No Man's Land

by G. M. Ford

  10

  “Another day or so,” Melanie Harris spoke into the receiver.

  The silence at the other end of the line spoke volumes. She tried another tack. “Maybe we could take a little time off. Go back to Michigan . . . visit your parents . . .” She stopped. The silence went on for some time before Brian’s voice broke the spell.

  “You’re not hearing me.”

  “Of course I am.”

  “You know, Mel . . . you have the most amazing ability to hear only what you want to hear. It’s like you’ve got some kind of built-in filter or something. Some device that doesn’t allow anything negative to get in the way of the grand plan.”

  She sucked in a breath of air. Used the power to keep her voice modulated. “It’s called focus, Brian. The ability to stay locked on something until it’s finished.”

  “Unlike me, of course.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t need to. It comes up every time.”

  “Not from me,” she insisted “You know . . . I think you attend too many of those group think meetings where everybody sits on their well-heeled asses nodding at stupid things. You forget what’s it’s like to just come out and say whatever you’re thinking.” Before she could speak, he went on. “You ought to try it now and again. It’s a breath of fresh air. Listen . . . I’ll show you. Ready?” He took a deep breath. “I’m sick to death of Hollywood and I’m going home to Michigan.”

  She could feel his intensity over the phone line. “There. Did you hear that or should I say it again?”

  “I don’t need this right now.”

  “Would the ‘right now’ part of that statement indicate that there would be some other more convenient time to bandy this about?”

  “I hate you when you’re like this.”

  He laughed. “You don’t pay enough attention to me to work up anything as strong as hate.”

  Melanie began to sputter. “I . . . I mean . . . how can you . . .”

  The motor home’s door flew back with a bang. The springs compressed as someone weighted the stair. Martin Wells bounced into the room with the kind of glee usually reserved for furloughed schoolchildren. In his right hand, he held a DVD in a plain white jewel case. The carefully combed lock of hair that usually lay plastered to his scalp had been blown straight up like a rooster’s comb.

  “We’ve got it,” he announced.

  Melanie pulled a smile across her face and covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “Could you give us a couple of minutes here, Marty?” she said in a strained voice.

  Wells was too agitated to be so easily deterred. He shook the DVD. “Got the whole damn thing. Exclusive. Just us . . . nothing . . .”

  Melanie raised her voice and cut him off. “A couple of minutes, Marty . . . pleeease.”

  When he failed to move, Melanie pointed at his head and made a smoothing motion with her hand. Marty got the message, using both hands to steer the shingle of hair back into place, before stepping over and using the rearview mirror to check his efforts.

  “For the time being, you can reach me at my parents’ house,”

  Brian said. “I get something more permanent, I’ll let you know.”

  Unable to suppress it any longer, she heaved a massive sigh into the mouthpiece. “Come on, Bri, let’s be reasonable here . . . I’m in the middle of a prison riot . . . I’ll be home in a few days . . . we’ll sit down and . . .”

  Without warning the phone began to sing its solitary note into her ear. She sat for a moment in disbelief, words still on her lips, the phone still sweaty against the side of her head. She used her thumb and forefinger to massage the bridge of her nose before heaving yet another sigh and settling the receiver in its cradle.

  “Everything okay?” Marty wanted to know.

  She waved him off. He knew from long experience this was not one of those times when it was safe to press. He watched as she gathered herself.

  “What is it you’ve got an exclusive on?” she asked.

  “The takeover,” he said tentatively. “The moment when this guy Driver takes over the prison.”

  “And how did we come into possession of this exclusive piece of media?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Melanie took him at his word and did not press the issue. She had long since resigned herself to the reality of her profession. Their job was to get the story and get it out to the public. Along the way, they sold ads for the program. The more popular the program, the more expensive the ads. What it took to get the story in the first place was very nearly a moot point. As long as the means weren’t outright illegal or the story wasn’t an outright fraud, they could skewer any other charges on the lance of “the public’s right to know.” Something in the way he stood his feet, however, caught her eye.

