Almost Midnight

by Paul Doiron

  “Thanks.”

  “Too smart for your own good.” He folded his big hands on the tabletop. No wedding ring. Just a circle of lighter skin where a band would have been. But most people who worked at the prison removed their valuables before going to work. “I want to know what Billy Cronk talked to you about yesterday.”

  “The dismal state of the Patriots’ secondary.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

  “It’s my business if your friend had foreknowledge of the attack on Mears and Richie.”

  I crossed my knife and fork on my yolk-stained plate. “If he had foreknowledge of anything, I doubt he would have come near that laundry room. I don’t know if you have had a chance to speak with your sergeant yet, but she’s claiming it was Billy Cronk who saved her life.”

  “I’ve heard what Dawn is saying,” Donato said in a skeptical tone that hinted at some secret knowledge.

  With his hands resting on the table, I reconsidered the sallow circle of skin on his ring finger. There was no indentation in the flesh. Donato hadn’t worn a wedding band for a long time. I remembered a photograph on his desk at the prison of a wife and young children taken the day of his return from the war.

  I pushed my chair away from the table so I could cross my legs. “I was under the impression the investigation into this morning’s attacks was being handled by Detective Klesko of the Maine State Police.”

  “That’s correct, but we’re conducting our own inquiry. It includes an audit of security protocols. When prisoners have found a way to exploit a hole in our systems, we need to identify the breach and patch it immediately. We have the safety of our staff—and other inmates—to consider.”

  I saw no need to respond. The smell of a frying hamburger wafted from the hospital kitchen.

  Donato picked up the salt shaker as a plaything. “Cronk wanted to talk with you about Sergeant Richie, right? What did you talk about?”

  “We agreed that the Patriots need to draft a cornerback, which means they’ll probably take a long snapper instead.”

  He spoke without looking at me. “It would be a mistake to test my resolve.”

  I found the expression odd, almost old-fashioned. “It wouldn’t be my first mistake of the day.”

  My phone vibrated on the table. I turned the screen faceup. A luminous photograph shone up at me, identifying the caller as Aimee Cronk.

  “I need to take this.”

  Donato rose to his feet. He adjusted his cuffs and straightened his tie. He smoothed his goatee with his fingers. The purple shadows under his eyes seemed pronounced from this angle. The man wasn’t much older than I was, but he looked as if he’d barely survived a head-on collision with middle age.

  “Billy Cronk is no hero,” he said, looming above the table. “The man’s a wild animal who should spend the rest of his life in a cage.”

  As he stalked away, pursued by his right-hand man, Sergeant Hoyt, I answered the phone.

  “Aimee?”

  “Mike, where are you?”

  “In the cafeteria.”

  “We’re here at the hospital, but they won’t let us see him!”

  “Billy was still anesthetized when I was last there. He had just gotten out of surgery.”

  “But the guard says he’s awake. A detective’s in his room interviewing him. He should have a lawyer in there. He has a right to an attorney!”

  I rose from the table. “I’ll be right down.”

  * * *

  I heard Aimee Cronk even before I rounded the corner to the waiting room.

  “You had no business interrogating Billy without him having legal counsel present.”

  Steve Klesko said with strained patience, “Your husband isn’t being investigated for a crime, Mrs. Cronk.”

  “It don’t matter. It’s the prosecutor who’ll decide if it was self-defense, and if he says otherwise, you’ll wish you’d Mirandized the shit out of him. Not to mention that our lawyer will claim Billy was drugged up when he spoke with you. So there’s a consent problem for you there, too, Dee-tective.”

  Aimee was standing toe-to-toe with Klesko, although she was close to a foot shorter than he was. She wore a man’s chamois shirt that hung on her curvy body like a tunic, jeans she’d patched herself, and a stunningly white pair of sneakers. Her red-blond hair was cinched in a topknot, and she was wearing what Billy called her “sexy librarian” glasses.

