The curtains are drawn to reveal a tangle of soiled and sodden bedding that is Dirk Dickerson’s funeral pyre. The Half Guinea stands at the opening of a sterile white sheet of plastic dangling from metal hooks along the aluminum frame that surrounds the doomed detective in the ward for the emotionally disturbed on Frunze Street in Kyiv.
Dickerson’s steel and springs cot is wide but low to the floor. There’s a dull green lamp still lit from the night before attached to the wall above his head. His fedora is propped on the bedpost, and his belted trousers and well-wrinkled shirt lie crumpled at the foot of the cot, long unused to being worn.
Urine, tobacco and some kind of fumes smell up the air, but all the other patients are apparently still asleep or at least at peace in those early morning hours that promise protection from the nightmares of the night and the cure of the day.
Black socks sprinkled with specks of dry skin peek out from under the sheets, and a pair of powder-blue boxer shorts cover the bend of his back and buttocks jutting just over the cot’s edge. Dickerson’s eyes are bulged out of his pale unshaven face above the blankets.
The Guinea is dressed in smart black pants and a matching button-up shirt with a white collar. He’s holding a thick red Christmas candle on a cracked tea saucer like the one that usually decorates the nurse’s station near the ward entrance.
After crossing himself in reverse order and swearing under his breath, the Guinea removes an orange Bic disposable lighter from his trouser pocket to light the candle with, and smiles unashamedly at the dying man.
“Aren’t you gonna speak Latin?”
“Latin? Why in hell would I do that? English is good enough under the circumstances, and you wouldn’t understand it anyway. English is the new Latin, and Russian the new Greek. Arab will soon replace Hebrew, and everyone will be much happier as a result.”
Dickerson is still goggling at him, but his head remains sunk into his pillow, as if he’s lost the ability to move his neck. It’s just his eyes and his voice that remain to serve him at this point: Eyes that surprise with daring on the verge of aggression, and a voice as unquiet as it is pathetic, probing, searching but rarely finding what it has looked for, for a life spent almost entirely on chase, only to now be at its end on the run.
“Anything to confess, Dirk?” whispers the Guinea, now looking more like a co-conspirator than a priest.
“Yes… I’ll give you a confession. And I’ll repent right here on the spot. Cuz as you well know, I ain’t got a long sentence to serve. But don’t expect no snot-nosed stuff. That’s all gone… spent on the other birds in this cage – the dodos and the loons, the chickenshits and the stoolpigeons.
“No rooks?” The Guinea smiles, now actually looking like a priest.
Dickerson manages a smile himself, and suddenly his arm starts working, at first at the elbow under the covers, from which a wrinkled cigarette between two strong but boney fingers eventually emerges.
The Guinea, now warm-eyed and gently beaming, stretches out his large brown hand, sheltering the uncertain flickering flame with the other like a father, a friend.
“And then what happened?” asked one of the detectives of the Older Still-Well-Built Man, now reclined in his leather-bound swivel chair, eyes closed and almost smiling or fallen asleep.
“It burned for three days, the whole damned place, most of the lunatics there along with it. A few got out and were seen running across nearby roads in white dressing gowns gleaming in the night. The next morning is was all burnt-wire beds, and soot-covered sheets smoldering in the ruin.”
“Shit, Mac!”
“What the hell!”
“He didn’t deserve that.”
“Yeah, he did,” said someone else, until the office eventually emptied and everyone was gone.
Filed by: Ah, Reader, Reader, why so insistent and curious; for does it matter? Is not one name as sufficient to your purposes as another? And, likewise, anent the filing date: Should not this day be sufficient unto itself? For, for you, Dear Reader, that date, no matter when you get to it, shall always be at some point in the future, and far, far out of your reach, although it will always feel like you can just about touch it – although, of course, you never will. And, in any case, it will never be any closer than tomorrow. For as truly as the Earth turns on its axis every day, while at the same time orbiting the Sun exactly once a year – no more, nor, mark you, no less – so we live amidst miracles we take for granted while forever looking for some kind of sign…