The Innocent

by Vincent Zandri

  Pelton was staring at Schillinger now. Schillinger was looking at Tommy dead on the floor. As for the video, it was finished and all you could see on the screen was snow.

  “How is it you’re privy to all this information, anyway?” Pelted inquired. “I mean, you’re no detective, Keeper. You’re a stupid warden.”

  “I paid a second visit to Mike only a few hours after my arrest on Wednesday. He told me flat out that Marty had come in and taken the evidence away from him, no explanations, no nothing. And I believed him.”

  Pelton moved closer to Schillinger, put the barrel of the chrome-plated.38 up against his temple.

  “So how you and Tommy do it, Marty?” I pressed. “Get Mike good and stinking drunk behind closed doors? Then string him up with his own belt once he passed out, make it look like the suicide he was sure to pull off ever since his nervous breakdown at Attica? With him dead, there was no chance for him to open his mouth about what was going down in the New York State Department of Corrections. Because Mike had been doing little jobs for you guys through the years, hadn’t he? But he could only be trusted just so far since he was a drunk and he wasn’t renowned for being too stable. In fact, Mike might have been gone from the department a long time ago had he not been considered a tragic hero-a survivor of those four bloody days in September 1971. You remember those four days, don’t you, Wash?”

  I might have looked into Wash’s eyes, but instead I got a good look at Schillinger. The sweat poured off his brow, into his eyes, down his puffy red cheeks, and onto his Burberry trench coat. I could tell that he wanted nothing more but to wrap his hands around my throat and squeeze till Kingdom Come. But he could do nothing about it. There was nowhere to run and hide. He just had to stand there and take it. That was his only option.

  “And you were next on Schillinger’s and Tommy Welch’s list, Commissioner Pelton,” I said. “But Marty here didn’t want to do it so soon after he’d pumped Vasquez.”

  “You’re full of shit, Keeper,” Schillinger mumbled.

  “You were going to wait until the cops picked up me and Cassandra and slapped us with first-degree murder. And you knew I’d go to Athens, Marty, because you’d planted that envelope on the floor of Vasquez’s cell on Monday afternoon. You knew I’d find it and if I didn’t find it, you would have picked it up yourself and pointed it out to me. You knew I’d be curious enough to go to Athens. You’d shoot Vasquez, and when witnesses would testify to seeing my 4-Runner there, I’d naturally take the blame. But somebody had beaten you to the punch. When you went to kill Vasquez, he was already dead. Still, no matter who killed Vasquez, the result was the same. The case against me and Cassandra would be open and closed. All that would be left would be to make sure Pelton had an accident. But you had time for that.”

  There was a thick silence for a slow second or two, with only a clear blue screen on the television and a high-pitched whistling that indicated the porn video was about to run out of tape, and I found myself praying to Christ that the camera was still rolling under the floorboards and that Cassandra was all right. But just then, as I pictured the blood from Tommy Walsh’s head dripping through the cracks in the wood panel into the potato cellar, Schillinger suddenly looked at me and screamed, “I’m not taking a dive!” And just like that he took hold of Pelton’s revolver. “It’s him!” Schillinger shouted while he and Pelton struggled for control of the pistol. “It had to be him. We left the room together. Pelton must have gone back to Vasquez’s room, shot the fucker dead.”

  Schillinger screamed and clawed at the pistol but Wash had the advantage with his chubby index finger already wrapped around the hair trigger; it went off and Marty dropped like a stone. He went down right beside Tommy’s body, his blood and his soul draining out of his face like water from a faucet.

  For a second or two, Pelton and I just stared down at the two dead bodies. Then he raised his head to me.

  “I didn’t kill anybody,” he said in a strained, out-of-breath voice. “I didn’t kill Vasquez. I needed him alive because I wanted my money back. This son of a bitch must have killed him, no matter what he said, he had to have done it. Or you, Keeper, but somehow I don’t think you’re capable. No, Schillinger must have killed Vasquez. Just like he killed Mike and would have killed me. The son of a bitch.” He extended his right arm, held out the pistol, and emptied another round into Schillinger’s body at the exact moment that he said, “bitch.” Schillinger’s dead body jumped when the bullet hit it.

