Little Black Book

I remember that Tuesday starting like any other Tuesday, with my arrival at TongueAss and a visit with Priscilla Hewlett on my schedule. My name is Jess Rupert and I am a Recreational Activity Worker at ToungeAss, which is slang used by the residents and staff at Tongass Retirement Villa in Juneau, Alaska.

Talking with Prissy could be demanding at times and was never boring. I headed to my office to review last week’s conversation and prepare for today’s bout of linguistic combat. I leisurely finished my notes review and mosey’d my way down to Priscilla’s room. As I rounded the corner, entering Orca Wing, I spotted two residents gathered outside Prissy’s door. This in itself was not unusual, as Prissy was quite popular among her fellow residents: she didn’t seem to cause them the anxiety she produced in me. What was unusual were the expressions and body language of the residents. Generally ToungeAss residents displayed what might be most aptly described as apathyㅡif not outright boredomㅡor, to be less complimentary, resting corpse face.

Today, however, these residents were more animated than usual. Albert Yazzie, or “Yazz” as he preferred, looked pleased with himself, almost smug. Gladys Chiavis appeared to want to pull Yazz out of his wheelchair and give him a good old-fashioned spanking. Unfortunately for Gladys, Yazz would probably enjoy any punishment currently percolating in her annoyed imagination.

When I reached them, Yazz leaned back in his wheelchair and amateurishly attempted to be nonchalant and to ignore Gladys. From her wheelchair, however, Gladys continued to stare daggers at Yazz until the moment Prissy’s door cracked open and Lilly Reed, preceded by her walker, emerged from the room. Lilly was startled to see the three of us standing there but quickly controlled her confusion and greeted us all with a cheery “good morning” before slowly shuffling down the hall.

Even though I had an appointment with Prissy, I motioned for Yazz and Gladys to enter the room first and helped to wheel Gladys into ToungeAss’s standard tight quarters. Prissy was sitting comfortably in the little armchair beside her bed. Aside from the antique tall boy dresser in the corner and a tiny writing desk beside Prissy, her armchair was the only other piece of furniture in the room. With three additional guests and two wheelchairs, the cozy space had become decidedly crowded.

Prissy gazed at the three of us through her large thick glasses that, in addition to her coiffed white hair and the knitted ivory shawl over her shoulders, gave her the appearance of a snowy owl.

“Well, aren’t I a popular lady this morning?” she exclaimed in a slight southern drawl. Looking at me, she asked, “CP, be a dear and give me a few moments with my friends here. Then I’m all yours.”

“CP,” short for “Cabbage Patch,” is Prissy’s nickname for me due to my relatively large-sized and round-shaped head. The moniker is not a favourite of mine, so even though I knew Prissy wanted me to leave her room, I stubbornly leaned against the wall and said, “Oh, don’t let me stop you. I’ll wait here until you’re done.”

Prissy blinked once towards me and then switched her attention to the little black notebook lying open on the desk beside her. From a desk drawer she retrieved a business envelope with a “Y” printed on it. Turning to hand it to Yazz, she said, “Nicely done, my dear, please see me this afternoon, after my appointment with CP, if you would care to try again.” Yazz grabbed the envelope, grinned, and looked sideways at me before awkwardly reversing his wheelchair out of the tiny room with a bit of assistance and a nudge from my left foot.

By the time I returned my attention to Prissy and Gladys, they were glaring intently at each other. I assisted Gladys again, navigating her wheelchair out of the door. As Gladys departed, Prissy said, “Please do come visit again G., your visits are a pleasure.” Using the momentum I’d produced, Gladys rolled down the hallway without a word.

Facing Prissy, I noticed her looking around slightly puzzled before turning her attention to me and asking, “Well, Doll, what do you have in store for me today?”

I replied, “Well, Ms. Hewlett, today I thought we might try to use your tablet again to explore the vast and exciting world of the Internet. How does that sound?”

“Delightful, Doll. Delightful.”

*********

After patiently and painfully showing Prissy how to use her tablet for the eleventeenth time, I retreated from her room and firmly closed her door. The hall was empty. Feeling safe again, I took in several slow, full breaths, relieved that my visit with Prissy was done for the week. Our exchange didn’t feel complete though. My nerves tingled. What had happened between Prissy, Yazz, and Gladys earlier? Feeling unsettled, I made my way back to my office, hoping to ask other ToungeAss staff if they’d noticed anything strange between Prissy and other residents.

