Chapter 11
Remo lay awake the rest of the night thinking about the old Oriental. The dream had shaken him. There was something almost tangible about the images, particularly the old Oriental. Even hours later, his wizened face hovered clearly in Remo's mind's eye. Every wrinkle, every inflection in his voice. It was as if he had actually known the little man. But as Remo searched his memory, he couldn't recall ever having seen him in real life.
It was strange. In his dream, the little Asian had a name. Chiun. Remo couldn't remember ever having had a dream in which one of the figments of his imagination had a name. Remo even knew how to spell it. There was an I that wasn't pronounced.
It was a pretty sophisticated concept for his subconscious mind, Remo reflected. Why not Chang? He had heard the name Chang before. Many Chinese were named Chang. It was like the name Jones over here. He had never heard of a Chiun, however.
After a while Remo drifted off. The morning buzzer jolted him awake too soon. Slowly Remo got into his dungarees and apricot-colored T-shirt. He hated the T-shirt almost as much as the pink cell walls. He wished it was blue. Or the walls were blue. These pastels reminded him of a cheap department-store print.
Before breakfast was shoved through the slot, word raced down the row that Crusher McGurk had died during the night.
"What about Popcorn?" Remo asked urgently.
A voice replied with a gruff, "Don't no one know, man. But that boy, he got spunk. That how he got his name."
"How did he get his name?" Remo asked suddenly. "When the little dude came down the line first time, he was jokin' and jivin', tellin' the hacks that when his time come to set his ass on Sparky, he was bringing a thing of Jiffy Pop with him. Said it was for the row. After that, he was Popcorn."
Remo grunted. He wondered if Popcorn, wherever he was, had any of that spirit left in him. Remo told the guard, "Thanks, but no thanks," when he appeared with the tray. It was ham and beans. The C.O. shrugged and started away, but Remo called after him, "Hey, what's the word on Popcorn?"
"Does it matter? He's scheduled to go tomorrow."
"Yeah, hack," Rema growled. "It matters to me." He fell back into his bunk and suddenly remembered the pack of Camels in his dungaree pockets. He fished them out and lit one up.
The first puff sent him coughing. The second was a little less harsh. His lungs only burned like sulfur. Remo managed to smoke half of it before his head started aching. He snuffed the butt against the floor and carefully replaced the remaining half in the pack after the tip had cooled. No telling how long the pack would have to last him.
It was late afternoon when two guards escorted Popcorn to his cell. The little con walked in chains, with his head bowed low.
Remo waited until the guards were gone before he hissed out a greeting. "How's it going, kid?"
The sound that came back was mewing. Remo couldn't make it out. Somewhere down the line, a taunting voice said, "Hey, Popcorn, what's the matter? Pussycat got your tongue?"
And from Popcorn's cell came a protracted whimpering that turned Remo's blood cold. It went on for an hour. A picture of Popcorn, his face buried in his pillow, unable to speak, leapt into Remo's head.
Remo pulled out the half-cigarette and a single match, then pushed the pack out into the corridor. "Here. You need these more than I do," he said gently.
Remo watched through the bars as Popcorn's thin brown fingers groped for the pack. They disappeared with it and Remo lingered by the bars while Popcorn smoked in silence. For some reason, secondhand smoke seemed to suit him better these days.
The rest of the day was gray and interminable. Every head count was the same. Even Radar Dish, once night fell, did the same Star Trek monologue he had done earlier in the week.
After lights-out, the silence was eerie. There were no midnight howls, no night terror screams, no buzz of furtive conversation.
Everyone knew that tomorrow was Tuesday. The day Popcorn was scheduled to go to the chair. Remo wondered if the little guy would get any sleep, and then he wondered how he himself would sleep when his turn came.
He listened to Popcorn toss and turn all night and wondered if he should offer any words of comfort. Then he realized he had none. What do you tell a Dead Man as his final minutes tick by?
