Eureka Man: A Novel

by Patrick Middleton

  “She did?” Oliver asked, affectionately patting his younger brother's shoulder. “Well, I think that's a good way to look at it, Huck. One thing's for sure. I'm making the best of it. You can count on that.”

  When they returned to their seats, June and Joe were having a friendly conversation and Oliver took note of how happy his mother looked before her countenance turned serious again when he sat down beside her. She smoothed out an imaginary wrinkle on the front of her chartreuse chiffon blouse. “We'll have to be leaving soon, Oliver. It's a long drive home. Do you need anything? Clothes? A new radio? How's your television working?”

  “Fine. I don't need anything.” Oliver smiled confidently.

  “Well, I'll leave you some money in case you do. We'll be back to see you again real soon, son.”

  Oliver shook Joe Michael's hand and thanked him for visiting. He hugged his siblings and then held his mother in his arms. When he let go, she held on tightly for a moment longer before she released him and backed away, her eyes locked on his. “I'm going to get you out of here, Oliver, if it's the last thing I do,” she promised, before she turned away and walked quickly toward the exit door.

  EVEN IF HIS FUTURE was uncertain, the present was where Oliver wanted to be anyway. At seven thirty that night, he dismissed his high school math students and ten minutes later he was in the arms of his superfine woman whose fifty-something face looked two decades younger. In the privacy of his office he kissed her and ran his hands up and down over her curves. She traced the angles of his strong jaw, lingering on the corners of his mouth. Then she ran her fingers through his long brown hair and kissed his neck tenderly. She stood back to look at him and asked, “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Can I! Like nobody you ever knew,” he said.

  “Good. I've been craving for you since I left here last Tuesday.” She loved to tease him.

  “Well, you must have some appetite. Come here.”

  “Wait, there's something else. I made some changes to my schedule. I can come in on Thursday nights, too, for the rest of the summer.”

  “That'll put me in heaven two nights a week instead of one,” Oliver said. “I'm not going to know how to act.”

  “I brought you a gift,” she said. “It's in the bottom of my tote bag.”

  “Oh, yeah? Let me see the top of your thighs first. Pull your skirt up real slow. Take your time. I like it better when you go slow.”

  “Like this?” Slowly she started raising her skirt, carefully, as though to drive him wild.

  “Higher,” he urged her. “Come on.”

  Quickly then, she revealed the milky skin above her thigh hose. “Look at that,” Oliver whispered. “Lemme touch you.”

  “Later. Let me show you what I brought you first.”

  She lowered her skirt and walked out of his office and into the classroom. They sat down and as she fumbled through her tote bag, Victor LeJeune walked into the room and sat down at the table across from them.

  “Excuse me, Doctor. There's something I need to discuss with you and Mr. Priddy here,” Victor said. “Something real urgent.”

  “We're right in the middle of a lesson,” she said. “Can you come back at eight thirty?”

  Victor leaned forward, jowls, dewlaps, heavy shoulders slumped. His bloodshot eyes were bulging, the bags under them large enough to make a pair of leather pockets. His lips were chapped, his breath sour. “No, I can't come back at eight thirty, Doc, and here's why.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small cassette player. He plugged it in the wall socket behind him, then leaned back in the chair.

  Oliver bolted out of his seat. “What the hell do you think you're doing, Victor? Get out of here, man!”

  “Sit down, Priddy. This is business.”

  Victor pressed the play button on the cassette player, and turned up the volume.

  “… take off your panties, B.J. …”

  “… I'm not wearing any, Oliver, honey … See? …”

  “…What a pretty ass … Sit on the edge of the table and lie back …”

  “… Oh, Oliver …Oh my God! I want you!...I want you now!”

  Victor shut the machine off and snatched the plug from the wall. “In case you want to know, the tape's fifteen minutes and forty-two seconds long,” he announced casually.

  Before Oliver or B.J. could compose themselves enough to speak, Victor rose from his chair, removed the tape from the machine and stashed it down the front of his pants, then calmly walked out of the room.

  Oliver kept his rage to himself. In that moment he could have killed Victor LeJeune. What would she think of him if he beat the man senseless? Did she even know what violence was up close? No, she didn't. There was a better way to deal with this, Oliver was certain of that. He looked down at the floor, incredulous, shocked. The nerve of that motherfucker! He glimpsed a shaft of light coming through the removable baseboard in the corner of the room where they had made love, and he knew instantly how Victor had done it. He had removed the baseboard in the adjacent classroom and slid the tape recorder's microphone through the hole. Now he looked at her and she was on the verge of tears.

  “This is my worst nightmare,” B.J. said. “What do we do now, Oliver?”

  Oliver was about to tell her when Victor walked back into the room and leaned against the wall. Oliver glared at him. “Before this gets ugly, Victor, you'd better-”

  “Shut up and listen, Priddy.” His stony black eyes turned to B.J. Dallet. “If you want this tape, Dr. Dallet, it's going to cost you a thousand dollars in cash and I want it by next week. That's all there is to it. It's as simple as that.” Victor's face was creased with a smirk as he walked back out of the room.

  Oliver moved quickly into his office. She followed him, crying, terrified. A rash had broken out on her neck and arms.

  “B.J., you've got to get a grip! What if George, the guard, walks in and sees you like this, baby?” Oliver picked up the phone and dialed 3-6-2. “Moose? I need to talk to Champ. Is he there?”

  “Hold on. Who is this?”

  “Priddy.” Oliver pulled her close to him and held her until he heard Champ's voice.

  “What's up?”

  “Theodore, this is Oliver. I got a problem, man. I need your help. Meet me outside the school in two minutes.” Oliver hung up the phone and grabbed B.J.'s arms. “Listen, B.J., I'm going to let the guard know I'll be right back. Don't open the door for anyone except the guard if he happens to come back.”

  “There's not going to be any violence, is there, Oliver? I cannot be a part of any violence.”

  Oliver grimaced. “You once told me you trusted me, didn't you? Well, now's the time to show it. You've got to trust me.” He put his arms around her waist and held her and he was almost unable to let go. She was perspiring profusely and he was attracted to the scent of her sweat. “I'll be right back.”

  The streetlights cast Champ's long shadow across Turk's Street and Oliver moved quickly toward it.

  What's going on, white boy?” Champ said, shifting a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.

  “That no good cocksucker Victor LeJeune recorded Dr. Dallet and me in a private moment. Now he's trying to blackmail her. He just came in the room and played part of the tape to us. Then he demanded a thousand dollars from her.”

  “Oliver, how the fuck did you let him record you two?”

  “I'll tell you about that later. Right now I need you to go up there and get that tape from him, man. He slid it down the front of his pants before he left the room.”

  “Where's he at now?”

  “He was sitting in Rhoda Cherry's classroom listening to music with one of his boys when I just walked by.”

  “All right. Where you gonna be?”

  “Back in my classroom waiting for you.”

  Champ checked his watch and looked back up the street. “I'll be behind you by a minute or two. Who's on the door? George?”

  Oliver nodded and looked up at the sk
y. It was brilliant with stars that dwarfed the crescent moon, high over Turk's Street. “I owe you, Champ,” Oliver said. “Thanks, man.” Oliver took off in a trot.

  B.J. Dallet was standing inside the door of his classroom as Oliver hurried across the main corridor. She unlocked the door for him and he took a seat at the table in the front of the room. “You said you had a gift for me?” he asked, perfectly serious.

  “Oliver, this isn't the time,” she admonished. “I've never been so afraid in my life. Tell me what's going on, please.” She was about to cry again. “Maybe we should just go to Mr. Sommers and tell him everything. We can trust him. I know we can. We're very close. He thinks highly of you, Oliver. He'll know what to do.”

  Oliver saw Champ stalking across the corridor. The collar on his black jacket was turned up and the sleeves were pulled up over his forearms. His face was stoic. He was now wearing his wrinkled brown prison cap, the beak positioned slightly off-center the way the North Philly men wore them.

  “Oliver, talk to me.”

  “Listen, B.J. I respect Mr. Sommers a lot, but he can't ever know one goddamn thing about this. It would mean the end of everything. Nothing bad's going to happen. This is all going to be taken care of. You have to trust me.”

  They sat in silence for a long while. She took out a pair of aviator-style sunglasses and put them on. He was about to reassure her when Champ knocked on the door and walked in. “How you doin', ma'am?” His smile was reassuring.

  Her hello was a whisper. She looked at Oliver when Champ turned to him.

  “Here. Get rid of this thing.” Champ handed Oliver the tape.

  “Champ, this is Dr. Dallet, the lady who spoke at your graduation.”

  “I know that, dummy. Nice to see you again, ma'am.” Champ smiled at her.

  “Nice to see you too,” she said smiling back meekly. She was starting to regain her composure now.

  “I've got to go,” Champ said. “I'll holler at you later, Priddy.”

  When Champ left the room, Oliver walked back into his office and inserted the tape in his own machine to make sure Victor hadn't pulled a switch. When they had listened to it long enough B.J. told him to turn it off. She felt deeply violated, she said. And what if he had made a copy of the tape? What then? It wasn't possible, he told her. There were no duplicating machines around. What if he'd had it smuggled out of the prison to make a copy? No way. He didn't have those kind of connections.

  “Oliver, do you know what this means?” she whispered, closing his office door.

  “What?”

  “It's over. I could never make love to you again as long as he's around. I just couldn't.”

  “Why? We got the tape back. There's no harm done.”

  “Are you serious, Oliver? Who's to say he won't run his mouth to his friends? And now this Champ fellow knows about us. How do you know he won't try something?”

  Oliver walked to the window, his back to her. His mind raced, tripped and raced again. “You don't trust me, do you?”

  “You think I would have given myself to you the way I have if I didn't trust you? Yes, I trust you, but you don't have control over what happens next, Oliver.”

  “Well, I trust Champ with my life. He's a thug but he's an honorable thug. He put the fear of God in Victor LeJeune, I know he did. Victor isn't going to open his mouth to anyone about this. I can promise you that.”

  “How can you be so sure? You can't! And I can't chance losing my career either. Oliver, I love you and I won't stop coming over, but-”

  “This was my fault.”

  “How was it your fault?”

  “Come here, let me show you something.” She followed him back into the classroom and up to the front corner of the room where they had made love. “You see that hole in the baseboard? I know that's how he did it. He was in the room next door. If we had stayed back in my office this would never have happened.”

  “It's not your fault.” She walked in front of him and he watched her go, instantly aroused at the sight of the sensual tension of her back legs and buttocks as she walked into his office. He could see both their reflections in the window. She never took her eyes off him and he doubted if she was all that interested at the moment in how her backside and long legs looked in the black knee-length skirt and matching stockings she was wearing.

  “What if I told you we could get rid of him?”

  She stood there with her hands folded across her stomach. They exchanged glances, her eyes begging for restraint, his promising none. “Oh, come on. How could you possibly do that? Or do I want to know?”

  He sat at the edge of his desk in front and a little to the right of her and looked at her steadily. He went on. Went on trying to make an impression. “One of Champ's people is a clerk in the major's office. He's made transfers happen before. The guy wouldn't even know who he's doing it for.”

  “I don't know, Oliver. I'm all nerves right now. I don't know what to think.” She looked at him, trying to figure out if he was the man who understood theories of multiple intelligences or the one who worked his way through one catastrophe after another. Or both.

  “There's only one catch.” Oliver said.

  “And what's that?”

  “It would cost money to have it done.”

  “Everything costs money. How much?”

  “I don't know. I would have to talk to Champ.” He dropped the cassette on the floor and brought his heel down on it with force. The case cracked and scattered across the floor. He gathered up the spool of tape and tore it to shreds.

  “Here, give me that.” She opened the top two buttons of her blouse. He watched her left breast rise as she stuffed the ball of mangled tape inside her bra. “Tell me more about this Champ person.”

  “What do you want to know? You want to know about the stories I've heard or about the things I've read about in old newspaper clippings?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, they say when he was thirteen he cut a boy's face from his earlobe to the corner of his mouth just for being in the wrong neighborhood. And when he was fourteen he took a screwdriver and made three evenly spaced holes in the chest of a rival gang member. Now what I read about him is even worse. He came to prison for hanging a storeowner in the back of his store. Then while he was in prison waiting to go to trial, he killed an informer inside the prison. He hanged that guy, too, from what the papers said, and then he buried a ten-inch knife in the guy's rectum. He's the most feared man in this prison. He's also the most well-liked. He and his crew have their hands in everything that goes on around here. Victor LeJeune's not in his league, B.J., believe me.”

  She combed her hair with her fingers while looking at him. “So what's the catch, Oliver? He's looking out for you, why? Because you tutored him in math?”

  “That's one reason. Remember the guy we saw two years ago being escorted across the walkway in handcuffs?” She nodded yes. “His name is Fat Daddy Petaway and he's a notorious sexual predator. Okay. Remember the guy on the gurney who was bleeding like a stuck pig? Well, Fat Daddy stabbed him like twenty-seven times. The guy on that stretcher could have been me, B.J. Fat Daddy had been stalking me since the first day I got here. To make a long story short, a few years ago I found out he had been in my cell two or three times looking around when I was at work. The minute I found out, I decided to get him before he got me. I was less than twenty four hours away from bashing his head in when they moved me off the block.”

  “My God, I had no idea you'd been through this sort of thing. But how does Champ fit in?”

  “It's a long story. He came at me with a deal that I couldn't turn down. He knew Penelope was visiting me every week so he offered to make me a member of his crew in exchange for a couple of ounces of weed every month and some math lessons. I took the deal and it was the best thing I ever did for myself. Champ made it so I didn't have to carry an ice pick around everywhere I went and sleep with one eye open all the time. Penelope got the weed from my friend Albert. Champ
paid the wholesale price of the weed and it didn't cost me a dime.”

  “Maybe not, but he was using you just the same. Now I know how you've survived this place all these years. You've been through so much, my God.” She pushed the door closed with the point of her high heel and moved to him slowly, her hand reaching out for his. She pressed herself against him and brought his hand to her lips. After several seconds, he replaced his hand with his own lips and kissed her gently. When he moved his hand up between her legs she said, “We can't, Oliver. Not as long as he's around.”

  chapter twelve

  THOUGH IT HAD BEEN a moneymaking enterprise since its inception in 1972, the Pennsylvania Lifers Association was never a very productive organization until around 1980. That was the year the membership acquired a large enough constituency of Philadelphia voters to oust the old president, sixty-four-year-old Homer Dunn, and install Champ Burnett as their new one. Champ's first order of business was to change the organization's constitution so that its main mission statement no longer read, “merely to encourage members to become model prisoners.” Its new mission became “to change the public's perception of convicted murderers.” Champ embarked on this formidable task by setting up generous annual donations to several local charities-a North Side homeless shelter, an after-school community center, a nursing home for retired veterans, and the Ohio River Boulevard Volunteer Fire Department. His next step was to increase the organization's productivity by making its members more productive. To that end, he created a new legal committee, a public relations committee, a newsletter committee, an entertainment committee and a welcoming committee that showed up at each new lifer's cell door with greetings and a goodwill bag stuffed with toiletries and other daily necessities. When Champ had difficulty finding willing volunteers to fulfill these committees, he resorted to the one asset that had never failed him-his guile. When asked to head the legal committee because he had the best legal mind in the state, Omar Ali had flat-out declined until Champ told him that all the legal books he wanted, plus a brand new Olivetti electric typewriter, came with the job. And when Oliver was recommended to head the newsletter committee, he said he needed time to think about it. Champ gave him ten seconds, glared at him and said, “Time's up, Priddy. Here's the file. Now get the show on the road.”