Death Sentence td-80

by Warren Murphy

  Remo walked on, one second ahead of the trailing C.O.'s uncompleted shove.

  As they were passed through a series of electronic doors and through a four-way intersection of floor-to-ceiling cell tiers, Remo asked a question.

  "Where am I?"

  "What do you mean?" the lead C.O. snarled. Then, recovering, he added, "That's right. You came in sedated, didn't you?"

  "You tell me," Remo said as they came to the warden's office. The lead C.O. knocked on the door while they waited.

  "Boy, your new home is the state penitentiary in Starke."

  "My geography isn't so good," Remo said as the other C.O. poked his head into the door and announced, "He's here, sir."

  "Florida," the other C.O. said flatly. "The land of sunshine and alligators."

  "Don't forget Florida juice," the first guard added, pushing the door open for Remo.

  Remo stepped into the warden's office, his chains dragging on the floor. His hands hung manacled below belt level, but his head was up, his posture defiant.

  "Sit down, Williams," the warden said in a nononsense but unbelligerent tone of voice. He waved for the guards to shut the door behind them. Remo slipped into a simple wooden chair. The hard chair made him feel instantly uncomfortable. He wasn't sure why, but it stirred some vague, unreachable memory.

  The warden made a point of ignoring Remo as he leafed through a manila file folder. He was a short, pugnacious man with a smooth bald head. There was a small pit in the flesh along the bridge of his nose, as if someone had chiseled a chunk out of it.

  When the warden looked up, he let the folder fall flat. He gave it a last glance before turning his full attention to Remo.

  "Do you know why you're here, Williams?"

  "The state says I killed a drug pusher."

  "That's why you were sent up to Trenton State Prison. I meant why you were transferred to Florida State."

  Florida, Remo thought. So the guards weren't lying. Aloud he said, "It must have slipped my mind somehow." He wondered what the warden was talking about.

  "You're a very foolish individual, Mr. Williams. You were better off back in New Jersey, where they don't take advantage of their death penalty. Up there, you were just another lifer on death row. But you kept getting into trouble. According to your sheet, you maimed your cellmate. Put out his eye over a cigarette. That was bad enough. But on top of that, you killed a guard. I imagine that guard had family who had high political connections, because someone pulled a lot of strings to get you transferred to my prison. It's not legal, but when I protested, I was told, in no uncertain terms, to play along. So I am."

  "Maybe I needed a change of scenery," Remo said flatly. He wondered where this bullshit was going.

  "You're pretty casual now," the warden resumed. Remo noticed the nameplate in front of his desk said he was Warden McSorley. "But I'm told the Trenton officials had to sedate you for the transfer. So you must know what you've gotten yourself into."

  "Sure," Remo said coolly. "I got myself into Florida. "

  "That's true," the warden said humorlessly. "But you've also gotten yourself onto Florida's death row. You see, unlike New Jersey, this state does take full advantage of its death penalty. And since you've been transferred into our jurisdiction, you fall under Florida law."

  Remo said nothing. His eyebrows drew together, forming a deep notch.

  "I'm sorry," the warden said in a voice that was neither sympathetic nor sarcastic, but simply a voice. "You were a police officer once, according to your records. And I hold no truck with drug pushers. Maybe you had your reasons for doing what you did, but killing a corrections officer ... well, my responsibility is to the law."

  "I want to talk to my lawyer," Remo said tightly.

  "I understand that an appeal has already been filed on your behalf. In the meanwhile, you'll be expected to obey the rules of this institution. You'll be allowed out of your cell for two minutes every other day to shower, and twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, for thirty minutes of supervised exercise in the prison yard. Otherwise, you will be confined to your cell, where you will take your meals and do all your business. Given your rather extensive record of violence against corrections officers and fellow prisoners, I will have no choice but to put you into segregated detention if you misbehave in any way."

  "You make me sound like a bad little boy," Remo said in a hard voice.

  "Be assured, Mr. Williams, I do not see you in that light at all. Now, do you understand everything I have just told you?"

  "Guess so."

  "Do you understand what I mean by segregated detention?"