Waiting for me at my office door was Gladys wearing a look suggesting that she was even more determined to spank someone than before. As I began to greet her, Gladys raised her hand to silence me and said, “I wasn’t here. You never got this from me.” She dropped a little black notebook beside her wheelchair and rolled off down the hall in a hunch.

I grabbed the book from the floor and locked myself into my office to inspect Gladys’s castoff. The book resembled the one I’d seen in Prissy’s room earlier. Page after page of the book contained long columns of text: dates accompanied by seemingly random initials and numbers. A fairly recent entry had a tick mark beside it: ”✔26/10/2017 - A.Y.-50-T.W.-6M.” This entry was from about 5 months ago and, if this was what I thought it was, my mind had just been made up. Even though I didn’t know exactly what this book was, I decided to ask the local sheriff if he thought it was anything worth looking into.

I picked up the phone and dialled the sheriff’s office and spent the next half-hour on the phone, explaining that I thought little Prissy Hewlett was running a gambling ring out of Tongass Retirement Villa. While I expected some disbelief and pushback, I didn’t think old Sheriff Dan would laugh quite that loud or half that long. By the time I’d stubbornly conveyed my story and informed him that I had a gambling record book as evidence, the laughter in his voice had reduced to a slight chuckle. After a few deep breaths of his own, the Sheriff begrudgingly asked me to drop the book off at the office and to fill out an official report if I really thought a crime was being commited.

I waited until the weekend to go down to the Sheriff’s since I knew old Dan would be off work and I could file a report with Darlene, his deputy. I didn’t completely escape ridicule because Darlene had already heard my theory. She shot me a sideways grin when I told her I wanted to file a report about Prissy’s biddies’ betting, but I heard no outright laughter, which worked just fine for me. I dropped off the notebook, completed a report with my account, and then went home to dread my next visit with Prissy Hewlett on the coming Tuesday.

After an uneventful couple of days in which I tried not to think about Prissy but failed miserably, I arrived at work on Monday morning to find a woman in a blue suit standing at my office door. She introduced herself as Agent Sally Benally from the FBI and told me that she wanted to ask me some questions about Ms. Priscilla Hewlett. I repeated to Agent Benally what I had told Darlene and Dan and she eventually seemed satisfied and left. Although I was steeling myself for another visit with Prissy on Tuesday, when I got to work the next day I discovered that she had been transferred to a different facility. The details about why and how and where were sparse and my manager was close-lipped about the move.

*********

Six weeks have now passed since then and the mystery of Prissy’s fast-tracked transfer had receded into the background of my mind, so I was mildly shocked to receive a call from Agent Benally this morning. She told me that TongueAss residents had been gambling on incidents that might happen to other residents, such as who might break a hip, who would be caught leaving someone else’s room in the morning, and, worst of all, who would die and when. The entry I sawㅡ”26/10/2017 - A.Y.-50-T.W.-D6M”ㅡhad been a bet with Albert Yazzie for $50 that Tanya Williams would be dead within 6 months. Tanya had indeed passed away the evening before I received Prissy’s notebook, which was 5 months to the day that the bet had been made. In retrospect, fuelled with this additional information and thinking about the icicle-cold glare that Gladys had delivered both Yazz and Prissy, I remembered the close friendship that Tanya and Gladys had shared. I had never mentioned Gladys or the source of the little black notebook to Agent Benally but made a mental note to have a chat with Gladys quite soon.

As my conversation with Agent Benally wrapped up, she walloped me with the best type of news. Prissy was a known fugitive in Savannah, Georgia, whose original name was Priscilla Grace DuBois. Prissy had been wanted for murder for over 20 years and was now being extradited back to Georgia to face trial. Agent Benally told me to expect a cheque in the mail for $20,000 in unclaimed reward money. I stammered some profuse and surprised “thank yous” and nearly lost my composure. Our call ended and my mind whirled like a psychedelic circus so that I had difficulty focusing on anything but a singular word in my head.

Jackpot.