by Clark Howard
Whitman shook his head. “Handwritten, in pencil.”
Cloud nodded, remembering Whitman’s letter. His writing was legible, which was a point in favor of the project. He tugged thoughtfully on one ear as he watched Whitman finger another cigarette from his pocket and dig a thumbnail into the head of a stick match to light it.
“I thought you gave up smoking back in the county jail.” “I fell into the habit again,” Whitman admitted casually. “We get them free on Death Row so it’s no problem.”
Cloud nodded and glanced at his watch. “How long are we allowed to visit?”
“Two hours. But we’d better cut it short if you want to take the pages I’ve finished. They have to be checked out through the deputy warden’s office.” Whitman paused tentatively, then asked, “Have we got a deal?”
“We’ve got a deal,” Cloud said, deciding at that moment. “How do I go about getting the pages?”
“You go back to the administration building and fill out an inmate-property-transfer form. They’ll send the form over here and the guard commander downstairs will have me sign it and send it back with the pages.” Whitman looked up at a clock on the wall behind him. “It might take an hour or so, for the approval and all. Can you wait that long?”
“I think so. What about the rest of it?”
“I’ll just mail it to you, eight or ten pages at a time as I write them. I’m allowed twelve letters a month; I’ll only use three or four writing to the state library.”
“Don’t you have any family at all to write to?”
Whitman shook his head. “Nope. No brothers, no sisters, and my parents are dead.”
“At the L.A. jail, you said you’d been married once. I take it you don’t keep in touch with your ex-wife.”
“No, I don’t.” Whitman forced a smile. “I’d appreciate it if you’d just forget about that. I never should have mentioned her. I wouldn’t want to get her involved in all this, you know?”
“Sure, I understand,” Cloud said. “I just didn’t want you using up your personal mail privileges. Incidentally, speaking of mail, how did you manage to get my address? I’m not even listed in the phone book.”
Whitman grinned. “I have my ways.” He leaned forward again, lowering his voice. “I’m no first-timer in here, you know. I still know a lot of guys over in the main part of the prison, and I’ve got good connections with the prison grapevine. I could probably find out what you had for breakfast this morning if I wanted to bad enough.”
Cloud sat back and looked at him. “I’ll give you credit for one thing: you’re resourceful as hell.”
“I have to be, Mr. Cloud,” he answered quietly. “My life depends on it.”
Cloud nodded soberly. “Listen, why don’t you drop the formality and call me Rob? I have a feeling we might get to know one another pretty well before this thing is over.” Cloud stood up and Whitman did too. “I’ll go on back to the administration building now. You’ll get a letter from me in a couple of days, after I’ve read what you’ve done so far.”
“Good deal,” Whitman replied.
They said goodbye and Cloud started over to the elevator. He was halfway there when Whitman spoke again.
“Hey—”
Cloud paused and turned back.
“Thanks,” Whitman said.
Cloud nodded. “Okay.”
Captain Dukes was waiting for Weldon Whitman when the elevator door opened.
“Step over there against the wall, Twenty-two.” Whitman did as he was told. “Strip,” Dukes said.
“What the fuck for?” Whitman demanded.
“For security,” the big Death Row guard commander said. “Come on now, Twenty-two, you’re a four-time loser; you know that even an ordinary convict has to stand a strip search anytime an officer orders it. And we’re all aware that you’re not just an ordinary convict: you’re the famous Spotlight Bandit, the only man on the Row who’s been sentenced to the gas chamber twice.” Dukes folded his thick, gray-haired arms and his square face turned mean. “Now you strip out of those fucking clothes or I’ll isolate your ass.”
Whitman glared at him, openly hostile. Slowly, deliberately, he began to undress.
