The Dead Man: Ring of Knives

slack-jawed at her phone.

'Hi there.'

She kept staring at the phone, so he said it two more times.

Finally she looked up, irritated. 'What?'

'My name is Matt. I called ahead?' No response. 'I'm here for a visit with a resident by the name of Jesse Weston.'

The clerk turned her attention back to her phone and yelled out a series of syllables. It was either a name he'd never heard before, or she was speaking in tongues.

'What's going on here?'

A pale, toad-faced wreck came out. She appeared to be wearing a gray tent. In one hand she had a clipboard, and in the other, amazingly, a cigarette.

'This guy wanna see Jesse,' the clerk said, still not looking up from her phone.

Toad-Face's astonishingly wide mouth creased downward at the edges, and a mirror image of the long furrow formed on her forehead. 'Oh yeah? Well, you can't. He's gone.'

'Gone?' Matt wasn't sure he'd heard correctly.

'Gone. As in, Not Here Anymore. He transferred out.' She turned away, started to leave.

Matt couldn't believe what he was hearing. 'But I set up this meeting three weeks ago with the facility administrator. He promised me an opportunity to meet with Jesse Weston!'

'Sorry.' She waved her cigarette over her shoulder at him.

'Well, where's he been transferred to?'

'Confidential.'

Matt felt his face flush with anger. Behind him he heard the front door bang open. The manager whipped her pasty face around to see who it was. Matt stepped deliberately into her line of vision.

'Ma'am, I came all this way to see Jesse Weston. It's a matter of life and death. If he's gone, then I at least need to talk to whatever doctor was treating him: Dr. . . . Ah . . .' He remembered the Coke-bottle goggles but not the name.

Toad-Face and the clerk shared a quick look. 'Dr. Dindren,' Toad-Face said—with far too much pleasure, Matt thought—'doesn't work here anymore. Sorry.' Before Matt could respond, she stepped around the desk, eyes narrowed, and crossed her arms confrontationally.

'Maloria,' she said, 'how nice of you to drop by—half an hour late.'

Matt turned. Behind him, panting, damp with fog and perspiration, was the big woman who'd chased him away from her Corolla.

'Oh, no, you don't, Hirotachi.' The big woman rolled her eyes and shoved the pink palm of her hand towards the manager. 'Talk to the white girl, 'cause the black girl ain't listenin'.'

'Don't you use that tone of voice with me. Your shift starts at three!'

Another eye roll. 'I . . . had . . . a flat, arright?'

Hirotachi (apparently the clerk had not been speaking in tongues) put her hands on her hips. 'For thirty minutes you had a flat? Without calling? Why should I believe that?'

'Because it's true,' Matt said.

Both Hirotachi and Maloria looked at him in surprise.

'I can vouch for her. She got a flat back there. I told her not to call, said I'd fix the flat. But I couldn't get the tire off, took forever trying. So it's all my fault, not hers.'

Hirotachi opened her vast, amphibian maw, then closed it. She sucked in her thin lips and glared at him.

'See?' Maloria crowed. 'What I tell you, bitch?'

'Don't you dare disrespect me,' Hirotachi snarled.

'Oh, shut the fuck up,' Maloria said, grabbing the clipboard out of her hand and signing in. 'Talk to my union rep, you don't like it.'

'Oh, I will, and I'll write it up in a report, too. But in the meantime, you might as well know you're being assigned to do janitorial in Module One.'

Maloria put her fat hands on her mythological hips. 'That ain't my job.'

'It is now. Roger called off. Stay here; I'll get you a bucket.' She spat out this last word and stormed into a back hallway, slamming the door behind her as she went.

Maloria turned to Matt immediately, cackling, holding out her fist.

'Dag, was I wrong about you. You white, but you right! Give some love, boy.'

Matt executed the most Caucasian fist bump in history.

'Hope I haven't gotten you into more trouble,' he said.

'Nah, nah, she just trippin' 'cause her man a freak. Hey, look . . .' She stepped in close, pulled Matt away from the desk clerk, and lowered her voice. 'You mean what you said, about it bein' a matter of life and death—you meeting with Dr. Dindren?'

'Yeah, I did. And it is.'

She pursed her full lips, gave a curt nod. 'Meet me around back in twenty minutes; I'll take you to him.'

Matt stared at her. 'But Hirotachi said he isn't here anymore.'

Maloria snorted. 'You got to listen better, boy. She say he don't work here no more, and he don't.'

'But then why would he be . . .'

She raised an eyebrow.

Suddenly, he got it. 'Oh my God.'

'That's right.' Her gold tooth glittered. 'He a resident now.'

CHAPTER TWO

Twenty minutes later, as instructed, Matt stepped out of the fog to meet Maloria at the Admin Building's back loading dock. She gave him a mop, a bucket, and a maroon knit golf shirt with 'Carthage Janitorial' embroidered on the chest, below a gold plastic name tag that said 'Sid.'

'So if I've got this, what's Sid wearing?' Matt asked, unbuttoning his flannel shirt and tying it around his waist.

'Orange fuckin' jumpsuit is what that cracker got on, after the shit he played with that retarded girl we got sent on accident last month.' She shook her gold streak ruefully. 'This place gone to hell is what, and that's no joke. First they cut the fundin' to nothin', then they lay off, then they start usin' part-timers. But with shit pay, shit hours, no benefits, an' no supervision, who you gonna get? Buncha kiddie-porn-watchin', methamphetamine-cookin', probation-dodgin', dead-beat, crackhead, stripper-for-a-girlfriend, no-count ma'fuckahs, is what.'

'And you can work with that?'

'Fuck no. Three weeks from now? I'll be onna South Side of Chicago, with my moms and sister. That's where I'm from. When I make forty in April, I'm 'a be with my moms for sure. 'Til then, I collect my pay, and any one of them fuckheads tries somethin'?' She patted her huge purse.

'You'll Tase their ass.'

'Damn straight. Paid three hundred twenty-five dollars for this shit. Now, come on, follow me.'

He had the shirt on now. Together they took the mops and buckets and began walking across a quad towards the four modules out back.

'Arright, listen up. Way it's gonna work is, you keep your mouth shut and stay with me. We got to clean Module One. People ask, just say you fillin' in as a swing. Dr. Dindren's in Module Two. Hirotachi in charge of that module, but she always take a meal break around five o'clock. That's when I'll take you over there, an' you can talk to your friend.'

'Sounds good.'

'Yeah, but hear this: I'm only workin' a half shift today, so at seven I got to leave. You stay longer than that, you on your own.'