The Devil in Silver (47 page)

“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.

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. Mack 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.

“What if we pop this door,” Wally asked. “And get outside and some alarm goes off?”

“That’s not going to happen,” Mr. Mack said.

Pepper had moved to the jerry-rigged clothing rack, eyeing the changes of clothes with envy. “How do you know that?” Pepper asked.

“Because this door doesn’t lead outside,” Mr. Mack said matter-of-factly.

Frank Waverly had already chipped away the paint at the top of the doorway and moved on to the right side. Though he’d seemed hesitant, though he was at least as old as Mr. Mack, he moved quickly and with vigor.

“Best I can tell from Dorry’s map”—Mr. Mack patted the breast pocket of his sport coat—“the space on the other side of this wall used to be the
front
of the building. Maybe from when it was an eye clinic. The front of Northwest faced the sidewalk. People could just pull up out front and drop off the patient who would walk right in. But when it became our Northwest, for mental patients, they sealed that entrance off. It was like the building turned its back to the neighbors.”

“Like it was ashamed,” Wally said.

Frank Waverly worked hard but remained as quiet as ever. He didn’t even grunt as he chopped at the doorway. The only sound was the sawing of the screwdriver against old paint. The way the chips flew, you would’ve thought Frank Waverly was using an electric saw.

“Now Dorry has this map all laid out,” Mr. Mack continued. “She drew it by hand but it’s detailed. She was in fifteen on Northwest 3, last in her row. She didn’t have a roommate. So who knows how many times she was back there. Plenty, I’m guessing.”

“Why would she?” Pepper asked.

“Maybe she’s been leaving the building whenever she wants,” Wally said.

Mr. Mack said, “I don’t think so, Mr. Gambino.”

An address that made Wally smile.

“That wasn’t Dorry’s way. Each one of us got the greeting and the tour from that woman. She never just thought of herself. She could be a trial sometimes, but she was never selfish.”

You should see a friendly face first
. That was one of the first things she’d said to Pepper. And so he had. So had all of them.

Frank Waverly moved to the other side of the doorway and got to chopping. They watched him quietly for a moment. As hard as Frank Waverly was working, each man willed him to go even faster.

“But because Dorry was a soft touch,” Mr. Mack continued, “I’m going to tell you what I think she was really doing back there all these years. The map shows a way to get out of this building. Through an air duct on the second floor. But the map also shows a back path that leads to one room in particular. One that’s off-limits to patients, normally.”

“The silver door,” Pepper whispered.

Mr. Mack reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, but instead of pulling out that map, he revealed something else.

A key.

Mr. Mack said, “I think she took care of that thing like she took care of all of us.”

Wally slapped his own leg. “She took care of a fucking
monster
?! Nah, that ain’t right.”

Pepper looked at the ceiling. “She always said it was just a man.”

“She even wrote his name down,” Mr. Mack said.

Frank Waverly continued to chip and Wally Gambino laughed.

“That old bitch was double crazy!”

Mr. Mack pulled out the map. The sheet of paper had been folded into a small square. He handed it to Pepper.

“Why are you giving this up?”

“I got it memorized already.”

Pepper unfolded it. Wally couldn’t help himself, he went up on his toes and tried to see the map, too. They looked like two boys who’d just found a page ripped out of a porn magazine.

“Now what we’re going to do,” Mr. Mack announced, “is break through this door and then move over to the other side of the men’s hall and get the two fellas there. Then we go to the women’s hall and we do the same. Everyone’s expecting us. It’s going to take us awhile, I know, but
everyone
needs to be involved.”

“Involved with what?” Pepper asked.

Mr. Mack pointed at the door, slowly being revealed. “We’re going to teach that thing a lesson or three.”

Pepper scanned the map. Dorry was so good that she’d even detailed the number of steps they would find on the staircase that led from the first floor to the second. (Dorry had a bit of that OCD going strong.) The route to the air duct looked simple enough. As did the path to the Devil. She’d also scribbled a note. Funnily enough, the note wasn’t addressed to Pepper. Not to anyone specifically. Which made Pepper wonder how long Dorry had been planning to pass on this knowledge. How long she’d been hoping to take her rest.