The morning buzzer was like a shank in the gut. The first visitors were a pair of C.O.'s and a priest. The exchange was inaudible and one-sided. The priest soon left, his face a shocked bone-white after he realized he could not hear the condemned man's confession because he had no tongue.
Next came the barber and the warden.
Warden McSorley spoke in flat, rote-like tones over the buzz of the clippers that were whittling Popcorn's high-top fade to microscopic stubble.
"Listen carefully, Mohammed," the warden was saying. "After the barber is done, you're going to step out of your shorts and we're going to prepare your body."
Popcorn whimpered.
"Now, don't be alarmed. It's just a rubber band." The clippers stopped. "Is he done? Good. All right, Mohammed, stand up. Don't be afraid. The guard is just going to wrap the band around your penis. It's just to prevent any accidents while you're undergoing the process."
Remo shuddered at the word "process." It sounded so clinical.
"Now, bend over. Guard, insert this suppository into Mohammed's rectum. There. That wasn't so bad, was it? I'm sorry about the indignity, but it saves the undertaker a lot of unnecessary work, not having to clean the body."
Popcorn tried to speak, but all Remo could make out was a pitiful muff muff of a sound.
"What's that?" the warden was saying in a solicitous tone. "What? Oh, yes. Customarily there is a last meal, but the doctor left specific instructions that you not eat while your tongue is stitched up like that. I'm sorry, but the doctor knows best."
"For Christ's sake," Remo exploded. "You're about to drag him off to the chair. Who gives a rat's ass if his stitches pop!"
"The person who would have to clean up the blood," the warden called back. "Guard, if that prisoner speaks out again, take him to solitary."
Remo started to tell them where they could shove solitary, but subsided, bitter that they had that to hold over him. But as they had told him the first time he walked through the Trenton State gates, he had forfeited his civil rights.
"All right, you may dress now," the warden went on quietly. The rustle of clothes came next. Then the cell door buzzed open and Remo could hear the soft padding of Popcorn's sandaled feet on the corridor floor. For some reason it sounded louder than the shoes of the others.
"So long, Popcorn," a man shouted several cells away.
"Give 'em hell, my man."
"You goin' to a better place, my man."
"Let me reassure you that the procedure is completely painless," Warden McSorley was saying as a guard unlocked the door to the electric chair. Popcorn whimpered miserably. He was attempting to speak, but only an inarticulate blubbering came out.
"Catch him!" the warden shouted suddenly. "He's collapsing."
"Don't worry, I got him. Here, let's just haul him along."
After the commotion subsided, the hush was palpable. It was a hush Remo had heard before. He was not surprised, then, when a man walked down the line. He wore a black hood over a simple brown workman's uniform. He looked like a common repairman.
The executioner.
After he passed Remo's cell, the wheel on the thick door squealed shut. Then absolute silence blanketed the row.
The next several minutes were interminable. Remo wondered if Popcorn was conscious when they strapped him down. He hoped not. It seemed to take a long time. How long could it take to strap a man in? Remo fretted.
Then, after what seemed like forever, the lights flickered and Remo went cold. When the flicker came, it seemed too sudden. They flickered again. And a third time. Remo held his breath after that. Then the lights flickered a fourth and final time. "Christ!" Remo said, sickened.
The warden reemerged, tr
ailed by the guards and the hooded executioner.
One of the guards was saying, "Imagine that. Four jolts. And such a little squirt, too."
"Before I do this again," the executioner said testily, "I want to look that thing over again. I don't want to ever go through another one like that. I'm not up for this kind of thing. I'm semiretired, dammit!"
"I hope you feel that way when my time comes," Remo muttered sotto voce.
The executioner glanced in his direction, his eyes going wide within his leather-ringed eye holes.
He stopped, came up to Remo's cell. "Do I know you?" he asked vaguely.
"That's a popular question lately," Remo shot back sourly.
"I do know you," the executioner said. "But I can't place the face."
"Yours is a blank to me," Remo said, flashing a wicked grin.
"You're a cold-blooded son of a bitch, aren't you? What's your name?"
"Look it up," Remo fired back.
