The Madman's Tale (25 page)

It did not take long for all the patients and staff to become aware of Lucy Jones’s presence in the Amherst Building. It was not merely the way she dressed, in loose dark slacks and sweater, carrying her leather briefcase with an orderliness that defied the more slovenly character of the hospital. Nor was it her height and bearing, or the distinctive scar on her face, that separated her from the regulars. It was more in the way she passed through the corridors, heels clicking on the linoleum floor, with an alertness in her eyes that made it seem as if she was inspecting everything and everyone, and searching for some telltale sign that might lead her in the direction she needed. It was an awareness that wasn’t defined by paranoia, visions, or voices. Even the Catos standing in the corners, or leaning up against the walls, or the senile elderly locked into their wheelchairs, all seemingly lost inside their own reveries, or the mentally retarded, who stared dully at almost all that happened around them, seemed to take some strange note that Lucy was driven by forces every bit as powerful as those they all struggled with, but that hers were somehow more appropriate. More connected to the world. So when she paced past them, the patients would follow her with their eyes, not interrupting their murmuring and mumbling, or the shakiness in their hands, but still watching her with an attentiveness that seemed to defy their own illnesses. Even at mealtimes, which she took in the cafeteria with the patients and staff, waiting in line like everyone else for the plates of nondescript, institutionalized food, she was someone apart. She took to sitting at a corner table, where she could look out at the other people in the room, her back to a painted lime green cinder block wall.
Occasionally, someone would join her at the table, either Mister Evil, who seemed most interested in everything she was doing, or Big Black or Little Black, who immediately turned any conversation over to sports. Sometimes some of the nursing staff would sit with her, but their stark white uniforms and peaked caps set her even more apart from the regular hospital routine. And when she conversed with one of her companions, she seemed to constantly slip-slide her glance around the room, giving Francis the impression that she was a little like a field hawk soaring on wind currents above them all, looking down, trying to spot some movement in the withered brown stalks of the early New England spring and isolating her prey.

None of the patients sat with her, including, at the start, Francis or Peter the Fireman. This had been Peter’s suggestion. He had told her that there was no sense in letting too many folks know that they were working with her, although people would figure it out for themselves before too much time had passed. So, at least for the first days, Francis and Peter ignored her in the dining hall.

Cleo, however, did not.

As Lucy was carrying her tray to the refuse station, the portly patient accosted her.

“I know why you’re here!” Cleo said. She was loud, and forcefully accusatory, and had it not been for the usual dinnertime clatter of dishes, trays, and plates, her tone of voice might have grabbed everyone’s attention.

“Do you now?” Lucy calmly replied. She stepped past Cleo and began to scrape leftovers from a sturdy white plate into a trash canister.

“Indeed, yes,” Cleo continued with a matter-of-fact tone. “It is obvious.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Cleo went on, filled with bluster and the peculiar bravado that madness sometimes has, where it releases all the ordinary brakes on behavior.

“Then perhaps you should tell me what you think.”

“Aha! Of course. You mean to take over Egypt!”

“Egypt?”

“Egypt,” Cleo said, waving her hand to indicate the entire room, motioning in a slightly exasperated fashion at the clarity of it all, which had initially eluded Lucy Jones. “My Egypt. Followed pretty damn fast by seducing Marc Anthony and Caesar, as well, I wouldn’t doubt.”

Cleo harumphed loudly, crossed her arms for a moment, blocklike in Lucy’s path, and then added, as was her usual response to just about everything, “The bastards. The damn bastards.”

Lucy Jones looked quizzically at her, then shook her head. “No, in that, you are decidedly mistaken. Egypt is safe in your hands. I would never presume to rival anyone for such a crown, nor for the loves of their life.”

Cleo lowered her hands to her hips and stared at Lucy. “Why should I believe you?” she demanded.

“You will need to take my word on this.”

The large woman hesitated, then scratched at the twisted mangle of hair she wore on top of her head. “Are you a person of honesty and integrity?” she asked abruptly.

“I am told that I am,” Lucy replied.

“Gulp-a-pill and Mister Evil would say the same, but I do not trust them.”

“Nor do I,” Lucy said quietly, leaning forward slightly. “On that count, we can certainly agree.”

“Then, if you do not mean to conquer Egypt, why are you here?” Cleo asked, putting her hands back on her hips, and resuming an aggressively intuitive tone.

“I think there is a traitor in your kingdom,” Lucy said slowly.

“What sort of traitor?”

“The worst sort.”

Cleo nodded. “This has to do with Lanky’s arrest and Short Blond’s murder, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Lucy replied.

“I saw him,” Cleo said. “Not well, but I saw him. That night.”

“Who? Who did you see?” Lucy asked, suddenly alert, leaning forward.

Cleo smiled catlike, knowingly, then she shrugged. “If you need my help,” she said, a sudden portrait of haughtiness, her voice dripping with entitlement, “then you should apply for it in an appropriate fashion, at the correct time, at a proper place.”

With that, Cleo stepped back, and after taking a moment to light a cigarette with a flourish, she spun away, a look of satisfaction on her face. Lucy appeared a little confused, and took a step after her, only to be intercepted by Peter the Fireman, who had carried his tray up to the refuse counter at that moment, although Francis could see that he had barely touched any of his food. He began to scrape his plate, and thrust the utensils through an opening into the cleaning station. As he did this, Francis heard him say to Lucy, “It’s true. She saw the Angel that night. She told us that he entered the women’s dormitory, stood there for a moment, then exited, locking the door behind him.”

