Hope is the slowest poison, Palomino had always thought. Pessimism isn't the antidote, but a healthy dose did the heart a lot of good.
In the execution chamber José said something to the Chaplain, and the young priest--far too young to have acquired much life experience outside the three years he'd spent at Alamosa County--smiled beatifically, offered the Sign of the Cross, and began his prayer.
"My Jesus, by the sorrows Thou didst suffer in Thine agony in the Garden, in Thy scourging and crowning with thorns..."
While the others in the execution chamber bowed their heads for the Chaplain's benedictions, Palomino scanned their faces. He saw the EMT turn to whisper something into the doctor's ear. The doctor nodded but not before throwing a worried glance at Deputy Adams, who was closest them. Palomino saw all of this, and wondered what she'd said that Doctor Death was concerned Adams would overhear? Had she noticed the subtle quiver of the doctor's hands as they went about their business, as Palomino had, and the sweat glistening on his brow? Or had she declared she couldn't wait to get this execution in the bucket so she could put his limp uncircumcised dick between her lips?
Palomino sneered at the idea. Thoughts like this were Friedkin's influence. He'd worked side-by-side with the racist, sexist bully far too long. Captain Milton was stepping down in a month, and Palomino had talked with Jenny about putting his name in for the position. It would get him off the night shift (he would miss those early morning Zen moments, but he could live without them), and allow him more time with Jenny and the boys, the new baby they hoped would be a girl. It would also get him away from Friedkin, and nothing bad could come of that. Of course it would put him closer to Adams, but he supposed kissing a little pucker was the price one had to pay for ambition.
Deputy Warden Adams spoke briefly to the Commissioner, voice hushed. He nodded once, and cradled the phone. "José Vasquez," he announced, and at the sound of his name being spoken José rolled his eyes in the Deputy Warden's direction. "You have been condemned to die by lethal injection by a jury of your peers, a sentence imposed by a judge of good standing in the State of Florida, and to be carried out by the staff and officials of Alamosa County Prison. Do you have anything you wish to say before the sentence is carried out?"
José's eyes rolled toward the witness room window, regarded the people sitting there for a moment. Palomino expected a final dramatic statement, a May God have mercy on your souls to turn the table on his executioners, or something more befitting of his newly Christianized state of mind, like the confession he'd never offered. A turning of the other cheek. Tears. Blubbering. Christ, anything really.
What José Vasquez did was shake his head and lay back to await his fate, a pitiful end to a pitiful life.
Adams covered his surprise well. If nothing else, the man was a PR machine. "Very well." He tipped a nod toward the executioner's room, where the doctor stood alongside Donna Jepson, soundproof, bullet-resistant glass between themselves and the condemned.
Doctor Death opened the IV clamp. Sodium chloride began to drip down the tube. Palomino imagined its ice-cold fingers creeping through José's veins. The doctor then administered the Nembutal into the IV port. This was a slow, methodical process that in reality Palomino had only seen a handful of times in his seven years on Z Block. There were eleven syringes in all: four 50cc injections of pentobarbital to put the convict to sleep, followed by a saline flush to clear the line; two 50cc injections of pancuronium bromide to paralyze the inmate, so as to prevent any inconvenient muscle twitches or dancing limbs during the final set of injections, and a second saline flush; two syringes of potassium chloride, 50cc in each, to stop the heart.
Another saline flush would be administered, but by then the inmate would already be dead. This last injection was simply to clear the poison from the tubes.
It was during the second flush that Palomino grew concerned. He'd been staring at the fluid bubbling its way down the tubing when he spotted the pinky finger on Vasquez's left hand twitch once, twice. The self-inflicted tattoo on its first knuckle was a crooked cross of tiny dark blue pinpricks.
Palomino studied the faces in the death room to see if anyone else had noticed. He met only impassive looks, expressions they'd practiced once a month in Day Four simulations with volunteers in place of inmate and physician. Friedkin caught his eye and gave him a brief scowl, and Palomino was suddenly sure.
Not a single soul had noticed the movement but him.