When Whitman was naked, Dukes took a penlight from his pocket. “All right, lift your arms.” He directed the bright, tiny beam into the curly hair under Whitman’s arms. “Get your feet apart and lift your cock; okay, now your balls. That’s good. All right, turn around, bend over, and spread your cheeks. Okay, run your fingers through your hair. Faster, come on. Okay—” Dukes checked his toes, his ears, the inside of his mouth, and each article of clothing. “Pick up the clothes,” he ordered. “Don’t bother putting them on; just carry them and I’ll escort you back to your cage.”
They walked to the middle of the elevator corridor and through the barred door into the cell corridor. Along the way, Dukes stopped to visit some of the other condemned men. The first cell he stopped at was Twenty-nine. Its occupant was leaning indolently against the bars.
“Hello, Milo,” said Dukes. “How’s our cop-killer today?”
“Fine, Captain. Just fine,” Milo answered. He was a bushy-haired, bushy-browed armed robber who had shot down a motorcycle policeman in a gunfight following a supermarket holdup.
“You know Milo, don’t you, Twenty-two? He’s a copkiller.”
Dukes resumed walking; he stopped again in front of Number Twenty-seven. A tall, rail-thin black man with a Fu Manchu mustache glared through the bars at him.
“Hello, Henry,” Dukes said. He turned to Whitman. “Henry’s one of our rapists, as I’m sure you already know. Used to rape a lot of white women. Really liked that white pussy. Liked one so well he went back and raped her a second time. Then he beat her to death.”
They stopped next in front of Cell Twenty-five. A short, balding man of forty looked out at them.
“Hello, Franklin,” Dukes said in a friendlier tone.
“Hello, Captain Dukes.”
Dukes turned to Whitman. “Franklin’s the only man on the Row who doesn’t belong here. He came home early one day and caught his wife in bed with their insurance man. If he’d been smart he would have killed them both right then and there; he would have got twenty years and been out in six. But instead he beat the shit out of the insurance man and waited until bedtime to strangle his wife. That made it premeditated, and Franklin got maxed. Personally, I hope his sentence is commuted.”
Duke escorted the naked Whitman down to his own locked cell. Death Row cells were always locked except during recreation, when they were open in sections of ten. Dukes motioned to the control-room guard to release the safety bar at the top of the cell door. Then he nodded and Whitman entered the cell. As soon as the door was closed and safety-locked behind him, the condemned man began to put his clothes back on. Dukes stood and watched.
“You know, I’ve seen all kinds up here on the Row,” the captain said, standing up close to the bars and speaking in a soft, conversational voice. “Cop-killers, wife-killers, rapists like Henry, psychos of every imaginable kind; but I have to admit that you’re a new experience for me, Twenty-two. You’re the first real pervert I’ve ever had up here.”
Whitman, stepping into his coveralls, flushed an angry red but said nothing.
“I’m used to being around the cold-blooded killers and the guys who blow their tops and do something violent to a wife or a girlfriend or somebody like that. But I just don’t know about a man who takes an innocent little teenage girl and makes her suck his dick at the point of a gun—”
“Did it ever occur to you, Captain, that I might just be innocent of that?” Whitman asked tightly. Dukes shook his head solemnly.
“Not for a minute,” he said. “I’ve been a correctional officer for twenty-nine years; I’ve seen guys like you by the hundreds. Not as smart as you, maybe, but just as rotten. Just as evil. And you are evil, Twenty-two; I know it as well as I know my own face in the mirror. Guys like you, you can fool a lot of people; yo
u can fool lawyers and judges and juries and social workers. But you can’t fool me, Twenty-two. I know evil—and you’re it. You’re going to deserve exactly what you get when your time comes.”
“Don’t be too sure it’s going to come,” the condemned man said grimly.
“Oh, it will,” Dukes assured him confidently. “It will.”
The big guard captain walked away. Weldon Whitman walked up to the bars and leaned his face against the cold, hard steel. With one blue-gray bar dividing his face into uneven halves, he stared at his keeper’s back.
