A bike messenger was running up the stoop as she went down. She turned, saw him pressing her buzzer.
“That’s me,” she said.
He handed her a padded envelope, hopped on his bike, and was gone.
Ivy checked the label: Weiner, Landau and Pearl. She sat on the stoop, opened it. Inside were the two tapes and a letter:
Dear Ms. Seidel:
I took the liberty of reviewing your tapes with an old and trusted colleague in the state attorney’s office. While my colleague acknowledged the presence of a subtle distinction in body movement, he was unprepared to entertain the possibility of such distinction arising from the presence of two different people, as you suggest. Since the casino tape has already been introduced at trial, pressure for reopening the case would depend solely on the one new element, the high-school tape from years before. In his opinion, and my own, this is far too flimsy a basis for an undertaking that rarely succeeds even in cases where injustice is both grievous and plain. In addition, the state regards the Gold Dust robbery as being particularly brutal and would fight with all its resources to prevent any new proceedings. In terms of the political background, the owners of the casino would strongly oppose any reopening, and smooth relations with the tribe are very much in the state’s interests. Therefore, my advice is to let go of this matter. None of the above prevents you in any way from writing your “mystery novel” based on the case, and in this endeavor I wish you luck.
Ivy dropped “Caveman” in a mailbox, went back up to her apartment, and lay on the bed. She slept all day.
Writing folder in hand, Ivy walked through the administration building toward the security gate. Sergeant Tocco leaned out of his door as she went by.
“Got a sec?” he said.
She went into his office. He closed the door, waved her into a chair. A fluorescent tube buzzed overhead.
“Holdin’ up all right?” he said. He stood by the window, watching an inmate slowly rake out a flower bed, a guard nearby.
“I actually enjoy the drive,” Ivy said.
“Not the drive,” said Sergeant Tocco. “The job.”
“I like it very much,” Ivy said.
“What about it, specifically?” said Sergeant Tocco.
“Just teaching itself,” Ivy said. “I’ve never taught before.”
“You could teach in lots of places. Why here?”
“I don’t really know,” Ivy said. “Maybe it has something to do with finding out how stubborn creativity is, hanging on in extreme positions.” She realized the truth of that as she spoke, felt kind of proud of her answer.
Sergeant Tocco turned from the window. “We had a pedophile in here a few years back,” he said. “Raped and strangled five little girls. He was amazing on the harmonica, played a couple times with Bruce Spring-steen, I think it was.”
He sat down at his desk, opened a folder. The name on the front: Balaban. “Ever had any dealings with the Latin Kings?” he said.
“Me?” said Ivy. “Of course not.”
“Or negative back-and-forth with Hispanics in general?”
“No,” Ivy said. “What’s this about?”
“The Kings had it in for Felix, true enough,” Sergeant Tocco said. “Come here with an attitude, you got to be able to back it up. They gave him a rough time.” He paged through the folder.
“But?” Ivy said.
Sergeant Tocco slid a photo across the desk.
“What’s this?” Ivy said.
“Surveillance from the showers in B-block.”
The photo, grainy, black-and-white: a pale guy stood under a showerhead, washing his hair, one eye open, one closed. He was skinny, but had a slight paunch anyway, overhanging a defenseless-looking little penis. Felix.
“Check the time,” said Sergeant Tocco.
White numbers in the top right-hand corner gave the date and time: 9:31:47 A.M.
“They found Felix at nine thirty-five,” Sergeant Tocco said, “bled out to the right of those toilets where the cameras can’t see, one of the defects of an old prison like this. A guard took a photo of the body, if you want to look.”
Ivy nodded. He passed her another photo, this one in color: Felix, lying on bloody tiles, his neck a horror. Her gaze fled quickly, settled on the time code on the corner: 9:37:57.
“And here’s another surveillance pic,” Tocco said.
Two men were playing cards at a cafeteria-type table, bolted to the ground. One Ivy had never seen before. The other, playing cards almost lost in his huge hand, was Hector Luis Morales. She checked the top right corner: 9:33:12 A.M., same date.
Ivy looked up. Sergeant Tocco’s eyes were waiting. “That’s the cafeteria in A-block,” he said.
Cafeteria in A-block? Showers in B-block? “I don’t get it,” Ivy said.
