The Innocent

by Vincent Zandri

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “That you wouldn’t be coming back after the dentist,…said you’d be in too much pain to talk or work.”

  “Listen,” I said, pulling out the crumpled envelope I’d found in Vasquez’s cell earlier that afternoon. “I want you to write down a California address for me and then look it up in the atlas on the shelf behind my desk.” I read off the address to her. “Then I want you to fax to the sheriff in Olancha, California, the same package Dan faxed to Pelton. Tell them to fax the same material to their contact with the FBI.”

  I could tell Val was writing down my orders.

  “Anything else?”

  “Just remember that I still love you, Val Antonelli.” I smiled even though I was alone.

  “Glad to see you’re loosening up, boss,” she said.

  “Glad to know you care,” I said. “And don’t call me boss.”

  I hung up.

  I put the cell back into the glove compartment. But before I turned over the ignition, I decided to get back out of the truck, take one last look at the gravel pit. The wind had picked up now with the coming of night. A dry, hot, wind that swirled the sand around and blew it against my face. I looked at the ground, kicked up some of the loose dirt. It was then that I saw something reflecting in the orange half-light of the setting sun. Some kind of flattened metal about the size of my little finger, with a key ring attached to it. I bent over and slid a small twig carefully through the key ring so that I wouldn’t get my prints on it. I could see right away that it was the key to a set of handcuffs. Logan’s or Mastriano’s cuffs, no doubt. I stored the key in my pants pocket along with the six live rounds and the envelope addressed by Cassandra Wolf, Vasquez’s girlfriend. Once I got back to the office, I’d put everything under lock and key, then decide what to do with it.

  But first I walked back over to the edge of the pit.

  This time the boys sat on their bikes in the center of the giant crater, with the dark, murky water coming up past their ankles. I guess they kind of enjoyed the muddy water. I guess it had a way of holding their interest or cooling them down or both. As I pulled a cigarette from my pocket and fired it up, the kid with the aviator sunglasses flipped me the bird. Just a middle finger raised high from a tough little guy. The second time someone had flipped me off in as many hours.

  The kid in the red baseball jacket laughed.

  I hoped they’d both catch pneumonia. Double pneumonia.

  But then I saw Fran’s face. Fran, the elementary school teacher. I saw her scolding me for my despicable attitude toward a couple of harmless adolescents.

  Harmless, my ass.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BACK IN SEPTEMBER OF 1971, during the third day of the Attica riots, a corrections officer by the name of Mike Norman decided to drop out of the madness. No more shivs made from prison-issue razor blades pressed into toothbrushes, no more poles sharpened into spears, no more trenches dug out of D-Yard, no more COs with their throats slit. No more tear gas, handcuffs, blindfolds, and burning buildings. No more bonfires, no more helicopters, no more rain, no more suicide.

  I was eighteen years old and engaged to be married.

  That night, in the middle of D-Yard, Mike Norman curled up his lanky body like an embryo and went to sleep on the ground where twelve of us had been ordered by the rebel inmates to drop. Half a dozen inmates pointed homemade shivs and spears at the backs of our heads. When a young black man with sunglasses and a black do-rag wrapped around his bald head tried to wake Norman, Norman wouldn’t budge. He wasn’t sick. But then he didn’t even appear alive except for the soft breathing. He was just sleeping peacefully, with a slight smile planted on his face, even with that rebel inmate screaming in his ear, “Wake up, motherfucker. Wake up or I’ll cut your throat you don’t wake up.”

  He didn’t move when the inmate tried to slap that little smile off his baby face, or when the inmate picked up his feet and dragged his skin and bones along the gravel floor of D-Yard. He slept through the state troopers’ failed ambush, when they hit and killed two of their own COs. He slept for two full days during the Attica riots of September 1971- the week the nation’s entire penal system nearly caught fire.

  Me and Washington Pelton, a fellow CO, humped Mike Norman around by his hands and feet, keeping him out of harm’s way as best we could. The rebel inmates made jokes about the sleeping beauty, taunting us with sinister kisses in the air. I could understand wanting to drop out. We all wanted to drop out. Still, I could not understand how he had managed to sleep through those final impossible hours.

  He was asleep on the last day of our incarceration when a rebel inmate cut Wash Pelton’s throat with a razor blade. The jagged scar would stay with Pelton for years, like a tattoo gone bad. And he continued to sleep when the state troopers rushed the thirty-foot stone walls and stormed D-Yard, and when I tackled a rebel inmate from behind and plunged a shiv into his neck.

  We lost twelve men during that riot. No one went unscathed, except for sleeping beauty-my buddy. Inmates and officers died all around him. To this day I can’t be sure if he faked that sleep, or if his nerves had given out and truly left him catatonic. But here’s the weird thing: Whatever he did, it worked. By dropping out of life, Mike Norman managed to stay alive.

  I couldn’t decide if Corrections Officer Bernard Mastriano had a different thing going or not.

  What was certain was that he had a room in Newburgh General with a color TV mounted high on the wall. When I walked in he was laid out flat on the bed, a clear tube up his nose, an IV stuck into the underside of his right arm. He was alone, knocked out cold. The hospital bed beside his was empty. The fact that I was in the room had nothing to do with visiting hours, which during mealtime were suspended for anyone not belonging to the immediate family. According to the elderly woman with an Italian accent who worked the reception desk, normal visiting hours didn’t resume until seven at night. But I flashed her my badge and that’s all it took for me to be admitted to the ICU ward.

  Before I tried to wake Mastriano, I took a good look at his face and recalled what Logan had said about him being struck in the head with the butt end of a shotgun. From where I stood, the black-haired, fat-faced man didn’t have a scratch on him. He looked in better shape than Logan had.

  I grabbed his arm just above the needle that supplied his intravenous. I shook it.

  Mastriano mumbled a couple of words, opened his eyes, and closed them again. His face was tan and fleshy, the corners of his mouth turned up like he couldn’t hold himself back anymore, like he was about to break out into a fit of laughter.

  I shook him again, but there was still no response other than some incoherent mumbling. I bent at the knees, put my mouth up to his ear. “Mastriano,” I whispered. “Can you hear me?”

  No visible sign that he could.

  But at the chance he might be faking it, I went on with what I had to say. “I want to hear about what happened out there today. I want to hear your story. Understand, Mastriano?”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the open door. Nurses walked back and forth from room to room, clipboards and plastic water bottles in hand. It was then that I began running my fingers along Mastriano’s right temple, feeling for any evidence of a bump or abrasion. I ran my fingertips all through his thick, black hair, felt the cold, bumpy scalp. I would have run my hand through a second time too, had the doctor not walked in.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “But is there some kind of problem?”

  He was a short, curly-haired, young man. A kid really. He wore a tweed suit jacket, khakis, and running shoes. He had a laminated identification card with his photograph and a name I could not make out pinned to his jacket. He carried a clipboard in his right hand and wore a stethoscope around his neck. What he did not wear, however, was the usual knee-length, hospital-white lab jacket.

  I took my hands away from Mastriano’s scalp and smiled. “Maybe you can help me,” I said. “What’s this man’s diagno
sis?”

  The doctor reached for the pen in the breast pocket of his blazer. “You related to the patient, sir?”

  I pulled out my wallet. But this time, I did not flash my badge. Instead, I showed the good doctor my valid prison ID. “Keeper Marconi of Green Haven Maximum Security,” I revealed. “This man works for me.”

  This time the doctor took a breath. “When the patient was brought in, he was already unconscious. The officer who came in with him said he was knocked out cold with the stock end of a shotgun.”

  “Be honest, Doc,” I said. “Did this man take a blow to the skull with a blunt object?”

  The doctor let out a breath. “No,” he said. “No sign of it that I could see, anyway. What he does have is a couple of bruises to the head, but nothing that would have been caused by the back end of a rifle. At least, I don’t think so at this point.”

  “You’re certain of this?”

  “Pupils aren’t uneven. No other lateralizing signs like paralysis, decreased reflexes, descerbrate posturing. In terms of the Glasgow coma scale, I’d say he’s a two, maybe a three.”

  “Glasgow?” I asked.

  “The medical standard by which we measure the seriousness of a head injury. The higher the score, the worse off you are. In theory, at least.”

  “What do you think, in theory?”

  “His relaxed state could be due to Descorticate Syndrome, which could mean injury to the cortical level of the brain.”

  “But so far, he shows no real sign of taking that kind of hit, does he?”

  “Could be a blood clot, could be a basilar skull fracture, who knows.”

  “For now you keep him in ICU?”

  “We’ve pumped him up with some Manitol and steroids in case of brain swelling.”

  “His breathing seems okay.”

  “Don’t see a ventilator, do you?”

  Feisty little guy, I thought. This doctor is a feisty little guy.

  Together we looked at Mastriano for a second or two, like he was about to bound up, say Gotcha. He was as still and as stiff as-you guessed it-a statue. The IV dripped slowly and steadily, in sync with the rising and falling of his chest.

  “But he still shows no real sign of a concussion,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Just the sleeping,” the doctor said, “which, in itself, could be serious.”

  We said nothing for a few more seconds, just continued staring at the motionless body. Then I said, “Doctor, can I see you out in the hall?”

  “He can’t hear us,” he said, nodding toward Mastriano.

  “Indulge me.” Turning for the open door.

  Outside we leaned our shoulders up against the white plaster wall. The nurses and interns marched passed us, not giving us a second look.

  “Doctor, is there any chance Mister Mastriano could be faking sleep? I mean, maybe he popped some sleeping pills or something.”

  The doc let loose with a high-pitched nasal laugh that I assumed was intended to convey my apparent silliness.

  “Listen up,” I added, “a cop killer escaped from my prison today and I want to get to the bottom of it.”

  “I suppose,” he said, getting a grip on himself. “But it’s awfully tough to do for hours on end. And he’s been in ICU for some time now.”

  “But it is possible?”

  “Given the right conditions, I guess all things are possible. But then, it’s not unusual for a man to go into a catatonic state if properly frightened or startled. And from what I understand, that officer has been through a lot. We’ve drawn some blood. It’s being analyzed as we speak. If there are drugs involved, it’ll show up.”

  “What happens next?”

  “Tests, tests, and more tests.” Smiling. “That’s what we like to do here.”

  “Tests for what?”

  “CSF leak, concussion, epilepsy, a few other assorted maladies. We have a neurologist coming in to check out his brain, put him into an imaging machine, really get into it. We even have to test his vision.”

  “Do me another favor, will you?”

  He nodded and rolled his eyes in a way that told me he was sick of answering my questions.

  “Make sure,” I said, loud enough for Mastriano to hear me, if he could hear me, “that I’m notified right away if the officer wakes up.”

  “He’ll be with us for quite a while,” the doctor informed.

  I took out my wallet, slipped out a business card, and handed it to him. Then I leaned into his ear. “Doctor,” I whispered, “let’s hope your patient makes one hell of a miraculous recovery.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MAYBE IT HAD SOMETHING to do with having Wash Pelton on the brain. Maybe it had something to do with seeing Bernie Mastriano laid up in bed, knocked out cold without the slightest hint of injury. Maybe it had something to do with Vasquez taking off without a trace. Maybe it was all of the above. But as I walked across the massive block-shaped parking lot outside the electronic sliding-glass doors of Newburgh General, the events of the past came back to haunt me in all their timeless brilliance and horror.

  Listen. In the world of the Attica survivor, memory never occurs in the past tense.

  One second it’s May 1997 and the next it’s September 1971 all over again.

  In my memory I am able to see Mike Norman rolled over onto all fours on the muddy floor of D-Yard, heaving his guts. My blindfold has finally been pulled away and I can see that there is nothing left in Mike’s system to throw up onto the mud and gravel. He slumps over onto his left side, his shackled legs and hands tucked up into his chest. In the yard, with the fires going and the rebel inmates chanting for blood and revenge, we are the innocent angels of the prison system. Mike’s face is soaked with sweat and dirt. The three of us-Norman, Pelton, and I-have got to stick together if only to keep each other sane. But I know Norman is fighting a losing battle. His nerves are giving out. And there are rumors about one CO who got locked in a bathroom on the main floor of the administration building while a rebel tossed in kerosene and a lit match. Another man was castrated with a shiv and crucified to the wall in G-Block. I myself have seen COs kicked to within inches of their lives. Before my blindfold was removed, I could only listen to their screams, their moans, the gurgling, and then the silence.

