Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

Chapter 7

I went back upstairs to check on Margaret again. She was sleeping, which was to be expected, but her color was returning and her pulsebeat was regular. I went in the other room to ask Michael to write down the names and descriptions of the other patients who had escaped with him on the bus. When he had done so, I memorized the information and tore up the paper.

Although Sharon Stephens and the patients could be scattered through the five boroughs, and would be if they were acting logically, I still had the feeling that most of the people, if not the psychiatrist and her ward, had remained in Manhattan, in close proximity to the site where they hoped to rendezvous and receive salvation on Christmas Eve. So Manhattan was where I would begin my search.

I took the A train to the northern end of the borough, and then slowly walked through the George Washington Bridge bus terminal, searching end to end and top to bottom, looking for anyone who might fit the descriptions Michael had given me. It was no easy task. The patients could have altered their appearance, and it wasn't as if all the homeless people and drifters in the terminal were standing up against a wall and facing me as if they were in a lineup; many were sleeping with their faces to the wall, or were covered with mounds of rags or surrounded by plastic garbage bags stuffed with their meager belongings. Finally, it came down to the question of how one could pick out a particular escaped mental patient from all the other mental patients wandering around the streets of the city as though it were some great, labyrinthine outpatient ward.

I didn't see any man or woman who exactly fit any of the descriptions I had been given, but when I saw somebody who came close, or appeared relatively lucid, I would stop, offer the person a dollar or two, show them the black-and-yellow capsule I carried, and then begin asking personal questions about Rivercliff, Dr. Sharon Stephens, and Raymond Rogers. What I was looking for was a reaction, shadows moving in the eyes, a sharp intake of breath, or an attempt to move away. All I got were requests for more money.

When I struck out at the bus terminal, I headed for the nearest homeless shelter, an armory. I slowly walked through the cavernous space, examining the faces of the men and women who had already checked in for the night and were resting on their cots as I discreetly held a handkerchief over my nose and mouth to try to protect myself from the new and virulent strains of tuberculosis that were now spreading rapidly through the city's population of homeless.

As I worked my way downtown through shelters and other havens for the helpless, I developed a list of questions for any of the guards, volunteers, or social workers who would talk to me. Had they noticed anything "unusual" about any one of the people who had first come in during the past two weeks? That question always got a laugh. Had they noticed anyone displaying any unusual talents or traits, like being very skilled at chess, or being able to see particularly well in the dark, or anything at all peculiar? More laughs. I had no trouble getting people to talk to me, only in taking me seriously after I had asked my first few questions. I came to realize that, with the noticeable exception of three or four fresh volunteers who had only been on the job a week or two, few of the employees any longer "saw" much of anything around them at all. They simply could no longer distinguish individual faces in the vast, cruel tapestry of human misery that cloaked them, the tide of suffering that swept in each evening to overwhelm, and then swept out again the next day. Most of the staff, in the interest of self-preservation, had willfully allowed themselves to grow numb, half blind and half deaf. I couldn't say I blamed them in the least.

I found nobody who matched any of the descriptions.

By 10 P.M. I had worked my way south toward my own neighborhood, and I decided to visit the one city shelter and three Salvation Army and church relief centers in the area before calling it a night. I was getting more than a wee bit discouraged. If the patients had seriously gone to ground and were avoiding all relief centers, or were scattered in the other boroughs, I had little real hope of finding them even if I devoted all my time to the search. And that would be counterproductive, since come December 26 or thereabouts they would all be mad or dead or both anyway. The only solace I could take was in the knowledge that if I was having so much difficulty finding the lost flock, then so must the assassins on their trail.

I was coming out of the shelter when I looked across the street and saw something that made me stop so abruptly I almost tripped over my own feet. There, standing at the curb under a streetlight, was a young couple-at least they certainly appeared young from a distance-with their arms around each other's waist, apparently engaged in earnest conversation. From the way they dressed and by their physical mannerisms, their gestures, the man and woman looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. From what I could see of their faces, they certainly appeared youthful-but there was no bus stop where they were standing, and it seemed to me that there were any number of other, more pleasant places where a young couple could go to chat rather than this forlorn, potentially dangerous block, across the street from a shelter for homeless men. I waited for a stream of cars to pass, then headed in their direction.

