Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

Chapter 5

If the man with the boyish face, brown hair, high forehead, blue eyes, and slightly dazed expression had missed a couple of meals while he was living on the streets, he was rapidly trying to make up for it. He'd already wolfed down two cheeseburgers, a mound of french fries, a side order of coleslaw, and two large Cokes at the small luncheonette across from the park where I had taken him.

"I've never met a dwarf before," Michael Stout said, sipping at his chocolate ice cream soda. "I've never even seen one, except in pictures."

I smiled, said, "It looks like you're surviving the experience."

"You're a nice man, Mr. Mongo. I haven't met many nice people in New York; most can't even bother to be polite."

"Just Mongo will be fine."

He pointed to the fifty-dollar bill resting between us on the marble tabletop. "That's an awful lot of money. You're a friend of Theo's, and you're buying me lunch, so you don't have to pay to talk to me."

"It's all right, Michael. It's worth it to me. I'd like to ask you a few questions."

"Sure. But I don't see how anything I have to say could be worth fifty dollars. I know money doesn't grow on trees."

"Theo tells me you only picked up on chess a couple of weeks ago. Is that true?"

"Well, I only began to understand the game a couple of weeks ago, and I'm learning more every day-even playing here, where the people who pay to play aren't that strong. But I learned the moves of the pieces as a child."

"Can you tell me how this sudden understanding of the game came about?"

He gave it a lot of thought while he sipped at his soda. He ate some of the ice cream left at the bottom, then looked up at me with his wide, innocence-filled blue eyes and shook his head. "No, I don't think I can.

"Give it a try, Michael. For instance, on the day when you first met Theo, Buster Brown, and the others, had you come down here to the park to play chess?"

"No. I was doing what I did every day, just wandering around."

"And then you saw Theo and the others playing, and you were interested. So you stopped and watched."

"Yes. I remembered how I liked to play as a kid. I watched people playing for a while, and-this is what I don't know how to explain-I just suddenly understood all sorts of things about the game that I'd never been taught. You hear people talking about how good players can think nine or ten moves ahead, but it wasn't like that at all. I could look at a position and know what was a good move and what was a bad move, and why. If one player made a bad move, then I could see what moves the other player could make in order to win. Suddenly I just understood certain principles of the game, and the right moves flowed from these principles. Sometimes I could see the right moves all the way to the end of a game. I don't want you to think I'm bragging, Mongo, but beating Theo and the other people who play here regularly isn't hard; beating the people who want to bet with me on a game is usually even easier. Actually, getting used to playing with a clock, and remembering to hit it after I'd made a move, was a lot harder in the beginning than actually playing."

"How do you come to be in New York, Michael? How long have you been here?"

Michael Stout was guileless, his emotions transparent, and now it was as if a curtain had dropped down somewhere behind his expressive blue eyes. Clearly uncomfortable with the question, he quickly averted his gaze. "I, uh, just kind of ended up here."

"Where did you come from?"

"Well. . uh. . that's kind of hard to say. Look, maybe I should-"

"Were you in a mental hospital, Michael?"

His eyes darted back to my face. The curtain behind them had abruptly been raised, and onstage, front and center, were alarm and anxiety. "Why do you ask that?"

"You told Theo, Buster Brown, and the others that you'd been 'out of it' for a long time. I thought you might have been in a mental hospital."

He pushed the remains of his ice cream soda, and the fifty-dollar bill, away from him in a slow, deliberate motion. "I don't mean to be rude, but I don't want to talk anymore. I think I'd better be getting back to the tables. Theo will be wondering where I am."

I took a second black-and-yellow capsule I had brought with me out of my shirt pocket and set it down in the center of the table where the fifty-dollar bill had been. Michael Stout was halfway out of his chair, but when he saw the capsule he let out an audible gasp and collapsed back into the chair as if his legs had been cut out from under him. The expression on his face was not only one of shock but something very close to terror.

"What's the matter, Michael?" I asked quickly. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"But you have one of the pills! You're not one of us!"

