He Done Her Wrong

CHAPTER 11

“Well?” said Winning curiously, taking another puff on his pipe.

“Not very,” I said. “Let me take a guess. That description I just gave, the Dr. Winning, that was Ressner, right?”

“With some allowances, a reasonable description of Ressner,” he admitted.

My mind was clicking, but the ribbon was blank. It didn’t make sense.

“How did you know I was coming? Ressner didn’t call you. And why the hell did he pay me fifty bucks to …”

“Your sister called,” Dr. Winning said.

“My sister? I don’t have a sister.”

“She called, or someone did, and said she was your sister. She also said your real name is Tobias Leo Pevsner.” He had cheated and looked at a pad on the desk behind him.

“Right, that’s my name. I changed it for business reasons. I’m a private detective.”

“Of course.” He moved behind the desk and sat down. “You catch criminals and protect the innocent. Just like Sam Spade.”

“Something like that,” I said. “Let’s spend some time talking about Ressner. You want him back, don’t you?”

“We want him back,” said Dr. Winning. “We’ve informed the state police and gone through the proper channels. We wouldn’t hire a private investigator. How did you hurt your head?”

The lawn mower appeared in the distance behind Winning. I tried not to watch him as he moved slowly from left to right as if he were the star of a boring movie.

“Ressner clobbered me,” I explained, “just before he killed Richard Talbott, the actor.”

“Ressner killed Talbott,” he said evenly. “Mr. Ressner never displayed any violence in the time he spent with us.”

“Well, he’s much better now,” I said with irritation, getting out of the chair. “He’s managed to throw off his inhibitions and murder two people. You did a hell of a job with him.”

“You have no identification?”

“I told you,” I said with more than a little irritation. “It was stolen from me. My cash, my driver’s license, and my Dick Tracy badge.”

“Dick Tracy badge,” he said with a tolerant pout of his lower lip.

“It’s a kind of joke,” I explained. “There are no private investigator badges. People like to see badges and it doesn’t hurt sometimes if they think I’m a cop.”

“Are you a cop?” Now he was openly taking notes.

“No, well yes, a private cop. I used to be a Glendale cop. Then I worked at Warner Brothers. My brother is a cop, an L.A. Homicide cop. You can pick up that phone and call him. Do you think I’m working some kind of con here?”

“No I don’t, Mr. Pevsner,” he said. “Your brother is a cop. What about your sister?”

“I don’t have a sister,” I said.

“What about friends?” he said, still writing. “You have any friends? I mean people who could verify your identity. Remember we have a delicate situation here. You might be a friend of Mr. Ressner.”

The lawn mower was about halfway across the window and moving steadily.

“Gunther Wherthman,” I said or maybe spat.

“Tell me something about him,” said Winning.

“He’s a midget, I mean a little person.”

Winning nodded.

“He’s Swiss. And there’s Jeremy Butler.”

“Is he a midget?” asked Winning, scratching his neck.

“No, closer to a giant. How about cutting this crap and just calling one of them or the guy I share my office with?”

“You have a partner,” he said, looking up. The mower was nearing the end of the window. “Like Spade and Archer?”

“No, Shelly’s a dentist.”

“You are partners with a dentist.”

“I didn’t say he was my partner. I said we shared an office. Look, doc, we’re getting nowhere here. Someone is feeding you a line, and you’re taking it in. I’ve got a long way to go and a lot to figure out. I’ll take off now. There are some people who need some help, and I can see you’re not going to cooperate.”

“What people?” he said, still writing. I considered ripping the pad from his desk or his nose from his face.

“Mae West and Cecil B. De Mille, to name two,” I said through closed teeth.

“And, let me get this straight, you think Jeffrey Ressner is planning to hurt them, and it’s your responsibility to protect them.”

“You’ve got it straight,” I said. The lawn mower was out of sight. I wanted to get up and change my angle so I could see him. He was steady and, if not sane, at least something to hold on to. “Look. You can just check your files to know about this thing with movie people. The son of a bitch went to Mae West’s house four days ago dressed in drag and tried to kill me.”

“Mr. Ressner tried to kill you?”

“Do you think we can carry on what’s left of this conversation without you repeating everything I say? It’s like listening to a dead echo.”

“Sorry,” he said. “A dead echo?”

I put a finger in his face and said, “I’m going.”

“What happened at Mae West’s house?” he went on, ignoring my farewell.

“Jeremy saved my damned life,” I said.

“Jeremy’s the midget,” he said.

“No, the giant. That’s it. I’m going. If I find Ressner, I’m turning him over to the cops. I think I’ve had it over my head with the Winning Institute.”

“One last thing,” Winning said still ignoring my anger. “Mr. Pevsner, your sister has asked us to keep you here for observation for a few days, possibly longer. She’s told us that you’ve had sessions like this before and can be self-destructive. Mr. Pevsner, we found the gun in your car.”

