IT WASN’T as if he had a plan. He simply understood, after weeks of getting noplace in his skull, what had to happen next. He didn’t know, or care, much more than that. So he waited until Ray got on the phone, pulled the shower trick, then hit the street. He thumbed a lift on a grocery truck and rode with a thousand dozen eggs through the tunnel and south on the expressway to the Quincy side of the Neponset Bridge. He banged on the cab of the truck to be let off, and said goodbye to the driver. He waited until the truck was out of sight, waving inanely because he had forgotten where he was and why he had come here. Then he tried very hard to recognize street signs, buildings, anything, and he remembered that if he walked toward the smell of the salt marshes, he would come to the guardhouse that led to the causeway that led to the nuthouse jail island. He had a couple miles’ walk to the guardhouse. It was becoming a hot morning—the first hot morning of the spring. He took his coat off and laid it carefully over a mailbox, then started his hump to the sea.
His feet hurt. A streetcar ran west, crackling along overhead wires. Biff kept walking. The morning got hotter. He was past the Naval Air Station and coming up on the guardhouse. A little jimmy in a Corrections getup stepped out of the shed into his path.
“I’m hearing voices,” Biff said. “I’ll see Dr. Childs now, please.”
The guard started jawing, so Biff hit him in the ear with a pretend karate chop that hurt his hand but dropped the jimmy nicely. Biff started past him onto the causeway, squeezing through the iron gate, and was halfway to the island when the Corrections boys came screaming down the causeway from the island in a trashy carpool Rambler. They piled out, four gorillas making for him, slamming four doors, nightsticks banging against car and leather belts and thighs and wooden gun butts, a comforting sound at that moment, just an old cop sound. He gave the fat sergeant, who led, a lazy grin and got cracked in the teeth with the tip of a sap. He slumped, thinking, Here we go, BoSox, here we go….
They stomped him until the fat sarge gave himself a charley horse. Biff yelped to make them think they were getting somewhere, but he mostly felt dreamy and sleepy. They loaded him into the back of the Rambler and drove him out to the island, leaving him manacled to the wall in Receiving.
He sat on the floor for an hour before a nurse came over. “Name?” she asked.
“Mears,” Biff said. “Joe. I’d like to see Dr. Childs.”
The nurse disappeared. Another hour passed. Two orderlies came in asking for the job who beat up the cop. Biff tried to stand. They uncuffed him, and joshed, one taking each arm, calling him Sugar Ray, until he was down a long corridor and behind two locked iron doors. Then one orderly pinned his arms behind his back. The other orderly stepped in front, fished for brass knuckles in his pockets, slid them on his right fist lovingly, and sent five bolo shots into Biff’s breadbasket. Biff crumpled to the filthy floor.
“You in the Open Wards,” the hitter said. “I’m boss here. You and your voices fuck up again, Mr. Joe Mears, and you’ll never walk off this island on working knees. Dig?”
Biff dry-retched on his new boss’s scuffed steel-toed shoes and got kicked in the back of the head.
“Dig?”
He was nodding feebly at the shoes. They dragged and carried him through another security door, and shackled him to a bench bolted to the floor. He passed out.
WHEN he woke up, all his joints hurt. He’d pissed in his pants some hours before. He was in a room big enough for half-court basketball, and one of the fifty-odd loons gawking at him had stolen his shoes and socks and tried to take his soiled shirt but hadn’t been able to get it off over Biff’s wrist shackles. He moved his arm. He could tell that he’d been given needles in his shoulder.
After a while, the orderly who had pinned his arms in the corridor came in with a ring of keys and a much-scarred baseball bat. Biff named him Goon One. The other inmates looked away and moved off.
Goon One unshackled Biff, cursing the odor. Biff sat on the bench. His head throbbed. He fought back puke while the orderly circled the room, slapping the bat in his left palm. Goon One departed, locking the doors behind him. Biff stood up gingerly and walked barefoot across the ward. He vomited next to an old man in a fetal ball so that the oldster would get blamed, knowing that the spew meant a beating from whoever had to clean it up.
He limped around the ward once, trying to size up what survival here meant. There were five cells off either side of the open room, ten total, four narrow cots crammed in each. He counted men, windows, chairs. Wretches hunched on the cots, babbling, screaming, chattering back at voices in their heads. Me shut up? You shut up! You never gave me credit. No, you never did! Men straitjacketed in the corner cried out that they were thirsty. Biff was in one of City & County’s infamous open wards, the snake pits, reserved for violent offenders trying to fool the court shrinks, meantime preying on the chronics, who’d never get out.
