by Frank Zafiro
My lawyer was Peter Shelton. He was even older than my Dad and I’m guessing he experienced the Sixties while in his thirties. He practiced law out of an office in the warehouse district. We sat opposite him, the thick smell of incense hanging in the air.
“This is a very unique case,” he told us from behind his desk, fingering a bamboo flute while he spoke. “In fact, I’m surprised the prosecutor is even filing charges on it.”
“I’m not,” Dad said with disdain. “Prosecutors are basically cops who went to law school.”
Shelton shrugged. “Even so, they don’t like to lose. But they’re filing charges against Antonio as an accomplice to the murder of Jeffrey Parker.”
Cold water seemed to wash over me. I sank in my chair. “M-murder?”
Shelton nodded mournfully. “Yes.”
“It was a prank call,” Dad snapped. “How in the hell do they get murder out of that?”
“It’s called Contributory Recklessness to a Felony. What they’re saying is that Antonio here acted recklessly and thereby helped cause the felony to occur. The charge itself is a lot like the Aiding and Abetting law, in that the sentencing range is less than the actually crime by one step.”
“That sounds like a whole lot of bullshit to me,” Dad said. “Wait a minute. What do you mean, one step?”
Shelton sighed. “It means, in this case, that the crime is a Class B felony, punishable by up to ten years in prison.”
My head swam. I gripped the sides of the chair for balance.
“He shouldn’t get ten years, though,” Shelton continued. “With his clean record, I’d guess he won’t even get a year. Especially if we plead to a lesser crime.”
“No plea bargains,” Dad said. “He made a prank call. He didn’t commit a crime.”
Shelton raised his hands. “I understand. But the state says he did and they can try him for it. Now, I don’t think they’ll get a conviction, but if we go to trial, we run that risk.”
“No pleas,” Dad repeated. “You can’t trust the government. They’ll find a way to screw him over.”
“They’ll try,” Shelton agreed. “In fact, they may have already.”
“What do you mean?”
Shelton glanced at me. “Your friend Hank has secured Joel Harrity as counsel. Harrity is very good. And he’s holding a much better hand than we are.”
“How so?” Dad asked.
Shelton set the flute on the desk in front of him and counted off on his fingers. “Antonio is an adult, Hank is not. The calls were made from Antonio’s house. Antonio is the one who spoke on the phone. And if Hank cooperates—”
“Cooperates how?”
Shelton lowered his fingers, touching the flute but not picking it up. “If he pleads to a lesser charge and testifies against Antonio, he may see a month or two in the local juvenile facility.”
Dad looked at me worriedly. “You think he’ll do that?”
Shelton considered, then nodded slowly. “He may have already. If Hank were my client, that’s what I would advise.”
“Jesus,” Dad muttered.
I started to cry.
In the end, that’s exactly what Hank did. Because I refused to plead, the prosecutor took the case to trial. With the testimony of Hank, Kate Parker and then the phone records, the jury found it easy to convict. At least, that’s what I surmised when they returned in just two hours with a guilty verdict.
Turned out Shelton was wrong about the sentencing, too. Or the judge. I don’t know which, but I do know I got eight years for a goddamn prank call.
Hank received one month in Juvenile. They let him wait until after he graduated to serve the time. Shelton said that the most he could have received even if he’d buttoned up and refused to testify was incarceration until his eighteenth birthday. That meant five months.
He traded his four months in juvenile for my eight years in prison.
That’s what caused the fire to take spark and begin to burn.
Prison was hell. I was small and I was young. Things happened to me that I could never tell another person. Things I wouldn’t even tell God. I did what I had to do to survive. And then I found the right friends. I pressed iron. I became strong.
I read a lot of books about lots of different things. Still, I spent much of my time staring at the cold prison walls while a fire burned inside the pit of my stomach, rising up a little each day.
I became a small ball of hate.
And I waited.
The day I was released, I refused the shuttle into town. The long walk from the prison felt good. After years of the same sights day after day, watching the scenery change slowly was ambrosia. I hopped on a bus and headed back to River City.
On the bus, the scenery slid by even faster. The rush of images made me shift in my seat. A strange mix of emotions flashed through me, changing as quickly as the sights outside my window. Exhilaration. Discomfort. Anticipation.
The River City bus station had moved since I went away. The new station didn’t smell nearly as bad and it looked like they tried to keep it clean. I stared around at the new sights for a few minutes, then walked out to wait on the sidewalk.
Dad looked much older than I expected. As he clambered out of the aged VW Rabbit, I had to remind myself he was something like forty-five when I was born. Mom was thirty-eight. She died of leukemia before she hit forty.
In the full light of the outside world, Dad’s face bore deeper lines than I’d noticed when he came to visit me in prison. The long hair he’d always refused to cut look dried out and fragile atop his head. His hands shook slightly when he clasped my hands, then drew me close for a hug.
“Welcome home,” he whispered in a husky voice and his thin body shook with silent sobs.
