by Tim Green
Exact Revenge
Tim Green
A promising attorney and political candidate, Raymond White was on the fast track when his life was suddenly derailed. Unexpectedly framed and convicted of murder, he is sentenced to solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison. Alone with his inner rage, Raymond methodically plots his revenge against those who schemed to ruin his career and take away his life. Now, after spending 18 years behind bars, Raymond makes his escape – and is ready to finally put his plan into action.
Tim Green
Exact Revenge
For Illyssa, because the brilliant light of your life warms even the deepest shadows of ours.
BOOK ONE. BETRAYAL
A bitter laugh burst from the count’s lips; as in a dream, he had just seen his father being taken to the grave, and Mercedes walking to the altar.
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
1
THERE WAS A TIME when people wished that they were me. The only boundaries I had were the limits of my imagination. Now my world is six feet wide, eight feet long, and eight and a half feet high. It’s less than you think. The only thing between the concrete floor and me is a narrow three-inch mattress. I don’t need blankets or sheets because it’s always warm. My shirt and pants were once gray. Now they are the color of oatmeal. They are no longer stiff with sweat and I can’t smell them even though the guards angle their faces away whenever they try to let me out.
My days are full. They last one hour. It is the hour that they give me light. There are pests to be hunted and killed. Cracks in the walls need to be filled with a mortar I compose from loose pebbles and sand. My body needs inspection. My nails need to be filed down against the block wall. An ingrown hair scraped clean. Small ways that bring some order to my life.
When my work is through, I allow myself to languish and think about the times when I was a boy. I like to tilt my face to the light and close my eyes. I can feel the heat of the sunlight then and hear the swish of waves lapping the stones and the trees whispering secrets. I can feel the planks of wood beneath my towel. I hang my arm over the edge of the dock and press just the tips of my fingers into the water’s pliant skin without breaking its surface.
I can smell the woodsmoke from the cobblestone fireplace in our small cabin and an occasional whiff of balsam. I can hear the bang of aluminum against the dock and my father asking me to go for a canoe ride. I say yes so as not to disappoint him even though I don’t want to leave my mother’s side. Her fingertips slide down the back of her page and her thumb snaps its edge as she turns to the next. I can hear the rattle and clang of the dinner bell.
Then my day ends.
I begin by allowing myself to vent, having somehow latched on to the notion that it’s good for me. I have screamed myself mute. I have cried myself dry. I have laughed until my stomach convulses in painful knots. I have jabbered insanely to myself, reasoning with, arguing, begging, scolding, and mocking God. Eventually, I grow tired and I am ready to behave. Then I’m like everyone else, struggling to stay busy enough with what I have so I won’t think about all the things I don’t.
I still take pride in the long hard muscles, taut beneath the bronze skin of my six-foot frame. I have more positions for push-ups than a sex manual has for copulation. Push-ups on my fingertips. Push-ups upside down. Push-ups with my feet braced halfway up the wall. There is a thin metal seam above the door casing. I have calluses on my fingertips that fit nicely into that groove. I do pull-ups four different ways. Frontward with a narrow grip. Frontward with a wide grip. Same thing backward.
I can do five thousand sit-ups. I can run in place. I can jump on one leg and jump on two. I can shuffle from side to side the length of my world six thousand times without stopping. I know eighteen katas from Okinawa and I can do them all, ten times in succession without stopping. Then I sleep.
When I wake up, it’s still night. Always. If I can, I go back to sleep. If I can’t, I exercise my mind to keep from thinking of her. The velvety handfuls of dark hair in a curtain over my bare chest. The smooth pencil-line scar on her hip.
I can multiply and divide seven-digit numbers in my head. I can integrate and differentiate formulas I make up at random. I can regurgitate the meaning behind every mnemonic device from Pieper’s New York State Bar Review.
I need to be strong.
