by Clark Howard
“Personal correspondence for Weldon Whitman,” he said.
He walked down to the middle of the partitioned visiting table and took the same chair in which he had sat the very first time he visited Whitman: the seat midway between the two observation guards, as Lew Lach had taught him so long ago. He unbuttoned his raincoat but did not bother to remove it; he did not plan to stay long.
The door of the prisoner elevator opened and Weldon Whitman stepped into the room. His eyes were narrowed and his lips curled into an actual sneer, not the unintentional one so often created by his features. He walked purposefully over to the table, and instead of sitting, remained standing to look down at Cloud.
“I asked Genevieve to come,” he said curtly. “Where is she?”
“She’s not coming,” Cloud said in a quietly neutral voice.
“Why are you here?” Whitman demanded. “You’re the one who walked out on me.”
“I’m here because Genevieve asked me to come,” Cloud said. “And because there’s no one else left to come.”
“What do you mean no one else left?” Whitman said contemptuously. “I have a foundation behind me. I have thousands of supporters all over the fucking state!”
“Then where are they?” Cloud asked.
Whitman ignored the question. “Where are Niebold and White?” he said irritably. “What are they doing for me?”
“Nothing.”
Whitman chewed his bottom lip for a moment, then snatched back the chair on his side and quickly sat down. He leaned forward urgently. “I’ve got to get some information to the governor,” he said tensely. “That’s why I wanted Genevieve here.”
“She sent me in her place,” Cloud told him again.
“How can I depend on you?” the condemned man said. “You walked out on me once already. And besides, I need someone impressive to see the governor for me. Someone like Genevieve, who has some stature. I can’t send you. Look at you: your hair needs cutting, you look like hell with that mustache, your clothes never look neat. You won’t do at all.”
“That’s too bad,” Cloud told him. “Because I’m the only one you’ve got.”
Weldon Whitman thought about that. He looked up at the clock on the wall; it was almost eight. In two hours he would be removed from the Row and taken down to the holding cell where he was scheduled to spend the last twenty-four hours of his life. Once there, in that tiny cell behind the gas chamber, he would be totally out of touch with everyone on the outside except through prison officials.
“Nobody else is coming to see me this morning?” he asked suspiciously.
“I don’t think so.”
Whitman slammed a fist into the open palm of his other hand. “I have information that must get to the governor today!” he said again. “I’m certain he’ll grant me a stay when he hears what I have to say.”
“Tell me that it is then,” said Cloud. “If it’s the truth, I’ll see that it gets to the governor.”
Whitman’s eyes flashed suspicion. “What do you mean by that?” he asked. “Who’s to decide whether it’s the truth or not?”
“I will,” Cloud told him.
A little of Whitman’s sneer returned. “How will you know?”
“I’ll know,” Cloud said.
Whitman studied him for a long moment, his lips parted in concentration, the sneer gone, wiped away by an overall expression of indecision. Again, as so many times in the past, he seemed at that moment to have about him an odd vulnerability, a suggestion of helplessness, a look that cried out for a friend. Robert Cloud remembered that look and his jaw tightened slightly.
“All right,” Whitman said, “I’ll trust you. It doesn’t appear that I have a great deal of choice in the matter.” He tried to lean closer across the divided table, his shoulders hunched, elbows planted firmly, fingers laced together. “You remember I told you a long time ago that I committed all the crimes I was convicted of except the car theft and the Calder and Luza jobs? And I told you I thought an ex-partner of mine had pulled those? Well, I want to confess to the crimes I committed, and I want to make a deal to name the guy who did the other crimes.”
“Are you saying you didn’t commit the Calder and Luza crimes but you’ll name the person who did?” Cloud asked, cutting directly to the core of it. Whitman nodded his head emphatically.
“Exactly. I told you I knew who the guy was, and I do. As a matter of fact, the car I used on that last job was the same car he used to pull the Calder and Luza jobs. I had been borrowing the goddamned car from him and using that spotlight gimmick to pull jobs by myself. In fact, I got the idea for the gimmick from him.”
Cloud kept his eyes riveted on Whitman. “Now you’re willing to give the governor the name of this man and accuse him of the Calder and Luza crimes?”
Whitman nodded. “Yes.”
“Can this man be found? Can he be brought to trial?”
Whitman nodded. “He’s right here in San Quentin. He took a fall for another rap and just got transferred up here from Folsom.”
“If what you’re saying is true, why didn’t you name him before now?” Cloud asked bluntly. “Why didn’t you do it the last time you were this close to execution, when Gen and I had to finally turn the foundation over to Niebold and White in order to get you a stay?”
“I couldn’t do it then,” the condemned man said. “I didn’t know my ex-partner was back in at that time; I thought he was still on the street. I didn’t know he was doing time again until a week ago when he came in on a Folsom transfer.”
“What difference does that make?”
“While he was outside, he was a potential threat to someone I had to protect,” Whitman explained. “I knew if I finked on him, he’d hurt that person before the law could get to him.”