"One of whom, Michael? One of what?"

His gaze left the capsule, came back to my face. He stared at me for a few moments, mouth slightly open and eyes still filled with fear, then slowly shook his head. "I can't tell you, Mongo. I'm not supposed to say anything to anybody."

"Michael, I know you're in trouble. You're in danger. I think there are people stalking you who want to kill you, and it has something to do with these pills. I want to help you. I got this one from somebody-"

"Who?!" he interrupted, his eyes growing even wider. "Which one?"

"You don't know her; she's not one of you either. They were given to her by a man I'm sure knew he was about to be killed, and he gave his bag of capsules to the first person he came across who he thought could be helped by them. Right after he gave them to my friend, he was shot on the street. My friend suffers from severe psychosis-she's schizophrenic. Is that what you are, Michael-a schizophrenic who's able to function normally on this particular medication?"

He stared at me, clearly frightened, for what seemed a long time, then slowly, reluctantly, nodded his head.

"Do you know that if you stop taking this medication, even if you skip just one dose, you'll lapse back into madness, and maybe die?"

"Mongo, I can't talk about it!"

"You can talk about it to me. I want to help you-you, and my friend, and however many more there are of you in the city. But I can't do that unless you tell me everything. Now, do you know what will happen to you if you stop taking the capsules?"

I wasn't sure he was going to answer me, but after another long pause he finally nodded his head again. Now he had the startled expression of a deer caught in headlights. "I just know I have to take one every day or I'll end up nutty again."

"What are you supposed to do when you run out of the supply of capsules you have now? I don't know how many you have, but my friend only has enough to last her another couple of weeks or so. How can she get more?"

Michael Stout swallowed hard, said quietly, "Dr. Sharon is trying to get us more. We're supposed to meet her on Christmas Eve at the big Christmas tree by the skating rink uptown."

"You mean Rockefeller Center?"

"Yes, I think that's the name of it. Besides the Christmas tree, there's a big statue there."

"Who's this Dr. Sharon?"

"Sharon Stephens. She's a psychiatrist. She was the only nice one there."

"Where, Michael? A mental hospital? Is that where you came from?"

He nodded in a timid, birdlike fashion.

"What's the name of it?"

"Rivercliff. It's about a four-hour drive from here, north up the Thruway."

"How did you get to New York City?"

"Dr. Sharon brought us, in a bus that belonged to the hospital. She helped us get away. Raymond was running around with a surgical saw and scalpel killing everybody. She took as many of us with her as she could, and she brought us here. There were twelve of us on the bus, besides Dr. Sharon."

I suddenly realized I was breathing rapidly and shallowly, and my stomach muscles had knotted. I took a deep breath, slowly let it out, then leaned back in my chair and tried to relax. "All right, Michael," I said in what I hoped was a soothing, reassuring tone, "let's slow down and back up. You trust me, right? You believe I want to help you:

"Yes, I do," the boyish-faced man said quietly. There were still shadows of anxiety moving in his eyes, but he was starting to look a bit more at ease. "But Theo's going to be mad at me if I don't get back soon and start playing. He'll say I'm mooching off him and costing him money. Without Theo, I don't have a place to stay, or any way to support myself."

"You let me worry about Theo. Like I said, in order to help you and my friend, I need to know everything so that I can begin to understand what's going on. I think it may be easier if I just ask questions and you answer them-but if you think of anything to add to an answer, don't hesitate to do so. Don't worry yourself about Theo, or playing chess, or anything else except the conversation that's taking place right now. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Let's start with Rivercliff. Were all of the patients there schizophrenics like you and my friend, or were there also patients there who had been diagnosed with other types of mental illness?"

"I don't know. You'd have to ask Dr. Sharon."

"Where can I find her?"

"I don't know. She just told us to meet her by the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. How did you know about me, Mongo?"

"I was at the Manhattan Chess Club the night you were playing in the tournament. When I saw my friend's capsules, I realized they were just like the one I saw you take. You say this Dr. Sharon helped you escape from Rivercliff after a patient named Raymond started running amok and killing people. Is that right?"

