Talking Heads (7 page)

Tomorrow he was going to the Law Library. He was working up an attack on the state system for awarding construction contracts. Would two hours be enough?

He was still at his notes when the phone rang again. The Senate majority leader, Forbes Croftall.

“I'm glad I found you, Mr. Viddich. I'm glad you were still on the job.”

The Senator had read Kit's piece. His aide had passed it along. “We were both impressed, Mr. Viddich, indeed impressed.” The hum in Kit's ears made him recheck the empty workspace: Corinna's open desk calendar, Zia's bright neglected postcards. “At any rate, Mr. Viddich, after reading the excerpts my aide selected for me, I thought a call to the Building Commission was in order.” Kit ran a touch-test along his desktop: pens and stapler and here was a photo of Bette on horseback. The Senator's conversational style recalled her family's, Brahman Brisk. “And Mr. Viddich, did you know that your piece had made the rounds at the Commission as well?” Comp copies, check. Kit hadn't even gotten the go-ahead yet, the word he was waiting for, and already his knees were pumping, he had to force himself to listen through the sproing and wobble of the jack-in-the-box in his chest.

Just five minutes ago, the Senator said, he'd gotten a call back from the commissioners. “I've been empowered to extend you an invitation, Mr. Viddich. You can ride with the inspection team.”

Kit kept it under the desk, flutter—kicking like he was swimming sprints.

“Though you will have to be there before seven-thirty, Mr. Viddich. Bright and early tomorrow morning.”

The Senator went on talking, names and addresses. With that of course it was anticlimax, dishwater. Kit said thanks, formally. His legs settled. The Senator spieled on and Kit fitted the phone under his jaw, he took down the details on his appointment calendar. The thrill was durable: a tasseled puppet's cap tickled the inside of his ribs. But he checked his wall calendar, he made sure to thank the man again.

“You know, it was your piece that did it, Mr. Viddich. We were all very impressed.”

He'd have to leave a note for Corrina, she'd have to make some calls. And the word “we” settled Kit still more. He took up his notepad again and leaned into the phone. His electricity faded into questions, possible connections, quick scribbles across yellow paper. The aide, after all, was no friend of his, a crooked preacher. Croftall was no angel either.

“I put a lot of work into that piece, Senator,” Kit tried.

“You called our attention to some very disturbing material, Mr. Viddich. Very disturbing material. Really, we can't get on with our business until we have a look at this.”

Croftall must have his reasons. “And that's why you're doing this, Senator? My case deserves special treatment?”

“Well, as I'm sure you're aware, so much of what we read in the news these days is nothing but fluff. The words fade right into the paper. But your piece, well. Indeed.”

He tried to picture the senator, but he couldn't recall anything recent on TV. “Still I do have to wonder, Senator. Such a last-minute change of policy, ah …”

“Oh now. You've heard of this sort of thing happening before, surely. Every once in a while, someone from the media goes along on an inspection.”

Dishwater. Names and details, but no explanations. And the Senator would like to see whatever story came out of the visit. “You could make an appointment if you'd like, Mr. Viddich. My aide has the book.” But this wasn't the place for Kit to go after the answers he wanted. Asking would do more harm than good. He told Croftall only that he'd “like to talk, some time.” Like to scratch a few blackboards and see if the man squirmed.

Kit hung up knowing the larger motive. No mystery there. A few of the people who made policy had gotten scared. They'd decided that on this one, they better look clean. No mystery at all. Kit's zizz returned, flutter-kick, flutter-kick. He came up with noises that made his chest-muscles ache. Between Monday and Wednesday he'd gotten into Monsod and found out Leo's dirty little secret—pretty good. Pretty good for the first three days of the rest of his life.

He stood pumping his arms, his fists.
Made it
!

Unexpectedly he caught his reflection in the dark streetside windows. Batman afloat in the Gotham skies. He sat again, his breathing settling until it no longer echoed, and stared at the photo of his wife.

