Victor Lavalle - The Devil in Silver

“But what about when they get caught?”

“ If they ever get caught, they’ll call it a computer error. They’ll repay some portion of what they made in a settlement. But the amount they take in before they’re ever called out will be ten thousand times what they have to pay. Equator Zero makes patients profitable in perpetuity. That’s how Dr. Anand put it once. You all are worth more to them missing than present. More lucrative dead than alive.”

Pepper nodded appreciatively.

“Wow,” he said. “That’s devilish.”

“Dead souls,” Josephine sighed. “Good business.”

And quickly, instantly, Pepper saw himself trying to tell someone about Equator Zero. Nurse Washburn, Josephine, had just offered him quite a lot. He had the name of the program, he had the names of at least four dead patients (Kofi Acholi, Doris Walczak, Frank Waverly, Gerald Mack), and if he thought back a bit, he could probably list the exact dates when they died. Compare that to the dates on the bills recently submitted in their names and you had a report — verifiable, credible, simple, clear — that could force someone else outside the walls of New Hyde to take a goddamn interest. Pepper even saw himself using Coffee’s blue binder and trolling through the list of names and numbers of public officials that his friend spent so long amassing. And if those channels failed, maybe he could even try the reporter who’d written about Sue. Pepper wouldn’t change Coffee’s plan, just complete it.

Josephine tapped at the plastic pane, as if she was about to hand him his food order. She scanned the nurses’ station.

“I’ve got something here for you.”

Now one of the lines on the newly returned staff phone lit up. A bright red beacon on the cheap tan plastic phone. Josephine stopped searching for Pepper’s item and picked it up, didn’t even listen for a voice. “Be right there,” she said, then hung up again.

She walked to the formerly open end of the nurses’ station. There was a shatterproof plastic door there, running from ceiling to floor. Josephine slipped the red plastic key chain from a pants pocket.

Pepper walked toward the door of the nurses’ station, almost like he was the nurse’s escort.

“Stay where you are, Pepper.” Josephine didn’t sound scared like she might have a couple of months ago. She locked eyes with Pepper when she spoke, held his gaze until he nodded and backed away. She unlocked the door and stepped through, shut it again and locked it.

“That’s new regulations,” she told him. “I wasn’t trying to snap at you.”

Pepper put his hands up. “I didn’t take it that way.”

She nodded and, as proof of her comfort, she let him walk alongside her freely. He followed her. She began down Northwest 1, toward the front door. This was the only item on the unit that cost too much to move. Pepper passed the threshold of the hall, and Josephine put her hand out, just a millimeter away from his belly.

“No men on the women’s hall,” she said. “You know that.”

Pepper looked at the doors of the former conference rooms.

“But then how do you get male patients in and out of the unit?”

He pointed at the front door as proof of his clear logic. And Josephine didn’t fight him. She just shrugged and waved him toward her.

“That was easier than I thought,” he said.

“Maybe I don’t care because I’m leaving.”

“You got another job?”

As she walked, she looked from side to side, from one room door to the next. The swivel of a seasoned staff member. She was leaving just as she got good at the job. “I found something a little less … unpredictable,” she said.

“Bomb squad?” Pepper asked.

“Close!” Josephine laughed. “I joined the Army.”

“Get out of here!”

“Better pay,” she said. “Sad as that is. And I already feel like I’ve had some war training.”

“That’s kind of insulting,” Pepper said. “But I see your point.”

They reached the secure door. Josephine looked through the plastic and spoke loudly to someone on the other side. “Got to wait for the doctor to let you in!” she shouted. She shrugged as if to say, Regulations .

“Hey!” Pepper said. “What was it you had for me? A going-away present?”

“You’re not leaving yet.”

Josephine heard how harsh that sounded. “I mean that’s got to be settled by the new unit head,” she added. “But I don’t think it’ll be too long. Really. You know who’s been telling the new doc that you’re not ill? Miss Chris!”

“She just doesn’t like me,” Pepper said.

“That’s true, but she wouldn’t lie. She means it.”

Pepper waved her off. He didn’t want to start expecting good news. Nothing made waiting worse. At the very least, he hadn’t been removed from the unit and taken to a lockup, so the original case of assaulting the officers probably had not been brought before a judge yet. Josephine walked back toward the nurses’ station. Before Pepper joined her, he pressed his face to the door’s window. On the other side he saw two paramedics, one man and one woman. They looked at him for a moment, standing straighter and widening their eyes. He realized they hoped he was the doctor and was about to let them in.

Pepper didn’t bother trying to explain. Instead he stared at the third person out there. A big man. Not tall but wide. The polite term is heavyset. (The clinical term is hyperobese .) A black guy. Maybe. Or a Latin guy? Pepper couldn’t say for sure. Late twenties or early thirties, his hair was kind of a wild puff and his head was down. The EMTs watched Pepper, but this heavyset guy was more interested in his own toes. He had his arms crossed. He looked thoughtful, morose, like that presidential painting of JFK. Almost identical except this guy wore a bright blue windbreaker and weighed about three hundred pounds. Pepper knocked on the little window hard enough to shake this big guy from his daze.

He looked up at Pepper. Pepper returned the stare.

Then someone tapped his back.

Pepper turned and found Dr. Barger. The man didn’t smile now like he often had in Book Group. And his shirt, once open down to the chest, was buttoned to the top. He wore a tie and a frown.

“Dr. Anand had a lighter touch with patients,” Dr. Barger said. “But I’m going to expect more from you.”

Pepper waited to be recognized.

“Now, I want you out of this hallway,” Dr. Barger said. “It’s for the female patients only.” The doctor looked at him blankly. He didn’t recognize Pepper at all.

Pepper decided not to try to remind the man of the good old days in Book Group. What would be the point?

“Go,” Dr. Barger commanded.

Pepper saluted.

“Yes, Captain!” Pepper said.

He returned to the nurses’ station where Josephine had already let herself back in. When Pepper appeared, she was already moving charts and peeking into drawers.

“Go over there,” Josephine pointed. At the end of the station, opposite the long door, was a window the size of a dinner tray. Josephine opened one last drawer, pulled something out, and came toward him. Inside the nurses’ station there was a small plastic knob that she used to slide the plastic window open.

“Don’t see much mail coming through here,” Josephine said. “But you got a postcard last week.”

“Why didn’t you give it to me when it first came?”

“I couldn’t have a conversation with you,” Josephine explained. “You were just, out , you know, from the meds.”

Pepper nodded and opened his hand to her, right outside the window.

“Plus, I liked looking at the picture on the front,” she said. Josephine handed the postcard through. “It’s by a man named Vincent Van Gogh. Have you ever heard of him? He was a painter. A real genius.”