"Yes."

"Raymond was a patient?"

"Yes."

"What's Raymond's last name?"

"Rogers."

"Michael, why was it necessary to have someone help you to escape in the first place?"

"Because Raymond was-"

"No, I'm asking why you were still there before this Raymond started killing people. Whatever else it may do, the medication in these capsules you're taking seems incredibly effective in relieving your symptoms. Both you and my friend seem to be functioning perfectly normally-in your case, better than normally. How long have you been able to do this-think, speak, and act like you do now?"

"Oh, I don't know. . years. Except for the chess, of course."

'Tears?"

"Uh-huh."

I felt a chill. "Michael, if your symptoms were being controlled by medication, why didn't they just release you and treat you on an outpatient basis? There are thousands of mentally ill people wandering around New York City, some taking medication as outpatients, and they're in nowhere as good shape mentally as you seem to be. Did you do something wrong to get you put there? Were you judged to be criminally insane?"

"I don't think so. I don't remember doing anything wrong."

"What about this Raymond Rogers? Was he diagnosed as criminally insane?"

"I don't know. Nobody was ever released from Rivercliff. Sometimes the doctors would say somebody was going to be released, but they lied. I was there for more than twelve years. I saw new patients brought in, but I never saw anybody released. When a patient died, they just buried him in the cemetery on the grounds. When that happened, they'd bring in a new patient."

I felt another chill, and this time I actually shuddered. "How many patients were there at Rivercliff?"

"I guess maybe forty."

"What about your family? Why didn't they press for your release?

And what about the families of the other patients who died? Didn't anybody want to claim the bodies?"

"None of us had families-in fact, I think that's one of the reasons we were selected to go to Rivercliff. I'd been transferred from a state hospital in Oklahoma. Everyone I ever talked to had been transferred to Rivercliff from some state hospital. And nobody there had families-at least not families that cared about what happened to them. I'd been abandoned when I was a child, but a lot of the patients there had been orphaned."

"Jesus Christ," I mumbled to myself. I'd stumbled into a nightmare. What I'd witnessed the night before with Mama Spit was horrible enough, but the nightmare was just growing darker and deeper. And I was merely hearing about it; the man sitting across the table from me had lived it. It all made me very sad, and very, very angry.

"Mongo, you all right? You look funny."

"Yes, Michael, I'm all right," I replied, looking up at him and forcing a smile. "Just a touch of indigestion. Look, let's assume you're right: one criterion for selecting a patient for transfer to Rivercliff was that the person had nobody on the outside who would be asking questions about him. Why? None of you was ever released, even after your symptoms had been brought under control. Why?"

The questions had been rhetorical, but Michael answered them anyway. "I don't know, Mongo."

"I assume Rivercliff was the only place you were ever given that medication?"

"Yes."

"Well, they had to be up to more than just the testing of a new drug they could never hope to market; they wouldn't even be able to publish papers or data, because they'd end up in prison for illegal and dangerous human experimentation. I think it's safe to assume they weren't acting out of humanitarian impulses. So what did the doctors at Rivercliff want with you? What could they hope to accomplish when they'd broken every canon of medical ethics in the book and could never hope to see the drug they'd developed used in any patient population outside the hospital?"

"I don't know, Mongo."

"All of the patients there took these capsules?"

He nodded.

"Were you or anybody else there ever given any other kind of medication?"

"No. We didn't need any other medication. I remember when I first went there I was on all sorts of different medications, and I was a mess. I was making these uncontrollable movements-"

"Dyskinesia."

"Yeah, I guess that's what they call it. Anyway, the first thing the doctors did when I got there was take away all my other meds and give me one of those capsules. When I woke up the next morning, I felt. . like I feel now. The voices in my head had stopped, and I could think clearly. And there weren't any of the lousy side effects I used to suffer from with the old meds."

"And they never talked about releasing you?"

"They talked about it, but I knew they wouldn't do it. They never released anybody."

