Key Witness

by J. F. Freedman

  The Korean’s back was to him. He was writing something down on a notepad. Korean-looking writing, Marvin could see over the short man’s shoulder as he leaned in toward the counter. The owner had heard Marvin come in—there was a bell above the door that tinkled whenever a customer went in or out—but he wasn’t going to turn around until he was ready, Marvin realized.

  Fuck this, he’d been planning on this stickup for months, he wasn’t about to wait on this asshole one minute longer.

  “Turn around.” His voice was low, calm.

  The storekeeper glanced at Marvin over his shoulder, started to turn back to his writing, then froze as he saw the gun in Marvin’s hand.

  “And hold your hands out in front of you, where I can see them. Both of them.”

  His gun hand was pretty steady. A little bit of a shake, but hell, whose wouldn’t be? He was doing good, he was handling this like a pro.

  The Korean pivoted on his heels so that he was facing Marvin across the counter, standing in the middle of the small aisle between the counter and the cabinets in back of him.

  “What you want?” the Korean asked in that singsong voice of his. Flat, no feeling to it. Marvin hated that voice, it sounded like it was coming out of a robot instead of a human being.

  “Your money, man. What the fuck do you think I want?”

  Just stay calm, man, this chump is pigeon bait. “You speak English plenty good, don’t be pulling no dumb show on me.”

  The storekeeper stared at him impassively.

  “Hey, man, come on, I ain’t got all night. Open up the damn register!”

  The man stood rooted to the floor. Silent.

  Marvin raised the gun up and pointed it right in the owner’s face, two inches away from the absurdly small mushroom-shaped nose. The man’s whole damn nose was the size of one of his own nostrils. “Open up the register right fucking now or I will bust a cap right into the middle of your face. Ain’t no difference to me, one way or the other.”

  He was sweating. Under his arms, down his chest, his crotch. He took a quick look behind to make sure nobody was coming in.

  The coast was still clear.

  The Korean stared at him a moment longer. Then he reached over and punched open the cash register.

  Marvin felt the muscles surrounding his ass relax. “Now you’re acting smart.” With his free hand he pulled a small plastic trash bag out of his pocket, held it up to the storekeeper. “Just the bills,” he commanded, “no coins.”

  Slowly, methodically, the owner started emptying out his register, drawer by drawer—twenties, tens, fives, ones. Marvin watched him like a hawk. There looked to be about three, four hundred dollars in bills.

  “Don’t forget what’s underneath,” he said, indicating for the owner to lift the drawer, to get to the larger bills that were stashed underneath.

  The owner glared at him, but did as he was told.

  There was a small stack of fifties and a couple of hundreds hidden underneath, held together by a paper clip. The owner picked them up and stuck them into the plastic bag with the rest of the evening’s take. He held the bag up to Marvin.

  Marvin indicated with his head. “The rest.”

  The Korean stared blankly at him. “No more. You see yourself.” He pointed to the empty register.

  “The money you keep in the cabinet,” Marvin told him. “Behind your back. In the bank bag.”

  The storekeeper’s eyes narrowed.

  So he’s human after all, Marvin thought. Finally. He fought back a smile.

  “The bank bag in the cabinet,” Marvin repeated. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  The man was staring at him, as if trying to see through his eyes into his brain. Then he took a step back. “No.”

  Marvin twitched visibly. “What the fuck did you say? Did I hear you correct?”

  “No.” The man spoke the word again, this time with more force.

  Marvin could feel his heart pounding in his chest like a jet airplane taking off. “ ‘No’ ain’t an option,” he said back to the man.

  “No.” A third time.

  He was sweating like a bandit. “Don’t you get it, man? If you don’t give me that money I will shoot you!”

  The storekeeper didn’t move. Not a muscle. He stood there, staring into Marvin’s eyes with his own black marble eyes.