“It’s registered,” I said. “Just put it back, you son of a bitch. It’s my property. I don’t have much property, but what I’ve got, I like to protect.”

“Your sister says that in fact you have quite a bit of property back in Arizona.” Winning rose and looked at me. “Her check to us this morning was quite generous. Now why would a sister you don’t have give us a generous check?”

I drew in my breath for one last try before I threw Dr. Winning’s tolerant body through the window.

“I’ve been set up,” I said. “Ressner pretended to be you, got me up here, took my wallet, paid someone to call saying she was my sister.”

“Why would Mr. Ressner do that?” Winning said reasonably, putting his pipe down in a neat wooden ashtray.

“To get me out of the way while he goes for Mae West and De Mille. Because he doesn’t like me and thinks he has a score to settle. Because he is a nut, something you are supposed to know something about.”

Winning wrote something and put the pad down.

“Nope,” he said sadly, “Where would Jeffrey Ressner get the kind of money that came here this morning? And your story. Put yourself in my position, Mr. Pevsner.”

“Peters,” I corrected, making a fist.

“Peters,” he said with a smile. “If there is some kind of plot by Ressner, we’ll find out about it. Why not just cooperate with us for a day or so? You can have a nice rest here, all paid for. We’ll check your story, your brother, your friends.”

Our eyes met, and I could tell that I was being humored. I tried to think of a way of breaking through that tolerance, and then I gave up.

“You know what I think I’ll do?” I said.

“No, what?”

“I think I’ll just walk out of here quietly if I can, but if I can’t I’ll bounce you off the wall.”

Winning wasn’t fazed.

“Like a dead echo?” he said and put his hand under the desk. I could hear a buzzing sound in the hall and realized he had hit a hidden button.

I turned to the door as M.C. strode in with Nurse Grace a pace behind him.

“Mr. Pevsner will be staying with us for at least a day or so,” said Winning, tapping his notepad.

“Step out of the way, M.C.,” I said, holding out my arm.

“No trouble,” he said, blocking the doorway.

“I think we’re a little late for that,” I said, easing to the right with the idea of a fast dash past M.C. and a wild end run over Nurse Grace.

“Maybe so,” he said. Everybody in the damn place was reasonable.

“I’m going now,” I said, taking a step forward.

M.C.’s head shook a soft no. I turned to Dr. Winning, who watched with sad paternal eyes. I was one of his now.

I made my move and threw my shoulder at M.C. He side-stepped and grabbed for my arm. He missed. I pushed Nurse Grace and headed down the hall. I got no more than ten feet before M.C. caught me around the waist and lifted me in the air. I felt like a football about to take part in a brutal punt return.

“Go easy, my man,” he said in my ear.

I threw an elbow at his head and felt it connect. My elbow hurt but he didn’t loosen up. Instead he sat me on the ground. I could hear footsteps coming up behind us and caught a glimpse of Nurse Grace’s white shoes.

“You need some help?” she said.

“Just put him out,” said M.C. still softly, as if he wanted this over with so he could get on to more important things. He grabbed my right wrist and clamped it tight. Nurse Grace was on her knees, and I could see something in her right hand, a hypodermic needle.

“I’ve been vaccinated,” I said, struggling to get free.

“Not for this trip,” said M.C., and the needle went into my forearm.

I think Koko tried to stop them. At least he was there almost instantly and happier than ever before. He was beautifully clear and, for the first time, in color. I wanted to open my eyes and tell M.C. and Nurse Grace that Koko had appeared in color, but I couldn’t. Koko took my hand and led me to the inkwell. I had things to do, people to save, but he was not to be denied. We balanced at the end of the inkwell, and just before we plunged in, I could see a pen descending on us. The pen looked suspiciously like a needle.

When I awoke, I had the feeling that just seconds had passed. I was lying on a bed. To my left was another bed. Beyond that bed was a wall with a small, barred window leading to the night. A circular fluorescent light fixture in the low ceiling revealed white walls. On the other bed, a powerful-looking man with brownish-yellow hair reclined comfortably in bright green and red pajamas and read a book. It was Frenchman’s Creek by Du Maurier.

We looked at each other for a few moments before I turned my back and closed my eyes. But I couldn’t sleep and knew it. If anything, I had a headache from too much drugged sleep. When I was feeling under the blanket to find out what I was wearing (it turned out to be a pair of hospital gray pajamas), I realized that since I was a potential psychotic, my roommate must also be a mental patient. I might be unwise to turn my back on him. In turning quickly to face the man in the bright green and red pajamas, I forgot about the stitches in my head.

“You got a headache?” the man said. “You want a drink?” He leaned forward, blinking.

