Final Stroke (9 page)

“Maybe you’re right,” said Jan. “This afternoon Steve mentioned spring and said I should do more than simply take a night off for din
ner. When I asked him what I should do, he said I should go for bike rides. Ten years ago when we met I rode almost every day. I rode to my first husband’s business only to find that it was burning and he was inside. And now there’s been a fire in Steve’s head. He’s mentioned the word
case
a lot lately. I think he misses the challenge, but since he can’t recall the cases he worked on over the years it bugs the hell out of him.

“The first time I met Steve was when he got on my case. We had a clandestine meeting at O’Hare Airport. Steve was back in town after laying low for a while because of some mob guys from Miami. He sat in the terminal holding up a crumpled newspaper. The word I was supposed to look for was circled in a small headline at the fold of the
paper. The word was
Gypsy
.

“We talked about the fire that killed my husband and a friend of Steve’s named Sam Pike. Mostly I remember Steve walking away after our meeting that day. I remember it vividly because it symbolizes his stroke. He walked with his shoulders forward as if anticipating an attack from behind, as if his brain knew what was coming ten years down the road. I’ll always remember the swagger and momentary hesitation of his cop walk as he disappeared into the crowd. And I’ll always remember what he wore. Blue suit, and that tie, that horrible wide green and red tie that looked like a Christmas neck scarf, or a Gypsy scarf.

“Not long ago, when we were alone for a few minutes, I told Mar
jorie about my first meeting with Steve. When I finished, she kissed my forehead, then she cried like a baby.”

Lydia held up her glass. “To all the babes in the woods.”

Jan held up her glass, clinked Lydia’s glass, and they drank.

CHAPTE
R

FIV
E

Tyrone Washington checked his watch, hoping Flat Nose
was doing the same. Last fall Flat Nose forgot to turn back his watch for the end of daylight savings time and showed up an hour early and scared the shit out of a resident by putting his ugly face against the small glass window in the door from the loading dock. Ever since then, Tyrone feared Flat Nose would get the time wrong and screw everything up. He checked his watch again and cursed the system, both because it deserved to be cheated, and because it allowed itself to be cheated.

Tyrone was disgusted with the system and knew he had lots of company, especially white folks who seemed to be the main strain around this place. Some said it was a thing called demographics, but he knew it was no such thing. He knew the reason there were more white folks in this place than black was because white folks lived lon
ger. And the longer white folks lived, the more they’d complain about the system while making sure there were plenty of ass wipes like him handy to wipe up after their white asses.

Tyrone knew damn well all the shit started in Washington and was handed down. A congressman farts at the podium and the next thing you know there’s another new rule and another new form to fill out. They cut down trees in the boondocks to make paper while turn
ing a river into something that burns, then they ship the paper to Chi
cago where printing presses three stories tall spit out ten-part forms, then they ship the forms here to Hell in the Woods to be filled out, then, even though they put the data on computers, they ship the forms to Washington so the farting congressman will have a bundle of them before next election to hold up and shake in the air while he complains about government waste like he’s the first to discover it.

Tyrone checked his watch again, then stretched his long arms into the air and almost touched the ceiling. Maybe his daddy had been a basketball player. That’s what the doc at the retard school said in so many words back when he was a kid with such big hands he could hold onto the basketball with one hand when he was only twelve, even though he couldn’t play worth a damn. He overheard the doc say
ing to another doc, who’d stopped by for a shot of morphine, that his daddy and ma were probably cousins. But the doc said
first
cousins and he knew damn well that wasn’t true. Second or third maybe, but not first. Maybe the doc let him overhear on purpose because all it took was to hear that doc saying his daddy and ma were cousins and the next thing he knew he was out of retard school, graduating from high school and getting his first job down at Cook County Hospital where he learned the health care ropes.

Yeah, learned real fast that the health care system was a thing put there to make sure most of the money funneled on up to the docs, and to the drug company executives, and to the supply company execu tives. Everybody with fists full of forms to make sure all the money was correctly earmarked so the docs and company executives wouldn’t
stop buying second homes, because in Washington the fart at the po dium didn’t want to see housing start figures take a nosedive.