Cloud’s expression did not change, but he suddenly felt peculiar in the pit of his stomach. He’s lying to me, he thought. His mind gave him no clues as to why he thought it; he knew only that the thought was clear and irrevocable. The Whitman mystique was gone.
“Who’s the person you had to protect?” Cloud asked in as even a voice as he could muster.
“That’s something I don’t want to go into,” Whitman told him.
An act, thought Cloud. He’s putting on an act.
“You’ll have to go into it with the governor,” Cloud told him.
Whitman again was silent for a long, thoughtful moment. Then he nodded his head once, firmly, and looked Cloud squarely in the eye. “I’ve got a daughter, Rob. She’s eight years old. I was protecting her and her mother.”
“Who’s her mother, Whit?”
“My ex-wife.”
“You never did tell me her name.” Cloud said.
“I still want her kept out of it.”
“I’ll keep her out of it,” Cloud promised. “Just tell me her name. I’m curious.”
“Carol,” said Weldon Whitman. “Her name is Carol.”
You lousy fucking liar.
“Do you believe me, Rob?” Whitman asked after a few moments.
Cloud nodded. “Yes, I believe you,” he lied back.
“Will you help me?”
“I’ll help you,” he lied again.
“You’ll go to the governor for me?”
“Yes. Either me or Genevieve. One of us will do it.” Another lie. Cloud was beginning to enjoy it. Like sweet revenge. “There’s a lot to do,” he said, standing. “I’d better go. Incidentally, there’s a letter from Gen waiting for you. It was supposed to be her last words to you. Do me a favor, will you: sit down and answer it, just like you were writing your last words to her. I don’t know how you really feel about her, but she can still be very useful to us. A really sincere-sounding last letter from you would make all the difference in the world in how she thinks of you in the future. Will you do that for me?”
“Hell, yes,” said Whitman. “Whatever you say, Rob.” The condemned man was also standing now, smiling across the long table. “It’ll be like old t
imes, won’t it, buddy? You and me again.” Whitman rubbed his hands together jubilantly. “Hey, man, we’ll beat this fucking place yet. Won’t we, Rob?”
“We sure will, Whit,” said Robert Cloud.
And that was the last lie he told him.
At nine-thirty the next morning, Whitman was vomiting.
He was on his knees in one of the two tiny holding cells, regurgitating his breakfast of two hours earlier into the lidless toilet in the corner of the cell. The vomit was yellowish in color, like his scrambled eggs had been; it burned his throat coming up, and a little of it got into his nose and burned the tissue there also.
When he finished throwing up, he sank back to the mattress spread on the floor and sat with his knees drawn up and his head back against the cold steel bars.
Captain Dukes, who was standing outside the cell, handed a container of coffee through the bars. “Here, drink this. It’ll take the taste of that puke out of your mouth.”
“Yeah, okay,” Whitman said hoarsely. He took the cup with trembling hands and shakily managed to get some of the steaming liquid past his lips. He looked through the bars at Dukes. “You’ve hated my guts all this time and now you’re being decent to me,” he said, almost accusingly. “How come?”
“No particular reason,” Dukes said. He would not admit to anyone that he had been receiving foundation literature in the mail. That he had been reading it. And that, incredibly, he had begun to have doubts about Weldon Whitman’s punishment. “Nothing wrong with being civil to a man on the day he’s going down,” the bull-shouldered Death Row commander said. He avoided meeting Whitman’s eyes and stepped away from the bars. Turning his back on the cell, he checked his watch; it was twenty-seven minutes to ten.
Whitman took several quick sips of coffee. What the fuck could have happened? he wondered. Cloud had to have seen the governor by now. His mind, sick with fear, raced anxiously for hope. Maybe they were going to make it a last minute reprieve, so it would look more dramatic to the press and public. Sure, that was probably it. Condemned man snatched from jaws of death as new evidence is brought to light at last minute. Good. Very good. He felt better and drank some more coffee.
From around the corner of the short corridor leading to the gas chamber, came a heavy, dull thud. Whitman’s head shot around.
“What was that?”
“They’re testing the chamber door,” Dukes told him quietly. “They have to make sure there’s a perfect pneumatic seal.” Dukes turned to the death-watch guard on duty. “I’m going to check the Prep Room.” As he went into the short corridor, he heard Whitman speak to the same guard.
“How about turning that radio up a little?” Whitman said.
“Sure.” The guard rose from the bench where he sat and adjusted the volume knob of a small radio on the floor in a corner. It was tuned to a popular San Francisco station which traditionally broadcast news of stays of execution at the prison. Every man on Death Row was tuned to the station that morning, as they were every morning that an execution was scheduled. They knew that if there was a stay or a reprieve, word of it would reach them first on that radio station.
