Key Witness

by J. F. Freedman

  Not that it actually mattered. He didn’t smoke tobacco. One brand was the same as the other, far as he was concerned. Camels had been the first brand that had popped into his mind, because of that Joe Camel character you saw everywhere, on the billboards and in the subways, a takeoff of an ultracool dude, shooting pool and scoring the bitches.

  Tobacco was a plot: evil, enslaving, you saw that message plastered on the signs in the buses, the billboards all through the south side—sometimes plastered right over that Joe Camel’s jive-ass face: a picture of a skeleton handing a lit cigarette to an innocent little black kid. Little girl in pigtails, face all clean and shiny. Big shit-eating grin on the death-head’s skull-face.

  Pass on tobacco. Smoke weed, or he would mix up some crack with Valium that was part of the contents of some old bitch’s purse he’d grabbed off the seat of her car where she had left it while she was putting coins in a parking meter. Deserve the bitch right, leave her purse on the seat with the window wide open.

  Doing drugs on a regular basis was expensive, too much for him, especially where he was at these days. The only good thing about not having money he could think of.

  He wasn’t going to have a habit—ever. Habits were for losers. Like they say on the street, if you have a regular habit that’s all you have. You deal shit, you don’t use it, unless you’re dealing it and taking a taste for yourself. Preferably you sell it to white people, ’cause they paid top dollar. They want to score and get the fuck out of his neighborhood, scared shitless, you could smell the fear on them.

  Score dope and cheap pussy, blow jobs in their expensive cars, that’s all they came down to his neighborhood for.

  Mostly, though, it was his own people who copped. Where you live is where you do business. But you got to be careful, you’re gonna do a lot of prison time if you get caught dealing if you’re black. Black dealer goes to prison, white dealer goes on parole. Check it out, Dexter had told him once.

  It was true. Still, as the saying goes, selling drugs is a living. Mighty fine one.

  Getting into dealing was going to be his next move. He was already desperate thinking about it, about the life he was missing out on. Cars, jewelry, clothes. Bitches.

  His best friend, Dexter—like a brother: blood, almost, born four days apart. Their mamas sitting out on the stoops, side by side, legs spread against the August humidity, drinking Cokes out of the bottle, baby boys bouncing on their knees. That’s how far back. Dexter Lewis and Marvin White, from the cradle. Dexter four days older, he’d pulled rank all their lives. And still did.

  Dexter was a dealer, a legitimate high roller, not some street hustler selling dime bags. Just turned eighteen and he’s a lieutenant in the city’s drug syndicate, run from the state prison by bloods: a multimillion-dollar business.

  Dexter was a prime example of how good you could do if you were willing to take chances, hang tough, be a hard-nosed businessman. Dexter had started dealing barely a year ago, and already he’s driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee, the Orvis model, top of the line—leather on leather, two car phones, CD player, he’s buying his suits three, four at a time at the most expensive men’s stores in the city. Ralph Lauren, Dexter’s very buttoned-down, nothing flashy. Rolex on his wrist, a real one, not one of those jive knockoffs. The Navigator model, understated chrome, good down to fifty fathoms. The watch cost Dexter $3,500, Dexter pays for it in cash, hundred-dollar bills, crisp like he’d printed them up himself. Whipping out his roll, peeling them off, laying them down on the jewelry-store counter. The salesman, pasty-faced middle-aged white asshole, his eyeballs bulging, checking it out, shit-eating grin on his face; “Very good, sir, is there anything else I can show you today, sir?” Salesman thinking, eighteen-year-old nigger drug dealer, pimp, I hope you choke on that watch, you socially worthless piece of shit, smiling, “an excellent selection, sir, you have excellent taste.” You could read that motherfucker’s mind like he had a window in his forehead.

  Standing there next to Dexter, watching. With less than five dollars in his own damn pocket. About as useful as a second asshole.

  This being-poor shit was going to end, and soon. Get out of the projects, get his mother off her knees.

  Six months. A year, tops. He’d be peeling off the hundreds, just like Dexter.