Lucy Jones nodded. “Curious behavior,” she said, although even she realized that this particular observation was somewhat useless inside a mental hospital where all the behavior was, at best, curious, and at worse, something truly awful. She looked over at Francis, who had risen and now stood next to them. “C-Bird, tell me why would someone who has just committed a violent crime, taken the extraordinary trouble to cover up his tracks and worked hard
to see that someone else is blamed for the crime and should by all rights want to disappear and hide, enter into a room filled with women who, if any one of them happened to awaken, might remember him?”

Francis shook his head. He wondered to himself:
Could they remember him?
He could hear several of his voices vying within him to answer that question, but he ignored them and instead fixed on Lucy’s eyes. She shrugged.

“A riddle,” Lucy said. “But an answer I’ll need sooner or later. Do you think you could get me that answer, Francis?”

He nodded.

She laughed a bit. “C-Bird has confidence. Good thing,” she said.

And then she led them out into the corridor.

She started to say another thing, but Peter held up his hand. “C-Bird, don’t let anyone else know what Cleo saw.” Then he turned to Lucy Jones. “When Francis first spoke with her, and she first mentioned that the man we’re seeking entered the women’s dormitory, she was unable to really provide any sort of coherent description of the Angel. Everyone was pretty upset. Perhaps, now that she has had a little more time to reflect on that night, she might have noticed something important. She likes Francis. I think it might be wise if he went and spoke with her again about the events that night. This would have the added advantage of not drawing any attention to her, because as soon as you start questioning her, people will understand she might have some connection to all this.”

Lucy considered what Peter said, and then nodded. “That makes some sense. Francis, can you handle that by yourself, and then get back to me?”

Francis said, “Yes,” but he was unsure of himself, despite what Lucy had said about his confidence. He couldn’t remember actually ever questioning someone to try to elicit information.

Newsman wandered past them at that moment, stopping a few feet distant, doing a little balletlike pirouette on the polished floor, his shoes squeaking as he spun, then saying, “
Union-News:
Market plunges in bad economic news.” Then, with a flourish, he spun about again, and tacked down the hallway, a newspaper held out in front of him like a sail.

“If I go talk to Cleo again,” Francis asked, “what will you do, Peter?”

“What will I do? It’s a little more like ‘What would I like?’ What I would like, C-Bird, is for Miss Jones to be more forthcoming with the files she has brought with her.”

Lucy didn’t reply at first, and Peter turned to face her.

“It would help us to have a little better idea of the details that brought you here, if we are to help you while you stay.”

Again, she seemed to hesitate. “Why do you think—,” she started, only to have Peter interrupt her. He was smiling, in that offhand way he had, which
meant, at least to Francis, that he had found something amusing and slightly unusual, all at once.

“You brought the files with you, for the same reasons that I would have. Or anyone else who was investigating a case that is barely better than a supposition would have. Because you will need to reassure yourself of similarities, at virtually every stage. And, because somewhere, Miss Jones, you have a boss, as well, who is going to want to see some progress quickly. Probably a boss, like all bosses, with a short fuse on his temper, and a highly exaggerated political sense of how his young assistants should be spending their time profitably. So, our first real order of business is to determine common threads, between what went before, in those other killings, and what happened here. So, I think I should see those files.”

Lucy took a deep breath. “Interestingly enough, Mister Evans asked me for the same thing, this morning, using more or less the same rationale.”

“Great minds must think alike,” Peter said. This was spoken with unconcealed sarcasm.

“I refused his request.”

Peter hesitated, then said, “That’s because you are as yet uncertain whether he is trustworthy.” This, too, was amusing, and he seemed to laugh on the tail end of the sentence.

Lucy smiled. “More or less precisely what I just told the lady you call Cleo.”

“But C-Bird and I, well, we are in a different category, are we not?”

“Yes. A pair of innocents. But if I show you these …”

“You will anger Mister Evans. Tough.”

Again, Lucy paused, before replying, this time with a hesitancy born of curiosity in her voice. “Peter,” she said slowly, “do you care so little about who it is that you piss off? Especially someone whose opinion as to your current mental state could be so critical for your own future …”

Peter seemed about to laugh out loud, and ran a hand through his hair, shrugging and then shaking his head with the same off-balance smile. “The short answer to your questions is
Yes
. I care very little who I piss off. Evans hates me. And whatever I do or say, he’s still going to hate me, and it is not because of who I am as much as because of what I did. So I don’t really hold out any hope for him to change. Probably not fair for me to ask him to change, either. And, he’s probably not alone in the We Hate Peter Club around here, he’s just the most obvious, and, I might add, the most obnoxious. Nothing I do is ever going to change that. So, why should I concern myself with him?”

Lucy, too, smiled slightly. It made the scar on her face curve, and Francis thought suddenly that the most curious thing about a blemish as profound as hers was that it made the rest of her beauty all that more substantial.

“I protest too much?” Peter asked, still grinning.

“What is it they say about the Irish?”

“They say a lot. But mainly that we like to hear ourselves speak. This is the most dramatically trite cliché. But, alas, one based on centuries of truth.”

“All right,” Lucy said. “Francis, why don’t you go and see Miss Cleo, while Peter accompanies me to my little office.”

Francis hesitated, and Lucy asked again, “If that’s all right with you?”

He bent his head in agreement. It was a strange sensation, he thought. He indeed wanted to help her, because every time he looked at her, he thought she was more beautiful than before. But he was a little jealous of Peter getting to accompany her, while he had to launch himself after Cleo. His voices, still muted, rumbled within him. But he ignored the noise and after a momentary hesitation, hurried down the corridor toward the dayroom, where he suspected Cleo would be behind the Ping-Pong table, in her customary spot, trying to enlist victims in a game.