  Klesko seemed to be bending backward from the short woman’s frontal assault. “Please, Aimee—”

  “It’s Mrs. Cronk to you. And how come his own family can’t see him if he’s alert enough for the third degree?”

  “He’s still an inmate in the custody of the Maine State Prison. It’s up to them if he can have visitors. You need to take it up with an official—”

  “Really? You’re gonna play that card?”

  Klesko needed rescuing fast.

  “Aimee?”

  I’d been nervous about my reception, but she threw her arms around me with such force I was glad her hyper-jealous husband wasn’t there to see it.

  Across the room, I could see her children, the five blond Cronklets, occupying couches and chairs beneath the lone television set. They had already spilled sunflower seeds all over the carpet. Someone had tuned the TV station to a financial news network, and the backwoods ragamuffins were watching it with the intensity of day traders waiting for the next earnings report to drop.

  “They won’t let us in, Mike,” Aimee said.

  “So I heard.”

  “What are you going to do about it, I want to know.”

  I might have repeated Klesko’s line that the decision remained in the hands of the prison officials, but I knew Aimee Cronk well enough to know how poorly that excuse would fare with her.

  Fortunately, the deputy warden, Angelo Donato, had also made his way to the surgical wing. He stood in the doorway, conferring with three guards: the mustached sergeant he’d called Hoyt; the white shadow, Tyler Pegg; and a big guy with a shaved head who kept his back to me.

  “Deputy Warden Donato!”

  “Warden Investigator Bowditch.”

  “Your guard won’t let Mrs. Cronk in to see her injured husband.”

  The twinkle in his eye announced his pleasure in having something to hold over me. “The rules are to protect the safety of everyone involved, including the medical personnel.”

  I glanced back at Klesko, figuring a good word from the detective might help, but he was already beating a retreat.

  I tried an appeal to whatever heart powered Donato’s massive chest. “You were an MP at Bagram Air Base, correct?”

  “I know where you’re going with this. I am aware that Cronk did a tour in the Sandbox.”

  “And Afghanistan.”

  “The Maine State Prison isn’t a branch of the VA. His military record isn’t our concern. His criminal record is.”

  Most bureaucrats, in my experience, have a fear of unknown outcomes.

  “What do you think the TV reporters out there are going to report,” I said, “when they learn you wouldn’t permit an injured hero to see his wife and children?”

  “What makes you think I give a shit what those bubbleheads have to say?”

  I should have known that particular threat wouldn’t work. Donato and his boss, the head warden, were protected by the governor, whose contempt for journalists was the stuff of legend.

  “How about a trade then?” I played the last card in my hand. “I tell you what Billy and I talked about in exchange for letting Mrs. Cronk and her kids see him.”

  He rubbed his goatee in a way that suggested he’d only recently grown it. Facial hair was still a novelty. “The wife only, and she will be supervised by one of my men.”

  Aimee was watching me with a bottled fury. She flared her small nostrils and raised her red-gold eyebrows. Be a man and make the call, that expression was telling me.

  “All right.�
� Then I added, to everyone’s surprise including my own, “But I want Pegg to be the guard in there with her.”

  “Me?” the pale young man said.

  “Billy trusts him,” I explained. “I assume you do as well, Donato.”

  He eyed his own man with open suspicion. “Of course I do.”

  I was tempted to ask Aimee if her kids needed supervision, but they were clearly waiting with keen anticipation for Microsoft’s earnings report. While Pegg escorted her in to see Billy, Donato and I stepped into the corridor that separated the ER from the surgical care unit. The hospital had decorated the long hallway with black-and-white photographs of Maine’s maritime past: ships under sail, wharves all afire, sea captains laughing in the face of storms.

  “Billy Cronk wanted to see me because he had concerns about Sergeant Richie’s safety.”

  “That, I’m afraid, is a lie.”

  “What reason do you have to say that?”

  “I am under no obligation to share my reasons with you, Bowditch.”

