The Corruptions

by Vincent Zandri

  “No,” I said. “Just a figure of speech.”

  Her face lit up, her dark eyes wet and kind.

  “Ha ha,” she said. “Figure of speech…like cocksucker. That what Correction Officer Rodney always say.” She identified Rodney by pointing her pencil at the loud-mouth, thick-necked, head shaved one. “Cocksucker this, cocksucker that.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Something like that.”

  Together, Blood and I made our way to the bar.

  By luck or divine Providence, the bar stools that surrounded the attractive woman at the bar were unoccupied. Or maybe luck or God had nothing to do with it. Maybe it had everything to do with the fact that her uniform pegged her for the local sheriff.

  Bridget Hylton.

  Since she was sitting on the ninety-degree angle at far corner of the L-shaped bar, Blood took the seat to her right-hand side and I took the seat to her left. If I scooched to my right a little on my stool, we could all face one another.

  She was drinking a Budweiser longneck. My brand. Raising my hand up to snare the attention of the young man tending bar, I said, “Three Buds, please.”

  Blood waved his hand as if to block my order.

  “Not on your life,” he said. Then, “Bartender, might I inquire about your wine selection for the evening?”

  The kid behind the bar was tall, impossibly thin, wearing a T-shirt that bore a black and white photo of a UK boy band called The Rixton. Printed on the back of the T-shirt were the tour dates, including one in the neighboring town of Plattsburg. He had one of those thick, round, earlobe piercings that you might see in the bush country of East Africa. His black hair was short and he wore a baseball cap over it. The cap had an extra wide flat rim and the gold sticker it’d come with was still stuck on. The hat wasn’t pulled onto his head, but merely balanced upon it, cocked to one side. Ghetto style.

  “Wine selection?” the kid said, while washing out a beer glass with a damp gray rag. “Why, we have an excellent Heineken, a fine Miller High Life, the classic but oh so subtle Pabst Blue Ribbon, and of course, a very rare but lovely Budweiser, two thousand and fifteen. Unless of course, you prefer a cocktail from our primo selection of generic bottom shelf booze.” He swept his left hand over the shelves of no-name alcohol like gameshow host Vanna White used to do when Don Pardo belted out, “A new car!”

  Sheriff Hylton burst out in laughter, until she put her hand over mouth like she’d merely coughed.

  “Pardon me,” she said. “Something in my throat.”

  For a man who rarely demeaned himself by showing any kind of emotion whatsoever, Blood looked deflated, but not defeated.

  “I choose the Budweiser, young man,” he said after a beat. “When in Rome.”

  “Dannemora is a far cry from Rome.” The kid smiled. “Two Buds coming right up.” Then, looking at the sheriff, “You ready?”

  She picked up the bottle, glanced at what little was left. “I’ll allow myself one more, since these nice gentlemen are buying.”

  The kid dug into the cooler, retrieved the beers, and popped the tops. He set them before us. I reached into my chest pocket on my work shirt, pulled out a twenty, set it onto the bar.

  “Glass?” he said, making change.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  We all took sips from our beers.

  Then, looking neither at me or Blood, the sheriff said, “So how much is this beer gonna cost me, Mr. Marconi and Mr. Blood?”

  Blood and I exchanged glances.

  “You know who we are?” he said.

  Finally, she looked at Blood, then at me, smiling at us warmly.

  “I’m the sheriff,” she said. “As you probably are already aware. Maybe I’ve been completely cast aside in the search for those two on-the-lamb murderers, but I still command the respect of the governor.”

  “Valente called you?” I asked, recalling his ordering me to check in with Hylton as soon as I got into town.

  “His assistant texted me actually,” she said, picking up her iPhone from off the bar, setting it back down. “She asked me to be kind to you.”

  “Good of him or her,” I said. “Then you know why we’re here.”

  “Take a good look around you, Mr. Marconi,” she said. “The entire joint is here for the same reason.”

  “True dat, Ms. Hylton,” Blood said, stealing another sip of his beer, no doubt wishing it were a 2010 Malbec. “Got enough lawmen in there to start a small war.”