After hustling laundry at Cook County Hospital for a couple years, Tyrone moved on to the VA Hospital on the west side where it seemed half the patients suffered from one thing or another having to do with smoking cigarettes since they were PFCs with Betty Grable pinups thumb-tacked to their bunks. His job there was to deliver clean spit-up cups and take away used spitted-up cups. Even though most of the guys at the VA were white, the stuff in those cups made it seem like they were slowly turning black on the inside. One theory he developed while working at the VA was that just before white people die they turn black inside and finally feel how it is to be black, but they also realize it’s too late for this realization to do any good and they die hollering and screaming to the Almighty to let them live even if they have to suffer like black folks. He heard plenty of hollering and screaming at the VA and sometimes wondered if part of the purpose of the system was to turn everyone who didn’t own at least two condos into niggers.

A while back, when he told Latoya about his theory, she was duly impressed. They’d just done a couple rounds on her living room floor, being that her roommate was out, and while they got dressed she told him just how impressed she was.

“There best be no bruises on me from those big old hands of yours. You hear what I’m sayin’? There any bruises back here? What about there?”

“No, babe, there ain’t no bruises. Anyhow, who’d see ‘em on you?”

“You sayin’ I’m too black for you? That what you sayin’?”

“No, babe, I ain’t sayin’ that.”

At this point he told Latoya it didn’t really matter how black a person was, or even how white for that matter, because in the end we
all end up turning black inside. He told about the dying VA hospital guys and about his theory that everyone eventually turns into a nigger in the end and finally learns about suffering when it’s too late to do anything about it.

“So, what you think, babe?”

“I still think I’m bruised. You’re no gang-banger no more, so I fig
ure you got nobody else to beat up on ‘cept poor defenseless me.”

“I wasn’t no gang-banger. I was only a shorty for a while until they sent me to retard school. Ain’t that somethin’? Old Uncle Ezra—God rest his soul—convinces Ma to send me to retard school. And the retard school saves me from a life of crime and violence. But come on now, what about what I said about everyone turnin’ nigger in the end?”

“Don’t you start hintin’ about no end games, Tyrone Washington.”

“Latoya, I’m serious. You took philosophy at Kennedy-King, so you should know how serious I am. You ain’t simply a body, after all. You got a mind, and I got a mind, and I’m not playin’ mind games. It’s called conversation is what it’s fuckin’ called.”

“All right, honey. I didn’t mean it. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’ve got something. I guess it’s kind of like the ashes-to-ashes Bible thing put another way. Seriously? I like it.”

After Latoya stood on her toes and laid him a good one on the lips, she said, “But I also like the fact you ain’t been down at Johnny-O’s wasting your hard-earned money on jail bait.”

Yeah, Latoya was a smart chick, and a beautiful chick, especially when she was half-dressed and stood on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on him. Of course, the chicks down at Johnny-O’s were somethin’ else again, but nowhere near as refined as his Latoya.

Tyrone checked his watch again. When he reached the far end of a hallway, he heard a guy behind in one of the rooms moaning in pain and once more thought about his stint at the VA hospital with
the last of the WW-2 vets who lived decades in the past, dreaming of girls back home while they picked up more free cartons of Luck ies at the PX. One old fart vet said that during a month-long layover with no assignment, he and a bunch of other guys lay in their bunks all day long sucking unfiltered Luckies and blowing smoke at photos of Betty Grable, eventually turning her skin from the light gray of the black and white photos to the dark golden brown of nicotine and tar. Of course there were younger vets at the VA. Guys from Korea and Vietnam and even a few from the Middle East. But the ones who im pressed him most were the WW-2 vets who’d managed to take advan tage of the system all those years.

After the VA, Tyrone jumped around from one hospital to another, looking for a place he fit in. Some hospitals were better than others, but in hospitals there were always too many nurses and residents run
ning around. It was like having a hundred bosses. Couldn’t even park whatever cart he was pushing and duck into a men’s room for a smoke because he quit smoking after his stint at the VA, and after Uncle Ezra died of lung cancer.