"Don't worry, I will," the executioner said, and walked on.
"Guard," the warden said, "show Williams to his new cell."
"Damn! Now I've done it," Remo said bitterly, thinking he had just earned a stint in solitary.
"Williams!" the executioner said explosively. "Did you say his name was Williams?" The buzz of the control door closing cut off the warden's reply.
The guard buzzed Remo's cell open, and to Remo's surprise, he was taken to Popcorn's old cell.
"Take good care of it," the guard told him as the cell door clanged in his unhappy face. "On the row, this is the Presidential Suite."
As the guard started away, Remo called after him, "Did he die hard?"
The guard stopped. His expression was stiff. "Know what his last words were?" he asked solemnly. "What?"
"Mumph! Mumph. Unquote." And the guard broke into howling laughter.
"He was just a kid, you bastard," Remo hissed, his knuckles whitening on the cell bars.
"Sure. A kid who blew away his own sister, left her for dead in a swamp with maggots crawling all over her."
Remo started. "What?"
"Sure. What'd he tell you?"
"That he killed his girlfriend on his birthday."
"I don't know about the birthday part, but he made a duck out of you. It was his sister, and he killed her, all right. After he raped her. But he should have read up on maggots before he poured them into her wounds. He thought they'd consume the body so it wouldn't be recognized. Instead, they ate away all the bad tissue. She was barely alive when they found her, and lingered just long enough to finger her brother. Whatever you thought of that little prick, he deserved what he got. Just as you will." The guard strode away.
Remo's eyes looked into dead space. "Son of a bitch," he muttered. "He lied to me."
Remo stumbled back to his cot and looked around. The new cell was as pink as his old one, but it smelled different. It smelled of sweat and something else, something indefinable. It smelled of fear. And cold realization hit Remo Williams.
"Damn," he muttered emptily, "I am next." Remo felt very cold inside and lay back on the cot to get a grip on himself. His hand, exploring under the pillow, encountered something soft and crushable. He pulled it out.
It was Popcorn's pack of Camels.
Remo sat up and lighted one. He took a long drag. He had less trouble this time and smoked it all the way down. As he smoked, he considered how his life had turned around. Twenty years ago, Popcorn and he would have been on opposite sides of the law. But behind bars, they had been friends of a sort.
When he was through smoking, Remo whispered into the emptiness, "Thanks, Popcorn."
Chapter 12
Harold Haines felt the warden's office go dark around him. Distantly he heard Warden McSorley's voice call through the roaring in his ears.
"Haines. What is it, man? You're turning white." The warden's voice seemed far away, so Harold Haines didn't bother to answer it. The darkness seemed to expand. All that Harold Haines saw, or cared to see, were the yellow pages of the condemned man's rap sheet in his suddenly cold hands. "Harold?"
"It's him," Haines croaked, his eyes not wavering from the pages. "It's not just a guy with the same name. It's him. Williams."
Then the fading typed letters on the rap sheet started to jiggle uncontrollably. Harold felt himself shake. The world was a very small place as seen through the diminishing tunnel of his vision.
"Harold!"
Haines looked up, his eyes opaque. The warden's heavy hands were on his shoulders and he was shaking Haines violently.
"Snap out of it. Here, take a chair."
Haines felt himself being guided to the hard wooden chair that except for the leather straps and copper halo was identical to the electric chair Haines had just operated. He knew this because a year ago he had salvaged an identical wooden chair from storage to serve as a replacement for the old chair, which had given out. He sat down, unmindful of the irony.
Warden McSorley towered over him, his arms folded, his care-seamed face concerned.
"This is the guy," Haines repeated. "Remo Williams."
"You said that before. And you know how it sounds. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Maybe the work is getting to you."
"Stop talking at me like I'm one of your goddamned cons!" Harold Haines shouted with sudden vehemence. "That man on death row shouldn't be there. He's already dead!"
"Nonsense. Williams is a transfer prisoner. He arrived last week from ... well, it's in the file you're holding."