I stayed in my old room. Many of the people on the block had moved away, including Hank’s parents. That was good. I wanted to keep a low profile.
My parole officer turned out to be all right. In fact, he could have been my Dad’s younger brother with his hippie attitude.
“Be straight with me and we’ll be cool,” he told me. “You’ve got one year left on your sentence. Stay straight for that long and then you’re totally free.”
He got me a job working as a laborer on a construction site. I made sure I showed up early and left a little late. The muscles I’d worked on inside were put to good use. After a few weeks, the scowl the foreman always had when he looked at me loosened a bit.
I worked and went home.
I watched television with my Dad.
I discovered the Internet.
I found Hank.
He was doing all right for himself, my old friend Hank. Went to college at the University of Washington over in Seattle, then came back to River City to work for Barnes & Associates, a small money management firm. Married his college sweetheart, Bobbi.
It’s amazing what you can find out for free, right on the Internet. I discovered Hank’s college G.P.A. and class ranking. His work address, his home address, his telephone number. I learned that he’d taken up racquetball and played in tournaments at the local gym. I even found an interview with him in an issue of his company newsletter, The Barnes Bulletin.
He was doing well, all right.
I took a day off from work and did some scouting in my Dad’s VW. I checked out Hank’s house first. It was up on Five Mile Prairie, a wide flat expanse of land that sits above the rest of River City almost like a king’s castle. They’d developed the area a lot in the time I’d been away. It used to be farm country. Now it was wealthy suburbia.
I found the address and parked across the street.
Hank’s place was loosely in the style of East Coast Tudors, complete with all the tall, sharp angles that spoke of noveau riche aristocracy. The grey and white muted colors contrasted with the lush green of his lawn and the red sports car in the driveway.
I stared at that house. It could have been my house. It could have been Hank who rotted away for seven years, fending off attack
s from other inmates, eating runny, tasteless food and feeling the walls close in on him.
There was a long hiss and I jumped in my seat. The sprinklers spewed water out onto the bright green lawn.
I looked down at my feet and let out a breath. So many things I wasn’t used to yet.
The front door slammed and I glanced up. A trim woman with hair that was a deep red strode down the walkway toward the sports car. Her gait was confident, with the slightest sexy swing to her hips. The workout clothes she wore left little to the imagination.
My breath quickened. This would be Bobbi.
Jesus, she was beautiful.
I watched her slide behind the wheel of the car, fire up the engine and pull out of the driveway. She didn’t notice me as she zipped by, most likely headed off to a treadmill in some gym.
I turned my gaze back to the house. How easy would it be to kick in the front door and spend an hour destroying the place? Just let my rage loose on everything he owned. It would be simple, except I was sure that Hank had the place alarmed. This would be the kind of neighborhood that would get a quick response from police.
No, I had to be smarter than that. I would get my revenge, but I wasn’t going to go back to prison for it.
Still, I felt the anger bubbling inside of me. Seeing the wife he had whetted it further, brought it raging up.
I swallowed, clenched my jaw and pulled away from the curb.
Hank worked in a large office building that held about sixteen different businesses. I checked the directory in the lobby and made a note of the suite number for Barnes & Associates.
Then I cruised the parking lot.
In the newsletter article I’d read, Hank had laughingly bragged that he went out and bought a green Land Cruiser with his first big bonus. I found three Land Cruisers in the lot, but only one of them was green. A small gym bag and a racquet rested on the floor behind the driver’s seat.
I checked for security, but there didn’t seem to be any. Most everyone had already arrived for work and it was too early for the lunch exodus, so the lot was empty.
I gripped my house key in my fist and ran it down the side of the Land Cruiser, flaking off tiny chunks of green paint. Then I walked back and forth three more times, scarring that beautiful, hateful green finish on the doors and the front and rear quarter panels.
When I was finished, I walked back to my Dad’s VW and drove home. I kept waiting for the satisfaction to wash over the anger, but I felt nothing. Once home, I sat on the couch with an iced tea and wondered why. Eventually, I realized it just wasn’t enough. I’d spit on a forest fire, that’s all. No real damage. I knew he could afford to have it fixed. Hell, he had insurance, so it wouldn’t even cost him much.
If I was going to hurt him, I needed to hit a lot harder.
Over the next few weeks, I did some more research. I found out which gym Hank and Bobbi belonged to and got a membership myself. Hank only went to play racquetball, so I avoided that side of building whenever I went. I spent my time with the heavy iron, rolling in after work to lift for an hour or two.
There was a strange familiarity to being in a weight room after the many hours I’d spent in the prison gym. The clang of iron and the smell of exertion was the same. But it was different, too. Music played, a softer variety than had accompanied the workouts on the inside. And despite my silence and my constant vigilance, it felt strange knowing that I didn’t have to worry about being attacked in the middle of a set.
And then there were the women.
Like every inmate, I bragged that a woman was on my immediate to-do list the day I was released. That was over two months ago and I hadn’t made good on that yet. Truth was, I didn’t know what to say or how to go about it. I’d been eighteen the last time I spoke to a woman in any meaningful way and I’d been a young eighteen at that.