  “So you know my name too,” she said, holding out her hand to Blood.

  He took it in his, as if it were a delicate leaf. Her face blushed. Blood, working his magic.

  She turned to me, with the same hand held out. I just shook it. No magic.

  She was younger than Blood and me. Maybe just a year shy of forty. Her hair was dirty blonde, and natural. It was long enough to hug her shoulders and parted on the side neatly over her left eye. The eyes were brown and big and deep, and her lips were thick and wet from maybe one beer too many. When she smiled it wasn’t out of happiness so much as out of resolve. A woman who, having gained the trust of the town of Dannemora enough to be elected sheriff, was nonetheless being told to step aside by some big-wig law enforcement agencies in the investigation to locate its two escaped cons. Something that was either going to stop her or make her more determined to go rogue and take matters into her own hands whether they liked it or not. In any case, Governor Valente was going rogue and she knew all about it. So maybe the two of them were working together. Which meant that now, she was more or less working with us.

  I drank more beer, then set the bottle down onto its coaster. “So, then, Sheriff Hylton, you know why we’re here and what Valente wants us to do.”

  “I know who he wants you to find,” Hylton said, “and how, and what he wants you to do with them once you find them. That is if you can find them with all these uniforms and their hound dogs already way ahead of you.”

  “Where are the two cons exactly?” Blood chimed in, going for broke.

  She turned to him.

  “Damned if I know,” she said.

  “Damned if those staties know either, sheriff,” he said. “Hounds or no hounds. But we got something they don’t got.”

  “What’s that, Blood?” she said.

  “We got Keeper Marconi and we got me. He knows how to think like a CO and a prison supervisor. I know how to think like a criminal. We both righteous individuals. But we don’t do things text book.”

  “That’s why Valente hired you,” she said.

  “So you gonna help us?” I said.

  “For a price, Keeper,” she said.

  I smirked. “How much?”

  “Dinner,” she said. “I’m waiting until some of those tables clear out before I can relax. That vertically challenged trooper in there sitting at the head of the table like he’s Napoleon? His name is Vincent D’Amico. He’s made it a personal mission in life to see that I’m entirely eliminated from the search.”

  “He feel threatened by you,” Blood pointed out.

  “He feels threatened by anyone who stands in the way of his future promotion. Including Governor Valente who likes to micro-manage things. Then there are the COs who want the staties gone ASAP.”

  “Can you get us inside the joint?” I posed. “Say tomorrow morning?”

  “Thought you were going all Lewis and Clark,” she said. “Over the river and through the woods on the trail of the bad guys.”

  “I need to get an idea of their level of sophistication. More than what the media’s been hyping for the past sixty-plus hours. I’d like a come-to-Jesus with the warden, squeeze any info out of him I can. Preferably something that might shed some light on where they went or who, other than Joyce Mathews and Mean Gene Bender, helped them.”

  “You wanna speak with Joyce and Gene?” she said. “I got them both locked up in county.”

  “First thing after talking to the warden. All goes well, we’ll be in the field no later than tomorrow
afternoon.”

  She nodded, falling quiet.

  “What is it, sheriff?” I added after a beat. “Something on your mind besides two escaped murderers?”

  “The COs,” she said. “They’re not going to like you meddling in the case. They’re very secretive about the inner workings of their prison. Their deadly sanctuary. They feel that the escape of two killers under their own watch is their business and their business only.”

  “That why the musclebound one with the cue ball head called us cocksuckers?” Blood said.

  She pursed her lips, nodded.

  “That about explains it,” she said. “Baldy’s name is Rodney Pappas and he’s as nasty as they come. He’ll do anything to defend his turf. As for D’Amico, he’s playing a different game. He wants notoriety. He captures those two cons before anyone else, it will be quite the feather in his Stetson.”

  “What do you want?” Blood said.

