“Yeah, I know you are. First I heard, I got a call from my sister last night, she seen it on Channel Four. We weren’t officially notified for another half hour. You imagine that?”
“What happened?”
“Aw, Jesus. Another guy, an inmate there. Also in Bellevue, where he and George had an argument. Then this guy’s returned to the psychiatric wing or block or whatever they call it at Rikers, and a day or two later so is George. And the guy goes for him and stabs him.”
“That’s awful.”
“Get this. Guy’s in a wheelchair.”
“The man who—”
“Yeah, the guy who stabs him. Paralyzed from the waist down, can’t wiggle his fucking toes but he can stab George. Not the first time, either. He’s in there for stabbing his mother. Difference is she lived.”
“How’d he get the knife?”
“It was a scalpel. He stole it in Bellevue.”
“He stole it in Bellevue and smuggled it back to Rikers Island?”
“Yeah, taped to the bottom of the wheelchair. And he had tape wrapped around the base of the blade so it wouldn’t be brittle. I mean, some of these people are crazy as a shithouse rat, but that don’t make ’em stupid.”
“No.”
“My sister said the oddest thing. ‘Now I don’t have to worry about him.’ That he’s getting enough to eat, that he’s in trouble, that he’s got someplace to sleep. Same as she said it was a relief having him locked up, now it’s even more of a relief to have him dead. The thing is, I know what she means. He’s safe now. Nobody can hurt him, and he can’t hurt himself. And do you want to know something?”
“What, Tom?”
“He’s gone less than a day, and already it’s changed how I remember him. My grandmother on my mother’s side got Alzheimer’s. By the time she finally died she was this pathetic creature. You know how they get.”
“Yes.”
“We all told each other that the cruelest thing about it was the way it changed how we saw her. This was a strong woman, came over from the old country, raised five children, spoke four languages, cooked and cleaned like she had a black belt in housework, and all you saw was this woman drooling and wetting the bed and making noises that didn’t even sound human.
“But then she died, and it had a magical effect, Matt, because overnight I remembered what she used to be like, and that was all I remembered. When I picture my grandmother now she’s always in the kitchen wearing an apron and stirring something on the stove. I have to work at it to picture her in bed at the nursing home.
“And already it’s starting to be the same way with George. These memories have been flooding in, things I haven’t thought about in years. Before he went in the service, before he started to lose it. Back when we were boys together.”
After a moment he added, “It’s sad, though.”
“Yes.”
“What you were saying, that he might be innocent. What an irony, huh?”
“It seems like a real possibility.”
“My first reaction is to be angry about it. Like if they hadn’t locked him up this wouldn’t happen. But that’s bullshit, isn’t it? I mean, look how he died, stabbed to death by a guy in a wheelchair. That happens to you, you got to say it was meant to be. Fate, karma, God’s will, whatever you want to call it, it was just plain in the cards.”
“I see what you mean.”
“You want to hear something’ll make you sick? I got calls from two different lawyers telling me how I gotta bring suit against the city of New York. I’ve got a legitimate action for wrongful death, on account of there’s my brother in their custody and he gets killed through no fault of his own. You see me suing the city over this? What do I do, claim loss of services? And how do they figure what his life was worth, add up the cans and bottles he might have redeemed over the remainder of his anticipated lifespan?”
“Everybody sues nowadays.”
“Tell me about it. I had a customer last year — well, the hell with that. Put it this way, average American gets hit by lightning, ‘stead of giving thanks he lived through it, he runs to his lawyer and sues God. I don’t want to live that way.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“Anyway,” he said, “I want to thank you for taking a shot at it. If I owe you anything on top of what I already gave you, just let me know and I’ll send you a check.”
“No question of that. And if I find out anything further—”
“Why would you? My brother’s dead. Case closed, right?”
“I’m sure that would be the official view.”
“Be my view, too, Matt. Far as trying to clear his name, what’s the point? Wherever he is now, it can’t make a bit of difference to him. He’s at peace now, God bless him.”
I called Joe right away. Before he could say anything I said, “Don’t start. I just now found out that Sadecki got killed last night.”
“You must have been the last man in the city to get the news.”
“I slept late and didn’t buy a paper. I read the headlines on the run but the story didn’t make the front pages. Everybody’s giving top billing to the senator and his bimbo. I wondered why you were so steamed before.”
“And I wondered why you were beating a dead horse. Or giving it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
“There’s a charming image.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a charming guy.”
“I don’t know anything more than what I just got from my client. I gather another prisoner did it.”
“Another nut case, in there for attempting to do his own mother. Confined to a wheelchair — I hope you got that part.”
“I did.”
“That’s the best part,” he said. “I was editing the Post, God forbid, I’d bump the senator’s secret nookie and spread the wheelchair across page one. He’s a skinny kid, too, looks like a bank teller, but I guess he’s a resourceful son of a bitch. Wheelchair, shit, he’d be a menace in a full-body cast.”
“No question he did it?”
“None whatsoever. He did it in front of guards, for Chrissake. Makes ’em look stupid, something like that goes down in front of their noses, but what are you gonna do? Fucker was quick as a cobra.”
“Why did he do it, do they happen to know?”
“Why does anybody do anything? He and George evidently got into it a little at Bellevue. Maybe George said something about Gunther’s mother, something really nasty like she wasn’t worth killing.”
“That’s his name? Gunther?”
“Gunther Bauer, from a good German family in Ridgewood. Here you got two guys, one kills the other, and they’re both of European extraction. How often does that happen? It’s like seeing two white kids facing each other in the ring.”
“You see that.”
“Yeah, on cable, and the fight’s taking place in the veterans’ hall in Bismarck, North Dakota. Does that cover it, Matt? Because I’m kind of busy here.”
“I’ve got one more question,” I said, “but I’m afraid you’ll get mad at me if I ask it.”
“I probably will, but why don’t you ask it anyway?”
“Is there any chance at all that somebody could have set this guy up to take George out?”
“Like the CIA? Controlling him through the fillings in his teeth? Next I suppose they’ll hit Gunther. You been watching a lot of Oliver Stone movies lately?”
“From what you’ve said, Gunther Bauer makes an unlikely Jack Ruby.”
“I’d say so, yeah.”
“But so did Jack Ruby. I’m just trying to rule it out, that’s all.”
“What are you looking to do, squeeze a few more dollars out of the brother? Get him to feed more quarters into the meter?”
“I’ve got another client.”
“No shit. You wouldn’t want to say who?”
“I can’t.”
“Interesting,” he said. “I still think there’s less to this than meets the eye, but I’ll make a phone call. What the hell.”