Chapter 7
Chapter 7
There was a private security man on duty in the lobby, but he didn't seem to care who they might be or even whether they came in. He had a magazine and a canned soft drink, and he hardly looked up as they passed.
"Does he know you?" asked Ross.
"I don't think so. I never come at night. Maybe he just watches out for people stealing the TV's or cracking the candy machines."
"Maybe he's a scout for a mortuary."
Bynum gave him a strange look, but made no reply. They found stairs at the end of the lobby and walked up to the second floor, where they reported in to the nurse at the station in the hall. The place looked and smelled like a hospital, but with considerably less equipment to be seen. The only communication with the various rooms seemed to be a board with numbered lights on it. There might have been a buzzer on it somewhere. Bynum told the nurse who they were and who they wanted to see, and she scanned an assortment of little yellow notes secured by magnets to the wall of the refrigerator next to her desk. She took one of the notes down and read it through her bifocals, holding it so that the visitors could not see, and then rose painfully and led them down the hall. She was elderly and heavy, and she walked as though her feet hurt. Ross imagined he could smell death in the air, and he wondered what kind of people were capable of spending forty hours every week in this environment. People like the elderly nurse, no doubt, whatever that was.
Piper-Graham's room was the fourth door on the right and the nurse entered without knocking. Bynum followed her in, but Ross hesitated for a moment, suddenly not certain he wanted to see Piper again, after all. He didn't like digging up dead soldiers, but he reminded himself that the affair didn't matter any longer. He pushed open the door, which had swung shut silently behind Bynum, and went inside.
Piper lay staring at the door, obviously anticipating Ross' appearance. He was only a few years older than Ross, which would put him in the neighborhood of fifty, but he had aged far beyond his years. Most of his hair was gone, and his skin, instead of being wrinkled, seemed to have shrunk until it could barely contain his skull. His mouth had drawn back from yellowed teeth, and his eyelids had receded, leaving the white of his eyes showing all around the irises. It gave him the appearance of a permanent incredulous, staring expression, like a man who has just discovered a dead mouse in his plate lunch. He looked every bit the sick man he was - emphysema, mostly, Bynum had said - but somehow he didn't have the look of other dying men Ross had seen.
There was a plastic tent above him, but the near side had been lifted, so that his view of the door would not be obstructed. He was alert and calm, and lying on his side with a book in his hand; a cheap-looking book with a golden cross printed on the cover. The lamp on the bedside table was the only light in the room. When he faced the door, the light fell directly on his face, but when he turned and lay on his back, grisly shadows gave him an appearance like that of Lon Chaney in full makeup. All his attention was for Ross, but he showed no fear. If anything, his gaze was curious. Ross met his eyes for a few seconds, but he felt nothing and said nothing. Bynum watched the reunion in silence, and the nurse with the sore feet laid down the ground rules.
"If you and Mr. Graham want to talk, we'll have to take the tent down, and hook the oxygen hose to the mask, and keep it in his hand. He can't go too long without oxygen. He can decide when he needs it. Try not to excite him, as he's very ill." She spoke as though the man in the bed were asleep, or deaf, or didn't understand the language. "The hardest thing for him is to try to speak loudly. That's what starts the coughing. Sit up close and remind him to keep his voice down, if he forgets. How long he talks is up to him. Press that button if you need me." She lifted the plastic canopy away from the bed and draped it over a chair. The hose was disconnected and attached to a mask, which she put into Piper's hand. She checked the gauge and adjusted the regulator and limped to the door and out of the room. She still had not spoken directly to her patient.
"Willie, is this the man you wanted to see?"
The wasted figure in the bed nodded slowly, and began to move his dry lips around, preparing to speak, possibly for the first time in hours. He went around the lips with his tongue and spoke - not to Bynum, but to Ross. "Jack, you look pretty good. You haven't changed all that much." Ross was surprised to recognize the voice. It was weak, but still the same as he remembered. The accent was from some part of New York City, and he had a nasal tone, as some of them do. He and Ross had spoken only a few times before, but the familiar voice made it easier to believe that he really was Piper. Or was it Graham? There was no tension in the atmosphere. Ross still felt nothing, not even pity.
"You look kind of used up, Piper. I wouldn't have known you. Maybe I should go around and look at your back. I might recognize your back."
Piper missed the barb, or chose to ignore it. "Still tall and straight. I always wanted to be tall. You might be fifteen pounds heavier. Anything else change since the last time I saw you?" He sucked at the oxygen mask.