Well, so what? he thought, hoping to calm the strange cold creeping into his own veins. The worst that could happen was José might do a little hop and jiggle on the table when the potassium chloride hit his heart, a Mexican hat dance without the hat. And anyway, it was too late to stop the process now. The final chemicals were already coursing down the tube toward José's prostrate body.
The only thing Palomino could do now was wait and watch, both things he was being paid to do anyhow.
Watch the fingers for twitches. Watch the eyelids for a flutter. Watch the chest for a slow rise and fall.
Palomino's heart beat heavily against his uniform shirt.
Nothing.
Thirty seconds passed without movement, and he finally allowed himself to breathe a hushed sigh of relief. Involuntary muscle spasm, he figured, and the moment he thought this, the heart monitor began its steady drone, signifying José Vasquez's life had ended.
The doctor gave a somber nod to Adams.
"The sentence of José Vasquez has been carried out." Deputy Warden Adams adopted a suitably gloomy tone. "Thank you for your attendance, and please ex--"
The creak and pop of the restraints stopped him from finishing, from saying exit, but that final word would not be necessary. Somehow José's right arm had come free. The dead man lashed out with it, untrimmed fingernails slashing across the Deputy Warden's cheek, tearing it open, before anyone could react.
In the witness room, a woman shrieked: high-pitched and tremulous, as if she were consciously trying to break the glass separating herself from the horror show.
José was still attached to the heart monitor--he was still flatlining--but somehow, despite the poison they'd filled him with, his left hand snapped from the second restraint and he sat up, arms pin-wheeling, clawing out mindlessly at his captors as a long, rattling cry of rage arose from his snarled lips, his eyes rolling wildly like an animal at the slaughterhouse, feet kicking at the restraints like a child crying out for a toy.
Palomino thought: Something's wrong with the monitor.
Friedkin's hand went to his baton. He fumbled with the clasp and couldn't manage to free it for probably the first time in his twenty-eight years on the job. The Deputy Warden had fallen to his knees in the corner, holding a blood-soaked handkerchief to his cheek, probably some sort of Italian silk, as he wept. In the witness room a mass exodus had begun with the scream: chairs overturned, purses forgotten, hats knocked off. A behemoth of a man wearing khaki shorts up over his belly button and a fat woman in a sundress had lodged themselves in the doorway, and neither would back down. The rest of them pressed these two through the doorway until finally they popped out into the hallway, the others spilling out behind them, a human levee breaking.
Behind the soundproof glass, Donna had the doctor in a headlock. The execution hadn't gone very well, and Death Watch Supervisor Donna Jepson was far from pleased. José Vasquez wasn't dead--or was dead, but his body refused to admit it. Dead/not-dead José had nearly beheaded Deputy Warden Adams with his fingernails. He had the nurse by the hair while she screamed for help, running in place, the soft soles of her Crocs squeaking on linoleum, her head wrenched back as she struggled to flee the monster's grip, her lime green scrunchie unraveling.
Palomino was in shock. His limbs refused to move, as if he, instead of José, had been given the near-lethal dose of pancuronium bromide.
Thankfully, Friedkin got his baton free and brought it down in a swift arc onto José's forehead. The flesh split open like a ripe melon. Blood spilled dow
n into the maniac's white eyes, and the pain didn't even cause him to flinch.
"Kill it!" Adams shouted, still on the floor. "For God's sake, kill it!"
Palomino watched impassively as Friedkin gave it his best shot, strike after strike on the dead man's skull, neck, spine--thock, thud, thump. And though it was probably a slip of the tongue, Adams was right. José was no longer a he. This mindless creature, still strapped at the ankles to the gurney, was officially a thing, no more conscious of its own life than an insect. A man suffered no moral quandaries putting an insect to death. He just smashed and smashed and smashed until the goddamned thing was dead.
And Friedkin would have, except the thing on the gurney unexpectedly struck back. It let go of the nurse and grabbed the baton in the same motion. The poor woman, still running full-tilt away from José and screaming at the top of her lungs, slammed headfirst into the witness room window.