Every sixty days, they come for me. Sixty days is as long as they can put someone into solitary confinement without giving him the opportunity to show that he is ready to behave. When they come for me, I will attack the first person I can get my hands on. I will do as much damage to him as I can because I know I’ll get it all back and then some whether I spit in someone’s face or tear out an eyeball.
At first, they try to beat it out of you. One at a time, the meanest guards get a chance to claim you from the hole. Then, when they realize that you are strong and that you will never stop, they begin to send the rookies. They will watch from behind the bars and laugh until they’ve had enough or until they get nervous. It takes six years to work through the digestive system of a maximum-security prison in New York. I am in my third different prison. After today, I believe they will send me to a fourth.
My life didn’t used to be like this. There was a time when I had everything.
2
THE MIND IS LIKE a screen in a water pipe. It collects the impurities of the past in random ways, a fragment of conversation, a snippet of color. A smell. I smelled like money that day in the cab when I passed through the tunnel into New Jersey to see Congressman Williamson at Valley Hospital. He smelled like death, old copper pennies, and bleached bedsheets.
I was the youngest partner at Parsons amp; Trout, with a suite at Donald Trump’s Plaza Hotel and on the verge of a multimillion-dollar deal that would save my firm. It was the height of the Reagan era. There was a war on drugs. Russia was still an evil nation, and there was no shame in wanting to be rich.
But Roger Williamson only wanted to talk about duck hunting. He talked about the first double he ever shot with those tubes coming out of his nose, coughing into the air, like somehow he was handing me a small wooden box filled with life’s secrets.
Then, I knew how to nod my head, respect my elders. But I didn’t listen. Only fragments remain.
Roger had come from Syracuse and attended Princeton like me, only about forty years earlier. He lettered in basketball. I lettered in soccer. After he graduated, he went to Albany to work for Nelson Rockefeller. I went to law school to try to be Nelson Rockefeller.
I remember looking at the lines in his face. Road maps for my own future. Yes, I saw them. I recognized them without a thought.
It took Roger thirty years of kissing other people’s asses before he was elected to Congress. At twenty-five, I hadn’t even patted an ass and people were talking about having me be his replacement. That must not have seemed fair to Roger. But that’s only if he was aware of it.
I was surprised that none of Roger’s family was there. Two men in three-piece suits were. They didn’t talk to me and I didn’t really care. Roger had other tubes besides the one coming out of his nose. There was one in his stomach and another down below, collecting his urine in a clear plastic bag that was hooked to the stainless steel rail of his bed. There was a heart monitor beeping pleasantly and clear liquid dripped from an IV bottle.
“You aren’t smiling,” Roger said. His voice was strained and it came from the far reaches of his throat. “Every day you have your health is a good day. You should smile.”
His skin had a blue cast to it and was sunken around the eye sockets and into the other depressions of his skull. His hair was wispy and gray. Only the very tips were still dark from dye. I thought I smelled the contents of the plastic bag and I cleared my throat.
“They say you might be the one to replace me. I’m glad. I wish they asked me, but I’m glad anyway.”
I nodded and reached out to touch the back of his hand. The veins were pale and green and riddled with scabbed-over needle holes. His skin was cool, but dry. I regretted touching him anyway. The men in suits were watching.
“Hey,” I said, “this might be like the ’82 election. Remember that bounce-back?”
He started to laugh, but it ended in a painful-sounding choke that set the monitor off like a small guard dog. When he recovered, he turned his hand over and clutched my fingers in his own with an awkward grip. His nails needed a trim.
“My family left me two days after the first time I was elected,” he said. “That was my second wife.”
I nodded.
“Why?”
I shook my head.
“Duck hunting,” he said, again. “Standing in those cattails, remember? The sun not even up. The birds swarming in on us like insects. Clear your head, Raymond. As often as you can. You grow cobwebs inside you until you die. They only clear for those last few weeks? Why would He do that to us?”
His lips kept moving, but little sound came out. I leaned closer.
