Game Bet

by Forrest, Richard;

  “This is the presidential suite. We got it reserved for special visitors like you.” He laughed at his own humor.

  The guard insisted that Cory mop not only the corridor, but also the unused cells. It was a slow and painful process, fought by his aching body and by his lack of sleep. He shook himself to stay awake and began to examine the layout of the wing closely.

  The building was a concrete structure. Massive walls enclosed the exterior of the building and separated the cell block he occupied from the floor above and below. The dividing walls between the cells were thick metal. The bars on the cell doors were of forged and tempered steel.

  Heavy mesh covered the narrow rectangular windows. When he looked outside in the daylight, he saw that the floor was the third. If they continued manacling and chaining him each time he was taken from the tier, escape was going to be difficult if not impossible.

  The door that led from his tier to the remainder of the prison could not be opened from the inside. An armed guard, in a booth a dozen feet down the exterior hall, opened and closed the exiting door on request. Even if he overpowered the jailor in the cell block, Cory would still have to pass through the door and past the guard outside. There probably were more locked doors and more guard posts beyond what he could see.

  There must be a way. There had to be a way. Throughout history men had escaped from impregnable fortresses. There was even a documented case of a Devil’s Island escape.

  His situation was doubly difficult since they watched him so carefully. Segregated from the rest of the jail’s population, he was denied certain advantages given the average accused felon.

  The guard sauntered toward him. “You finished yet, Williams?”

  “Just about.”

  “Then wash your mop out and you got exercise time.”

  That was a glimmer of hope. He would be put in the yard with the general population. He finished mopping with renewed vigor and called to the guard. “I’m ready.”

  “For what?”

  “I want my exercise.”

  “So?”

  “Where do we go?”

  “We go nowhere. Put the mop away and walk along the hall. Jog, do push-ups, or go back in your cell I don’t give a damn.”

  “I don’t leave?”

  “You don’t go nowhere without more guards. And you ain’t goin’ nowhere nohow, except to court or to see your attorney.”

  “I need a shower.”

  “You got one—Sunday.” The guard pointed his club toward a narrow door at the end of the hall, near the door. “The mop goes in there. Make sure you wash it out in the sink.”

  Cory pushed the mop bucket along the floor with the mop handle and opened the supply closet. There was a deep sink against the far wall of the room, with shelves along the side walls. The shelves contained blankets, pillows, detergents, and other miscellaneous cleaning supplies. He emptied the bucket, rinsed the mophead, and stored the equipment neatly to the side.

  He found himself automatically straightening a pile of blankets on a middle shelf. Man is a very adaptable creature, he realized. He had reverted almost instantaneously to his early days in the army. He had accepted without qualm or decision the edict to mop, and other jail discipline. The middleclass, it seems, is constantly prepared to follow orders.

  He finished in the supply closet and started back to his cell. The guard leaned against the door, reading a magazine. He gave Cory a brief glance. It hurt to walk. The added exertion of the mopping had not helped. His muscles had cramped further from the previous night’s beating.

  He slipped back in his cell and flopped down on the bunk. He closed his eyes. A few hours’ sleep would pass the long day.

  “Outta there, Williams.”

  Cory glanced up at the guard standing in the door. “Huh?”

  “You heard me. Off there. No sack time during the day.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

  “That’s your problem, old buddy. Get off the bunk! You can sit on the stool in your cell or walk the corridor for your exercise. We will not assume the supine position.”

  “Suppose I tell you to go to hell?”

  “Then we put you in a cell where there ain’t no bunk. No bunk now and no bunk tonight. And it’s dark. Very dark.”

  Opposite the sink was a narrow shelf bolted to the wall, where Cory had piled the paperback novels. A low, three-legged stool was shoved under the shelf. He staggered from the bunk and pulled out the stool. He sat down and bracketed his head with his hands.

  Why had they come to beat him?

  He had heard that in certain police jurisdictions, if you took a swing or a shot at a police officer, you were heavily “subdued” during the arrest process. It was a self-protective device used by uniformed men who faced possible death or mayhem during each shift of duty. But the men who beat him near dawn had seemed nonjudgmental and without anger. Their attack was performed in a cold efficient manner. It seemed too calculated to be a retaliation. It had been done for another reason.

  He turned on the stool and looked into the mirror. He looked god-awful. His eyes were bloodshot and rheumy, while his beard marched sloppily across his chin. He looked as if he had just come off a three-day bat.

  That’s what they wanted. They wanted him to appear in this condition. They wanted him to speak with his defense attorneys and make court appearances in a walking, exhausted state, looking like a derelict.

  It was calculated terrorism directed toward his own destruction and the protection of the conspiracy.

  They came at midnight.

  He had prepared. The extra army blanket, the pillow, and his meagre supply of books were stuffed under the blanket on the bunk. It was a haphazard heap, and only in the dimmest of light would it appear to be his sleeping form.

  He stood in the far corner and clutched the legs of the stool.

  They came as they had the night before. They stalked silently down the corridor in stocking feet and gently slipped the key in the lock of his cell door. They did not speak.

