Inside a Silver Box Read online

  Ronnie wondered if Ma Lin was like that when he’d slaughtered his victims for the state.

  “I know I am,” Ronnie replied, “but I don’t know why.”

  “Kidnapping,” the cop threw out, “maybe rape and battery.”

  Ronnie looked up to see what was in the policeman’s eyes. This was new for him. In all his twenty-six years of brutality, he could never look an authority figure in the eye: not his minister, his teachers (except Miss Peters), or even white men or women in business clothes.

  “What you lookin’ at, Bottoms?” the policeman asked as a threat.

  “I don’t know what to say, man. I just got out of Rikers a day and a half ago. Lorraine checked us into that hotel. The desk clerk asked for my name, and I gave it to him.”

  The policeman stood up and slapped Ronnie—hard.

  The young man saw the blow coming, could have evaded or blocked it, but he didn’t. He felt the jolt and allowed the pain to enter his system like any other form of communication—man to man.

  The sergeant saw how passively Ronnie accepted the slap, and balled his fist. “If you don’t cooperate, this could get ugly, Bottoms.”

  “I was in jail, man. I just got out. I could see if I robbed somebody. That’s what I was in jail for in the first place—”

  The next blow from the enraged cop was much harder, causing a sharp pain in Ronnie’s jaw. The young man lowered his head, groaned, and then raised it up again. He had to squint past the agony to see into big Blanders’s eyes.

  “She’s in the next room, Ronnie,” Blanders explained. “Now that you aren’t there to intimidate her, she’ll tell us everything.”

  “Her tellin’ what’s true is only good for me, brother,” Ronnie said, and Reese socked him again.

  The pain from the second blow took precedence over any other thought. It whined through his senses like an off-tune violin being played by a deaf monkey. The dissonant chord of pain brought tears to the thug’s eyes.

  “Now you gonna cry like a baby?” the cop asked. “The cameras are off, Ronnie. I can do what I want.”

  It was as if there were four people sitting at the green metal table in the gray interrogation room: Ronnie and his physical interlocutor, the pain from his broken jaw and his mother’s heartbeat making the room they were in sound as if it were a chamber of her heart.

  “I got tears in my eyes, man, but it’s from hurt not fear. I ain’t afraid’a what Lorraine might say. She was with me because she wanted to be. I did not kidnap her. Damn, man, I saved her life.”

  At that moment the heartbeat of his long dead mother combined with the pulsing pain in his jaw. There was something exquisite about the sharp ache compounded with the memory of love. Ronnie took in a deep breath. This was enough to loosen his grip on consciousness. Much later, in the hospital room, he remembered toppling over, falling in an arc because of the anchor of his chain.

  * * *

  “YOU HAVE NO excuse to hold my client,” a man’s voice complained, “much less torture him.”

  “He got his injuries resisting arrest,” another voice said.

  “The woman you arrested him with, the one you said he kidnapped, will testify that there was no struggle whatsoever and that your men had cuffs on my client in their room. I’m sure other witnesses in the hotel lobby will corroborate.”

  Ronnie opened his eyes to see a high-ranking uniformed policeman and a tall man in a business suit with long hair, bushy eyebrows, and a prominent nose.

  “This man is in violation of his parole,” the high-ranking cop said.

  “His victim says that he saved her life, that he found her wandering in the park and took care of her until she came back to her senses. Is his meeting with a PO more important than a girl’s life?”

  “We think that he kidnapped and brainwashed the girl,” the cop countered.

  “Excuse me,” the lawyer said as if getting ready to move a piece on a chessboard, “but are you saying that Ronnie Bottoms is a mugger or an international spy shooting up his victims with Sodium Pentothal?”

  “This isn’t a joke, Mr. Gideon.”

  “No, Captain Briggs, it is not. Racial profiling, police brutality, unlawful arrest, character assassination, and the attempt by a superior officer to cover up the facts in a missing persons case—none of that is amusing, not one bit funny.”

  Ronnie wondered where the lawyer came from. He was obviously important. That cost money. And you had to have connections too. Just the fact that those two men were arguing meant there was a deeper problem somewhere.