“Means there’s no way Morales killed Felix,” Sergeant Tocco said. “Have to pass through three gates from where he was, take ten minutes at least. Plus we’d have video of him en route, which we don’t.”
“But—” But it was impossible. Oh, Morales did Felix, all right. The only question is why it took them so long to figure it out.
“But what?” said Sergeant Tocco.
Ivy realized he was missing something. Maybe it wasn’t Morales in the photo, just another inmate who resembled him; or had the Latin Kings figured out some way to doctor the time codes? It hit her that as in so many subgroups, there were two levels of knowledge in prison, insiders and outsiders. The inmates were the insiders and always knew more about what went on.
“I’m surprised, that’s all,” Ivy said.
“Lots of surprises in here,” said Sergeant Tocco. “Which brings us back to where we started. Any problems between you and the Latin Kings?”
“I’d never even heard of them till I came here,” Ivy said.
“What about Morales?”
“I had no problem with him either.”
“Lots do,” Sergeant Tocco said.
“Not me,” said Ivy. “I liked his poem.”
“So why did you give him up to Balaban’s lawyer?”
“Oh,” Ivy said, understanding dawning—so late—of where this was going. The answer had mostly to do with how Harrow had looked out for Felix: in a way, she’d been continuing his work. But that might not make sense to Sergeant Tocco. “The pain his wife was in,” Ivy said. “And his kids. It wasn’t right.”
“True,” said Sergeant Tocco. “But why Morales?”
Ivy thought back to that first class. “It was obvious in retrospect,” she said. “There was a lot of tension between them.”
“That’s pretty much the rule in stir,” said Sergeant Tocco.
“It was more than that,” Ivy said. “Morales accused Felix of calling him a liar.”
“About what?”
“Where Felix went to college,” Ivy said. “It was actually Cornell but Morales insisted on Harvard.”
“And Felix backed down.”
“But not right away,” Ivy said. “It was all so stupid. And even though Felix was terrified of Morales, he still made the mistake of trying to hurry his writing along.”
“Hurry his writing along?”
“So he could get the pencil we were sharing,” Ivy said. “I didn’t realize how serious something like that could be in here.”
“Right about that,” Sergeant Tocco said.
“Morales gave him a murderous look,” Ivy said. “Felix shrank away from it. Visibly.”
“Any more?” said Sergeant Tocco.
“Any more what?”
“To why you named Morales.”
“I’m not sure what you’re suggesting,” Ivy said.
“Nothing,” Sergeant Tocco said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time you’d have been right. And maybe Morales would’ve slit Felix’s throat eventually. It’s just that someone else got to him first.”
Was it Ivy’s place to argue with him? No. Besides, she had no proof, just a moment of shared insider’s knowledge.
Sergeant Tocco turned a page in the folder. “That leaves this little episode of Morales getting beat up by a dictionary.” He scanned the page, the corners of his lips curling down, a facial expression Ivy had always disliked. “Which you realize no one believes.”
Ivy nodded.
“So what’s the real story?”
“It all happened so fast,” Ivy said. “I didn’t see.”
Sergeant Tocco ran his thick finger down the page. “Word for word what you told Officer Moffitt,” he said. He looked up. “Anything you’d like to add now?”
“Just that I’m sorry if I jumped to conclusions about Morales,” Ivy said.
Tocco leaned forward. “Has one of these guys got you scared?”
“No.”
“Like Morales, maybe? Did he threaten you? And then a couple of the others took care of him?”
“No one threatened me,” Ivy said. “I was writing. My head was down. I don’t know what happened.”
Tocco gazed at her. “ ’Kay,” he said at last, gathering up the papers and closing the folder. “Got a new writer for you today, if that’s all right.”
“Sure.”
He reached for his nightstick. “And any objection to Morales coming back to the class?” he said.
“No,” Ivy said, although the word came out a little unsteady.
“Wondering whether we told him about your tip?” Sergeant Tocco said.
“Yes.”
“We don’t work that way,” Sergeant Tocco said.
“Okay, then,” said Ivy.
Tocco rose. “Questions?”
Ivy got up, too. “Only who you think killed him,” she said.
“Beats me,” Tocco said. “I’d actually been planning a little talk with Felix. He was a smart guy, probably the smartest guy I’ve seen in here. Our shrink tested his IQ, just for fun. One seventy-eight.”
