr. Mack whispered from the other side of the door.

  Pepper pressed at it. Mr. Mack had chipped away at the paint around the door frame on his side, but on Pepper’s side it remained intact.

  “Put your weight behind it,” Mr. Mack commanded.

  Pepper shouldered the door hard. When the paint separated, it sounded like ice cracking, a frozen lake splitting under someone’s weight, and Pepper felt his face go cold, as if he’d been dunked. It was the fear that he might’ve been heard by Miss Chris, Scotch Tape, and Nurse Washburn. Pepper stopped pushing and watched the other door.

  When he turned back, Mr. Mack had pulled the former wall door open.

  Now Pepper could move freely from this room to the next. No need to walk out into the hallway and risk the wrath of the staff. Thank you, Repurposing. In order to cut costs, the hospital had inadvertently provided them with a secret path.

  Mr. Mack held the screwdriver like a scepter. He used it to wave Pepper through. Into room seven. The floor here was littered with off-white paint chips. They looked like pencil shavings. Pepper stepped into the doorway, but didn’t enter the other room yet. Being right here, where a threshold had suddenly just appeared, made the moment seem so magical that he expected to step through and be transported to some fantasy kingdom.

  (The Lion, the Witch, and the Psych Unit.)

  But that didn’t happen, of course. This moment was fantastic enough as it was. Pepper entered room 7 and saw, in the far wall, that another doorway, exactly like this one, had been pried open. It led to room 9, and past that, another doorway that led to room 11. Room after room, all the way to the last in line. The door in room fifteen, down there, was still sealed. A white wall. What was behind that? The sidewalk?

  What if this was the last time he’d be in this place? He stepped back into room 5. What should he take? His wallet, yes. And Sue’s blue accordion folder? It seemed cumbersome to carry the whole thing. He’d probably drop it. How bad would he feel if somehow that was the thing that got him caught, the staff following the trail of magazine pages like bread crumbs? Instead, he opened the folder and stuffed as many pages as possible into the front pockets of his pants. He hoped he was taking enough of Sue’s dreams with him. Then he went back into room 7 and followed Mr. Mack.

  “Where’d you get a screwdriver?” Pepper asked as they walked to the next room.

  “When I said get your houses in order, what did you think I meant?” Mr. Mack asked. “Share a few kisses with your family? Shit. I asked a little bit more of mine.”

  Pepper entered room 9. It looked just like his, generally. Two beds, two dressers. But this room hadn’t been occupied in a long time, so there weren’t any personal effects. It felt like the showroom version of a mental hospital’s bedroom. Pepper almost expected to find a mannequin in the bed, but that would’ve been hellaciously weird.

  “This isn’t prison!” Mr. Mack squawked on, lifting the screwdriver like a prize. “They might check your visitor’s purse or bag, but they’re not sniffing anyone’s booty cheeks for contraband.”

  “You had someone put a screwdriver up their ass?” Pepper asked.

  Mr. M
ack sniffed with disdain at Pepper. “It was up my nephew’s coat sleeve, if you really want to know.”

  They entered room 11. This one had been occupied. Pages from magazines had been taped up to the wall over one bed. Lots of shots of black and Latino and a few white teenagers either squinting at the camera with a sneer or posing with cars, girls, and guns. Wally Gambino’s little acre.

  “Rooms one and three are empty, so we don’t need to pop them open,” Mr. Mack said. “That’s better anyway, we don’t have to get too close to the nurses’ station.”

  Finally, they reached the last room in this lane. Room 15. The one shared by Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly. They’d been there for many years. Relatively speaking, the place was quite nicely appointed. The same beds and dressers, but there was a low bookshelf near one of the beds. And these guys had even set up a kind of garment rack. They’d run a cheap tension bar across the windowsill so they could hang up their sport coats, shirts, and slacks.

  Frank Waverly waited in the room. He sat on his bed, reading a book. Wally Gambino walked out of the bathroom, wiping his hands against his jeans.

  Wally saw Pepper. “This motherfucker?” he said.

  “Don’t start with that,” Mr. Mack told him.

  Wally squinted at the old man (a lot like the dudes in the magazine pages taped to his wall), but he acquiesced.

  Mr. Mack walked to Frank Waverly’s bed and held out the screwdriver.

  “Your turn,” he said.

  Frank Waverly sat there, still reading. Mr. Mack repeated himself. Reluctantly, Frank Waverly set his book facedown on his bed, leaving it open as if he expected to return to it quite soon. Pepper couldn’t help himself, he peeked at the cover. Emma. By Jane Austen.

  “Is it good?” Pepper asked Frank Waverly, pointing at the book.

  Frank Waverly gave the thumbs-up.

  “You two want tea and goddamn biscuits?” Mr. Mack snapped. “Or can we get to work?”

  Frank Waverly touched at the outline of the door in this wall. He found the groove between door and frame and stabbed the screwdriver into the layers of paint. Once he cracked through, he dragged the screwdriver blade along the top edge, slowly chipping off more.