The Devil in Silver

The hallway was clear and empty, just lavender walls boxing in a thin runway of industrial carpet. But the big man could see that the runway ended at a big old door, heavy like you’d find on a bank vault. Unmovable. This was no Motel Six. His footsteps faltered. But this time the cops weren’t going to let him wander off. Dewey yanked that big boy backward, by the handcuffs. His shoulders popped in their sockets and his face went hot with pain.

“Now he’s scared,” the lead cop said.

They reached the door. A small white button sat in the wall. Huey pressed it and kept his finger on the button. The buzzer played on the other side of the door and sounded like a duck’s quack, as if Huey was throwing his cartoon voice.

The secure door featured a window the size of a cereal box. With his finger still steady on the buzzer, Huey peeked through it.

“Just break the glass,” Dewey said.

He seemed to be joking, but he hadn’t smiled.

Huey clonked the sturdy silver face of his diver’s watch against the window. “You couldn’t shatter this shit with a bullet.”

The big man opened his mouth. He had plans to speak but found no words. He couldn’t stop staring at that door. Not wood, not faux wood, fucking iron. Maybe. The damn thing had rivets in it, like it had been torn off a battleship. Bombproof; fireproof; probably airtight, too.

He finally found the words. “This place is locked up tighter than your Uncle Scrooge’s vault.”

Huey turned away from the door. His eyes brightened with joyful cruelty. “You think these jokes are going to save you, but they’re only making things worse.”

Louie said, “He’s just trying to get one of us to hit him. So he’ll have a lawsuit.”

Dewey said, “We didn’t hit him before, why would we start now?”

Huey said, “You’re applying logic to a man who’s not thinking logically.”

“What the hell does that mean?” the big man asked.

“We think you might be a danger to yourself because of your mental condition,” Louie added sarcastically.

The big man’s body went rigid. “What mental condition?”

Dewey said, “You attacked three officers of the law.”

“How was I supposed to know you were cops?!”

To be fair, the big man had a point. The three men wore plain clothes. Their shields, hanging around their necks on silver chains, were tucked under their different colored sweatshirts. But who cared? Here was one rule you could count on: You were never allowed to punch a cop. So forget about punching two of them, repeatedly, and trying hard to connect with the third. It didn’t matter if they were in uniform, wearing plain clothes, or rocking a pair of pajamas.

But before he could get into a debate about the finer points of an entrapment defense, an eye appeared on the other side of the unbreakable window.

Well, a head at least, with a mess of grayish white hair, but the only part they could make out clearly was that eye. The outer ring of the pupil was blue but closer to the iris the color turned a light gray. Cataracts. The other eye was shut because the person squinted. Man or woman? Hard to say, the face was smooshed so tight against the pane. The clouded pupil swam left then right, as alien as a single-cell organism caught under the objective lens of a microscope. It surveyed the big man, and the three cops. It blinked.

The big man frowned at the person in the window. Dewey and Louie unconsciously stepped backward. Only Huey, still pressing the white button, didn’t seem startled by the watchful eye. He smiled at the big man, more broadly than he had all night. Relishing what he would say next: “Welcome to New Hyde.” He pointed to a plaque embedded in the wall right above the door: NEW HYDE HOSPITAL. FOUNDED IN 1953.

Dewey said, “When can we leave?”

Just then the eye seemed to slip away from the window and another face replaced it. This new person stood farther from the glass so they could make out more of him. A man. Brown-skinned. With puffy cheeks, a soft chin, and a nose as round as an old lightbulb. He wore glasses. A bushy mustache. And a scowl.

They could see his chest, the tie and jacket he wore. An ID card, sheathed in plastic, hung around his neck on a plastic cord.

The big man said, “He wears his ID on the outside, see? That’s how people know what his job is.”

The three cops sighed with exhaustion. Nine-twenty at night and all three were tired. They just had to hand the big man off and file their reports, then each could finally go home. (To their mother, Della Duck?)

The brown man looked out at Huey, and his gaze followed the cop’s arm down as far as it could go, toward that finger, still mashing the white buzzer. The brown man then stared up at Huey again and brought one finger to his lips in a shushing motion. Huey pulled his hand away so quickly, you would’ve thought the buzzer had just burnt him.

The bolt lock in the door turned, clacking like the opening of a manual cash register’s drawer. Then the door opened with surprising ease for its apparent weight. The doorway exhaled a stale, musty smell.