  "Sure. Solitary."

  "Is that what they call it up at Trenton?"

  Remo had to think about that before answering. "They called it administrative detention," he said at last.

  "And I'm certain a man who's staring at the death penalty will think twice about living out his last days in solitary confinement." The warden pressed a buzzer. The two C.O.'s entered the room and took their places on either side of Remo Williams' unflinching face.

  "Before these officers escort you back to your cell, do you have any questions?" the warden wanted to know.

  Remo stood up, sending his chains clacking. "Just one," he said quietly.

  The warden looked up quizzically.

  "Do you gas, inject, or fry in this state?"

  "We have a very efficient electric chair, Mr. Williams. If it comes to that, you won't feel much more than a short-lived jolt. It's quite humane, really."

  "Just the same, I think I'd prefer the needle." The warden's face registered curious interest.

  "Really?" he said. "If you don't mind my asking, why is that?"

  "They don't shave your head before the lethal injection."

  "Ah," the warden said as if understanding. But Remo could tell by the opacity in back of his eyes that he didn't understand at all.

  Remo was silent as they led him away.

  Chapter 3

  They waited until Remo was back in his cell before they removed the chains and leg irons. Remo sat on the bunk as the barred door clanged shut. For the first time he noticed the white sign fixed to the cell doors: DANGER! STAND CLEAR WHILE GATE IS IN MOTION in stark black death-warrant letters.

  It was the only reading material in the cell, so Remo read it several times slowly.

  A voice from the adjoining cell broke his concentration.

  "Hey, Jim. What's happenin'?" The voice was black. Southern.

  "The name's Remo."

  "Don't be takin' no attitude, man. I calls all white boys Jim. What're you in for?"

  "None of your business."

  "Suit yourself. I was just bein' friendly. My name's Mohammed."

  "In that case, my name's Allah."

  "The Muslim brothers pronounces it Al-lah, whitey. But if it suits you, you can call me Popcorn. All the cons do. Just don't you be puttin' down my personal god. Allah's all that be gettin' me through the day till I gotta walk down the line. I killed my old lady, don't you know."

  "Tough."

  "Don't I know it. Sometimes I really miss the woman. Wouldn't have cut her, but I caught her in bed with some turkey I never saw before. And it was my birthday. That was the unforgiving thing, you know."

  "Spare me," Remo said, throwing himself back on the cot. He stared up at the ceiling.

  "I hear you was a cop once."

  "Once," Remo said tonelessly.

  "So what's a cop doin' in this empty place?"

  "I forgot to Mirandize your mother."

  "Hoo! You are some cold dude. But let me set you straight, bro. The cons, they know you're a cop. The hacks, they know you offed a guard. That put you in a very bad place. I'd make all the friends I could get, I was you."

  "You're not me," Remo returned, suddenly wishing for a cigarette. Maybe it would clear the cobwebs from his mind. He felt like stale beer-flat and too warm.

  "In that case, I just got one more piece of advice for you, Jim." When t
here was no answer, Popcorn said, "Don't eat the meatloaf. It's always yesterday's hamburger. And if they offer you meatloaf stew, that's not only yesterday's meatloaf, it's also the day before's hamburger. They don't waste shit in this joint. They just reheat it and slide it back into your sorry face all over again."

  "I'll keep that in mind," Remo said, still staring at the ceiling. It was too smooth. In his old cell, the ceiling was cracked and peeling: He used to imagine the cracks were an earthquake and the hanging flakes volcanic eruptions. He used to follow the cracks with his eyes for hours, imagining them-no, willing them-wider. Sometimes, it seemed that they did widen, but they never widened enough to let him out, now matter how long he stared through the endless gray days and months.

  Remo rolled to the side of his bunk. He found no entertainment in this flat unblemished ceiling. Staring at his shoes, he thought about what the warden had said.

  He couldn't remember killing any guard back at Trenton State. But his mind was still fuzzy from sedation. Remo couldn't remember ever hearing of an inmate being shipped under sedation. Not a sane one. He wondered if he had cracked from the long years of imprisonment on death row.