  Look around the Korean’s store. Take your time. Check it out. Play it cool, play it slow. Don’t rush it, it ain’t going nowhere.

  This store was a little gold mine. He’d been checking it out for months, from when he’d been a delivery boy. The block the store was located on had been part of his route, he had walked by it every day, five days a week. Once or twice he’d gone inside and bought a soda, and that was when he’d seen how much money was coming in.

  The store owner slapped a pack of Marlboros—hard box, like he’d asked for—down on the counter.

  Lay his money down, nice and polite, pocket his change, cigarettes, walk out. Casual, no big thing. Owner not even looking at him, he could’ve been a spaceman from Mars.

  VIOLET WALESKA’S FEET WERE killing her. Her ankles, her calves, her knees. Some days it felt like she’d been beaten with a baseball bat from the waist down. She had been standing on the rock-hard concrete floor, slippery from being constantly hosed down, for her entire shift, ten miserable hours, only breaking for lunch and the bathroom—but she was going out tonight and aching legs weren’t going to stop her.

  She peeled off her white pants and smock that the company furnished daily, freshly laundered and deodorized, continued stripping down to her underwear, off came her Dr. Scholl’s support hose, it all went into the big canvas laundry basket. Everything was soaking wet with her sweat and stinking to high hell; they could wash these uniforms in boiling water forever and the smell would still stick—the smell of dead, burning pigs.

  She was naked but she could care less about modesty. They were all women, over two dozen of them, old, young, short, tall, skinny, fat, black, white, and they knew each other intimately. Killing, cutting, gutting, rendering, ten hours a day, year in and year out—it formed a bond among them.

  The stench of burnt hair and rendered pigskin hung in the air like a mushroom cloud. Five acres under one roof, thousands of pigs butchered daily. They moved up the conveyor belt, four hundred pounds of sheer squealing terror, each hog’s ten pounds of watery shit running on the floor like blood, the hose washing everything away. But not the smell of death, the awful decay.

  It never went away, despite the air conditioners and industrial fans that blew twenty-four hours a day, and the quantities of lemon oil and deodorant, also provided by the company. The women lathered the stuff on at the end of every shift, after scrubbing themselves raw in the scalding showers. But it never went away.

  She stood under the shower of near-boiling needles, the steam rising up and filling the room. Standing there until the muscles in her neck and back began to stop aching, the tension flowing away like the water flowing down the drain. She had a strong, full figure—a womanly woman, nothing weak. Washing her hair, she eased herself to the floor, the water flowing under her butt, under her legs, lying on the floor of the shower on her back and elevating her legs, feeling the circulation coming back.

  She dried off with her own towels she’d brought from home, nice thick terries. When you worked this hard you had to pamper yourself. That’s why, despite the ache in her calves and ankles and feet that would outlast a two-hour professional massage, she was going to dress up in a sexy outfit and go out dancing. She was meeting a couple of girlfriends, Peggy and Paula, they’d dance with each other like teenagers, drink some margaritas, act up. And maybe she’d meet a cute guy, dance with him—some slow ones. Not that anything would ever come of it—it never did, not someone you met dancing in a bar—but a girl has to dream.

  She still had time, but not an infinite amount anymore, not very much at all. She had turned forty on her last birthday, a month ago. The dreaded four-o.

  She wanted a family, a husband: every girl
’s dream, was that so much to ask for?

  She was beginning to give up hope. But not completely; it would flare up when she least expected it. Tonight she was going to go dancing with her two best friends, and she was going to get wild. Within bounds, of course. She was more wild in thought than deed. She was an officer in her union, and she had worked too hard to get to where she was to act like someone who was like what she had come from.

  THEY BROUGHT DWAYNE THOMPSON down to the city under supertight security.

  Two veteran guards rousted him in his cell, waking him from a bad dream. All his dreams were bad. You didn’t have any other kind in here.

  “Rise and shine, bright eyes.”