“No. No thanks.”

“Mind if I exercise?” He put his book aside and stood next to me between the beds.

“No.”

The man suddenly disappeared, and it took me a few seconds to realize that he had dropped to the floor. Leaning dizzily over, I found him sitting crosslegged, teeth clenched, and red-faced. He grunted slightly and turned redder. As the red began to turn to white, he relaxed and turned on his stomach. It seemed as if he had gone to sleep, but instead he threw his arms back and lifted his legs from the floor so that he was carefully balanced on his stomach and looking in vacant agony at the wall ahead of him. Again he failed to make any impression on the wall except for fingerprints, which joined the pattern of other, older fingerprints at approximately the same point.

“You were wondering why I waited till you woke up to do my exercises, weren’t you?”

“No,” I said, trying to shake the drug dryness from my tongue and brain.

“Truth is I like an audience. I used to feel guilty about that.” He dabbed his perspiring face with the corner of his bright pajamas. “Used to find myself exercising whenever company came over, and my wife would say I was just showing off. I never thought I was showing off. Just did it when the mood took me and didn’t stop to analyze it. The hell with her. I said it then and I say it now.”

We looked at each other in silence for a minute or longer.

“My name is Sklodovich, Ivan Sklodovich,” he said, extending a hand, which I shifted to meet with my unsteady grasp. “Don’t worry, I won’t squeeze. I don’t believe in tests of strength on a first meeting. It creates a competitive tension that’s hard to overcome. You know what I mean?”

“Yes. My name is Peters, Toby Peters.”

“Nice to meet you. Listen, Toby. They call me Cortland around here. The staff, I mean. I don’t like it, but live and let live. It doesn’t cost me anything to be called Cortland, does it?”

“No.”

“You see my father was a welder in Russia and when he came to America he invented a new welding process, Slig. A big tycoon was what my old man wanted to be, so he changed his name to Cortland. But it didn’t help. Nobody wanted Slig welding, and nobody wanted a roly-poly bearded Russian with a name like Cortland. They thought he was a Bolshevik spy or something. For twenty years my family has hidden the solid, black-bread name of Sklodovich behind the chewing-gum name of Cortland. But no more. I am Ivan Sklodovich. Peters. Are you the Peters who paints murals in sewers?”

“No, I’m a detective.”

“A defective?”

“Detective. A private eye.”

“Oh. I couldn’t figure out what the hell a defective was. This is a mental hospital, you know?”

“Yes, I know,” I said and told him my story in condensed form, during which he blinked frequently and ate an orange pulled from under his pillow after first offering it to me.

When I mentioned Ressner, Cortland-who-would-be-Sklodovich paused in his citrus munching and nodded wisely.

“I know Ressner,” said Cortland, after I had finished telling him of how I became a prisoner in Winning. “I used to work in an office, sold carbon paper, Whitney Carbon Paper, the carbon paper that leaves a clean impression on the paper and no smudges on your hand. You’ve heard of them? From salesman, trudging from stationery shop to drugstore to school supply store, I was promoted to North San Diego regional director of sales with a nearsighted secretary and my own office in an old building with windows that looked like rejects from the Union Station bathroom. My secretary, Phyllis, took off her glasses one day, and I fell in love and married her. Carbon paper sales rose in North San Diego, and I moved up to assistant Midwest sectional division manager in charge of complaints. This brought me to L.A., where Phyllis learned to play bridge, and sales boomed.”

At this point I must have made a face, for Sklodovich said: “Be patient, I’ll get to Ressner.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Now that I think about it, I don’t really know what I did those four years in the main office. Then sales fell. Who knows why? Carbon sales depend upon little competition and a triplicate society. In any case, bills mounted, my commission dropped, Phyllis had an abortion, skinny old John Whitney Lickter began to get on me, and I began to worry seriously about Hitler. But Lickter was the worst of all because I had to face his shriveled, frowning face every day with excuses. It got to the point where I couldn’t stand to hear his ‘Is that your total and complete report, Mr. Cortland? It leaves much to be desired.’ If any single thing drove me mad, it was that statement from him each morning while he sipped tea from a mug marked J.W.L. and played with the perpetual mole on his chin, the old fart. You don’t mind if I use a bit of profanity to color my speech, do you?”

“Not at all.”

“We do have to make some allowances for each other. After all we are mentally unwell. You don’t mind if I refer to our mental problem, do you?”

“I haven’t got any mental problem. They’ve made a mistake, I told you.” I tried to sit up and swallow, but the will was not enough. Ressner could be merrily hacking away at Mae West while I pretended to listen to this ranting maniac.