They saw me coming, turned their heads slightly to regard me for a few moments, then resumed their conversation; as I drew closer, it sounded to me as if they were speaking Dutch, or perhaps some Scandinavian language. I stepped up on the curb next to the couple and waited for them to take notice of me, something which they at least pretended not to do. They were both about the same height, about five eight or nine, and what I saw when I looked into their faces amazed me and made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. While the man and woman had indeed looked like college students from where I had stood across the street, up close I could see that they were no spring chickens. Like an optical illusion gone sour, they had aged twenty years or more in the time it had taken me to cross the street.

The longish, dyed blond hair of both the man and the woman hid the multiple scars I knew they both bore behind their ears from multiple visits to plastic surgeons; their flesh, which had the starched look and translucency of parchment, was stretched like drumheads across their skulls, lending both of them the expression, even when speaking, of a perpetual, faint grimace. The man had brown eyes, and the woman one blue eye and one green; the eyes of both protruded slightly from their sockets, and looked like glass marbles in the mercury glow from the streetlight. I had no idea what the man and woman would have looked like if they had allowed themselves to age normally, but they couldn't look any worse than they did now.

I'd seen enough, and was about to retreat into the shadows when the woman with the mismatched eyes suddenly glanced down at me and asked me a question in what I now thought sounded like a German dialect.

"Uh, excuse me," I said, smiling up into the stretched faces. "Could you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?"

They conferred for a few moments in the language that was incomprehensible to me. Finally the woman looked at me and winked her blue eye. "You are perhaps trying to have some fun with tourists?" she asked in heavily accented English. "We have heard that joke. The answer is: Practice, practice, practice."

"Uh, right you are. Well, thanks anyway. Have a nice evening."

I didn't go far, south half a block and around a corner. Then I stopped and peered back around the edge of a building. The man and woman were still standing at the curb, talking. I was certain they were Punch and Judy, trolling the same shelters and relief centers I was, but avoiding the risk of identification by remaining at a distance to watch who went inside and who came out. They would have whole dossiers on the escaped patients, including photographs and behavior profiles. Taking out this decidedly unattractive duo could produce all sorts of dividends. They were unlikely to know anything about Rivercliff, the drug or the company that manufactured it, but they could tell me the names of their employers, people who presumably would know. Their forced retirement would also certainly make the streets a lot safer for the lost flock, and might even bring a faint smile to the thick lips of Captain Felix MacWhorter, perhaps even raise his level of tolerance for having me live in his precinct.

But I was going to need more than my own conviction and evidence of plastic surgery to remove them from circulation. It was going to cost me valuable time to gather enough evidence for MacWhorter to take them in, but the effort certainly seemed worth it.

Fifteen minutes went by, and upwards of twenty men entered the shelter without the couple giving any one of them so much as a glance. That surprised me, and took a bit of a nick out of my confidence that they were Punch and Judy. In fact, they seemed far more interested in each other than in who was entering the shelter across the street. Then they surprised me a second time by abruptly heading off down the block in the opposite direction. They were definitely not acting like the stalkers and professional killers I wanted them to be, but I followed them anyway.

Since I was the only dwarf in the general vicinity, I had to keep a respectable distance between us or I would immediately be made if one of them happened to glance back. However, they didn't seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere, and they were easy to follow. They went north awhile, then turned east on 76th Street. Three quarters of the way down the block they paused outside an apartment building. They demurely kissed each other on the cheek, the woman disappeared into the building, and the man resumed walking. It seemed unlikely that Punch and Judy would be living in separate quarters, and the behavior of this couple was growing ever more depressingly unsuspicious. Still, I continued to follow the man, who disappeared down the steps into the subway station at Columbus Circle.

I sprinted the rest of the way down the block, across the street, and scurried down the stairs, toward the almost palpable rumble of incoming and outgoing trains, hoping to at least catch a glimpse of him to determine whether he was going towards the uptown or downtown stairs. There was no sign of him. I dug a subway token out of the change in my pocket, dropped it into the turnstile, then hurried down another flight of stairs leading to the platforms for the downtown trains. I knew I was running a considerable risk of being spotted if he was on the platform, but I didn't see him anywhere.