I pointed to the capsule in the center of the table. "What do they call this stuff?"

"They never called it anything; it was just our meds."

"All right, Michael, describe your daily routine for me, if you will. Did you have individual therapy sessions, group counseling, what?"

He shook his head. "Mostly, we could do whatever we wanted all day-there were game rooms, a gym, and a swimming pool. They always had videotapes of the latest movies, and there was a good library. The doctors only seemed interested in asking us questions, and they'd do that, oh, maybe two or three times a week. If they were interested in what you had to say, they'd take you to another part of the hospital and give you some tests. That never happened to me, but I heard about it from others."

"What kinds of questions did the doctors ask?"

"They wanted to know how we were feeling."

"You mean whether you were feeling disoriented, hearing voices, feeling paranoid, that sort of thing?"

"No. They wanted to know if we felt anything, or could do anything, we hadn't felt or done before. You see, people had different reactions to the meds. We all got better mentally, and for the most part we stayed that way. But some people started to change in different ways; sometimes they'd get really good at things. I think this is what the doctors were interested in. And I know they made changes in the meds from time to time."

"How could you tell that if the meds always came in the same black-and-yellow capsules?"

"Aftertaste-sometimes it would change. Also, my stomach could tell; sometimes the meds made me sick, sometimes not. And I would feel different; I could still think clearly, but my emotions would be stronger, or weaker. Sometimes I'd have diarrhea, and other times I'd be constipated. The meds I have now work pretty good."

"Michael, I'm still not sure I'm following you. What kinds of things would people get good at? You mean like chess?"

"Yeah, but that's just me. I didn't know I could play chess like I do now while I was there, because nobody played. They didn't even have any sets. But there was one guy who suddenly got real good at music; there was a piano in one of the recreation lounges, and he taught himself to play. Hum him any tune, and he could sit down at the piano and play it. He even started writing music."

"Like you, he discovered a talent he hadn't realized he had?"

"Yes-but it wasn't always a talent. There was a woman there- her name is Greta Wurlitzer, and she was on the bus with us-who suddenly developed incredible night vision. She could see at night like a cat. The problem was that the daylight hurt her eyes, so she had to wear dark glasses during the day. Greta used to joke about it, call herself 'the night owl.'

I was immediately reminded of Margaret Dutton and the remarkable senses of taste and smell she had displayed during our Thanksgiving dinner, super-keen faculties I now realized she must have developed within hours after she had started taking the drug in the capsules. I said, "The meds obviously relieved the symptoms of schizophrenia and restored your emotional balance. But you're saying the doctors at Rivercliff were mainly interested in the side effects of the drug?"

He shrugged, glanced nervously at the clock on the wall to our left. "I guess so. I really don't know, because we were never told why the questions were being asked. I'll bet they would have run tests on me too if they'd known about this chess thing."

"Oh, I think you're absolutely right. Michael, were any of the patients at Rivercliff ever taken off the meds, just to see what would happen?"

"No, at least not that I know of. We were always given our meds."

"Did any of the patients ever forget to take their meds?"

He shook his head. "A nurse always brought us our meds in a paper cup every day after lunch, and then would stand over us to make sure we took it."

I sipped at my coffee, which had gone cold, and thought about the many levels of what I could only think of as monstrous evil committed by the doctors at Rivercliff, and whoever was behind them. It was not only that they had imprisoned innocent men and women for life, but they had somehow, in secret, managed to develop what could only be called a wonder drug, the mental health equivalent of a cure for AIDS, and had not bothered to tell anybody about it because they were more interested in the drug's side effects. Then again, they had good reason to keep their activities secret; a drug that changed body chemistry to a point where a patient would spontaneously bleed to death if he stopped taking it wasn't a likely candidate for FDA approval.

"Mongo?" the other man continued anxiously. "Can I go now?"

"I just have a couple more questions, Michael. Dr. Sharon helped you escape from Rivercliff when this Raymond Rogers started running amok. What do you suppose caused Rogers to go wild like that?"

"I don't know. Sometimes things like that just happened."