Chapter Seven
“Do you mean,” Laurel said rather coolly, “that you just got on a plane and went to San Francisco today? Without telling anyone?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Cloud asked with a genuinely innocent shrug.
“Oh, nothing,” she said, piqued. “Nothing at all. Except that if the plane had crashed, no one would have had the faintest idea that you were even on it.”
They were sitting at a tiny corner table in Rosa’s Pizzeria, a cozy, pungent-smelling, inexpensive place not far from Laurel’s apartment. Between them were two glasses of very dark Bardolino and a flickering candle burning in a chipped saucer.
“I guess I should have called you this morning,” Cloud admitted. “It was pretty much a last-minute decision; I don’t think I realized I was really going until I was on my way to the airport.”
“What ever possessed you to go?” She was still peeved.
“Whitman wrote me a letter. He asked me to come.” Cloud took a sip of wine, then for a moment held the glass in front of the dancing candle flame and stared thoughtfully at it. “He’s scared, Laurel. He’s been sentenced to die and he’s scared. He’s starting a fight for his life from a prison cell, without a friend in the world to help him.”
“I see. So he’s picked you for his friend.”
Cloud put down his glass. “In a way I guess we kind of picked each other. He’s writing a book about himself, hoping to bring his case before the public and to make some money to fight his conviction. He asked me to edit the book for him. For a half interest in whatever it makes.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said I would.”
Laurel’s eyes narrowed the tiniest bit. “Do you think it’s a profitable venture?”
“It could be. Especially if he turns out to be innocent.”
“Do you think he’s innocent?”
Before Cloud could answer, the waitress arrived with a large, steaming pizza. Cloud helped Laurel separate several of the cut slices to cool, taking his time because he knew she was waiting for his answer—he had none.
“Well, do you or don’t you?”
“Think he’s innocent?” Cloud shrugged, as if to relegate the matter to unimportance. “I don’t really know. But innocent or guilty, I don’t think he deserves to go to the gas chamber.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t think a death sentence is justified when no life has been taken. I’m not even sure it’s justified in any case. I’ve been kind of researching it in my spare time; you’d be surprised at some of the arguments—really lucid arguments—against it.”
“Such as?” Laurel said.
“Well, aside from the fact that statistics have proven that it isn’t a deterrent to capital crimes—”
“Is that true?” she interrupted skeptically. “The death penalty doesn’t prevent murders?”
“Not according to the figures,” he assured her. “The murder rate is just as high per capita—sometimes even higher—in states where there’s a death penalty as it is in states that have abolished capital punishment.” Cloud balanced a slice of pizza on his thumb and index finger and took a bite. It was hot and he swallowed it quickly. “But one of the very best arguments for outlawing death penalties is by a man named Donald MacNamara, dean of the Institute of Criminology in New York. MacNamara says that the death penalty actually stands in the way of penal reform and that as long as it is a part of our system of justice, a truly rehabilitative approach to penology will never be fully attained.” He glanced down at the pizza. “Why aren’t you eating?”
“I am.” She picked up her first slice of pizza. Her expression was disapproving.
“You don’t think I should have agreed to help Whitman with his book.”
“I think you were probably hasty, yes,” she admitted. “If you were interested in making extra money, I’m sure you could find a much better way of doing it. How long will it take to finish it, do you think?”
“I’m not sure. Six months, maybe.”
“At the end of which you might very well end up with fifty percent of nothing.”
“On the other hand, I could come out of it with a lot of money and maybe even a name. Aren’t you the one who wants me to be rich and successful so you won’t have to marry beneath yourself?”
“That’s not even close to funny.”
“No, I guess not,” he agreed.
Laurel was silent for a moment, then took a new tack. “Don’t you think this is going to affect your regular job? It’ll be on your mind, you’ll be thinking about it when you’re not working on it; it’s bound to tap what little interest you have in your work on the paper. You don’t really care for your job at the Ledger, you just go on working there because there’s nothing different that you do care for. And when you finally decide to apply yourself to something, it’s this … this Whitman thing—something that has no permanent direction to it and no definite reward.” She bit her lip briefly. “Do you understand what I’m talking about, Rob?”