I hurried back upstairs then down another flight to the platform for the uptown trains, but I didn't see any sign of the man there either. I headed home, my thoughts once more turning to the image of a man with an ice pick, taking care to avoid dark areas, and paying close attention to anybody who passed close to me on the sidewalk.

By the time I reached my block I had convinced myself that the couple had not been Punch and Judy, that it had simply been coincidence that both the man and the woman had undergone extensive plastic surgery, and that they had been standing in that particular spot across from the men's shelter. I had been very careful in tailing them, which meant that the woman most likely really did live in that particular apartment house, and the man had simply stepped onto a train that had been in the station and had almost immediately pulled out. In any case, whether or not the couple had been Punch and Judy was a moot question; they were gone now. At least I had gotten some exercise.

As I crossed the street heading for the brownstone, I noticed that the light in the stairwell leading down to the belowground floor Garth and I used as a storage area was out, leaving the stairwell and half the stairs leading up to the main entrance in darkness. That was not good for my own security, or for the safety of my neighbors, and I decided I would replace the bulb before I went to bed.

I was halfway across the street when I saw the figure sitting in the shadows on my stoop, in almost exactly the same spot where I had found Margaret Dutton. But this wasn't Mama Spit. I went a few steps closer, and my mouth went dry when I saw the dyed blond hair and pale sheen of the taut flesh of the woman's face; I'd not only been made but had, but good, by the two professionals. It was the last thought I had before the steel prongs of a stun gun probed into my back on either side of my spinal cord, sending a few thousand volts of electricity coursing through my body. It smarted pretty good; it felt like somebody had poured molten lead into a hole in the top of my skull, burning out my brain and severing every neural connection in my body. I dropped to the pavement like a stone. A powerful hand grabbed the collar of my coat and dragged me the rest of the way across the street; I was bumped up over the curb, hauled across the sidewalk, and unceremoniously bumpety-bumped down the steps into the darkened stairwell. Punch was now joined by Judy, and they used separate, thin ropes to lash my wrists and ankles. When they had accomplished this, Punch tossed the ends of both ropes over the street-level railing above my head. Then he pulled on the ropes and tied them off, leaving me drooping in the air like a hammock. It was an extremely uncomfortable position-which, of course, was precisely what they'd had in mind.

My eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, and it was useless to struggle, so I just sagged there, trying not to think about the pain that was already nibbling along my spine, and watched while the man, who I now realized was wearing a toupee, pulled a thick leather glove over his right hand. He removed a small glass bottle from his pocket, unscrewed the cap, and poured a small amount of a clear liquid into his gloved palm. Suddenly the air was filled with the fetid odor of feces.

"It won't do you any good to try to cry out, Dr. Frederickson," the parchment-faced man with the blond toupee said in perfect English that no longer carried any trace of an accent. "I will immediately muffle any cries with my glove. Like this."

Having made this pronouncement, Punch proceeded to cover my nose and mouth with the liquid-soaked glove. Whatever was on the glove didn't appear to be the real thing, but it might as well have been, because the smell and taste immediately made my mouth feel like a recently used toilet. After a few moments he took the glove away, and I spat.

"That is really vile stuff," I said in as even a tone as I could manage from my extremely stressed, rather undignified position. "I certainly don't plan to cry out, and I hope you're not planning on doing anything that would make me want to change my mind. How do you know who I am?"

"Don't be so modest," the woman said in English that was as perfect and unaccented as her husband's. "Doesn't everyone know Mongo the Magnificent, the famous ex-circus star, former college professor, karate expert, and renowned private investigator who also just happens to be a dwarf? You and your brother have made headlines all over the world."

Ah, yes, the perils of celebrity. "I can see I'm going to have to tell my public relations people to tone things down a bit."

"I can't believe you could have been so stupid as to approach us like that on the street, and then ask a dumb question about how to get to Carnegie Hall."

I couldn't believe it either. If I lived to New Year's, I was going to make a serious resolution to stop trying to be such a clever little rascal. "I didn't know who you were when I approached you, and I still don't know who you are. I've been looking for a teenage runaway. I came over to ask if you might have seen him, but when I heard you talking I assumed you didn't speak English. The question about Carnegie Hall was just a display of my razor wit employed in an attempt to amuse myself. What the hell do you want?"