"Yeah, I'm not as scared as I was the last time I saw you."
"I figured you for a hard-ass, Jack, a real tough guy. I knew you were in trouble, but I never figured you were scared."
"I thought I was pretty tough when you took me in there, but I got over it in a hurry, standing in that black muck up to my knees and watching you going home without me."
"Did Mr. Bynum tell you I was dying?"
"He said you were pretty sick."
"Well, I'm dying. Everybody knows it. That's what a hospice is. Everybody here is dying. It's cheaper to die here than in a hospital." He paused to pull at the oxygen, but his eyes stayed on Ross. "My lungs are gone, and one
day soon I'm going to cough my way right out of here. I'm glad you came to talk to me before I go. I've been thinking about you lately."
"I came mostly to hear what you wanted to say to me, and I'm traveling on your money. I made Mr. Bynum send it to me in advance."
Bynum excused himself. "Mr. Ross, I'll wait in the lobby downstairs. Take your time." He seemed satisfied that Ross would not murder Piper. Or Graham. "Willie, I'll see you in a day or so." He let himself out.
Piper spoke again. Ross couldn't think of him as anything but Piper. "That's okay. I told him to do what he had to do. How about getting one of those extra pillows out of the closet and propping me up? And pull your chair up close. I can't talk very loud, you heard the nurse." A speech of that length drained him badly, and he went to the oxygen again. Ross got the pillow and lifted the other man enough to slip it behind his shoulders. Ross guessed he weighed a hundred and fifteen pounds. Piper's breath made him turn his head. That much of him was already dead. He brought the chair up next to the bed and positioned it so that he had an ear tuned to Piper, but with his nose pointed into the air conditioner.
Piper rested a moment, staring at the ceiling and planning his approach. "Ross, tell me what happened on Long Island after I left." He made no attempt to explain or apologize.
"They caught me, what else? There wasn't anywhere I could go. They were private security of some kind, not police, and they pushed me around a while and cracked a couple of my ribs and asked a lot of questions. They wanted to know what I was looking for and who had sent me and who was the guy in the boat."
"Did you find what you were looking for in that building?"
"I never really had time to look around. I had to break into the place and I was worried there might be an alarm that sounded up at the house, so I planned to go to the front window about every thirty seconds and have a look at the house. It was maybe half a mile up a shell road, and sure enough, about the second time I looked I could see a car and a pickup truck coming my way in a hurry, and maybe half a dozen men, so I had to get the hell out of there. I gave you the signal on that little transmitter, and hit the brush behind the building. I figured I was okay, because they were a ways behind me and they had to find me. That little point was only eight or ten acres, but there was lots of cover and they didn't know where I was going. All I needed was for you to be there."
"Well, I waited as long as I could, but I could hear the cars, and I figured there was no use them getting both of us," offered Piper, but he wasn't looking at Ross.
"Bullshit. There was plenty of time, and you know it. You didn't hear any cars. They were all on foot by that time, because they had to leave the cars when they got to the edge of the woods. It wasn't time you ran out of, Piper, it was nerve.. Is Piper your name, or not?"
"It was then; it's not now. How did you get out of all that?"
"They couldn't decide what to do with me. They weren't about to call the law, and they didn't want to let me go. This wasn't an organized group of any kind. It was just a bunch of low-lifes somebody had hired to do Lord knows what, including look after the property on Long Island. They were drinking, and knocking me around once in a while, and sometime during that night, they decided I had to go into the water, and somebody else could figure it out when they found me. For a few hours, I was in the same spot you're in now. It looked like it was finished for me. But they didn't do it, because of you. They didn't know who you were, but they knew you knew where I was, and they just kept getting madder. A couple of them had shed a little blood in
the excitement, and figured they should get more satisfaction than just the fun of breaking my nose. I was wet and cold and hungry and sore and scared shitless, and as soon as I got a chance, I told the oldest one that a guy in Albany was holding twenty four hundred dollars for me, and that he could have it, but he had to get me out of there first. So he decided to go for that, and he and another guy told the others something or other, and in the morning the two of them put me in the car and I told them we had to go to a Western Union office in Manhattan, near Central Park, where they knew me, so that's what they did. They took me to Manhattan."
"And you had to give up the money to get away?"
"There wasn't any goddam money, Piper. If I had had twenty four hundred dollars I wouldn't have been working for Colin. I wouldn't have been out on Long Island breaking into private buildings, with a backup man with no balls.