  “I want the bastards back in custody. I want this town…my town…to get back to normal. I have almost zero support staff. It’s just me and a couple other bodies, and I need them here in town to keep things in order, and make sure no one takes it upon themselves to do a little convict hunting. This is wild country up here and Dannemora isn’t a gun-free zone.”

  “Lots of people carrying guns and sidearms out there,” I said. “Let me guess. Not all of them are licensed for a concealed carry.”

  She drank down her beer, ordered another round for all of us. For as attractive as she was, she was not beyond drowning her sorrows in a few beers. Couldn’t say I blamed her.

  “What would you suggest I do, Mr. Marconi?” she said. “Most people in this town have families. For all we know Sweet and Moss could be hiding out in somebody’s attic or basement. The townspeople have a right to defend their life and limb. Defend their kids. Second Amendment says so.”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” I say.

  She looked up at the kid behind the bar. He caught her gaze, smiled at her.

  The old Chinese lady approached us.

  “Dining room almost empty now,” she said, happy-faced. She touched her mouth with her fingertips. “You wish to eat.”

  “There any shrimp left?” Blood said.

  “Plenty shrimp,” the old lady insisted.

  We grabbed our beers, slid off our stools.

  “Jason,” Hylton said, “we’re going to have dinner.”

  “Okay, Mom,” the kid said. “Enjoy your dinner. And bring me back an egg roll.”

  “You got it, kid,” she said.

  “Mom?” I said, walking beside her back into the dining room.

  “And dad too,” she said. “My husband ran out years ago. Back to Buffalo. In his words, back to civilization. Jason was born when I wasn’t much older than he is now.”

  “Tough circumstances, but looks to me like you did a hell of a parenting job. Anyone who can spar verbally with Blood has either got to be a genius or just plain crazy.”

  She laughs. “He’s about to start his third year at Boston College. Poly sci major.”

  “I went to the corrections officer school of hard knocks,” I say. “My graduation ceremony was the Attica riots of ’71.”

  She says, “What about you, Keeper? Wife? Kids?”

  “Never had kids,” I said. “Wanted kids. But my wife died early on.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Long time ago. Time doesn’t heal like they say it does. But it does make life more tolerable sometimes.”

  The dining room wasn’t entirely empty it turned out. As we entered, the COs were leaving, heading for the door, the ruins left behind at their table like the dead that littered a small battlefield. The big one, Rodney Pappas…the one with the big mouth…issued us a glare that might have melted the plastic off the menus. At least he didn’t spit at us.

  “Rodney’s the band leader,” Hylton said as we sat down at the round table and took our menus from the old lady. “He’s also the union rep. The one the others look up to. He hates intruders. Dannemora is his prison. From the very top to the very bottom.”

  “His prison broke,” Blood said.

  “And he knows it,” she said.

  “I’d like to speak with him tomorrow too, if I may, Sheriff,” I said.

  “Aren’t you the brave one, Keeper. More than likely, he’ll be the one showing us around.”

  “He brave all right,” Blood said.

  “And stupid,” I said.

  “Is there anything more dangerous?” Hylton said.

  We all raised our beer bottles high, made a toast to bravery, stupidity, and danger.

  The next morning, we met Sheriff Hylton outside the red brick Stewarts Stop and Shop convenience store. She was standing by the glass door, already working on a large cup of coffee. When I got close to her, I could see that her face was a little pale, her eyes red and tired.

  “One too many beers?” I said, not without a smile.

  The punch that nailed my upper arm nearly tipped me over. Turning, I faced Blood, eyes wide.

  “That how you normally address a pretty young lady first thing in the morning, Marconi?” he said. “No wonder you always lonely.” Then, holding out his hand, Bridgette gently placed her hand in his. “Good morning, Ms. Hylton,” he said, voice smooth and inviting. “You look ravishing, as usual.”

  “Why, thank you, Blood,” she said, giggling. “You are such a gentleman.”

  He turned back to me. “Now that how you address a woman, even if she did hit the sauce a little too hard last night.” He winked.

  I recalled the six beers apiece we managed to polish off from the case in our motel room after we’d returned from dinner.