"You're lying," Judy said, and Punch indicated that he agreed with her sentiments by poking me in the ribs with the stun gun. I screamed and went into convulsions, and Punch immediately slapped the glove that smelled like feces over my mouth. That stopped the screaming, but not the convulsions. The electricity and repulsive odor comprised a double-barreled bazooka attack on all my senses, pairing the extremes of pain and revulsion, and it was most effective.

I'd been tortured before; I hadn't much cared for it then, and I didn't much care for it now. In fact, I hated being tortured. Just like the times before, I cried and screamed-or tried to-and threw up and most sincerely begged them to stop, and, just like the times before, I knew that if they finally found out what they wanted to know, they would kill me. Just like the times before, I knew I was going to have to somehow summon up the will to look beyond the terrible pain, try to think happy thoughts about the fact that I was still alive, and keep lying in order to keep me that way.

They let me hang around, as it were, twitch and soil myself for what felt like a couple of centuries, but was probably only about five minutes. My back felt like it was about to break, and might have if they hadn't flipped me around into a position that was only slightly less uncomfortable. My whole body had become one huge cramp, but in the new position I was able to breathe-and presumably talk-a little easier. I couldn't decide which was worse, the artificial odor on the glove or the real smell of my own vomit, and I knew I was going to have to endure-survive-one more slam of electricity before they would be ready to believe whatever tale I was going to tell them. It would have to be good enough to satisfy their curiosity yet make them decide not to kill me, and it was a whopper I had yet to come up with. My current situation was seriously interfering with my imaginative flow.

"Untie the ropes and let me lie down on my back," I croaked. "I think I'm rupturing a disc or two. I'll tell you what you want to know."

Punch said, "Tell us what we want to know, and then the pain will stop. How did you know who we are?"

"Hey, pal, if I'd known who you were, I wouldn't have come up to you on the street and made clever remarks. If you're going to torture me for information, at least don't waste time by asking stupid questions. It's my body you're using up. I had a description of two people, and you two looked like you might fit it. That's why I came over to you, to take a closer look."

"Who gave you this description?"

"There was a witness to the killing you pulled off here a week ago."

"Who?"

"How the hell do I know? It was somebody in the neighborhood. The police wouldn't give me a name."

"Was it the woman sitting on the grate, the one dressed in rags?"

"I told you I don't know, but I seriously doubt it was her. I know her. She's not only a loony but half blind and deaf."

"She's not up there now. Where is she?"

"How the fuck would I know? She's probably in some shelter-or maybe she went to Florida for the winter. Jesus H. Christ. Hurry up with the questions, will you? My back is really giving me problems."

"The killing you mentioned is a police matter. Why are you involved?"

"I'm chairman of our neighborhood Crime Watch committee."

That did the trick. This time I got the stun gun in the belly, and my bones rattled as I twisted around in the ropes, convulsed, threw up, and cried. It was now time for Mr. Scheherazade to step through the curtain and go for one more night, this one.

"Interpol," I gasped when I was finally able to speak.

The man and woman looked at each other, obviously surprised. Judy asked, "What about Interpol?"

I spat out vomit and stifled a sob. "You're blown; the whole operation is blown. One of the patients who escaped from Rivercliff walked into a relief center and told her story to a social worker. The social worker called the police, and the police called the Feds because they smelled something very big and fishy about the whole thing. Word about what was going on leaked to a senator who's a friend of mine, and she's planning an investigation into just who's responsible for Rivercliff. In the meantime, her committee has hired me to do some preliminary investigating and search for the rest of the patients, besides the one you killed and the one who came in, who are still hiding out on the streets."

"That's nonsense," the woman said, sounding none too sure of herself. "What you're describing couldn't possibly have happened so quickly."

"What can I tell you, lady? You tell me how I could have become involved if things aren't the way I just told you."

Punch raised the stun gun threateningly. "If your senator doesn't know who Rivercliff belonged to, how could you know we'd been hired, and how could you know that the man we killed was one of the escaped patients?"

