The Corruptions

by Vincent Zandri

  This time he just grunted.

  “Yes, the girl is married,” he said. “I watch her newscast all the time. And why do you think those two escaped assholes could be close by?”

  “I know prisoners,” I said. “I used to be the warden at Green Haven Prison. But that was a long time ago.”

  “That makes you an expert, chief?”

  “More than most. Or so I’d like to think.”

  On the television, the broadcast shifted from the pretty journalist to a shot of the thick Adirondack forest that surrounded the prison walls. The woods looked thick, dark, foreboding. Like a place where only the Big Bad Wolf hid out.

  D’Amico said, “Moss will head to Mexico first chance he gets. It’s where his girl is. Where his money is. Where his home is. Depends how much Sweet holds him back.”

  “You think they’re out of state already?”

  “FBI’s gonna try to pounce on this now,” he said. “Try being the operative word here.”

  I shifted my gaze in the direction of the black van outside. Blood was standing by the door. He winked at me.

  “I think Agents Scully and Mulder have arrived already,” I said.

  “The van,” he said. “I saw it pull in.” He watched the TV for a few beats more until Pretty Journalist came back on the screen. “So, what’s your theory, chief?”

  “I think they’re held up in a hunting cabin somewhere. I don’t think they even expected to make it out of the prison in the first place and now that they have, they’re confused and scared and not sure about what their next move is. Their contact on the outside screwed them over. Their only hope of getting to Mexico now are the two living and breathing bodies that reside in the Clinton County Jail. They’re desperate and hungry and sitting on their asses right under our noses. Dollars to donuts. And I’m guessing a big part of you must believe the same thing, or a version thereof anyway, or you wouldn’t be devoting so much time and resources to the situation. Am I warm, Trooper D’Amico?”

  “You know my name?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I’ve done my homework.”

  “Well, chief,” he said. “Do yourself a favor, and keep your nose out of official law enforcement business.”

  “I’m being paid to poke my nose in it. I were you, and I’m not telling you your job or anything like that, but I’d enlist a bunch of local hunters and the like. No one knows these woods better than them.”

  He nodded. “You mean like deputize them, create a posse comitatus?”

  “Sort of. I think my boss would agree to the tactic.”

  “I’d ask you who your boss is, but I think I already know. And let me tell you something. You think you can come in here and undermine the work of the New York State Troopers? Well, chief, you’ve got yourself another thing coming.”

  “Whoa,” I said.

  He looked up at me while trying desperately not to make it look like he had to look up at me.

  “What’s whoa mean, chief?”

  “It means you sure threw a scare into me.”

  On the TV, Pretty Journalist smiled. “This is Tanya Rucker reporting live from Dannemora Prison,” she said. Her eyes lit up. I melted.

  “You sure she’s married?” I said.

  “Get the hell out of here,” D’Amico said.

  “You asking or telling?”

  He grunted again.

  I found Blood standing by the door, glancing at the rack of dirty magazines.

  “You just looking,” I said in my best imitation Indian accent, “or are you going to buy the porno magazine?”

  “I prefer the real thing,” he said.

  I handed the real thing his coffee and together we made a swift exit.

  Outside, I eyed the black van. I couldn’t see anyone inside it, but I knew they could see me. I could feel their gaze like two separate sets of red laser beams. So could Bridgette and so could Blood. The driver’s side door opened on the van and a young man dressed in a dark suit stepped out. Then the passenger side door opened and a young, business-suited woman stepped out. They must have been waiting for me to re-emerge from the shop before they revealed themselves. Which told me they not only knew my ID, but knew all about my mission. Not that they’d would readily admit to anything.

  “Here come the Feds,” Sheriff Hylton said. “You can tell by the cheap suits.”

  The young man approached us, smiled. A fake smile.

  “Coffee good here?” he said. His hair was cut short and trimmed professionally.

  The woman stepped up behind him. Her short skirt matched her jacket. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she wore aviator sunglasses over eyes which I imagined to be brown. “Know where we can find Sheriff Hylton?” she said. Unlike her partner, she didn’t smile when she spoke. All business.