"Raymond Rogers had gone wild before?"

"Yes. And they'd taken him away."

"Taken him away where?"

"I guess to another part of the hospital. Raymond wasn't the first person to suddenly become violent. When it happened to somebody, big guys would come and take him away. We'd never see them again- except once I saw one of them when I had to go to the infirmary. I think that's where Raymond must have been when he got loose; he must have been sick, and they took him there. That's where he would have found the scalpel and the surgical saw he was using to kill people."

"Did you actually see him kill anybody?"

His blue eyes again opened very wide, and he nodded in a quick, jerky movement. "He almost killed me. I had a cold and a sore throat, so I'd been sent to the infirmary. I was sitting on an examination table while this doctor was looking at my throat. Then Raymond just suddenly stepped into the room and slit the doctor's throat with a scalpel-sprayed blood all over me. Jesus, I was scared. I just sat there, like I was paralyzed, looking into Raymond's crazy eyes. I thought he was going to kill me next, but instead he started to cut up Dr. Sawyer while he played with himself. I came to my senses and ran the hell out of there while he was busy with Dr. Sawyer. I saw two dead guards and a nurse inside another office. There was blood all over the place." He paused, laughed nervously in a high-pitched giggle. "It scared the cold and sore throat right out of me."

"I can believe that," I said, nodding slowly. "You say Raymond was playing with himself while he mutilated the doctor. You mean he was masturbating, jerking off?"

Michael Stout reddened slightly. "Yeah. It's kind of embarrassing to talk about."

"There's no reason for you to be embarrassed. It's important that you tell me everything you can remember, in detail."

He shrugged. "I remember that, all right. Raymond's dong was already out of his pants when he came in the room. It was poking straight out of his fly, hard as a rock, and there was jism oozing out of the tip. He grabbed himself with one hand while he was slashing Dr. Sawyer's face and sprayed jism all over the floor. That's when I came to my senses and ran out of the office. But I kind of froze up again when I got out into the corridor, because I didn't know where I was going to go where Raymond wouldn't eventually find me, because now he had the run of the place. That's when Dr. Sharon found me. She was carrying a black plastic garbage bag. She must have come from someplace Raymond had already been, because her hands and face and the front of her smock were covered with blood. She shouted for me to follow her, and when I couldn't move she grabbed my wrist and pulled me after her. We ran out of the infirmary and through the halls of the residence area; Dr. Sharon was banging on doors and shouting at everyone she saw, telling them to follow her if they wanted to live. When we got to Emily's room, Dr. Sharon opened the door and went in. Emily was huddled on the floor over in a corner. Dr. Sharon grabbed her wrist, pulled her to her feet, and dragged Emily along behind her. She had to do that, because Emily wouldn't have come along with us on her own; she was too scared. Emily was usually like that-too upset to do anything. Emily was the only one Dr. Sharon took with her when we split up."

"Emily who?"

"I never knew Emily's last name."

"Was Emily somebody who had experienced side effects from the meds? Did she do anything special, have some special talent?"

"I don't know."

"You say she was upset most of the time?"

"If she came out of her room to try to mingle with the rest of us, yes. Sooner or later somebody would say something she didn't like, or there'd be an argument, and then she'd just crumple to the floor and cover her head with her hands. Emily was very sensitive, very shy. After the last time they changed the formulation of the meds, she never came out of her room at all. That's why Dr. Sharon had to go in and get her."

"The doctors locked Emily in her room?"

"No. There weren't any locks on the doors-at least not in our part of the hospital. Emily stayed in her room because she wanted to."

"Then the meds didn't work with Emily?"

He thought about it for a few moments, then shook his head. "I'm not sure you can say that. Sometimes she'd open the door and talk to people-as long as they stayed outside. I talked with her a couple of times, and she seemed rational enough. She just wanted to avoid close contact with people. Dr. Sharon was the only person she'd let in her room."

"All right, Michael, so Dr. Sharon was rounding up as many patients as she could to save you from Raymond. And she ended up with twelve."

