Death Sentence td-80

by Warren Murphy

  "Thanks," Remo said tonelessly, wondering if he meant it.

  "Don't thank me. Thank my grinnin' corpse," Popcorn shot back. "Maybe I'll take ol' Crusher with me and do everyone a favor. A man with nothing to lose can do most everything. 'Cept live."

  "I heard that," Remo said tightly.

  Breakfast was runny eggs and fat strips with the shadow of bacon meat on them. The bacon was cold by the time it reached Remo, and the smell of it nearly turned his stomach-as if it were cooked human flesh. There was a pint carton of orange juice and Remo tried that. It seared his tongue to taste and burned his throat going down. But it stayed down. He ignored everything else.

  Today was shower day and Remo lay on his bunk waiting for the guards. He was getting tired of staring at the flat ceiling so he sat up and transferred his attention to the pink cinder-block walls.

  "Hey, Popcorn," he called.

  "Yo."

  "What color are your walls?"

  "Same as yours. Pink as quiff. "

  "I hate pink."

  "A hack once told me they painted every cell on the row pink to keep us poor Dead Men down. Scientist dudes think pink keeps our aggressions pacified. Makes pussies of us."

  "You've been here awhile. Does it work?"

  "Well," Popcorn said sadly after a lengthy pause, "I can't tell you the last time I got it up and kept it there."

  Remo laughed out loud. When Popcorn didn't join in, Remo realized the little con had taken offense and was sulking. Remo decided to let him get over the mood on his own.

  When the guards came, Remo knew at once that they had not come to escort him to the shower room.

  Although he had no watch, and no window in his cell, he sensed it was too early for his shower. Only after they let him from his cell and walked him down the longest death row in the country did it dawn on him that no one else was going to a shower either.

  "What's this, Adopt-a-Con week?" Remo asked, looking neither right nor left at the flanking C.O. s. "Your lawyer's here," one growled.

  Remo's eyebrows lifted in surprise, but he said nothing.

  As they approached the inmate-choked prison crossroads, the other guard called out, "Clear the hall! Dead Man walking! Clear the hall!"

  Instantly, denim-clad population inmates returned to their cells or gave way like human traffic before a fire engine. Remo felt like a leper. It had not been like this up in Jersey, but then, no one on the Trenton State death row expected to be executed.

  After they had passed, the human sea surged back into place. Remo felt countless eyes on him. He saw no sign of Crusher McGurk.

  Near the warden's office, protected by bars of specialty steel, was a suite of conference rooms and outside of it a bright yellow cage. Not a cell. It was like an animal's cage.

  Remo was placed in this. He took a seat on a hardwood bench and waited. The hours passed before a guard came and opened the cage. It was the squat one who had tried to strip-search Remo the day before. Pepone. He gave Remo a wolfish grin.

  "Looks like I get to finish what was interrupted yesterday," he said. "Now, strip."

  This time Remo didn't hesitate. If he resisted normal previsitation procedure, he would be denied all visitation rights and not see his lawyer. And if Pepone wrote up a report on him, he'd end up in solitary and probably never see his lawyer.

  Remo wanted to see his lawyer. And so quietly he removed his apricot T-shirt and dungarees.

  "Now drop your drawers, spread your cheeks, and crack a smile," Pepone said.

  Remo hesitated. Some spark flickered in his stillgroggy mind. He looked Pepone straight in the eye and said, "I'm not carrying any contraband. Take my word for it."

  Pepone's broad face darkened. "Think about it, Williams. It's just you and me in this cage. No way out. "

  "For either of us," Remo said, putting cold meaning into the pronoun.

  "You know the rules of this facility."

  "And you know my reputation," Remo countered. Pepone stiffened. He looked around. There were no other guards nearby.

  "Okay," he said dully. "Dress."

  Remo dressed quickly, and only then was he led into one of the conference rooms.

  There was only one other person in the room, a curly-haired young man who sat nervously on one side of the glass-partitioned conference cubicle. Remo strode up to the cubicle and took the seat. He fixed the man with his deep eyes. "You're not my lawyer," he said suspiciously.