A pretty kid was being butt-fucked over a cot by a tall sunburned man. The kid bared teeth as the sunburned man’s shiny tool rode in and out. The kid turned his head, met Biff’s gaze, and forced a thin, coquettish smile. Everyone eyed Biff. New meat.
The sunburned man came, braying and bucking, then drew his cock from the kid, lay on a cot, and began paging through a tattered magazine about boats. The kid was hitching up his pants and buckling his belt, walking like he just got off a horse.
“What’re you looking at?” the kid sassed Biff, lower lip out, hands on slender hips.
“You,” Biff said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You got something I need.”
“Take a number,” the kid said. Biff’s right knee came up into his crotch. The sunburned man got off the cot.
“This don’t involve you,” Biff said.
The man took a long look at Biff, and went back to his magazine as Biff ripped his shoes off the kid’s feet, twisting the kid’s ankles almost backward. Biff found an empty corner and sat down. He put his shoes back on, tied a knot in each, and looked around the room to make sure everybody got the message.
Biff figured Childs would have to come see him eventually if he kept saying he was Mears. When Childs came, he would recognize Biff from the Shecky Bliss shooting and, maybe, assume the worst—that Biff was undercover with official sanction, part of an investigation getting hotter and closer to Childs’s LSD pipeline. Childs would panic, tell Mears, and let Mears do the dirty work in the Opens, Childs’s home turf. Mears would come after him, dressed as an orderly or a patient. This would be Biff’s chance. Bait, Biff thought. I’m bait.
“Mears!” Another orderly, an old guy pushing a cartful of meds in little cups. Goon One stood guard on the cart, bat slapping palm.
Biff limped over. The orderly watched him swallow each pill: three blue, four gray. They felt wrong going down.
RAY dialed Vinnie the lawyer’s office, still looking for Biff.
“He’s supposed to be here right now,” Vinnie said. “I wanted to go over his testimony at the fitness hearing. Coach him on looking zombielike, not that Biff needs any help in that department lately. What’s going on, Ray?”
Ray wasn’t sure how to answer. Vinnie couldn’t know about the kidnapping of Bennie Anastasia.
“I was afraid of that,” Vinnie said. “The hearing’s in front of Judge Croft today at two. Biff’s a basket case, so we’re gonna win this thing. But Croft won’t be giving us any more adjournments. If we dick around, maybe Croft hardens and does something rash, like finding Biff fit to stand trial. And if Biff doesn’t show—well, you know Judge Croft.”
“He’ll issue an arrest warrant,” Ray said.
“And because Croft doesn’t trust the PD to find their own, he’ll sic the troopers on Biff’s ass. They’ll tip the town upside down looking for him. It won’t be jolly. Find him, kid.”
Ray spent the rest of the morning cruising the blocks around the Skyway Motel, then on a hunch trolled Biff’s boyhood haunts back in the Telegraph. Thinking Biff might be like the man who misplaces his keys and goes back to where he last saw them, Ray rode past the three towers of the Gibraltar Street projects. He walked through 10 Gibraltar, where Biff had met Joe Mears, found the derelict mill where Biff had lost Mears’s trail on the morning of the doomed search warrant, and wound up at the bank of the Ship Channel where Biff and Sheck had run Mears down. Kids were out that morning, playing street hockey, skipping double-dutch, listening to AM radio, drinking beer.
When Biff’s case was on in court that afternoon, Vinnie Sullivan begged Judge Croft for a two-week continuance, and when Croft exploded, Vinnie said a week would do.
“Where is your client?” Judge Croft demanded of Vinnie, who stood beside a very empty chair.
“Your Honor, he is a man who has been diagnosed as delusional and severely depressed. He is a man sadly out of touch with his surroundings.”
“He is a man,” Judge Croft cut in, “who can’t get to court to answer murder charges. Bailiff, get me the state police.”
TWO, three, four. Three times a day, four gray and three blue, then three gray and four blue, some whites, a yellow, Stelazine, Thorazine, lithium, the men in the ward said. It was raining. Later, it wasn’t.
He was told all kinds of unbelievable things and asked repeatedly who he was.
Don’t I know you?
Yes, well, it’s possible, but, no, I don’t think so.
Sure. You a cop. You bust me down Fort Point couple-five years ago. Drunk and drivin’.
No, no.
Five minutes later: Don’t I know you?
Well, you know.
You sure?
The orderlies caught the pretty kid turning a cot trick for some chewing gum and took him away. He came back later, winking at the ward, new heavyweight champion of the world. A guy died in the middle of the night and nobody found him until at least one day later. The smell tipped them off. He asked a boy who said he ate acid what day it was, and it felt like it took an hour to get an answer of some kind.
Acid? somebody was saying. Can’t eat acid.
The kid replied, Windowpane.
Can’t eat windowpanes neither.
