Sanctuary (6 page)

“And yet you’re still here,” Danny said.

Godfrey lowered his hands and flashed his missing-toothed smile. “Because I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut. The warden doesn’t like my little slipups. He’s got all the privileged guys in tow, see?” He stabbed his forehead with a bony finger. “But I got too much up here for him. The only thing that keeps me out of trouble is that no one has the brains to listen.”

His confession made Danny wonder why he’d been placed with Godfrey. Clearly, the warden wanted him to hear all of this.

“How long have you been here?” he asked.

“Two years. Give me another two and I just might see it like the rest. It gets to you, you know. Don’t think it doesn’t. Once you buy into it all, you’re stuck. The strange thing is, the Pape’s philosophy actually seems to work. Basal is probably the smoothest-running correctional facility in the country.”

“Why wouldn’t it be? The warden handpicks his prisoners.”

“True. He’s even got the knuckleheads by the gonads. It’s not just the carrot, my friend. There’s more down in that basement than a cold hole. You buck the system and you pay a price.”

Godfrey glanced at the bars and lowered his voice. “In my time I’ve seen three men commit suicide, all of them knuckleheads, and I swear not one of them did it to themselves. That’s just the way it is. He’s got a little heaven and a little hell laid out like a smorgasbord, and he makes the choice pretty easy. Just like on the outside.”

“Hustlers?”

“Sure, we got all kinds, everybody has their thing, but it’s all pretty much either aboveboard or immediately exposed and punished. Nothing happens the warden doesn’t know about, trust me. If there’s a hustle going on, it’s only because he allows it. There’s no freedom here. Pape controls every syllable uttered in this prison. Sometimes I think half the staff doesn’t even know what’s really happening.”

“So it’s not all aboveboard.”

“I’m not talking about the hustles and tattoos or what not. I’m talking about what’s
really
going on. And visitation? Forget it.”

It was the first thing Godfrey said that struck a raw nerve.

“Unless you’re in the east wing, and then only if he can trust you. ‘Come out from among them and be separate,’ as the book says. Keeps you safe from what destroyed you, he says.”

“I’m surprised his policy isn’t challenged.”

“By who? You have an attorney?”

“No need for one.”

“Exactly. Like you said, he handpicks his prisoners. The ones who don’t have a case or the resources to bring a case. You have anyone on the outside who would help you?”

His mind filled with an image of Renee marching up to the gate upon learning that she was barred from visiting him. She would go ballistic if she learned that contact with him was being cut off indefinitely.

Danny stood and ran his fingers through his hair. On the other hand, if he could manage his way into the east wing and earn both visitation rights and an early release, he would be able to tend to her needs.

Dear God, he missed her. It was difficult to reveal the true nature of his longing to be with her without causing her more anxiousness. If she knew the extent of the suffering their separation caused him, she would never consider moving on to build a new life without him. And yet, considering her nature, he was sure she needed constant companionship. His own need for her loyalty and love was superseded by his need to see her at peace and comfortable, even if the transition proved to be difficult.

But now…what if there was a way to get out early? A legal way.

“How long does it take to get into the east wing? Assuming you play by the warden’s rules.”

Godfrey shrugged. “I’ve seen it done in six months. But he cycles them out as fast as they go in. Any deviant behavior, and I mean crossing-the-road-on-the-wrong-day kind of deviant behavior, and you’re back where you started from. Welcome to the sanctuary, Priest.”

“Please, don’t call me that.”

“No? Might as well get used to it, they’re already calling you that.” The older man stood. “If I was you—and this is just me, understand—I would learn the rules, follow his laws to the letter, and take your abuse. Let them think they’re breaking you. It’s in their blood. In the Pape’s universe, everyone is guilty and deserves punishment. Heck, he’d put the whole world in here if he could. Follow the Godfrey and you won’t go wrong.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“And so that you know, the only people who will talk to you during your so-called indoctrination are those the warden’s determined fit to speak to you. You’ll feel like a leper out there, but it’s by design. The good news is, you get me. If you let me, I’ll talk your ear off.”

“Speak all you like. Although I’d prefer it if you didn’t snore too loudly.”

“Then we’re good. I’ll sleep with my blanket over my head.”

Danny chuckled. “No need, my friend.”

Godfrey gave him a whimsical look. “You may insist, my priest.”

“What do you know about an inmate named Peter Manning?”