  He was going to have to shoot this fucker for the money. “Give me the goddamn money, it ain’t no sweat off your ass. Come on, man! Don’t make me kill you, you dumb Jap!”

  Yet again; flat, emotionless: “No.”

  He lunged forward to snatch the bag out of the man’s hand but the storekeeper, surprisingly nimble, hopped a quick step back and he caught nothing but air. His hip bounced hard against the counter—he ricocheted off and then he had his pistol in the fucker’s face. Right against the Korean’s forehead.

  He’d crossed the line. The future was now—no turning back.

  He pulled the trigger, flinching from the expected explosion of sound, of blood and cartilage and hair spraying across the walls.

  The gun clicked.

  What the fuck!

  He pulled the trigger again. This time there wasn’t even a click. The mechanism was frozen right in his hand. It was useless.

  That motherfucker Raymond, with his “professional” gun. He’d paid Raymond good money for this worthless piece of shit.

  The store owner was bending down behind the counter. Marvin knew what that meant—he was going to die.

  Pure animal survival instinct got him running to the door. This was a nightmare—if he could have willed himself to vanish into thin air he would have. It felt like he was running in slow motion, the entrance receding from him, farther and farther.

  Then he was finally jerking the door open and catching a mouthful of moist night air, and as he took the first step outside to the safety of darkness there was this incredibly loud roar, like a cannon going off underneath him.

  His ass and legs were on fire. It felt like a bucket of nails that had been heated to white-hot intensity in burning oil had been blasted onto him. All the air was instantaneously sucked out of his lungs, the force of the blow was so strong and unexpected.

  His mind went black and he pitched face forward, slamming in a heap onto the sidewalk.

  THE MARSHALS AND THEIR prisoner were on schedule. They had called ahead every half hour, giving a progress report. Everything had gone smoothly, no screwups.

  They flashed their IDs at the gate. The guard in charge, a sergeant who had been sent down for the express purpose of helping facilitate this transfer, radioed upstairs to the main check-in floor.

  “I got the two marshals and their charge from Durban State here.”

  “Copy that. Send them in.”

  The sergeant pressed the button that swung the gate open and they drove down into the basement underneath the jail, passing through two more locked gates. The second gate didn’t start to open until the first gate had slammed shut, the echo reverberating loudly in the hot stillness.

  Dwayne looked out the windows. He had been here before, he knew the drill. Same way it had been every other time he’d been taken into a lockup, jail, or prison.

  The jail was huge, and it was old. A WPA project, built in 1935 at the height of the depression, it had been obsolete for decades. It felt more like a prison than a jail. The form was essentially that of a wheel; a center core extended from the basement to the roof, divided into floors two stories high. Each level was its own command center, where deputies’ lockers, information counters, and administrative were contained. Radiating out like spokes were the two-tiered cellblocks that housed the inmates. In the center of each cellblock was a corridor onto which all the cells opened.

  The marshals parked the car by the reinforced metal entrance door and unlocked the back door and helped their prisoner out. They showed their badges once again through the small barred window that was next to the entrance door. Then they unbuckled their automat
ics and took them out of the holsters that rode low on their hips and passed them through to the officer, who put them in a small secure locker and locked it. The jail deputy swung the door open so they could enter.

  The door clanged shut behind them with solid authoritative finality. Dwayne raised his shackled hands in the lead marshal’s face.

  “Soon,” he was told.

  They rode up on the elevator to the third floor. The elevator creaked slowly in fits and jerks. The doors wheezed open and the marshals led their prisoner into the two-story rotunda that was the central booking area.

  The place was busy with activity. Over two dozen men and a few women were seated on the benches, waiting to go through the procession and enter the system. They had all gotten to this sorry place for the same old reasons—get fucked up on drugs and liquor, act out festering grudges that have been building up. Or they committed straightforward serious crimes, nighttime is the right time. Domestic violence. Gang shit. Drug deals—more drug stuff than everything else put together. Most of the women, like those slouching on the scarred wooden benches, bored, numbed-out expressions on their overly made-up faces, were in for prostitution. Blow jobs in cars, not two-thousand-dollar nights in high-priced hotel rooms. A smattering of the male arrestees, openly gay, lounged together on their own bench, away from the others.