Whatever mindless instinct controlled José's body, it was fine-tuned. The dead man's hand fought with Friedkin's grip for only a moment. What Friedkin had with his baton was speed, and the element of surprise. The José-thing had ferocity. It wrenched the baton from Friedkin's hands and tossed it casually aside before turning José's face and rage toward its tormentor. José's pupils were no longer visible at all, trying to get a look at its own prefrontal lobe.
Friedkin's head twisted between José's hands with a kind of pop! pop! like bubble wrap, and in the moment before the CO realized he was dead, he looked straight at Palomino with a strange muddle of shock and anger. Then he fell to the floor.
It was only after his long-time partner was dead that Palomino noticed the electrodes were no longer attached to José's chest. They'd come detached when he'd torn out of the straps. He was still alive. He wasn't dead, let alone undead. Once this sunk in, Palomino found himself able to move again. A shotgun was racked on the wall for just such moments. Not moments exactly like this--moments like this didn't come up often, if at all, Palomino figured--but it would do. He ran for it.
Behind him, José lurched off the gurney. Still strapped in at the legs, the condemned toppled with a clang and a crash, his hips twisted sharply. The slap of his palms on the floor, the metallic drag of the gurney across the execution chamber's chipped tile floor.
Palomino fumbled with the shotgun, tried to pull it from the wall.
The nurse screamed again, waking from unconsciousness, and in the same instant as Palomino felt José's cold grip on his ankle, the latch opened and the shotgun all but fell into his hand. The thing was loaded, but still required cocking.
José clawed at his leg. Palomino's white sock, red stripes mismatched from the left's blue, slipped down to his boot as he turned to look into the whites of José's eyes. His hand, icy with fear, somehow managed to squeeze the forestock and jerk it back. Clack-clack! Body's gon' stack! as the "gangstas" in George Jr.'s rap songs said.
It was not customary for the executioner to speak. Palomino knew that. But José clawed at his leg with inhuman strength, threatening to pull Palomino to the floor, where the condemned could easily perform a repeat of Friedkin's fate on him, or something even more gruesome, and he found himself shouting--
"GAH!"
--as he pulled the trigger.
José's head exploded like chunky, wet red streamers, splashing on Palomino's uniform. A chunk of something, brain or bone or cartilage, struck his throat and unstuck when he swallowed, spattering on the linoleum floor by the gloppy, stringy remains of José's head. What was left looked a lot like what José had puked up overnight. Vasquez slumped to the floor. He did not move again.
Tendrils of cobalt gray smoke issued from the shotgun barrel.
Palomino stood for a moment, regarding the scene. That perfect dead quiet had fallen over Z Block again. His guts turned over suddenly, spoiling it. His dinner, a Tupperware of Jenny's leftover chili, came up on his shoes, fitting quite nicely with what was leftover of José.
The door to the executioner's room opened and Donna Jepson charged in, Doctor Death--Doctor Fuckup, more like, Palomino thought, and he liked that so much he laughed--running in on her heels.
"Oh shit," Donna said, wide-eyed, surveying the carnage. "What the fuck, George? What the fuck?"
Instead of replying--did she even want an answer?--Palomino looked through his tears, past José's headless corpse and Friedkin's twisted remains, beyond the upturned gurney, and several feet above the Deputy Warden still cradling his face with his bloodied handkerchief was the clock on the wall, showing a quarter to seven. Fifteen minutes until shift change. Gina Stavros was probably toweling off in the change rooms right about now, maybe having one last smoke before she came in to relieve him for the day.
I better get overtime for this, Palomino thought, tossing the shotgun aside. Donna knelt down beside the Deputy Warden, and while she helped him to his feet, Doctor Dipshit stood looking over the corpse of José Vasquez.
Palomino knew that look. He'd seen it from coworkers, when the punishment for some minor violation of the rules had somehow spiraled out of control. When a prisoner lay unconscious and swollen, bloody and bruised. Or dead, like José. The look on the doctor's face mirrored Donna Jepson's words. The look said Oh shit.
Regarding the gooey chunks of José he wiped from himself, Palomino decided this would be his final execution. José Vasquez had been a model prisoner, it was a shame for him to die like this. (Jim Friedkin, however, wasn't likely to be missed.) He would put in his name in for Captain by the end of the week. The way the Deputy Warden was looking at him, with a combination of amazement and fear, he'd be likely to get whatever goddamn job he wanted.