  He let his mind roll back over the years. It was all a flat gray blur. How many since the day they came for him at his Newark walk-up? Ten years? Twenty? Closer to twenty. Twenty long years since the judge-what was his name, Harold something? had sent him up the river. In those days, New Jersey enforced its death penalty. Remo had sweated out over a year on death row-a "Dead Man" in the parlance of the other inmates-while his lawyer filed appeal after appeal.

  It was not so much the appeals process that saved his life as it was the trend against invoking the death-penalty statutes that finally saved ex-patrolman Remo Williams' life. It wasn't vindication, but it was better than sitting on the chair.

  Now, twenty years later, he was facing the chair all over again.

  Remo stood up. His joints felt stiff. His not-quite-numb fingers stroked the stiff stubble of his chin and throat. There was no mirror in the cell. On death row a man might cheerfully slice open his throat rather than be dragged to the chair.

  Swallowing reminded Remo of how dry his throat was. The washbasin was dry, so Remo decided to go in the other direction.

  "I could use a smoke," he said aloud.

  There was no answer from the left-hand cell, which Remo recalled had been empty when he passed it. But from the other side Popcorn asked, "Camel do for you?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well, here she come. One tailor-made."

  Outside his cell door, a filterless cigarette rolled into view. Remo had to get down on his knees to snare it. But his wrists were too thick for the narrow space between the bars. He strained, his fingers nearly brushing the paper cylinder. He shifted to the other hand, but only succeeded in pushing the cigarette completely out of reach.

  Remo returned to his bunk and sat down heavily, his face a mask of defeat.

  After a while Popcorn remarked, "I don't smell no smoke, Jim. And I had my heart set on second-hand."

  "It got away from me," Remo told him without emotion.

  "That how I feel about my life, Jim. But you still owe me one."

  "Sure," Remo said flatly. He felt like shit.

  "Just don't be waiting long for payback. Sparky own my ass, you know."

  "Who's Sparky? Your lawyer?" Remo wondered into the air. He might as well have been communicating with the dead. Popcorn's next words told him that he was.

  "Sparky's the chair, man. I walk the line next month if my appeal don't stick. They tell you when you're going?"

  "I'm not going," Remo said flatly.

  "Do tell. I used to think that. The Man lets you think that for a while, him and his lawyers. After a while you get to believin' it yourself. Then they take it away from you an inch at a time. That's the bitch of it. One day you be flyin', the next you're scratchin' in the dirt at your own damn feet, thinkin' that the only way out is to dig your way out. But either way you slice it, you be diggin' your own grave."

  "I'm not going," Remo repeated.

  "You figure 'cause you was once a cop, you got the juice. That it?"

  "They won't fry me. They didn't fry me in Jersey. They won't fry me down here."

  "Maybe so, Jim. But in this hole we in, Florida juice got a whole 'nother meanin'. It ain't orange and they gotta strap you down before you can get the benefit of it."

  "They can't transfer a man from one state to another and fry him. My lawyer will see to that."

  "I'm with that. My lawyer's my last hope too."

  "They won't fry me," Remo repeated. And suddenly he remembered why he had felt so uncomfortable sitting on the hardwood chair in the Warden's office. Electric chairs were always built of nonconducting wood.

  A door buzzed down the passageway distantly. Another buzzed. And each time, the buzzing was louder as Control opened door after door. Then there came the clear, unmuflled sound of footsteps.

  The guards stopped outside Remo's cell. They were the same guards as before.

  "Today's shower day, Williams," one said, sneering. Remo looked up from his bunk with dull eyes. He stood up. "Why not?" he muttered.

  This time they didn't cuff him as they brought him out from the cell.

  "Am I the only one who gets to wash off the dust?" Remo asked.

  The guard showed fierce teeth. "The others are already getting nice and clean for you, Soap Boy. Now, get moving."

  Remo walked slowly past the range of death-row cells. He met each glance in his direction boldly.

  This time there were no catcalls or jeers. In a way, it was a bad sign.

  They walked past the control booth at the prison crossroads, called Grand Central, where the watch commander buzzed them into the shower area. Remo stripped under the watchful eyes of the guards and stepped into the communal shower.

