‘We’re in,’ said Terry.
Shockner dropped the butt and trod on it and climbed the steps again in the dark. Terry shouldered the door open and they entered a pitch black space. Terry took the flash from Shockner, found a switch on the wall and turned on a light. The room was maybe eight feet by ten and the floor was empty. On the walls were a series of large fuseboxes with cables running up into a steel box sticking down eight inches from the ceiling. To one side of the box was an ancient trap door.
‘We’re right under the basement of the watchtower,’ said Terry.
Shockner nodded. Terry pointed to the steel box.
‘That baby holds all the electrics, telephone lines, alarm junctions, video cables. That shit. It runs from here, down under the General Purpose wing, all the way to reception. I’ll have to sit on your shoulders. You handle that?’
‘Sure.’
Terry looked at his watch. ‘We got thirty minutes. When we cut this open it’ll trigger their smoke alarms, but by then that’ll be all she wrote. Give me a smoke.’
Shockner gave him a Winston and Terry pulled off the filter. They stood smoking. Terry tapped the ash more often than was necessary.
‘You think this is a bad idea, don’t you,’ said Shockner.
Terry laughed bitterly and just stared at the end of his cigarette.
‘You can speak your mind,’ said Shockner.
‘Nev says it gotta be done.’
‘That doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion.’
Terry kept staring at the ash growing on his Winston. ‘Bout nine years ago,’ he said, ‘I was up for parole. I thought about it a long time, ’bout what it would be like to be free. And I thought, yeah, out there, if I’m lucky, I’ll maybe get to stack shelves at the mini-mart, or wear a paper hat in MacDonalds while some Porto Rican kid tells me how many pickles to put in a cheeseburger. And if I’m real lucky maybe I’ll find me a woman, the kind that would be lonely enough to shack up with an old convict. Second-hand car. Cut the “save twenty-five cents” coupons out of the papers. Two rooms and an empty refrigerator on the Mexican side of Laredo.’
Terry looked up at Shockner and Shockner saw the pain and dread in his eyes.
‘In here I got two hundred men working for me. The warden asks my advice.’ Terry flicked his head at the steel box above them. ‘I told him where he’d have to put this shit. I eat good. I live good. I can call Agry and DuBois “Nev” and “Larry” to their faces. They ask me for favours.’ He paused and some of the anger sagged out of his voice. ‘I told the parole board to fuck themselves.’
Terry dragged the Winston down until the coal was touching the tips of his finger and thumb then dropped it on the floor. He watched his foot grinding it out.
‘Nev talks about five years’ time,’ he said. ‘Ain’t going to be no five years’ time after this. He’s gonna take this place down and us with it. I love this shithole. You understand?’
Terry’s face filled with stark despair.
‘I can’t start again elsewhere, Tony. This is the end of the line. I am this fucking place. They transfer me to Huntsville I’ll spend the rest of my days swabbing floors and bumming Winstons from guys like you.’
‘You’re looking on the down side, Dennis,’ said Shockner. He knew it was bullshit the minute he said it and Terry ignored it.
‘This is your first tour, right?’
Shockner nodded. Terry nodded too, grimly. For the first time Shockner felt a glimmer of fear. Terry looked at his watch again.
‘We can sit this out you know, you and me.’
There was a plea in the old man’s eyes that Shockner couldn’t bear to look at.
He turned away. ‘The niggers killed DuBois. Nev says we can’t let that stand. He’s never been wrong before.’
‘Who gives a fuck who killed DuBois? We can stay down here for days,’ pleaded Terry. ‘I got places, stashes. Food, videos, drugs, whatever the hell you want. Nev’s headed for Huntsville, seg for life, death row. We can come back up when it’s all over, when that mad fuck is either dead or gone.’
Shockner’s guts were in turmoil. Suddenly Agry’s voice rang in his head. Semper fucking fi, Tony. Agry had treated him right and not many had. If Shockner had ever had a father, it was Nev Agry. More than a father. A friend. Semper fucking fi. He looked at Terry. Whatever Terry saw in his face, it turned him white.