“What were you going to talk to him about?” Ivy said.
“We got word from a snitch on B-block that Felix had put his brain to work on some sort of escape plan.” He strapped on the nightstick. “I don’t like escape plans.”
“But it must be impossible,” Ivy said.
“You’d think,” said Sergeant Tocco. “Good luck with the class.”
Twenty
Morales on the left, his arm no longer in a sling, hair long and oily; Harrow at the end, his tan shirt wrinkle-free and buttoned to the neck; El-Hassam, back on the right, a faint white film on his lips; and beside him, closest to Ivy, the new guy. The new guy was skinny, with butterscotch-colored skin—the smoothest skin Ivy had ever seen on a man—and looked about sixteen.
“Teach,” said Morales, “meet the new author. This here’s Babycake.”
The boy, head down, stared at the steel tabletop.
“What’s your real name?” Ivy said.
“Babycake his real name,” said Morales.
Ivy turned to him. “We’re in a last-name zone, remember?” she said. “Babycake isn’t a last name.”
“His last name is Pope,” Harrow said.
The vein in Morales’s forearm did its jumping thing.
“Great name for a writer,” Ivy said. “Welcome to the class.”
The boy nodded, kept his head down.
“The pope’s a writer?” Morales said.
El-Hassam—giving off a bad smell today, hair matted and dirty, eyes red—said, “The pope is a murderer.”
Morales’s chair scraped on the floor.
“I wasn’t talking about the pope in Rome,” Ivy said. “Alexander Pope was a poet from long ago.”
“What did he write?” said Harrow.
“Satire, I guess you’d say,” said Ivy.
“What’s satire, Babycake?” said Morales.
The boy made a little noise in his throat.
“It means making fun of things that need making fun of,” Ivy said.
“Huh?” said Morales.
El-Hassam’s eyes closed.
“Like Bugs Bunny,” Ivy said. “He does it all the time.”
One of El-Hassam’s beautiful hands made an impatient little movement. “Recite this pope of yours,” he said.
“Recite?”
“Like for Perkins.”
“Where is Perkins, anyway?” said Ivy.
“Gone but not forgotten,” said El-Hassam, eyes still closed.
“Dead?” said Ivy.
Morales started laughing.
“What’s funny?” Ivy said.
“Perkins dead,” said Morales. “Just the opposite—he got himself promoted.”
Had Perkins somehow gone from solitary straight to freedom? “Where to?” Ivy said.
“Attica,” Morales said.
“That’s a promotion?”
“Better chow,” Morales said. “What you like to eat, Babycake?”
The boy said nothing.
“Asked you a friendly question,” Morales said.
The boy made that little noise in his throat, a kind of gurgle.
“Got no tongue?” said Morales. “Not what I hear.”
“Recite,” said El-Hassam. Drool appeared at the corner of his mouth.
Pope. Ivy had taken a full semester course of eighteenth-century English poetry but only one measly line came back to her. “‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,’” she said.
El-Hassam slumped forward, rested his head awkwardly on the table. No one seemed to notice.
“I thought that was a song,” said Harrow.
Ivy looked at him. He was sitting up straight like an attentive student, hands folded on the table. She noticed something about him, how dark his eyes were, given his complexion. A striking effect, like from some specially compelling portrait: How had she missed it?
“That came later,” she said.
El-Hassam groaned.
“Are you all right?” Ivy said.
El-Hassam didn’t answer.
“Psych drugs,” said Morales. “Mean shit.”
“Do you want some water?” Ivy said. “El-Hassam?”
No answer.
“He ain’t thirsty.” said Morales. “What we gonna write about, teach?”
“Well,” said Ivy, her eyes still on El-Hassam, “I’m not sure we should—”
“He’s safe in dreamland,” Harrow said.
Ivy rose and went around the table, handing out paper and pencils, laying El-Hassam’s near his head. “I was thinking we could write about an important person in our lives.”
“Huh?” said Morales.
“It could be anybody, from any time in your life,” Ivy said. “A parent, teacher, coach, friend—you choose.”
“Sergeant Tocco in my life,” Morales said. “Big-time.”
“Better to write about someone none of us know,” Ivy said.