  I stood there watching the bleeding body as if I wasn’t in the room at all, like my body was still there but I was somewhere far away, like in a dream. I knew that it didn’t make even an ounce of difference who’d drawn whom into the smuggling and murder business, or who abused whose power or who double-crossed the other or if I had created an accurate scenario of what went down during the last five days or not. In the end what difference did any of my assumptions make? This wasn’t a case of whodunit. It was a case of don’t-blame-me. What I mean is, it didn’t really matter who took the blame for killing Vasquez, as long as it wasn’t Cassandra and as long as it wasn’t me.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  “SEEMS TO ME WE’VE been here before, Wash,” I said, taking a step forward, closer to where he stood. At the same time, I recalled that September afternoon when the rebel inmate held the barrel of the black-plated.38 service revolver inside Wash’s mouth and pressed a shiv against his neck, making the jagged scar that still existed today.

  “You turned out to be some kind of hero,” Wash said. “This time I have the power to save your life or take it away.”

  “What made you do it?” I said, now standing as still and as nonthreatening as possible. “Why go to all the trouble of arranging a drug deal that was destined to fail? After all we believed in?”

  “What we believed in once upon a time, my friend,” he said, “is pure fantasy now. What we believed in was destroyed when Attica went down. They took away our power, handed it over on a platter laced with gold to the inmates. It was either us or the gorillas. Or there was a third option.”

  “We could just join the gorillas,” I said.

  “Precisely,” Wash said.

  “But what do you really know about us or them? How much time have you spent inside a prison lately, other than to make a surprise inspection and take away my officers?”

  “I was there, Keeper,” Wash said, shaking the barrel of the chrome-plated.38 in my face. “I was there a long time before I entered the political arena. I felt the pressure, maybe more than most, because of what happened to me at Attica.”

  I knew what he was referring to and I knew it involved the four men who’d held him down on the concrete floor of Times Square.

  “I felt the pressure too,” I said, “and I never gave in to the gorillas. Not once.”

  “Yes, you bloody well did!” Pelton screamed. “You signed the releases for Vasquez a half a dozen different times. You knew he’d killed that rookie cop. You knew he was high risk and that you could have vetoed the releases. But you signed them anyway.”

  He was right.

  “Come on, Keeper,” he went on, “after Fran died, nothing was important to you anymore. So you let the gorillas take over in force.”

  “My wife had nothing to do with this,” I lied.

  “You went soft.”

  For a moment, I zeroed in on the chrome barrel. If he’d let loose with a round right then, I’d never have known the difference. It’d be lights out, no pain, with the hope that I reached heaven an hour before the devil knew my soul was up for grabs. Right then, standing on the blood-soaked floor of my grandfather’s cabin, death seemed very near, and it was doing a job on me.

  “Listen, Keeper,” Wash said, softer this time, “when we started out in this system, there were thirteen thousand inmates for twelve maximum security prisons in New York. Now there’s twice as many inmates living under the same twelve concrete roofs. And do you know what the governor expects of me? My assignment
is to cut more officers, cut more programs. Now you tell me, Keeper Marconi, just what does the governor know about prison?”

  He kept the barrel of that weapon pointed at my face like it would somehow help him drive his point across. A point that was absolutely valid, but had little to do with saving my life. I was defenseless and Pelton knew it.

  “Maybe you had no choice but to go soft, Keeper. We all go soft at some point when the fight becomes pointless. Fran’s death was just the catalyst for your experience. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been something else. And as for Mike Norman? He’d barely gotten out of the starting gate before he crumpled under.” He started bobbing the weapon as though about to collapse under its weight. His finger was pressed against the trigger. I knew he might shoot me and not even intend it. “There is nothing more we can do for inmates. There is no such thing as rehabilitation. Never was. Nowadays, you either give up, or you give in. You gave up is all. I gave in.”

