by Tom Swyers
In the meantime, Annie had written down the phone number Phillip had called from onto a sticky note. “Here’s his phone number,” she said, handing it to David before grabbing his arm and pulling him close. “I love you, David Thompson.” She gave him a bear hug and a quick, hard kiss on the lips.
David left the house full of determination; he hoped the farewell kiss wouldn’t be his last.
Chapter 25
David sped up Central Avenue toward the bus stop closest to Phillip’s motel, but there was no Phillip waiting near the CDTA shelter. He jerked the Mustang to the outer lane; the tires screeched as he pulled a U-turn. As he passed Jimbo’s Shooter Supply, David prayed that Phillip hadn’t shopped for a gun there.
Suddenly, traffic came to a halt. Up ahead, David could see the light arrays of several emergency vehicles flashing in both lanes of the Albany-bound traffic. There was some kind of accident ahead. But David didn’t see a red express bus between himself and the accident. That would have been the color of Phillip’s bus. If Phillip’s bus was between him and the accident, David figured it would have blocked the light arrays of the smaller emergency vehicles ahead of it. But he could see their lights perfectly. He pounded the steering wheel when he realized Phillip’s bus must be traveling ahead of the accident. He pulled out his cell and dialed Phillip’s telephone. It rang but there was no answer. After eight rings a voice said that there was no way to leave a message. Phillip hadn’t activated the phone’s messaging feature.
Phillip had hopped on an express bus to downtown shortly after hanging up on David. Now he was riding the elevator, straightening his tie, on his way to see O’Neil in the state office building. The directory in the lobby said he was on the twenty-third floor. Another suit was along for the ride.
“It’s a nice day outside,” the other suit said.
“Sure is,” Phillip replied.
“Too bad we have to be inside today.”
“You said it.”
The chime sounded and the elevator came to a stop. The other suit got off. “Have a good one.”
“You too,” Phillip said, rolling up on the balls of his feet. When the doors closed, he chuckled as he reached for the lanyard around his neck and tucked his fake New York State ID partially behind his lapel. His artwork was not perfect, but he hoped it was good enough. The point of the sheathed carving knife tucked in his sock pricked his ankle so he shimmied it up his calf a bit.
The chime went off; the door opened. Phillip strode off as if he owned the place. A sign on the wall opposite the elevator pointed the way to the Bureau of Prisons executive offices and Phillip veered left in that direction. The hallway was filled with working stiffs—men and women—milling and walking about. There was a security station dead ahead. No metal detector in sight. A pimply face male guard was sitting behind a desk. He was on the phone talking to someone. As people passed by him, he bobbed his head in approval. Phillip got behind two men heading for the executive offices. When they laughed, he smiled and shook his head just as they did. When all three of them got to the security desk the officer there gave them the head bob.
Phillip trailed behind the two men, gradually creating more distance between him and them. He didn’t want to invade their space and raise their suspicions. One swiped his ID card over the scanner at the entrance to the executive offices and the red light turned to green. They opened the door wide and shuffled into the office. The hydraulic closer overhead whooshed as the door closed slowly—slow enough for Phillip insert his foot in the opening and for him to enter the office. No card, no problem.
As Phillip made his way around the huge perimeter of the open floor office space design, he ignored the sea of cubicles in the middle section. He knew that the commissioner would not be stationed there. Those spaces with mounds of manila folders piled high were reserved for the underlings who served their masters sitting in the windowed offices.
Phillip was only one of 60,000 inmates to the top brass, but the top brass were everything to Phillip. He believed that the commissioner and his servants were the master puppeteers behind his day-to-day existence under the control of the Kranston staff. In his mind, they decided if he should stay in solitary or go to the general population. Knowing how the brass worked was a matter of life and death to him.
He made it his life’s work to learn about how these bureaucrats thought. At his cell gate or through the ventilation shafts, he had overheard COs and prison officials at Kranston talking forever about the central office in Albany. Phillip talked to the suits from that office when they made rounds every once in a blue moon at Kranston. Anything and everything in the prison library having to do with incarceration in New York was devoured, reread, and memorized.
Phillip had scoped out the Bureau of Prisons office building on Google Maps at the public library. He saw how one side of the Bureau of Prisons office overlooked the New York State Capitol, home to the Senate and the Assembly, the epicenter of power in New York State. If the prison brass were going to be anywhere, they would be in window offices looking down on the New York State Capitol. Phillip knew that appearances were everything with the Bureau of Prisons.
Phillip read each nameplate as he strolled by the outer window offices and headed for the larger corner office, with its two large windows on either side overlooking the capitol building. The nameplates mounted on the wall next to each office door carried the name and title of the occupant. He knew he was getting warmer as he walked by chiefs, assistant directors, directors, assistant deputy commissioners, deputy commissioners, and then a senior deputy commissioner. Pecking order based on seniority was sacred in the Bureau of Prisons, as Phillip knew all too well through his experiences with the COs.
