Violence (29 page)

Anderson descended the front steps of church with Jeannie and the other attendees after the services had concluded. It was a crisp winter evening and the condensed water vapor from everyone’s breath billowed like blasts of steam. Lips were instantly made numb and it was so cold people laughed at the icy contrast because they knew everyone else was in the same boat.

“You didn’t exit with your little toe pointed towards the third Valley of the Sun.” Anderson mentioned as he playfully held Jeannie back on the stairs. “Or is it your left knee in transit with Jupiter?”

“Who cares?” Jeannie responded gaily.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and headed for Anderson’s Mercedes in the parking lot when they were intercepted by a lean, smiling young man in an expensive full length cashmere coat.

“Noel Anderson?” The young man asked as he pulled off his leather glove and extended his hand. “Hi, Glen Steig, I’m a producer for the Byron Burke Show.”

Anderson shook his hand as Jeannie’s eyes grew wide at the mention of the “Byron Burke Show.” Burke was the undisputed new king of daytime tabloid trash TV and had singlehandedly revitalized the struggling format. Saying you worked for Burke was tantamount to saying you worked for The President as far as Jeannie was concerned. And so it was for everybody else in America for that matter. The last year had seen a meteoric rise in Burke’s fortunes. Every bus stop and magazine cover had his face plastered across it. Burke stepped out of the shadows and separated himself from his slew of talk show competition when he got a congressman to admit during an actual live interview that he was a cross-dresser. Adding to that, the congressman’s favorability numbers actually went up and he made a successful run for the U.S. Senate seat in his home state. Burke also juiced his own numbers when he lead a triumphant televised raid of a sex slave operation in Texas, even suffering a serious knife wound to his leg in the process fending off one of the human traffickers.

“I had a chance to catch you on the ‘Kari’ Show and I was impressed.“ Steig remarked, wasting no time getting to the purpose of his visit. “We have twice the viewers and we’re syndicated to over two-hundred stations…” Steig rapidly continued, trying not to make it sound like the spiel that it was, as he smoothly removed a business card from a thin leather case. “…We’re based here in Chicago. I’d love to have you come in for a pre-interview, see if we can’t get you on the show, give you another chance to get your message out. What do you think of that?”

Anderson only had the business card in his hand for a second before Jeannie grabbed it and scrutinized it in detail, awestruck.

The pre-interview took place a week later in one of the producer’s offices at Protect The Dreamer Studios located just outside of the main downtown business district of Chicago. Protect The Dreamer was the name of the production company which housed the sound stages where The Byron Burke Show was taped.

Anderson was greeted in the lobby by Glen Steig. After going through a metal-detector and a pat-down that was more thorough than anything he ever experienced at the criminal courts building, Anderson was then lead by Steig through a series of security doors and deposited in a waiting room.

The waiting room or “Green Room” was packed with guests and back-up guests to be used as needed to fill the hour-long show currently getting ready for that day’s taping on “Obesity – A Mental Health Issue?” Needless to say, Anderson was the thinnest person in the room.

Since Steig had disappeared, Anderson decided to slip out into the corridor and bide his time there until he was summoned. Staffers and assistants darted in every direction like they were on speed.

Anderson could see Steig’s back in what looked like a control room doorway so he drifted in that direction. Moving up, he could hear the booming voice of Byron Burke, the hyper 40-year-old star of the show who was watching a bank of monitors and eating Chinese take-out.

“Look at the moustache on this broad!” Burke bellowed in reaction to a close-up of a large woman on the studio stage who was being prepped for the show’s opening. “Have make-up take care of that! And please, no more shows on fat people after this!”

An assistant with a headset instantly relayed Burke’s instructions to the studio floor.

At this same moment, Steig peevishly noticed Anderson and the fact that Anderson had impudently abandoned the Green Room.

“Yeah Byron, this is Noel Anderson, the guy I told you about.” Steig interrupted.