“Members, not inmates. Remember that. And the guards are facilitators. They’re just here to help us see the light. The warden’s very particular about words. And whatever you do, don’t swear. It took me three months to learn how to speak right.” He walked to the bars and peered down the tier. “Why do you ask about Peter?”

“The warden asked me to help him out.”

Godfrey looked away, frowning. “Pete’s in for statutory rape. He’s twenty years old and his story’s going to break your heart and get you in trouble, mark my words. He moves like clockwork—he’ll be in the dining room in half an hour. You can hear the story from him if you can get him to talk. But I’m warning you, tread carefully. You can’t save him.”

“I’m not here to save anyone.”

The man didn’t respond, but his eyes betrayed his thoughts clearly enough.
We’ll just see about that.
You never knew what kind of cell mate you would find in prison. Danny couldn’t imagine a better one than this old character who spoke what was on his mind.

“Just curious,” Danny said, “since you asked me, what’s your story?”

“Me? I was once a philosophy professor at UCLA. That was sixteen years ago. I’ve been serving Father Time ever since for a crime I didn’t commit.”

“And what crime was that?”

“I was framed for the tsunami that killed all those people in Indonesia. Unfortunately, I no longer have the resources to appeal the verdict.” He said it without the slightest hint of humor. “But don’t you worry about that, Priest. You have bigger worries.”

“Is that right? And what would they be?”

“Bruce Randell,” Godfrey said. “You’re not careful and he’ll kill you.”

SEEING THE MANGLED,
bloodied finger in a shoe box, I reacted as any normal person sent a piece of her husband’s body might. I rushed to the sink and threw up.

My illness came at the thought of that finger belonging to Danny, but whether it actually
was
Danny’s finger, I couldn’t know. It was way too mangled to tell. Either way, my world was caving in on itself. Danny’s life was in danger. So was mine.

I stood over the sink, shaking, mind racing. I couldn’t go to the police, that much I knew. Whoever was behind this knew too much about our past. Questions would be asked. People would talk. Both Danny and I would go down.

I didn’t have time to figure out who Bruce Randell was by researching the particulars of his incarceration and looking for details about his case. That was a long shot at best. I had to get to Danny, and there was only one way I knew to get to him. I had to go to Basal.

Impulsively, without even taking the time to look again, I wiped the vomit off my lips, grabbed the shoe box, and dumped the contents, tissue and all, into the garbage disposal. I flipped the switch. Three seconds of chunking and scraping later, the thing was gone, and only then did I wonder if I’d sent valuable evidence into the sewer system.

Danny had once cut things off of people. Maybe someone was returning the favor.

I had to get to Danny. He had to be alive. I knew that from my call to Basal earlier. If he was alive, I would find a way to get to him.

Basal was located in the high country, north of Rancho Cucamonga, far beyond my regular stomping grounds, which pretty much consisted of my condo, north Long Beach, and Ironwood State Prison. I wasn’t one for exploring just for the thrill of it. For starters, I hated the traffic in Southern California, especially the freeways, which were anything but free. They were their own kind of overcrowded prison—thousands and thousands of steel boxes crammed together on concrete with their prisoners staring ahead for hours on end. Then again, I suppose we all live in one kind of prison or another. Mine was my head.

Following the Google map I’d printed earlier in the week, I drove my white Toyota Corolla down the Riverside Freeway and caught the 15 headed north, cursing at the trucks when they barreled down my tailpipe or pushed me to the shoulder. But the hour drive with all of its hazards didn’t distract me from a larger reality pressing in on me.

I’d just ground up a finger and rinsed it down the drain. Maybe Danny’s finger.

It’s difficult to express just how much I loved him. He was my rock, my adviser, my lover in better times. I leaned on him for everything and he seemed to return the favor.

Take my job, or lack thereof. At twenty-seven years old I ought to have had a decent job, and believe me, I’d given it a shot. Not because I needed the money—Danny had given me enough to buy the two-bedroom condo in a quiet corner of an upscale complex and live without working for seven years. I needed a job because we both knew I had to find a way to enter a thriving social context if I didn’t want to go nuts.

During one of my weekly visits to Ironwood, Danny suggested I try something that didn’t require too much interaction with complaining customers, and ease into the workplace that way.

“Like what?” I asked.

He shrugged across the table and gave me one of his crazy, blue-eyed grins. “Like a night watchman. Put your skills to good use.”

I sat up. “Seriously?”

His grin faded. “No, not seriously. It was a joke.”

“But I could do that!”

