Final Stroke (35 page)

Again, despite the pain, she was able to think of something be
sides it. She traveled back in time in order to be out of this place for a few seconds. In order to be with Steve once more. But there seemed to be another reason for the brief interlude. Steve was there, sitting with her in the living room sipping wine. She had just taken a sip of wine, had put her wine glass down, and had clasped her hands behind her back to appear coy. Steve would come to her, tell her he loved her, and she would unclasp her hands in order to hold him. But this is not what happened in the moment recalled from the past. Instead of telling her he would always love her and would always remember her, Steve seemed to know about this particular night in the future. Star
ing at her with his dark eyes, a sad look on his face, his hand reaching forward through time and touching her cheek, Steve recalled a then recent case in which a client with a secret had disappeared and was later found dead. She asked if it would have been better if the client had simply given in to those who had threatened him. She asked if it would have been better if the client had told the secret. Steve was seri
ous when he spoke.

“When desperate people threaten to hurt you, and you know something they want to know, and they know that you know, never tell them. Because when you do tell them, you’ll no longer have some
thing they need. That’s what I told my client, but he apparently didn’t listen. That’s why he’s dead.”

Rather than nod that she wanted the tape off so she could speak, she
stared at Dino. Lights flashed on his face. Then they drove through a darker area where intermittent streetlights brought his greasy face out of darkness for only seconds at a time. While they drove, the driver turned on the scanner mounted below the dash and she could hear the muted sounds of police calls. The driver turned off the scanner when something beeped next to her. Dino took a phone from his inside pocket and unfolded it. When he put the phone to his ear and turned away, she leaned close to listen to his side of the conversation.

“Yeah, they split.”

“Back at the place.”

“In the parking lot.”

“Yeah.”

“Next to me.”

“Legless.”

“No other name but mine.”

“At the funeral.”

“Yeah, I’ve got ‘em.”

“If not, it’s back to the place, I guess.”

“Why you?”

“I was just asking.”

“Later.”

After putting away the phone, Dino sat back in the seat, staring straight ahead. For a moment she was reminded of Steve. The way Steve sometimes looked away from her shortly after his stroke as if preoccupied. He’d been in the hospital back then, unable to move his right side, unable to talk. At the time she wondered if his turn ing away had been a sign he was aware of flickers of memory from the past. Like the summer he was a kid and that other kid named Dwayne Matusak threatened him. Was Dino thinking about when he was a kid? Yes, a kid bullied by another kid, that’s what it sounded like on
the phone.

Steve was right. Once these men got what they wanted, they would kill her. She knew it. And if they didn’t get what they want
ed, they’d kill her. It was only a matter of when. And when they did kill her, Steve would be alone with nothing more to remember her by except perhaps the diary she kept for him. When she was dead, he could forget about the uphill battle to recall the past, because then it wouldn’t matter.

The van slowed and turned into another well-lighted area. Beyond the sweep of the windshield wipers was a strange tunnel. The tunnel was lit from within by bright ceiling lights and steam rose from its floor. Because of another in a series of eruptions of tears that blurred her vision, it took several seconds to determine what was ahead of the van. It wasn’t until the driver pulled into the brightly lit steaming tun
nel that she realized they had driven into a car wash.

The driver turned off the windshield wipers, shut off the engine, and once again left the van. The mechanical whir and clattering of the lift echoed within the self-serve car wash until the empty lift was back inside and the door slid closed. In the silence that followed she assumed that the “Legless” she’d heard Dino mention while on the phone referred to the driver. Now she knew two names. Dino and Legless. After a few seconds she heard a muted clatter of coins, then a loud pump came on and the van was being sprayed. The spray was powerful and noisy against the metal sides.

During all of this Dino had been silent and unmoving. But now, as the sweep of the powerful spray buffeted the van, she glanced to
ward Dino and saw him reach to her face. When he ripped the tape from her mouth, she screamed.

CHAPTER

TWENTY

TWO

Two hours after visiting hours had ended at Hell in the
Woods, the outside main double doors were locked, leaving only the single side door leading into the lobby vestibule open for emergencies and for employees coming and going during shift change. This door could be locked by the guards at the front desk if need be. As stat
ed in the chapter on security in the building policy manual, “In rare instances involving acts of nature or social unrest, the building may need to be secured for the continued safety of residents, whether they be located in rehabilitation facilities or in dining facilities or in private rooms or lavatory facilities, and for the ongoing safety of employees, whether they be attending to their tasks or making use of employee recreational or dining facilities or using lavatory facilities.”