“Perhaps,” said Sklodovich, lying back on his bed. “It wouldn’t be the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. I hope you don’t mind the homilies. Do you? Actually I shouldn’t spend so much time apologizing. That was one of my problems. Always apologizing to my wife, to Lickter, to stationery store owners.”

“You were going to tell me about Ressner?”

“Oh yes. Well, one morning after I had lost my bus transfer and fought with the driver over changing a five-dollar bill, old Lickter called me into his office to grumble and complain about the lack of sales. You wouldn’t think to look at me, but I used to be a real worm; that’s a fact. I was home and office doormat. I handed old Lickter my report as usual and he read it grim-faced, glancing up at me through the smoke of his cigar or the steam of his tea; either of the two was constantly at his mouth. ‘Is that your total and complete report, Mr. Cortland? It leaves much to be desired.’ Instead of nodding in fear for my fragile reputation as I had previously, I grabbed the old man, took his damned cigar, tied him with the cord from his draw drapes, and dangled him out of the window fifteen stories above the sidewalk. He was too frightened to say much at first, but as soon as I tied one end of the cord to his desk I heard him screaming to the sunny sky. ‘The situation does leave a great deal to be desired, doesn’t it, Mr. Lickter?’ I called out the window and peered over to see a crowd gathering. ‘Cut the rope, man,’ someone shouted. ‘No, no,’ said another guy, ‘wait till I get my camera.’ Mr. Seymour, my immediate superior, chief Midwest sectional division manager in charge of erasers, came into the office about five minutes later with a smile on his false and lecherous face. ‘What’s going on here, Craig? Some kind of misunderstanding with Mr. Lickter? Can I help in any way?’ ‘I hung him out the window, you queer bastard,’ I said, tweaking his effeminate nose. I pulled him by the nose to the window and shouted down to the waiting crowd, ‘Mr. Seymour here is a queer.’ ‘Wha’ he say?’ I heard a woman shout. ‘He says Seymour is a fairy,’ said another voice. ‘Which one’s Seymour?’ ‘This one,’ I shouted. ‘Atta boy, Mac, toss him down here.’ Seymour, nostrils stopped, pleaded ‘led me go, please,’ ‘Mr. Lickter, you knew Mr. Seymour here was a queer, didn’t you?’ ‘Let me up, Mr. Cortland, I promise I’ll pay you anything,’ shouted Lickter, whose upside-down face was quite red. I shoved Seymour, the corrupter of office boys, into the large closet behind the huge desk. Next a cop came up and talked to me through the door, though the door wasn’t locked. ‘This is Sergeant Derk, Cortland. What have you done with Seymour?’ ‘He’s in the closet,’ I said, ‘but why you should care is beyond me.’ ‘Now,’ said Sergeant Derk slowly, ‘I want you to listen to me. Cutting that rope isn’t going to solve any problems,’ Do you think this whole thing sounds Freudian? I mean their fear that I might cut the imaginary umbilical cord that bound me to his authority.”

“It does sound a little Freudian,” I said, feeling a little reasonable fear of the orange-eating, talkative lunatic in the next bed.

“I didn’t even think about cutting the cord until he brought it up. But I didn’t answer Sergeant Derk, who went away after a few seconds. ‘Is there anything to be desired out there?’ I asked Lickter. He said nothing, and I noticed that the fire department had spread a net below the window and was busily at work on an additional net a few stories below. I helped Lickter up, and the now-massive crowd groaned. ‘Don’t worry,’ I shouted. ‘He’ll be right back.’ ‘Please Cortland,’ he sputtered, seated upright on the window ledge. ‘I’ll make you a partner.’ ‘Be realistic,’ I said, turning him upside down again when the normal paste color had returned. The crowd cheered. ‘How can you make me a partner? You know as well as I do that if I let you in, I’ll be thrown in jail and fired. You’d have to be crazy to make me a partner.’ Toby-do you mind if I call you Toby?”

“Not at all.”

“Next they sent a priest up to talk to me even though I’m not a Catholic. Why is it they always send a priest even though most people are not Catholics?”

Before I could answer he continued talking.

“The priest was a pleasant, chubby guy who looked scared to death but determined, so I let him in. ‘This is not the way, Craig. You can gain nothing from this. Let them go, and I’ll do what I can to help you.’ ‘You don’t even know me,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to know you, but I can see that you are a man who respects the laws of God.’ ‘I respect neither God, man, nor the Internal Revenue Service, father.’ “That is blasphemy, young man,’ he said gently. “Yes,’ I replied, wishing they had sent a more capable priest. But I’m sure they sent what they had on hand. ‘I’ll have to insist that you let that man in,’ said the priest. There was no choice for me.”

“You let him up?”

“No, I tied up the priest with the cord from the other drape, and he joined Lickter out the window. I’m not boring you, am I?”

“No.”