“Yes.” He let it go at that. It was an old, familiar subject by now, one they had debated several times before. Their disagreement narrowed down to a difference in personal values.
They ate their pizza and drank their wine in uncomfortable silence, concentrating with elaborate, seemingly undivided attention to the task, as if every move, every bite, were being recorded for posterity. The longer the silence endured, the more self-conscious they became. The food grew tasteless in their mouths, and the wine, usually so mellow and perfectly suited to the particular cheese Rosa used in her pizzas, tonight seemed tart and vinegary. Finally the meal became such an ordeal that it simply was not worth the effort. By silent mutual agreement they decided to give up on it completely.
“Not very good tonight,” Cloud commented, putting his napkin on the table.
“No,” Laurel said quietly. She folded her own napkin and sat back in the chair, fingers toying with the stem of her glass. Cloud lighted a cigarette and studied her as she stared down at the red circle of wine shifting in the glass. Sitting as she was, turned slightly away, accentuated the round fullness of her breasts under the snugly fit crewneck sweater. He could not help thinking again how much he had come to want this woman. He felt helpless in the face of the seemingly impossible differences between them. As he sat there studying her, from somewhere deep inside him a sigh inadvertently but audibly slipped past his lips.
“You’re tired,” Laurel said. “I am too, a little. Why don’t we forget the movie and both get home early?”
“All right,” Cloud said. He did feel tired.
Walking back up the hill toward her apartment, they turned their coat collars up against a crisp, cool night breeze. They walked close together, but not holding hands as they usually did. When they entered the tiny lobby of her building, Laurel turned to him and said, “Let’s say goodnight here, Rob. Do you mind? I’m really very tired.”
“Sure,” Cloud said. He touched her shoulder and leaned forward to kiss her lightly on the lips. “Want me to call you tomorrow?”
“You know I do.”
“Then I will.” He rubbed his fingertips over her cheek. “Goodnight.”
Before he was out the door, she spoke to him again. “Rob—”
“Yes?”
“Have you definitely made up your mind to help this Whitman with his book?”
“Yes, I have.”
“All right then,” she said, and she turned and went up the stairs.
Cloud stood there frowning. Had her words meant an acceptance of his decision? Or were they a veiled implication that he was going to be sorry?
For the next six weeks, Cloud concentrated on the book that he and Weldon Whitman were writing—for that was the way it quickly turned out to be.
The manuscript, he found upon his first close reading, was badly in need of work—a lot of work. There was definitely a story in what Whitman had written, but it had to be dragged from the pages. The organization of his material was terrible, the writing itself atrocious. The script had no continuity, no real form, and was totally without style of any kind. But there was a story.
The title Weldon Whitman had selected for his book, in his dark humor, was Room 22, Hotel Death. Cloud thought it a good title—very good, in fact. But the rest of the book…
He wrote Whitman about it, candidly putting forth his opinion:
You do have a story here, Whit, and I think it’s a good one, a story worth telling. However, I’m afraid that your narrative, your dialogue, the entire way you’ve attempted to tell the story, is pretty poorly done.
I am being very frank with you because I do not want any misunderstanding between us. Together we can probably come up with a book that will have a good chance of being published—but before we begin the project, I want you to understand two things: first, the finished product will more likely be quite different from the picture of it you now have in mind; and second, it’s going to take a lot of compromise on your part because it’s going to take a lot of rewriting before we finally get that finished product.
I’m ready to give it a try if you are—but I wanted to let you know that the script needs more than simply editing. I’ll undoubtedly be changing a great deal of what you write. Let me know how you feel about that.
At the end of the letter, he put a postscript.
Incidentally, I like the title you chose. That’s the one thing I won’t change.
Three days later, Cloud received his reply: