The Innocent

by Vincent Zandri

  I slipped the key into the lock, twisted it, felt the deadbolt give way cleanly and smoothly. I opened the door and stepped inside and smelled the familiar mud-and-wood smell. It was a very personal smell that had not changed in all the years since I had last stepped foot inside the place. Feeling my feet on the rough plank floor, I walked blindly but confidently-the.45 leading the charge-knowing my way across the sitting room and into the kitchen where I knew a wrought-iron lamp would be bolted into the log wall above the kitchen table.

  I felt for the lamp.

  It was still there. I reached inside the lampshade, felt for the switch, and then there was light.

  In the kitchen, cast-iron pots and pans hung from metal hooks above the black gas stove, and white plates were stacked on the exposed pine shelving beside the cabinets. There was the same black rotary phone I remembered as a kid, sitting on a small table in the far corner of the room, below the window and behind the kitchen table. I picked up the handset, brought it to my ear. The phone worked.

  I returned to the great room and took a good look at the fireplace my grandfather had constructed with Adirondack fieldstone cut out of Old Iron Top. The fireplace rose up through the ceiling. A railroad tie had been mounted above the box to serve as a mantel. I gazed at the crossbeams that supported the roof-exposed beams that, once upon a time, seemed so massive to me and so high off the floor. Now I could reach the beams by raising my hands above my head.

  I took a quick second or two to listen for anything out of the ordinary. When I heard nothing, I went back to the kitchen and pulled down the shade on the window. Another house or cabin could not be found for five miles in any direction, but I knew it was not unusual for the occasional car to pass by along the hard-packed east-west road. Why draw unwanted attention in a place where even a sudden shift in the weather was cause for an Ironville town meeting?

  After all, if the cabin was going to be my safe house, it had to be safe.

  I slipped across the kitchen into the short hall that accessed the bathroom and two back bedrooms, aiming the.45 into each room as I passed. Nothing but empty walls and empty beds. Back out in the great room, I eased the hammer back on the.45, clicked on the safety, and slipped the piece into my belt.

  The light shining into the cabin from the headlights on the Pontiac reminded me of the white spotlight that lit up my office at Green Haven on those occasions when I worked well into the night, which was more often than not now with Fran gone. It also reminded me that I had to get Cassandra inside before she woke up. I had no idea who she really was or what she was capable of. She had gone along with me so far, but then her life was on the line as much as mine was. I knew she could easily undo that belt and run off, and I wasn’t about to allow that to happen.

  When I checked on her and found that she was still asleep, I carried in some of the wood from the stack under the carport. Maybe it was warmer than normal down in Albany, but up here it was downright cold. I cut up some kindling using a small hatchet that hung by a strip of leather from a rusty sixpenny nail pounded into the log wall. Using some newspapers left behind in an old wooden vegetable crate and my lighter, it didn’t take a lot of effort to get a good fire going.

  When I was certain the fire could sustain itself, I went out and drove the car up under the carport to keep it hidden. Then I unraveled the belt from Cassandra’s wrists and slipped it around my waist. I cradled her in my arms, carried her into the cabin, and laid her down on the mattress in one of the bedrooms. In the kitchen, I searched under the sink for anything resembling a rope. But I found nothing. So I took a towel from the bathroom, tore it into two long strips, and used them to secure one of her wrists and one of her ankles to opposing posts of the single bed. I covered her with a black-and-white-checkered blanket left behind by a summer vacationer. Then I returned to the kitchen of our new safe house and began my search for food and, God willing, booze.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  AS LUCK OR GOD would have it, I found two cans of beef stew, a large can of baby peas, and an entire case of Beaujolais still packed away neatly inside its cardboard case. I set the.45 within arm’s reach on the counter while Cassandra continued sleeping in the back bedroom. Then I mixed the stew and peas together in the same pan.

