Larry pointed to a light moving along the far lakeshore. “The cops are down by the zoo,” he said. “Let’s get to the water.”
They hustled between giant ash, down the hill, across the road, and to the boathouse. Larry led the way around the building, heading to an L-shaped aluminum dock that reached into the lake. Eight plastic paddleboats floated motionless in the water.
“You left your stash here?” Peter whispered.
“Six years ago, before I went inside.”
“A thousand people come here every day.”
Larry clucked his tongue. “Best place to hide shit is right in everybody’s face. Wait here a second.” He knelt on the dock, crawled to the end of it, and then scampered back. “The paddleboats are tied down with wire, padlocked to eye hooks in the dock.”
“And?”
“And you need to swim under the dock and loosen one of the hooks so we can take a boat.”
“Think about what you’re saying,” Peter said. “We don’t have time to shoot smack and get laid, but we have time for paddleboating?”
“Two jokes in one day,” Larry said dryly. “You’re on fire.” He pointed to the water. “Get under there.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I told you I can’t swim. Can’t even dog-paddle,” he said, exasperated. “I’ll drown, and then you’ll have to face Garrett alone—without the stash. Think about that.”
“Aw, cripes,” Peter said. He shook his fist at nobody in particular and then began to strip.
“Slower, shithead,” Larry whispered. “You’re making too much splash.”
“I just want to get there.”
The convicts pedaled the two-person boat away from the boathouse, toward the black stalks of trees on a tiny island.
From across the lake, the angry snarl of a caged tiger slashed the silence. Goose bumps erupted on Larry’s arms.
“Jesus, you hear that?” Peter whispered. “Is that from the zoo?”
“Mm-hm.”
“I hope that thing ain’t escaping, too.”
“All that time locked up together and tonight I find out you’re a comedian,” Larry said.
The cat snarled again—a high-pitched ripping noise.
Larry clutched the side of the boat. He was already surrounded by death in the little craft. They had found no life preservers at the boathouse, and Larry swam like a hunk of marble. “I might drown out here,” he said, “but I refuse to be eaten.”
In a few minutes, they approached the teeny island, not much bigger than a whale’s back. They aimed into it. The boat’s plastic hull ground against sand and roots and became beached. They climbed out into a grove of skinny pine and silver birch, thick underbrush, and a soft, damp rug of moss. Larry could smell the wet earth under his feet. He reached down, tore up a handful of moss, and stuck his nose in it. “Never smelled anything so good, even when I was free the last time.”
“Where’s the stash?” Peter asked. He sounded impatient.
“Other end.”
They fought through underbrush, heading toward the other side of the island. They sank into the wet moss and made suction noises when they lifted their feet. Plup! Plup!
“In that stump,” Larry said.
The stump was two feet high, half as wide, and was decaying to mush. A determined person could have pulled it apart with his bare hands. The center of the stump had rotted out and had been filled with coarse sand.
Larry began to dig out the filling. He paused to watch the police car and its cone of light as the cops crested a hill across the lake and then dipped out of sight.
Peter stood aside. “Where did you get this stash?” he asked.
“It’s a week’s worth of productive work. An Exxon station, a nightclub after closing, the lottery drawer of a Seven-Eleven.” He reached deep into the sand and found something. “Heeeeeello! Tell our two contestants what they have won on Digging for Dollars.”
He pulled out a package wrapped in plastic, slightly bigger than a softball.
“My pistol,” he said casually, rolling it aside. “We may need that.”
He dug some more and pulled out another pack in plastic. He rolled it toward to Peter. “Rip it open and count it,” he said. “I had three packs of two grand and one of three.… Here’s another one … and another.” He fished deeper into the stump, growing excited about their chances of actually escaping all the way to Canada, because nothing smoothed problems like cash.
“And Garrett laughed at me for hiding my shit in here,” Larry said, a smack of “I told you so” in his voice. “Hmmmmm … ah, got it.”