  The door opened, and they entered the confined space.

  Cory stepped out of the corner and slammed his foot down on the nearest man’s instep. He swung the stool at the head of the second man.

  “Son of a bitching Christ!” The man with the broken instep fell sideways across the bunk. He pulled his leg up and fumbled at the broken arch. The stool bounced off the shoulder of the second man. He uttered a low unintelligible oath and stumbled backward into the corridor.

  Cory aimed a kick at the third man’s groin. His ankle was grasped, and he was shoved back against the wall.

  “You want to play, huh, mother-fucker?” The third man came toward him.

  “No marks,” was the low command from the man with the pipe who stood in the shadows of the corridor.

  CHAPTER 10

  They removed the leg irons and manacles just outside the defense attorney’s room. Cory rubbed his wrists and then doubled over in agony as a shooting slash of pain crossed his back. It was a residue of the night before.

  “You all right, Williams?” The question was professional, not solicitous.

  “Yeah.”

  They opened the door, and he stepped inside the small room that was becoming so familiar. His brother stood at his usual place by the window. A cigarette dangled from his lips. Steven coughed and turned to give Cory a halfhearted wave.

  Henry Rockwell was seated at the small table. His briefcase was thinner this morning. Seated immediately across from Henry was another man, unfamiliar to Cory.

  The new member of the defense triumvirate was thin, intense, and had dark features and hair. His clothing was casual: an ill-fitting sports coat, wrinkled shirt, and a tie pulled down to the third button. He looked at Cory with interest.

  “You look like hell,” Steven Williams said as he ground out his cigarette.

  “I feel worse.”

  “You’ve got to pull yourself together.”

  “Not necessa
rily,” the new member of the group added.

  “This is Issac Lowenstrein, Cory,” Henry Rockwell said. “We have discussed your case in depth at a senior partners’ meeting. It is our conclusion that we need co-counsel on this matter. We need someone with more expertise in criminal matters.

  Lowenstrein stood and stuck out his hand toward Cory. “Glad to meet you, Williams. Your case interests me.”

  “They’re working me over,” Cory said.

  “Working what over?” his brother asked.

  “Me.”

  “Take off your shirt,” Lowenstrein snapped. The attorney’s eyes flashed. “If they’re leaning on you, I want to see. Take off your shirt. I’ll get a photographer in here in five minutes, and we’ll slap them with a faceful of injunctions.”

  “What happened?” Steven Williams asked.

  Cory told them as he removed his shirt.

  “Not a damn mark,” Issac Lowenstrein said after he had examined Cory carefully.

  Cory rebuttoned his shirt. “That’s what I expected.”

  Rockwell and Steven glanced sideways at each other as Lowenstrein made a note on his legal pad. “I’ll make some inquiries. I have some friends on the force who can find out. It probably won’t happen again.”

  “I think it will,” Cory said. “I think it’s part of their plan to discredit me.”

  “Well, be that as it will,” Henry Rockwell said. “Mr. Lowenstrein has come up with a possible line of defense. Want to sketch it out for him, Issac?”

  “I’ve already made some initial overtures to the federal attorney’s office and played you up, Cory. Your service record, your position at the bank … you aren’t exactly the usual run-of-the-mill crackpot.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I didn’t mean that like it sounds.”

  “There are still people in this town who remember Dad,” Steven said.

  “I don’t doubt it,” Cory replied. “So do I.” He wondered how much of his irony was caught by his brother.

  “Let me proceed,” Lowenstrein said. “I think we can get your bail lowered.”

  “That would help. To say the least, I’d like to get out of here. How much will it be?”

  “They’ve just about assured me that they won’t protest a motion to lower it to 250,000 dollars.”

  Cory sat tiredly down on a straight chair. “It may as well be ten million.”

  His brother coughed and lit another cigarette. “I can put it up,” he said in a low voice.

  “You don’t have that kind of money,” Cory said.

  “I’ve arranged for one of our junior associates to run a title search on my house. The mortgage is down to twenty-two thousand dollars, and you know how real-estate values have appreciated. I’m also ordering a fresh appraisal, which I believe will come in at over a hundred and seventy five.”

  “I appreciate that, Steven, but it’s still a long way from a quarter of a million.”

  “I can raise another thirty in cash, and the firm is standing for the balance.”

  “Your law firm would do that?”

  Steven coughed and smiled wryly. “I would like to think it is their faith in me as a partner, and that is what they would like me to think. I am afraid they really want this matter over and closed as quickly as possible. They have reviewed Lowenstrein’s defense and approve. It will get this thing out of the limelight, maybe forever.”

  Cory was puzzled. “I don’t understand. Besides the conspiracy, what’s my defense?”

  “We can’t corroborate that,” Lowenstrein said. “So when you’re precluded from one line of defense, you obviously take another.”

  “Such as?”

  “Diminished capacity.”

  “Insanity?”

  “Not quite. Let me outline our moves. Step one is the reduction of bail, then the posting of the lower amount and your release. Approve so far?”

  “I’d be a fool not to.”

