“You take it easy now, Curtis. Don’t panic along the way, got it?”
Curtis nodded.
“Don’t say a word to the other inmates. Look like you’re being dragged to the scaffold, understand? Any sign of solidarity from them is the last thing you should expect.”
He pulled Curtis out in the corridor and scrutinized the twenty yards up to the first obstacle, a super-secure, armored plate-glass door that functioned partly automatically and partly with a key—a key that he hoped to be able to find on the key ring without too many tries.
“What the fuck, Buddy Boy? What’s happening? Boogieman come to get you already?” The black man in the cell next to Curtis’s stuck his henna-colored palm through the bars, but Curtis kept his eyes on the floor, like his life was already over. “Hey! Yo! You leavin’ Daryl without sayin’ good-bye? What about your cigarettes, huh?” he yelled after them, as more prisoners along the hallway began shaking their bars.
It was stress. You couldn’t always see it, but they were really wound up and would stay that way until death relaxed them permanently.
Curtis tensed up a little but was completely under control as he turned to his cell neighbor. He had to say something, if the whole cellblock wasn’t to flip out again. “Easy, Daryl, easy. I’ll be back soon. You’ll get your cigarettes, don’t worry.”
Then Daryl’s yellowed teeth broke into one of the biggest smiles T had ever seen—a smile strangely innocent and delighted, and probably the last one to ever cross his face.
Curtis’s leg chains jingled and clanked as T pulled him past the cell that had just been vacated, towards the cells where the inmates’ orange jumpsuits bore the imprint ENEMY OF THE STATE over the breast pocket. These were the militia prisoners. Their turn was coming soon, too. You could see it in their angry, bitter faces.
“Let’s have that Smith and Wesson, Sheriff,” one of them hissed. “Then we can really give those cocksucking guards a surprise when they come back.”
“Hand that swine over to us,” snarled the next. “We’ll slit him open from throat to asshole.”
T marched Curtis as well as he could past the outstretched arms and tried to get an idea of which key to use before he reached the door. It looked as if at least five of them might work. He took one, but it wouldn’t turn in the lock. He tried the next—no luck. As he was fumbling after the third key, he heard someone in cell number one get up and move to the bars.
“T? T. Perkins, is it you?”
He turned and found himself looking straight into the eyes of a skinny, pale little man. A man who he recognized immediately, a man he’d known all his life and who—until all this damned insanity had erupted throughout the nation—had never harmed a fly, as far as he knew. It was Jim Wahlers, who’d been discovered with an arsenal in his basement that could blow the faces off Mount Rushmore. Jim—his old dart partner and Highland County’s former undertaker.
“Jim! Goddammit, are you here? What happened?”
“T! Tell my wife I’m in here, will you? No one knows where I am. Not even my lawyer.”
T could feel a cold sweat on the palms of his hands. He looked at his old friend’s quivering lips and despairing eyes. “Jim, why are you here? It’s not because of all those weapons in your basement, is it? What was it you did, Jim?” He stuck the third key in the lock and turned it cautiously. It resisted a bit, but not like the first two.
Jim Wahlers pulled himself together for a moment and grabbed the bars. In a second his face had transformed into a fierce hardness that T had never seen there before. “The bastards say I organized an attack on a military camp, and goddammit, I wish I had!”
Once, Wahlers’s hearse had run off the road and the coffin of the widow of an army major down in Clifton Forge had toppled over and opened, flinging her body up against the hearse’s rear window. When T and his men arrived, Jim had been standing there, pissing against the window, right where the widow’s white, shrunken face was pressed against it. “This is just to let you know that not everyone respects women who spread their legs for pigs in the fucking US Army, you old cow!” he’d hissed, and T had led him away from the hearse so no one would see what he’d done. At the time, T thought shock had made him react with this unusually disrespectful act. But right now, looking deep into Jim Wahlers’s eyes behind the bars, this sudden flashback took on a whole other perspective.