  When an inmate walks by with a wood shank as long as a spear, I try to persuade him to remove my cuffs and shackles. My buddy is hurt, I tell him. I’ve got a right to help my buddy. Pelton tries to stand. He holds his long arms out as if the inmate will unlock the cuffs right then and there. Instead, the inmate uses the dull end of the shank like a nightstick, plows it into Wash’s gut. Wash collapses, curls into himself on the ground. I see the inmate’s leg lift behind me and I feel the steel in his toe as his boot comes down against my head.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ON THE DRIVE BACK to Green Haven, with John Coltrane playing softly on the radio, my own eyes caught my attention in the rearview mirror. The skin around my brown eyes was heavy and wrinkled. Dark bags were already beginning to form. Goatee thick and speckled with gray, widow’s peak receding above my forehead. I needed a shave. The knot of my tie had been pushed to one side of my collar. The tension was shooting through the center of my solar plexus and down the backs of my arms, tightening my triceps. Chest, arms, stomach were tight and sore, yet I hadn’t pumped iron in five full days.

  It’s amazing, really, how stress affects people.

  By the time I got back to the office, Val had left. My entire staff had gone home to their wives, their kids and their hot suppers. They sipped cocktails, shoes off, feet up on the coffee table, and got a charge out of the daily news read for them off the teleprompter. At least that’s the way it had been for me not too long ago. I no longer had any of those things or the woman who had given them to me, but I still had my Jamesons. And as I poured a second shot, I pushed away the paperwork that had piled up after I’d left the office that afternoon.

  I felt empty inside, my stomach as vacant as Vasquez�
��s cell.

  I sat back, put my feet up on the desk, and gazed into the darkness of my second-floor office-a darkness broken only by the white light from the desk lamp and the scattered spotlights moving across the prison grounds like hungry sharks lurking through deep, blue waters.

  I took another drink of whiskey and fingered the notes filled with Val’s handwriting. Messages from the commissioner. I had no interest in talking with him right now. As I said, I had to avoid him not only because of the escape, but because of the two additional names he wanted slashed from an already diminished list of officers. I could have given him Robert Logan and Bernard Mastriano, but I still couldn’t be sure that they weren’t telling the truth about Vasquez’s escape.

  The white spotlight swept across my floor.

  The wall-mounted clock face showed the big hand on the twelve, little hand on the seven.

  I knew Pelton would still be in his office. He would be in his office until midnight, maybe later. Maybe he’d sleep on the couch, send out for a fresh suit of clothing. Pelton had a wife, Rhonda, a small blond-haired bull terrier of a woman who acted as public relations officer for the commission-a position Wash had virtually invented for her. She was notorious for her flirting and her drinking. Pelton was notorious for the way he sometimes slapped her sober. But then, like in any bureaucracy, there were a lot of rumors in the corrections department.

  I wasn’t entirely against Pelton. We’d been good friends early in our careers. Both of us had started out as COs at Attica only weeks before the riot that had nearly taken our lives. Not long after, both Wash and I, along with Mike Norman, had been reassigned by the commission to set up a training program for rookie cops and security guards, not only to better prepare them in the event of another Attica riot, but also to help prevent another riot.

  In those days, Wash, Mike, and I were no strangers to the bars that lined Broadway in downtown Albany. Justins, the Lark, Jack’s Oyster House. Five solid blocks of bars, glaring neon, and the rich fish smell that used to come off the Hudson River in the days before the state cleaned it up. But those were the days before Wash quit the department to get a bachelor’s degree and then a law degree and before Rhonda came into his life. When Wash married Rhonda and Albany politics, whatever friendship we had took a backseat.