  I reached under the sink to open the gas valve. The gas hissed as it passed through the line and fed the stove. I lit the front burner with my lighter and stood at the stove to watch the stew heat and to think about my next move. But very soon the thick gravy began to bubble and it was suddenly impossible to think logically what with the aroma of beef stew filling the cabin.

  I guess it was impossible to sleep, too. Because that was when Cassandra started screaming.

  Perfect timing.

  I grabbed the.45, rushed into the bedroom. She was struggling to free her limbs from the bedposts. She popped her head up from the pillow. With the pale moonlight shining in through the window against her face, her expression reminded me of The Exorcist.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?” she spat.

  “Protecting my assets,” I said, knowing I shouldn’t have.

  “You gotta sick sense of humor, Marconi,” she said.

  I was waiting for her head to spin completely around.

  “Can’t take a chance on you running off.”

  “Just where precisely would I run off to?”

  A good point, considering that we were miles away from any kind of civilization and light-years away from New York City, her home turf.

  I began undoing the knot in the cloth strip wrapped around her ankle.

  “At this point,” I said, “I can’t take any chances. It’s only a matter of time until someone knows we’re here, and then the cops will find out, and then it’s all over.”

  “So,” Cassandra said like a question, shaking out her now-free ankle.

  “So,” I said, starting on her wrist, “I have to know I can trust you.”

  “What was all that nonsense with the priest? A nice little act? I mean, I could’ve bolted right there and then. But I didn’t. Because I know you’re in trouble, and you know I’m in trouble, and maybe we can help each other out, right?”

  When the last strip of cloth was undone and Cassandra could sit up, she slapped me.

  “Thanks,” I said, bringing my hand to my stinging cheek.

  “That was for not trusting me,” she scolded.

  I might have slapped her back if she hadn’t started crying.

  She looked weary now, not in the moonlight, but in the dim light that leaked in from both the kitchen lamp and the fire. She ran her hands through her thick hair, got up off the bed, and marched into the kitchen. I followed her out and noticed how she paused just long enough to get a quick look at the beef stew cooking on the stove. Then she went into the great room and sat down in front of the fire.

  I followed her in.

  She brought her knees to her chin, wrapped her arms tightly around them, stared into the flames.

  “First comes the denial,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Then comes the grief. Just wait till I get to the angry part.”

  The case of Beaujolais was under the kitchen table. I took out a bottle, opened it with a corkscrew I’d found inside the junk drawer next to the sink. I ladled some of the beef stew into a couple of bowls and poured some red wine into two coffee mugs. Mugs in one hand and plates in the other, I managed to carry everything into the living area of the cabin and set it down by the fire without spilling even a single drop of wine or gravy.

  Cassandra took one look at her plate and turned back to the fire.

  I sat down, picked up my plate, and set it carefully in my lap.

  “I think it’s time we had a little talk,” I said in my best diplomatic, let’s-make-peace tone of voice.

  Cassandra dipped the tip of her index finger into the thick stew, brought it to her lips and tongue. Her teardrop eyes glistened from the fire and her crying.

  I took a bite of the stew. It was hot and
tangy on my tongue.

  “I’m ready to listen if you’re ready to talk,” I said. But I could see that it would be no use pressing her. Cassandra was in too much pain to talk. I suppose I couldn’t blame her. Her boyfriend had just taken a round in the back of the head, point-blank. I knew what it was to lose someone you loved.

  “Would it help,” I said, “if I told you it can only get better?”

  She looked at me with a blank stare and said, “Look who’s predicting the future.”

  I finished off my beef stew and wine in silence. I finished it all, right there on the rough wooden floor of my grandfather’s cabin, in the exact spot where he used to sit after an afternoon fly-fishing Putt’s Creek, the narrow stream that ran parallel to the east-west road.

  I took the empty bowl into the kitchen and put it in the sink. I filled my mug with more wine. I knew the time was ripe for me to get some answers. I also knew the longer I waited, the longer it would take for me to figure out just who was responsible for this mess. I stood there in the kitchen with the wine in my hand and it was all I could do not to grab hold of Cassandra and make her spill the truth right there and then. But all she could manage right now was tears. And I couldn’t blame her.

