James Siegel - Deceit

Why?

What was he doing there that night?

He’d been evicted from the premises, then gone and holed himself up somewhere to work on the story.

What was the story?

I think I knew.

It was a story about MIAs helping one another out.

Purely for bureaucratic purposes.

Those MIAs up on that granite wall-their records remain open in the VA system as long as their bodies remain missing . They’d helped out a few MIAs from a different kind of a national disaster. Unknowingly, of course. They’d given them their names . The disappeared from Littleton Flats-where it wasn’t a dam that blew sky-high that Sunday morning.

No.

You might want to get yourself a Geiger counter, Mr. Wren.

I still hadn’t really looked at where I was.

If I had , I would’ve noted that it resembled a padded cell minus the padding. I would’ve been aware that Rainey hadn’t come back in a jiffy, that one minute had become two, then three, and four and five.

Time needed to register.

Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick and suddenly it was fifteen minutes after Rainey left. Suddenly I was sitting on the hard metal bench, which folded down from the wall. I was in a room you didn’t want to spend too much time in.

I wasn’t collecting accolades as I showed off for the crowd.

I was staring at my surroundings. I was reading what various incarcerated people had knifed into the wall.

I am a man of constant sorrows , someone had scrawled.

Call God collect.

I am MIA from the world.

And this:

Greetings from Kara Bolka.

Even as I stood up and walked the four feet to the door-it had a small grill in it like the door outside the elevator-even before I turned the knob, I began to sense that it might not open. That doors can open and doors can close and sometimes open doors can become closed ones.

I grasped the knob and turned.

Locked tight.

I put some wrist into it. Nothing.

I pushed against the door as if making sure that it was really, truly locked. I tapped on it, politely at first, as if it might be a misunderstanding, just a technical glitch, and Rainey would come running over in one minute to open it up and apologize.

After a while, I started pounding on it.

“ Hey ! Hey, Rainey ! What’s going on here?”

Sometimes when you shout a question out loud, you already know the answer. It’s mere formality. What are you doing? you yell when someone pulls a gun on you in a dark and scuzzy part of town. You know what they’re doing. They’re preparing to shoot you.

“Hey, c’mon! Open the damn door. What is this?” I shouted, with the rising panic of someone trapped between floors.

It took ten minutes for Rainey to show up.

Long enough to have bloodied my knuckles and to be dripping in sweat. To have put numerous scuff marks on the bottom of the door where I’d tried to kick it open.

Rainey wasn’t smiling anymore. He wasn’t letting me out, either.

“Shut the fuck up,” he said.

“You know what you’re doing? I’m a cop.”

“Yeah, I’m a cop too. I’m the fucking chief of police.”

Okay, charade up.

“Okay, fine. I’m a journalist .”

“You don’t say?”

“My name is Tom Valle. I’m from the Littleton Journal . Sometimes reporters have to lie a little to get the story. You can’t lock us up for that. Otherwise we’d all be in jail. Look, just let me out, and we’ll forget about this…”

“Lie a little ? That’s a lie right there. That’s a whopper.”

Someone had been talking to him.

“ Look , you’re breaking the law here. You’re aiding and abetting the wrong people. Right here-right in this fucking hospital.” Sometimes the first time you know you’re really scared is when you hear it in your own voice. Up till then, you think you’re doing okay-you’re in control, you’re going to get out of this.

“Wrong people, right. That’s good. That’s funny. Why don’t you just be cool, okay? Why don’t you sit back down?”

“Rainey, let me out of here. I’m a reporter , for god’s sake. There’s something criminal going on here.”

“Yeah. You’re right about that.”

“I’m not the criminal.”

“Yeah, you’re the cop. You’re Detective Wolfe.”

“You wouldn’t have let me in if I told you I was a reporter.”

“Well, now that you put it that way…”

“You’re going to let me out?”

“No.”

He was taking orders. This was a military hospital and he was taking orders.

“Look, you can’t just lock me up. This is fucking nuts. I have rights …” It was a tired refrain, something he probably heard a hundred times a day. It was like every prison on earth. No one’s guilty. No one belongs there. It’s all a mistake.

“Rights, huh,” Rainey said. “I got the right to some peace and fucking quiet. So sit down, and shut the fuck up.”

I screamed something. I’m not sure what it was-something with lots of four-letter words in it.

I managed to stop screaming just long enough to hear someone whispering.

Out there-out where Rainey was.

He’d ducked away to the left of the grill-I could hear a conversation going on. I couldn’t make out the words.

“Hey! Hey ! Who’s that? Who you talking to, Rainey? Hey !”

More footsteps. The sound of cart wheels rolling on tile.

The doorknob jiggled, turned.

I instinctively backed away, edged closer to the wall.

Rainey and two orderlies in blue scrubs. They’d obviously been picked for their size and not their bedside manners. One of them had a syringe in his left hand.

“What’s that?” I said.

“What’s it look like?” Rainey said.

“I’m not taking a shot.”

“Okay. Whatever you say.”

“You’re committing a crime, don’t you get it? You’re going to jail.”

“Nah, I’m going home. After we put you to bed.”

“I’m not taking a shot.”

“You’re agitated, dude. Agitated people make me agitated.”

The orderly with the syringe in his hand looked Samoan, like one of those NFL fullbacks with a last name you can’t pronounce. He smiled and said, “Come here.”

“No thanks. I’m fine right here. Thanks anyway.”

“Look, man,” he said with weary exasperation. “We can do it hard or easy.”

“Okay-easy. Let me out of here, and I’ll go easy on you. Promise. On all of you. I understand. You’re taking orders. I get it. You’re orderlies; orderlies take orders. I’m not a patient . I’m a reporter. I’m doing a story.”

“Better spell my name right, bro,” the Samoan said. “It’s got eleven letters.”

“ Name ? Hey, I won’t mention your name. Just let me walk out of here and it’s all copacetic. It’s all cool.”

“You really want this?” Rainey said. “You want to be hog-tied, straitjacketed, fucked up? You want the whole shit storm?”

“Okay, fine, you win,” I said.

There was a slight space between the Samoan and the door, a crack of daylight a good running back might blow through like a category 4 hurricane.

“Can I roll up my own sleeve?” I said.

I hadn’t played football since childhood-three-on-three street ball where you had to keep one eye open for darting cars. I’d been considered shifty back then, a good thing on 167th Street even if it was a not-so-good thing later on in the newsroom.

I tried to look relaxed, resigned to my fate.

It’s hard to do with every muscle in your body quivering in alarm.