“Good. Well they sent Phyllis, but I wouldn’t let her in. There was no more drape cord, and I already had someone in the closet. She cried for a while and went away. You’re wondering about Ressner, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“The phone had been ringing the moment I lowered the priest out the window and heard the faraway voices below: ‘It’s a priest.’ ‘God no.’ ‘He gonna drop a priest?’ ‘That’d be something.’ ‘Oh, they’ll fall in the net.’ ‘Father,’ I called. ‘That is Mr. Lickter.’ ‘Courage,’ said the priest. ‘That’s the spirit, father,’ I shouted before answering the phone.”

Sklodovich reached under his pillow for a fresh orange.

“Then a red-faced old cop with a gun in his hand came outside the door and fired a bullet in the air. ‘Come out of there with your hands on your head or I’ll come in there and shoot you in the balls,’ he shouted indiscreetly. I was wondering why no one had thought of doing this earlier.”

“What did you do?”

“What did I do? For Chrissake I opened the door and let him in. I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid. I could tell that little son of a bitch meant business. I found out later he got a medal and they fired him for risking all those lives. A few months afterward I read in the paper that he was suspected of working for the syndicate.”

“Ressner?” I reminded him.

M.C. walked in as Sklodovich was about to speak again. He motioned to me to follow him, and I looked at Sklodovich, who was smiling at M.C.

“When are we going to arm-wrestle, M.C.? You know you’re going to give in eventually. Now is as good a time as any.”

M.C. paid no attention to Cortland’s question as I rose on weak knees, put on a pair of slippers that I found next to the bed, and started out of the room.

“Now I ask you, Toby. How can a man refuse a challenge like that and retain his dignity? See you later.”

M.C. grasped my arm and led me down a corridor of doors, past a large alcove with old couches and magazines, and by a glass-enclosed desk across from two elevators. At the desk sat two nurses, a short, young pretty one and an old thin one with a thin mouth that hardly moved as she spoke to the young girl. A tall, barrel-chested, hairy-armed man with short hair stood behind them with his arms folded. He was dressed in the same white uniform that M.C. wore, and the two men exchanged understanding glances. We stopped before the elevators, and I watched the lights go on 1-2-3-4. M.C. pressed the black button with the faded white 4 on it and concentrated on the wall as we rose.

I had decided that I would have to go along and look for a chance to get away. The fourth-floor lobby contained an enclosed desk (PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE NURSES), an alcove of empty chairs, a desk and a corridor of rooms. A young doctor stood in the hall, speaking to an even younger nurse. They looked at me as we passed. At the end of the hall we stopped at a door that looked like the others. M.C. opened it, motioned me in, and closed the door, leaving me alone to face two men seated at a table in a small, bare room with a cheap Degas reproduction tilted on the wall.

One man, the one with a small pointed white beard and a bald head popping through a fringe of gray hair, smiled and pointed with the stem of his pipe to an empty chair. I sat in it. The other man, a young Arabian-looking serious type with thick black hair, split his attention between me and the older man, with whom he shared an ashtray for their quite similar pipes.

The older doctor (Thomas Mitchell with an earache) leaned back and flipped through a chart in front of him, his underlip curled over his upper and his eyebrows up as if straining to let in maximum light.

“My name is Dr. Vaderg-” and his voice cracked and went squeaky. Coughing, Dr. Vaderg-reached for a glass of water while his dark companion looked helplessly about, not knowing what to do. I pretended not to notice, but the incident obviously had shattered a carefully prepared scene. The old doctor drank, recovered, smiled slightly, and cleared his throat. I joined him in a thin, careful smile.

“My name is Dr. Vadergreff. My colleague is Dr. Randipur.” Dr. Randipur nodded.

“Your name, it is Toby Peters?” said Dr. Randipur, looking down at a pad of paper.

“Yes.” Such an answer, I thought, must be safe.

“Mr. Toby Peters. May I ask of you why is it you think you may now be here?” said Randipur, after a glance from Vadergreff, who nodded in approval at the question.

“A mistake.”

“Dr. Winning”-smiled old baldy-“seldom makes mistakes. As a matter of fact, I can’t recall him ever making a diagnostic error. He may have some minor disagreements with some of us on treatment procedures, but after all, this is a research institute and unusual cases require unusual treatment. No, I’m afraid we’ll have to look elsewhere for an explanation.” Dr. Randipur jotted down this pithy statement.

With a blank, expressionless gaze I hoped would pass for sincere attention, I fixed upon Dr. Vadergreff’s ample nose. Somehow I had given the impression that Dr. Winning had been accused of error. Since this concept was impossible for the old man, I tried to make it seem as if I had made the mistake as a result of my ignorance about Dr. Winning’s infallibility.