  “No problem at all?”

  He gave a semishrug and looked away. “The other end’s a little dicey. Real need to know. Real small group of people who’ve been privy to the info.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s not gonna take ’em long to figure out who’s wet on their end.”

  She eyed him closely and rolled a manicured hand around her wrist. “And thus by extension who’s wet on our end.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted.

  “I don’t like it,” she said quickly. “We’re not in a position to weather a lot of heat. At this point—”

  “We’re clean on it,” Marty insisted.

  Her face was skeptical. “How’s that?”

  “I had Jimmy make the connection,” he said, naming one of the legion of assistant producers roaming the premises. “No other staff person was involved in any way. The show was never mentioned. This was strictly a cash-and-carry deal.”

  “You’re sure the show wasn’t mentioned?”

  “Positive.”

  The way he’d described the situation, it wasn’t possible for him to be sure beyond a doubt, but, in their business, factual leaps of faith were often required. She let it go.

  “And if anybody comes looking for Jimmy?”

  Marty’s little boy smile crept over his face. “I sent him back to L.A. Gave him a week off.” Before she could speak, he went on.

  “With pay,” he added with a wink. “Kid’s gonna take his girlfriend to Cancún.”

  She arched her eyebrows. “And this is worth all of that?”

  “This”—he waved the jewel case in the air—“puts us right back on top of the food chain.”

  She pointed to the console. Housed inside were the TV set, the VCR the DVD player.

  “Fire it up,” she said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  She gave the words all the positive energy she could muster. She’d been down this road before only to be disappointed. They hadn’t had a true exclusive in a long time. Nothing that was worth the hoopla anyway. A couple of two-day leads on mediocre stories, but that was about it. After so many false alarms, she found it difficult to muster a great deal of enthusiasm for anything unseen.

  The screen rolled once, then flickered to life. Melanie watched in silence as Driver accessed the control pod. At the point where Driver looped the piano wire around the guard’s neck, she began to rise from the seat, pushing herself sympathetically upward with her arms, as if drawn on a string, until near the end, when her locked elbows braced her above the seat bottom and her red mouth hung open like a scar.

  The screen rolled. She dropped back into the seat with a plop.

  “Jesus,” she whispered. “Can we run that?” she asked.

  “If we fuzz the face on the stiff, New York says we can put it on . . . as is.” Marty checked his watch. “Maybe an insert on tomorrow night’s show. All I need is the go-ahead from you and we’ll pull the Norton piece. We can record you doing a lead and a follow right here and e-mail it to L.A. They’ll take care of the rest.”

  Melanie leaned back in her seat. “It’s pretty graphic,” she offered. “We’ve never done anything quite that intense be
fore.”

  Marty raised his hands above his head, brushing the low ceiling with the jewel case.

  “Breaking new ground,” he chanted. “Pushing the envelope.”

  When she remained unconvinced, he went on. “Those forensic shows are always in the morgue these days, prime time . . . showing burnt dead bodies and such every night of the week.”

  Melanie shrugged. “Those things are simulated,” she said.

  “Paint and rubber.”

  “What’s the difference?” he wanted to know.

  She thought about perhaps explaining the difference to him but immediately discarded the idea. Marty had been in Hollywood for so long that, like so many others in the business, the distinction between life on earth and life on the silver screen had been lost somewhere in the bargain. Didn’t matter whether or not it was true. What mattered was whether or not it looked good on the screen and whether or not it put people in the seats, so to speak. “Good thing they don’t put ratings on our private lives,”

  she thought to herself.

  She flicked a finger at the still-quavering screen. “This was real, Marty. You could feel it. There was something . . .” She searched for a word. “. . . something almost voyeuristic about watching it.” She looked up at Marty. “Like I was watching a snuff film or something.”