He pulled out the last pack of cash, looked at Peter, frowned, and then said flatly, “You fuckin’ double-crosser.”
Peter leveled the pistol at Larry’s face. “Put the dough down and get behind the stump,” he ordered.
“Garrett should have punctured your lung before we left the room.”
“The money.”
“I should have insisted,” Larry said, “or done it myself.”
Peter motioned with the pistol for Larry to drop the money.
Would he really waste me out here?
Larry didn’t know Peter Shadd well enough to be sure. But no altar boy ever got assigned a cell with the Nickel-plated Outlaw, so it had to be possible that Peter could pull the trigger.
Larry dropped the money, spat at it, and then moved behind the stump.
Keeping his eyes—and the gun—directed at Larry, Peter gathered up the cash and stuffed the packs in his jumpsuit. Then he backed away, retreating all the way across the island.
“What can you do?” Larry asked, keeping his voice low. “Kill me here? The cops will hear the shot.”
With his foot, Peter pushed the boat free.
Larry stumbled toward him. “I can scream for the cops,” he threatened. “If I scream, they’ll be here in two minutes. I’ll do it.”
Peter sat on the left side of the boat and pedaled backward from the island. He put the gun away.
Larry stepped into the water. The paddleboat’s tiny wake lapped at his knees. The water paralyzed him; it grew so deep so quickly and seemed pleased to suffocate him if he lost his balance. He could go no deeper.
He couldn’t yell for the cops, either. Peter had called his bluff—after smelling the land, Larry could not betray himself by screaming for the police to take them both back to prison.
Peter turned the boat in an arc and headed for shore. With just one man aboard, the craft listed to the port side.
“I’ll kill you,” Larry promised, his voice barely above a whisper.
Peter probably couldn’t hear him. But he’d know.
twenty-three
The café’s patio overlooked the cobblestone Riverwalk, which bustled with people moving at two speeds: Half were in a hurry; half had no place to go. Below them, the river followed its man-made canal of granite into a round basin, where Martin’s wife had often dragged him to see Shakespeare performed in a Rhode Island accent. Beyond the basin, the river vanished beneath the mall, where Martin’s favorite juror had been found dead, his skull broken.
The sky was bright. Sunlight skipped off the river and blinded him. Martin stared down the canal, listening to two voices: one from across the table, the other in his earpiece.
His tenderloin had arrived on a gold plate, presliced and arranged in a fan around a spiral tower of red Bliss mashed potatoes. Martin rarely ate so fancy a meal. A covert hamburger at the Haven Brothers diner, down by City Hall, usually satisfied the inner carnivore he kept secret from his vegan wife.
He liked the view from the patio. He could see the best of the “new” Providence—the river park, the graceful arched bridges, the new office buildings, which combined brick and glass to look modern and classic at the same time—all built upon the ruins of what the Los Angeles Times had once described as “a dreary little mob town.” The view of the new Providence gave Martin hope that he could still puncture Ethan Dillingham’s case again
st Peter Shadd, though he was running out of time.
“Martin?” Carol said. “Are you listening?”
“Mm-hm.” He jiggled the earpiece deeper.
“Want to run away together?”
“Absolutely.”
“Let’s invite your wife to a bullfight.”
“Mm-hm.”
She threw an olive at him.
“What?” he cried, indignant, wiping the wet spot on his shirt.
“I knew you weren’t listening.”
Martin held up his tiny radio. He said, “It’s this asshole from the talk show—Pastor Guy. I don’t know why I ever subpoenaed him.”
“You wanted him to testify because he’s a minister, he’s semifamous—at least by voice—and he’s the only person outside of prison who knows Peter personally.”
Martin held up his hand. “Commercial is over,” he said. “I should hear this.”
Pastor Abraham Guy continued his radio rant:
“So how do we LOVE an enemy who takes advantage of us?” he raged into Martin’s ear. “An enemy who steals what we have earned through HARD WORK, who cheats our elderly out of their pennies, who hurts our children, mugs our sisters, and robs our brothers at the point of a gun?”