  “What the fuck?” He’d barely been asleep an hour, so he was discombobulated, disoriented. His cell was windowless. It could have been high noon or the middle of the night, he didn’t know. Six of one, half a dozen the other, like he could give a shit.

  The one guard reached down and grabbed him roughly by the neck of his T-shirt, jerking him off his bunk. He had been in isolation for two weeks for breaking some chicken-shit rule, he couldn’t even remember now what it had been. The prison system had a million bogus rules, and over time he’d broken his share of them. So what—what could they do to him they hadn’t done already?

  “Grab your shit.”

  They led him down the long concrete corridor that connected his wing of the prison to the central control area. Four guards flanked him. He had a small ditty bag in his hand, everything he would take with him. It was early nighttime—he could see the sky turning as he looked out the barred windows.

  Two state marshals were waiting. His escorts. Tough old boys, ex-marines, they’d as soon break your arm or leg you gave them any shit.

  “Prisoner been to the can?” one of the marshals asked the prison guards. “Four hours’ drive, and there ain’t gonna be any pit stops. Don’t wanna hear no whining about his weak bladder or whatever.”

  “He’s done his duty,” the guard said.

  “I’ve been having the runs lately,” Dwayne ventured. “Can’t control my bowels.”

  The marshal shrugged. “Worse things in the world than shitting your drawers. Last fella couldn’t wait, we made him eat it.”

  “Least I’d have a hot meal,” Dwayne answered.

  The marshals grinned at each other. “This could be fun,” the other said.

  “Just don’t play country-western, that’s all I ask,” Dwayne went on. “That definitely qualifies under the cruel-and-unusual clause.”

  They shackled him from head to foot—waist chains connected to handcuffs, connected to heavy leg-irons—standard procedure for transporting a felon like Dwayne. The marshals double-checked the locks on his irons and signed the release forms.

  “Be careful with this one,” the deputy warden on duty warned the marshals as he handed over the keys to Dwayne’s irons. “He’s got no conscience whatsoever.”

  “We hear you,” the lead marshal replied.

  Dwayne showed no emotion at hearing this. He’d heard it before, countless times.

  Dwayne Thompson didn’t look particularly dangerous. In his late thirties, he was about average height and build, rough-handsome like the photos you see of authentic cowboys. Blond hair almost white, milk blue eyes the color of a dry sky. A woman had once told him he looked like Robert Redford, the actor, but he attributed that to drunkenness and wishful thinking.

  His most distinctive feature was the dozens of tattoos all over his body: up and down his arms, all across his chest, his legs, his back. They were real works of art—some of the most famous tattoo artists in the country had made their contribution to Dwayne Thompson’s needle-inflicted flesh. The most outrageous tattoo, also the largest, covered his entire back, neck to ass crack. It was a reproduction of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, in stunning color and detail. Except that Satan, finger extended, took the place of God.

  Dwayne’s body was tight. He kept superbly fit by doing sit-ups, push-ups, and chin-ups by the hundreds in his cell. He didn’t use the weights in the yard because he didn’t do much of anything that would put him in close contact with other prisoners. He went his way and everyone left him alone.

  At the main entrance, after clearing final security, the marshals were handed back their side arms, 9-mm automatics that could seriously hurt. They strapped the guns into their holsters and escorted their prisoner out the gates of Durban State Penitentiary, the number one maximum-security prison in the state system. They don’t sentence you to do your stretch at Durban unless you are a really bad guy with a lot of hard time to do.

  Dwayne qualified on both counts.

  He had a jacket several inches thick. Armed robbery, assault with intent to kill, forgery, rape, strong-arm coercion—you name it, he’d done it. He’d also, some years back, murdered two men in cold blood that no one except him and one other man knew about, and that man would take his secret to the grave. Of that Dwayne was certain, because he had the goods on that guy for shit he’d done, crimes that were as bad as any Dwayne had committed. So although this current stretch was a long one, Dwayne wasn’t doing life without parole.

  Except that when he finished doing this stretch there was a pending case he was going to be tried on, another felony assault—if he had a specialty, that would be it. And under the newly enacted three-strikes law in the state, if he was convicted on that one, he would be a lifer for sure.

