“You seem a little insecure,” murmured Dr. Chickadee, a West African with a deep, sonorous, cultured voice.
The man was Cambridge-educated. In his Nehru jacket and saddle shoes, Brubaker was sure glad he didn’t have the doctor’s nerve in his tooth.
What was he supposed to say?
“You seem well educated,” he began affably enough.
“Hah!” guffawed the doctor. “You seemed a little paranoid when you were brought in to the hospital.”
Bru calmly raised an eyebrow.
“Tell me about the letters,” Chickadee added in afterthought.
Bru could read him like a book.
“I write letters to the editor. I sent one out to twenty-five different papers in Ontario,” Brubaker replied. “I’m trying to get a raise for the disabled. Five percent a year for the next five years.”
“Do you think you can do it?” queried the doctor.
“Someone has to talk to the bastards,” noted Bru. “Most people who talk to the government have some kind of an interest. Why not me? Would you write a letter to the government?”
The doctor studied something in his file folder.
“In your most recent letter to the editor, you seem to relate pollution to the city government and the police budget?”
Interesting.
This was the guy who claimed not to read the paper; because it was too much, ‘bad news.’ He just, ‘didn’t have time.’
Bru never forgot stuff like that. Not that Chickadee was a bad guy. Bru liked him well enough. But he most assuredly wasn’t, ‘your friend.’
Chickadee liked writing prescriptions, he recalled.
“Pollution is a crime. Where are the cops when you need them?” asked Brubaker. “All of our leaders are absolute cowards when it comes to anything that might reflect poorly on the city.”
He thought for a moment.
“You want the truth, Doc? The Lennox cops are incompetent, and badly-trained. They have no honour and integrity. They lack moral fibre, and violate the civil and human rights of suspects, witnesses and victims, including disabled people. It’s part of their daily routine.”
And that’s probably one of the reasons why I’m here, but it would seem too paranoid.
Cops lie. Cops lie all the time.
“That dirty little weirdo harassed me for fucking years down on Sigourney Street. As soon as I got done with him, the cops, and the courts; the fucking ODSP was all over me like a dirty shirt,” Brubaker told the man, and he was getting tired of trying to explain the facts of life to ignorant people.
“If you threaten someone often enough, they may become a little paranoid,” he noted.
“It’s a normal human reaction. You know, I’ve often wondered if someone was calling up the ODSP and giving them anonymous tips. Oh, I don’t know; maybe stuff about me working for cash under the table, stuff like that. Anonymous letters. That’s about the level of what I’ve had to deal with around here.”
“And did you?” asked the shrink.
Bru felt his face tighten up.
“No,” he said.
Doctor Chickadee remained silent, looking inscrutable over the top of his note pad, with his brown, watery and wishy-washy eyes looking sort of skeptical.
“Look. When I started my business, I knew the guy was all over me like a dirty shirt,” Chuck tried to explain. “I knew my only protection against that little creep; and against the ODSP for that matter, was to keep good books and account for every fuckin’ dime, and every fuckin’ minute of my time.”
“And you don’t feel that’s paranoid?” asked the doctor.
“I was right,” said Bru. “I’ve known the ODSP was scum for a long time. They made that clear when I bought my house.”
The ODSP freaked out when he bought a house for no money down and three hundred bucks a month! Besides. It was only sound business practice. But when he said it, it was always a sign of mental illness. Once they had you tagged, everything you said was written down and held against you in some way. He knew that. He couldn’t even attempt to tell the doctor that. They tended to have thin skins, and resented any implied criticism of the system which paid them the big bucks unquestioningly.
If you tried to be diplomatic, they would read too much into it.
“How do you feel now?” asked the doctor.
“Well; you fuckers screwed up the only job I had. The only job I could get,” said Bru.
“Other than that; I despise the police with a passion that surprises me. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all a gutless bunch of piss-ants, with way too much arbitrary power.”
“We’re just trying to help you, Chuck,” said Chickadee.
“Help me get rid of the Lennox Police Department. As long as we have them bums, every damned one of us is endangered. That asshole Oberon, remember that fuckin’ murder-suicide where the Chinese guy shot his girlfriend in Confederation Park? It was in all the papers. Sergeant Oberon says, and I quote, ‘we have to assume the gun was smuggled in from the U.S.’”
Brubaker thought about his point.
“Any cop who walks into a crime scene with a set of assumptions is an idiot. And I’ve seen Oberon’s work.”
“What about the man who bothered you before?” asked the doctor.
“I’ve never retaliated against that man in any way, shape or form, and I never will,” said Brubaker.
“Would you care to share the reason why?”
“It’s self-evident,” Bru told him. “He was always trying to push my buttons. If I went over and punched him in the nose, it would have justified everything that went before. I won’t give him, or you, the satisfaction.”
“Well, I think we’ve had a pretty good session,” said the doctor. “Is there anything else you want to share?”
“You’ll be letting me out of here Saturday or you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
“No need to be rude, Mr. Brubaker.”
“No. Of course not. You take my freedom, my job, and my dignity. My very fucking humanity. You label me paranoid and delusional, and treat me like a bug every chance you get. Perhaps it’s because of my working-class roots, but you just assume that I must be a violent person. Or as Sergeant Oberon wrote in documents submitted to the court, ‘An unexploded bomb waiting for a chance to go off.’ But there’s no need to be rude, sir.”
The session was obviously over. Brubaker got up and walked out without so much as a by-your-leave.
Chapter Ten
“City has its priorities mixed up…”