  The half dozen deputies on duty stopped what they were doing and turned to look as Dwayne, wearing his penitentiary-issued clothes and metal chain on his person, walked out of the elevator and was escorted by his marshal transporters to the booking desk.

  The lead marshal pulled a folder out of a manila envelope. “We are hereby officially transferring custody to you of Dwayne Thompson, inmate #3694, Durban State Penitentiary,” he told the sergeant in charge. “Sign here.”

  The sergeant signed the documents and handed them back. “He’s all yours,” the marshal said.

  Dwayne was patiently waiting with his hands outstretched. The other marshal unlocked the shackles from Dwayne’s waist, then the handcuffs. Dwayne stepped out of the pile of metal at his feet, rubbed his wrists to start the circulation going again.

  The marshal slipped the cuffs onto his belt loop and scooped the shackles off the floor, cradling them in his arms. “See you in a couple weeks, old son,” he told Dwayne. “Don’t fuck up too bad.”

  Dwayne looked at him sideways. The marshals got back on the elevator, and the doors closed behind them.

  “You’ve been here before,” the sergeant said to Dwayne as he led him where he would begin to be processed in. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Couple times.”

  “How long since it’s been?”

  “Four years.” And four months, twenty-three days. He knew how much time he had done—to the day, and in which prisons and jails—and how much he had left to do. There was more left to do than had been done already. Not counting the other stretches he’d done over the years.

  “Nothing’s changed much,” the sergeant told him. “The roaches are bigger and bolder, is about all.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “Do I need to cuff you?” the sergeant asked. “While we’re checking you into our fair establishment?”

  “I’d prefer you didn’t.”

  “Then until you give me cause, I won’t.”

  “Thanks.”

  He stood passively at the counter while a female clerk-deputy made up a housing card for him, copying down his vital information from the transfer papers. They lined him up against the wall and took a Polaroid, stapled the picture to the card. Then the sergeant led him out of the rotunda into a smaller room adjacent to it, where the formal processing took place. A complete set of fingerprints was taken, both in the computer and in traditional ink. If he had just been arrested they would have run the computer prints through the FBI in Washington, but in this case that wasn’t necessary. The ink prints were for their own records. After that, he stripped out of his prison clothes down to his shorts and faced the medical examiner, who was a male nurse. Most of the nurses in the jail were men.

  “Healthy set of pictures,” the examiner commented, meaning the tattoos.

  Dwayne didn’t reply—it was all bullshit.

  They took body Polaroids of him, front and back.

  “Any current problems, sickness? Open sores, chronic diseases? You wear glasses, a hearing aid, anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “Venereal disease. HIV-positive, AIDS, clap, herpes, whatever?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You aren’t gay, are you?”

  If someone on the outside had asked Dwayne that question, Dwayne would have torn the offender’s head off. In here it was SOP, no offense meant. Which didn’t mean he liked being asked. Sexual orientation inside prison had a whole different context than it did in the free world. Dwayne’s criterion was that if he had a choice of fucking a man or fucking a woman, he’d fuck a woman, every time.

  If he had a choice.

  He was escorted into a small cubicle with a classifications officer. Because of who he was, and what he was here for, Dwayne’s interviewer was a lieutenant, who’d stayed on after his shift had ended earlier in, the evening. The lieutenant leafed through Dwayne’s prison documents. “You’ve been a good enough soldier,” he commented, mildly surprised. “Not many bad marks, considering how much time you’ve done.”

  “I stay out of people’s ways, they stay out of mine.”

  “Good policy.” The lieutenant picked some dinner crud out of his teeth with a paper clip. “Regulations say you should be housed in protective custody. For your own safety, which I’m sure you can appreciate.”