“You couldn’t do that. I was just having fun.”

“No, I could. The only people I would have to worry about would be the ones looking down my barrel.”

Now his face was flat, that determined expression he uses when he wants to cut to the chase. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re tiny. The first thug that comes along weighing three hundred pounds would smash you flat.”

“You’re saying I don’t have what it takes?”

“I’m only saying that you’d be putting yourself in the way of danger. Please, Renee, do not consider this. For my sake if not for yours.”

See, I liked that Danny tried to care for me even while locked up. And while a part of me loved the idea of going up against a three-hundred-pound thug who might crush me if he tripped in my direction, the thought of using a gun again did bother me some. And I was a bit small to do any real business with a nightstick, if that was all they gave me.

“Then what else could I do at night?” I asked.

“Anything, I suppose. Drive a truck.”

“You’re serious?”

“No, not really. Just trying to—”

“That’s it! I could drive a truck. Right? One of those big 18-wheelers.”

“I think that’s pretty heavy work, don’t you?”

“Are you kidding? It’s all lifting gizmos and electric power stuff. It’s mostly listening to the radio and steering down a long road, right?”

“Hydraulic lifts.”

“What?”

“They’re called hydraulic lifts. The lifting gizmos.”

“Oh. Right.”

“So then try it,” he said.

And I had. The instructor thought I was a bit nuts at first, but he quickly learned that my mind wasn’t quite as frail as my body. I think it was during those few months trying the whole truck-driver thing that I first entertained the thought that I was too skinny. A lot of the best drivers have at least a few extra pounds of fat and muscle. Frankly, I was a bit jealous.

But here’s the thing about being a truck driver: once you get out of school and get to working for a real company (General Electric in my case, which was why I had GE appliances) you realize that you spend a lot of time with men in dirty warehouses. And too many of them don’t mind putting their filthy paws on your shoulder, your arm, your thigh, or your butt. Not a bad thing if you’re interested in them and their hands are clean, but I wasn’t and these weren’t.

I also tried selling magazine subscriptions from home, but the continual abuse was inhuman and I found myself fighting the urge to help ungrateful customers see their way to a better life despite repenting for my previous indiscretions.

All the while, my neurosis seemed to get worse, and after two years of periodic trials and failures I finally gave up. Point is, Danny supported my decision. He always did. I had been through a nightmare, he said. I just had to take some time and find myself.

Tears came to my eyes as I drove north, praying that Danny was still alive and had all of his fingers. My emotions ran a ragged edge, from rage to remorse to abject fear. I should never have listened to his nonsense about finding myself another, suitable man. The thought of living without him seemed profane now.

I still remembered every word of that conversation. It was on another one of my regular visits to Ironwood State Prison that Danny stared me in the eye and brought up the unthinkable. I knew he was working up to something critical in his mind because he gave me that long, I’m-sorry-for-what-I’m-about-to-say look and took my hand.

“Now listen to me, Renee. Please, you have to listen very carefully.”

Already, I didn’t like it. “I am listening, Danny.”

“We’ve been over this before.”

“Over what?”

“You know that I’m going to be in here fifty years.”

“Paroled in twenty-five,” I said. “Twenty-five years.”

“I don’t know that.”

“I do.” The fact that he had escaped death row, which at first I was so sure would be his fate, emboldened me. If he could cut such a deal with the DA, what else might be possible? A twenty-five-year parole, of course.

He glanced at the door. “What happens to me isn’t really in my control, Renee, you know that. It’s a war zone in here. Things happen.”

“They can’t hurt you, Danny,” I said. “Look at you!” He had been a powerful man before his incarceration but had gained thirty pounds since, all of it muscle. “You could take any of those thugs one-handed, show them who you are! Have any of them been through a real war?”

“Prison
is
a real war, but that’s not the point.”

“You’ve managed this far,” I said. “Right? Just defend yourself.”

“It’s not that simple. Defending yourself means defending your people, and that means resorting to violence. I can’t do that. But really, that’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“Fifty years is too long.”

“No, Danny, it’s not. No, you have the will of a bull!” Guilt was swamping me. He was in prison and I was free. I clung to his hand as if it were my last lifeline. “You have to do whatever you need to stay alive.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about, Renee.”

“It’s me? You want me to confess?”

“No! Please, no!”

“You want me to break you out?”

“Renee. My love. You’re missing the point.”

“Then what
is
your point?”