“Now, Mr. Peters,” Vadergreff continued through the clenched teeth, which held his pipe, “how do you account for your behavior this morning? It seems you threatened Dr. Winning and became violent. If this report is right, you had to be subdued.”

My moment had come. I told them the whole story.

When I finished, the two doctors leaned over for a whispered consultation. The old man’s eyebrows pointed up as he listened.

“We, Dr. Randipur and I, feel that you have had a difficult day, and perhaps it would be better to let you get some rest. Be assured that we are neither quacks nor fools. We are trained physicians trying to help you. Please give us the benefit of any doubts you may have and accept the help we offer.”

Vadergreff rose, and I was surprised to see how short he was. Randipur and I also rose. Vadergreff pushed a white button on the desk with his left hand. The two doctors stood frozen-smiled, waiting for someone to come and remove me so that they could relax and discuss my case, old mentor to eager pupil.

“Dr. Vadergreff.”

“Yes.”

“I would like to see Dr. Winning again.”

“Sorry, Dr. Winning has left for the night, but I’ll tell him tomorrow you want to see him. I believe he has a speaking engagement in Los Angeles, however, and won’t be back here until Friday. Can Dr. Randipur or I help you?”

“Tomorrow may be too late. We’ve got two murders. There could be two more in the next few days. Are you two in there? Do you understand what I’ve been saying?”

The door opened, and M.C. moved quickly to take my arm and guide me out.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”

He looked at me for a few seconds before shrugging noncommittally. Three minutes later I could hear him locking the door behind me when I stepped into my room.

Sklodovich was leaning forward with the palms of both hands against the wall in a vain attempt to push it over.

“How’d it go?” he asked, pushing himself from the wall and wrapping a towel around his neck.

“Fine.”

“They still think you’re nuts, huh?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t feel like talking? I know how you feel. Sure you wouldn’t like to punch me in the stomach? It would be a great opportunity to release repressed hostility, and I’d never feel it.”

“Goodnight,” I said, closed my eyes and slept.

“Goodnight.”

Maybe it was an hour, maybe it was two. Someone was shaking me. I opened my eyes to darkness and hoped it was Phil, Jeremy, or even Gunther or Mrs. Plaut. I’d even settle for Shelly.

It was Sklodovich.

“Get up,” he whispered. “I’ve got a meeting arranged with Dealer.”

“Great,” I whispered back. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

I closed my eyes.

“Are you getting up?”

“No.”

His hand grabbed my stomach, and for a second I thought he was going to kill me, but I soon realized that he was tickling me.

“Cu-cu-cut it out,” I chuckled.

“Are you getting up?”

“No.” I tried to curl into a ball, but he straightened my legs with no difficulty. I tried to roll off the bed as nausea welled, but he held me with one powerful, hairy arm and continued to tickle while I grew sore from laughter.

“O.K.,” I pleaded. “O.K.”

He stopped. A few more guffaws ached my head, but I stood up.

“You want to get out of here, or you want to get out of here?” he asked reasonably. “Dealer can get you out. He got Ressner out.”

“He got Ressner out?”

I forced myself up and looked at Sklodovich. The pattern of bars cast by moonlight through the window made him look as mad as he surely was.

“Dealer’s been in this place for years, longer than anybody. Psychiatry staff is meeting now. They meet every night about now. It’ll be at least an hour before they break up and anyone could think of coming here to check us. Let’s move. See if the door’s locked.”

I put on the robe he handed me and took the slippers he shoved into my hand. Standing wasn’t easy, but I did it.

I shuffled to the door and tried it. It was locked.

Sklodovich put his ear to the door, listened for a moment, and rapped twice on the wall to the left. Someone on the other side returned the two rasps and Sklodovich smiled.

“What’s Dealer’s problem?” Sklodovich asked.

“I don’t know. I never even heard of him till you mentioned him.”

“I meant that you should ask me what his problem is. I was prompting you,” said Sklodovich, taking a small wire from the heel of his right slipper and carefully placing it in the lock.

“O.K. What’s his problem?”

“He’s a prisoner. Sometimes he’s in a German prison camp or concentration camp and he’s a Jew or a British officer. Sometimes he’s in a Japanese labor compound and he’s an American sergeant. Or he’s a counterrevolutionary in a Siberian work gang. Sometimes he’s very specific. Once he was the man in the iron mask. Another time he was Edmund Dantes in the Chateau d’If.”

“He sounds like a big help.”

“I think so too. Come on.”

The small wire made a clicking sound in the door, which opened slightly. Sklodovich peeped out and scanned the floor in both directions before darting into the room next door, from which he had received the two answering raps. I followed, robe wrapped tightly, slippers flopping.

Sklodovich closed the door, and we faced a small, birdlike man with wild gray hair and huge saucer eyes, which bulged in a look of constant surprise. The white-gowned creature eyed me for several seconds, then reached up, pulled Sklodovich’s head down, and whispered in a loud voice:

“A guy came wit you.”