And I wouldn't have spent an evening and a night getting my ass whipped by a bunch of punks. When we got into the Western Union office I broke the news to these two guys, and the older one turned red and blue and said he was going to kill me, and he told me to go outside with him and get in the car and I told him there was no way in hell. If he was going to do it, he could do it right there. I wasn't leaving. Man, I was ready to stay in there until closing time and then go home with the manager, if I had to.
So they started a fight right in the Western Union office, with about eight people standing around, and I couldn't hold up my end of it, not with a couple of cracked ribs, anyway. They worked me over pretty good. Nobody would give me a hand, but at least somebody called the police, and finally the two of them rassled me outside, and they had me down, and they took my wallet and the money I had in my pocket, and I don't know what they would have done, but a squad car rolled around the corner and pulled up in front of the building, so they dragged me to the edge of the lot and pushed me down a little hill into Central Park, and then I guess they got away in the car. I never saw them again."
"And the police picked you up and took care of you?"
"Hell, no. I passed out at the bottom of that little hill, and when I woke up it was all over, and there were no police around, and nobody had looked for me very hard. I was pretty sick, Piper. For a couple of hours, every time I tried to move around I got nauseated and had to throw up. Finally, just before dark, I got back up the little hill and onto the sidewalk, and I figured I might sell my watch for enough to get back to Utica. I had pushed it up my arm, under my shirtsleeve, and the goon had missed it, but the first guy I ran into found it and took it, and he pushed me back down that same hill. That made it official. I was flat broke - as broke as any bum in the park - and there wasn't a soul who wanted to hear about it, as far as I knew.
But I was wrong. I found the Salvation Army and they took me in and cleaned me up a little and painted the worst places with merthiolate and washed my clothes and fed me and lent me a bed. After a few days I was feeling better, and I got on a crew with some Latinos and we worked at night, cleaning up movie theaters after closing time. Someday before you die, Piper, you need to get up and go and clean a stag movie theater after it closes. There's nothing like it. I did that for about ten days, then drew my pay and checked out of the Salvation Army place and bought a bus ticket back to Utica. I knew I wasn't supposed to call Colin, but I called him anyway, about the second day I was in New York, and his wife answered and that bastard Colin wouldn't even talk to me. Back in Utica, I went through his stupid drill and got my money for the Long Island trip, and he didn't even want to know what happened out there. He asked about you once, and I told him to forget you as it wasn't likely he'd ever hear from you again. He said he would call me in a few days, but I knew he wouldn't and I'm pretty sure he knew he wouldn't find me if he did, and we left it at that. The last thing he said to me was that I should take care of myself, and the last thing I said to him was to go piss up a rope. It took me about twenty minutes to pack my duffle bag, and then I headed south on a bus. For a couple of years, Piper, I woke up every day thinking about you and Colin."
Ross had stared out the window as he told the story, but now he turned to look at Piper. Piper looked incredulous, because that was the only expression he had left. His eyes, like his breath, had preceded him in death. Ross thought it was obvious that he had wanted to hear the account only from curiosity, not because of any concern for Ross.
"What about now?" Piper wanted to know.
"I've kicked that part of it. I figure you did the best you could, at the time. Some people can hang in, and some can't. I should never have gone out without knowing more about you, so it's partly my own fault. The cuts and bruises all healed up, and it was time to move on. I'm sure you know I'm not here today because I wanted to see you again."
"I know that."
"I was glad for an excuse to close the shop for a day or two, and I'm traveling on your money, and I wanted to hear what you had to say. Bynum mentioned that this might be profitable.'
"He's right, it could be a pretty good thing. And you were right about me. I was probably closer to that house than you were, by the time I found a spot to hide out until the signal came, and when the alarm went off I could hear it, and I walked up the bank a ways and saw those guys piling out and getting in the cars, and I didn't wait too long after that." He rested for thirty seconds, breathing oxygen with his eyes closed. "I got your signal, but you seemed to take a long time getting back, and I figured it was about time for that other bunch to show up, so I decided they could have you, if they didn't already, and I left." Piper inhaled the oxygen again.
"I was in the edge of the water when I hollered at you, and I saw you flinch. You knew I was there."
"It was too late, by then. You were on your own. And that was the only time I ever did that, too. From then on, I've always been a standup guy."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"It doesn't matter. I never cared what you thought, or Colin either, for that matter. I never even went back for my eighty dollars."
"Eighty dollars, is that what you were making?"
"What were you getting?"