  I glanced at Blood. He drank some coffee, soaking up the atmosphere, his face stoic, expressionless.

  “I’m Sheriff, Hylton,” Bridgette said.

  “Serendipity,” Blood said. The sarcasm that painted his voice was noticeable only to me. I was trained to recognize the subtleties in life.

  “More like they tracked her smartphone,” I said, knowing they knew exactly who the sheriff was, never mind Blood and me. But then, I guessed the cloak and dagger act was all a part of the FBI job description.

  The young man pulled out his badge, flashed it.

  “FBI,” he said. “I’m Agent Muscolino, and this is Agent Doyle. We’re here to inquire about the case of the missing prisoners.”

  “You don’t say,” Hylton said. “Thus far we have no less than four law enforcement agencies, not including the Canadian Royal Mounted Police, on the trail of those two assholes.”

  “What’s your point?” said Doyle.

  Bridgette sipped her coffee, nodded contemplatively.

  “My point, Agent Doyle? Is that you will wait your turn, like the rest of us.”

  He went to talk, but she raised up her free hand as if to say, “Shush,” immediately silencing the dark-suited spook. It wasn’t easy to make out, but I was pretty sure Blood giggled.

  “This is my town, agents,” she said, stressing the plurality of the S on the end of agents. “That big ugly gray building behind you is my prison. Those escaped convicts are my responsibility first and foremost, and despite firm, well intentioned, but nonetheless empty promises from both Governor Valente and First Deputy Superintendent State Trooper D’Amico, I have made it my number one goal to apprehend those two no good bastards on my own.” She paused for effect. “Now, do we have ourselves an understanding, Agent Muscolino? Agent Doyle?”

  They nodded, turned on their heels, got back in the van. They backed out and took off in the opposite direction of the prison gates and, apparently, a coffee shop where the atmosphere wasn’t so hot.

  We stood there sipping coffee and watching them disappear into the landscape. Until Blood broke the silence by saying, “You good. You very, very good, Ms. Hylton.”

  She smiled, proudly. “I was the first girl in this town to play Pop Warner Football. Sure, we didn’t have enough boys to form a full team, but I’m the competitive type, Blood.”

  The coffee shop door opened. D’Amico stepped out, his coffee in hand. He stopped and stared at us, then focused his gaze on Bridgette.

  “Busy catching the bad guys, Sheriff Hylton?” he said. “Or are you about to catch a hair appointment?” He cracked his lips as if attempting a wry smile brought about by his brilliant witticism, before turning and walking towards his prowler. When his boot caught on a crack in the concrete, he tripped and went down on his chest, the coffee cup hitting the concrete sidewalk and exploding all over his pristine uniform.

  It was all we could do to squelch our laughs.

  Slowly, he raised himself back up, while several bystanders looked on, not quite knowing what to do or how to react. He swiped at the huge brown stains that soaked his shirt and the front of his trousers, he attempted to straighten out his Stetson, which now hung off his j
arhead like a bad toupee. He turned, held out his hand, pointed it at us.

  “One word,” he said, face full of fury. “Say even one word, or let me hear just one snicker out of your insubordinate mouths, and I will call in every statie from New York City to Buffalo and your town will be covered in the gray and black. Do I make myself clear?”

  His hat slipped off his head, dropped onto the coffee covered pavement. Blood stepped forward, retrieved it for him, not before brushing away some little pieces of gravel that were stuck to the brim.

  D’Amico swiped it out of his hand.

  “Thank. You. Very. Much.” he said, acid pouring from his mouth.

  Turning, he hobbled to his prowler like a toddler with a load in his drawers, the baby-faced uniformed driver nervously opening the rear door for him.

  “He very uptight,” Blood said.

  “That’s because you and Keeper are on the job, Blood,” Bridgette said. “You guys are gonna help me nail those two bastards. And soon. And he knows it.”

  The prowler left the scene, spitting gravel and dirt out from under its wheels. I glanced at my wristwatch.

