Day of Reckoning

by John Katzenbach

  It was not the actual words that bothered her. Megan had responded just as she’d anticipated—her vulnerability has always been her emotions, Olivia thought. She has always placed a high premium on loyalty and honesty, and that is a great weakness.

  But there was something—not defiance—Olivia was sensitive to that, but something within the tones of Megan’s responses that bothered her. Something that insinuated an angle not anticipated, a direction not covered.

  She shrugged it off, and looked about the room, surveying the blank walls, the empty fireplace, the threadbare furniture. She could hear Bill Lewis and Ramon Gutierrez moving in different parts of the house; this place has worn thin, she thought. We’ve been here two months getting ready for these few days and now it’s almost time to leave. She wondered where they would head. Someplace warm. The house was always drafty; New England blasts of cold air creeping through the hallways, lurking in the corners.

  In prison, it was always warm. Massive institutional boilers pumped out great surges of heat when the weather turned, which mingled freely with all the stored-up hurts and angers of confinement.

  What will you do when you get out?

  The question was at the core of everything in prison; it was the center of every conversation, every bad-tasting meal, every slow-passing day, every sleepless night. Getting out. Even the women doing time for murder were preoccupied with the idea, even if twenty, thirty years distant. I’m gonna find a man who’ll love me right. I’m gonna get out of this fucking state. I’m gonna find my kids and settle down. I’m gonna live my life without bars. I’m gonna be free to do what I want. I’m gonna get me a little place and go back to living day to day. I’m gonna be a secretary, an office worker, a construction worker, a cleaning lady, a whore, a drug dealer. I’m gonna make some money hustling on the street so I can retire someplace comfortable. I’m gonna go back to what I was doing, only I’m gonna be smarter and I’m not gonna get caught. I’m gonna make just one more good score then get out for good.

  She remembered a hundred, thousand, million conversations. I’m gonna this. I’m gonna that. None of the gonnas ever really came true. Too many I’m-gonna-go-straights came back in a couple of years, with a few new tattoos and a few new scars and some new plans and some new I’m-gonnas. There had been one woman, a tall, statuesque black woman, whom Olivia recalled with a small pang of grief. I loved her a little, she thought, not as much as I loved Emily, but a little. She was the only one to whom Olivia had admitted her own fantasy: I’m gonna get the people who put me here. The woman had nodded, and said, Remember, they won’t be the same as they were when you came in here. So you’re gonna have to find some different way of getting them back.

  Did she die? Olivia wondered. Did the streets swallow her up? Probably. But she remembered the woman’s advice, storing it away next to all the conversations she had had with Megan and Duncan in the early days of the Phoenix Brigade, conversations that had always started benignly, with some offhand question like: “So, where are you from?” and “What about your family?” or “When was the last time you went home?” But she had stored away all this knowledge and much more, and knew where to go when she got out, just as she would have known where to find any member of the brigade, even after eighteen years.

  Olivia took a deep breath and blew out slowly.

  It is all working. It is all on schedule.

  Keep control. Keep control. Keep control.

  She felt better, and went off in search of Ramon Gutierrez, won­dering whether she should let loose a little of his unique brand of terror.

  Tommy happily scraped away at the built-up dirt and plaster between the attic’s wooden slat walls, feeling with his bare hand the cold air that blew against the side of the house. He thought for an instant that things were reversed, that the chill wind that awaited outside was caged and that he was trying to free it from captivity, loosening its chains and allowing it to soar skyward again.

  Since morning, with his grandfather leaning over his shoulder and kibbitzing frequently, Tommy had worried free a half dozen wooden boards. Each time he reached a point where the board seemed ready to come loose from the framework, his grandfather had stopped him, gone to the metal cot, and retrieved the strut they had found earlier. Judge Pearson would then wedge the strut behind the board and gingerly tug at it, loosening nails and cracking the wood, until the two were sure that a single hard tug would strip the board out.