Carol turned her palms up, asking, “What? What?”
Martin put a finger to the earpiece, like an FBI agent on a stakeout. His other hand grabbed a fork and stabbed a slice of steak.
The voice in his ear continued:
“In my career doing GOD’S WORK, I have tried to bring the ministry to the enemies of hardworking folk—that’s right, I have carried the Scripture WITHIN THE WALLS of the state prison, and more than once …”
Martin grumbled, “More than once? More like every week for five years. I hate this guy—he’s so afraid of getting tarred as too liberal.”
Carol folded her arms and scowled. “I can’t hear what he’s saying,” she reminded him.
Pastor Guy ranted along:
“… What can one poor minister do where the government of the state of Rhode Island has failed so miserably? Our judicial system is an ABOMINATION. The jails are so near full. How long before the ACTIVIST JUDGES say we must release the short-timers to make more room? Does this make you feel safer for your children?”
Martin groaned. Carol reached for another olive. He explained, “He’s setting up a tough-on-crime position for his run for governor.”
“On his show?” Carol asked. “Aren’t there campaign rules about that?”
“Politicians make the rules for themselves, so there’re loopholes,” Martin explained. “Until he declares himself a candidate, he can say what he wants, and the radio station doesn’t have to give any opponent equal time.”
Pastor Guy fumed:
“We will be releasing people back into society who ARE NOT READY to go back. Where is the rehabilitation in our prisons? We ought to be transferring these potentially dangerous criminals to facilities in other states if we don’t have room to hold them here. Sure it costs money, but how much are we willing to pay for peace of mind? I’ve been in our prisons, folks. I’ve looked into eyes BRIMMING with evil. Eyes that could belong to THE DEVIL HIM SELF—that’s what I’ve seen in there.”
Martin slapped the table in anger. “Asshole!” he shouted.
Carol nodded and smiled to diners nearby, then glowered at Martin.
“Half of what he says is wrong, and it’s killing my strategy in Peter’s case,” Martin said, disgusted. “He says the prison is full of evildoers.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Mostly—but how can I call him as a witness now? I’m trying to portray Peter as the class dunce who got in over his head.”
“You have deposition transcripts,” Carol reminded. “Pastor Guy told you—under oath—that Peter was mild-mannered, respectful, interested in the Bible.”
Martin said bitterly, “I didn’t think to ask the son of a bitch if he had seen evil in Peter eyes.”
She shook a finger at him in jest. “That’s no name to call a pastor.”
“He’s a politician,” Martin said, staring off to a yellow-brick cupola on top of the mall. “At his core, he’s a self-promoting asshole—any accidental noble qualities are secondary.” He yanked out the earpiece. “It’s risky now to call him to testify. I could use his deposition transcript to keep him on the reservation during my direct exam, but I don’t know what he could say on cross.”
He chewed cow. “But I don’t have much else,” he admitted. “Larry Home has been more credible that I had expected—it’s damning for Peter to be seen in cahoots with his cell mates.”
“He escaped with them,” she said. “I’d call that cahoots.”
“If I can’t separate Peter from those other two thugs, we’re screwed.”
Martin grabbed his steak knife. The blade reflected the sun. He stared at the knife, at the tiny serrated teeth that moved so easily through the beef. He saw his reflection in the silver.
He had an idea.
“Pen!” he called out.
Carol dug a red felt-tip from her alligator purse. Martin snatched it and furiously scribbled his thoughts on a starched linen napkin.
“Are you separating Peter from the other escapees?” Carol asked.
“Don’t have to—any one of our jurors would have escaped that night, too. Just like Peter Shadd. I only have to show them why.”
He wrote. She waited a full minute.
“Why?” she begged.
Martin stabbed the knife into the table and stuck it there. “Because if Peter didn’t go, Garrett Nickel would have cut out his guts.”
“Is that a fact?”