  He tried to speak but couldn’t open his mouth, so all that came out was a garbled groan.

  Gideon turned toward him with a passionate frown. “Mr. Bottoms?” he said.

  Ronnie nodded. His jaw didn’t hurt, because he was high on something strong. Percocet, he thought, or maybe even morphine. He wanted to nod but instead his head moved in a circle like the moon around the Earth.

  “Wha’ hap?” he managed to say.

  “I was engaged by your benefactor, Claude Festerling, to see why you had been arrested. I found you unconscious in a cell, suffering from a serious concussion and with a broken jaw. You’d received no medical assistance, and the trial date was delayed until you woke up or died.”

  “The papers had been misplaced,” Captain Briggs interjected.

  “They won’t misplace your misconduct report,” Gideon said while looking into his client’s eyes.

  “Wher’ Lor?” Ronnie mumbled.

  “She’s in the hall. She’s been worried about you.”

  “See her?”

  “I’ll have her come right in.”

  The lawyer Gideon ushered the reluctant Captain Briggs from the hospital room. A few minutes later, Lorraine came in. She was still wearing the thrift store blue dress with the white lace along its high collar.

  “Hey,” Ronnie grunted.

  “Oh, baby, your jaw is all swollen. The doctor said that they had to wire it shut.”

  “Wha’ hap?”

  “Claude Festerling hired Mr. Gideon. He’s also representing me. My parents are trying to get me declared incompetent so they can have me committed, but Mr. Gideon has brought an injunction against them on my behalf. You’ve been unconscious for two days. Claude came to me at the hotel yesterday and said that he needs to see us back in the park as soon as possible.”

  “Bu’ why he jus’…,” Ronnie began.

  “He says that he has learned not to use his power to override the rules of any society. He says that by doing that in the past, he was more evil than you and Ma Lin put together.”

  Ronnie closed his eyes to locate the heartbeat that was the only purely good memory in his entire life. It was there, in his own chest, the steady beat that was like a naked musician on top of a high mountain, pounding his clubs against a great drum.

  Each double beat cleared the fog a bit more in Ronnie’s head. He counted up to seven and then sat up. Lorraine helped him get to his feet and dress. She tied his shoes for him and he touched the place on her head that he’d caved in with the white stone.

  “Sorry,” he managed to say.

  “There’s no time for that now,” she replied, shrugging off the fact of her murder but not forgetting it, not forgiving.

  * * *

  WHEN THEY WALKED out into the hall, Ronnie was approached by two uniformed cops.

  “Hold on,” one of them said.

  “Captain,” Gideon complained. “My client has done nothing wrong. He’s been sorely treated and now he just wants to take a walk with his friend.”

  Briggs was stoic. He glared at Ronnie with some secret knowledge. But he was in a bind because his officers had misread the situation with Lorraine Fell. The coed had been missing nearly a month when she was found in the company of this criminal. They followed unwritten procedure.

  This procedure was wrong.

  “Let him go,” the captain said.

  The uniforms stood back, and with the help of
Lorraine and his lawyer, Ronnie walked into the elevator car and watched the chromium doors close on the overlong and sordid first chapter of his life.

  * * *

  ON THE SIDEWALK outside the hospital, Roland Gideon said, “You don’t look too steady, Mr. Bottoms. I can understand why you would want to get away from police custody, but maybe we could put you in a private clinic somewhere.”

  “We need to do something, Mr. Gideon,” Lorraine explained. “The fact that Mr. Festerling hired you means that he wants to see us. After the meeting, maybe we’ll take you up on that clinic.”

  “All right. But remember we’ll have to do more work together. Your parents won’t stop trying to commit you, and the police want Ronnie here behind bars.”

  “We’ll call by tomorrow morning,” Lorraine promised.

  The lawyer watched them walk away, the slight black man leaning upon the rail-thin girl. He didn’t understand anything about them or their benefactor, but understanding human nature was not his job.