  It was slow going. Whenever they heard any sound from the rest of the house, they would stop, clean up the area as quickly as they could, and retreat to their cots. Then, when things had grown quiet again, Tommy would be back at the wall, making steady inroads with the nail, fighting off fatigue and cramps, tearing away at the confines of their prison. As he worked, he fantasized about escaping. He could see himself leaping through the hole in the wall, jumping down to the pitched roof he knew waited for him outside. Then he would prance down the peak, swinging off the edge onto a porch, then leaping the final story down, alighting on the cold ground. He could see himself racing across the fields, down the roads, jogging steadily through the winter day, blowing icy breaths in front of him. The woods would give way to cleared land, then isolated houses, finally the outskirts of town. In his mind’s eye, he could see Greenfield’s streets. He would cruise past his school, past his mother’s office, past his father’s bank, past the high school where Karen and Lauren went, no longer breathing hard, no longer fighting the cold air, no longer scared or tired, his feet barely touching the earth as he flew toward his own street.

  He scraped harder. Stroke in, stroke out. Tug and pull. Gnawing like some determined rodent at the wall. I am a mouse, he thought, I will make a mousehole.

  He saw his house, his family waiting for him.

  Tommy gritted his teeth. His hand slipped briefly, and he felt a splinter jab into his finger. He bit back the sudden sharp pain.

  I am a soldier mouse.

  He pried a last particle of wood from the wall, and felt the rush of pleasure that he knew awaited him when he tumbled into his mother’s arms. He thought, too, of the great bear-hugs that he would get from his father and the warmth he would feel from his father’s body. Karen and Lauren would hug him and kiss him too many times, but he smiled and decided he would let them this time, though ordinarily he was too big and too grown-up for that sort of thing.

  “Grandfather, I think I’ve got another one loose enough. Bring the metal thing.”

  Judge Pearson freed the metal slat, hefted it in his hand, allowing himself the fleeting thought of bringing it squarely down on one of his captor’s heads, and approached the wall.

  “Good boy, Tommy. We’ll be out of here in no time.”

  “Try it.”

  The judge wedged the metal behind the wood and gave a short pull. There was a muffled cracking sound and then a creak, as the wood gave way.

  “That’s good,” the judge said.

  “Shall I keep at it?”

  The judge straightened up. “Why don’t you take a break—” he started, speaking easily. Then he stopped and held up his hand. “Shhhh!”

  Tommy paused.

  “Someone’s coming!” the boy said. He felt as if someone had robbed him of his wind and he wheezed harshly.

  They both heard a door squeak, and footsteps.

  “Hurry!” said the judge.

  Tommy frantically wiped the floor around the area with his hand, shooting dirt and wood chips into the corners of the room. He burst across the room and hid the nail beneath the cot’s mattress. The judge had maneuvered the metal slat back onto the bed. They heard the dead bolt lock turn and they both looked toward the door. It was Bill Lewis, carrying a luncheon tray.

  The judge relaxed, and stood, pausing to put his hand on Tommy’s shoulder, trying to slow the boy’s rapid breathing.

  He won’t noti
ce, the judge thought. Olivia would immediately see in our eyes that something was amiss. But Lewis is not as alert.

  “Sandwiches again, I’m afraid.” The familiarity growing as each hour of confinement passed had put some jocularity in Lewis’s voice. “I put some extra jelly on yours, Tommy. I’ll try to whip up something hot tonight. Or maybe go out for pizza or chicken. What would you prefer?”

  “Pizza,” said Tommy, his head dizzy, responding by rote.

  “Chicken,” said the judge.

  Bill Lewis smiled.

  “We’ll see.” He pushed the tray toward them.

