The Corruptions

by Vincent Zandri

  “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

  The taller one shot me another crooked glance. No response.

  “Someone die?” I said.

  Tall Goon gave Short Goon a look like I wasn’t supposed to say that. Or it wasn’t in their script anyway.

  “What?” Tall Goon said. “Who said anything about anyone dying?”

  I sat far back in my grandfather’s old hand-me-down swivel chair, worked up a friendly smile. “You look like funeral home directors.”

  Short Goon bit down on his bottom lip. “He’s being an asshole, Stanley. Told you everyone thinks he’s an asshole. He must have learned that shit when he was warden at Green Haven. The boss ain’t gonna like him. Thinks he’s a know-it-all. Know what I’m sayin’, Stanley?”

  “Forget him and concentrate on the job, Brent,” Stanley said.

  “Who called me a know-it-all?” I said. “I just wanna finish my lunch.”

  Tall Goon/Stanley completed his search of the room. Apparently satisfied that I didn’t have a bomb rigged up for his boss or that I wasn’t hiding a Fox News reporter in the corner or that the place wasn’t bugged for sound, he made for the door and waved whoever was hidden behind the wall to come in.

  When the suited man came through the door, Brent and Stanley took their places beside the open door. Each of them unbuttoned their jackets, allowed them to open just enough for me to make out the black grips on their service automatics.

  Intimidating.

  The half sandwich set before me smelled good. I didn’t want to be talking to clients right now no matter how important they were. I’d made the commitment to eating the second half of my sandwich and damnit, that’s what I was going to do.

  The important client pulled one of the two wood chairs I reserved for visitors closer to my desk and sat down.

  “Do you know who I am?” he said.

  Of course I recognized him. Everybody in New York State government knew his name. You’d have to be living under a rock not to know his face and name and political persuasion. But then, I guessed some people steered clear of politics. They knew who Bruce Caitlyn Jenner was, and who Lady Gaga was, and they even knew the precise dimensions of Kim Kardashian’s ample behind. But not who their own governor was.

  I stared at the rest of sandwich. It screamed, Eat me! in a nice way.

  “Provolone,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  The Governor had dressed himself in a tailored summer-weight tan jacket, also tailored dark trousers and before he sat down I noticed his loafers were Gucci. Because he represented the left bank of the Democratic Party, he didn’t wear a tie. His one concession to the blue collar Marxist revolution crowd. But he wasn’t fooling anybody, because the silk jacket cost more than my entire wardrobe of two blue blazers, half a dozen Converse button down shirts, three pairs of Levis 501 button flies, and two pairs of Tony Lama cowboy boots.

  “Provolone cheese,” I said, staring down at my lunch. “Did you know that it comes from Casilli near Mount Vesuvius? It was a staple of the inhabitants of Pompeii.”

  He stuffed his tongue in his cheek, looked at me with intense, unblinking eyes.

  “No,” he said. “I was not aware.”

  “You should be as an Italian American.”

  “Italian and Libyan, if you must know the truth. Mother and father, respectively.”

  “Interesting combination. You can enjoy your pasta in the desert. Manga Allahu Akbar, so to speak.”

  I saw the eyes on Stanley go wide, even if they were masked by sunglasses. He set his shooting hand on his pistol grip. Made me tremble with fear.

  “Listen, Mr. Marconi—”

  “Keeper. Call me Keeper, your majesty.”

  Stanley took a step forward. “You watch your fuckin’ mouth, pal. That’s the Honorable Leon Valente to you.” More tickling of the holstered pistol.

  “Your boys like their guns, I see,” I said. “Thought you wanted to abolish the second amendment.”

  “Evil necessity, the very outdated United States Constitution.”

  I patted my rib cage where my .45 rested. “I’m quite fond of my Colt 1911. Makes me feel warm and cozy and free.”

  “Governor will be fine,” the governor said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You wished to know how to address me. So I’m telling you.” Then, over his shoulder. “That will be enough, Stanley. Please take your hand off your sidearm.”

