Michael Christie - The Beggar's Garden

Though Saul respected Kraepevic immensely, he sometimes pictured him as a skittish islander with a bone-skewered septum, scampering up a volcano in full ceremonial regalia with a small payload of psychotropic medication the doctor and the other villagers had prepared in large steaming cauldrons, which Kraepevic then shovelled into the great smoking orifice to sate the bloodlust of an angry volcano god.

“All thoughts are intrusive, Darko,” Saul said, rising from his chair. Dr. Kraepevic, he realized, might have had more to do with Luis’s appearance than he’d suspected.

Attention: Martin Shenck Minister of Mental Health Province of British Columbia

Dear Sir,

Saul Columbo here and as you know and are aware Ive been residing in the care of Riverview Hospital for most of my long life because of my mental state being unfit determined by my personal psychiatrist Dr. Darko Kraepevic. I do not disagree with this please ignore any letters Ive made before now that says anything else. May I state for the record in light of my dangerous past actions I feel happy and safe to live in the care of Riverview Hospital and please keep funding such activities as bingo, video rentals, pizza night, crafts, etc, thank you.

But this is part two of my letter. I wish to tell and inform you that through my detective skills and from my own observations Ive detected an individual or a person who is almost definitely an Assassin sent here (it is not as of writing this letter to you sir clear by who) possibly and probably with the help of my personal psychiatrist Dr. Darko Kraepevic who has infiltrated my mind and my hospital of residence and who I suspect means as well as intends to cause me harm possibly of the grievous bodily type or also more in my mind which is as you know sir much more difficult to know is happening. Also he might be shocking me while I sleep.

This is a situation I want you to investigate with EVERY POSSIBLE AGENT through the right channels of course. I ask you sir to have this be kept in strict confidence. There is no one else for me who I can trust.

Your Humbled Informant,

Saul Columbo, Compliant and Concerned Patient/Detective, Riverview Hospital, BC

Saul pitched a bolus of house laundry into the dryer, pressed Start, then filled the mop bucket and rolled it sloshing into the Dayroom to perform his next chore. Apart from TV and bingo, chores were his favourite pastime. They ignited in him a faint yet pleasurable feeling of competence that made his thoughts fall quiet as clouds. Chores also earned him the snatches of freedom called two-hour passes, which he spent walking the oak-strewn hospital grounds.

Sending the letter to Martin Shenck had put the Luis affair out of his hands and Saul had officially closed his investigation. Though Saul disliked going over Kraepevic’s head, even if the doctor was in on it, once Martin Shenck intervened and Luis was exposed and all was returned to normal, Kraepevic would offer an apology, which Saul would generously accept.

After a few swipes under the couch that yielded a dusty domino and a bendy straw, Saul saw he’d neglected to add soap to the water. The laundry-room door had locked automatically and only staff could open it. He knuckle-rapped at the nurses’ station window and mouthed laundry room to the duty nurse, Roberta, who sat with a cellphone clamped between cheek and shoulder. She put a hand over the phone and called out.

The Assassin emerged like a lion from the medication room. Saul hadn’t seen him in days and was suddenly concerned he’d somehow intercepted the letter. Luis stepped into the hall, his freshly cut keys sparkly in his hands.

“I’ll let you in, Saul, no problem,” he said.

“I’d rather Roberta did,” Saul said, knocking at the window again. Roberta didn’t stir.

The Assassin’s eyebrows vaulted. He shook his head and expelled a short burst through his nose. “Okay,” he said and reentered the nurses’ station. While he spoke with Roberta, Saul noticed all the binders labelled with patient names and file numbers crammed together on a high shelf. His eyes landed on the binder bearing his own name and he saw that it was much thicker than the others. Saul took comfort in the knowledge that his file was mostly well-crafted cover stories he’d been feeding them for years. Even so, he detested the idea of Luis’s unlimited access to any of it.

“Well, Saul, Roberta’s busy at the moment,” the Assassin said when he returned. “Looks like it’s you and me.”

Saul trailed the Assassin by a good four paces, listening to his brand-new nurse shoes grunt on the linoleum in the wide, echoic hallway. The sound brought to mind Georgina’s repulsive habit of scratching her throat with the base of her tongue. Like a tree trunk come to life, Luis was at least a foot shorter than Saul, who was a gangly six-two, and moved with the wobbly power of an upright bear. Saul would have to use his reach advantage; the Assassin would crush him like a lamb if it ever came to grappling. Saul doused his fear with an image of Martin Shenck keying in a background check at that very moment, turning up all those poor souls Luis had tossed from the doors of unmarked helicopters.

The Assassin stopped at the door. There was more jingling as he sought the correct key. Saul feared he was stalling.

“There you go,” he said, jamming the door open with his left foot.

“After you,” Saul said.

“I’ve got to go get the medications ready,” he said, unflinching. There was no choice. Saul took a few steps. The Assassin did not move. Saul took a few more, shuffling his way through the doorway, his hands guarding his face, keeping perpendicular to the Assassin, just as he’d seen in the martial arts programs. But Saul did not want to fight; he’d always hated when the nurses had touched him in the past, forced him to do things, their unbreakable wills and their questions, their hundreds of latexed hands.

“Sore back?” Luis said as Saul passed safely into the room.

“I don’t want trouble,” Saul said.

“Yeah, I heard they cut aerobics. Too bad. Could have used it myself,” he said, cupping his barrel of a belly.

“You don’t get a face scar like that doing burpees,” Saul said.

The Assassin chuckled, then grinned, his large white teeth like an open suitcase of money, as he traced the minnow with his thumbnail. “This? This is just something that happened to me when I was young. It’s nothing.” Then he let the door go and it hissed on its pneumatic hinge.

Later, in the Dayroom, its floor luminous from the mopping job he’d done, Saul glanced up from a checkers game with Kim to watch the Assassin through the glass of the nurses’ station. Roberta was teaching him to punch pills from blister packs into paper cups with initials markered on them. Luis worked, squinting like a watchmaker, wary of a mix-up, which in fact happened frequently and was no great cause for concern. Saul had once got Darryl’s anti-seizure meds and his body went rigid for six hours until they stuck him with muscle relaxants and he’d melted into his bed.

“King me,” Kim said.

Saul counted Kim as his only friend, a manic-depressive and a shrewd and brutal checkers tactician, especially so when she was depressed. Saul clacked one of her captured checkers atop the valiant soldier who’d survived a brave advance to the underworld of his deepest rank. Why this checker? Saul wondered absently. What’s so special about it? He sat for a moment admiring its stacked, regal magnificence, even though it was about to be commanded by Kim to cut a swath of vengeful, bidirectional wrath through his already dwindling forces.

“Med time, folks,” said a nurse named Parvinder as she cranked open the gate on the drive-through-style window where they dispensed pills four times a day. The patients assembled and Saul ended up with Drew ahead of him in line. Luis was behind the counter, and Saul felt his eyes narrow. He still couldn’t grasp why Luis hadn’t choked him to death in the laundry room.