  “We load the promos out there over the next thirty-six hours and we’ll draw a bigger share than we’ve drawn in three or four years. No way we can keep this one in the bag. It means too much to all of us.”

  “What about the inside source? You as much as said the authorities are gonna know where this thing came from.”

  “Ya pays yur money, ya takes yur chances,” Marty said, without so much as a hint of a smile. “Come on, babe.” He was at his most sincere now. “We gotta run with this. It’s now or never.”

  She let a long minute pass before she folded her fingers over her chest and gave him an answer.

  11

  The noise assaulted the ears like angry hornets . . . aloft, abuzz . . . fifty stations spewing a swarm of jazz, honky-tonk, speed metal, butt rock, rap radio . . . the shouts and grunts and groans, the talk and the twang and the tonsils rolling out into the air, where the concrete walls blended the bebop with the hip-hop, then bounced it back to the inside track where the homies and the hurt kicked back and relaxed.

  They moved along the edges of the cellblock walkways, trying to separate themselves from the surrounding chaos. Driver and Kehoe were on either side of Corso as they slipped among the acres of broken furniture and burning mattresses littering the concrete floor. The air was acrid and oily. Smelled of piss and Pall Malls. Here and there, scattered knots of prisoners loitered. Some armed, some not. Mostly up by the front windows where they could keep an eye on the brightly lit perimeter and the front gate. At one landing lay a trio of corpses, all piled helter-skelter on top of one another, throats cut, bodies awash in a thick halo of dried blood. Halfway down C Block, a hairy hand reached from the darkness of an open cell, caught hold of Corso’s collar and jerked him backward into the darkness. Whoever it was smelled of old blan-No Man’s Land kets and wet sheep as he used his weight to drag Corso to the floor, where it took all of Corso’s strength to keep from being yanked over onto his back. Corso struggled for all he was worth. The guy moaned once and adjusted his grip before Corso heard the voice. Kehoe’s. Yelling.

  “Hey. Hey. What the fuck you think you’re doing? Get the fuck offa him. You hear me, motherfucker. Get the fuck offa . . .”

  Corso felt his attacker swipe at Kehoe with his free hand . . . then, a moment later felt a deep shudder, followed by what could only be described as a sudden loss of body tumescence, as if his attacker had suddenly had the air let out of his balloon. Three seconds later, the guy tilted sideways and fell to the floor without a sound. Corso scuttled out from under and pulled himself to his feet. Guy looked like some sort of caveman. Hairy all over like an ape. Like, in his whole life, he’d never had a shave or a haircut. Corso shuddered.

  Corso was still trying to process what had happened when Kehoe reached down and wiped the boning knife clean on the dead guy’s chest hair. One side of the blade, then the other. Real nice and neat before he stuck it back into his pocket.

  “One of those assholes can’t get a hard-on less he can smell shit,” Kehoe said with a shake of the head. “Place is full of them. Long as I been in these places I ain’t never . . .”

  And suddenly the air was filled with shouts and the slap of running feet. “Here they come,” someone bellowed. Driver moved quickly to the opposite side of the walkway. Through three layers of bars and steel grates, the area around the front gate was roiling with activity. A phalanx of Bradley armored vehicles rumbled just outside the gate. Along the main road a seemingly endless procession of troop carriers discharged squad after squad of foot soldiers.

  “Shit,” said Kehoe. “They’re comin’ for us with soldiers. Party’s over.”

  Driver shook his head. “Half an hour . . . forty-five minutes.”

  he said. “It’ll take them that long to get staged and ready.”

  “You got a plan, Captainman . . . I’m guessin’ now’s the time.”

  “Get the tanker truck. Bring it around between the buildings.”

  “You want I should bring the driver?”

  “Just the truck. We’ll fetch the driver later.”