  The Remington 1187 was on the floor, not far from my feet. But it wasn’t loaded. I’d unchambered the four unspent rounds myself. My only chance was to jump Pelton or call for Cassandra. But counterattacking Pelton would have blown my entire plan out of the water. I had no choice but to remain the victim for as long as possible.

  But then something happened. Something I never would have expected given the dead men on the cabin floor. Pelton took a deep breath, lowered the pistol, eased back the hammer, and simply pocketed the weapon. He spent a second or two rubbing the feeling back into his shooting hand, and then he bent over and pressed the manual eject switch on the rented VCR. When the video was ejected, he popped it out of its VCR adapter and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He straightened up and looked me in the eyes. “You’re certain no further copies of this exist?”

  “No copies,” I said, standing cautiously still despite the disappearance of his weapon. “I can’t be sure no one else made any. But Cassandra assured me, before she left.”

  Pelton nodded.

  “Well then, we had a shaky start, but I think I’ve seen enough to know you mean business.”

  “Okay,” I said, not quite grasping his reference to two dead men as a shaky start.

  “I’ll make sure you’re cleared of this mess,” he said. “As soon as I get back, I’ll make the necessary calls.”

  I nodded.

  “Then I’ll send someone up here to take care of the bodies.”

  “The overcoat man…what’s his name?”

  “Moscowitz.”

  “He’s buried out back, underneath a pile of dirt and stones.”

  “I see.”

  “Key’ll be in the mailbox,” I said.

  “Sorry all this had to happen,” Pelton said, running his hand through his gray hair as he turned for the door. “But people change. Things change. You saved my life once. I can’t take that away from you. No matter what, you saved my life. I owe you that. Consider this the fulfillment of a twenty-six-year debt of gratitude.”

  I stood still as a statue while the pools of blood grew larger and combined. And just like that, Washington Pelton left through the side door, alone. But as sincere as he may have sounded, I knew he was lying about clearing my name. It was a gift I had, an ability to spot a liar at twenty paces, and it may have been the only thing I’d gotten out of working inside a prison for all these years. I knew that Pelton had no choice but to make me go down for the entire ball of wax. And frankly, I was a little insulted that he assumed I’d bought into his empty promise of vindication.

  But there were more immediate problems at hand.

  As soon as I heard the Taurus make the turn out of the driveway onto the gravel east-west road, I stepped over the puddles of blood and removed the panel to the potato cellar. Cassandra looked up at me.

  “You get it?” I asked.

  “You want to see it now,” she said with a killer smile. “Or do you want to see it later?”

  “Grab the money,” I said. “We’re taking a little trip.”

  “Where to?” Cassandra said, handing up one of the pots filled with cash.

  “See an old friend of mine who works in television.”

  “No business like show business,” she said.

  I felt the weight of the three hundred thousand dollars in my hands, and for the first time in forever, I laughed.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  I SEE THE QUICK muzzle flash from the west wall a split second before I hear the sharp crack of the warning shot. When the round explodes against the concrete floor, it sends stony shrapnel into my face, stinging my chin and lower lip. I feel the edge of the shiv pressed up hard against my throat. But not hard enough to break the skin. I hear the breathing of the rebel inmate who holds me tight, forearm wrapped around my neck. I feel his body pressed against mine, his heart beating through my body. To my right, Mike Norman lies on his chest, facedown on the concrete walkway. He is motionless, has been for more than a day. For all I know he is already dead and there’s not a damned thing I can do about it. The M-16 is still aimed at his head.

  An M-16 without rounds.

  On my left is Washington Pelton. Blood flows steadily and thickly down the front of his yellow inmate jumper. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down. His face has taken on the chalky-white color of death. My face must appear just as lifeless. He is my mirror image. The troopers aim their sniper rifles steady, just waiting for the word, not even the whole word, just the first sound of the word.

