‘I just want to get out of here and go back to watching the shadows on the wall.’
‘A man like you must have learned something of himself in here.’
‘A man like me?’ said Klein. He shrugged. ‘Maybe that’s why the shadows out there look so good. You can make believe they’re something that they’re not.’
Hobbes wasn’t going to let him off so easily. ‘And what would you make believe of yourself that you are not?’ said Hobbes.
Fuck, thought Klein. ‘I don’t want to mislead you, sir. I’m just another convict waiting for the prison gates to open.’
‘You’re avoiding my question.’
‘Even the bravest of us’, said Klein, ‘rarely has the courage for what he really knows.’
Hobbes’s eyes wobbled in their sockets. For a second Klein thought he was going to walk around the desk and embrace him.
‘Virescit vulnere virtus,’ said Hobbes.
‘My Latin isn’t that good,’ said Klein.
‘I believe it translates as “Strength is restored by wounding”,’ said Hobbes.
Klein thought about his own wounds, the wounds of love, the false rape charge that had brought him to this office. Was he strengthened or merely more calloused, more cynical?
‘Only if you’re already strong enough,’ said Klein.
Hobbes nodded gravely. ‘Maybe so, maybe so. And yet the risk must be taken if the spirit is to grow.’
‘I guess so,’ said Klein. ‘The question is, which risk, which wound?’
‘Do you think we have a choice?’ asked Hobbes.
In Hobbes’s face was a yearning, a desperation that took Klein aback. He’d come here for five minutes’ routine prison bullshit. Either another year inside to further rehabilitate himself or a paternal pat on the back and a firm handshake to send him on his way. Instead Hobbes’s eyes were black pools swimming with a nameless inner horror that reminded Klein of madness.
‘Again,’ said Klein, ‘only sometimes.’
‘Even the man before the firing squad has a choice,’ said Hobbes. ‘He can fall whimpering to his knees or he can refuse the blindfold and sing.’
Hobbes sounded like just such a man. Klein felt powerfully drawn to explore Hobbes’s state of mind, like a Marlow to his Kurtz. He cursed himself for going too far. There was something hypnotic about Hobbes. But Klein was here as a convict hoping for parole. The convict warned him to back off.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Klein, ‘You’re absolutely right.’
Hobbes sensed the retreat. He blinked twice and sat back in his chair. He seemed shaken. He put his hand in his pocket and clutched at something, Klein didn’t know what. As if retracing his steps back to safety Hobbes nodded towards the bronze bust behind Klein and said, ‘How do you know so much about Bentham?’
Klein considered pretending that he was a life-long student of Bentham’s philosophy. Too dangerous. After all his decades in the system Hobbes could smell a liar from the other side of the yard.
‘From Dr Devlin,’ said Klein. ‘As you know she’s a forensic psychiatrist.’
‘Most forensic psychiatrists don’t know the difference between Jeremy Bentham and Jack Benny.’
Klein didn’t smile. ‘Dr Devlin does, sir.’
Hobbes nodded, calm again. ‘An unusual woman. Your work together has been fruitful?’
‘She’s submitted a paper to the American Journal of Psychiatry.’
‘Have they accepted?’
‘Dr Devlin hasn’t said so yet.’
Hobbes grunted. ‘You know that when Bentham died he had his body stuffed and placed in a glass case. In London. I believe it’s still there.’
‘Yes sir,’ said Klein. ‘Now everyone can see him too. Forever.’
Hobbes’s eyes widened again and the look returned, the look that dropped a slab of anxiety in Klein’s gut. The look had a voice which said, ‘Understand me. Be close to me. Don’t leave me alone in here.’ Klein recognised the voice for he had heard its call many times: from patients, women, fellow prisoners; the needy of every kind. From the ex-lover who’d condemned him to all this. ‘Give me more than you’ve got to give,’ they said. And inside his guts a voice of Klein’s own called out to him too: ‘Get me the fuck out of here, man.’ Coley’s motto came to comfort him: NOT MY FUCKING BUSINESS.
‘Excellent,’ said Hobbes. ‘Excellent. The irony of Bentham the panopticist’s bequest has never struck me before. I’m grateful for the insight.’