Stela, Thora, lith. He kept asking what day it was, and finally somebody said Thursday, and somebody said Wednesday, and somebody said Thursday, and somebody else agreed, so he decided it was probably that day.
Goon One came with the bat for every man except him until he thought he’d never see another room. He started to love the orderlies. Not like them. Love them. Especially Goon One.
They came for him, taking him out of the Opens, which made him grateful to these lovely men as they led him, slapping the bat, through corridors and up stairs and along catwalks, sticking him without a word in a little room before a two-way mirror. He waved hello at the mirror.
A young woman with intern written all over her stepped in. She had a clipboard and a caring gaze.
He waved at her.
“Joe Mears?”
“That’s not my real name.”
“Why did you say that was your name then?”
He looked at her.
“Why did you say that was your name?”
He could see how kind she was.
“Well, anyway, what should we call you today?”
“Biff. My real name is Harold, but I’m called Biff.”
“That’s fine, Biff,” she said, writing “Harold Mears” on the top of her paper.
“I’m here to see Dr. Childs.”
“Dr. Childs is very busy. I’m Miss Anthony. I’ll do your intake interview, and then in a few days—”
“I need to see Dr. Childs right away. It’s very important.”
“Well, Mr. Mear—ah, Biff, we’ll—”
“It’s very important.” He explained to her about the man in the back bedroom, the way the liquid felt in his eyes, the momentary blindness, and his friend Shecky, whom he had killed. He didn’t want to kill his friend—didn’t remember killing his friend—but everyone was saying he did. Gunshot wound to the face. Biff touched his own nose. He needed to find the man in the back bedroom. Dr. Childs would send the man to him.
Miss Anthony looked at him a long time and seemed sad. Then she nodded as if she understood. This surprised him, since he hadn’t explained it very well. She left with his message for Dr. Childs. The orderlies took him back to the pills in the ward.
He was happy. It was a matter of time now—time to finish what he’d come here to do. Which was? He thought really hard. Find the man he’d chased out a bedroom window, the long fall, and had been chasing ever since: lost target, carrot-top, bloody murderer.
A trio of orderlies took him back to the Opens, one orderly a step behind, one at each elbow. He heard the baseball bat slap palm in a strolling rhythm: slap palm, slap palm, slap palm.
When he was locked back into the Opens, he knew the next time they came for him it would be to bring him to see Mears.
TWO hours before dawn: big commotion in the ward. White men barking at the orderlies up and down the corridors. He saw flashlights playing on the walls from the security desk, heard the boss orderly’s big key ring jangling, rubber-soled hospital shoes quick-scraping the tile floors.
“Whas dat name agi’n, Cap’n?” the boss orderly was asking, putting on the phony shuffle-along accent.
“Dunn.”
“Ain’ no Dunn in dis ward, I tol’ ya—”
“He’s a bench warrant, you imbecile,” the barker barked. “He’d be here under another name. Step aside.”
The two plainclothes state troopers were from the Violent Felony Warrants Squad out of the South Weymouth Barracks. They wore nickel-plated Charter Arms .44 Bulldogs, gargantuan sidearms favored by the unit because they fired the slowest, heaviest bullet commercially available, a body-stopping slug that plowed through guts and stuck, no clean hole, no ricochet.
The troopers were named Green and Jackson. They had been hunting Biff Dunn without pause for eighty straight hours, starting at Biff’s mother’s place in suburban Belmont, banging on that door and demanding to search her prim two-bedroom saltbox, busting up Ray Dunn’s house in West Roxbury and Manny’s deserted place on the water. The troopers grabbed a neighbor’s son on the front lawn and checked his face against a photo of Patrolman Biff Dunn.
“Nope,” Trooper Green told Trooper Jackson, who tossed the boy aside.
They hit Jay Scanlon’s slutty sister’s place because somebody told the troopers Biff used to mess around with her.
Ginger Scanlon was entertaining a gentleman caller at the time, but the troopers kept knocking, until she opened up wrapped in a towel.
“We have an arrest warrant for Patrolman Biff Dunn. Have you see him?”
“You kiddin’ me? That punk hasn’t so much as called me in a year.”
Ginger Scanlon’s gentleman caller was a sergeant from Auto Crime. He was married and naked and hiding behind the door, and when he heard the troopers demanding to come in he thought his wife had sent a private dick or, worse, Internal Affairs. He booked out the back, scooping up his pants along the way. The two troopers heard the philanderer scram and caught him in the alley.
“Drop it!” they roared, referring to the sergeant’s trousers. He complied, hands up, penis swiftly shrinking from the April chill, flabby buttocks quaking. Trooper Green held the husband at cocked .44-point, while Trooper Jackson surveyed him head to foot, then slowly compared the sergeant’s face to the photograph of Biff Dunn.