  NINE

  “HOW ARE YOU feeling?” Lorraine asked Ronnie when they finally staggered into the park.

  “Dizz,” he said, “but that okay. Jaw hurt a little.”

  “It’s not too far now.”

  “Yo’ mama mad?”

  “She was scared when she saw my skin and my eye. I told her that I got sick in the park, that I fell unconscious and that for a while I had a fever and forgot who I was.”

  “’he belie’e that ’hit?”

  “She wants to. But Daddy said that I had to be committed because I wouldn’t press charges against you. He got so mad that he almost hit me. I never knew how much he hated black people until the things he said about you.”

  Ronnie sniggered behind his wired teeth.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “Hey, you,” a man called from behind.

  Lorraine turned around, bringing Ronnie stumbling along with her.

  The little man was still wearing the baggy clothes from days earlier. He walked toward them with short fast steps, his left hand held up to the level of his shoulder, as if trying to make sure that the two didn’t disappear.

  When Ma Lin reached them, his face looked strained while his eyes were urgent.

  “What did you do to me?” he asked the space between their two heads.

  “You remember?” Lorraine asked.

  “I remember a girl’s voice in my head,” he said, “your voice. Ever since then, I’ve been stuck here in the park, looking for what happened.”

  “I…” Lorraine was at a loss for words.

  “We took ’oo monk, monk-ee ca’e…’oo,” Ronnie said, lying out of reflex upon hearing a certain dissonance in the retired killer’s voice.

  “The zoo?” Ma Lin asked excitedly. “The monkey cage at the zoo?”

  When Ronnie nodded, his jaw felt like it was on fire. “We go ’oo now,” the ex-thug said.

  Without another word, Ma Lin took off running.

  “You lied to him,” Lorraine said.

  “That not him,” Ronnie managed to get out before genuflecting to the pain in his jaw.

  * * *

  CLIMBING UP INTO the nest of boulders was difficult for Ronnie, but Lorraine got behind him and pushed until they tumbled down into the grotto of stone. While they made their way up, Lorraine noticed that passersby didn’t seem aware of the off-white girl and the staggery black man scaling the rock so precipitously.

  Used-to-be-Claude was waiting for them, leaning against a boulder and looking up. When the unlikely couple spilled down at his feet, he continued his surveillance of the sky.

  To Lorraine his countenance seemed less human than before. It was clear to her now that the man Claude Festerling was merely a husk for the Silver Box to communicate his desires to insignificant beings like herself and her murderer, Ronnie Bottoms.

  As if hearing her thought, Used-to-be-Claude looked down on her. His eyes had contracted the blue from the sky overhead. It was with this endless sky that he observed her.

  A full minute passed before he said, “I have made a terrible mistake.”

  “Saving us?”

  “What? No. Not at all. You and Mr. Bottoms are part of my destiny, partners in my trial.”

  “Like cour’?” Ronnie asked before grimacing in pain.

  Claude turned his gaze toward Ronnie. They were human eyes now, bloodshot and passionate.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Bottoms,” Claude said. He reached over, placing his right hand on the left side of Ronnie’s jaw while allowing the fingers of his left to sink into the stone wall like the red hot tines of a pitchfork into a vat of butter.

  The vibration coming from the dead man’s hand called up Ronnie’s mother’s humming when he was a child on her lap. At first he was sure that this memory was what dispelled the pain in his jaw. The release was so profound that he sighed and then opened his mouth to take in a deep breath.

  “What happened?” he asked, no longer restrained by threaded wires or broken bones.

  “Do you feel better, Friend Ronnie?” Used-to-be-Claude asked.

  “All you have to do is touch somebody an’ you could cure ’em?” Ronnie asked.

  “That and the power of one of your atomic bombs,” the elderly corpse agreed.

  “That much?” asked Lorraine.

  “What’s wrong?” Ronnie said.

  Claude smiled and looked upward again. He said, “While I was engrossed in your extraordinary feat, I lost concentration where it was most needed.”

  “What happened?”

  “Will you agree to come with me?” their benefactor said.

  “Of course,” Lorraine agreed.

