The Devil in Silver

What if this was the last time he’d be in this place? He stepped back into room 5. What should he take? His wallet, yes. And Sue’s blue accordion folder? It seemed cumbersome to carry the whole thing. He’d probably drop it. How bad would he feel if somehow that was the thing that got him caught, the staff following the trail of magazine pages like bread crumbs? Instead, he opened the folder and stuffed as many pages as possible into the front pockets of his pants. He hoped he was taking enough of Sue’s dreams with him. Then he went back into room 7 and followed Mr. Mack.

“Where’d you get a screwdriver?” Pepper asked as they walked to the next room.

“When I said get your houses in order, what did you think I meant?” Mr. Mack asked. “Share a few kisses with your family? Shit. I asked a little bit more of mine.”

Pepper entered room 9. It looked just like his, generally. Two beds, two dressers. But this room hadn’t been occupied in a long time, so there weren’t any personal effects. It felt like the showroom version of a mental hospital’s bedroom. Pepper almost expected to find a mannequin in the bed, but that would’ve been hellaciously weird.

“This isn’t prison!” Mr. Mack squawked on, lifting the screwdriver like a prize. “They might check your visitor’s purse or bag, but they’re not sniffing anyone’s booty cheeks for contraband.”

“You had someone put a screwdriver up their ass?” Pepper asked.

Mr. Mack sniffed with disdain at Pepper. “It was up my nephew’s coat sleeve, if you really want to know.”

They entered room 11. This one had been occupied. Pages from magazines had been taped up to the wall over one bed. Lots of shots of black and Latino and a few white teenagers either squinting at the camera with a sneer or posing with cars, girls, and guns. Wally Gambino’s little acre.

“Rooms one and three are empty, so we don’t need to pop them open,” Mr. Mack said. “That’s better anyway, we don’t have to get too close to the nurses’ station.”

Finally, they reached the last room in this lane. Room 15. The one shared by Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly. They’d been there for many years. Relatively speaking, the place was quite nicely appointed. The same beds and dressers, but there was a low bookshelf near one of the beds. And these guys had even set up a kind of garment rack. They’d run a cheap tension bar across the windowsill so they could hang up their sport coats, shirts, and slacks.

Frank Waverly waited in the room. He sat on his bed, reading a book. Wally Gambino walked out of the bathroom, wiping his hands against his jeans.

Wally saw Pepper. “This motherfucker?” he said.

“Don’t start with that,” Mr. Mack told him.

Wally squinted at the old man (a lot like the dudes in the magazine pages taped to his wall), but he acquiesced.

Mr. Mack walked to Frank Waverly’s bed and held out the screwdriver.

“Your turn,” he said.

Frank Waverly sat there, still reading. Mr. Mack repeated himself. Reluctantly, Frank Waverly set his book facedown on his bed, leaving it open as if he expected to return to it quite soon. Pepper couldn’t help himself, he peeked at the cover. Emma. By Jane Austen.

“Is it good?” Pepper asked Frank Waverly, pointing at the book.

Frank Waverly gave the thumbs-up.

“You two want tea and goddamn biscuits?” Mr. Mack snapped. “Or can we get to work?”

Frank Waverly touched at the outline of the door in this wall. He found the groove between door and frame and stabbed the screwdriver into the layers of paint. Once he cracked through, he dragged the screwdriver blade along the top edge, slowly chipping off more.

“What if we pop this door,” Wally asked. “And get outside and some alarm goes off?”

“That’s not going to happen,” Mr. Mack said.

Pepper had moved to the jerry-rigged clothing rack, eyeing the changes of clothes with envy. “How do you know that?” Pepper asked.

“Because this door doesn’t lead outside,” Mr. Mack said matter-of-factly.

Frank Waverly had already chipped away the paint at the top of the doorway and moved on to the right side. Though he’d seemed hesitant, though he was at least as old as Mr. Mack, he moved quickly and with vigor.

“Best I can tell from Dorry’s map”—Mr. Mack patted the breast pocket of his sport coat—“the space on the other side of this wall used to be the front of the building. Maybe from when it was an eye clinic. The front of Northwest faced the sidewalk. People could just pull up out front and drop off the patient who would walk right in. But when it became our Northwest, for mental patients, they sealed that entrance off. It was like the building turned its back to the neighbors.”

“Like it was ashamed,” Wally said.

Frank Waverly worked hard but remained as quiet as ever. He didn’t even grunt as he chopped at the doorway. The only sound was the sawing of the screwdriver against old paint. The way the chips flew, you would’ve thought Frank Waverly was using an electric saw.