Serial

68

The police hadn’t believed that Tom Stopp was trying to help Tanya Moody the night he was arrested. That he’d heard a commotion, gone to his door to investigate, and seen her come flying half nude out of the unoccupied apartment across the hall. She was struggling in a desperate dance to put on her clothes as she ran, somehow managing.

What had prompted him was blind instinct. She was obviously in trouble, running hard from something, and in need of help. He called after her, trying to get her to stop and explain what was happening. She’d glanced back at him, obviously terrified, running from him!

No! She had it wrong! He couldn’t let her think of him that way. He couldn’t!

He ran after her faster to help her, to explain to her.

They wouldn’t believe him. Not at the scene in front of his apartment building, and not at the precinct house where he was read his rights and interrogated.

After a while in police custody, he could hardly believe himself. They paid no attention when he told them he’d tried to get Tanya Moody to stop, so he could convince her he wasn’t whoever or whatever had frightened her. So he could help her.

Later, when she’d regained her composure and good sense, she told them her story. Her concept of the truth. It was too late for Stopp then. There was enough circumstantial evidence against him to convict him ten times over.

The man who’d actually raped Tanya Moody was long gone. And Tom Stopp sat for the next several months listening to what he’d done, where he’d been, when in fact he’d been home in bed.

The more the prosecution, and the jury, heard his story, the less they believed it, and, strangely enough, that affected Stopp. He began to feel guilty. Maybe, when enough people didn’t believe something, it could somehow become untrue. Who you were could seem little-by-little unreal, until finally you were someone else. Some person the system had created.

In prison they’d laughed at him. There had been times when he’d thought he was one of the guards, complete with uniform and authority. Laughter sometimes tilted to violence. He’d been badly beaten by other inmates when he’d tried to hurry them back to their cells.

If Stopp had experienced this problem before, being another person, he couldn’t remember it. But that was the problem; that was how he became someone else sometimes, by not remembering who he really was or had been. The other person, waiting for an opportunity, would then take over. The one named Tom Stopp would recall what had happened, faintly through a veil, but not for very long. At least, from what other people said, that was the way it happened.

The prison doctor suggested mental illness, perhaps schizophrenia with multiple personalities. He was a general practitioner and recommended that a psychiatrist see Stopp. The prison authorities decided Stopp was simply putting on an act to better his circumstances and make his way back to the streets sooner.

Stopp saw no mental health professional. He simply remained convict 1437645. And one night when he decided he was a psychiatrist, it elicited more laughter than concern.

Now he was out of prison, wandering around unemployed, existing on welfare checks and whatever his brother and sister, living in California, sent him from time to time. Money he was going to pay back someday. Still. Even after his years in prison.

Stopp would find a way to pay his debts, even if it meant becoming a criminal, as they’d branded him all those years, and stealing the money. He owed that and more to his brother Marv the screenwriter, and his sister Terri the beautician. Tom Stopp was a man who paid his debts. Maybe someday his brother could write one of his TV movies about that. Stopp reflected that his life would make an excellent film.

But he knew his determination to pay what he owed was will rather than probability. Six months ago he’d been diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Which wasn’t as bad as it sounded-but almost. Put simply, his heart couldn’t pump out as much blood as it took in. A minor surgical procedure had helped, but not enough. The doctors told him he might live for years, if he didn’t overexert himself, took medicine he couldn’t afford, and slipped a tiny nitroglycerin tablet beneath his tongue if and when his heart started to act up.

There wasn’t much danger of him overexerting himself, because in his circumstances, and with the lousy economy, he couldn’t find a job. His stress mostly came from regret. He didn’t blame the girl, Tanya. She’d been doped up and half mad with terror when he’d tried to catch up to her and been interrupted outside her cab by the cops. The bastard who’d actually raped her… well, Stopp could work up a hate for that guy, only he had no idea who he was.

So he kept his pills handy in his pocket and made it through his days. Time was misery and was killing him with exacting slowness. Years, the doctors had given him, if he was careful. Plodding along Canal Street, Stopp almost laughed, watching the vendors close the folding steel doors of their kiosks after selling tourists and phonies their knockoff brand merchandise. He was like one of those faux Rolex watches that looked good at a glance, but had a strict limit on how many ticks were in them before they quit running. He shook his head sadly. Reality was always in disguise.

Years…

Tom Stopp wasn’t so sure. Something bad was going to happen to him, and soon. He could feel it. Like that time in Sweden when he’d been fired from his job as watch repairman.

He went home to his crummy basement apartment, stretched out on his bed, and watched the roaches. Outside, the sun began losing its battle with the night. Dusk moved in like an occupying army. After a while the apartment got dark, and Stopp could no longer see the roaches.

He wished he had some booze. He couldn’t afford it, and he didn’t like to beg. He’d tried panhandling once and decided it was less soul-smearing to write his brother for another loan. He felt like jumping up out of bed and leaving the apartment, walking the dangerous city streets. No, not walking. Running hard enough to outrace his tortured self.

Yeah, he’d had a lot of luck the last time he’d impulsively run from an apartment.

There was nowhere for him to go, anyway. No one he had to see or who wanted to see him.

He reread yesterday’s newspaper, which he’d gotten out of a trash receptacle. Then he put the paper aside and lay quietly, outwardly calm, watching the shadows grow and listening to his heart.

Cannibalism.

Such rumors died hard.

The Skinner tossed his folded Post aside and sipped some more of his espresso. There was no doubt now that the rumors of cannibalism were started by Quinn, in an attempt to rattle him.

Quinn seemed to have rattled the women of New York even more. Before the cannibalism speculation, the Skinner could sense their uneasiness in dark or crowded places, in the subways or narrow streets, or chattering together as they strode in tandem along wide sidewalks. He walked among them and secretly enjoyed that rippling undercurrent of fear.

Now he saw in New York’s women a quieter, deeper fear. They were scared shitless, and all thanks to Quinn. The media of course, had cooperated, but surely even they didn’t truly make the leap from severed tongues to cannibalism. They pretended. That was fine with the Skinner. The whole world was pretense. Sometimes he thought he was the only real thing in it.

He glanced at his watch.

Tom Stopp was home sleeping, or perhaps in an alcoholic stupor. The Skinner had seen him negotiate the narrow steps to his pathetic apartment he shared with the roaches. Stopp wouldn’t reappear until late tomorrow morning. That was his routine. He was where he was supposed to be, a game piece in its place on the board. And a move was about to be made.

It was almost time to leave the restaurant and do something very real.

Something Quinn could read about in the papers.