“How come?” said Morales.
“Or not,” said Ivy. “Maybe it doesn’t matter.”
“Then how come you said it?” Morales said.
Harrow was already writing. The boy, head still down, had picked up his pencil. “Shh,” Ivy said, and pointed to Morales’s paper.
“Shh?” said Morales. There was a pause. Then he laughed again: in a good mood today, although Ivy had never heard laughter more aggressive. He slid his paper into place, reached for the pencil. “Does it have to be one of them poems?” he said.
“If you want,” said Ivy. “Or a story.”
Morales wrote STORY at the top of his page and underlined it three times.
Ivy grew aware of someone watching her. Harrow. “You writing, too?” he said.
“Of course,” said Ivy.
The inmates, except for El-Hassam, were all writing. The library grew quiet, that same strange feeling that had crept into this room before, like the atmosphere from somewhere else.
Normally Ivy did some thinking—maybe even too much—before she felt ready to form word one. But right now, for some reason, she gave the matter no thought at all, the pencil taking off on its own.
Where w
as that photograph taken—you, Betty Ann, Claudette, Frank Mandrell? Claudette showed it to me. Did you know she lives on Ransom Road? Although not in a trailer—she got very offended when I said that. But of course you know that—it’s their childhood home, where she grew up with Betty Ann. I understand about fueling your writing from bits of life here and there. The only bit from the ice-storm story that seems completely invented is the curly-headed little girl. You had no kids, so there’s no curly-headed little girl, right?
Anyway, it’s a great photograph. The four of you are on a deck railing, with water in the background, a lake or maybe a river. Is it the St. Lawrence? The expressions on the faces are so interesting. I could tell from yours how attached you were to Betty Ann, how much you loved her. And still do, I’m sure, which explains a lot about what’s happened to you. On the other hand, I once spent a whole class with this great teacher—Professor Smallian, maybe you’ll meet him one day—discussing how pictures can lie.
For example—Felix Balaban. I’ve just seen surveillance pictures that seem to show the impossibility of Mor—
“All done, teach,” said Morales, throwing down his pencil. “Want me to go first?”
Harrow, still writing, didn’t look up. The boy put down his pencil at once.
Ivy checked the time. Ten minutes till noon? The hour was almost up. “Sure,” she said.
Morales cleared his throat, hunched over his page. “‘Story. An Important Dude in My Life,’” he said, then glanced around to see whether he had everyone’s attention. Except for El-Hassam, head still on the table, eyes still closed, and Harrow, still writing, he did. His eyes locked on the top of Harrow’s head. That vein in his forearm started up again, and then a huge fat one on the side of his neck.
“Nice title,” Ivy said. “I’m all ears.”
With enormous effort, as though fighting a gravitational pull, Morales broke off his stare, turned slowly to Ivy. “All ears?” he said. “What’s that?”
“I mean I’m ready to hear your story,” Ivy said. “Ready and eager.”
Morales cleared his throat again, blew a little fleck of something off the page, restarted. “‘Story. An Important Dude in My Life. An important dude in my life was Johnny DiGregorio.’” Morales wriggled in his chair, got more comfortable. “‘Me and Johnny were friends. He was the first dude I ever beat the shit out of. In my whole life! What an asshole! All he had to do was give me that fucken scooter. The red one he got for Christmas. But he said no! Just like that. No! What he think I was gonna do with the fucken scooter? Eat it?’” Morales laughed at his own joke, looked up to see if anyone was joining in. The boy, who’d been watching him, made a sound that had the rhythm of laughter but sounded squeaky, and bent his head. Morales turned back to the paper. “‘All he had to do was give me that fucken…’ Shit, read that already.” He muttered for a moment or two, eyes moving across the page. “Oh yeah, ‘Eat it?’ Ha. That’s where I was. ‘Eat it? So I popped him in the face! Johnny D, that what we called him, Johnny D went down like that.’” He frowned, reached for his pencil, stroked out something, wrote in something else. “‘Went down like a ton of bricks,’” he continued. “‘Making it real easy to knee drop him in the nuts! So I did! That’s when I found out for the first time. Hey! You really can beat the shit out of dudes! Real shit! Real shit comes out! Then the bell rang. The end.’”
End of Story Page 16