  “I don’t want that. I’ve been taking care of myself for years without any problems. In tougher places than this.”

  “I know you don’t. But we’ve got our own interests to watch out for. You wind up with a knife stuck in your back we’re up shit’s creek.” The lieutenant paused for a moment. “No one in population knows why you’re in here. Not even most of the guards, just a handful in administration.”

  “They won’t be knowing from me.”

  The lieutenant kicked back. “This trial you’re testifying in, it’s moving slower than the proverbial glacier. They should’ve delayed transferring you down here, but the orders had already been cut. You could be with us a couple, three weeks.”

  “Time’s time. Here or Durban, it’s still time.”

  “That’s a fact.”

  Dwayne put his hands on the lieutenant’s desk. “I’m here to do the state a favor,” he said bluntly. “And since I’m doing the state a favor, I think the state should treat me nice.”

  The lieutenant looked at Dwayne. “Like how?”

  “You’ve got an infirmary here. I want to work in it.”

  “So you can get your hands on drugs? Forget it.”

  “I don’t do drugs. It’s the best work in the place, and I’ve been working infirmary duty at Durban.”

  The lieutenant was skeptical. “I don’t know …”

  Dwayne leaned in toward the man. “This is no skin off my ass, you hear what I’m saying? You treat me good, I do the same. Otherwise I’ll call the district attorney up tomorrow, tell him I’ve changed my mind about testifying, they can ship me back upstate.” He leaned back. “I’m not going to make you look bad. But I want my stay down here to be as comfortable as possible—it’s a small perk but it means a lot to me.”

  The lieutenant thought about it for a moment. “All right. But if you fuck up, you’ll do the rest of your stay in isolation.”

  “I hear you.”

  The lieutenant looked at his watch. “We’ll house you in a protective cell tonight and transfer you into the general population tomorrow.” He stood—the interview was over. “So’s we understand each other.”

  “We understand each other.”

  They gave him the customary delousing shower. His prison garments were put away for when he would be taken back to Durban.
Regulation jail clothes were issued—green T-shirt, green sweatpants, boxer shorts, sweat socks. He was allowed to keep his own shoes, Nike cross-trainers he’d bought in the Durban commissary.

  He collected his mattress, bedroll, and toiletries, and was escorted by one of the guards into the bowels of the jail.

  WYATT AND MOIRA PICKED Michaela up on the way home.

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” she commented when they told her what had happened earlier in the evening. “Poor old Mrs. Sprague. Do the police know who did it?”

  Moira stared at her daughter, wanting to make a statement. “Ted Sprague said they were young black males who looked like gang members to him. Those were his exact words,” she said pointedly, as if daring Wyatt to contradict her.

  He wasn’t in the mood to get into a fight. Later on, when everyone’s passions had cooled, they would talk about it rationally.

  “I thought the Spragues were in Europe,” Michaela said from the backseat.

  “Yes, they were,” her mother confirmed.

  “Then how come they didn’t have their alarm on?” Michaela queried. “Don’t you remember last year, when Mrs. Sprague set it off by accident at three in the morning? It woke us all up, remember? We were all running outside in our nightgowns and everything, wondering what was happening, and then the police came, and Mrs. Sprague had to make them coffee and apologize, and the people from her security company came, too, and everybody was so pissed off at her. Don’t you remember, Mom?”

  “Yes, I remember,” Moira answered. “They must have forgotten to set it.”

  Or it was an inside job, Wyatt thought to himself again, inwardly seething, but remaining quiet about it. He was going to look into that, first thing in the morning. They used the same security company—Alarms Unlimited—as the Spragues did; most of the neighbors used them. If there was a breach of security in the company, they’d better find out ASAP.

  He pulled into their driveway and parked the car in the garage.

  “I’ve got more homework to do,” Michaela told them. “I’ll finish in my room.” She kissed both parents good night and disappeared behind her door.