“I know,” Sklodovich replied in the same stage whisper. “He’s with me.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Me? Me? Me?” said the bird, his great eyes darting about in astonishment. “What did you ask me?”

“He’s with me.”

“Good.” He looked in triumph at me and scratched his head. A few wisps of hair rose ridiculously. “Just want to be sure, you know. Tell me,” he whispered again, pulling Sklodovich’s sleeve into a crinkly mess, “are they still out there?”

“No. Look out there for yourself.”

“Me? Me? Me? Look out there? No tank you, buster. Not me. What you think I am?” He looked at me for an answer, but I could supply none, since I didn’t think anything about him other than he was a genuine madman.

“Toby and I have got to see Dealer.”

“Toby?”

“This is Toby. He came with me.”

“I see,” said the man sagely. “Come wit me.” He turned into the room which looked exactly like our own except for a closet where we had a blank wall. One bed was neatly made. In the other, a large bulge under a crazy-quilt blanket was shivering with fear, illness, or shock. The bird opened the closet door.

“They maybe ain’t there now,” he mumbled, moving boxes from the closet floor to one side, “but open that door and they’ll be there so fast, it’ll make you pee-pee in you pants I tell ya.”

Sklodovich nodded, reached down, and removed a plasterboard panel from the back of the closet wall. Beyond the panel I could see a tile floor. Sklodovich stepped through the hole and motioned me to follow. I stepped into a large bathroom, and the bird replaced the plasterboard and whispered: “You think I don’t know they out there you got anudder think?”

“Who does he think is outside the door?”

“I don’t know,” said Sklodovich. “He’d rather not say.”

Sklodovich listened at the door for a second, then strode to the nearest stall to the accompaniment of swirling water in the line of automatic constantly flushing cleanser-needful urinals.

I followed.

Inside the stall, above the toilet, was a small, metal door painted battleship gray. Sklodovich pulled it open.

“Up the pipe,” he whispered, pointing his finger up the dark shaft beyond the door.

At first I thought he was muttering a dark-purpled curse against pipes and tubular constructions. After all, he was, by confession and choice, a lunatic. Headfirst, Sklodovich disappeared through the hole.

“Close the door behind you,” his voice echoed seconds after his slippered toes vanished.

Reaching into the darkness, I felt a moist water pipe and began to pull myself painfully into the darkness, pausing to close the metal door behind me.

There I balanced, clinging to a wet pipe with one hand and both legs while with my other hand I attempted to close a heavy metal door that had no handle on the inside, nothing but a protruding bolt, which I struggled to grasp with unprotected fingers.

Plunged in darkness, my fear increased. How many floors below me did this blackness fall? If my grip and the surrounding wall in the narrow tunnel failed me, would I zip down into a limbo like razor blades into those shafts in hotel bathrooms? And up? What was up above me except the retreating sound of Sklodovich’s breathing?

Using the wall, a jagged mass of rough bricks, and piping, I managed to follow within hearing distance of my guide. I skinned my right arm on an unidentified outcropping, and my wet hands kept slipping, but I rested without too much difficulty by holding the pipe and letting my rear end rest against a smooth section of wall. I continued like this in the timelessness of darkness for a period of between two minutes and four hours.

My back ached, but I climbed upward. My pajama bottoms slipped, but I grappled upward. My palms blistered, but I moved onward. My foot found an exceptionally good hold on a protruding brick and I pushed myself forward and found a long, thin face gazing at me. The face included a mouth that hung stupidly open, inches from me. A gray stubble of beard surrounded the open mouth, which reveled a pitted and not very pleasant tongue. I almost let go.

Sklodovich’s face replaced the one that had startled me.

“Where have you been, Toby? I thought you changed your mind. Hell, I guess there aren’t many men who can make it up the shaftway as quickly as I can. Dynamic tension does it. With nothing but dynamic tension Charles Atlas got strong enough to pull railroad cars. Think of that. Railroad cars. A man who can pull railroad cars doesn’t get sand kicked in his face at the beach, or anywhere else. You know Atlas volunteered to beef up old Gandhi in India?”

“Can I come in? My feet are slipping.”

“Sure, I’m sorry,” said Sklodovich, helping me through the hole, which turned out to be another shaftway entrance in another washroom like the one we had left. I stepped over the toilet and leaned against the wall to catch my breath.

A man with his mouth open stood there with his pajamas at his feet, watching us. He was very tall and thin and leaned forward with rounded shoulders. His grayish skin made him look like a wilted stalk of celery. He had obviously been interrupted while seated.

“Let’s go,” said Sklodovich, walking to the door.