  “You think Warden Clark has shown up for work yet?” I said.

  “If he’s smart,” Bridgette said, now walking toward her Jeep, “he’ll never show up for work again.”

  “Will you fucking slow down? I’m starving. I ain’t got the fat around the belly like you do, Picasso. I ain’t got the energy stores.”

  Derrick Sweet is sucking air, but he’s worked up enough oxygen to shout at Reginald Moss’s back. A broad back covered in so much sweat, it soaks the prison green work shirt, making it appear more black than pine tree green. How ironic that Moss was worried about slowing Sweet down, when, in fact, it’s worked out the opposite way. Skinny Sweet slowing doughy Moss down.

  The artist trudges through the grass and thick scrub, the vegetation wet from the early morning dew that is already turning to steam in the hot sun. A heat that arrives and sticks around for only a few short weeks, but that packs the same nasty ass punch as its longer lasting winter counterpart. He’s just as hungry as Sweet, just as tired, just as lonely, but what choice does he have other than to move on towards the border regardless? It might not be Mexico, but if they can cross over to Canada, chances are they can get someone to help them get out of the country. They will have to rely on IOUs, or they might have to rob a bank or a 7-Eleven or a Chipotle Grill. Whatever. Point is, they’re going to need money, a change of clothes, some hair dye, and some fake passports, just for starters.

  “Slow down, will you, Picasso?” Moss overhears as he breaks through into a clearing that seems to run for miles. He knows that just beyond the horizon is the Canadian border.

  “Stop your bitching,” he barks over his shoulder.

  Pushing through scrub, he takes his first step into the clearing. That’s when the trap springs, and the metal clamps slam closed on his shin.

  Blood took the shotgun seat while I rode in the back for the short one-mile drive to the gates of Clinton County Maximum Security Prison. We parked in the visitor’s lot just like the common folk. We then made our way to a front guard shack that accessed the small visitor center, an uninviting square space that was nothing more than a glorified waiting room constructed in the 1950s or ’60s. We signed in at the front desk, were handed our laminated guest badges, and told to sit tight until our escort arrived.

  While we waited, we finished our coffees in relative silence, Blood having withdrawn into himself now that he was once again surrounded by four walls and some razor wire, me also choosing silence for much the same reason. There was a reason I thought twice about taking this job on. A hell of a good reason. For anyone who’s ever lived or worked inside an iron house, they know how difficult it can be to make a return to the place, even if that return is voluntary and for a very limited time. Maybe you left the joint a long time ago, but the joint never leaves you. No matter how much time passes, the joint stays the same. The sickening smell wafting up from the chow hall combined with industrial disinfectant, body odor, and human piss. It is a scent that immediately sticks to the roof of your mouth and nasal passages, and it is not all that different from the smell of death. And it is just as sickening. I came close to losing my life in one of these iron houses during the Attica uprising, and even if I was just a seventeen-year-old kid right out of high school, it was something I’d never forget. Men being crucified outside their cells, men being burned alive, men with their cocks cut off and stuffed into their mouths, men shot in the head pointblank by invading state troopers. It was amazing how all those memories came flooding back just by stepping inside the prison waiting room.

  Blood tossed what was left of his coffee into the trash before it came back up on him. I did the same. That was when the metal door on the opposite side of the room opened, and a man stepped through. He was a big man. Shaved head, neck the size of my thigh, clean shaven revealing a face of bumps and abrasions. A face that knew violence as much as it did human growth hormone. He was the same CO who held court at the table of COs at Fangs the previous night.

  Rodney Pappas.

  Bridgette stepped ahead of us, held out her hand for him. He took her hand in his, offered up a smile. Not like he wished her well. More like he wanted to fry her up, eat her for lunch.

  “Bridgette, how lovely to see you again,” he said, putting on his best PR song and dance. His smile was broad, his biceps squeezing out of his black work shirt. “And you brought your nice friends.”

  “Peter’s expecting us,” she said.

  “And right on time,” Rodney said, releasing her hand, pushing up on the utility belt that wrapped around his narrow waist and connected with the mic clipped to his shirt. “The super will be so happy to see you.”