“… promise…”
“You want me to promise?” I asked.
He nodded and I moved even closer.
“You take this,” he said, squeezing tight. “Only you. I wrote it myself. Here. In New Jersey. Remember that. You give it to her. As soon as you get back. Right away, Raymond. No one else. You tell no one. Will you promise me that?”
In his other hand was a legal-size envelope. He held it out to me. A woman’s name and address were scrawled on the front: Celeste Oliver. I looked into his milky green eyes, red-rimmed and brimming with moisture, and took it from him. His eyes closed and his head went back into the pillow. The men in suits seemed to be oblivious to our arrangement, so I said good-bye to Roger, even though he was already asleep.
3
AT ELEVEN IN THE MORNING on Friday, the directors from Iroquois National Bank signed a seven-year retainer agreement for Parsons amp; Trout to be both their national and regional counsel in twenty-two different states. I threw my suit coat over my arm and jogged back to the Plaza. I threw everything into a suitcase, checked out, and left New York City for the first time in over four weeks.
The drive home took me just over four hours with a stop for gas and a drive-thru burger. The door of my black wedge-shaped Celica Supra stayed open when I jumped out into the brick flagpole circle in front of Parsons amp; Trout. Sunshine glared down from between the clouds. The agreement was clutched between my fingers and it ruffled in the warm breeze. I skipped the steps, leaping right to the threshold between the thick soaring columns that supported the pediment of the old post office.
Parsons amp; Trout bought the building cheap in the late seventies, then renovated it as a historical site with tax-free dollars all through the coming years. Now it was the most impressive office space in the state outside New York City. Inside, as I climbed the marble steps to the second floor, I realized that the firm would be able to keep it now. The brass banisters. The oriental rugs. The Tiffany fixtures.
Dan Parsons was my mentor, and I loved him almost as much as my own dad. He was tall and husky with curly white hair and a round florid face that changed colors easily. Three years without a cigarette had left him with a small potbelly. His nose was bulbous, but not big, and his eyes had crow’s feet from smiling so much. He was the kind of man who smiled even when he was raving mad. He had two kids my age whom he didn’t speak to and a young son with his second wife. She was a former Miss New York with false breasts and eyelashes and great muscular legs. But she also laughed at Dan’s jokes and stood by him in the worst of financial times.
Dan’s office was just off the old courtroom. His secretary kept people out, but I sprinted right past. I made a hard left and pushed through the leather-upholstered doors into the old courtroom. Fluted columns rose twenty feet to the ceiling. Gilt molding shone down on the crystal chandeliers and the parquet floors. Dan sat at the head of the long burl wood table at the other end of the room, under the shadow of the old mahogany judge’s bench. Next to Dan sat Bob Rangle, only twenty-seven but already the chairman of the Onondaga County Republican Party.
Rangle could be a twit, but he was so damn ingratiating that I couldn’t bring myself to dislike him, even though a lot of other people did. He was a thin man with big beetle-black eyes set close to a sharp little nose and well below the receding brown hair that he liked to slick back. His fingers were long and narrow and he liked to grasp all four with his other hand and crank his hand back and forth as if he were throttling a motorcycle or winding himself up. When he smiled, the pointed tips of his small white teeth made him look even more like a weasel. He wore a dark suit with padded shoulders, an electric blue tie, and a white shirt with big silver cuff links. A conservative Huey Lewis.
The two of them looked up at me like I’d forgotten my pants.
“Hey,” Rangle said, “Raymond.”
“I got the deal,” I said, waving the agreement in the air.
Dan jumped out of his seat and snatched the papers from my hand, scrutinizing the signatures as if he suspected a fake. He wore yellow suspenders and his blue shirtsleeves were unbuttoned and rolled up to his elbows. He plopped down into one of the leather swivel chairs, laughing, with his thumb and index finger spread across his forehead.
“He did it,” Dan said to Rangle, looking up.