One of the two guards at the main desk read from the building policy manual, mostly to pass the time, but also because he was new at Saint Mel in the Woods Rehabilitation Facility.

“This here book’s real interesting,” said the new guard. “Espe cially these parts about residents and employees having the right to be
safe while they’re sitting on the crapper.”

“Yeah,” said the other guard, who stared at the closed-circuit mon
itors. “The book got a lot thicker for homeland security. Someone from up on three told me that nurse named Betty probably wrote it. She’ll talk your head off if she gets a chance. I figure they put her on three because it’s all strokers up there and it’s good for them to hear a lot of jawboning.”

“She must’ve written the policy manual they had back at the hos
pital, too. Of course that one’s about two inches thicker than this one, being they got all those highly-paid docs and all that expensive medi
cal equipment and locked-up drugs to talk about.”

“They got drugs here, too.”

“I suppose they do. But not so much of that IV stuff they got back at the hospital. There, they want you out for the night, they put you out for the night. If it weren’t for IV drugs there’d be all kinds of screaming and commotion and relatives staying all night long bitchin’ about staff not giving a damn about all the pain in that place. Not as much pain in this place.”

“I suppose not,” said the veteran guard, staring at the empty hall
ways shown on the monitors. “Maybe that’s why most visitors go on home when they’re supposed to.”

“Makes it nice and quiet,” said the new guard, turning a page in the policy manual. “I think I’ll like it here.”

Although Steve had not remembered his mother when she visited with his sister, he did know about mothers. And now, as he dressed in the dark, a voice from a commercial recently on television came to him. A voice telling him to dress warmly so he would not catch cold. But
instead of the generic mom’s voice of the commercial, he imagined his own mother telling him to dress warmly. Not simply because it was a cold wet March night, but because he had work to do. And, considering his obvious physical weaknesses, he needed all the help he could get.

From foot to head he wore black high-tops and jeans and two sweatshirts, the black hooded one on the outside. He’d put on his right leg brace beneath his jeans and tightened it so his leg wouldn’t collapse in case he was under stress and had to be on his feet and for
got to will the muscles in the leg to hang tight. On his head he wore his White Sox baseball cap, which was also black except for the Sox insignia above the brim.

He had his wallet and the two-hundred dollars in cash Jan had taped to the bottom of one of his dresser drawers about two-hundred years ago shortly after they transferred him here from the hospital. He knew Jan had done it as a test back then to see if he would remember the money. And when he remembered the money, she’d left it there. She said he’d need it to take her out to dinner when he graduated from Hell in the Woods. While he was thinking about his wallet, he took it out and checked his credit cards and his driver’s license to make sure they hadn’t expired. After he put the wallet away, he reached around with his left hand and patted his right pocket, knowing he should have something there, but not sure what it was. Then, when he was about to close the dresser drawer to which the money had been taped, he saw the keys to his and Jan’s apartment and felt a wave of inadequacy come over him. He stood there for a minute grasping the drawer, actually thinking the words
drawer
and
key
and
inadequacy
. He wondered for a moment why there were two keys and decided one must be for the building entrance. Finally he took a deep breath and put the set of keys in his left pocket.

He considered taking his portable computer along, stood staring
at it atop the dresser for a minute, imagining it spitting out explana tions to people he might encounter. But finally he decided the com puter would only be good for taking notes or maybe sending a FAX or getting on the Internet if he hooked up to a phone line.

Crazy bastard. Things like that, especially waiting for someone to read a damn FAX or mailbox entry, or getting on the Web and try
ing to do research about Max Lamberti… All of it was much too slow for what he’d be doing tonight. But before he turned from the dresser, he reached out and pocketed his portable thesaurus. Maybe he’d need it, maybe not. If he couldn’t come up with a word to call the bastards who …

No, couldn’t afford to think of that. Jan was fine, and all this preparation most likely for nothing. They’d have a great laugh tomor
row because Jan would chalk up tonight’s excursion into the cold rainy world as simply more good therapy, mind over matter and mind over muscles, getting the damn right side to do what
he
wants it to do for a change.

Not only had he followed Mom’s advice about dressing warmly, but he’d also eaten well. After the struggle with the aide named Ty
rone, and after convincing the nurse on duty that he must have dozed off in his wheelchair and fallen forward out of it, he’d gone down to dinner with the others. Before returning to his room, he’d snuck be
hind the counter in the nurses’ station to see if he could grab his night
time medications, but of course the tray wasn’t there. Medications were always locked up until they were needed.