Dukes turned the corner of the short hallway and entered the Preparation Room. Into this area protruded five sides of the octagonal gas chamber; its other three sides, with their thick glass observation windows, were beyond a wall in the Witness Room. That room was empty and would remain so for the next few minutes, but in the Preparation Room, the men of the death watch were quietly and efficiently preparing the chamber for its job. Dukes stood near the big pneumatic door and watched them. One guard was carefully counting out cyanide eggs and wrapping them in cheese-cloth. Another guard, wearing double-thickness, elbow-length rubber gloves, stood next to him, waiting. When the eggs were ready, the second guard would carefully hang them on a mechanical arm under Chair A, the chair on the left as one entered the death chamber and faced the pair of death chairs. That mechanical arm under Chair A, which was operated from outside the chamber, would at the appropriate time be lowered into a lead bucket under the chair. The bucket would contain sulfuric acid, which at that moment was being measured by a third guard who would soon pour the proper amount into a receptacle which flowed into the bucket.
Dukes looked past the three working guards to still another member of his death watch: a fourth guard who was checking out the Death House telephone, on which would be maintained an open line to the warden’s office in case a stay was ordered. Dukes could not help hoping that a stay would come through; but he could not help feeling that one would not. Still, one never knew.
The big guard captain walked back into the Ready Room. He saw that the prison chaplain was now talking to Whitman through the bars of the holding cell. Dukes poured himself half a cup of coffee and sat down on the bench next to the fifth member of his death-watch squad. Sipping the coffee, Dukes could not help hearing the nearby conversation.
“—haven’t gotten to know one another too well since you’ve been on the Row, Weldon,” the chaplain was saying, “but I want you to know that if there’s any way I can be of help to you, I’m more than happy to do it.”
Whitman looked up from where he was now squatting on the mattress with his hands closed around the coffee container. He mumbled his thanks absently and resumed concentrating on the radio, trying to ignore the chaplain.
“Is there any kind of religious solace I can offer you in these last few minutes?” the chaplain asked. Whitman looked at him again, frowning.
“What?”
The chaplain patiently repeated his offer. Whitman shook his head.
“No, I don’t want anything,” he said in a clipped tone. “I just want to listen to the radio.”
“Of course,” the chaplain said. “I won’t intrude any longer. May I shake hands with you?”
“Yeah, sure,” Whitman said. He rose and put one hand through the bars. The chaplain gripped it firmly.
“Goodbye, Weldon. Remember that in God’s eyes your passing is as important as the passing of a king. God marks the sparrow’s fall. We are all His children.”
Whitman mumbled his thanks again and the chaplain let go of his hand and left the Ready Room. Whitman finished his coffee and set the container on the ledge of the holding cell door.
“What time is it?” he asked Dukes.
“Nineteen minutes to ten.”
Whitman forced a tight grin. “My people on the outside are cutting it pretty thin this time.”
Dukes and the death-watch guard exchanged glances; neither of them responded to Whitman’s comment.
A moment later, one of the other members of the death-watch squad came in from the Prep Room and unlocked Holding Cell B, next to the cell in which Whitman waited. Holding Cell B was empty except for two rolled-up lengths of green carpet, twenty-seven inches wide. The guard, avoiding Whitman’s eyes, removed the carpet from the cell. He unrolled one length, the longer of the two, from the door of Whitman’s cell to the door of the Prep Room. He unrolled the shorter length from the door of the Prep Room to the open door of the gas chamber itself.
Watching the guard perform that part of the execution ritual made Whitman feel ill all over again. He felt the taste of bile come up into his mouth, and a sudden clammy coldness came over him. With shaking hands he managed to put a cigarette between his lips. The death-watch guard stepped over at once to reach between the bars and light it for him.
At fourteen minutes before ten, the prison doctor and a deputy warden entered the Ready Room.
“The reporters outside have asked if you have any last statement for the press,” the deputy warden said. Whitman looked up at him from the mattress.
“Yes, I do,” he said hoarsely. “I want to deny once and for all that I committed the crimes for which I am being sent to the gas chamber. The state of California is killing an innocent man today.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all, yes.”
The deputy warden nodded and turned to Captain Dukes.
“Get him ready, Captain.”
“Yessir.”
Dukes waited until the deputy warden left, then came over and unlocked the holding cell. He stepped inside the cell with Whitman. “You’ll have to change now,” he said.
Whitman, moistening his lips, stepped out of his felt slippers. Unbuttoning his shirt and trousers, he took them off and dropped them in a heap on top of the slippers. He stood waiting in pale nakedness.
A death-watch guard handed Dukes a new white shirt, pressed, on a hanger, and a pair of new blue denim trousers. Those were the only articles of apparel the condemned man would wear into the death chamber. No shoes, socks, or underwear. Dukes handed Whitman the trousers first. The prisoner put them on.
“Okay, Doc,” the captain said.
The prison doctor entered the cell, located Whitman’s heartbeat, and taped the head of a stethoscope directly over it. A twelve-inch rubber tube extended from the head and hung loosely from under the tape.
“All right,” the doctor said. He extended his hand. “Good luck, Weldon.”
Whitman shook hands and nodded, but said nothing.
The doctor left the Ready Room and went into the Prep Room. Dukes stepped back into the holding cell and handed Whitman the white shirt.
“What time is it now?” Whitman asked dully.