‘Again I’m indebted to Dr Devlin for that.’
This wasn’t true; it had sprung unbidden into Klein’s mind. But as Cletus said, he was too smart a son of a bitch for his own good and he had to push Hobbes away. He had to escape these tentacles of connection reaching out towards him. He already had too many sucking on his blood, draining him. He always had. Patients, women, the needy of every kind. His ex-lover. And now Hobbes. Or was he, Ray Klein, also getting too paranoid? Hobbes suddenly pulled his hand out from his pocket and placed a pill bottle on the table in front of Klein.
‘My own doctor tells me I should take these three times a day. I consider him a fool. What do you think?’
Klein picked up the bottle and read the label. Lithium carbonate 400mg. Klein suddenly felt empty of feeling. His mind registered without emotion the fact that Hobbes was taking a drug used almost exclusively for treating manic depression. The Arnold Schwarzenegger of mental disorders.
When swinging up into a manic phase of unhinged grandiosity and visionary disinhibition, such patients often stopped taking their medication, which was what Hobbes appeared to be saying right now. ‘Maniac’ was a word much and inaccurately overused. The implication of the little brown bottle in Klein’s hand was that Hobbes was at least a contender for the real thing. A maniac. Unlike most maniacs Hobbes wielded immense power over many lives. Klein looked up into Hobbes’s eyes. Strangely, Klein felt calm for the first time since entering the office. It was simple now: instead of being everyday crazy, Hobbes was genuinely insane.
Hobbes nodded at the bottle in Klein’s hand. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’
Klein put the bottle down on the glass topped desk. ‘I advise you to go back to your own doctor and ask him.’
Hobbes frowned.
‘But if I was you,’ went on Klein, ‘I’d do whatever I felt I had to.’
Hobbes’s eyes swam with emotion. He nodded. ‘Any man that doesn’t do so isn’t worth a damn.’
He grabbed the pill bottle and threw it into the aluminium waste bin under his desk. The bottle hit the sides of the bin with a dull clang. After the clang came a pause. Klein looked again at the green folder. Hobbes followed his gaze. He pulled the file towards him and opened it.
‘The parole board was impressed by your performance,’ he said.
Klein did not answer. Hobbes leafed through the file.
‘As you know, they are morons to a man. A line memorised from the New Testament, preferably one that they’ll recognise, is usually enough to get past them. Jesus always goes down well. That’s why you failed last year. Wrong mental attitude.’
‘Sir?’ said Klein.
‘Stubbornness,’ said Hobbes.
‘With respect, sir, I’ve been flexible enough to learn the rules in here.’
‘Indeed. Your success, shall we say, has been remarkable. And yet every coin has two faces, is that not so?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Hobbes glanced down at the file. ‘For instance you are a healer, by all accounts a good one. Many inmates prefer to purchase their medical care from you rather than get it for free from Dr Bahr, not that I blame them. Yet contrast that with the case of Myron Pinkley’s lobotomy.’
Klein kept what he hoped was a poker face.
‘You get my meaning,’ said Hobbes.
‘If you mean am I aware of the duality of man’s nature, yes, sir, I am.’
In a single beat of time Klein’s mind was swamped with rage: a rage to know, a rage against Hobbes fo
r fucking him around like this, a rage against himself for hoping, for standing there, for breathing, for being too smart a son of a bitch to lean across the table right now and tear Hobbes’s fucking head off. The rage screamed: Keep your fucking freedom, man, I don’t fucking need it, it was never mine in the first place. A counter voice replied: but that’s why you do want it, you asshole: because it is theirs and because you need it, and because it was never yours in the first place. And because it isn’t yours now, whether you get the parole or not.
The rage fell silent and as suddenly as it had been filled the space inside Klein’s head was once again empty and cold. He shivered in the breeze from the ceiling fan. His shirt felt drenched. Across the desk Hobbes snapped shut the green folder.
‘You’re free, Klein,’ he said.
Klein sat staring at him. He didn’t answer.
‘The board concurred with my recommendation. You will be handed over to your parole officer at noon tomorrow.’
Hobbes rose to his feet and held out his hand. Klein stood up and shook it.