“Nope,” said Jackson.
Biff was in the last bedroom at the end of the ward along with two catatonics and a sedated raver, who was diarrhetic and diapered. He heard Green and Jackson go from room to room, rousting every single man from bed, comparing each tortured, terrified face to the BPD photo. Old men, young men, black, white, blind geezers with milky eyes, amputees. Green yanked each head out of bed and tilted the flashlight, while Jackson held the photo, glancing at face, then at photo, bed to bed to bed, grunting, “Nope. Nope. Nope.”
Biff had to make a move.
The troopers came to Biff’s bedroom. Their flashlights raked the cots.
“We got an empty bed here,” Trooper Jackson shouted. Orderlies came running.
“He was there at lights-out,” the boss orderly explained, frantic that he might be blamed. He tore the cot apart, tipped it over.
“Well, he’s not there now, is he?” Trooper Green said. “There any way out of here?”
“Windows all sealed up,” the boss orderly said, Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice accent disappearing. “Only ways out’s past the security desk, and Moakey here, he been on since midnight.”
The troopers pointed their flashlights into the face of the lumbering Irish cretin Moakey.
“You didn’t happen to catch a nap tonight, did you, Moakey?” Trooper Green menaced.
“I, I, I—” Moakey stuttered, Adam’s apple a yo-yo.
“What’s past the security desk?” Jackson demanded. “Another ward? A low-security ward? Building exits?” Moakey and the boss orderly were nodding in unison, yes to all three questions.
“Christ, Dunn could be out of the building by now. What name’s the missing man here under?” Jackson pointed at the tipped-over cot.
The boss orderly, flustered, consulted a clipboard. “Pugh,” he said. “Clifford Pugh.”
Biff lay facedown in his cot, sheets over his head, five feet from Trooper Jackson’s leg, his body covering that of the diarrhetic raver Pugh. He waited for the troopers, brace of orderlies in tow, to hustle out of the ward in search of Biff Dunn a.k.a. Clifford Pugh. The stench of Pugh’s runny stool under the sheets stung Biff’s eyes. He didn’t move for half an hour after the ward went quiet, then he dragged his savior across the tile floor to a janitorial closet and tucked him in under sour mops.
JOE MEARS rode the city bus down Dorchester Ave for five miles. He knew it then went east on Q-Shore Drive, made a stop at the guardhouse at the mainland end of the City and County causeway, and continued south to points in Quincy.
Childs had been terrified on the phone that morning, reading to Mears from Miss Anthony’s report.
“This guy says he’s you,” Childs stammered. “What the hell is going on?”
“Relax,” Mears had told him.
“It’s a cop. They’re on to us—”
“Just relax. Look at the name: ‘Joe Harold Biff Mears.’ It’s not a cop, it’s an ex-cop. They aren’t on to nothing.”
“Then why send an undercover into my hospital?”
“Nobody sent him. He’s all by himself. He came back to find me. Or maybe he’s an elephant, he came back to die.”
“Well, either way, I’m through. The deal’s off.”
“The deal’s on. You were supposed to fix Biff Dunn. Looks like you didn’t quite finish the job. Now I will. But the deal is on. Remember who I am.”
Childs remembered. He made Mears promise: nobody dies at City & County.
“Okay, okay,” Mears had told him that morning, “but you make sure you got my package.”
“I’m working on it. I meet the party from New York tonight. I’ll see you right after, like we said.”
“Don’t be late. I got one big thing to do, then I’m blowing Boston forever.”
Now Mears scanned the block outside the causeway gate, letting five hospital workers off ahead of him. If he saw an odd car, an idle man reading a newspaper, anything out of place, he’d stay with the bus to Wollaston Beach. The block was clear. He jammed a foot in the closing door, and got off.
Mears wore the priest suit he had stolen from Sedgewick and carried Childs-supplied chaplain credentials. He was waved through the checkpoint, and caught a ride with some nurses. They let him off in front of the jail. Mears signed in, and waited for the elevator up to the electroshock department.
BIFF marked time by pacing laps of the ward, five minutes a lap. He had counted ninety-nine laps when two guys jumped him looking to steal cigarettes. He smashed their faces together, then went back to pacing, but forgot the number he had counted to. This made him mad. He overheard the orderlies saying that the troopers thought Biff Dunn had skipped town. He was thinking about carrot-top, lost target, the bloody murderer.
Later, he saw two orderlies in the doorway.
“MEARS,” they paged, looking at a white piece of paper.
“Upstairs,” an orderly said, pointing out the door of the ward and down the corridor.
Biff went with them, ready.