Danny stared at me for a moment, then lowered his gaze. He was never one to cry easily, but when he looked back, I saw that tears had filled his eyes. He swallowed hard, took a breath, and made it clear. “The point is that you can’t wait for me, Renee.”

“Of course I can. And I will.”

He lifted my hand and kissed my fingers tenderly. “No, Renee. You can’t. You’re going to fall apart without someone to hold on to. You know how much I love you, but you have to let go of me and find someone who can—”

I slammed my palm down on the table and bolted to my feet. “I don’t want anyone else!”

“Sit down,” the guard watching us near the door barked. I gave him a harsh stare and sat.

Danny spoke in a placating tone. “Please, darling. You have to be practical. As much as we both hate it, this is unfair to you.”

“I can decide what’s unfair to me. Thousands of prison wives do it. What’s unfair is that you’re in prison and I’m not.”

He ignored my last statement entirely. It was a moot issue for him. “I’m not suggesting that you can’t decide for yourself, and I have the highest respect for those who stand by their loved ones doing time. I’m only saying that you need to be realistic.” His jaw flexed, and he continued, “And you have to start thinking of me as well.”

I gawked at him, aghast.

When he took my hand again, his was trembling. Danny’s hand never trembles. He has one of the softest hearts I know, but the rest of him is made of steel. “Listen to me, Renee. I can’t do this knowing that your life on the outside is difficult because of your loyalty to me. You may argue that you’re fine, but I know you, dear. And I know me. You have to find someone to take care of you, if not for your sake, then for mine. Someone who will hold you at night when your fears come, someone to laugh with during the day. I can’t be that man.”

“You
already
are that man!”

He shook his head gently. “We’re not like the rest—you have to begin accepting that. I didn’t surrender myself for you to be alone except for an hour each weekend for the rest of your life.” A tear slipped from his eye and my heart began to break for him.

We’re not like the rest.
It was the truth, and I’d long known it. Having decided even before we married to take the fall for my sins, Danny never officially filed our marriage license and other necessary paperwork in Bosnia. In the eyes of the law, we never technically married. He wanted to make it easy for me that way, knowing this time would come. But he couldn’t know then that I would be forever married to him in my heart, regardless of the law.

“I’m strong, Danny,” I said. But I had started to cry with him.

We tenderly spoke for an hour that day at Ironwood, and when it was time to go I clung to him, sobbing, until the guard pulled us apart. The next time was no easier. But as time passed I began to admit my own loneliness to myself.

It took me another three months to accept his reasoning, and then only with the help of my therapist. Danny was only looking out for me, knowing that I really did need someone on the outside. He could not be persuaded otherwise. His need to belong to me was outweighed by his need for me to have constant companionship. Because I really was interested in honoring his needs above my own, I couldn’t dismiss them.

The problem was I still loved Danny and he loved me. Even after finally agreeing to entertain the idea of dating another man, I never worked up the courage or the desire to pursue any other relationship. I would love Danny till the day I died, even if he wasn’t my husband.

I left the city behind me and followed the train of trucks into the scrub-covered hills. The day was overcast or smoggy or both; a thick haze hugged the mountains. I couldn’t shake the feeling that when I emerged on the other side of the mist I would find myself lost. Thinking the radio might help, I turned it on, then off after a few minutes of talk about things that didn’t interest me.

By the time I reached Highway 138 the mist had thickened and I felt downright spooked. The traffic on the two-lane road snaking through the hills was spotty, which was a relief. But the lack of movement on either side made me feel more isolated. And it was quieter. Large limestone outcroppings rose from the ground like ghosts on guard.

A mile and a half later I reached Lone Pine Canyon Road, turned left onto the narrow two-lane road, and headed into no-man’s land. It was called the Angeles National Forest, but the forest was mostly shrubs and dirt here. The road turned, then rose and fell gently, following aboveground power lines.

The cutoff for Basal came suddenly, a few miles farther, announced by a single blue sign that read Basal Institute, with an arrow directed across Lone Pine. I swung my car onto a blacktopped driveway and it was then, driving into tall and ominous-looking trees, that I began to doubt my spontaneous decision to come and make something happen on my own.

I really had no idea what I could accomplish. For all I knew, I would never even reach the prison. There would be a gate and guardhouse long before I reached the actual entrance and, without the necessary paperwork, I would be turned away.

The driveway was long, at least half a mile, descending slowly as it snaked around the hills. The trees grew even taller. The mist was thicker. I rolled forward, alone on the road, breathing shallow.