  For now he wasn’t sweating that. When his release date came closer, he’d start thinking about it, how to work it, beat it. Right now, since he was already in, why worry about something he couldn’t control anyway?

  The marshals were moving their prisoner in a plain-wrap Ford Taurus station wagon with regular tags, a nice comfortable vehicle nobody notices. They didn’t want to attract attention, hence the unmarked car instead of one bearing state tags and door ID, or a prison bus. It’s easier driving at night, less traffic, you make better time, and there is less chance of a foul-up with the prisoner. Not that they had any worries about him trying to escape—with the quantity of metal he had on his body and the small amount of play in the leg-irons, he couldn’t run a hundred yards in five minutes. And he couldn’t go for one of their guns because his hands and arms had virtually no mobility, and anyway, he was in the security cage in the backseat, locked in. They were in the front.

  The only problem would be if they got into an accident. He could be trapped, unable to escape. The gas tank blew up, he’d be roasted.

  The odds on that were about ten thousand to one. Acceptable.

  They rode in silence except for the Garth Brooks tapes one of the marshals had brought. Dwayne hadn’t said anything when they started playing them. “Either of you have any cigarettes?” was the only thing he’d asked, shortly after they hit the interstate. They drove at a comfortable sixty-five. Outside it was overcast, the stars obscured by cloud cover.

  “Don’t smoke,” the driver had informed him.

  “Can we stop and get a pack?” Dwayne asked. “I’ll pay for them.”

  All the prisons and jails had gone to No Smoking for over three years now. It made cigarettes as valuable a commodity as marijuana or cocaine. A single cigarette could go for five bucks, a full pack for a hundred. Men in Dwayne’s cellblock had been severely beaten, and worse, over a disputed pack of contraband Pall Malls.

  The shotgun rider shook his head. “No can do.”

  They had food and water in the car, in a small hamper under the shotgun rider’s feet. After about an hour he looked back over his shoulder at Dwayne. “You want something to eat?”

  “What do you got?”

  “Ham and cheese, and turkey. And some Hershey bars. There’s water, also.”

  “Which one doesn’t have mayo? I don’t feature mayo.”

  The one who wasn’t driving pulled a couple of sandwiches out of the hamper and unwrapped them. “They both do. Mustard and mayo both.”

  “Well, shit. All right, fuck it, give me a t
urkey. And some water. And one of the Hershey’s. With nuts if you got it.”

  The marshal passed the sandwich back through the narrow slot in the bulletproof divider that separated the front seat from the rear. Then he handed back a small dental-office-sized paper cup of water, spilling some on the floor at Dwayne’s feet.

  “Sorry ’bout that.”

  “Can I have the Hershey bar too?”

  “Not unless you eat up all your dinner first.” Both marshals laughed. Then the one who wasn’t driving passed back a candy bar.

  “Gracias,” Dwayne said.

  “You’re welcome,” the marshal replied. He unwrapped a sandwich for himself, and another for the driver. “Let me know if you want me to drive at some point,” he told his partner.

  “I’m fine.”

  The tape finished playing. They ate in silence. The road passed under their wheels.

  “ARE YOU SURE YOU still want to go out?” Wyatt asked, rubbing his hair vigorously after his shower. They were upstairs, in their bedroom.

  “Well …” Moira held two different earrings up to her face, trying to decide which one went better with her dress.

  “What about Michaela? Maybe we shouldn’t leave her here alone tonight.”

  Michaela was their daughter. An only child, she was a junior in prep school. Like many only children, she was the sun and the stars to her parents.

  “No burglar’s going to come within a million miles of here tonight—isn’t that what the policeman promised us?” she said with a mocking edge to her voice, a tone he wasn’t used to hearing from her. “Anyway, in case you didn’t notice, Michaela isn’t here. She’s over at Nancy Goodwin’s working on a science project. We’d be home long before her. In fact, we could swing by and pick her up on our way back.”