  Blood and I exchanged a look, because we both knew that the last person Warden Peter Clark wanted to see right now was a member of New York State law enforcement, even if she was the town’s sheriff, and someone who considered herself just as responsible for Sweet’s and Moss’s breakout.

  Rodney looked up, gave Blood and me a glare with wide, gray eyes. He stood foursquare in his spit-polished combat boots, his black military style cargo pants tucked into them.

  “You two boys ready? I’m not going to have to hold your hands now, am I?”

  Blood took a step towards the door.

  “You a comedian, Rodney,” he said. “You missed your calling. But you refer to me as boy again, I rearrange your jaw.”

  “That so,” Rodney said, smile tight and tense. “You never seen me in action busting some heads.”

  “Bet it’s a sight to see,” Blood said. “You must be real bad ass. How’s it feel to be the bad ass chief corrections officer after Dannemora’s first breakout in its century and a half history?”

  Rodney’s face went south fast.

  “Must be he didn’t break enough heads, Blood,” I said.

  “You two watch your mouth,” Rodney said.

  His smile entirely disappeared, he turned and escaped through the door into the concrete bowels of the maximum security joint. We followed. When the metal door slammed shut behind us, I felt a rock lodge itself inside my stomach. The rock told me I was trapped behind a concrete wall and inside my vile memories.

  Warden Peter Clark’s office was located on the second floor of the administration building. A concrete block building planted directly beside A block. The honor block that housed mostly Italian mobsters who, like Moss and Sweet, were allowed to cook their own meals with food provided by outsiders and, as it turned out, insiders. Food packages that apparently weren’t always well vetted for what they might contain aside from essential nutrients, ingredients, and calories.

  We entered a small front office where an attractive middle-aged woman sat behind a desk, typing something on her computer. To our right was a leather couch pressed up against the wall, and to our left, a tall green plant, the leaves of which were coated with a layer of dust.

  She looked
up from her work, smiled, pulled off her reading glasses, allowed them to hang off her neck by a slim gold chain.

  “Can I help you?”

  “They got an appointment with Clark, Betty,” Rodney said.

  The green-eyed woman smiled once more, fixed the bangs on her short red hair.

  “But of course,” she said, looking beyond Rodney’s bulky build to the three of us. But, just as quickly, her eyes shifted from all of us, to one of us. Blood. “Your names, please?”

  Rodney told her.

  “Blood?” she said, smiling. “That’s it?”

  “You want my email?” he said. “Cell phone number?”

  Her face went flush-pink. “Well, that won’t be necessary. But if you’d like.”

  Blood stepped forward, wrote something down on a pink Post-it-Note from the full pad he lifted from her desk, handed it to her.

  “You through playing Match dot com, Betty?” Rodney interjected. “I’ve got to make the headcount.”

  “One moment please, Rodney.” Smiling, she turned, opened the door behind her, stepped inside.

  Bridgette turned to Blood.

  “Better watch it with that one, Blood,” she said. “When she walked out on her husband five years ago, she took half his law practice with her.”

  “What she doing working inside a stoney lonesome, then?” he said.

  “Betty likes to keep busy,” the sheriff said. “Lots of nervous energy.”

  “Blood’s type exactly,” I said. “Lots of energy where it counts.”

  Rodney rolled his eyes, flexed his biceps. But for a brief moment, I believe Blood actually cracked a hint of smile.

  The door opened once more, and Betty announced, “Supervisor will see you now.”

  We went around the desk, stepped on past Betty. As though planning it that way, Blood chose to be the last one to pass her by. When he did it, he took it slow, so that she might experience his full aura, his entire uber manly being. I considered it a miracle she didn’t faint on the spot.

  Clark was a tall guy. Maybe six one or two. And slim. Not in-shape slim, but nervous slim. As we entered he pulled a cigarette from between his lips, punched it out in the metal dish set beside his laptop, not like he was extinguishing it, but killing it. He also closed the laptop, hard. So hard I thought he might have broken the screen.