Even if he didn't--if Donna got it instead, though after today's debacle her chance of seeing any career advancement was about as likely as Jenny being able to get the bloodstains out of this goddamn shirt--he'd make sure he was out before the next con was hauled down to the Death Watch cell. He'd transfer off the goddamn Block if that was what it would take.
Who was next, anyhow? Mozey? That chickenhawk creep, Jim Lee Allen?
It didn't matter. They were all dead men on Z Block. Even Palomino would someday be a wet splat on a funeral director's shirt, he figured.
Just a matter of time, really.
In the meantime, there was the lottery. He decided to buy two tickets tonight, instead of the usual one. After today's shift, he felt like his luck just might be heading for a change.
THE EYE AT THE DOOR
TODD PENDLETON HAD always felt like a poseur in the world of PR consulting, and the thought of his colleagues at Savvicorp knowing how he felt gave him stomach troubles.
While the Big Dogs power-lunched at Hy's Steakhouse or Canoe, at the top of the TD Centre, Todd would wolf down what he half-jokingly called a "powerless lunch" at one of the cheaper places in the mall. He and Darlene had just bought a house, and he'd always said it paid to save where he could. Darlene had offered plenty of times to pack up a lunch of leftovers, but Todd wasn't about to eat from a Tupperware container at his desk.
"Why not just put a big old sign on my head?" he'd asked her, miming the flashing sign by splaying his fingers out from his forehead. "Loser! Loser! Not meant to be here!"
Darlene had smiled patiently. After seven years of marriage she knew when her husband was just blowing off steam. Todd knew that she knew, and was glad when she permitted it. He kissed her on the forehead. "Sorry, Apple." He'd been calling her Apple for years now, and neither of them could remember why. "You're just looking out for me. And you know I love your cooking. But they're gunning for me down there, that's something I know. So far as they're concerned I've been meeting you for lunch, and while it's not optimal--what kind of weirdo meets his wife every day for lunch?--it's worked. At least the women around the office respect me for it."
Today was Casual Friday. Some of the others wore jeans, but Todd wore his favored suit--one of two he'd picked up at Tom's Place. They fit nice and looked twice as expensive as they'd been--afraid that if the other
s saw him in jeans, they'd spot how out of place he felt right away. Todd was rarely, if ever, casual at the office. Casual implied comfort, an easement with one's surroundings. Todd Pendleton was perpetually aware of the eyes at his back. A man like that was only ever comfortable with a door closed firmly behind him.
Kenneth Pratchett, the office wildcard, shot finger guns and/or winked at everyone as they stepped into the boardroom for their big Friday morning meeting. When Todd sauntered in, taking up the rear as usual, Kenneth simply nodded. "Todd," he said, not meeting his eyes.
The meeting didn't go well. The boss was as irritable as Todd's bowels. Work on the Raleigh's account was a slog, but it was progressing. The problem was they'd undershot the amount of time required to complete the job to guarantee they'd be the ones handling it.
Then they pawned it off on me, Todd thought miserably, sitting at his desk. Raleigh's Industrial Lubricant. Sheesh. What the heck was he supposed to do with a company that sells petroleum-based oils for machinery? If it was cooking oil, he could slap a pretty face on it. Hell, if it was sex oils he could do something with it. Raleigh's Personal Lubricant: perfect for lubing up and taking it in the old poop chute from your superiors!
He sighed heavily and glanced at the clock beside his framed photo of Darl. Looking at her picture always made him smile, but the smile would quickly fade. He didn't deserve to be with someone so perfect. Not that she would make a man jealous of him. She was, he hated to admit it, awfully plain (he wasn't so hot in the looks department either, particularly in recent years, with the growing paunch and his once magnificent auburn hair retreating from his eyebrows like Allied soldiers during the Battle of Mons). But intelligence and personality radiated from her. The two of them had married straight out of high school--"plucked her right off the vine," as his dad had once described their pairing--and as a result, he often thought she must have felt like she'd missed out on some of the more exciting aspects of life.
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