“You did it,” Dan said again, this time to me.
The corners of my face were beginning to hurt.
“This is thirty million a year,” Dan said, snapping his fingernails against the paper. “Minimum. Your bonus will be over two… closer to three if I get my way. How’s that?”
“I’ll take it,” I said.
Dan stood and put his arms around me. He clapped me on the back before holding me at arm’s length to grin some more. Rangle sat looking at us with his head bouncing around like it was attached by a spring. He said “Congratulations” with that toothy smile of his.
“Goddamn, you’re cool. Cool under pressure. You know what I’m going to do?” Dan said. “Make you a congressman.”
“I just saw Roger on Monday,” I said, subduing my voice to a level I thought appropriate for a man who had just died.
I looked at Rangle. His smile thawed and he blinked at us.
“What about experience?” he said, cranking up his fingers.
“We were just talking about it,” Dan said to me. “Bob thinks it should be him.”
Rangle’s face turned blotchy. He folded his arms across his chest and shifted in his seat.
“Experience is going to be crucial,” he said. “Politics is my world. It was my father’s world.”
“That’s what’s perfect about Raymond,” Dan said, raising his hands into the air like a five-year-old, palms up, fingers splayed. “People don’t necessarily want insiders. They want an everyman. Like Jimmy Stewart… The governor agrees.”
“The governor?” Rangle asked.
“I talked to him,” Dan said. “You know how much money I’ve given him. He wants to announce it tomorrow night.”
Rangle’s mouth fell open and his head tilted at an odd angle.
“The committee will have to vote on it,” Dan said. “That’s why I wanted to see you. You’ll have to call an emergency meeting.”
“The governor?” Rangle asked, his eyes drifting off toward the beam of sunlight poking through the tall arched window by the old judge’s bench. “Of course, and Raymond’s an Indian…”
“Being part Native American isn’t the reason,” Dan said. “It doesn’t hurt, but that’s not why.”
Rangle recovered his wits, rose, and walked down along the conference table. His breathing was shallow, but he extended his hand. I took it.
“Congratulations, Raymond,” he said, wrapping those long f
ingers around my hand.
“Thank you.”
The leather doors swung behind him. Dan picked up a Mont Blanc pen off the table and twisted it open and shut. He shook his head.
“What are you going to do?” he said. “His old man was an asshole.”
“Dan,” I said, “we like to do favors for people who help us, right?”
“The world is round,” he said. “We both know that.”
“Dan, you know me,” I said. “Do I want this? Of course I do. It would be incredible. Part of me knows I don’t even deserve it, but if I do it, I want to be careful.”
“Careful? Of course.”
“I mean, I can’t just run around making decisions based on favors,” I said. “I have to represent the area. Do what I think is best.”
“Well, there are two sides to every issue,” he said.
“Exactly,” I said. “And I don’t want to choose the wrong side just because someone did me a favor.”
“You can’t forget your friends,” Dan said. His smile was big now, but in an angry way.
“I don’t mean that,” I said. “I just want to be my own man.”
The smile stayed, but the scowl left.
“You’ll be fine,” he said. “We both will. Go see that girl and get her a new dress or something for tomorrow night, will you? I’ve got a conference call with the Chicago office, and if you don’t mind, I want to be the one to tell them about Iroquois. Trout’s been all over my ass for sending a kid. That’s what he calls you. But I told him. The hotter it is, the cooler you get.”
Outside, Rangle sat on the low wall by the entrance to the circle. His long legs were crossed and his arms were folded. A half-smoked cigarette dangled from his lips as he squinted at the fountain and the reflecting pool across the street. The fingers of his left hand were clutched in the right. I eased shut the door of my Supra and took Roger Williamson’s letter out of the inside pocket of my blazer. Pretending to study it, I walked quickly for the front of the circle. If I could make it to the sidewalk, I could lose myself in the swarm of office workers milling their way toward the bars. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rangle jump up.