Finally, after ten years in the health care system, Tyrone saw the light. What Medicare and Medicaid could do for old folks, it could do for him. After working at Saint Mel’s main hospital for a couple months, an ad went up on the employee board saying there were open
ings for orderlies and aides on the west side at Saint Mel in the Woods Rehabilitation Facility, which everyone called Hell in the Woods. A friend of his named Flat Nose who worked at Hell in the Woods told him it was the opportunity of a lifetime.

Of course now that Tyrone was here, Flat Nose no longer worked here. But he did see Flat Nose quite often. In fact he’d be seeing Flat Nose tonight. Even though Flat Nose was in a new business, he did not try to lure Tyrone away from Hell in the Woods. The reason for
not trying to lure Tyrone away was because Flat Nose needed him right where he was.

Tyrone checked his watch. Twenty-eight minutes to go. The rea
son he checked his watch so often was because timing was important. If he got there too early he’d have to stand around and someone might come wandering down the hall and ask what he’s doing there. If he got there too late, one of the late night kitchen workers might make a trip out to a dumpster and see Flat Nose hanging around by the load
ing dock and ask him what he’s doing there.

Yeah, timing was important. He’d get to the hallway outside the nursing home wing activity room on the first floor at the exact time Flat Nose parked in that spot at the loading dock hidden from the kitchen entrance by the dumpster enclosure. He’d disconnect the wire on the door alarm while Flat Nose crept up the side of the loading dock. He’d get through the alarmed door, down the short hall paral
leling the kitchen, and open the loading dock door just in time to let Flat Nose in. Then they’d come back into the main hallway and duck into the janitors’ closet to make their business transaction. Tonight it was a couple cases of rubber gloves and a couple boxes of individually wrapped Demerols. He’d hidden the stuff at the back of the closet earlier in the day.

Tonight he’d get a couple hundred and Flat Nose would get rub
ber gloves and Demerols. Of course nothing was that simple. Just like with Medicare and Medicaid there had to be someone on top. In this case the guy on top had a fitting name because the guy on top was named after the Lord.

DeJesus was his name. Christ Health Care Supplies was his game. According to Flat Nose, DeJesus justified his business, which involved selling stolen goods back to various health care facilities in the city, because he, too, was a victim of the country’s health care system.

According to Flat Nose, DeJesus’ mother—the mother of Christ— would be a nursing home resident if it were not for her son’s ability to provide the best in private home care. According to Flat Nose, DeJe
sus figured Medicare and Medicaid were probably paying about the same for his mother’s private health care at home as it would have had to pay if DeJesus had spent down her money and dumped her into Hell in the Woods. So, in a way, it all came out even. The health care system at work. And not only that, Christ Health Care Sup
plies served nursing homes and rehab centers all over the city without regard to race, religion, or ethnic origin. A bed pad from this place that had been destined to hold the piss of a rich white bitch living in a non-Medicaid private room might end up holding the piss of a wino at Cook County where Tyrone used to work, and vice versa.

Eighteen minutes to go. Time to start heading for the service el
evator. By now the old folks on the first floor not dead to the world would be glued to their TVs watching a
Murder She Wrote
rerun. And even if Tyrone did come across a resident in the nursing home wing, she’d be easy to fool since most of them had strokes or Alzheimer’s anyhow, especially anyone out wandering around. Just like that lady earlier tonight, out wandering around when she should be in her room minding her own business.

Of course maybe it was unfair to call them all rich white bitches on the first floor. After all, there were some blacks and browns and yellows and even a few men who weren’t vets and who’d managed to outlive their life expectancy. Actually Tyrone felt sorry for the folks in the nursing home wing because it seemed all they had to do all the time besides eat and sleep and piss and watch TV was think about death.

Tomorrow or the next day he’d probably get the job of moving the dead lady’s stuff out of her room. Whenever he got a job like that he’d see the averted eyes. Sometimes while moving stuff for a resident who
had not died but was simply being transferred to skilled or assisted or independent, he felt like hanging a sign on the cart announcing that the person was not dead but simply moving. Maybe then residents and visitors—especially visitors—would smile at him and return his greeting instead of checking out the detail of the floor tile until his cart passed.