  “Sure,” Ronnie added. He was rubbing his jaw, the pain now just a memory.

  “You must understand,” Used-to-be-Claude warned. “The journey will be within me and therefore a great distance, farther than any human has ever imagined existed.”

  “Inside you,” Ronnie said. “How?”

  “All humans are also machines,” Claude stated, “but not all machines are sentient. I was built for mundane purposes and then altered to map the limits of being for a race of scholars who wanted to understand the limits of existence. Those scholars became madmen intent on universal domination; but that’s another story.

  “In order to map the universe, I had to encompass it. In doing so, I became everything and everything is me.”

  “Like God?” Lorraine asked.

  “If God were a piece of driftwood and also the ocean that limb floated in. I am omnipotent and also helpless, destined to be and act and repeat the mistakes of my nature.

  “Will you come with me?”

  Ronnie and Lorraine agreed without speaking, and then all three disappeared from behind the blind of boulders.

  * * *

  THE JOURNEY FOR Lorraine was a field of flashing colors revealing truths that she could not quite comprehend. A motion was exposed between that which exists and that which does not. For her, it was like an Escher painting where connections were both mathematically perfect and at the same time impossible. The nothingness beyond material impressions called to her. It was a doorway through which, if she passed that way, her deepest instinctual species’ desire would be attained.

  Ronnie’s passage was pedestrian by comparison. There was his mother and seven different men, any of whom might have been his father. There were his victims: men and women, black and white, even children that he’d hurt. And then there were a million faces appearing one after another across a crystal screen that surrounded him; this procession of images passed over, under, and beside him without taking the slightest note of his existence.

  Ronnie understood that this was why he lashed out: No one ever saw him when he was standing there. His hunger was the emptiness of his being, and theirs. Only other people’s blood and pain made him into reality.

  * * *

  SUDDENLY THE JOURNEY inside the never-ending Silver Box came to a halt. Ronnie and Lorraine were s
tanding on a wide silver disk that floated in a chamber larger than Ronnie or Lorraine had ever seen. The walls were jet and silver. The ceiling was black, and the floor, as far away as any sky, was white.

  At the edge of the silver disk lay a big dead bug. It was the size of a rhinoceros Lorraine had once seen on a vacation when her parents took her and her brother to the San Diego Zoo. Its round head consisted mostly of a desiccated, dark yellow eye. It had seven arms and three legs, all curled up in death. The trunk of the dead bug was rounded like a ladybug, red and gray and orange.

  “It’s so ugly,” Lorraine groaned.

  “But it’s like somethin’ is missin’,” Ronnie added.

  “That is correct,” Used-to-be-Claude said from behind them. He was standing tall and regal, dressed only in a loincloth.

  “What is?” Lorraine asked.

  “I can’t explain it,” Ronnie said, “but I know where the missin’ piece is at.”

  “Where?” Claude asked in a voice that filled the impossibly large chamber.

  “That man,” Ronnie said. “That Vietnamese man that Lorraine took ovah. Somehow a piece’a this bug got into him. I heard it hissing sound when he talked.”

  “He’s been waiting for all these ages,” Claude said in that celestial voice.

  “Who has?” Lorraine asked.

  “Inglo, the last repository for the despicable Laz.”

  “He got outta that body and into Ma Lin like you did with Claude?” Ronnie asked.

  “Only a tiny little sliver did. A piece of him—and therefore, because of our relationship, a piece of me—has burrowed like a parasite into a living man’s flesh. It has been billions of years since a Laz has been freed upon the universe.”

  “What does it mean?” Lorraine asked.

  Ronnie could see a blue aura around his victim, his friend. He wondered at this new way of seeing.

  “Have a seat,” Used-to-be-Claude said, and silver chairs appeared beside the two new friends. “Let me tell you a story of that creature and me.”

  TEN

  “SO THIS DUDE Inglo and his people made you kill and torture all them others and then one day you just came to your senses and realized that you was wrong,” Ronnie said, feeling a certain sympathy for the old black man with a silver box in place of a heart.