Shockner said, ‘Enough’s enough, Dennis.’
He turned and walked towards the door. ‘Call me when it’s time.’
Shockner climbed down the staircase and sat on the steps. He lit another Winston. Up behind him, above the noise of the fans and ducts, he thought he could hear Terry weeping.
TEN
KLEIN STRODE PAST Correctional Officer Sung and into the grim magnolia precincts of the infirmary with his head buzzing. He was out of here tomorrow. Out. What Coley called ‘The Pea Vine Special’ had finally pulled into the station and Klein had a ticket to ride. But whatever joy his impending freedom might have brought him was buried beneath a dense pall of foreboding. As he’d left the administration tower Captain Cletus had called after him, ‘Walk softly, Klein. You still got plenty time to fuck up.’
Cletus was the kind of guy who couldn’t wish his grandmother a happy ninetieth birthday without warning her that she still had time to fuck up. Yet Klein’s guts were alive with the sense that turds of epic dimensions were about to hit a giant fan and that he was centrally situated in the spray zone. He ran through the evidence to justify his sudden paranoia. There was none. Henry Abbott had detected a vibe and told him to stay clear of Nev Agry. Well, okay, but Abbott wasn’t the US weather satellite. And then Hobbes had revealed the fact that he was a bona fide maniac and had made some vague noises about ‘improvements’. And that was it. Zero. Absolute zero. He was crazier than Hobbes and Abbott were. Only the bravest of us. Jesus. Where had he found the gall to pull out that one? Still, it had worked. Now he had other things to think about. Get it together, Klein. His intellect kicked in. The truth was simple: he was shit scared of going back out into the world and he was transferring his anxiety onto the ravings of madmen. Fear of freedom was undignified so he was looking to protect his pride. He was scared of facing the future, not of Cletus or Hobbes.
And then there was Devlin, too. She was out there in the world, where he would shortly be. What was he going to do about her? Could he do anything? Did he want to? Did she? Was his dick big enough? Would it still work? Did she like oral sex? He didn’t even know if she had a boyfriend. He’d never asked. For all he knew she was a radical lesbian. On the other hand she was a sports freak, the only woman he’d ever met who had a bookie and talked about point spreads. As far as he knew a weakness for gambling on golf, basketball and boxing were not noted lesbian characteristics. Sports were not Klein’s strong point either. He’d never made it onto any of his high school teams and his most enduring memory of junior high was of stumbling in circles round the playing-field whilst a beer-gutted coach shrieked, ‘Those Viet Cong are gonna be on your ass!’ His failure to distinguish himself in these endeavours, indeed the innumerable humiliations they’d brought him, had, he reckoned, fuelled his otherwise eccentric devotion to karate. But karate was not a sport. All those high school football heroes, he knew, now had beer guts and squalling children and wives they didn’t want to fuck any more. Bastards. He, the mighty Klein, the shotokan warrior, had gone on to greater things. And was now a despised convict.
What the fuck, he asked himself, would Devlin see in a fool like him? A seedy loser and convicted rapist? It was humiliating alright but nevertheless true: he was scared of being free. For the first time since he’d kicked the habit Klein felt an overwhelming desire to smoke a cigarette.
The corridor ahead of him filled with the bulk of Earl Coley heading for the stairs with an armload of sheets and pillow cases. Coley looked at him sourly.
‘Devlin’s waiting for you in the office,’ said Coley.
‘I didn’t
think she was due in today,’ said Klein.
‘It’s a surprise. Says she got somethin’ special to show you. Pro’bly her pussy. I reckon that bitch is in heat.’
Coley’s words cut him. The days Devlin came to the infirmary Coley was always more brutal than usual. Klein had never challenged him about it. Maybe he should have but he knew that Devlin was a reminder to Coley of who Klein was and what he represented: a white man with a future. Today that future had arrived, and Coley could read it on Klein’s face.
When Klein first started work on the wards Coley had told him never to make any friends in the River. Friendship was a luxury and luxury meant pain: sooner or later they always took it away. The pain was there now in Coley’s yellowed eyes. Coley walked past Klein and started up the stair.