  Dozens of pairs of hard eyes drank in his lean, tigerish muscles, his athlete-flat stomach and oddly thick wrists. Remo ignored them and stepped under the hot stream of an unoccupied shower head, lathering himself with a dirty bar of soap that stood melting in a gutterlike shelf that ran under the shower heads the entire length of the room. He rubbed some of the lather into his brawn hair, scrubbed furiously, and, aware of the eyes on him, stepped back under the hot water until the last of the lather ran into the floor grates, to be carried away to the kind of freedom Remo hadn't known since he was half his current age.

  As Remo started for the door, a man stepped in his path. He was white and built like a pregnant linebacker. His thick face was as expressionless as the Hoover Dam, except for the Fu Manchu mustache that had gone out of style when Gerald Ford was in the White House and a tiny dab of hair under his lower lip called a pachuco tuft. His black hair splayed all over his forehead, dripping dirty gray soap lather. He looked like a Klingon with a bad hairpiece.

  "You the new Dead Man?" he growled.

  "The name's Remo."

  "Yeah. That's you. Dead Man," the man muttered as if Remo wasn't there. Then louder he said, "I hear you were a cop."

  Remo said nothing. There was a phrase in the joint: Do your own time. It meant to mind your business and stay out of trouble. Remo decided he was going to follow it. He let his gaze drop to the man's soap-matted chest hair. Not in submission, but because the man was so much taller than Remo that Remo simply let his eyes rest at their natural level. He made his hard face still, betraying no emotion, neither weakness nor challenge.

  "I used to eat cops," the man taunted. "You tell 'im, McGurk," someone shouted. McGurk leaned into Remo's face. His breath was sour. Like week-old buttermilk.

  "Maybe I'll eat you." When Remo didn't reply, McGurk said, "Then again, maybe it'll be the other way around. I could protect you, cop. If you treat me right."

  At that, Remo's gaze lifted. His eyes seemed to retreat into their deep sockets. Their expression was unreadable.

  "You do for me and I'll do for you," MeGurk said, low-voiced. "What d'you say?"

&
nbsp; "I say," Remo said flatly, "that your breath smells like you've been sucking on an elephant's teat. Maybe you should stick with satisfying yourself that way."

  McGurk's jaw dropped, making his pachuco tuft bristle.

  The only sound in the room for a long time was the shower heads ejecting relentless streams of water. Then a man released an explosive bark of a laugh. Another sucked in his breath. They moved in on Remo and the giant called McGurk to see what would happen next. Behind the big man, Remo could see the guards watching through the square window. Abruptly they turned their backs, and Remo knew there would be no help from them.

  "All you swinging dicks stay out of this," McGurk said. He looked down at Remo. Remo met his gaze unflinchingly.

  "I'll give you a choice, cop," McGurk said in a taut voice. "Your mouth on my jones right now or my shank in your gut."

  "If you're packing, prove it," Remo said calmly. McGurk spread out impossibly big hands and said, "No pockets, friend. But I'll get you in the yard."

  "Then I'll see you in the yard," Remo said, pushing past the man and pulling open the door faster than McGurk could react.

  Remo grabbed a towel off a rack and began drying himself as the obviously disappointed guards separated and took up positions by the outer door. The odor of stale sweat was a permanent stench in the room. The others drifted out, naked and sullen, and claimed their towels. When they were done, they threw the towels into a laundry cart and put on their clothes slowly, as if donning the blue state-issue dungarees made them less, not more, civilized.

  As Remo reached for an identical uniform, one of the guards said, "No prison blues for you. Here." Remo accepted an apricot-colored T-shirt. He pulled it over his head, and realized what it signified. Every man on the row had worn one. It was the badge of the condemned.

  They formed a line, with Remo in the rear. The guards buzzed the door open and they walked out single file, their shoulders almost touching the right wall as they right-angled around corners until they passed the multiple-tier cellblocks surrounding Grand Central. The men ahead of Remo filed into their cells. They were general population. Remo continued on, alone, into the Q Wing, death row.