  "I'm local. Mr. Brooks asked me to manage your appeal through the Florida court system, now that you're under their jurisdiction. My name is George Proctor. "

  "I didn't hire you. I hired Brooks," Remo said flatly.

  "In all fairness to Mr. Brooks, he doesn't know his way around the Florida courts. I do. And you can't expect him to fly down here every time your appeal goes before a judge, can you?"

  Remo said nothing. He didn't know this man. He looked fresh out of Tulane. Worse, he looked nervous. And nervous men usually don't have the presence of mind to do the right thing in a crunch.

  "Are we clear on this, Mr. Williams?" Attorney Barry Proctor was saying.

  "Where do I stand?" Remo asked at last.

  Proctor took a sheaf of legal briefs out of his flat leather valise and looked them over. It seemed to Remo as if he were looking at them for the first time. Another bad sign.

  "Florida isn't New Jersey, Mr. Williams," Proctor said at last. "We have the largest death row in the country, and space is at a premium. They process people through the system as fast as they can."

  "They execute them, you mean."

  "Er, yes. That's what I mean. Because we're in a new state and a fresh legal system, I thought we'd start from scratch."

  "The last I heard, my case would be appealed to the Supreme Court," Remo offered.

  "Frankly, Mr. Williams, according to Brooks, he's been carrying you these last few years. Your life savings have been exhausted. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm willing to go through the appeals court in Miami on the grounds that having been transferred against your will to another state, you're entitled to at second bite of the judicial apple.

  "I'm innocent," Remo said.

  "The New Jersey authorities claim you killed one of their corrections officers."

  Remo paused. His eyes went blank. It was starting to come back. The constant hassling. The whispered threats. And the fight in the cell. He saw the hack's weather-beaten face go shocked as the blade dug into his guts. "He was riding me," Remo said. "He wouldn't get off my back. It was either him or me."

  "Then you admit to killing him."

  "Remo sighed. "Yeah," he said in a defeated voice. "I did the guard. But not the pusher in the alley. I was framed for that one." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Remo realized what he sounded like.

  He sounded exactly like every other whiny con on the row.

  "You know what I think?" Proctor was saying. "I think New Jersey dumped you on Florida to save themselves the cost of a new trial for that killing. They knew you would never be executed up there, no matter how many guards you killed. But in Florida you have an excellent chance of going to the chair within the next five years."

  "Can they do that? Legally, I mean."

  "It's highly unusual," Proctor admitted. "Frankly, I think the fix is in on you."

  "They're trying to railroad me," Remo said bitterly. But his eyes were bleak. It was starting to sink in. After all these years, he might actually pay for a crime he never committed because of another killing that wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been wrongly imprisoned.

  Proctor shoved the papers back into his valise. "I'll do what I can," he said, starting to offer his hand in a farewell shake. His manicured fingernails tapped the glass partition and he withdrew the hand sheepishly.

  Proctor stood up and signaled to the guard. A C.O. took Remo away, again calling, "Clear the hall! Dead Man coming through!" over and over until Remo began to feel very cold inside.

  Half the cells on death row were e
mpty as Remo made his way through the endless succession of control doors to his cell. He had missed his shower. And for the first time, he realized the significance of the black door which sealed off the corridor two cells down from his own cell. Beyond it was the electric chair.

  Remo felt drained after the cell door buzzed closed and the guard had departed.

  He paced the cell, feeling the craving for a cigarette return. But he remembered his last experience. What was wrong with him? he wondered. He was acting like a fish-a man new to prison. It must have been the sudden change in environment, he decided. The last thing he remembered was going to sleep in his old cell. They must have sedated him while he slept. Waking up in a new prison had been quite a shock. He was still struggling with it.

  Later, all along death row, cells buzzed open as those who had the luxury of showers returned to their cells. Popcorn was the last. He shot Remo the V-for-victory sign as he passed the cell. But the gesture was made ironic by the hunted look deep in his dark eyes.

  After the guards were gone, Popcorn asked, "What's the good word, my man?"

  "Saw my lawyer," Remo said in a remote voice.

  "I hope you got better news than I did."