"I didn't know that at the time. It was just a hunch. The killing had the signature of professionals. Now, why should professionals take out a homeless vagrant if he wasn't in fact one of the people I was supposed to be looking for? I told you there was a witness. I called Interpol with your description because I thought it possible they might have a line on you. They did. Punch and Judy. They even know your real names, and the fact that you live near Paris. That's it. So untie me. You don't have any reason to kill me, and you have several very good reasons not to. I'm just a hired hand in this case, working for the real heavyweights who are after your asses. Back off now and go home, and maybe those heavyweights will let you continue to enjoy your lifestyle. Kill me, and they'll know you did it. Then things could get real nasty for you. If you know about me, then you must know about my brother; he will definitely track you down, and he will most definitely kill you both. Cut me loose, and you cut your losses."

I squinted in the gloom at their shiny faces, trying to gauge how I was doing, hoping I could remember whatever story I had just told them in case I had to repeat it. Both Punch and Judy looked singularly unimpressed with the threat of my brother tracking them down, my argument, or both.

The woman said, "You've been looking for the patients."

"That's right. Just like you."

"Have you found any?"

"No. Have you killed any others?"

I didn't expect an answer, and I didn't get one. Punch and Judy looked at each other for some time without speaking, as if they could communicate telepathically. Finally the man looked back at me, said, "Your story doesn't make any sense. If the police know about Rivercliff and the patients, why aren't there more cops out on the streets looking for them?"

"I don't know how many cops, maybe some in plainclothes, are looking for them, and neither do you. Sometimes the truth is kind of crazy. Hey, could anybody make up a story like I just told you while he's dangling here being electrocuted? I don't want you to hurt me anymore. Believe it, and let me go."

He raised the stun gun for me to see. "I want to hear about this business with senators and congressional committees and Interpol one more time. But first-"

He had brought the electric fangs of the stun gun to within a fraction of an inch of my neck, but he suddenly froze at the sound of brakes squealing as a car pulled up to the curb and stopped. The car's engine was turned off, a door opened and closed, and then footsteps clicked on the sidewalk, coming closer, going up the steps to my front door. I heard the doorbell ring from deep inside the brownstone, and I was glad I had given Margaret and Michael strict instructions to stay away from windows, and never to answer the door. The doorbell rang again, and then.my visitor pounded on the door. Finally I heard a familiar voice shout, "Hey, Mongo! You up there?! If you are, you'd better stop playing games and get down here! The chief says I got to bring you in! Mongo?!"

It was Lou Colchen. Never again would I complain that there was never a cop around when you needed one-but then, I might never again get the chance to complain about anything. Punch had clapped the foul-smelling glove over my mouth the moment the car door had opened, and now I watched as he and his wife exchanged glances.

"Mongo?! You hear me?! I see lights on up there! If you are in there, you may as well come down now, because my orders are to wait right here until you show up! Come on, now! There's no sense in making me wake up the whole neighborhood!"

My captors continued to stare at each other, their expressions mirroring uncertainty. My heart was already pounding, but it began to beat even faster when a knife suddenly appeared in Judy's hand. She started to press the blade to my throat, but Punch, bless his dark heart, abruptly grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away, shaking his head. He nodded toward the steps, and she nodded back. He took his hand away from my mouth, and then they bounded in unison up the stairwell and sprinted away down the sidewalk, their sneakered feet making hardly any sound.

"Hey, you two! What the hell?!"

I tried to spit, but there was no saliva left in my mouth. I smacked my lips and swallowed until I could work up a little moisture, then croaked, "I'm down here, Lou."

"Mongo? Where. .? I can hear you, but I can't …"

"Under your feet. In the stairwell."

I heard him skip down the steps over my head, then come along the railing until he was a dark outline at the top of the stairwell. A bright light came on, shining full in my face. I closed my eyes and turned my head away as pain shot through my skull.

"Holy shit," the gray-haired policeman said, then quickly climbed down the stairwell to the landing. He set his flashlight down, then used a pocketknife to cut the ropes that bound my wrists and ankles while he supported me under the back with one strong arm. He caught me as I fell, then started to lay me down.

"I don't want to lie down, Lou," I rasped. "Lift me up so that I can grab the railing."

"What?"

"Just do it, Lou."

He did, grabbing me by the seat of the pants and hoisting me into the air so that I could grab the bottom brace on the steel railing over my head. I hung there, breathing deep sighs of relief as my weight served to stretch out the muscles and ligaments in my body, every one of which was cramped, knotted, twitching, and screaming in pain.