  The judge took a sandwich from the tray, grimaced at the choices of cold cuts or peanut butter and jelly, then settled back, munching on bologna and mayonnaise. He pushed the tray toward Tommy, who reluctantly plucked peanut butter and jelly from the offering. The judge saw the boy take a tentative bite and glance fearfully at the spot on the wall where they were working. A sliver of fear raced through the judge, but he thrust it aside, reaching over and patting his grandson on the knee, trying to seize the boy’s attention without being obvious. He turned away, and smiled at Lewis, thinking: Get out of here! But Lewis sat back on the bed across from the captives and stretched out. Damn! thought the judge. Leave us alone!

  Instead, he asked, “How are things progressing?”

  Lewis shook his head.

  “She gives out all the information,” he replied.

  “Give me a break,” said the judge.

  “Look, Olivia makes the rules. This is her show, and so far every­thing has gone exactly the way she said it would. So why would I screw things around now?”

  “Well, I don’t see the harm.”

  Lewis shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “I mean,” the judge continued, “what’s the big deal? All I wanted to know was whether things were progressing. Surely you can answer that with a yes or no. Look at us. We’re stuck up here without any contact with anyone except you guys. I don’t see what the harm is in giving us a little bit of encouragement or whatever.”

  “I’m sorry. I said I was sorry. Give it a rest.” He glanced around, as if making certain they were alone, then whispered, “Look, she says it’s all going okay, so I guess we’re getting closer to the end. But that’s all I know and you’ll have to settle for that.”

  The judge nodded. “It just doesn’t seem fair to keep us in the dark so much, especially the boy.”

  “Life isn’t fair.”

  “Now you sound like she does. You’re not like her, really, are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said. You’re not like her.”

  “Sure I am.”

  The judge shook his head.

  “I am!” Lewis protested. “I always have been, since we first met.”

  “When was that?”

  “Back in sixty-five. A few years before the Phoenix Brigade. We were always together. You know—solidarity. All that sort of stuff.”

  “But she went to prison—”

  “Yeah, and your daughter and son got rich. And I went underground.”

  “For how long?”

  “I still am,” Bill Lewis said, slightly boastful.

  “But surely—” the judge started, then stopped.

  “Surely what?”

  “No, it’s nothing, I didn’t—”

  “What?”

  “Well, there must have been a point where you figured they’d stopped looking. No one gets pursued forever.”

  “Sure they do. Come on, judge . . .”

  Lewis lounged on the bed. He seemed to settle in, anxious to talk. Tommy watched him stretch out, and nibbled at his sandwich, each bite tasting dryer and harder to swallow. The dizziness in his head threatened to overtake his entire body. Not again! he yelled to him­self. Stay here! But his emotions tugged and jerked at him, and he felt himself slowly but steadily drifting away.

  “You know what it is, judge, living underground. There comes a terrible point when you don’t know whether they’ve given up looking for you or not. It’s the worst moment by far. You see, running isn’t so bad. Your adrenaline is always pumping out, you’re always alert, ready, prepared for anything. It’s really like some intense upper, an amphetamine high. It’s the best part of being what you would call a criminal. You’re just constantly on edge, and it’s exciting and sort of fun. But after a while, a few years maybe, perhaps a decade, you start to wonder. Everything around you has changed, but you haven’t. Even if you’re working, teaching high school math or building houses—I did both of those—or working on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico—now that was hard work, judge—even if you’re doing these things, you know inside that it’s all a lie. Really you’re who you were and still running. And that’s the terrible time. Because you don’t have any idea anymore that there’s someone out there actually looking for you. You see, without those anonymous cops or feds or whatever, the underground wouldn’t exist. It would be irrelevant. So you wonder whether you’ve suddenly become irrelevant, too. Wasting your life only to end up as a footnote in some damn poly-sci major’s master’s thesis.”

  “So what happened to you?”

  “Well, when I hit that wall, Ramon and I were together. I figured there was no way really to find out for certain if they still were after me. So I did the next best thing.”

  “Which is?”

  “I got in touch with Olivia.”

  “I don’t get it,” said the judge.

