Authors: Ed Gorman

New Title 1 (10 page)

BOOK: New Title 1

2.2Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

He spends two of his prison years working in the print shop, running a big press. The prison does a lot of cut-rate printing for the state.

It is in the print shop that the snitch is dealt with.

Five days before it happens, two white cons trap a black con in the showers and castrate him. They also, after cutting him up that way, use the same knife to cut his throat.

Prison, always a dangerous place, is now even more dangerous.

At meals, the blacks huddle against one wall and glare at the whites who sit huddled along the other.

On the yard, he witnesses the most violent fistfight he's ever seen, between this jig and this big Polack.

In less than two minutes—the time it takes for the guards to come running and break it up—they break each other's noses, the black guy breaks two or three knuckles, the white guy breaks his arm, and both of them suffer what later prove to be brain concussions because of the ferocity of their blows. They are both bloody and unconscious by the time the guards reach them.

He is scared.

Can't sleep sometimes, he's so scared.

Even finds himself on the verge of tears, he is so frightened.

But most of the cons are. They all know how terrible this thing could get.

Comes a particular moment, he is alone in his cell. The warden is moving everybody around again—the cons have started referring to cellblock F as the Transit Authority—and he just happens to be between cell mates.

Another night when he can't sleep.

This night, he puts a pillow over his head and keeps his eyes shut and tries to block out all the screaming and the taunts as black men shout you gonna pay pussy! and white men shout back I'm gonna kill you nigger!

Not until tonight does he realize what a real prison riot must be like. All the chaos. But most especially all the rage. He can't get Attica out of his mind. So many had died so savagely. The cons had even broken pop bottles so they could use the jagged edges to rip the eyes out of cons who had snitched in the past.

Tear out their eyes like that.

He tries hard to sleep.

But can't.

Next morning, he's running his press, checking ink levels and grabbing an occasional page to scan, when Marley, a true maniac, comes up and says, "You didn't hear nothin'."

"All right."

"Haskins."

"Yeah?"

"He was the snitch," Marley says.

"Wow. He seems like such a nice guy. You sure?"

"What the hell's that supposed to mean? I say Haskins's the snitch, then he's the snitch. Dig?"

"Dig."

Two days earlier, the two whites who had castrated the black man had been identified by a snitch and put in the hole. They would soon be formally charged.

Now Marley says they found the snitch. And now Marley says, "So if you hear somethin', you didn't hear nothin'. Right?"

"Right."

He goes back to his press work.

A few minutes later he notices that a very pale, very scared-looking con named Haskins is being dragged toward the big storage closet in the room adjacent to the press room.

Haskins looks right at him. Puppy-dog eyes. Imploring.

Please. Please do something.

Please help me.

Please be human.

Please.

They drag Haskins into the storage closet and close the door.

He actually doesn't hear much.

An occasional cry.

An occasional scream.

The press makes a lot of noise.

They're in there a long time, or at least a lot longer than he expects.

He runs his press.

None of my business.

That's the only way you stay alive in prison.

None of my business.

When they come out, they're sweaty and sort of mussed up. They're walking fast.

Marley just sort of nods to him.

And then vanishes.

He just keeps working on his press.

None of my business.

But when it's time to grab a mid-morning Pepsi from the machine, he routes himself right past the storage closet door.

And sees the blood flooding out from beneath the door.

Man, they really must have given it to that poor bastard. Which is the really weird thing. Because while the blood he spills while cutting up his own victims doesn't bother him (murders the police know nothing about, murders that have nothing to do with his tenure in prison)—the sight of somebody else's violence sickens and scares him.

He avoids getting the blood on his shoes.

Doesn't want to be implicated in any way.

He goes and gets his Pepsi and goes back to his press and minds his own business.

After a while, this guard is cutting through the press room on his way to lunch, and he sees the blood on the floor and goes over and opens the storage closet door.

He suddenly looks real sick.

Rushes to the phone and then suddenly there are a dozen guards all over the printing room and they all take turns peeking into the storage closet and they all suddenly look sick

Seems that Marley and his buddy did the same thing to Haskins that the other white guys did to the jig in the shower.

Castrated him and then cut his throat.