  It was getting close to eleven o’clock. I hadn’t slept in what seemed like days. Maybe this was as good a time as any to get a little rest. There was no telling when I’d get the chance to sleep again. So that’s what I decided to do. Get some rest. While I had the time and the opportunity.

  Maybe I was taking a bigger chance than I realized. But Cassandra was still sitting by the fire, on her own, when I took the bottle with me into the bedroom so that she could be left alone with her thoughts about a past and a future I knew she wanted nothing to do with.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  BUT THEN I KNEW all about the power of the past, about the power of sleep. I knew that sleep could make my past come alive again in dreams, so that one second I am staring at the cabin ceiling and the next it is morning inside Attica State Prison on the fourth and final day of an insurrection that has already claimed a dozen lives and will claim dozens more before it is finished. I am walking the catwalk-the narrow concrete platform that spans the perimeter of D-Yard’s interior-thirty feet above the naked ground. The walk is protected on both sides by connected lengths of pipe railing. My right hip rubs against the railing as I walk toward the place where the catwalks from this and the other three yards merge in the center of the Attica State Prison complex to form a cross. The area in the center, where the catwalks intersect, is called Times Square by inmates and COs alike.

  A rebel inmate presses a shiv up against the back of my neck where the spine meets the brain and pushes me along by the collar of my yellow prison jumpsuit. He presses the razor up against the tight flesh surrounding the spine, until I feel the eye-watering sting of a blade on the verge of popping through the skin.

  Up ahead, another inmate holds a service revolver against Wash Pelton’s skull. Like me, Wash is dressed in a yellow inmate jumpsuit. Unlike me, he is lucky enough to have a pair of work boots to protect his feet. He struggles with the pistol-bearing inmate, trying to break free from the arm the man has wrapped around his neck. He pushes and pulls until the rebel inmate clips him on the back of the skull with the service revolver. Wash goes down on his knees, onto the concrete.

  I try to keep up with the pace of the inmate who pushes me along. I haven’t eaten in three days, haven’t slept in four. I can’t maintain my balance.

  It seems like hours pass before we finally make it to Times Square. It’s there that Wash Pelton is pulled back up to his feet by the rebel inmate after having been literally dragged. Then the inmate forces the barrel of the revolver into Pelton’s mouth. That’s when Pelton begins to cry. Tears and saliva drip down the barrel of the revolver. The hum from the crowd of inmates that fills D-Yard dies down. All eyes are on Pelton and myself and a third hostage who takes his position by my side. Norman is unconscious or catatonic, I don’t know which. He shows no sign of waking. Two rebel inmates hold him up, one on each arm. The inmate on his right points the skinny barrel of a prison-issue M-16 at his head. But the M-16 has no effect on Mike Norman.

  There are puddles of muddy water. There are piles of clothes and garbage. In a far corner of the yard a fire is blazing. It rained hard all night. And the corrections officers had been left out in the rain. No one except Mike slept. From over the prison PA system comes the tinny voice of the Commissioner of Corrections for New York. “Give up your hostages or you will be met with force.” No one pays even the slightest attention to the voice. Not the hostages or the inmates. The Commissioner, after all, addresses us from outside these stone walls.

  Above us a black-and-white state police chopper makes a flyby. The rebel inmates aim their weapons at the helicopter. From Times Square I can make out the squad of state troopers poised along the west wall. Sharpshooters with scopes and rifles (.270caliber sniper jobs, I assume) aimed in my direction. The rebel inmates are dressed in corrections officer uniforms. The hostages are dressed in yellow inmate jumpsuits-suits designed specifically for transporting prisoners outside the prison walls. I wonder if the state troopers can tell the difference between a hostage and a rebel inmate from that distance. I wonder if it will really matter to them once the shooting starts.