The nameplate on the corner office door read “Mr. Edmund O’Neil, Commissioner.” The door was just slightly ajar but still wide enough for a gaunt figure like Phillip to slip through. The Wizard of Corrections was sitting at his desk, his back to Phillip, facing one of the windows, one leg crossed over the other at the knee. He was reading a spreadsheet in his lap. The face of the prison system gently rocked himself by pushing and releasing his one grounded wing-tipped shoe. He nibbled at the temple end of his eyeglasses. When Phillip closed the door behind him, the door latch clicked into the strike plate. O’Neil’s black, bushy eyebrows snapped to attention as he spun his executive office chair around to see if someone had closed his door from the outside without his permission—again. His hair was thick, neatly combed and parted, and all white just as David had described it. Hanging on the wall behind O’Neil was a large photograph of the seventh hole overlooking the ocean at the Pebble Beach Golf Course in California. Phillip put together the golf photo and the tan O’Neil sported—O’Neil was shooting rounds every chance he got.
O’Neil spotted Phillip standing in his crisp, navy blue suit with his photo ID dangling from a lanyard around his neck.
“Can I help you?” O’Neil snapped.
“Yes, I think you can,” Phillip quipped. “My name is Phillip Dawkins.”
“Dawkins . . . Dawkins,” O’Neil said, stroking his chin. “Hmm, that name sounds familiar. What department do you work for in the Bureau?”
“I don’t work for the Bureau of Prisons, sir.”
“Really? Where have I heard that name before?” O’Neil asked, leaning back in his chair, almost twiddling his thumbs.
Phillip was surprised that the mention of his name didn’t get any reaction from O’Neil. “I’m an ex-convict, sir. I was released a few months ago because new evidence was discovered that proved my innocence.”
O’Neil popped out of his chair as if Phillip’s carving knife had poked him in his butt. He backed up a few steps from his desk. “How did you get in here?”
“I walked in, sir, like anyone else.”
“You used a fake ID to get in here?”
“Not really. Nobody bothered to look at it.”
“I told those morons from the General Services Bureau I wanted beefed up security in
place before we moved into this space. They promised but they didn’t deliver. Typical state pencil pushers. What do you want from me?”
“A few minutes of your time.” Phillip made note that O’Neil was surprised and concerned but he wasn’t begging for his life. Not yet, anyway. It’s like he thinks I’m really innocent.
There was a series of family 8 x 10 photos high on a bookcase—four children in front and sitting, O’Neil and his wife in the back standing—all taken in front of the same sky blue screen sprinkled with white, puffy clouds. Looking at the photos from left to right, the family grew up before Phillip’s eyes.
“Nice looking family,” Phillip said, pointing at the bookcase.
O’Neil bit his lower lip. “Thank you.”
“You had a family picture taken every year?”
“Yes . . . for the church yearbook. Look, you can’t just barge in here without an appointment. You have to follow procedures. I have a good mind to call the police.”
“I’m not going to let you do that, Mr. O’Neil,” Phillip snapped. A little electroshock might shut him up. “And you know as well as I do that you’d never make an appointment to see me. Look, I don’t want any trouble. I just want to ask you a few questions. Now why isn’t Janet Nowak in your church family yearbook photos there?” Phillip instinctively believed that O’Neil still thought he was Janet Nowak’s father. Maybe he really was, for all Phillip knew because he sure didn’t believe that he was the father despite what David’s DNA test said.
“What about Janet Nowak—I mean, who is she?”
O’Neil just tipped his hand right there—he knows her. “You know who I’m talking about. Edith Nowak is the mother of Janet. We both know who the father is.”
Silence.
Phillip waited for the denial but it never came.
“What do you want from me?” O’Neil demanded.
“I want to ask you a few more questions and then I’ll leave. And I won’t say anything about Edith and Janet Nowak to anyone.”
“Okay, but don’t come any closer.”
“Is it true that I was a central office case and that you directed the people at Kranston to keep me in solitary?”
“Are you kidding me? I’ve got 60,000 prisoners to manage. What makes you think you were so special that I would single you out to keep you in solitary?”
“You were from Syracuse and that’s where the killing took place.”
“I don’t care. I haven’t been back there in years. There are thousands of cons from Syracuse. I’m not targeting them and never did.”
“You mean to tell me there’s no such thing as a central office case?”
“Sure there is, but I don’t recall your name ever being on the list. Can I go to my computer and print something out for you?”
“Okay, but no funny stuff. I can see your hands on the keyboard. I can see your screen.”
“What I’m going to print out are the central office cases for last year.” O’Neil fiddled with his mouse; after a few clicks he hit the print button. Off to Phillip’s side the printer started humming and ran off six sheets of paper with names listed in columns in alphabetical order.
“Pick up that report and read it yourself.”
Phillip removed the papers. The first page had the title of the document, “Central Office Cases,” and a date for the calendar year. Phillip shuffled through the papers but didn’t see his name listed. “My name isn’t on here.”
“That’s what I thought. You’re not a central office case, see.”
“How do I know this isn’t some list of names you keep handy in your computer just in case you’re asked this question?”
“Are you serious? Do you think people barge into my office every day to ask me this question?”
“I don’t know.”
“Trust me, they don’t. Certainly not if we had our security in place.”