  Stanley resumed his solid foursquare position up against the wall, the dejection painting his face in the form of red blood blush.

  “I see that I’ve interrupted your lunch,” Valente went on. “But what I have to reveal is of the utmost importance.”

  “You want a bite?”

  He cracked a grin. “I don’t eat that kind of thing. Pork products especially.”

  “You Jewish?”

  His face was permanently tan. But it turned red at the mere suggestion.

  “I believe in God,” he said under his breath. “That’s about as far as it goes.”

  “You probably have a dietician. Someone who cooks for you. At taxpayer expense, of course. Karl Marx had a cook. So did Uncle Joe Stalin. And Obama. Perks for the public servant.”

  He cocked his head, as if to say, It comes with the gig. “I like to keep fit. Box mostly. You keep fit too, I see.”

  “I run and lift. Or they used to call it running and lifting, until they decided to call it cross-training. Now they call it cross-fit. Tomorrow they’ll call it something else like trans-fit. Something that won’t insult anybody who wants to dispose of their penis.”

  “Political correctness is all about human evolution, Keeper,” he said proudly, like he invented it. “It’s the essence of progressivism.”

  “I’d rather talk about maxing out on a flat bench.”

  “Stanley and Brent can bench three hundred pounds.” He smiled, like he was responsible for that too.

  The two goons nodded proudly.

  “Collectively?” I said. “Or individually?”

  Valente cleared his throat, crossed his legs.

  “Individually,” he said, exasperation in his tone. “Listen,” he added, glancing at his gold wristwatch. “Time is tight.”

  “I imagine it is, your greatness,” I said. “So, how can I be of service?”

  Any semblance of a smile was now gone. He looked at me like I was playing some kind of joke on him on the school playground for the entire student body to see. His concave-cheeked face was steely, taut, as if it might explode blood and brain matter all over my sandwich. That would kind of suck. No, that would suck a lot.

  “Dannemora Prison,” he said, rubbing his pug nose with his fist, kind of like he wanted to pick it with his thumb. But knowing I was watching him, he couldn’t risk it. “There’s been an external breach.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “Don’t you look at the news?”

  “I have a smartphone. Does everything but make my lunch. For that I still have to hoof it to Frank’s Deli over on Albany Shaker in the North End.”

  We both focused in on my sandwich. I think he actually wanted a bite but was too afraid to admit it. Or too proud over his pork boycott. He was clean shaven, his hair natty and curly and dyed jet black. His skin was tan, but somehow pale, like coffee with way too much milk in it. And the way his dark, almost black marble eyes peered at me made him look like he could be related to the late Libyan dictator, Moammar Khadafy. Who knows, maybe Moammar was his great uncle.

  “Two dangerous murderers are on the loose in Upstate and I need them apprehended. Yesterday, if you get my drift.” His accent didn’t originate from Albany, or anywhere from Upstate for that matter, but instead Manhattan born. What it meant was that he pronounced his consonants with all the force of a Mike Tyson uppercut.

  “I saw you on the news with the state troopers a few days ago. You said you were gonna find them in a matter of hours. Been a matter of hours now. And days. Two full days, I
think.”

  He nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “The escaped are nefarious.”

  “Does that word mean, like, sly and cunning, Herr Valente?”

  Stanley took a step forward, his hands balled into fists.

  “Stanley!” Valente shouted. “I’ll handle this.” Then, raising up his right hand he made like a pistol, pointed it at my face, poked the air with his index finger. He looked one way and then the other, like he was expecting The New York Times to show up at any moment. “You…you are a fucking wise ass, you know that?”

  He lowered his hand and uncrossed his legs, sitting himself up straighter.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Semi-empty stomach and all. Just dying to get back at those pork products.”

  He cleared his throat again. “So then, back to finding the two men who’ve escaped—”

  “Moss and Sweet,” I interjected.

  “Yes, Reginald Moss and Derrick Sweet. Finding them hasn’t been easy. The state troopers are stymied and now the Feds are threatening to join in the hunt.”

