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to agree. Even though he had had little more than sweets and sandwiches there, he considered every bite or sip of what he consumed at the Harvey House to have been memorable.
    â€œJanice?” Randy asked, almost by reflex. “Did she have a last name?”
    â€œI am sure she did . . . but she never told me what it was. We had some great times together . . . and not just eating.”
    â€œWhere, exactly?”
    â€œAt Union Station.”
    Randy was as confused as he was curious. But he had to get on to the district attorney’s office.
    He left Birdie Carlucci with the assurance that it wouldn’t be long before a social worker helped find him someplace to go besides a jail cell. Most likely, in a community-based group housing facility run by the city-county health services people.
    â€œWe don’t put folks like you in jail anymore, Mr. Carlucci,” he said at the cell door, “and, like I told you before, all the state hospitals—you know, for people with your kind of problems—are closed.”
    â€œI’m not a lunatic. I mean . . . not anymore.”
    Randy thought of Carlucci’s desire for Randy to contact Josh.
    â€œWhen was the last time you saw your friend Josh?”
    â€œOh, that was the day I came . . . to Union Station: in 1933.”
    â€œHow old was he at the time, do you remember?”
    â€œHe was pretty old, sixty or seventy . . . something like that.”
    â€œHow old are you, by the way?” Randy asked. This would definitely be his last question.
    â€œAbout the same as Josh . . . was.”
    Randy promised to stay in touch.
    And suddenly his curiosity about this man had returned—big time.
    Janice the Harvey Girl. As a kid, Randy had had many a wet dream while imagining what treasures and pleasures lay in wanton waiting under all those layers of Harvey Girl skirts and aprons and stockings.

IV
    JOSH AND BIRDIE
    SOMERSET
    1933

    Josh heard the duty doctor tell the bushwhackers that there was something
insincere
about Birdie. “I’m not sure he’s a maximum lunatic,” said the doctor. But he told them to be prepared for Birdie to make some noise and commotion and possibly even do something violent. The doctor, as always, then left the asylum and its patients to the care of the bushwhackers. He would do the rest of his Sunday night on-call duty from his home in town.
    The doctor was a young man named Jameson who, from Josh’s observation, was not competent to trim a toenail, much less deal with lunacy— sincere or otherwise. Josh had come across only one fine doctor in all his years at Somerset. He was Dr. Will Mitchell, a good man, a helpful, caring soul, who tried as best as he could to guide Somerset patients back to sanity and a regular life. Dr. Mitchell had been extremely helpful to Josh. He had, in fact, saved Josh’s life—and soul. Dr. Mitchell had left Somerset in anger thirteen years ago to become a private doctor in Kansas City.
    Among the practices at Somerset that enraged Dr. Mitchell was the use of Somerset Sluggers. Nor did he like the kind of restraining they were doing to Birdie this night.
    Just before lights-out at nine, the bushwhackers held Birdie down on his back while they tied his hands and arms to the metal frame of his bed. It was a common practice. Five other patients considered to be violent or potential wanderers were routinely strapped down on this ward.
    â€œThat way, no matter what, and just in case he decides to play games,” said Amos the ass, the night bushwhacker in charge, “this Birdie can’t fly away and damage anybody, including his ownself, can he?”
    Amos said that to Josh, whose bed was directly across from Birdie’s. The long narrow dormitory room had two rows of twenty single beds each, lined up barracks-style on both sides of a center aisle with the heads of the beds against a wall. All but two of the forty beds were occupied now, Birdie having