He hadn't expected a frisk. The Monsod security officer was young, Kit's age. He had an athlete's upthrust butt, an Irish delinquent's pout. He smelled of starch. Kit missed nothing, because as soon as he and the inspectors were through the prison sally port, the guard was on him. Kit was spun against the nearest wall, his hands and feet propped apart. He lost his height advantage. The first touch forced his eyes shut. The bars of the sally port buoyed up again in the darkness, lines and bars that were also somehow layout and pasteup. His ears began singing. The guard worked with stubborn fingers, a boxy palm—always first the fingers, then the palm—probing armpits and nipples and crotch.

The officer said nothing to indicate it was over. He called in at a nearby lock-box while Kit was still grimacing against the wall.

What about the Building Commission inspectors? Why didn't they join in the fun?

There were two inspectors, older men. Their shoulders had dropped and they appeared shrunken in down vests, rubber boots, tool belts. Kit never got to ask why they weren't searched. The security led them into the upper courtyard of cells, and there Kit was rocked by the scent of newly-washed floors. An ammonia frisk. Also the guard warned them that he didn't have much time. The staff was shorthanded again, he said. By then, the inmates had started up.

“Y'all gonna get naked in here, mothafucks. Nobody gets outta here.”

“End of the line, sweet butts. Might as well get down and get naked right now.”

“Oooo, check out the pretty one, check him out. The tall one.”

“The blonde? Nazi movie faggot?”

“Oooo, mothafuck heard you!”

“Nazi boy! Nazi movie!”

Kit couldn't believe he'd let his look slip. He'd heard the horror stories, he hadn't worn blue.

He fished out his notepad. During the ride from downtown, Kit had sketched the floor plan at basement level. He'd already looked over the blueprints on file at the Building Commission, checking the details Junior Rebes had given him. In the city van this morning, thinking ahead, making his sketch, he'd placed question marks here and there. But the page he opened to now was all about Bette.

Before they'd made it out past the 128 beltway this morning, Kit had begun jotting notes about his wife. The inspectors wouldn't talk, the floor plan took five minutes at most, and next thing he knew he was noting down what Bette had told him about the psychic. Apparently Kit himself had turned up at the seance. “B: ‘Not only saw u, saw yr father'.” In the van, the letters came out spiky. “B: ‘Well Some souls
are
inextricly linked, I spose.'” The notes had felt wildly irrelevant, of course. He'd struggled for some insight to justify them: “Bs: Frightened? Family? Too close?”

“Sweet Nazi butt, get
naked
. No secrets in here.”

“Mothafuck, what you lookin' for under your coat? Lookin' for your Daddy under there?”

Kit couldn't get hold of his pen.

“Lighten up,” the Monsod guard told him. “Looking pissed just makes it worse.”

It was bedlam as they reached the end of the courtyard. Prisoners thrust arms through the bars, brushing thumbs with fingertips. I'll pay, I'll pay. Kit hadn't expected such a game. The cons themselves were the butt of the joke here. Their grins and hipshot poses were copped from Flip Wilson's Geraldine, from God-knows-what other drag queens—all more than halfway to self-hatred. A man on an upper bunk extended a tongue as long and yellow as Kit had ever seen, but when he wagged this tongue it signaled disgust as much as tasty licks. Bedlam.

“Whoo, sweet butt!”

“You got to understand,” the guard shouted, as he punched the lockbox to the next door, “you're the whole party for these guys. You're the star. They love it when the virgins freak.”

The buzz from the box cut through the uproar. The door clanked and shrieked as the guard pulled it open.

“A virgin on the premises, whoa. That's party time.”

On the other side, the man bent to the call box and barked his code. Kit recalled the probing at his crotch.

“Plus,” the officer went on as the door groaned shut, “you should know, these last three-four weeks, these guys've been
ready
. Every day they've been jacked up and ready to rock.”

Kit still had his pad. “Is that since the disturbance?”

The guard nodded, tugging at the gate to check the lock.