“It’s a possibility,” he said. “With a maniac like Nickel, wouldn’t that be enough?”
twenty-four
Ethan Dillingham stood at the far end of the jury box. As any good lawyer knew, if he could hear the witness clearly from there, so could the jury. His voice rang a little thinner than usual that morning, after three long days leading the direct examination of Lawrence Home.
“When we left off yesterday, Mr. Home,” Dillingham began, “you had testified that the defendant, Mr. Shadd, menacingly pulled a gun on you.…”
Martin bounced up. “Objection!”
The judge glanced at the clock. “Two minutes past nine and we have our first objection,” he said. “Could be a new record.” He read Martin’s mind, and told Dillingham, “Let’s do this thing with less colorful adverbs, okay?”
The prosecutor lifted his chin an inch to acknowledge the objection as minimally as possible, then continued. “And so after Mr. Shadd pointed the gun at you, and left you stranded on the island in the lake, what did you do?”
Three days on the witness stand had started to wear on Larry Horne. His hair had grown greasy. The flesh under his eyes had softened and puffed up. He had been a competent witness all three days, describing the escape and Peter’s betrayal. But he suddenly seemed agitated. Martin had watched Home as the sheriffs escorted him to the stand. He counted three dirty looks toward Peter. Home had ended his testimony the day before by describing the double cross. Maybe he had been stewing over it all night.
Let’s hope so.
“I waited awhile, thinking maybe he’d turn back,” Home said.
Martin made a note. That seemed like a lie. He took his eyeglasses from their case and slipped them on. The spider clung to the lens over Martin’s right eye. It looked as big as a bearskin rug. Martin eased the glasses off and closed them back in their case.
“The sun started coming up,” Home said. “I had to do something, so I tore my shirt into strips and lashed a bunch of sticks together.”
“To make a raft?” Dillingham asked.
Horne frowned at him as if he were an idiot. “To make a little float I could hang on to and kick my way to shore.”
“And you made it?”
“Actually, I got halfway back and drowned,” he deadpanned. He raised an eyebrow and looked away, as if to say
, What’s with this guy?
Jurors giggled and smiled at one another.
Martin bit his lip. The jury knew that Home was a punk, but they liked him anyway. They had come to see him as an amusing rouge, which was dangerous for Peter. The only juror who seemed unmoved by Home was William Povich, but who knew what Povich was thinking? He was inscrutable behind a wrinkled brow and lively eyes that scanned, never stared.
“Mr. Home,” Judge Palumbo scolded.
Horne looked up at Palumbo, shrugged, and complained, “It’s a stupid question, Your Honor. If I’m here, I must have made it.”
Even Palumbo broke into a tiny smile. He glanced to Dillingham and said playfully, “This court does not discriminate against stupidity, but perhaps Mr. Dillingham would like to rephrase?”
“I would, sir,” Dillingham said. He chuckled at himself and then said to the judge, “We lawyers have long appreciated this court’s tolerance for our less insightful moments.”
Martin was shocked. Self-deprecating humor from Ethan Dillingham? The jurors adored it. That little joke was Dillingham’s finest moment in three days, and the first time he had connected with the jurors as a human being.
The bastard.
Dillingham flattened his smile, turned to Home, and corrected himself. “What I mean to ask is, how did you make your escape without being apprehended?”
Horne shrugged. “Little bit of luck—I made it to shore and then laid there to rest. The sun was up. By then I knew the prison was looking for us, so I had to get out of the orange pj’s, right?”
“Mm-hm. Go on.”
“So I crawled across a road into somebody’s backyard, okay? And they hadn’t brought their laundry in from the clothesline, so I helped myself to some painter’s pants and a couple shirts. The fit was real good. Maybe a tailor lived there, I dunno. I stuffed my jumpsuit in their trash and then tested out my new clothes in the neighborhood. It’s important to look casual, see? Take it slow. If you gotta run, you better be in gym shorts, or you’re gonna look suspicious. That’s what Garrett used to tell me. I thought maybe he had read that in the Bible.”
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