“Does he know what we’re doing here?” I asked.

“He?”

“This man,” I said, nodding toward the celery-man, whose look of astonishment was firmly frozen on his face.

“I suppose not. Why?”

“Why? I think we scared the hell out of him.”

“You think so,” asked Sklodovich seriously. “Did we scare the hell out of you, fella?”

The man shook his head wildly.

“See we didn’t scare him. You can have your pot back, mister. Now let’s go. If you see anybody in the hall, walk as if you belong here.”

Without knowing how one walks when one belongs on a particular floor of a nut house, I followed Sklodovich into the hall, leaving the bewildered man to make his own peace with reality.

There were patients in the hall, but they paid no attention as we went down a corridor like the one on our own floor. A nurse passed, paused, and turned to me. Sklodovich kept walking, but I stopped when I felt her arm on my sleeve.

“Don’t you think you should take off that robe and get a clean one?” she asked. “You look as if you’ve been crawling down a greased pole.”

“I don’t know how it got so dirty. Must have fallen. I’ll change it right away.”

“See that you do.”

She walked away to talk to another patient, and I hurried after Sklodovich, whom I found down a short corridor. He stopped in front of a window overlooking an enclosed courtyard. The window was hidden from the main corridor by a pillar. Sklodovich opened the window and gently pushed two of the bars covering it out of the way. He slid through and motioned for me to follow. I did.

Sklodovich closed the window and pushed the bars back in place. It was only then that I noticed we were standing on a narrow ledge four floors above the ground, a ledge that tilted slightly downward. A thin rain was falling, but Sklodovich began shuffling along the ledge, and I followed. After two steps on the wet ledge, I decided to climb through the next window and turn myself in for the safety of my room. We inched our way along the ledge, but came to no window. Sklodovich stopped.

I could see him from the corner of my eye. My back was tight against the wall and my head as far back as I could pull it without cracking the stitching open. Sklodovich reached up to an old rainspout, pulled himself up with one hand, and disappeared.

With trembling hand and rain-moistened body I shuffled over, reached for the rainspout, and tried to lift myself, but my foot slipped. “Not in my pajamas,” I screamed, picturing myself plunging downward.

Sklodovich reached over and grabbed my wrist, but my legs gave way and I glanced down to watch my slippers plunge, bounce against the wall, and melt into the rain. Twisting, I tried to regain a foothold. My robe flapped in my eyes, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that my pajama bottoms had slipped and I was, like the celery-man in the washroom exposed from the waist down.

Sklodovich lifted me easily over the top without bouncing me against the rainspout. I found myself on the roof of the hospital, lying on a pebbled asphalt surface and feeling like a mop left out overnight in the rain.

“I’ll carry you the rest of the way if you like,” Sklodovich offered.

“No, thanks,” said I, rising amid the sparse jungle of chimneys and parapets. “I’ll make it.”

Limping barefoot on the pebbles, I followed Sklodovich behind a protuberance of concrete and found us facing a green door. Sklodovich put his ear to the door and opened it gently.

“It opens from the outside but not the inside,” he whispered.

“I see,” I panted, but I did not see at all.

“Put these on,” Sklodovich ordered as we stepped through the door. He handed me a pair of sunglasses, which I put on and which did not help at all in navigating the narrow stairway down which we tiptoed.

“If anyone asks you, we’re on our way to Dr. Keaky for a heat treatment,” he said, putting on a pair of sunglasses.

“What if they ask us why we’re wet?”

“We just took showers.”

“But our robes and pajamas are wet.”

“I know that.”

“I know that you know it,” I whispered. “But what do we tell someone if they ask why our clothes are wet?”

“We fell in the pool.”

“Is there a pool?”

“I don’t know,” said Sklodovich as we hurried down a dozen stairs in sticky flight. “But no one will question it. We’re supposed to be mentally unstable, remember?”

“What else is there to remember around here?”

We reached another door and Sklodovich turned to me.

“Remember, we’re on our way to Dr. Keaky for a-”

“Heat treatment.”

“Right.”

Dripping, we stepped into another hospital alcove. The sunglasses made everything seem warm and sweaty, which it was.

“Wait behind the door,” he said. “Dealer is somewhere on this floor, but I’m not sure of the room. It’ll just take me a minute.”

Before I could protest, he plunged his hands into his pockets and stepped into the hallway, whistling more conspicidusly than I thought safe.

Alone, I noticed a single door in the alcove where I was standing. The door was slightly open, and glancing at it, I was sure it was opening an almost infinitesimal fraction each second. Just as I was about to step back behind the safety of my own door, the door swung open and a short, dark man who looked like an Italian bus driver stepped out. One hand was calmly resting in the pocket of a black silk robe. The other hand, his left I believe, held a pistol pointed at my stomach.