  Kehoe started to amble off. Driver stopped him with a hand on the shoulder. He tucked a piece of paper into Kehoe’s shirt pocket. “Keys for the oil truck and a bundle I put together . . . they’re in the central elevator. Access code is in your pocket there.” He took a deep breath. “You’re gonna need this too.” He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a dirty piece of blue rag, stained here and there by some unidentifiable dark liquid. He offered the bundle to Kehoe, who kept his hands at his side for a long moment before finally taking it between his thick fingers. Something about the feel sent a question to his eyes. Kehoe set the package gently in the palm of his left hand. Using the tips of his fingers, he folded away the edges until a severed finger appeared in his hand. The cut at the butt end was rough and ragged. The fingernail needed cutting.

  Kehoe pulled himself up to his full height and looked Driver in the eye.

  “Just how iffy we talkin’ ’bout here, Captainman?”

  Driver held his gaze. “About as iffy as it gets,” he said. A tense moment passed before Kehoe pocketed the finger and began to jog back the way they’d come. Driver turned a quick right and started down the stairs.

  Corso collected his wits and trotted along behind. “What’s the deal?” he wanted to know. “What’s so iffy?”

  Driver threw a wolfish grin back over his shoulder. “Gonna see if maybe we can’t get the hell outta here before the serious shooting starts.”

  Corso slid to a halt. “Hey now . . . ,” he began. “A little prison riot was one thing. You screwed me into showing up for that . . . but you know . . . like some escape attempt . . . I’m thinking that’s maybe more than I bargained for.”

  Behind Corso on the walkway, a dozen armed prisoners sprinted along the concrete. Scattered shots could now be heard from every corner of the facility. Driver stopped and turned Corso’s way. “Okay,” he said affably. “I can understand how you’d feel that way, Frank. I was just trying to make sure my story got told right, was all. Wanted to make sure everybody understood why I was doing this. How it was all coming together.”

  Driver grinned. “I’m a reasonable man, though. I’ll certainly understand if you don’t want to come along.” He didn’t wait for Corso to make a decision. “I’ve got some errands,” Driver said.

  “You take care of yourself now,” he said, throwing Corso a threefingered salute as he continued down the stairs. Corso stood for a moment, listening to the building chorus of gunfire. Somewhere above, another salvo of automatic weapon fire was joined by another, then a third, until the scream of projectiles and the clank of brass swallowed eve
ry other sound. Corso found himself taking the stairs two at a time, using his long legs to erase the distance between Driver and himself. By the time he pulled even, Driver was using his remote to open an outside door. “You can’t just leave me in here, man,” Corso said.

  “These crazy fuckers will kill my ass in a heartbeat.”

  Driver paused to consider the statement. He fished in his pocket pulled out an open pack of Juicy Fruit gum and, one by one, unwrapped the slices and fed them into his waiting mouth.

  “No doubt about it,” he said after a moment. “You best not be out and about when the shooting starts.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You could try to hide,” Driver offered, his mouth wide and wet around the gum. “Or maybe arm yourself.” He held the door open. Raised his eyebrows. “Coming?”

  Corso stepped outside. The air smelled of smoke and steel. They were in a wide alley between the administration building and the short side of the cellblocks. Down in a deep well of darkness, in a spot where the searchlights held no sway. The crunch of broken glass beneath his feet took him back thirty years. Took him back to the old derelict cotton mill at Rasher Creek. The broken husk of another era, when sweat was king and labor was cheap. A rotting shell of a building whose windows had long since fallen victim to the stones of boys, where, in the heat of a summer day, one could find solace in the narrow, shaded alley between the mill and the creek.

  Driver hooked the door open and hugged the darkness close to the building as he started off into the gloom. He talked as he walked across the manicured grass. “You could try to make a break for the front gate.” Driver waggled a dubious hand. “Way I see it, that’s way beyond iffy. Only real question is which side nails you first.” He shrugged. “Or maybe give yourself up to the soldiers on their way in. You could explain to them that you’re not really a con . . . that you’re just in here on a lark.” His lips formed the thinnest of smiles.