The Devil in Silver

Loochie looked back at Pepper when he hung up. Though her body rattled as she held the door, her face burned with pyrotechnic brightness.

Pepper looked as luminous as Loochie just then. Maybe it was the sunlight streaming through the office windows, but for a moment, the man’s aura glowed a triumphal red.

Pepper hung up the phone and told Loochie she could let them in. She kept her shoulder to the door for a minute more. She hadn’t barred the way just for Pepper’s sake.

Loochie didn’t know the Chinese Lady, so it wasn’t for her, either. She’d be the last to admit it, but this whole time she’d been picturing her mother and brother on the other side of that door. Loochie held it closed for that last minute.

Then she stepped back and pulled the chair away.

Loochie felt disappointed when the door opened and the cop and Dr. Anand didn’t fall into the room. She’d been hoping they’d spill across the floor, a little slapstick for the midday show. Instead, the door banged open and the two men stood there, huffing and glaring. Behind them stood two more officers in plain clothes, concerned but confused.

Funniest part? The pair in the second row were two of the three officers who’d brought Pepper to New Hyde. Huey and Louie. Pepper felt a shock because he hadn’t really expected them to come back for him. Yet here they were. Was it finally time for him to go before a judge? Receive his sentence? Huey and Pepper locked eyes and Pepper waited for some reaction.

Zero recognition.

Louie looked at Pepper and his demeanor was the same. Blank. Nothing.

“Where’s Dewey?” Pepper asked. He didn’t mean to say it, the words just came out. Of course, he regretted it—it was like he was trying to remind them who he was.

The question sounded completely random, nutty, so they ignored Pepper. (Dewey was actually back in the parking lot, waiting in the Dodge Charger. He’d refused to come inside the building, no matter what.)

“We done here?” Huey asked the cop in the uniform. It clearly galled the detective to have to ask the patrolman anything.

“Sorry,” said the pudgy one. He barked the same question to Dr. Anand. “We done?”

Dr. Anand stormed inside. He found Pepper sitting again, but remained suspicious. He checked his desk, every drawer. He checked the file cabinets in the corner. What had they been doing in here? What had been taken? What had been defiled? To Pepper’s great satisfaction Dr. Anand never even peeked at the telephone.

Dr. Anand surveyed his desk a second time. He noticed Pepper’s big boot print on the papers. But what did that prove? That Pepper had been stomping on his desktop? In a way, this actually calmed the doctor. They’d just been acting out, venting. A pair of monkeys who’d gotten loose. And, in a way, it had been the doctor’s fault. Samuel Anand chastised himself. He never should’ve left them alone. He’d spoken much too freely, feeling frazzled and forgetting himself, and that had led him to be lax. He must always be wary. He looked at Pepper, and then at Loochie, who had taken her seat again, too. The four cops crowded the doorway.

“You did something,” Dr. Anand said to them.

Loochie said, “We washed the floors for you, Dr. Sam.”

And do you know the four cops actually peeked at the tiles? All four. (Oh, if only Loochie had seen them do it. She would’ve grinned for a week.)

Huey nudged the patrolman.

“We got this other thing here,” the doughy cop said. Then jerked his head down the hallway. Meaning the reason they’d been called in. Because Dorry’s neck had snapped. Over in the smokers’ court. Where the old woman’s blood soaked the concrete.

Dr. Anand gave Loochie and Pepper the once-over. “You can go back to your rooms,” he said. “We’ll decide what to do with you later.”

“After the cops are gone,” Loochie said quietly.

“Yes,” Dr. Anand said. “Once we have you to ourselves again.”

Pepper and Loochie looked at the pudgy cop.

“You heard that?” Pepper asked. “He’s threatening us.”

The cop rubbed his shirtsleeve across his sweaty forehead and said, “Probably.” Then he and the other officers left the room.

Dr. Anand stooped forward, resting his knuckles on the desk. “Was it worth it?” he asked. “Are you going to keep causing me trouble?”

Pepper felt himself flush with honesty. He couldn’t lie.

And, “Yes,” he said, “yes. I will. Yes.”

35

AFTER PEPPER AND Loochie left Dr. Anand’s office, the doctor made a phone call to a member of New Hyde Hospital’s board of directors. He’d been dreading this moment since he got the call about Dorry. He stood while he talked. He wondered if they would finally fire him. He didn’t think he’d mind.

Pepper and Loochie entered the hall and walked toward the nurses’ station. As they entered the oval room, they saw patients scuttling all over. The unit was abuzz.