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘It’s alright to smile, Klein.’
‘Yes, sir.’
But Klein didn’t smile. The emptiness remained. He knew, somehow, that if he allowed it to fill up it would not be with joy but with a terrible sense of loss and he feared it. Hold onto it, he told himself, until you get somewhere safe. He let go of Hobbes’s hand.
‘Eighty-nine per cent of the men released from this institution return to prison again,’ said Hobbes. ‘Don’t be one of them.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ asked Hobbes.
Klein hesitated. All he had to do – all he had to do – was walk out the door and keep his head down for twenty-four hours, and he could drive down to Galveston Bay for a swim. The thought of wading out into that water and of how much he wanted to feel it against his skin made him frightened even at this late date – especially at this late date – of rousing Hobbes to fury. He remembered what Cletus said about his ass still being theirs until he walked out of the gates.
‘Don’t be afraid to speak your mind,’ said Hobbes.
Klein looked at him. ‘The way things are, Coley can’t keep the infirmary running on his own.’
‘Dr Devlin has made that clear to me on a number of occasions. Things are going to change.’
Klein just couldn’t help it. ‘With respect, sir, that place is a disgrace to us all.’
Hobbes squared his shoulders. ‘The prison infirmary is a disgrace to me, Dr Klein.’ The madness in Hobbes’s eyes was touched with fire. ‘Your complaints, if not my own, have been noted. I assure you that events have been set in motion that will make the conditions in the infirmary an irrelevance.’
Klein wondered what the fuck that was supposed to mean. The thought must have shown on his face because Hobbes’s expression suddenly became guarded. But his voice trembled with passion.
‘You have my word that . . .’ Hobbes searched for a word, ‘. . . improvements will shortly take place, not only in the hospital but across the whole of this correctional facility.’
Klein resisted the urge to take a step backwards. He nodded. ‘I’m glad to hear that, sir.’
‘Be glad then, that you won’t be here to see it.’
With that Hobbes turned and walked across the room to the north window. He stood with his back to Klein and stared out over the yard at the brooding megalith of the cellblocks. His hands trembled and he clenched them on the window sill. His body seemed to be straining to contain some immeasurable force.
Klein, watching him, didn’t know whether or not he had permission to leave. Suddenly he was scared for more than just himself. Whatever the real extent of Hobbes’s sickness, this behaviour was the merest of hints, the leakage from the psychic Pandora’s box whose lid Hobbes was struggling to keep shut. What ‘events’ had he already set in motion? Should Klein ask him? Should he walk over and put a hand on his shoulder? It was none of his fucking business. Despite himself he took a silent pace towards Hobbes.
‘Good luck, Klein.’
Hobbes spoke without turning from the window. Klein stopped in his tracks.
‘And, thank you for our conversation.’
In Hobbes’s voice was a finality that somehow signalled more than just the end of the interview. Klein waited. If Hobbes turned to look at him maybe something would happen. But Hobbes did not turn.
‘Good luck, Warden,’ said Klein.
Hobbes, still staring through the window at his prison, nodded slowly, twice.
Ray Klein stepped silently to the door, opened it and left the warden’s office without another word.
NINE
TONY SHOCKNER WAS lost. He’d known that beneath the enormous basement storage rooms of the prison there lay a jungle, but Jesus. Now that he’d been turning this way and that for twenty minutes its vastness and complexity blew him away.
Dennis Terry, the old Maintenance boss trudging in front of Shockner with hunched shoulders, said that if you included the sewers there was more space underground than there was above. Down here in hidden, airless crannies was where some of the cons distilled liquor from potatoes and brewed wine from orange juice and bread, where others gathered in small groups to share a sharpened eye dropper for injecting smack and cocaine, where whores swopped blow jobs and ass-fucks for cartons of Lucky Strikes and Hershey bars, and others still dragged struggling – or pliant – victims to be gang banged. Dennis Terry knew this jungle inside out. He was probably the only con in the joint who did. For damn sure none of the guards had a fucking clue. Shockner followed Terry doggedly around the dank twists and turns, dragging behind him a pair of gas cylinders – oxygen and acetylene – on a two-wheeled trolley. Slung over his shoulder was a coiled length of piping attached at one end to the cylinder heads and at the other to a cutting torch. Terry, encumbered only by a flashlight, tool belt and goggles round his neck, walked too fast and Shockner had to keep asking him to slow down. The torch and hose kept slipping from his shoulder. His clothes from head to toe clung to his skin in sweat-drenched folds.