  “Okay. We have you on the street, right? Now, our next step is to have you met at the jail door by an ambulance.”

  “I didn’t have much time on the street, did I?”

  “Listen to him, damn it!” his brother snapped. “He’s put a lot of time and effort into working this out.”

  “Sorry. I’m listening.”

  “Okay,” Lowenstrein continued. “We take you by ambulance, under doctor’s care, of course, to the Oakcrest Psychiatric Center. You will be admitted and immediately placed under ‘constant observation.’ A couple of sessions of shock therapy and some psychotherapy, and we begin to build a fat file on you. Now, we then—”

  “Wait a minute! You’re getting me out of one jail and into another.”

  “Oakcrest is a goddamn country club,” Lowenstrein said. “For Christ’s sake, they have swimming pools, tennis courts; you name it, and they’ve got it.”

  “It’s still a nuthouse.”

  “Of course it is. That’s why we use it.”

  “Let him finish, Cory.”

  “All right. We place you under doctor’s care. We then have enough psychiatric testimony to help establish diminished capacity.”

  “And if I’m not nuts?”

  “Who says you have to be nuts? Diminished capacity doesn’t mean that you see or hear strange voices. It doesn’t mean that your car radio told you to kill the President. All that it means is that due to extreme stress over the past several years, your judgment became grossly impaired. You were not yourself, in other words. If we build the case right, we might get you off with accelerated rehabilitation, which means no time served. Six months in Oakcrest and you walk out free, without another day in jail.”

  “What’s been my stress? I think I should know.”

  “Three things.” Lowenstrein looked at his notes. “Viet Nam, for one. Everyone knows those guys are screwed up for years.”

  “I was never in combat.”

  “Who the hell knows that? Hell, I’ll make sure that Judge Duffy sits on the case.”

  “Why Duffy?”

  “He landed at Normandy on D-Day in World War II. He thinks everyone in Viet Nam waded in rice paddies, with mines blowing up in their face.”

  “Viet Nam is a long time ago,” Cory said. “Anything else?”

  “Sure. Excessive drinking. I’ve already got a bartender from the Clock and Chime who will testify to that. Then we parade Vito to the stand if we have to.”

  “Vito?”

  “Your bookie.” Lowenstrein paced the floor as if addressing a jury. His hands moved in sharp chopping motions as he outlined the case for the defense. “Vito will testify that you were in to him very deep. You were driven, shall we say, crazy with worry.”

  “I don’t think Vito will lift a hand to help,” Cory said. “Unless he wants me out so that I can pay him back.”

  “Vito owes me,” Lowenstrein said. “He’s my client. I’ll get him immunity before I put him on the stand. Hell, he was busted last Christmas Eve on an extortion charge. I had to move heaven and hell to get him home to Momma without spending the night in the slammer. Vito will testify about your gambling losses.”

  “How long will all this take?”

  “For the bail? Couple of days—a week at most.”

  “Then I get my transfer to the squirrel farm, and after a few months I’m free.”

  “Right.”

  “And forever known as the man who took a shot at the President.” He leaned across the table, with his palms against its surface. “And what about those guys who really were going to kill the President?”

  There was another of their pregnant legal pauses until Rockwell finally spoke. “There is no way in this world that we can corroborate any of your story.”

  “Then I don’t want out of here. At least not your way.”

  “What?” His brother looked at him incredulously.

  “I will not let you lose your house and mortgage your future on my behalf.”

  “I don’t lose the house,” his brother said. “I only put it u
p as a property bond. It doesn’t even cost me anything. The firm will put up securities as collateral. There won’t be but thirty thousand dollars in actual money posted. When the case is over we get everything back.”

  “If I took off?”

  “That would be …” His brother looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “If I left that place, that private psychiatric oasis?”

  “Oakcrest?”

  “If I escaped from there?”

  “That wouldn’t be difficult,” Lowenstrein said. “There aren’t any armed guards and barbed wire, you know.”

  “I don’t want the bail. Come up with another defense.”

  Cory left the room. The guards, waiting outside the door, attached the leg irons and snapped-on the manacles.

  “That guy really is nuts,” he heard Lowenstrein say to his brother, inside the defense attorney’s room. “I mean, he’s around the bend.”

  The guards escorted him back to his cell. When they arrived, Cory discovered that the three-legged stool, his weapon of the night before, was gone.

  He had to arch his neck to see out the small window of his cell. His fingers gripped the narrow mesh. He wanted out. He wanted away from this place. His brother had offered him freedom. Months of incarceration in a mental hospital would be the extracted price, but the milieu would be far different than jail. Even submitting to electric shock would be far simpler than enduring the nightly visits from his brutal tormentors.

  He knew that if he took his brother’s offer of bail he would leave the mental hospital. He couldn’t bring himself to place his brother’s family in financial jeopardy and imperil Steve’s position with his firm. Steve was already compromised in the Boston legal fraternity by the mere blood relationship between them.

  “Oh, God,” he muttered aloud.

  “What’s the matter in there, Williams?”

  Cory turned to see that the day guard had opened the cell door. “What now?”

  “You got exercise time.”