The Thomas Berryman Number

But the Brooks Brothers doctors, the nurses, the fire-haired patients walking around the hospital paid no attention.

Which isn’t easy—even at 9:30 on a drizzly, unfriendly morning.

Generally I’m noticed most places.

My blond hair is close-cropped, just a little seedy on the sides, already falling out on top—so that my head resembles a Franciscan monk’s. I’m slightly cross-eyed without my glasses (and because of the rain I had them off). Moreover, I’m 6’7”, and I stand out quite nicely without the aid of quirky clothes.

No one noticed, though. One doctory-looking woman said, “Hello, Michael.” “Ochs,” I told her. That was about it for introductions.

Less than 1% believing Ben Toy might have a story for me, I dutifully followed all the blue-arrowed signs marked BOWDITCH.

The grounds of the Pound Institute were clean and fresh-smelling and green as a state park. The hospital reminded me of an eastern university campus, someplace with a name like Ithaca, or Swarthmore, or Hobart.

It was nearly ten as I walked past huge red-brick houses along an equally red cobblestone road.

Occasionally a Cadillac or Mercedes crept by at the posted ten m.p.h. speed limit.

The federalist-style houses I passed were the different wards of the hospital.

One was for the elderly bedridden. Another was for the elderly who could still putter around—predominantly lobotomies.

One four-story building housed nothing but children aged over ten years. A little girl sat rocking in the window of one of the downstairs rooms. She reminded me of Anthony Perkins at the end of

Psycho.

I jotted down a few observations and felt silly making them. I kept one wandering eye peeled for Ben Toy’s ward: Bowditch: male maximum security.

A curious thing happened to me in front of the ward for young girls.

A round-shouldered girl was sitting on the wet front lawn close to the road where I was walking. She was playing a blond-wood guitar and singing.

There’s something goin’ on,

she just about talked the pop song.

But you don’t know what it is,

Do you, Mr. Jones?

I was Ochs Jones, thirty-one, father of two daughters … The only violent act I could recall in my life, was

hearing

—as a boy—that my great-uncle Ochs Jones had been hanged in Moon, Kentucky, as a horsethief … and

no,

I didn’t know what was going on.

As a matter of fact, I knew considerably less than I thought I did.

The last of the Federal-style houses was more rambling, less formal and kept-up than any of the others: It bordered on scrub pine woods with very green waist-high underbrush running through it. A high stockade fence had been built up as the ward’s backyard.

BOWDITCH a fancy gold plaque by the front door said.

The man who’d contacted the

Citizen-Reporter,

Dr. Alan Shulman, met me on the front porch. Right off, Shulman informed me that this was an unusual and delicate situation for him. The hospital, he said, had only divulged information about patients a few times before—and that invariably had to do with court cases. “But an assassination,” he said, “is somewhat extraordinary. We

want

to help.”

Shulman was very New Yorkerish, with curly, scraggly black hair. He wore the kind of black-frame eyeglasses with little silver arrows in the corners. He was probably in his mid-thirties, with some kind of Brooklyn or Queens accent that was odd to my ear.

Some men slouching inside behind steel-screened windows seemed to be finding us quite a curious combination to observe.

A steady flow of collected rainwater rattled the drainpipe on the porch.

It made it a little harder for Shulman and myself to hear one another’s side of the argument that was developing.

“I left my home around five, five-fifteen this morning,” I said in a quick, agitated bluegrass drawl.

“I took an awful Southern Airways flight up to Kennedy Airport … awful flight … stopped at places like Dohren, Alabama … Then I drove an Econo-Car out to God-knows-where-but-I-don’t, Long Island. And now, you’re not going to let me in to see Toy … Is that right Doctor Shulman? That’s right, isn’t it?”

Shulman just nodded the curly black head.

Then he said something like this to me: “Ben Toy had a very bad, piss-poor night last night. He’s been up and down since he got in here … I think he

wants

to get better now … I don’t think he wants to kill himself right now … So maybe you can talk with him tomorrow. Maybe even tonight. Not now, though.”

“Aw shit,” I shook my head. I loosened up my tie and a laugh snorted out through my nose. The laugh is a big flaw in my business style. I can’t really take myself too seriously, and it shows.

When Shulman laughed too I started to like him. He had a good way of laughing that was hard to stay pissed off at. I imagined he used it on all his patients.

“Well, at least invite me in for some damn coffee,” I grinned.

The doctor took me into a back door through Bowditch’s nurse’s station.