He nodded. "She opened one of the doors to the outside with a key, and she put us all on one of the buses they'd use to take us on outings-picnics, the zoo, that kind of thing. The key was in the ignition. Dr. Sharon started up the bus, and we drove …"

He stopped in mid-sentence, and his face suddenly looked ashen.

"What is it?" I asked quickly. "What's wrong, Michael? Do you remember something else?"

"I'm. . I'm not sure. I was sitting near the back. It was all dark outside, so you couldn't see anything, but now I remember I think I heard a kind of thud at the back emergency door just as we were starting up, like something had run into us. Or somebody had jumped on. Oh, wow."

"You're saying the thump you heard could have been Raymond climbing on the back of the bus?"

"Now that I think of it, yes," he said in a voice just above a whisper. "There was a step on the back, and steel rungs he could have grabbed hold of."

"Did you hear anybody climbing up to the top?"

He swallowed hard, shook his head. "No. But I was scared. I wasn't listening for anything; it's only now that I even remember the thump, and I can't even be sure what that was. Everybody was scared and talking a lot-except for Emily, who was sitting on the floor up at the front next to Dr. Sharon. Mongo, I've seen newspaper headlines about how somebody's killing a lot of people here in New York. Do you think it could be Raymond?"

"He'd be my favorite candidate, except I don't see how anybody, even a homicidal maniac, could ride on down the New York Thruway on top of a bus for four hours at this time of year. If he didn't bounce off or freeze to death, he'd attract all kinds of attention up there and have cars honking, especially after the bus got to the city."

Michael licked his lips. His eyes had grown wide. "But there was stuff on top."

"What kind of stuff?"

"There was a railing around the edge, and storage bins bolted to the roof. They held sports equipment, tents, and other stuff we'd use when the staff took us on picnics, or camping. That's why there were rungs on the back. The bins were full of equipment, and not big enough to hide in, but nobody would have seen him if he lay down between them. And he could have wrapped himself in a tent to keep warm."

Ah. "Did Dr. Sharon stop anywhere to discuss what it was she planned to do with all of you?"

He again shook his head. "I don't think she knew then what she was going to do, except get us to New York. She drove right to the Thruway and headed south. She was quiet all the way, and every once in a while she'd reach down to stroke Emily's hair. I think she decided what she was going to do while she was driving, because once we got here she headed right for that place with the skating rink and the big statue."

"Rockefeller Center."

"Yeah. She parked at the curb of a street in the next block. Then she got up and came back through the bus, dividing up the capsules she'd brought with her in the plastic garbage bag. She told us she'd taken as many of the meds as she could find, and she hoped there were enough to get all of us through the next few weeks, at least until Christmas. She said each of us had a decision to make. She said she was afraid that the people who owned the hospital might send men after us to kill us, so we shouldn't help to identify ourselves by talking to anyone about Rivercliff. She said that if men were sent after us, the only way we could be safe was if we went to social workers or the police, told our story, and then asked them for their help and protection. But she also said there was no guarantee anyone would believe us, and she warned us that if we told the police or social workers about our meds, all of our meds might be taken away for testing, and we almost certainly wouldn't get them back in time to take the next day's dose. She said that if that happened, we'd get sick like we used to be, and might never be well again."

"Did she warn you that some or all of you might die if you didn't take your meds?"

"No. She just said we'd get crazy again. That was bad enough. So that's why each of us had to make a choice. She couldn't look after all of us-Emily was the only one she was taking with her. She said she was going to try to get more meds for us, but she wasn't sure she could do it. Any one of us could go to the police or social workers if we were willing to risk having our meds taken away. If any of us chose to take our chances living on the streets, then she would meet us by the Christmas tree next to the skating rink on Christmas Eve. She said she hoped she'd have a fresh supply of meds for us by then, and these would keep us going until she could come up with some kind of a plan for bringing us all in safely, maybe with a guarantee that we could keep taking our meds."

"You'd have had a better chance of being believed by the authorities if your psychiatrist had been with you. Why didn't she offer to go with you to the police?"