‘Frog?’ said Klein.
Coley stopped but didn’t turn. Klein hesitated. He felt like he was running a knife into the broad, stooped back that loomed above him. He swallowed.
‘They’re letting me go,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow at noon.’
Still Coley did not turn. His massive shoulders heaved and bunched. Then dropped. ‘Don’t expect me to congratulate you,’ he said.
‘I don’t,’ said Klein.
There was a pause, then Coley looked down at him over his shoulder. His voice trembled.
‘Guys used to pay me to work in this place. I was on easy street. These days costs me two tens of valium just to get the fucking floors swabbed.’
Klein said, ‘I paid you, Frog.’
Coley blinked. He shook his head. ‘Maybe you paid me too much.’
Klein’s chest ached. He wanted to tell him, straight out, the things he’d thought but never said. You’re a great physician, man. I worship the ground you fucking walk on. You are a great man. A great healer. A great friend. I’m sorry you can’t come with me but I can’t change that. And I’m sorry you’re my fucking friend too but I can’t change that either. And even if I could I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even if you would. Do you hear me you fat fuck? The words, so loud in his head, stuck high behind his chest. He felt stupid.
‘I’ll be along in ten minutes,’ said Klein.
Coley grunted and disappeared around the turn in the stairs.
Klein hammered the butt of his hand into the wall. Fuck this place. And all of us in it. He pushed himself away from the wall and walked towards the office. Fuck it. He was out of here and anger was easier than hurt. Use it. Why not? Twenty-four hours and it was just a bad memory. They would all of them, Coley included, be just another stupid bunch of regrets. His mind swilled over with bitterness and guilt. He shoved open the door to the office and saw Juliette Devlin.
Klein took a mental step backwards.
Devlin was standing over the desk with her back towards him, leaning on her elbows with her hips in the air as she scanned a neurology journal. A Winston Light smouldered between her fingers. It reminded Klein that he admired women who smoked. It was a blemish on their God-given perfection that made him feel slightly more relaxed about his own failings, which were monstrous and many. In respect of Devlin this flaw was essential for he found her very perfect indeed. She was tall as hell with legs that went on forever, an attribute Klein admired even more than her smoking Winstons. She also had small, tight-looking breasts, or at least he hoped so for he had never seen them in the flesh. Best of all she possessed a full, muscular ass with a one-and-a-half-inch gap between the top of her thighs, a vision whose radiance now scorched his retinas and evoked in his guts a primal yearning to be swallowed up by the earth. Devlin also had a brain the size of a planet. This too Klein appreciated, though it in no way mitigated the primal torment. She turned her head to look at him: long neck, angular features, brown eyes that didn’t waver when they met his. The short hair that gave her the air of a cocky punk kid was the final six-inch nail hammered into the hands and feet of Klein’s unrequited, renegade desire.
This power surge of sensory input fused Klein’s nerve-endings in a single instant. In the next instant – a reflex conditioned by Klein’s arduous survival programme – the renegade desire was beaten down and dragged away, bellowing defiance, to a padded cell in the depths of his unconscious.
When Devlin saw his face she stood up straight and turned to face him. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said.
Klein immediately felt compelled to censor his thoughts. It was another aspect of the problem he had with women. He feared that if they had any idea of what took place in his mind they’d run screaming for the cops. For him this wasn’t a joke. He was aware that in Devlin’s case at least this was somewhat absurd since she gave a convincing impression of being a hard ass and had seen the worst that the world had to offer. But old habits died hard.
‘Coley’s having a bad day,’ he said.
Devlin said, ‘He’ll survive.’
Her answer irritated him. Maybe it had been heard down in the padded cell.
‘Survive?’ said Klein. ‘We all survive, until we don’t. You’ve got to have something to survive for.’
Devlin looked at him. ‘What are you surviving for?’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Klein. ‘Maybe that’s why I’m having a bad day too.’
A look of dread came over Devlin’s face. ‘The board refused your parole then?’
Klein hadn’t known she knew about his review. Coley must have told her.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I can leave tomorrow. At noon.’
Devlin broke into a smile. ‘But that’s great. Isn’t it?’