Well, he supposes there's a kind of poetic justice to this, but he still can't sleep very well at night.

On the way back to my motel, my mind stuck on the photograph it had taken of Nora Conners's throat as she was being carried on the stretcher, the fleshy red mess of it. I had a difficult time changing the photo in the slide tray.

"Bad?" the old clerk asked after he waved me into the front office.

"Terrible." He wanted details. People in hell want ice water.

On TV, Larry King was talking to a movie star about her new autobiography.

The office looked the same, ancient and shabby, duct tape covering slices in the green vinyl couch and armchair, the diamond-patterned indoor-outdoor carpeting worn to a flat black dirty color. At one time, I think, it had been maroon.

"Somebody said she was buck-ass naked," the old guy said, still wanting scandal and gore.

"Sorry. She had all her clothes on."

"Oh."

"I'm sure it'll be in the paper tomorrow morning."

"Not here it won't. We only got the weekly."

"In the state paper, then."

"Yeah, but they never give you much detail, not like the Chicago papers. You ever read the Chicago papers?"

"Sometimes."

"They give you everything. If they're naked, they tell you they were naked."

"That's what first-class journalism is all about."

He caught my sarcasm, and for a moment looked like what he was: an old man dying out his nights at the front desk of a tiny motel in the middle of nowhere on a planet nobody but us lonely animals had as yet discovered. I was being a prig. He wanted a few juicy details, just a natural human curiosity. I'm the sort of hypocrite who scans all those tabloid covers earnestly while waiting in the supermarket line, then talks about how silly they are at dinner later that night, and how I can't imagine people wasting their time on them.

"There was a lot of blood."

"Yeah?" he said, all frayed red bow-tie and frayed polyester white shirt and frayed ancient blue cardigan. "A lot, huh?"

"Cut her throat."

"God damn."

"And she was a looker, too."

"Young, huh?"

"Young enough."

"God damn," he said to my back after I'd nodded good night and was starting out the door. "Sure wish the Chicago papers was going to cover this."

The screen door slammed behind me.

The old fart said, "Hey."

I stopped, turned around.

"You got a phone call."

"From whom?"

"Guy named Tolliver. Is that the rich Des Moines Tolliver?"

"He leave a number?"

"Said you had it."

"Thanks."

"Is that the rich Des Moines Tolliver?"

"I'm not sure."

He looked disappointed.

In my room, I locked up for the night, opened a Pepsi, sat down on the edge of the bed, lifted the receiver, dialed a long-distance operator and dialed Tolliver. My room was shadowy and chilly, a tomb of secrets, furtive adultery, broken dreams and bright doomed hopes.

The maid answered. I had the impression she didn't care for me awfully much. Maybe she knew I was a hypocrite about tabloids.

"I'll see if he's taking calls," she said frostily and set the phone down.

"Hello," said a deep voice that sounded both intelligent and curiously humble. I guess I'd been expecting the stereotype robber baron to answer.

"Mr. Tolliver?"

"Yes."

"My name's Jim Hokanson."

"Yes, Mr. Hokanson, that's what Katie said. Katie, my maid."

"Well, I called you earlier tonight before it happened."

"Before what happened?"

"Before—" I stopped myself. "Have you heard from the police tonight, Mr. Tolliver?"

"The police?"

"Yes. There's been—some trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

God, now I'd have to tell him.

"Mr. Tolliver, I wish I didn't have to tell you this but—your daughter Nora's been murdered."

A long enigmatic silence. "My daughter Nora?"

"Yes."

"Has been murdered?"

"Yes."

"And you are who, exactly?"

"Jim Hokanson."

"Are you a police officer?"

"No."

"Are you a private investigator, then?"

"Something like that."

"I see." A pause. "Mr. Hokanson?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Hokanson, this is going to come as a shock to you, but I don't have a daughter."

"I met her."

"You met someone who perhaps told you she was my daughter, but she wasn't."

"I feel pretty goddamned foolish right now."

"As well you should, Mr. Hokanson. As well you should. Now give me your exact location. I have a plane of my own, and I'm going to fly over there tomorrow."

"I'm really sorry about this."

"Quit babbling, Mr. Hokanson, and tell me where you're calling from. I want to find out just what is going on."