  “Plus the Canadian Mounted Police, the US Marshalls, and the border patrol—land, sea, and air divisions.” I held up my smartphone. “See, I keep up with the news.”

  “I’m not concerned with the Canadians. They’ll do whatever I say. I’m concerned with my state police since they’re leading the ground search. And frankly, Mr. Marconi, it annoys the crap out of me that the lead trooper, short guy by the name of D’Amico, refuses to abide by my directives.”

  “D’Amico,” I said. “I’ve seen him on the news. Short, intense guy. Reminds me of a fireplug, minus the red paint.”

  “Everything’s under control. Relatively speaking. Even if D’Amico claims it’s not.”

  “Something in the news about you refusing to share a press conference with D’Amico,” I added. “Also you won’t share the podium with the Clinton County Sheriff, who I believe is a woman and a looker at that. Gee, that’s gotta hurt their feelings.”

  He cracked a grin. “I like to run my show my way, without First Deputy Superintendent D’Amico’s or Sheriff Hylton’s interference.”

  “But aren’t you all in bed together? Situationally speaking, of course.”

  “They do things their way,” he said like I was talking about his ex-wife, who if I remembered correctly, was a distant cousin of the Kennedys. You know, like, from the Kennedy family. “I do my thing my way, and my thing is the most important thing because I’m ultimately responsible for the safety of every single New Yorker.”

  “Capisce,” I said.

  “What?” he said.

  “You should have followed up your my way speech with Capisce. It would have sounded better. More forceful. So what is it you want from me, Don Valente?”

  Commotion coming from the office door. “Son of a—”

  “Stanley!” the governor barked once more. His eyes were back on me. “You used to run a prison before becoming a PI. You know prisons, how they work, or in this case, don’t work. You know inmates, what makes them tick. So far we’ve come up with nothing. No leads. Not a thing. Not even after offering a reward of one hundred grand has produced as much as a fingerprint.”

  I nodded. “Why the personal approach? Don’t you have more pressing matters on your plate? Like dismantling the NRA or something?”

  He leaned towards me.

  “Listen,” he said. “There hasn’t been an escape from Dannemora ever in its one hundred sixty years of existence, and a cop killer hasn’t escaped a New York State joint in fifteen years. You should know that because that killer escaped from your prison, and you apprehended him.”

  “Dead,” I said. “When I got to him he was dead. Then the good guys wanted me to die for it too. But that’s another story.”

  “These guys get a hold of some weapons, they could go on a killing spree that would make ISIS look like the Boy Scouts. And guess who’s gonna get the brunt of the blame?”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “That little problem with prison funding in this year’s budget. Staff layoffs. Too many prisoners, too few corrections officers to monitor the stoney lonesome.”

  “Well, I’m not gonna let these killers get away. Not gonna let that happen on my watch.”

  “Plus there’s the little bit about your putting your foot in your mouth by saying you’ll recover them in twenty-four hours.”

  “Okay, yeah, I bit off more than I can chew, which is why I’m calling you in and why no one’s gonna know about it.”

  Once more I looked at the second half of my sandwich. I hoped it still loved me as much as I loved it.

  “That is if I take the job,” I said. “If I do, whom shall I report to, your governance?”

  He shook his head. “No respect for a political authority.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “We all lie from time to time. You guys just do a hell of a lot more of it.” Raising up my head, I shouted, “Stanley!”.

  “Just give me the word, Governor Valente,” the goon said, “and I will be happy to teach Mr. Marconi a lesson he won’t soon forget.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “I think I pooped myself.”

  “Look,” Valente interjected, “it’s possible these guys could already be in Mexico.”

  I shook my head. “Unlikely. They’re probably within twenty miles of the joint. Those woods are thick and they’re on foot from what I’m reading. Probably bunkered down somewhere until the heat is off them.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Escaped convicts usually want one thing. To get laid. After that they just want a cold beer and a hot meal.”