"I don't know. Maybe she needed time to come up with a plan. Maybe she was afraid they wouldn't believe her either, or that they'd still take away our meds."

And maybe arrest her, I thought. There had to be some very powerful people behind the operation at Rivercliff, and in the four hours or so it had taken Sharon Stephens to drive to the city they would almost certainly have found out what happened, and taken steps to protect themselves from exposure. They could have put out some kind of cover story to various agencies around the state, including key social welfare and medical authorities, and the police would have been waiting for this shepherdess and her lost flock. The capsules would have been confiscated, and then there wouldn't have been any need to send assassins; all of the patients would have died within forty-eight hours and Sharon Stephens would have been isolated. I wasn't willing to give this keeper at Rivercliff much credit for anything, including her rather belated acquiring of a moral sensibility and her heroics, but she obviously wasn't stupid, and she could think clearly under pressure.

I said, "She probably did the right thing."

"I know all of this sounds kind of weird, Mongo. Do you believe me?"

Nothing in the man's story sounded a bit weirder than what I'd already seen with my own eyes, and I said, "Yes, Michael, I believe you. And your Dr. Sharon knew what she was talking about. I believe people have come here to track you down and kill you, and I believe your meds would have been taken away if you'd gone to the authorities for help. To your knowledge, how many of the other patients made the same decision you did, to take your chances on the street and try to make it until Christmas Eve?"

"All of us did the same thing. It wasn't a hard choice to make, Mongo. Sometimes, even if you've been crazy for years, you can experience little snippets of memory, even if they only come in dreams, of what it was like to be able to think clearly, to be able to act normally and be with normal people, to not hear voices or screaming in your head all the time. Just those little pieces of memory can be so. . sweet. Then, to be able to function normally all of the time is like the most wonderful gift you've ever been given, and it's something you never take for granted. You never forget the torment of the craziness; to call it hell isn't an adequate description. It's worse than hell. All of us had maybe a month or more of sanity in our pockets, and it was worth being cold and hungry-and yes, maybe even dying-to keep that sanity for as long as was possible. To risk having our meds abruptly taken away from us was just. . unthinkable. I don't think you can understand."

I had a few vivid memories of my own, of the time when my brother's mind had gone over a very high cliff as a result of his being poisoned with "spy dust," a mysterious substance called nitrophenyldienal. I had suffered with him, in a very real way probably more than he did. I remembered him comatose, remembered how his consciousness had been warped when he'd recovered, his loss of "I," and his long, harrowing journey back to sanity. Garth had been changed forever, in many subtle but still distinct ways, but at least he could function again as a rational human being. I never again wanted to lose my brother to madness, didn't want to see anyone lost to madness. So I thought I could indeed understand what his meds meant to Michael Stout, but I didn't contradict him.

I asked, "Any sign of Raymond when you got off the bus?"

"No. Mongo, you're not going to tell anybody about me, are you?"

"No, Michael, I'm not going to tell anybody about you-at least not anybody who would do you harm. Where do you keep your supply of meds? Are the capsules back at Theo's place?"

"No. I never leave them anywhere, because I'm afraid somebody might steal them. I always carry them with me."

"Good. When Dr. Sharon dropped you all off at Rockefeller Center and told you to meet her on Christmas Eve, did she give any indication of just how she planned to get a fresh supply of your meds?"

"No."

"Did she or any of the other doctors ever mention who actually owned the hospital?"

"No."

"Did anyone ever tell you where the meds came from, or what company manufactured them?"

"No."

"When you split up, did Dr. Sharon give even a hint of where she and Emily might be going?"

"No. I've told you everything I know, Mongo. Can I go back now? Theo's really going to be angry at me for staying away so long. He'll call me a freeloader, say I'm costing him money."

"You can stop worrying about what Theo calls you, Michael," I said as I rose, picked up the fifty-dollar bill, and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. "Also, your career as a chess hustler is over, at least for the time being. You're not going back to Theo's place. You're coming to live with me for a while."