  He who cast the first stone…

  “I appreciate the collected concern, gentlemen,” Hylton said. “But it’s not the beers. It’s the lack of sleep. Things have been a little tense around here lately.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, thanks for the lesson in manners, Blood,” I said. “But if you ever punch me before I’ve had my coffee again, I’ll step on your big toe, and make it hurt.”

  “I didn’t punch you,” he said. “I merely tapped you to get your attention. You ain’t never felt one of my punches.”

  He was telling the absolute truth. A Blood full-frontal-assault punch to the jaw would pretty much shatter every bone in my face. Rumor has it that during his semi-pro football days, he stiff-armed a linebacker as he was making his way to the goal line, and dented the guy’s facemask. Facing the door, I made out the reflection of a van pulling up behind us, parking. A black van with tinted windows. In my head I whispered, FBI.

  Reaching for the door handle, I pulled it open just a touch. “Can I get you anything, Ms. Hylton?”

  “No, thanks, Keeper,” she said. “The coffee in my hand will do the trick.” I opened the door wider. “Mr. Blood, after you.”

  “You learning,” he said as he stepped into the shop ahead of me.

  Inside, the place was busy mostly with cops and troopers grabbing their morning pick me up. Working people in jeans and T-shirts, work boots, and soiled baseball hats. People who weren’t boycotting Starbucks, so much as they couldn’t afford to shell out five bucks for a small coffee even if they wanted to. But then, Starbucks was a stranger to a strictly lower to middle class prison hamlet like Dannemora.

  A uniformed trooper was standing at the counter, a cup of coffee in hand. He was staring up at the television mounted to the wall behind the cashier.

  Vincent D’Amico.

  I poured coffee into two large paper cups, pressed the plastic sippy lids on top, dropped a five on the counter, told the tired-looking kid working the register to keep the change.

  “Thirty-six cents,” he said, deadpan. “Thanks.”

  “I’m all about helping out my fellow man,” I said.

  I took a few steps back, so that I not only stood shoulder to shoulder with D’Amico, but so we both faced the flat-screen television. Rather, shoulder to shoulder was a bi
t of a misnomer since his shoulder only came up about as far as my elbow.

  On the television, the attractive female reporter who was eating inside Fang’s the night before stood outside the entry gates to Dannemora Prison. She was tall, her short dirty blonde hair parted over her right eye. Pretty eyes, ample breasts, hour-glass figure. She was speaking intensely into a handheld mic about yet another day without a clue as to the whereabouts of Moss and Sweet. That at this point, the two cons could be located anywhere from Canada to Mexico, despite the hordes of law enforcement officials having joined in the hunt. Just the sight of her provided more of a wake up than the hot caffeinated beverage in my hands.

  I stole a sip of my coffee.

  “Damnedest thing, isn’t it?” I said, my eyes shifting from the TV to the top of D’Amico’s jarhead and back again.

  “What’s the damnedest thing?” he said. His voice was high-pitched for an adult male, but not for a male who wasn’t much taller than your average racehorse jockey. I’d always assumed the state troopers had a height requirement. Or maybe he had friends in tall places.

  “The escape,” I said. “You ask me, those two cons are close by.”

  D’Amico was an intense man. You could almost feel the tension oozing off of him, the same way you hear the buzz of high tension wires when you passed beneath them. A man ready to explode at the slightest provocation. And I felt like I just pushed one of his many buttons.

  He looked up at me, quick. “I know you, chief?”

  I went to hold out my right hand, politely. But then quickly realized the hand was…how do they say it in France? Occupado.

  “Jack Marconi,” I said. “My friends call me Keeper. I saw you from a distance at Fang’s last night.”

  He nodded. “Well, Jack, what brings you to Dannemora?”

  I cocked my head in the direction of the television.

  “The prison break drama,” I said. “But then you knew that already, didn’t you?” Then, pursing my lips, “You think she’s married?”

  He grunted and snickered. But it wasn’t a pleasant snicker.

  “You a journalist?”

  “Private eye,” I said. “Like Mike Hammer. Only better looking.”