  "He told me I have an excellent chance of getting fried in the next five years."

  "Five!" Popcorn guffawed. "Hell, man, he was jivin' you! You're next after me."

  Remo stopped pacing like a man who had been impaled by an icy thought. He drifted up to the cinder-block wall that separated him from Popcorn's cell. Cell Number 1.

  "Bullshit," Remo said hotly. But his voice was anxious.

  "Man, you know I'm next. That's why they got me in the cell next door from ol' Sparky. You got the next cell up. What that tell you?"

  "I can't be ahead of everyone else on the row," Remo said. "I just got here."

  "Oh, yes, you can," Popcorn returned. "You done killed a hack. None of them others got that distinction in their jacket. Truth to tell, my man, you got Ted Bundy's old cell. Now, you think about that a spell."

  Remo sat on his cot heavily. The color drained from his face like water down a porcelain sink. After a while he asked a dull-voiced question. "Who's Ted Bundy?"

  "Shee-it!" Popcorn said in disgust. "Where you been livin'? In a cave?"

  Chapter 7

  That night, beef and rice were served for dinner. The beef was gray and Remo decided to pass it up. Although he wanted to keep up his strength, he had no taste for meat. He wondered if it was because of the bad news he had received.

  But he ate all the rice and wanted-more. He found a single grain clinging to the side of his plastic tray and he greedily took it in his mouth, holding it there, tasting its pristine starchy purity, until slowly, reluctantly, he chewed it to a liquid and swallowed the taste.

  "How often do they serve rice here?" Remo called out.

  "Two, three times a week," Popcorn told him. "Wish it was more. They screw up the pasta, can't cook decent potatoes no matter how they do 'em up, but rice is something even a state cook can't screw up."

  "Amen," Remo said. He started feeling better; his head even felt clearer. A calmness overtook him and he wondered if it was the grotesque pink coloration of the walls finally getting to him.

  Before lights-out, the C.O. who did the head count stopped at Remo's cell and wondered, "I know you from somewhere?"

  Remo didn't recognize the man and shrugged. The guard pressed on. "You look familiar. Something about the eyes. Ever been busted in Coral Gables?"

  "I've never been to Coral Gables. I'm from Newark."

  "Never been north of Delaware myself," the guard said in a puzzled voice.

  "Maybe you be lovers in a past life," Popcorn put in loudly.

  He was ignored. The guard inched closer to the bars.

  "I'm going to place you, Dead Man," he said. His voice was neither threatening nor insulting. He used the term from long habit. "I don't suppose you've ever been on television."

  "No," Remo said, ending the conversation.

  The guard went away, the progress of his leaving marked by receding door clangings.

  "What was that all about?" Popcorn demanded after the lights were out.

  "Search me," Remo said as he stripped for bed. Sleep took him slowly. He had just started to drift off when he saw a face. It was not really a face so much as the impression of a face. It was gray. Or the background was gray. All Remo could clearly see was crisp white hair and a pair of rimless eyeglasses. There were no features under the hair and the eyes behind the glasses. Just the outline of an angular face. Drowsily Remo tried to peer closer. Just as the features started to resolve themselves, he snapped awake.

  Lying awake, Remo fought to hold that fading image, as if, even awake, he could summon up that amorphous face in his mind's eye and force its true features to come into focus.

  But like a lamp burn on the retina, it remained blurry until it faded. Finally Remo slept. He dreamed of rice. Huge mountains of steamed rice. It made his mouth water, even in sleep.

  Chapter 8

  "I been dwellin' on it," Popcorn was saying in between mouthfuls of the same scrambled eggs that Remo was dumping into the open toilet bowl rather than smell them a second longer. "And I decided I'm one lucky dude."

  "How do you figure that?" Remo asked, wondering if he should try the hash browns. He brought a plastic forkful to his lips, touched it with his tongue, and decided to pass. The toilet flushed a second time.

  "This could be Red China and not America."

  "Uh-huh."