  We had arrived at a stalemate. Instead of returning his intense gaze, I stared at the center of his forehead, knowing it would make him uncomfortable. After nearly a minute of silence, he raised his fingers to caress his goatee again.

  “Have it your way. I’m pulling Cronk’s wife out of there. She can see him again when our nurse practitioner says he’s ready to leave the infirmary. That might be a while.”

  The desperation in this threat made me understand what was really eating at him. “You don’t trust Dawn Richie.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You and I haven’t agreed on much, Angelo, but you’ve always struck me as a natural leader. And a good leader protects his people. Somehow, though, I’m not getting the vibe that you feel overly protective of Sergeant Richie.”

  A janitor pushed a clattering cart past us. The distraction gave Donato the time to collect himself.

  “You should write novels,” he said in the affectless tone which was his default.

  “Maybe in my retirement.”

  Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a song began to play. I recognized the heavy-metal riff: “Enter Sandman” by Metallica. It had been a favorite of our mutual friend, the late Jimmy Gammon.

  Donato produced a cell phone from his pocket. He cupped a hand to his free ear and began to turn away from me for privacy. “Yes, sir?”

  But the person on the other end—and I was fairly certain I knew who it was—had news that shattered his composure.

  “You’re fucking kidding.” He paused to absorb a reprimand from his superior. “I apologize, sir. That language was out of line. How long before he gets here?”

  The answer was as unwelcome as the rest of the information he’d received.

  “Yes, sir. I’ll do my best to stall. But you know how he hates waiting.”

  Donato shoved the phone back into his jacket so hard it was a wonder he didn’t punch a hole in the lining. “The governor is coming.”

  “Tough break.”

  He seemed to withdraw into himself as he processed my remark. Donato was clearly having trouble sizing me up. He had a natural facility for placing people into categories, and it bothered him that I resisted his best efforts.

  He signaled down the hall for Sergeant Hoyt.

  In Donato’s haste to intercept the chief executive, he forgot about Pegg.

  I wasn’t sure I should be happy about the news he’d received.

  The Penguin was coming, and no one could predict the chaos he was about to cause.

  9

  I took a seat in the waiting room among the Cronklets. Aimee and Billy had four boys—Logan, Ethan, Aiden, and Brady—and one girl, Emma, who ran the entire house. Fortunately for me, the kids remained fully under the spell of the television. One of the few things in life that chilled me to the marrow was having to make small talk with children.

  Reporters kept trying to argue their way past the local cop the hospital had called in as backup to their security.

  The journalists would get their pictures soon enough, the minute the governor arrived. The Penguin both hated the media and yet loved nothing better than having a television camera focused on his face and a microphone pointed at his mouth. He would be sure to drag a whole cavalcade of reporters in with him to record his expression of sympathy to Dawn Richie.

  Why else would he be coming to the hospital if not to be photographed with the courageous CO who had survived a brutal attack by two convicts?

  Billy Cronk, I suspected, would conveniently be omitted from the narrative. His role in the fracas was too complicated for propagandists, who painted only in primary colors.

  For my part, I was chafing to escape the germy confines of the hospital. Dani had said she was headed to the Midcoast. I kept glancing up every time someone entered the room, hoping it was my girlfriend.

  Instead, it was Aimee who saved me. She looked relaxed, even a little flushed and rumpled, as if an act had transpired between husband and wife that couldn’t have been possible under such tight supervision.

  “Billy wants to see you.”

  “How did you arrange that?”

  “I told the guard it was part of the agreement with Donato to let you visit. He’s a good kid but not the sharpest crayon under the bed.”

  I stopped in the doorway when I saw Aimee kneel beside her little girl. “Aren’t you coming?” I asked.

  “I thought you understood. Billy wants to see you in private.”

  * * *

  For a man who had come within millimeters of being disemboweled and had just awoken from anesthesia, Billy Cronk looked damned amazing. He was pale from blood loss, but his pupils were tightly focused. Both wrists remained chained to the bed—the guards having learned their lesson with Chapman.