‘How much further?’ asked Shockner. Terry didn’t hear him above the din. Shockner shouted, ‘Dennis! How much further?’
Terry called back over his shoulder. ‘Another thirty yards, then we reach the steps.’
‘Steps? Jesus, what steps?’
The old man didn’t answer. Terry’s subterranean kingdom was a dark, filthy, grease-and-rust-coated undergrowth of groaning ducts and hissing pipes. Shockner felt like he was in the movie Aliens. It sucked. Why couldn’t Agry have sent some fuck else? Too paranoid. Agry didn’t trust Terry; and he’d snorted too much speed. Shockner banged his elbow on the right-angled bend of a fat pipe rising from the ground. He swore out loud. The fat pipe meant that this shit went even deeper still. Christ. Shockner knew he wasn’t a practical guy. Mechanics bored him. He hated changing the oil on his car and he sure as hell hated this shit. In some places the confusion of valves and pressure dials, boxed aluminium air-conditioning ducts and rusting flanges lowered the ceiling by feet. Even Terry had to duck his head to avoid cracking his skull and he was six inches shorter than Shockner. The noise was terrific, of heaving exhaust fans and their motors, of the gluey air being sucked back and forth through tarnished tin conduits. Plus half this shit was a hundred years old and rattled and flapped and shook like it was all about to fall apart. Agry had told him this was the safest part of the operation but it didn’t feel that way. Claustrophobia City was what it felt like. Shockner would rather have been up top wielding a hand-spike and a jar of oven cleaner.
Terry stopped. ‘Here,’ he said.
At the end of a short passageway to the left was a heavy oak door. Terry picked a tool from his belt, walked up to the door and picked the lock. Beyond the door a narrow flight of stone steps led upwards. Unlike most of the steps in the prison the edges of these were sharp and clean. Few feet had ever trodden them.
‘You’ll have to give me a hand,’ said Shockner.
‘Sure,’ said Terry, without enthusiasm.
Terry tucked his flashlight into his belt and took the cutting torch and the top end of the trolley. Shockner lifted the cylinders from the wheel end, taking most of the weight. Together they staggered up the steps, Shockner’s hips and shoulders banging back and forth between the walls. At the top was a second door, this one plated with steel. The lock was modern and looked serious. Terry made no attempt to pick it.
‘Right,’ said Terry. His voice and bearing were weary.
Shockner set the trolley on one of the steps. Terry unhitched the torch from his shoulder and handed the flash to Shockner.
‘Hold this,’ he said.
Terry fiddled with the gauges on the cylinder heads. Gas started hissing from the nozzle of the torch. Terry took a Zippo from his pocket and ignited the gas. A loose, fluttering flame twelve inches long leapt out. As Terry adjusted the nozzle the flame became a jet and the flutter a roar. He pulled the goggles over his eyes.
‘Best turn your head away,’ said Terry.
‘Can I smoke?’ asked Shockner.
‘Why not?’ replied Terry.
Shockner sat on the steps in the dim light of the oxyacetylene flame and smoked a Winston. The acrid stench of burning steel swirled down the narrow stairway, drawn by the draught of the tunnel below. Shockner suddenly wondered how Nev Agry was able to get so many people to do something as crazy as this. Maybe not so many. Probably less than ten guys were in on this and only Agry himself had the whole picture in his head. The rest had only been told their parts. They were the blue touch paper. The other cons would explode in their hundreds when it was lit. And of the ten probably only Shockner and Terry had any reasonable claims to mental normality. And, shit, maybe it wasn’t all that crazy after all. Out there in the world all it took was for some president or general to get a flea in his ear and suddenly you had a million guys from either end of the earth in a desert someplace trying to blow each other apart. At the top of the steps the sound of the torch cut out and then suddenly all Shockner could see was the tip of his cigarette.