Klein felt angry with himself that her joy seemed greater than his. It didn’t make sense.
‘Yeah, it is,’ he said.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going up for a hearing?’
Klein shrugged. ‘I didn’t think it was any of your business.’
Devlin’s cheekbones flushed with colour.
Klein added, ‘What I mean is, it was something I needed to keep to myself.’
‘But why?’
Klein hadn’t really thought about it but now he knew.
‘Because if you’d been wishing me luck and hoping for me and shit, and then they’d turned me down, I would have had to pretend that it mattered to me less than it did.’
There was a pause while she took in what he’d said.
‘That’s bullshit,’ said Devlin.
‘Maybe.’
Devlin held out her hand, palm upward, the cigarette still smoking between her fingers. ‘I could’ve written to the board.
I could have helped.’
‘I know,’ he said.
This was exactly the sort of scene he had avoided by keeping his parole hearing to himself.
‘I didn’t want your help.’
Again the colour flared on Devlin’s cheekbones. She gave him a long, hard stare and dragged on her cigarette. To his surprise the combination of high cheekbones, sucking lips and hard stare gave Klein an immediate hard-on over which he had no control. Devlin blew out a billow of smoke.
‘You know Klein,’ she said, ‘there are times when I think you are a half-decent guy.’
So he’d pissed her off. Well, at least he could stop worrying about seeing her in the world when he got out. He needed time alone and anyway she would probably have broken his balls within a week. Then he thought about how nice it would be to have his balls broken by the likes of Devlin. Devlin, very cool, stabbed the cigarette out in the ashtray and continued.
‘You’re intelligent, you’re committed, and sometimes you make me laugh, which in here is an achievement.’
‘Gee, thanks Miss Devlin,’ said Klein.
Devlin, without smiling, walked across the room towards him. Klein, with effort, held his ground.
Devlin said, ‘There have even been times when I’ve thought about sucking your cock.’
Klein experienced a transient blurring of vision. He blinked and begged his legs not to give out on him. He heaved the quivering musculature of his face into what he hoped was the expression of a
man who took it for granted that beautiful women thought about sucking his cock. Devlin stopped toe to toe in front of him.
‘But most of the time,’ she said, ‘I think you’re just an asshole.’
She made a circle of her finger and thumb and held it in front of his face.
‘A big asshole.’
Klein waited for a witty riposte to spring to his lips. There had to be one in there somewhere. But he was hypnotised by her eyes, stranded, speechless. Hi, I’m Ray Klein and I’m just an asshole. A big asshole. Thank you for listening. His mouth felt as if it contained an inflated condom. For Chrissakes, man, speak.
He said, ‘I need a smoke.’
Devlin was only an inch – two inches – shorter than he was. Her gaze was almost level with his own. The muscles round her eyes crinkled a little. Was it amusement? Or the contempt he so richly deserved?
She said, ‘I thought you’d stopped.’
‘I did,’ said Klein. ‘But now I know for sure I’m an asshole I feel entitled to start again.’
He watched her unfasten the top button of her shirt, and then the next. Her eyes flicked down to his mouth. ‘Then start,’ she said.
Klein resisted the urge to lick his lips. Instead he looked at hers. Like her cheekbones they were flushed with blood. Down below in the sweat-stained confinement of his prison denims the hard-on of his life, now a sovereign power independent of his will, bellowed for satisfaction. Klein’s Nietzschean psychological survival strategy had enabled him to resist making a pass at Devlin for over twelve months. He’d even resisted fantasising about her, about the size and colour of her nipples, the density of her pubic hair and the no doubt sublime beauty of the cleft between her buttocks. Instead he had relied on the copies of Hustler magazine that he occasionally accepted in his subterranean private clinic as payment for medical consultations. Certainly if Devlin had emitted any signals that she was attracted to him Klein had not dared register them. But now he was almost free. Free to smoke, free to fantasise, free, by God, to be just as big an asshole as he pleased. The hard-on roared with approval, urging him on: free to shuck these goddamned pants and let her taste his seed as she so clearly longed to do.