"A lot more than that, but not near enough." He changed the subject.
"Bynum said you knew where to find me."
"That was a coincidence. I used to buy some cars from a guy named Levine in Baton Rouge, and he mentioned your name one time when I was down there. We were trying to find somebody to do some work for us, and he said you could do it, but you might not be interested in the kind of thing we were up to at the time. I told him to forget you." Piper wheezed to a halt, and went into a fit of weak coughing. The oxygen relieved the coughing, but Piper had to rest before continuing. He was like a cordless tool. When he ran down, he had to be plugged in to his power source before he could work again. Apparently, the oxygen bottle was going to be his constant companion for what remained of his life. Finally, he went on. "I made Levine drive me over to the block where your shop was, and I got a look at you, and I told him not to let you know he knew me. I've checked once or twice, just to see if you were still there. No reason - it was just something to know."
"You said your name was really Piper when I knew you."
"Sure. I was Piper for a long time. Born a Piper. It was Willie Piper, too, but not many people knew that. I hated the name Willie, but I kept it. But I finally changed Piper to Graham legally, just so I could breathe easier." He closed his eyes and drew his dry lips back from the yellowed teeth and chuckled feebly at his own grim joke. "Go to another town and change your name, and it's a whole new life. People do it all the time. It's like changing into a clean shirt. I didn't do it because of what happened on Long Island. By that time, there was a bunch of things I wanted to leave behind. So I did. There's people around this country more anxious to see me than you ever were. But it's about too late for any of 'em now. Except you. You're getting in under the wire, Ross."
"Take a break," said Ross, getting out of the chair. "Rest up a minute. Don't die before you make me rich." He went to the window and stood looking down at the parking lot. The security man was sitting on the fender of Bynum's Lincoln, smoking. Bynum was not in sight. He could see the school they had passed coming in, and the stadium next to it. There was no traffic to see, and not many lights in the neighborhood. He stayed several minutes at the window, giving Piper time to recharge his batteries at the oxygen mask. When the little man was speaking, it was always with the mask in his hand, and each time he paused for breath, he breathed the oxygen. It was almost like taking bites from a rubber sandwich. Ross pondered the strange reunion he was involved in; two men with no feeling at all for each other, tied together briefly by some bond that still might prove to exist only in the mind of the one who was dying.
When he turned toward the bed, Piper looked lifeless, but when he went back to the chair and sat down, the other man opened his eyes immediately. Suddenly Ross wanted to get it over with. "Why did you send for me? What's on your mind?"
"I'm going to put you on to a bundle of money, if it's still there."
"Why? You just said you don't give a shit about me, and it doesn't seem to bother you that you let me down one time. Bynum said you had a woman and a priest. Why aren't you giving it to them?"
Piper did not reply at once. He seemed to grow smaller and sink into the pillows that supported him, and he focused on something high on the wall while he organized his answer. He looked at Ross and frowned slightly and looked away again. For an instant it seemed he might break down. "This is all about dying, Ross. It's not easy to talk about dying with a healthy guy like you, because you don't know anything about it. But I do. I've already started dying. You start dying when the doctor tells you you're too sick to get well. There's people who come around to places like this, social workers of some kind, I guess, and they'll talk about dying with you, if you want to. I hear about people who welcome it, and die peacefully. They say some die smiling. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's not the way I'm going to die. I'm going to die coughing, with my eyeballs sticking out and my face red, probably by myself at three in the morning. That's when I generally do things." He closed his eyes and went to the oxygen, and was glaring at Ross when he resumed. "You can't possibly know what a mother****er this is, Ross, to have things you want to say, and not have anybody to listen except a guy who's glad you're dying."
"I'm not glad you're dying. Don't make it worse than it is."
"Right. Well, you're it, anyway. I've got people I know better than I know you, but you're it. You're the one I'm telling. I'll get around to the part you want to hear in a minute. Since the last time I saw you, I've done a lot of bad things, and hardly any good things at all. It never bothered me, just like it didn't bother me to leave you on Long Island. I don't go to confession and apologize to a guy in a dress on the other side of the wall. I don't pray and promise to do better next time. I just don't think about it at all - it's the way I get along. You make signs or whatever, and I do what I do. Now I'm dying - they tell me there's no way to get around it - and I'm going to be dead a long time, and I've got nothing to do all day but lie around and think about it, and it gets scary." He rested again, but only long enough for two or three breaths from the mask. He still wore the astounded look, but without really changing anything on his face he now looked afraid, too. Afraid of going to hell. Bynum had been right. Ross was sorry for him.