Being stretched out felt absolutely divine. As far as I could tell, I hadn't broken any bones during the convulsions, or suffered any serious back injury, which I considered delightfully surprising considering the way I'd been trussed up, worked over, and had thrashed around.

"Mongo. .?"

"I'll be with you in a couple of minutes, Lou. I just need to hang out here a little while longer."

"What the hell happened to you?"

". . Mugged."

"Muggers are going to the trouble of tying up their victims these days?"

"These were kinky muggers. Lou, I'm really happy to see you. I mean, I'm really, seriously happy to see you."

"Jesus, Mongo, you smell like shit and puke."

"You should get a whiff of me from where I am."

I was actually starting to feel better. I released my grip on the railing and dropped to the landing of the stairwell. That turned out to be an overly optimistic estimate of my recuperative powers. Normally, such a drop would have been no problem at all, but now my legs wouldn't support me, and I collapsed in a heap on the cold concrete. Lou lifted me up by the armpits, then sat me down on the steps next to his flashlight. My muscles were already starting to twitch and cramp again, and I arched my neck and back.

"Hey, buddy, I think I'd better get you to a hospital."

I shook my head. "I don't need to go to the hospital. I'll be all right. I just need to do a few more stretching exercises."

"That's up to you. But if you're not going to let me take you to the hospital, you're going to have to come with me anyway. The captain wants to talk to you. Now."

I sighed. "Give me a break, will you, Lou? I just got the shit kicked out of me. I'm still alive, thanks to you, but I really don't feel like chatting with MacWhorter, or anybody else right now. Tell him I'll be there in the morning, but not to expect me too early."

The policeman shook his head. "I can't do that, Mongo. Sorry. The captain's been calling you all afternoon and night. First your secretary says you're out and he doesn't know where you are or when you'll be back, and then he starts getting your machine. My assignment was to find you, no matter how long it took, and I'm not supposed to show my face at the station house unless I've got you in tow; otherwise, I'm going to be walking a beat on Staten Island. He means it, Mongo. You know how he gets. I can see you're hurting, but that's the way it's got to be."

I dredged up another sigh, this one even deeper, louder, and more heartfelt than the first. "You mind if I clean up first? I don't want to stink up the station house."

"You're not going to skip out on me, are you, Mongo?"

"Skip? You've got to be kidding me, Lou. I might try to crawl out on you, but skip? No way."

"Make it snappy, will you?"

"Snap this," I grumbled to myself as I got to my feet and stumbled up the stairs.

Naturally, I was in no hurry whatsoever to get back downstairs, because I was certainly in no hurry to go another round with MacWhorter while trying to keep my wits about me as I figured out what I was going to tell him, which was probably going to be only a slightly less fantastic bubbameister than whatever it was I had told Punch and Judy.

I stripped off my soiled clothes, sealed them in a plastic bag, which I set down by the kitchen door to take out with the garbage. Then I stepped into the shower, turned the water on as hot as I could stand it, then lay facedown in the tub and let the needle spray wash over me as I reflected on how very close I had come to being dead. Very sore was preferable to very dead, I concluded, and started to feel better about life in general.

After twenty minutes or so of stretching out and soaking under the hot water, I got to my feet, soaped up, rinsed off, and got out of the shower. I was moving easier, and it at least felt as if I might be able to get about without looking and feeling like a palsy victim. I dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers, then checked on Margaret and Michael, who were both sound asleep. I considered calling in some outside help to stand guard while I was gone, but then decided that it was unlikely that Punch and Judy would return to the brownstone, at least not so soon. I went to the bar in Garth's apartment, whacked my brain and body with a quarter of a tumbler of scotch, then went back downstairs, double-locking the front door behind me. The policeman was leaning against the hood of his cruiser, sipping at a carton of coffee he'd gotten from the deli up the block.

"You took your own sweet time."

"You'd better cuff me," I said, going across the sidewalk to him and holding out my wrists. "It's procedure, and you know how MacWhorter is about procedure."

He looked at me in an odd way, then crumpled up his empty coffee carton and threw it into a wire trash container a few feet away. "You've got a really strange sense of humor, Mongo. Get in the car, will you?"