  “Moss already did time in Mexico. His south-of-the-border-señorita wife has shacked up with a new guy. Sweet is unattached and a bit of a wild man, or so I’m told. I’m placing my bets on them trying to get to Mexico.”

  “Who helped them on the inside?”

  “We got a woman, Joyce Mathews, worked in the tailor shop. She’s been balling them both in between stitches, so to speak. We think she helped smuggle in some tools. Screwdrivers, hacksaws, power tools she lifted from the construction going on inside the place. She also promised them a ride out of town as soon as they got free. But she got cold feet, feigned an anxiety attack, and ended up going to the emergency room.”

  “Where’s she now?”

  “Clinton County Jail.”

  “Motivation? And don’t tell me it’s love.”

  “Don’t quote me on this but I think Moss and Sweet agreed to kill her husband, Larry, if she agreed to arrange transport.”

  “Now that makes perfecto sense,” I said, pulling a yellow legal pad from the top desk drawer, writing down Joyce’s name along with her husband’s. “Anyone else?”

  “There’s a corrections officer,” Valente said. “Name of Gene Bender. Inmates call him Mean Gene because he’s big and bad ass, and plays bass guitar in a hardcore band.”

  “He must also be a boxer like you.”

  “Funny,” he said. “He’s in the process of being read his Mirandas for aiding and abetting. He’s on his way to Clinton County lockup also.”

  “What’d he do exactly?”

  “Like Joyce, he slipped some tools in along with some raw meat for the two escapees. Claims he developed a relationship with them in exchange for info on other inmates.”

  “Seems reasonable enough. I would have done the same thing. But raw meat?”

  “They’d earned time in the honor block and they were allowed to cook some of their own meals.”

  I nodded. Little known fact about max security prisons. Honor block prisoners could cook their own meals, keep their own gardens, and even earn conjugal visits from time to time. I jotted down Mean Gene’s name. I also jotted down, Tools hidden in raw meet. Dumb rookie mistake.

  “Who you want me to answer to? D’Amico?”

  He shook his head. “The aforementioned Bridgette Hylton. That’s Hylton with a Y.”

  I wrote that down too, including Hylton’s Y. />
  “Dannemora Super?”

  He told me and I scribbled the name, Peter Clark. In my heart of hearts, I knew that not only would Warden Clark lose his Christmas bonus, he was about to lose his job.

  Valente stood, smoothed out his pants. He was a dapper leftist governor who was, at present, single, and he took pride in both, from what the tabloids reported. The New York Post anyway. That and his boxing and his bodyguards. Excuse me, Secret Service.

  “And I’m sure all of these good people are sharing their information.”

  He cocked his head.

  “Bureaucrats,” he said, his voice filled with as much irony as my provolone and pork product-filled sub.

  “Politicians,” I said. Then, “Assuming you are my client and not necessarily the State of New York, who would you like me to speak to first?”

  “I think you’ll do well to start with Sheriff Hylton. She’s more reasonable than D’Amico.”

  “Looks like all roads lead to Hylton,” I said. “Hylton with a Y, that is.”

  “Please stop that,” he said. “We heard it the first time.”

  Both Stanley and Brent snorted, as if it was specifically spelled out in their contracts to snort whenever their boss made a funny.

  “You got a file for me to, ummm, peruse?” I asked.

  “You’ve got yourself a smartphone and a news app or two,” he said. “Use them.”

  Another pair of snorts from the Lurch twins. This time it was me who made a pistol with my right hand. When I pointed it at the governor, I said, “Touché.”

  He reached into his jacket, pulled out an envelope, handed it to me.

  “Advance,” he said. “I’m sure it’s adequate.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, governor.”

  “Of course you will,” he said, turning. He started walking. But he stopped just short of the door and the monsters who guarded it. “Oh, and if you would be so kind, Mr. Marconi,” he added, “if and when you happen to discover one or both of our missing prisoners, make certain you contact me on my private cell phone immediately. I want them both front and center, and I want them alive. You got that? Alive. That’s the kind of compassionate governor I am. You understand?”