Too bad. He’d be gone by the time his nighttime medications were doled out. Yes, he’d be long gone. So much for Tegretol, Cou madin, Heparin, Amitriptyline, and Dilantin. Although, just in case, he had managed to squirrel away a couple of Valiums during his stay at Hell in the Woods and he’d taken these along. While he was out in
the world, the Valium might come in handy if his muscles got spastic. He knew he risked having another seizure without Dilantin, but he also knew it would make him sluggish. Going out in the world with out his medication was a chance he had to take.

On the way down to dinner Steve had seen the man in the base
ball cap again. This time the man was loitering near the elevators, his baseball cap and jacket on as if he were a wheelchair-bound relative or friend heading home. On the way back from dinner he had not seen the man. Although it was possible the man had been there, he had not wanted to reveal to the man he knew he was being watched. Let the man in the baseball cap relax this evening.

On the way down to dinner, when the man in the baseball cap was obviously watching, Steve had made a point of acting tired and de
pressed and confused. He even muttered the word
sleep
loud enough for the guy to hear before the elevator door closed. Some of Steve’s fel
low residents seemed surprised at this setback. At dinner he sat across from Linda and Frank, the two right-brainers, and instead of talking incessantly to one another as they usually did, they both seemed con
cerned about Steve, Linda asking several times why he wasn’t smiling tonight the way he usually did. His only reaction to this was to say again that he was tired, “Really, really tired.”

Although Steve had been unable to speak when he’d gotten the news from Tamara about Max Lamberti’s connection to Phil Hogan, and about Antonio Gianetti Junior’s death, he had been able to think. Thinking without having to converse allowed him to think more clearly. He’d noticed this in bed at night when he was unable to sleep. Although he’d never quite been able to explain it to Jan, at night in bed was when the things they went over during the day really began to coalesce and make sense.

Yes, when given the opportunity, Steve knew he was able to think
things through. But he also realized this ability to think clearly, when he was not forced to converse, could be a double-edged sword. He knew that too much thinking had to be held in abeyance in order for him to be able to both think and communicate at the same time. Gwen, his occupational therapist, had taught him that. For this rea son he decided that tonight he would communicate with others as little as possible. He’d go into the night a nocturnal creature, avoid ing human contact. He’d be able to think more clearly and act upon his thoughts and not have to explain anything. Later, when this was over and Jan was safely back, there’d time for speech therapy. And if he couldn’t get Jan back safely, then there’d be no reason to ever com municate again.

Steve’s final act before leaving his room was the old trick of stuff
ing extra blankets under the top sheet on his bed and arranging his pillow to make it appear he was there sleeping. He knew he’d prob
ably be discovered missing eventually this evening, especially when the nurses began their medication rounds. But at least he’d buy himself some time in case he was looked in on before that by an aide or by the guy in the baseball cap. Before dinner, after closing his door, he’d un
screwed the cover over the night light low on the wall near the door. He’d loosened the bulb so the light would not go on. This way, if the guy in the baseball cap tried to sneak into his room in the dark, the lump on the bed would look all the more real.

Sitting in his wheelchair just inside the door to his room with the lights off, dressed in black, his hands gripping the wheelchair’s chrome push rims, he felt suddenly quite bizarre. As if, once he rolled through the doorway he would be leaving the only world he knew. His brain had been damaged by a stroke, things he had done and the person he had been had walked over a cliff up there in his noggin. And because of this, all critical moments in his existence—as this surely was—had
become akin to standing at a precipice.

He recalled having tried to express this to Marjorie and Georgi
ana one afternoon in speech therapy. He recalled them agreeing that this was a good way to put it. The things up in his noggin had simply walked over a cliff. But maybe those things were still there, like car
toon characters walking out into space and not falling until they look down and realize what they’ve done, or like a character in a Hitchcock film grabbing onto a ledge at the last second.

As he sat just inside the door in his darkened room, he wondered if the lump of blankets he’d made on his bed to look like he was sleep
ing there might have more going for it. Maybe when he rolled himself through the doorway, the lump of blankets would become Steve Babe.

He shuddered at this thought not so much because of the insan
ity of it, but because of the reason for having the thought in the first place. There was a chance he might never see Jan again. Yes, that was the fear. Goddamn anyone to hell who would hurt Jan!