  “You’ve seen her, Judge. Haven’t you figured anything out? They’ll always want Olivia. They’ll always hunt her. She’s just got that sense about her that authority hates and fears, and they’ll always hate her for it. Think about it. If she came in front of you, say for jaywalking or maybe littering, what would you sentence her to?”

  Judge Pearson didn’t hesitate:

  “The max.”

  Bill Lewis threw back his head and laughed.

  “So would I. So would I.”

  The two men were silent for a moment.

  “You see,” Bill Lewis finally continued, “that’s what she gives me. A re-entry to a real life. I feel alive again. I’m doing something. Not just going from job to job, wondering all the time, watching everyone else build their own little futures while knowing my own was all in the past.”

  Judge Pearson shook his head, suffused with thoughts. He didn’t know which way to bend the conversation, so he guessed.

  “So you got in touch . . .”

  “I wrote her a letter.”

  “A letter?”

  “Sure. Prison authorities are always dumb, judge. They couldn’t decipher the simplest code. I remember the opening lines: ‘Dear Olivia, thanks for your note. Cousin Lew is fine. Bill is, too. They want to hear from you . . .’ Lew is and Bill. Didn’t take her too long to figure out who was writing.”

  “And you came up with this plan.”

  “Well, we stayed in touch.”

  “You don’t seem like the sort of guy who’d get involved in this kind of thing.”

  “Hah! Shows how much you know.”

  “I mean, I can understand some of her hatred, she’s spent so many years behind bars. But you’ve been out and . . .”

  The judge let his voice trail into nothingness when he saw Bill ­Lewis’s face contort.

  He straightened up abruptly. He had a lanky basketball player’s build, which made him seem to be towering above them. He suddenly pinched forward at the waist, leaning his face inches away from the judge’s. Judge Pearson rocked back, almost as if he’d been struck. ­Lewis’s face twisted, a mocking sneer and grin mingling frighteningly with a barely controlled rage.

  “Your fucking children, pig! They cost me as much as her. You think my prison was any different! You think runn
ing and living underground is any different from being in jail? You know who died out there, on that fucking street in Lodi? She was my love, too. She was my wife! And we both loved Olivia! When Duncan fucked up, it cost me my future! Goddamn his eyes! My whole life, judge, my whole life! Do you know that I was a single dissertation away from a doctorate in applied engineering? I could have been a builder! I could have been something in the new world, if only that son of a bitch hadn’t chickened out and left us! I ran, judge, I ran right from the moment he killed our future, right to this moment. Now, I’m collecting the toll for all those miles.”

  Lewis’s force of recollection drove his arms into the air and he windmilled about above Tommy and the judge. His neck scar flashed red, as if keeping time with his clenched fists.

  Tommy first recoiled, then thrust himself against the judge.

  Judge Pearson recovered from his initial surprise and then remained sitting, ramrod straight, staring, unblinking, at Lewis’s tirade. He could feel Lewis’s rage and anger filling him and thought it strengthened him. He recalled a hundred moments on the bench when men just sentenced had lashed out at him. He had stared all those criminals down, and he fixed Bill Lewis with the same steady, unafraid glare that had quieted a thousand courtroom outbursts. He could feel the narrowing of his eyes, the set to his jaw, and it was like discovering a favorite old pair of slippers at the bottom of the closet and sliding them onto his feet. Olivia had told him how erratic Lewis was. She’d underestimated him.

  Bill Lewis threw back his head.

  “They owe me!” he shouted.

  “Why? Because things turned out differently for them? The hell they do!”

  “You don’t know anything, you old pig! You’ve got no idea.”

  “I know that what you did was wrong and that what you’re doing is wrong.”

  “Tired old pig ethics.”

  “Tired old rhetoric.”

  For an instant, it seemed Bill Lewis would smash his fist into the judge’s face. Then he pivoted and pounded across the attic room, stopping directly in front of the wall where they had been working. Judge Pearson felt Tommy stiffen and make a small gasp.