  “Are you sure this was all approved?” Pegg asked as he let me inside.

  “Cross my heart.”

  “You ain’t gonna uncuff him or nothing?”

  I sat down beside the bed. “I swear I won’t let him loose.”

  “Because I need this job, you know.”

  “If you could give us a few minutes.”

  Being so pasty, Pegg was incapable of hiding his agitation. The slightest anxiety caused his facial capillaries to flush.

  “This better be on the level.”

  As soon as he was gone, Billy said, without a hint of irony, “I like your shirt.”

  I’d forgotten I was still wearing Skip’s novelty tee. “Forget my outfit. Jesus Christ, Billy. What the hell happened this morning?”

  “I saw the shiv in Chapman’s hand and acted on instinct.”

  “Before that, I mean.”

  “It was an ambush. Chapman and Dow wanted to ice the sarge. But they had to take out Mears first.”

  “You need to back up even farther. Yesterday, you hinted that Dawn Richie was dirty and dangerous. You asked me to look into her private life—which I did by the way. Then the next thing I hear is you’ve nearly gotten yourself killed saving her.”

  “I was wrong about Sergeant Richie. She’s a stand-up woman.”

  This description didn’t exactly jibe with my own impression of her. “What changed your mind?”

  He darted his eyes at the door. “Something Dow said. When he slashed her, he said, ‘This is what happens to rats.’”

  So Dawn Richie was an informer? For whom? Against whom?

  Before I could ask those questions, the door opened wide, and Donato stood there with his uniformed henchman, Hoyt, behind him. Poor Pegg was nowhere to be seen.

  “Get the fuck out of here, Bowditch!”

  “Please don’t blame Pegg for my being here.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, asshole.”

  The radio crackled on Hoyt’s shoulder. The governor had pulled up to the hospital entrance in his two-car motorcade.

  Donato came close to grabbing me by the collar. “Out! Now!”

  It was lucky for him that he didn’t put his hands on me. Probabl
y lucky for both of us, given his considerable strength.

  I glanced past him at my friend chained to the bed. “I’ll find a place for Aimee and the kids to stay. I’ll take care of everything. Whatever you do, don’t talk to these guys.”

  The door shut in my face.

  * * *

  I wanted to be nowhere in the vicinity when the Penguin made his grand entrance.

  During his single term as governor, he had hired lobbyists who represented polluters to oversee the state agencies (including my own) charged with protecting Maine’s environment. Despite living in one of the most beautiful places in the world, his only regular encounters with the outdoors seemed to take place on manicured golf courses. Even then, from what I’d heard around Augusta watercoolers, he had spent most of his time at the nineteenth hole.

  I slipped through a side door and wandered around the front of the building, toward my Scout, so I could change my shirt, at least. The wind had shifted, and I could smell Clam Cove, the tidal flat just over a knoll from the hospital. Three ring-billed gulls were fighting over a KFC bag until a larger herring gull swooped down and plucked the greasy prize from their midst.

  After I’d pulled on a fleece quarter-zip, I remembered my promise to Billy.

  It being April, arguably the worst month to visit the Maine coast, I had my choice of motels. I made a reservation at the nearest establishment for two adjoining rooms. I left my credit card number, telling the manager the Cronks’ stay would be open-ended and that he should bill me for all of their expenses.

  My mother had left me some money in her will, a generous trust fund. In the note she had written on her deathbed, she had included a quotation from Dorothy Parker. (My mom had loved sending me memes she’d found on the internet.) “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.” The quote might have been a warning not to let my newfound wealth change me. More likely, she’d found it a funny zinger.

  I texted Aimee with the reservation confirmation for the Happy Clam Motel, and she replied with only slightly less reserve than her husband:

  We appreciate your charity, Mike. Hard as it is to accept. Thank you.