He tried to picture the bearded guy with whom he’d motorcycled up to Winchester long ago to play a round of darts against a couple of local braggarts. He laid his hand on the one extended through the bars. “You wish you’d organized that attack, you say? I’m wondering if reality ever entered into the picture with us two. I’m wondering if I ever really knew you, Jim.” Then he stepped away from the cell, turned the key, and opened the armored glass door.
“You can go to hell, you fucking pig cop!” bellowed Jim Wahlers, and from the other cells came echoes of agreement, so loud that he could still hear them after he’d slammed the door behind him.
T pulled Curtis close to him and touched the brim of his hat in greeting as he looked up at the next surveillance camera. It was a question of acting completely cool and just hoping the personnel in the death chamber hadn’t heard the inmates yelling.
As they made their way down the deserted hallway of the next section, T could see that the leg chains were hindering Curtis in keeping up. It had been a long time since he’d had to move that fast, and his physical strength had obviously deteriorated. Prisoners on death row had a habit of either working out like madmen or just shriveling up.
“Come on, Curtis, just three hallways left, then we’re out. You can catch your breath when we’re far away from here.”
“Why are you doing this, Perkins?” he gasped.
“Why? Because I saw that glass of water in your hand on election night, even though . . . even though it wasn’t there, and because I’ve . . . I’ve seen new possibilities in your case.”
Curtis gave him a strange look. A look that reminded him of Doggie. She’d had that same expression during her father’s trial—the look of Medusa, defiantly challenging the course of events and at the same time struggling to maintain her faith in justice. But, besides that, Curtis’s face radiated a kind of calm that T had rarely seen. It was hard to imagine what had created this inner harmony. Could it be because there was finally a human being who believed in him? That he no longer was completely alone?
“Watch out here, Bud,” T whispered. They turned up the next corridor and headed straight for the guard post that was manned by an overweight young guy, about twenty-five years old. Unfortunately, T had never seen him before.
He pulled his badge out of his back pocket and stepped up to the little window. He gave a hearty “howdy” and laid his badge on the counter. “You can just let us out. Falso’ll be sending the papers up here in a little bit. He’s busy dispatching a prisoner at the moment.” He winked at the guard to let him know he was one of the boys.
The guard peered at the badge with eyes set deep into his fat-laden face. “If the papers are on the way, I think we ought to wait,” he replied.
The man wasn’t as dumb as he looked.
T pursed his lips and whistled a few bars of a toneless tune. “Could I have a glass of water while I’m waiting, then? Falso’s Hershey’s bar’s still stuck in my teeth. You know how that is,” he said, in a confidential tone of voice.
The guard looked at them and nodded. He knew they weren’t getting out without his pushing the button to unlock the last door. “Wouldn’t you rather have a cup of coffee? I was just brewing a pot.”
“No, thanks, just water. Aren’t you Bambi’s son, by the way?” T asked, calmly as he could, while the kid fetched him a glass of water from a sink in the corner. Barney “Bambi” Pellegrino was the fattest prison officer T had ever met at Sussex, so it was an educated guess.
He could feel Curt
is’s arm quivering next to him and tried not to be affected by the man’s nervousness.
“Bambi? Nope, but I knew him. He’s the one who died last year with a face full of doughnuts.” The guard laughed, opened the window latch, and slid the glass of water over to him.
T took a gulp. It tasted stale, like water that had been standing in a turned-off refrigerator. “He died, did he? Jesus Christ. He was really a nice guy. I can’t believe it. But you still remind me of someone I know here at the prison. Maybe it wasn’t Bambi I was thinking of . . .”
“Maybe you mean Tammie Cambell down in the canteen. She’s my mother.”
T had no idea who he was talking about. “God!” he exclaimed, with a sweep of his arm that splashed water all down the front of his uniform. “Tammie!” He brushed the water off and studied the guard for a moment. “Damn, that’s right. Now I can see it.” He looked at the man’s badge.
“Freddie Cambell. So you’re little Freddie. Boy, have you grown! What’s your mom doing now, Freddie? I suppose she was fired along with all the others. Too bad. Hey, you know what? Can you give me her address? We could probably use a good gal like Tammie up in our canteen.”
