"Burn, baby, burn," the Fireman interrupted.
"— and we can read as well as the next chap."
"So it's all a game," I ventured, again remembering Pam's talk about intentional schizophrenics.
"And a self-fulfilling prophecy." He smiled and leaned even closer. "We tell the psychiatrists our hallucinations. Voices ordering us to kill."
I nodded. "Right. In New York, a young man hears a dog telling him women are evil. So he used a. 44-caliber pistol to kill a few."
"Yes, and the tabloids call him the Son of Sam and he goes to a mental hospital instead of prison. Better food, a higher class of tenants."
"You think it was phony?"
"What difference does it make?" Clarence said. "Evil or crazy, the victims are just as dead." He fixed me with a cunning smile.
"You never heard voices, Clarence?"
He sat back and beamed. "Only my own."
The group was growing restless. In a few moments the attendants would take them back to their high-security ward. Ken the Doll allowed as how he needed to use the facilities and stood up and walked toward the lavatory. He came behind me and fingered my sport coat, draped on the back of my chair. It sent a chill up my spine. "Nice," he said, walking away.
Stephanie giggled and yelled after him. "Stay away from the new boy, Kenneth. He's mine!"
A moment later, the door buzzed and two white-uniformed attendants came in. Stephanie, Clarence, and the Fireman stood up without being told.
"All of you back to Ward D and no lollygagging," one attendant demanded in what I took for an Irish accent. He was tall and heavy, big-boned, but no fat. Brawny wrists stuck out of the white uniform shirt. He had roughly cut dark hair and a pale complexion with blue eyes. He might have been handsome if he smiled. He didn't smile.
"I'm a visitor," I said pleasantly. "Lassiter. Guest of Dr. Maxson."
His eyes never moved from mine. The other one, a thick-necked youth with a shock of unruly red hair, circled to my left. These guys had some training. If I went for one of them, the other would nail me.
"Identification?" the tall one asked, the tone formal without being nasty.
I reached for my sport coat. Pam Maxson had pinned the badge on the lapel.
Damn! Now where was it?
"It must have fallen off," I said, sounding guilty even to myself.
Now the redhead was directly behind me.
"Sure it did," the tall one said. "There are supposed to be four lunatics in this group, and unless my Gaelic eyes deceive me, there's four of you here. So how about falling in with your friends?"
I smiled and tried to look sane but felt myself a grinning madman. "The fourth…uh…lunatic went to the head. I'm sure if you-"
"My patience is wearing thin, laddie."
"Careful," Stephanie warned. "Francis likes to hit more than he likes to fuck."
"Ken went to the head," I said. "He must have taken my visitor's badge. Maybe he's escaped. Perhaps you should sound an alarm. I'm Lassiter."
He looked at me skeptically.
"I'm a lawyer," I went on, "a barrister."
"Hear that, Clive, he's a bloomin' pettifogger," Francis told his buddy.
"I'm a specially appointed prosecutor from America. I'm looking for a murderer and I came here asking these…these murderers for help."
Even I didn't believe me.
"Classic schizophrenia," Clarence the Chemist said, "with guilt-induced denial."
"Clarence!" I pleaded. "Tell them. Tell them I'm not crazy."
Francis looked toward Clarence, who shrugged and said, "He's no crazier than the rest of us."
Stephanie gave me an adoring look. "Now, Kenneth. Don't you want to come back to the ward and continue where we left off?"
Clive put a meaty hand on my left shoulder. I swatted it away, and both men took a step backward and began circling me, keeping out of range, just like they were taught.
"I don't like being touched," I said.
"'E donna like bein' touched," Francis mocked me, laughing.
They continued circling. It was supposed to make me dizzy. But I was focused on a stationary spot on the wall. I was getting ready. The fog of the transatlantic flight was lifting. My nerves were coming alive, little lights blinking away, alarm bells sounding red alert. Some spigot deep inside opened wide and the adrenaline flowed. The heat started in the pit of my stomach and spread to my chest, through my shoulders, and into my arms and hands. Unused muscle fibers began twitching, and the heart picked up the pace. My fingers tingled. I flexed my knees and let my arms hang loosely at my sides. Somewhere far away, the crowd was getting to its feet, a rumble growing. Thirty seconds to kickoff. I wanted to hit somebody.
I didn't know how they would signal each other, so it would have been smarter to take the first shot. But I was the victim, after all. While I was thinking about it Clive winked at Francis, who was behind, me. I never saw Francis move toward me, but I felt him there, poised to grab me. He never saw my elbow shoot down, but he felt it. In karate, they call it the ushiro hiji-ate, the back elbow strike.
I heard Francis's ooomph, my elbow sinking into his gut. In a second, Clive snatched my right forearm with two strong hands and was twisting my arm behind my back. He was quicker than he looked. But he must have been thinking that my left arm was in his pal's grasp the way they planned it, and it wasn't, so I reached around, grabbed him by the hair, pulled him off me, and spun him around.
I was starting to enjoy this. Isn't that what I told Pam Maxson that first night: hitting people was fun? Before I had a chance to submit myself for analysis, Francis had recovered and landed a short punch in my kidneys from behind. Would this guy ever face me head-on? I must have left my flak jacket in the locker room, because the punch hurt. So did the second one, and some of the starch oozed out of me. But the adrenaline was still flowing, and I whirled, and while he was trying to tag me with a hook to the body I brought a forearm up under his chin. A solid chin but a pretty solid forearm, too, and it sent Francis to the hard floor. I didn't know whether to expect the fans' cheers or fifteen yards for unsportsmanlike conduct. I got neither. Clive tackled me from behind, a good hit for a guy who probably never went one-on-one with a blocking sled. He got me around the waist with those big arms and drove me to the floor. He hammered a shoulder into the small of my back and used his weight to keep me down. My face was crushed against the cold tile floor, my ear squashed beneath my head.
From above me I heard Stephanie's voice. "Don't hurt him, you brutes."
Francis got up cursing and holding his jaw. He must have missed soccer practice because he decided to take a few penalty kicks. He bounced a hard-toed shoe off my temple and three into my ribs before getting tired. Then he slipped something out of his back pocket. Clive was still holding me down, my arms pinned over my head, when they put the plastic handcuffs on me.
"Get the needle, Clive," Francis said.
I hate a needle almost as much as I hate a knife.
My head was a spinning satellite, and through the glare of a thousand suns I saw Clive unlock a drawer and withdraw a syringe and small vial.
"A day without Thorazine is like a day without a funeral," Clarence intoned from across the room.
"Oooh. When he's out, I'll give him a good licking," Stephanie cooed.
My hands were cuffed together, but in front of me, not behind my back. These guys had clearly never seen Miami Vice. Francis was hauling me up by the elbow while Clive approached gingerly with the needle. Clive was still a half-dozen steps away, and I was hunched over, breathing through my mouth, moaning. Playing possum.
Francis relaxed his grip on my elbow. I brought both arms down hard to shake him off, and then, fists together, I swung my arms up and smashed him on the point of his nose with both fists. There was a pop of breaking cartilage, and I was showered with blood, sticky and warm on my face. The punch stood Francis up, wobbled his knees, and he fell over backward.