  Fire!

  If I don’t do something now, I am going to die, one way or the other.

  We’re all going to die, in the name of terror or in the name of the law.

  Campfires spit red-and-yellow flame and black smoke. Steel tables are tossed on their sides, facing the wall like a barricade. The tables have been wrapped with razor wire. As the canisters of tear gas come hurling into the muddy yard and as the poison clouds rise from them like a gentle mist, I know that all negotiations have failed and that the only reason for keeping the corrections officers alive is suddenly lost to the wind like the pungent gas that begins to sting our faces, burn our eyeballs.

  When the troopers storm the west wall, I take a deep breath and elbow the rebel inmate behind me in the ribs. I grab his wrist, jam my fingernails into it, feel the nails dig in. He drops the shiv and together we go down for it onto the concrete catwalk. But I’m quicker than he is, more desperate. I grab the shiv, swipe it across his neck. The flesh of his thick, ham-like neck opens up red and white. Blood spurts out, stains my face. He is dead before he hits the ground.

  Rifle shots ring out in succession.

  I am curiously aware of everything around me, as if four days without food has somehow, suddenly, enhanced my senses.

  I see the rebel inmates take hits, one after the other. I see them drop dead in the yard.

  I hear the cries of the wounded, the screams of the gut-shot. I am up and running for the inmate with the shiv pressed against Pelton’s throat. I catch the inmate from behind, run the blade across the back of his neck while he stares distracted and shocked at the hordes of troopers pouring over the walls.

  I have just enough time to run the blade through the thick skin, digging deep until I feel the edge of the blade skip across his spine, finally piercing his spine, severing the nerve bundle. His reaction to the blade buried in his neck is more immediate than it was for the appearance of the troopers. He throws his head back, drops the shiv and the empty.38 onto the concrete catwalk. He falls back, looks up at me with wide-open eyes. He moves his mouth, but he cannot talk. Pelton falls beside him, takes hold of my leg. He is panting, bleeding, crying.

  At least he is alive.

  And as for Norman? He lies on his face, oblivious or dead. I don’t know which. The rebel inmate standing over him presses the trigger of the M-16 again and again, only no rounds burst from the barrel. The rebel inmate flips the M-16 over, butt first. He lifts the weapon by the barrel with two hands, swings it back like a war club.

  I have to stop
him.

  I can make it if I lunge after him.

  But I can’t move.

  Wash Pelton has me by the leg. He won’t let go of my fucking leg. The rebel inmate takes a deep breath, tightens his stance. The butt of the rifle is up. I reach out for Mike, but I can’t reach out far enough or fast enough. Then it happens. Two separate shots from a sniper’s rifle nail the rebel inmate square in the chest. The sound of the bullets entering his barrel chest are like a baseball bat swung fast and hard against a feather pillow. The inmate’s eyes go wide. His body is not thrust against the stone wall of D-Block like in the movies. He just goes wide-eyed, lets out a breath, and drops down onto Mike Norman.

  It’s then that Pelton stands, takes hold of my hand with his, holds them up to surrender to the uniformed men come to save our lives.

  BOOK FIVE. HOME

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  IT WAS MY TURN to cook. At least that’s what I told Val when she arrived at my home in Stormville on a Sunday night nearly three weeks after the escape.

  “Shouldn’t I be cooking for you, boss?” she said, spooning out the strips of stir-fried boneless chicken and fresh vegetables drowned in a marinara sauce and pouring it over a bed of hot pasta. “I mean, as a celebration of your recent exoneration.” She wore a cashmere V-neck sweater and a tan skirt, white pantyhose, and little brown shoes with buckles.

  “Salud” I said, lifting my glass of Chianti. “Keeper Marconi is not going to jail after all. In the words of the grand jury, hastily assembled on my account I might add, ‘No Bill of Particulars is to be filed against Mister Marconi.’ “

  “I especially enjoyed the part where the judge apologized to you for the hell you were put through.”