“That’s all right,” Flynn told him in a quiet voice. “Take your time. Come on your own when you’re ready,” he said as he straightened up. “No one is going to hurt you. We’re going to try to help you.”
Smith’s eyes followed Flynn as he came back to the table, and stayed on him even when he stood up, picked up the chair, and sat down on it.
I have seen people, gifted in ways I could only imagine, com-municate with dogs and cats and even horses, but until now I had never seen anyone do something like that with another human being. Howard Flynn sat across the table from that unfortunate soul and something passed between them, some ineffa-ble thing that made the boy respond-not with words or even a gesture-just a look, but a look which, had you seen it, you would never forget. It was the look of someone who has no knowledge-
no conscious knowledge-of himself, the look of someone who has not, like the rest of us, permanently divorced himself from the world around him. Clear your mind of every thought, rid yourself of every felt emotion, every seeming instinct of fear, until all that is left is that essential part of yourself that is yourself, and you will begin to understand what happened. The unspoken word, the thought that is silent even to itself-the thought that does not need expression to know what it is-that was the com-munication that was taking place right in front of my eyes.
“What can you tell us about Billy?” Flynn asked finally.
“Friend,” was the one-word answer.
“Billy gave you the knife?”
Smith nodded, and Flynn asked, “Where did Billy go?”
“Away. Billy went away.”
“Where did he go?”
“Away.”
“But where away?”
“River.”
I glanced at Flynn, but he was concentrating too hard to notice. With his arms folded together on the table, he leaned forward, cocked his head, and smiled. “What is your name?” he asked simply.
The boy smiled back. “Danny.”
“What’s your last name, Danny?”
It was so still in that room I thought I could hear my own heartbeat. Without any change of expression, he looked at Flynn and said, “Danny.”
Flynn nodded patiently. “Danny is your first name. You have another name, too. My first name is Howard.”
“Howard,” the boy repeated.
“That’s right. My first name is Howard. My last name is Flynn.
Your first name is Danny. Your last name is?”
There was a flash of recognition in his eyes, the look someone gets when they first realize that something is not where it is supposed to be and that they might have lost it. He shook his head.
“Danny,” he said again. It was the only name he knew, and perhaps the only name he had.
For half an hour I watched, an interested observer, while Howard Flynn did his best to learn where Danny had come from and what he knew about the man who had given him the knife.
Flynn was as gentle, as patient, as it was possible to be, but it made no difference: Danny seemed to know nothing about his past. As innocent as the child he was, he lived in the moment, a moment that for him had no beginning and no end. He remembered me, and he remembered we had been together in a room, but he could not have said whether it had happened that morning or a year ago. When Flynn had lit that match, it did not just remind him of when he had been burned all over his body with a cigarette: It was the same event. Time did not exist.
Everything that happened-everything that happened to him-
was now.
Though none of our other questions had been answered, we had gotten his name, and that at least was a start. We had gotten something else as welclass="underline" the knowledge that this was a case we had to win. It was always more difficult to defend someone you were certain was innocent: You could not comfort yourself with the thought that justice had been done if you lost. But this was worse. Danny was not just innocent, he was helpless. We were all he had. It hit Flynn harder than it hit me. When we left he was as angry as I had ever seen him.
“They should hang people like that!” he growled as we made our way to the front entrance. “And I don’t mean by the neck, either!”
I thought I knew whom he meant, but just to be sure, I asked,
“The people who burned him with cigarettes?”
“Yeah,” he muttered under his breath. His arm shot straight out in front of him and hit the door with such force I was afraid his hand was going to go right through the glass. At almost the same spot where we had stood talking together before, he stopped still. “Forget about that son of a bitch Jeffries. Forget about the guy who killed him,” he said, shaking his head impatiently. “Forget about whether he might have known Elliott Winston. Forget about the state hospital. Unless we find out who gave the kid the knife, we haven’t got anything.” He paused and stared hard at me. “You have to find out, and there’s only one way left to do it.”
People were swarming all around us. It was a few minutes past five and the sidewalks were filling up as civil servants walked quickly to the parking lots where they had left their cars or headed a few blocks across town to catch the light rail.
“You think the psychologist can get more out of him than you did?”
Flynn nodded, but his mind was on something else. “He’ll learn some things from him. He may learn quite a lot.” He worked his jaw back and forth, then he stopped and scratched his chin, a distant look in his eye. “He won’t learn that, though. The kid doesn’t know.”
“Then who?”
His eyes came back into focus. “The people he lived with.”
“Under the bridge?”
“Exactly.”
“Well,” I said skeptically, “we can try. But half of them are probably mentals and the rest are probably addicts or drunks.”
On the other hand, we had nothing to lose. “All right,” I agreed,
“if you think it’s worth the chance. When do you want to go?”
For the first time since we had left the jail, Flynn seemed to relax. He greeted my question as if I had just broken my own world record for stupidity. It was all he could do not to roll his eyes or laugh in my face. “Sure, why not? Let’s just go down there right now, two guys in coats and ties.”
Now I realized what he had in mind-or I thought I did. “You want to go undercover: pretend you’re one of the homeless-one of them?”
“No,” he said, looking away as he dragged out the sound. “Not exactly.”
For a few moments we did not say anything, and then I knew.
“You want me…?”
“I can’t do it,” he said, turning to me. Earnestly, he shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t spend three or four nights-I can’t even spend one night-by myself with people who are drinking. I’m sorry. I couldn’t do it.” He looked down at the sidewalk and sighed. “But I will if you want,” he said, lifting his head.
He meant it, and I knew it, and I could never let it happen.
“All right,” I said with a rueful glance, “I’ll do it. But only after the psychologist sees Danny.”
“He’ll do it first thing tomorrow.”
“You said you hadn’t talked to him yet.”
“I haven’t,” he replied as if that was an answer. “This will be a great experience for you,” he said cheerfully. We turned and began to walk and he again put his arm around my shoulder. “You remember that time Jeffries put you in jail for the weekend? Look at it like that: You might not like it much, but think of all the stories you’ll have to tell.”
I thought about that after I left him at the corner and headed back to the office: not what it would be like to pass myself off as one of the homeless, but what it had been like spending three nights in the county jail. Three nights-and I had never forgotten it! One weekend all those years ago, and as vivid as if it had happened last week or the week before. Three nights! How many nights are there in twelve years, the length of time Elliott Winston had already spent locked up in an asylum for the criminally insane? I could list the numbers and make a rough estimate of the result, but I could not do the multiplication, not in my head, not without a calculator or at least a pencil and paper. If I had been at the state hospital I could have asked Elliott’s friend, the former high school history teacher somehow given the gift for mathematics by his own insanity.