  Behind the row of sharpshooters the live television crews are watering at the mouth, hoping for one or more of our heads to be blown away. What a scoop it would make. What a report. What had become a gentle hum among the rebel inmates in D-Yard has once again become screaming. “Kill the screws! Blow their brains out!”

  The two inmates who support Mike Norman lay him down into a shallow pool of water that has collected inside a depression on the concrete catwalk. The white inmate who has forced the blunt barrel of the black-plated service revolver into Wash Pelton’s mouth pulls back the hammer, closes his eyes, faces away…

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  I WOKE UP TO the sound of footsteps on the roof. I didn’t know quite where I was until I focused my eyes on the half-light that leaked in from the fire in the great room. I wasn’t sure if I had truly heard footsteps on the roof or if it had been my imagination, the result of a dream, the recollection of which had disappeared as fast as it had come.

  I felt for my gun.

  Then I looked at my watch and realized I had only been out for an hour. But it felt like ten hours of drugged sleep. Taking a deep breath, I got out of bed and made it to the bathroom with eyelids at half-mast. You might say I was operating on instinct, on a physical knowledge of the cabin interior that had not left my body in more than three decades.

  At the sink, I threw cold water on my face and took a good look in the mirror. I gazed at the heavy brown eyes, at the three-day-old growth, and at the thick black hair cut close to the scalp. I felt more than tired, more than exhausted, as if my body had waited until this very moment to feel everything it was supposed to feel since the trouble had begun on Monday afternoon when Vasquez bolted from the iron house.

  Despite the persistent chill in the cabin (even this late in May), I took off my shirt and gazed at the washboard ripple of my stomach muscles and the way my chest heaved, defined and elastic, when I took deep breaths. Maybe all the running and weight training had kept me in some kind of shape, but I also knew that the cigarettes were getting to me, making my lungs ache, killing me. Although the real pain would take its own sweet time.

  But something else was also taking its own sweet time.

  Since Fran had died, I hadn’t slept well, or eaten well, or been without a bottle of Scotch or Jamesons close by. Since Fran had died, grief alone had made me drop eighteen pounds in twelve months. At that rate I’d be down to eighty pounds in five years. A frightening prospect. Standing at the sink, with the hot and cold water running down against the white porcelain bowl, and staring at my pale face in the mirror, I knew it was time to begin living again. The trick was learning to live without the grief and wit
hout the guilt. The trick was to create a life worth living, a life no longer conscious of death.

  I made a cup with my hands, filled it with cold water, splashed it over my face and chest. I felt unbearably cold until I dried my face with the towel and hung it back on the rack behind the door. It was only after I looked up again that I saw his face in the mirror. With the water running, I hadn’t heard him slip out from behind the plastic shower curtain. He was dressed in a full-length wool overcoat and he held a bowie knife the size of my leg up against my Adam’s apple.

  “Don’t make a sound,” the overcoat man said, covering my mouth with his free hand.

  How could I make a sound?

  His hand smelled like sweat. I felt dizzy, weak. The footsteps I’d heard on the roof were his. I hadn’t dreamt them after all. The footsteps were real.

  The water was still going steady, from both spigots, swirling down the drain of the sink. He took his hand away from my mouth slowly. At the same time, he pressed the blade tighter against my throat so that it was an effort just attempting a swallow.

  “Now,” he said, voice smooth and evenly toned, like a pro, “we’re going to take a walk.”

  “Who sent you?” I said.

  He rapped me on the side of the head with the blade. The rap stung, but I knew the damage was nil.

  “No talking,” he ordered.

  I raised my hands in surrender.

  “Turn off the water. Use your right hand, nice and easy.”

  I lowered my hand and brought it to the cold-water faucet. I twisted, clockwise, all the time wracking my brain for a way out of this, searching the immediate area for a knife, a comb, a razor blade, anything that would give me a semblance of a chance.