“Oh, right.” Burke responded, looking at an electronic notepad, then addressing Anderson like he was hard-selling him something (which he was – though he was unabashed and didn’t try to cover up the fact like Steig). “Glen told me about your story. Now Noel, we really want to probe the issue of forgiveness, and we want to do a piece with you and we’ve got some ideas. I think what would really lift the show and give you finality, closure, an end to your pain is this: we do a telephone hook-up with the jail, get a shot of you talking on the phone to the man who murdered your wife. And understand, we don’t go in for that circus crap, we’re different. We’re going to do this tastefully. How does that sit with you?”

Actually, when Anderson called Steig the day after the church parking lot encounter, and after Jeannie’s ringing endorsement, Steig ran this same idea by him and let Anderson know what he should expect if they got the “go-ahead” to produce the segment. He told Anderson they would need the usual: a whole history, photographs, signed release, and a voice-over which Anderson felt would be stagy and overly theatrical but which he agreed to do anyway. But all this was only necessary if the Burke “meet” went well.

Burke must have liked Anderson’s presence because Steig said this face-to-face was part of the process of getting the permission to proceed and Burke wouldn’t give Anderson “two seconds” if he didn’t like his “energy” right away. And Anderson wasn’t being dismissed.

“Actually, I was thinking…” Anderson said, and he had thought carefully about this. “…maybe I could meet with him in person, if that could be arranged.”

Burke stopped scooping chow mein noodles into his mouth and stared with astonishment at Anderson.

“Would you do that?” Steig butted in, stunned. “Meet with him? Eye to eye?”

“Sure. I’d like to tell him I forgive him. Sit in the same room. I thought I might wash his feet.” Anderson calmly suggested (to their continued stunned amazement) and added, “Jesus did that for his disciples as a way of symbolizing a cleansing from sin.”

“FUCKING DYNAMITE! I LOVE THIS GUY!” Burke howled in approval, throwing his arms in the air, plastic fork in one hand and chow mein container in the other as if he were signaling a touchdown.

CHAPTER 26

         T
he sally port at the Stateville Correctional facility was a foreboding holding area. It was where the featureless white van containing Anderson, Steig, a soundman and a cameraman had to be checked meticulously by a pair of guards using mirrors on poles to inspect the undercarriage before they were even allowed to remove their gear.

It had taken another three weeks after the Byron Burke “go-ahead” to get permission and coordinate the logistics for getting Anderson in front of Derek Lysander.

The sally port guards ran hand held metal detectors over Anderson’s group and they were systematically given pat-downs beneath the 33-foot high concrete walls topped with razor wire. Gun-toting sentries stared menacingly down at them from their tower perches.

“How do you feel, Noel, now that you are about to have this meeting with the man deemed responsible for your wife’s murder?” Steig asked Anderson after the soundman held out a microphone and the cameraman steadied the video camera on his shoulder for a quick shot to be used as part of the intro to the eventual aired segment (the cameraman had already jumped out and grabbed a cover shot of the exterior of the prison when they first drove up to the facility).

“I feel apprehensive, I have to admit…” Anderson answered a bit tensely, casting a look at the prison walls behind him, before looking back to the camera. “…but also hopeful that something positive can occur here today.”

“Any other feelings?” Steig queried.

“No, just that maybe that I sense God is walking with me today, and I also have my wife and daughter here.” Anderson elaborated, smiling nervously after taking a deep breath.

“Beautiful, thanks.” Steig snorted flatly, in another voice entirely, after drawing his hand across his throat which gave the cameraman and soundman the cue to cut the recording.

The warden at Stateville, Arturo “Art” Cassano, an angry-looking bear of a man who resembled the actual meaning of his given name, was buzzed through a double-set of security doors flanked by a pair of chiseled-veteran guards. Stateville had its share of movie shoots and television “specials” over the years. They had to allow themselves to be somewhat accessible to the “public.” The employees of ‘The ‘Ville’ were mainly irritated by this nonsense because they were always shown by the media as the bad guys, never portrayed the way they liked or felt they deserved. So, starfucking aside, since Byron Burke himself wasn’t going to be here, this request was viewed with annoyance. But, in these challenging economic times, with Illinois broke like most states, the check from Burke’s production company soothed their displeasure and made the State Prison Oversight Board think they were amenable to alternative funding initiatives.