“Superintendent Kleinschmit says I was a central office case.”
“Well, he’s mistaken. But it’s not like he knows who’s a central office case anyway. It’s not like we share the list with him or any superintendents. We just keep the list internally so that we give special attention to paperwork coming over our desks involving particular inmates.”
“Why was I held in solitary for so long?”
“Long? It’s the system. It’s the way it works.”
“You mean it’s the way it doesn’t work. It never worked for me. I was a good inmate, followed the rules as best I could, and you still kept me in the box.”
“I’m not the system. I’m just part of it. If you think I can just wave my magic wand and get you out of solitary, you’re sadly mistaken. I’ve got the union to deal with and all of these shop rules we’ve let creep into the system. The union has more power over personnel decisions than the prison superintendents or even me. If we try and get a CO fired and the union moves against us, they make us go before an arbitrator who has the ultimate say on punishment—usually an unpaid suspension even if they used excessive force.”
Phillip’s mind turned to Johnny McFadden and all of the rogue COs. There were plenty of rotten COs protected by the blue wall of silence. He never considered that his confinement to solitary might have been union orchestrated. But Phillip wasn’t buying it. “So you’re telling me that the COs were the ones who kept me in solitary?”
O’Neil said, “Well, the COs are a big part of the system.”
“Why did three COs perform a traffic stop on me and my friend after I got out of Kranston? Somebody told them to do it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Are you telling me you don’t know? They pulled me over for a traffic stop.”
“No, I don‘t know about any traffic stop. Please realize that I’ve got twenty-nine thousand employees. If it really happened, the Bureau would frown upon such behavior. Did you file a complaint with the Bureau?”
“Who was I supposed to complain to?”
“The Office of Special Investigations.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“I just told you.”
“You mean I had to breach your security and walk in here unannounced to find that out?”
“You could have called the Bureau of Prisons’ switchboard.”
“I’ve tried to call you to get some information since my release. You’ve got no real people to answer questions. Just a bunch of recorded menu options that don’t apply. What’s your special investigations case backlog?”
“I don’t know. About one thousand cases, I think.”
Phillip let out a long, fading whistle. “Let me guess. Are most of your investigators former COs?”
“Yeah, I suppose, but they’re qualified—”
“Never mind. We both know my complaint would stop with the blue wall of silence—just like in prison when it was my word against a CO’s word. It would drown in the backlog until they announced it was dead about ten years from now. Isn’t that how the system works?”
“We’re trying to change some things in special investigations. Time has a way of changing things.”
“That’s what Superintendent Kleinschmit used to say.”
“He’s right.”
“Isn’t he taking over your job when you retire?”
“Yes, that’s the arrangement.”
Phillip lowered his voice—almost to a whisper—and said, “He’s a good superintendent.”
For a few seconds, O’Neil sat there with a stupid grin, nodding. “But I can’t ever really retire.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’ve been sued as commissioner and some of those cases will drag on for years. I’ll be sued after I leave too, until every statute of limitations has run out. They’ll subpoena me, I’ll have to give depositions, have to testify at trials. The cons will never leave me alone. It’s like I’m the cause of all of their problems.”
Phillip’s lips pressed together and a tight, sly smile emerged. “It’s a great system
, isn’t it? Don’t worry, Mr. O’Neil. Time has a way of changing things, right? At least the state pays you when you show up in court, right?”
“Yeah, they’ll pay me. But I’d gladly give it up if they’d just leave me alone. You can see by the photos in my office that I’ve got a family. I made a lot of sacrifices to support my family over the past decades. No doubt, I’ve made some mistakes. I’d like to spend some quality time with my wife and children before I leave this planet. Quality time means that I want to forget about my time with the Bureau of Prisons. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate my time here. I’d just like to put it behind me as one phase in my life. I won’t be able to do that.”
“You and me both, Mr. O’Neil, except I didn’t appreciate my time at Kranston.”
“I see.”
“How would it be if you spent your retirement in a box, Mr. O’Neil?”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s what life’s been like for me in solitary—”
O’Neil’s gaze locked on Phillip’s gray eyes. He could no longer deny the recognition. “Now I remember your case.”
But Phillip believed that O’Neil knew about his case all along. “Thirty years. How would you like me to lock you in your bathroom for that long? Feed you under the door. Board up your windows. Blast a recording of people screaming all day long. Set up a cage in the backyard for your rec hour. Beat on you every few days. How does that retirement sound?” O’Neil looked away. “Look at me, Mr. O’Neil. Look at me!” O’Neil slowly turned to face Phillip. “I’m not a case. I’m not a number. I’m a person, flesh and blood, just like you.” Phillip’s eyes started to well up. “Now I see that old Royal typewriter over there on the stand. I want you to type this on it: ‘Solitary confinement beyond fifteen days is torture.’”
“I have to reach into my desk drawer to get some paper.”
“Go ahead, but I’ve got my eyes on your hands. If you take something out that’s not paper, I’ll kill you as sure as I’m standing here.” Phillip was all ready to pull out his knife and carve O’Neil up before pushing him through the window to the pavement below.