"I know. He's from Trenton State Prison, New Jersey. "
McSorley showed empty hands. "There it is."
"Exactly. "
"So what's the problem, Harold?"
"You don't have a con in that cell, you have a ghost."
"Harold, I've known you a long time-" McSorley began.
Haines cut him off with a curt, "Long enough to remember that until five years ago I was retired."
"Well, yes," Warden McSorley said slowly.
"I retired back around twenty years ago, when the death penalty fell out of political favor. Forty-five years old and I was out of work. The state give me a short-money pension because after a lifetime of frying felons, they know I'm not exactly going to assimilate into another line of work. Hell, who's going to hire an execution technician? And to do what, rewire houses? So I come to Florida, live in a trailer park, and watch game shows until I start to think about wiring up my easy chair as the best way out."
"Now, Harold . . "
"Can I finish? Thank you, I would have gone crazy, but the death-penalty thing loosened up. And even though I see the faces of the men I put down in my sleep, I offer my services to the state of Florida. The rest you know."
"Yes, the rest I know," MeSorley admitted.
"One of the faces in my dreams belonged to that Williams guy," Haines snapped. "Not exactly a common name. Remo Williams. A name you'd remember. Especially if it belonged to a cop who beat a pusher to death back to Newark, New Jersey, so long ago I don't even remember the year. This rap sheet says your Remo Williams snuffed a pusher in an alley. He was a cop, too."
"You must be misremembering. You've put down ... how many men?"
"I stopped counting long after it was too late for my peace of mind," Haines said sourly. "That guy you got in there, Warden, I did him. I remember he went easy. One jolt. And it was over. I remember feeling bad about it, too. Him being a cop once. Snuffing a pusher. What's that? Nothing. He should have gotten off. Maybe life. Never the chair. I felt sick about it for weeks after. He was one of the last guys I burned up there." Harold Haines's eyes focused in on themselves. "One of the last guys, and now he comes back to haunt me. . . ."
Warden MeSorley looked at Harold Haines without comment. He took the file folder from Haines's trembling fingers and retreated to the solidity of his big desk. He flipped through the folder, reading silently.
When he was done, he laid the folder flat and placed his blunt hands atop it like a worshiper layi
ng hands on a prayer book. His expression was thoughtful as he spoke. "We've known each other a long time, Harold. What I'm about to tell you, I will deny with my dying breath."
Haines looked up, his brown eyes hunted and dull. "The young man you just executed, Mohammed Diladay," McSorley went on. "Do you remember remarking that we were doing him awfully soon after the last execution?"
"I think I said they were going through here like shit through a goose."
The warden winced. "Yes. Well, I'm burdened with the largest population of condemned men in the nation. I have to move them through the system as efficiently as I can. The Diladay boy would normally have had a grace period of a month after his last appeal had been turned down, except that I received a phone call from the governor urging me to expedite his execution. When I asked his honor for his reasons, he said something vague about moving the process along, which was no answer. But I recognized a certain ... concern in his voice."
Warden McSorley paused. His lower lip crowded up around his upper lip. He went on. "I thought perhaps there was something political, even personal about his request to execute Diladay so quickly. There was really no need to hurry the process. Diladay had no chance of commutation, unless it came from the governor's own office. But now I wonder."
"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Harold Haines asked.
Warden McSorley picked up the Remo Williams file.
"Williams is next, by virtue of the state of his appeal and the time he spent on death row up in Jersey," he said thoughtfully. "It strikes me as I listen to you that perhaps the governor's concern was not with Diladay, but with Williams."
"Poor bastard. They killed him once and now they want me to do it again."
"I don't believe in ghosts, Haines. And when you settle down, you'll feel the same way, I'm sure. You may have thought you executed this man-and I believe you're sincere in that belief- but obviously you did not."
"I wonder," Harold Haines muttered.
"Hmmm?"
"Where has this guy been the last twenty years and what's he been doing that they want to kill him all over again?"
"I think I'll make a call," Warden McSorley said pointedly. He dialed the number himself after consulting a thin leather-bound directory.
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