The man looked at T and rubbed his chin. “Yeah, well, these days she’s almost always down at the radio station. W291AJ—you know it? I don’t know if they’re still on the air. They weren’t yesterday, anyway.”
“When I get a chance, I’ll drive down there and check out the situation. But you’re sure we have to wait for Falso? It could still be a while. I’ve got to deliver this jerk up in Washington, ASAP.”
“In Washington?”
“Didn’t you hear, Freddie? It was on the NBC news last night. He’s to be executed in DC. They’re getting their shit together up there.”
The guard gave a confused smile behind the glass. “Wow, that’s really . . .” Words failed him, so he took another look at T’s badge that was still lying on the counter. “Well, I guess you’d better get going, then. It’s a long trip.”
T could feel how Curtis’s arm relaxed immediately.
“Then I’ll have time to see your mother on the way back. Thanks for the glass of water . . . and the shower, ha-ha.”
The sound of the main door’s lock opening was better than any T could remember ever hearing.
“My God,” Curtis whispered when they got outside, immediately turning his face towards the sun.
“Now we take it nice and easy. Nice and easy. My car’s behind that white van over there.” They’d only made ten steps before two things happened that weren’t good. The first was that two police officers suddenly came strolling in their direction from the road leading up to the prison. It was the black cop and his partner who’d been keeping their eye on the anti–capital punishment demonstrators. They were heading straight for the prison entrance. Must be time for their coffee break, T managed to think, just before something far worse happened. It was Bill Pagelow Falso’s voice, screeching over the loudspeaker system.
“Stop, T, else you’ll regret this the rest of your life!” boomed the metallic-sounding voice.
Curtis’s body jerked involuntarily. The slightly thawing tension changed immediately to panic. His clanking, jingling steps increased in tempo, and his breath came in gasps.
T looked over his shoulder, back at the guard post. There was still only Fat Freddie Cambell in the little room.
“You sure stirred things up down here on death row, do you realize that?” boomed Falso’s voice.
“You’ve really abused my trust in you, T.” Then the volume fell. “How far has he got in the parking lot, Cambell?”
Cambell gestured behind the glass as he answered his boss.
“Oh, no . . .” groaned Curtis.
Again the loudspeaker echoed over the parking lot. “You’re not taking Curtis off prison ground, T. Not alive—got that? Leave him where he is. And you disappear, you renegade idiot!”
Now the two cops heading towards the entrance were aware that something was wrong and began running towards them. They were young and in good shape. There was about the same distance to them as there was to the patrol car.
“Come on, goddammit, come on, Curtis!” T barked through clenched teeth.
Curtis waddled forward as best he could, heartbreakingly close to a chance to stay alive.
The policemen began yelling at them. Fat Freddie had abandoned his guard post and was heading towards them, too. The indistinct cries of the men on death row could still be heard in the background over the loudspeaker.
That fucking Jim Wahlers . . . thought T. He’d probably been the one who set off the commotion. Who’d ever have imagined his old dart competition partner—with whom he’d once dominated Winchester’s dart club with twenty first places in a row—would one day play an instrumental role in T’s own demise? Jim Wahlers—fuck him!
Now the white van was just a couple of steps away. Curtis struggled even harder.
“We’re gonna make it, Curtis! We’ll drive down to the other end of the parking lot and then around, so they won’t be able to ram us.”
The two police officers fired warning shots in the air while T fumbled in his jacket pocket after his keys. At the same moment Curtis lost his gait as he attempted too-long steps. “Fuck!” he yelled, as the chain pulled his front leg out from under him and he fell helplessly to the ground, face-first.
“I’ll have to write a report if you keep this up,” wheezed Falso’s voice over the loudspeaker. “It’s wrong, what you’re doing, and God’s going to chastise you for it, T! He’ll cast you down; you’ll regret it!”
T came to a halt. Curtis was lying twisted on the ground five yards behind him, his chained legs flung to the side and his handcuffed wrists bloody and blue with bruises.