“So how come you're understaffed?”

The man gave him a look. “Whoa. You're a reporter and you've got to ask that?”

“The cutbacks are that bad?”

“Far as I'm concerned,” the guard said, “the cutbacks are what did it. If they'd give us the men we asked for, there wouldn't have been no disturbance in the first place. This stuff you're gonna see, this shit downcellar, that was just the excuse.”

They were in a narrower place now, a corridor of cells. The noise had subsided. Kit got out his pen.

“You put that in your paper, okay? My name's Garrison, Charley Garrison, and I don't care who knows it. You tell them that the way things are this morning, I got less than three years in here and I'm the senior man on duty.”

“And we gon' put it in yo
ass
, Garrison!” a prisoner cried.

Screeches, catcalls, obscenities. In this space the noise was total, the silence of a moment before inverted. The hallway was worse than the courtyard, more compressed, more metal. A lab rat would have known enough to turn and run. Kit didn't realize the guard had something more to say till he touched a finger to Kit's pad.

“Just tell them,” Garrison repeated.

He turned his back again, before Kit could respond. Hunched over his notes, his gorge bubbled with coffee. He'd needed a third cup.

“Better catch up, sweet butt.” A single voice, quiet. When had the ruckus died down?

“Don't want to be left all a-lone, sweet sweet.”

The penitentiary had five levels, “E” at the bottom and “A” at the top. The entry from outside was at the central level. The heat increased as they descended, until Kit felt his ribcage running sweat. He'd wondered about wearing his trenchcoat. Most of the way there were only a couple oversized bulbs for each corridor, the light made hotter by its steel reflecting cone. The cellblocks here were empty except for the occasional white stare. Even in the pen it was a weekday morning. There was the workshop, the law library, classes. No doubt some aired their resentments in the cold yard.

Kit had seen the blueprints. He'd visited county jails, and by now he must have interviewed a couple dozen cons. He could even recall Monsod's optimum population, 1,118. He decided to figure out what proportion of the prisoners were where. Start with those in these corridors, a ballpark figure anyway. How many had he seen so far? Okay, now subtract that from—well, there were the cutbacks, the overcrowding. Make the total population more like 1500, a nice round figure. No need to make himself crazy. So, the workshop, the yard, the library … classes and group therapy … altogether make it eight possible locations for any prisoner, with the largest percentage per capita on a Thursday morning either in the shop or in the yard: say 300 “working,” 300 “playing.” No doubt a time-&-motion expert could break it down further.

In the center of “D” level, an otherwise blank corridor, stood the doors to the workshop. Here the heat was worst. The inmates worked stamping license plates, and the fumes of paint and molten metal made Kit's eyes water. But the windows showed him nothing. Scarred and dented plexiglass, portholes on fog.

*

Aw, Viddich. Stay with it. Below “D” level, Kit and the others entered an enclosed spiral stairwell. For the first time he got between the two inspectors. There, almost between one ringing step and the next, it was January again. January and nighttime: down here they left the lights out. Kit's eyes were still adjusting when the four of them stopped.

“Wow.” The inspector who spoke was so close that Kit could feel the man shiver. “You can't even use forced air?”

“Somebody had the bright idea of using the workshop ovens as the furnace.” The guard tapped his baton across the downstairs door to find the lockbox. “Right now the overhead pipes are so bad we can't get any circulation.”

“Ah, Charley …” The inspector's voice had changed. “Overhead pipes?”

“Charley,” the other inspector said, “we never heard about no overhead pipes.”

This guy too sounded off-key, forced. Kit wondered about the stairwell's echo, and when the door opened, the group hustled through faster than necessary. Was there something worth knowing about overhead pipes? Kit tried to make a note in the dark, but a new dampness made his lungs catch. The smell was a thousand miles out of place, the skunk-cabbage chill of his uncles' creekbed. When the fluorescents came on overhead, coffee pulsed under his scalp.

“What is this?” he said. “What are you so scared of?”