“Gentlemen, I’ll need you to sign these, please.” Cassano rasped as one of his attendant guards handed a clipboard and pen to Anderson for him to be first to affix his signature. “It’s a release of our facility from liability should you suffer any personal harm during your visit.”

Anderson applied his signature in the indicated space on the top form as he let a guard rifle through the pages of the Bible he brought.

Anderson finished and handed the clipboard to Steig to sign his release while the cameraman and soundman continued to quickly offload their equipment.

“You’ll have twenty minutes and that’s it.” Cassano informed the group.

That’s all any of them wanted.

A guard posted at a security checkpoint just inside the sally port hit a button to open a heavy steel-reinforced trundle-gate.

The two chiseled guards lead the way for the warden, Anderson and the others to move into the prison.

“Only Mr. Anderson will be allowed inside the cell with the prisoner!” Cassano barked over the banging and shouts which resounded everywhere now. “The camera stays outside!”

Clamor was the only constant here. Day and night. Inmates were required to use earphone plug-ins for all audio/visual equipment (or else that item would be confiscated per the rules) to keep the noise down, but they mostly ignored the regulation and more than made up for it with yelling which was also against the rules but impossible to enforce with hundreds of prisoners in each cell block. The constant racket drove many to insanity.

Anderson flinched as the gate slammed shut behind them and the locking mechanism was shot home.

Cassano quickly escorted Anderson’s group through this, the imposing center of one of Stateville’s vast cellhouses. Cassano moved much more jauntily inside, not wheezing, like his lungs had suddenly become two well-timed pistons that fired perfectly in order to not take in too deeply the rancid, peculiar smells of the prison.

Derek had been moved temporarily for the “interview” to a solitary cell in X House, the Protective Custody Unit where usually, mostly openly gay inmates who required shielding were sent. It would be quiet enough there for the most part.

However, first Anderson and the group had to travel through this daunting five-story structure to get there. The prison just had its sixth lockdown in as many weeks due to inmate fighting, and all the prisoners were confined to their cells 24/7. Even meals had to be taken there.

The presence of Anderson’s group got an immediate rise out of the general population as hundreds of inmates in their state-blues cried out from the cells that honeycombed the multiple tiers or “galleries” on either side. It was just as smelly and noisy as F House, the notorious Segregated Unit where Derek resided. Indeed, most inmates here had heard through the prison grapevine that this get-together was taking place. The guards might have even helped spread the news, liking to see the fearful reaction of civilians to their everyday working world.

“Do not lose focus of where you are, gentlemen.” Cassano shouted back over his shoulder as he walked the group quickly through the vast space. “There are only two emotions in here… fear and anger. Be wary of both.”

The hair rose on the back of the necks of everyone in Anderson’s group. The soundman nervously dropped a piece of equipment.

Anderson stared intensely at the disquieting scene before him, taking in the savage spectacle of the inmates and the animal-like way they pressed against the bars, seething against their caged condition.

Time almost seemed to stop for Anderson as he fixed his gaze on some shouting, wild-eyed convicts, and a memory was triggered:

“You fucking little bitch!” railed the voice of an older man. It was coming from a dimly lit room at the end of a dark corridor in a house permeated by the sobs of a young girl. Anderson was 16-years-old, coming home from his late-night job washing dishes at a restaurant when he heard the girl’s plaintive cries. He ran towards the sound, skidding into a doorframe in his haste. Quickly finding his footing, he looked into the room where an older man in his early 50’s groped lecherously at the garments of a 14-year-old girl on a sofa. The teenage Anderson raced over and pulled the man off.

“Get away from her!” The 16-year-old Anderson yelled as he threw the older man into a table littered with empty beer cans and a nearly drained bottle of cheap whiskey.

The older man hit the floor momentarily but staggered to his feet, his sweaty face shiny in the weak light, eyes on fire with rage. “You little shit! Who the hell are you to tell me…” the older man snorted with slurred malevolence.