“Get out of here, Perkins, before it’s too late,” Curtis gasped, trying to lift his head. “Tell Doggie I love her. Tell her I didn’t do it—then we’re quits. Thanks for trying to help me, and get the hell out of here!”
“I’ll do everything in my power. Don’t give up, Bud—do you hear me?” he shouted, as he threw himself onto the front seat of the patrol car.
He floored the accelerator as he flew around the perimeter of the lot and passed the twenty-five miles per hour sign at the main gate. By then the two cops and Fat Freddie were standing over the still-prostrate figure on the asphalt.
A half hour ago he’d almost convinced the state’s most thick-skinned prison warden of Curtis’s innocence. Why the hell hadn’t he left well enough alone? Then his appeal might already be on its way to the Department of Homeland Security. He could have been in Washington before midnight and presented his case. And what now? If he tried calling Homeland Security, maybe some official would have already heard how he’d instigated an escape attempt by the nation’s most infamous condemned prisoner. Maybe, and maybe not. Would his old friend Bill Falso really tip them off? He had no idea.
He shook his head, disgusted with himself. How had he ever imagined that this brainless, spontaneous caper would succeed?
T waved to the new set of officers who were keeping an eye on the demonstrators as his police car sped by them, away from the prison.
Soon the giant, hanging spiderwebs were looming ahead again. “Oh, God, Doggie,” he whispered to himself, “what the hell have I done?”
He pulled off the road at a sign that read BIRD REFUGE and grabbed his borrowed cell phone. He looked at his notepad and dialed the number Doggie had called from.
It rang a few times before Frank Lee’s voice mail recording informed T that he wasn’t around, but the caller could leave a message.
T swore. How could he be sure she’d get his message?
“What the hell,” he grunted, and cleared his throat a couple of times. “Doggie, I’ve just tried to sneak your father out of Sussex, but unfortunately it didn’t go so well. Actually, it didn’t go
well at all. They caught your dad, and I don’t think I’m too popular right now, either. But who cares? They can’t take my pension.” T hated voice mail. He always wound up talking nonsense.
“No, I’m sorry, Doggie. What I wanted to say was that I have important information regarding the case. There are strong indications that Thomas Sunderland had a very dirty hand in orchestrating Mimi Jansen’s assassination. We have to meet and find out what can be done. You know everyone in Washington, so you can surely get much further with this information than I ever could, and much faster. Maybe it’ll work if we get together and are very, very careful. I don’t see any other way right now. What do you think? Let’s meet in Washington at noon, tomorrow. I hope that will give you enough time, since I don’t know where you are at the moment, do I?”
He stared into space, trying to think of where they could meet. After what he’d done, it sure wouldn’t be any police station or public office.
“Let’s meet at Barnes and Noble on the corner of 12th and E Street, at noon, tomorrow. I know they’re open on Sunday. I guess that’s all. Sorry about the long message, but I’m not crazy about sending texts. See you. Good luck.”
CHAPTER 31
A couple of days had passed, and Bugatti had made no progress getting out of the United States by airplane. He was surviving but exhausted as hell. Going underground as an overweight, chain-smoking fifty-year-old was one thing; suffering from AIDS on top of this was another. A body so brutally afflicted is in a state of constant suffering. And lack of sleep and vitamins and minerals, plus lack of calm, peace of mind, or anything to look forward to, had drained his poor body almost completely.
Friday had been spent at the airport, waiting and thinking and waiting some more, and on Saturday he had met up with Tom Jumper on his mobile radio show, only to escape capture by the skin of his teeth.
A man couldn’t stand much more.
* * *
—
Early that Saturday he’d made the decision to remain in the country. What other choices did he have? He’d just spent twenty-four hours at Dulles Airport, and the lines in front of him hadn’t gotten much shorter. For the time being, all departures abroad were allowed only for foreigners and individuals possessing a diplomatic passport. He could have chosen to keep waiting, but, as a lady at the British Airways desk said, prospects weren’t good.
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