It was distracting, the way they flounced past in skimpy exercise clothing. I noticed the curve of hip, the swell of breast. The smell of perfume. I felt the stirring those visions and odors created. I just wasn’t sure how to act on them.
Besides, I was an ex-con. I even had a couple of jailhouse tattoos on my arms that screamed out that fact for anyone with half a clue. No woman who went to a gym like this one would be interested in a guy like me.
The guys at my job asked me to go out with them after work sometimes, but I usually steered clear. My probation officer was cool, but I didn’t want to push it. No alcohol was one of my release conditions. Guys look at you funny when you order a coke while they’re downing drafts.
Besides, I saw the women who hang out in those bars. Hard women who didn’t care about prison or your past, but were turned on by it. I didn’t want that. After I was finished with Hank, I wanted a clean start.
I switched up the times I went to the gym, trying mornings and evenings during the week and all different times on the weekends. I noticed Bobbi a week later. She’d started using the hand weights in the mornings on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
She stared intensely into the full length mirror while doing slow repetitions. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. The thin, tight muscles in her arms corded up while she lifted. She pushed herself hard, always taking each set to the point of exhaustion.
At night, lying in my small twin bed under my father’s roof, I replayed those images in my head. I started to form a plan and I wondered how I could get close to her.
In the end, she made it easy.
“Excuse me?”
I glanced up from the concentration curls I was doing. Bobbi stood two feet away, an open smile on her face.
“Do you think I could get a spot from you?”
I stared at her in surprise for a long moment. She returned my gaze expectantly.
“If you don’t mind,” she added.
“Oh. Sure.” I shook off my surprise and followed her to the bench press. She settled on the bench while I stood over her. She nodded at me and I helped her heft the bar off of the rack. I could have lifted the bar with one arm easily, but I made sure to use both.
She did eight repetitions, exhaling hard on the upward push. Her scent washed over me each time. When her arms trembled on the eighth rep, I steadied the bar and lowered it back onto the rack.
Bobbie sat up and sighed. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” I repeated, then added, “Anytime.”
She stuck out her hand. “I’m Bobbi.”
I took her hand. It was warm and alive in my palm. “Ray,” I lied without thinking, using my middle name.
She smiled then and I felt something both hot and cold cut through my chest.
That was how it started.
I spotted for her once in a while. Then it became often. After a while, it was every time she lifted.
We pressed iron. Talked about nothing. Laughed about everything.
At night, I lay in bed and was torn between how good it felt to be with Bobbi and how good it felt to know I was getting close. I dreamt of her scent, her smile.
After a few weeks, she asked to me to get coffee after our workout. I sat across from her in the Starbucks, sipping the blend she’d recommended and lost in her eyes, her hair, her perfect skin.
“You’re not married?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Ever?”
“No.”
She cocked her head at me. “That surprises me.”
“Why?”
“Nice looking guy like you? I’d think the women were lining up.”
I laughed. “Not hardly.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “You’re part of the sisterhood. You tell me.”
She eyed me for a long while with an appraising eye. After a moment, she said with a half-smile, “Maybe it’s the danger factor.”
“Danger factor?”
She nodded.
“I’m dangerous?”
She nodded again. “Oh, yeah. I think you are.”
/> I could feel the heat radiating off of her. Her eyes met mine with an intensity that should have scared me, but it didn’t. I swallowed. “Not everyone can handle danger,” I said.
“No,” she whispered back. “Not everyone.”
The motel was cheap and somehow I knew that was what she wanted. We tore the bedspread from the rickety queen and coupled furiously on the bare sheets. I came in a long cry the first time but never broke pace. When my second orgasm approached, she locked her calves around my legs and let out the longest, shuddering moan I’d ever heard.
Afterward, we lay on the sweat-soaked sheets in silence. I stroked her hair slowly and she traced her finger around my nipple.
“I don’t do this,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m married.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Saw the ring.”
“Oh.” She touched it self-consciously. “I don’t know why I stay with him.”
“Then why stay?”
She remained quiet, then sighed. “I like the illusion, I guess. Or I used to.”
“Not anymore?”
She raised her head up from my chest and looked me in the eye. “I have a degree from the University of Washington in horticulture. I was going to work for one of the wineries down in the Columbia Valley before I met Hank. Now I’m a trophy wife for a money broker in a piss-ant town a quarter the size of Seattle.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “It’s my own fault.”
“I’m still sorry.”
She nestled into my shoulder. “I’ll make a change when I’m ready.”
“You mean divorce?”
“Maybe.”
“That can be messy, I hear.”
She shook her head. “No kids. It’ll be easy enough when the time comes. It just depends on how much I want to take with me.”
I didn’t answer, but I felt the same way.
Days passed, then weeks. Every time I lay down with Bobbi, I felt like I should be experiencing some sort of satisfaction at Hank’s expense. But mostly I felt overwhelmed by her.