  "In China," Popcorn continued solemnly, "they give you a bullet to the back of the brain soon as they find you guilty. Then they send your folks a bill for the bullet. You know what a bullet costs in Red China? Thirteen cents. Hell, the bullet I used on Condoleeza. couldn't have set me back more than a nickel. But that's communism for you. Even bullets cost more."

  "I thought you said you cut her."

  "I did. I cut her, then I shot her. I was honked off, okay?"

  Remo stared into his orange juice. This time, there were no little flecks of pulp, which told him it was probably diluted from concentrate. He decided it was better than nothing and started to sip it slowly, hoping it wouldn't burn his tongue and throat.

  Popcorn's voice rose. "In France, they used to use a guillotine. It supposed to be quick, but I read once of a dude who had his head taken off for real, who died so quick and slick his brain didn't know it. Chuck went that guillotine. Sluck went his ol' head. Plop it go, into the basket. And there it lay, blinking and trying to talk through the blood that come up from his poor mouth. Except the poor sucker ain't got no windpipe to blow his words out with."

  Halfway through the orange juice, Remo wondered how many times he'd have to flush the toilet before the water was fit to drink. He decided, reluctantly, that the answer was a disappointing never.

  "Hanging's worse, though," Popcorn went on in a merry voice. "You hang, and not only do you strangle to death, but your neck done break and you get a headache and a hard-on at the same time. You probably piss your pants to boot. Nobody should die hanging, not even a Puerto Rican."

  By that remark, Remo took it to mean that as in New Jersey, Puerto Rican inmates were considered the lowest rung of the prison social ladder. He could never figure out why that was. He had known an Eskimo up in Trenton who was doing a dime for manslaughter. A minority of one, but everyone liked him.

  "I am not a fan of gassin', either," Popcorn was saying. His chipper tone of voice rose in inverse proportion to the cheerfulness of his topic. "They strap you down in a little room and the cowards pull a lever in another room, droppin' these cyanide crystals into a bedpan of acid. Least, I heard it said it was a bedpan. That's where you get your gas. Imagine sitting there with those clouds billowing up around your hangdog face, knowin' that even if you held your breath, you were only prolongin' the agony."

  "I hear you go quick that way," Remo said.

  "Yeah?" Popcorn said testily. "Well, I hear your eyes bu
g out of your head, you go all purply in the face and drool like fuckin' Howdy Doody. No way I wanna go out drooling. I had my dignity in life. I wanna go the same way, with a little style, Jim. A touch of class. The chair ain't so bad when you think about it. You get to sit down and you kinda go out on your own throne." He allowed himself a dry chuckle.

  "I take it you changed your mind about throwing yourself at Crusher McGurk," Remo said airily. "What, and cut my days short? No chance, Jim." Down the corridor, the electronic doors began to buzz and roll, presaging approaching guards. "Damn!" Popcorn said. "He be early for these trays. I been talkin' when I shoulda been eatin'. You know, this ol' prison food never tasted as good to me as it does now."

  The door sounds grew closer. Two pairs of footsteps became audible through the remaining door. Voices along the row, mostly men talking to themselves, suddenly hushed.

  "I don't think they're here for the trays," Remo said.

  "I think you be right, Jim."

  Remo drifted up to the bars of his cell. Maybe it was news of his appeal.

  Officiously a guard swept past his cell. Accompanying him was a heavyset sixtyish man in a civilian work uniform. The man moved furtively, his hand up to his face to shield it, as if he were a convicted felon. He was not manacled.

  The two men swept out of view.

  "No, man," Popcorn protested. "It's too soon. I don't go till Tuesday. Tuesday, you hear!" His voice jumped to an excitable high C.

  "Pipe down," the guard growled. "We'll get around to you."

  The sound of a wheel turning told Remo that the iron door to the electric-chair room had been opened. It was closed by a huge wheel like on a submarine hatch. There was a medieval sound to the door swinging on seldom-used hinges.

  "Just tap on the glass when you're done, Haines," the guard said. "I'll be right here."

  The door squealed shut.

  "How you doing, Popcorn?" the guard asked in good humor.

  "I was fuckin' chipper until a minute ago, hack," Popcorn said uneasily. "I was the chipperest Dead Man you ever saw. Now I don't know."