"I don't know what happens when you die - maybe nothing. But I've got to do whatever I can, don't you see, just in case. No, you don't see. But you better hope that when it's your turn, you don't have all this time to think about it. I made out my insurance to that priest and his little outlaw church, just to get him to pray for me. That's the only way I know to get anybody to do what you want. Pay for it. I don't even know if he's the real thing. I'm going to be pissed if I go to hell, anyway, after leaving him my insurance." He tried to make a grin, but achieved only a grimace. "Miriam has been with me a while, and she still lives in my house and the priest goes over there now and then, and they pray. They say they pray. How the hell do I know? Maybe they screw each other in my bed, or on my sofa or on the floor. We were not much more than roommates, you follow me? People like Miriam don't fall in love, or people like me, either. But she comes to see me and brings me magazines and I had Bynum make out a will that leaves everything to her, because I figure better her than the county. Or is it the state? Whatever. All she'll have to do is bury me, and then there'll be the house and a few dollars and a couple of little businesses that she'll sell for whatever she can get. I won't get away owing Miriam anything." Piper was winded, and he rested and refueled. Ross thought he was growing stronger as he went. He continued. "Bynum will handle the whole thing, so he'll make his fee, and Miriam will check his arithmetic because his share will come out of her share. Bynum is okay, but most of his clients are a lot like me. And a lot like him, for that matter." Piper stared at the far wall for a few seconds, and then closed his eyes.
He knows, thought Ross. He knows there aren't going to be any mourners at his funeral. He wondered how that would feel, and it suddenly came to him that his own sendoff might be poorly attended, as well. He wasn't close to very many people. Whatever Piper was feeling, he wasn't going to let Ross know about it. He seemed more remote than ever; even angry, perhaps, when he returned. Lots of people get just such a reaction, after giving you a peek under their skins. He sucked at the oxygen and went back to work.
"That brings me around to the point of all this. Father Ortega. . ." he rolled his eyes a bit, "Father Ortega says it's important for me to do what I can to make things right with the people I've done wrong, and that makes pretty good sense. If there's a heaven, then the people who get in don't have to be the ones who have been good all their lives. The big thing is that you have tried to straighten out your sins, wherever possible. Try not to laugh, Ross. Believe me, it looks different from behind this oxygen mask than from that chair where you're sitting. If Ortega had known about this money I keep talking about, he might have recommended confession instead of atonement, I don't know. You think? Anyway, I left you on the hook back in 1985, and if I owe anybody, I guess it would be you. I don't mind telling you that it never bothered me until I got sick, but this is a chance to make it up to you - or at least try.
There's supposed to be some money stashed away in a safe place, unless somebody's already found it by accident. A lot of money. Something like five hundred grand in cash, packed in some kind of duffel bag and hidden in a building. I'll tell you as much as I know about how to get it, and then you can do whatever suits you. That's all I can do. If I punch out without telling anybody, then it all goes to waste. Miriam has known about it for several years, you know, I never tried to keep it a secret, but I never told her all I know about it, either. There's been quite a few times that she pressed me to let her know the big part - just in case something happened to me, she always said - and now and then I've had the feeling this might be the whole name of the game for her. It could be why she's hung on this long, I don't know. But I'm not all that old, Ross, and I never figured anything was going to happen to me just yet. It's only in the past month that I've had to get used to the idea that I'm never going to get that money. I don't know what I would have done with this thing I'm going to give you. Maybe she'd have wound up getting it after all, but that didn't set too well with me. It would have been like her winning and me losing. If I even had a brother or a cousin, you know, but I don't, so I guess she's screwed up by calling in this Ortega guy, because that's how I decided that the best thing would be to give it to you. Whether he's a real priest or not, it seems like a good move to do something good for you after that deal in '85."
Piper delivered his explanation with two stops for fuel, and now he paused again, but kept his eyes on Ross, and continued. "You're my man, right? Not Miriam and not Ortega, but you, because you're holding my note, so to speak, and hey - it won't cost me anything to pick it up. I could never get the money, but maybe you can. Understand, this is only because of the shape I'm in. It's not because you mean anything to me." It was almost like a fixation. Father Ortega had convinced him that he should atone, but if he'd mentioned anything about repentance, Piper had missed it. Just before sticking his gaunt face back in the oxygen mask, he added,"This is not for you - it's for me. I'm trying to make a couple runs here in the bottom of the ninth."