"You'll feel plenty hot, homeboy, once they got your throne all wired up." The guard's laugh was derisive, full-throated.
"I was just thinking that the chair ain't a bad way to go," Popcorn muttered. "Now I ain't so sure."
"Oh, it's not bad. Lethal injection is better, though." The guard's voice was matter-of-fact, just slightly tinged with cheerfulness.
"You don't say," Popcorn's voice was saying as Remo settled back on his cot.
"Yeah, once they cannulate the vein, the worst is over."
"What's 'cannulate'?"
"It means they plug in an intravenous line. It's fascinating to watch how they do it. They plug you in and the execution technician stands on the other side of a wall. First he pumps in something to knock you out. Then they squirt in the curare to paralyze your muscles. And then comes the show-stopper, potassium chloride to arrest your heart action."
"Doesn't sound all that quick to me," Popcorn said doubtfully.
"It's quicker than Sparky. Sometimes-"
"Don't tell me no more!" Popcorn said quickly. "I know all about Sparky. They zap you and you breathe your last right then and there. If you lucky."
"They never go that quick," the guard said informatively. "Remember that big black buck, Shango?"
"Now, don't you be callin' Shango no buck!" Popcorn snapped. "He was a righteous dude."
"Remember when the lights flickered the morning he went?"
"Yeah."
"Remember how many times?"
"No! Stop talkin' at me! I can't think no more!"
"Four times, Popcorn, Count 'em. Four. The first time the leather strap holding the electrode to his leg burned clean away. They had to shut off the juice to fix it. And Shango sat there all strapped in for his last ride, his head lolling off to one side, and there was smoke coming out of his ears."
"No way! No way, man! Shango went out wearin' a hood. No way you could tell if his ears be smokin'. You lyin' to me, motherfuck, you tryin' to rattle me."
"Now that you mention it," the guard admitted, "the smoke was coming up out from under the hood. We only found out after they took the hood off that it was coming out of his ears. The executioner said it was the first time he'd ever seen it. Usually smoke comes out of the mouth or up from the shirt collar. I guess the chest hairs burn or something. But you don't have to worry about that, boy. You're too young to have much chest hair."
Popcorn said nothing.
The guard went on. "Anyway, where was I? Oh, right. They jolted him again once they replaced the strap, but the doc found a heartbeat. So they had to hit him four times."
"Did he move?" Popcorn asked in a pathetic voice. "Did he say anything while this was happenin' to him?"
"He couldn't. The electricity, it freezes the muscles. Paralyzes your lungs too. You sit there, can't move, can't breathe, smelling the smoke of your own burning hair while your brains cook like eggs."
Suddenly the unmistakable sound of violent vomiting came from Popcorn's cell. And suddenly Remo smelled the breakfast eggs he had flushed down the toilet.
"Did you have to do that?" Remo demanded in a loud voice.
The guard suddenly appeared in front of Remo's cell. He was grinning broadly.
"My mistake," he said. "I forgot they serve eggs on Mondays. Well, one good thing came out of it. When your turn comes, Williams, I won't have to waste my breath repeating all the grisly details to you."
Remo grabbed the cell-door bars tightly. "Why, you-"
"Temper, temper," the guard cautioned. "Oops, I think I hear the executioner man tapping on the Door of Doom."
The guard went away and opened the squealing door.
"All done?" he asked, suddenly serious-voiced. "Good. Come on, then. Let's get you out of here." The two men went past Remo's cell quickly, but not so quickly that Remo didn't catch a glimpse of the executioner's face. The sight triggered a cold shock in the pit of his stomach. There was something familiar about that furtive, weathered face. But the man passed from view before Remo could see it clearly.
"Sorry I had to take you in through the row," the guard was telling the other man, "but I figured it would be quicker."
The other said nothing in reply, and the first door control buzzed open.
The guard's voice rang back. "I'll send someone back with a mop," he promised. "Unless you want to consider it a second helping."
The guard's laughter was swallowed by the closing doors and a renewed spitting coming from Popcorn's cell.
"If he comes back," Remo said, "I'd throw it in his face. What have you got to lose?"
"He won't come back," Popcorn said miserably. "He know better than that."
"Probably."
"Hey, Remo?"
"Yeah?" Remo said, noticing the unexpected use of his first name.
"Remember what I said about the yard?"
"Yeah. "
"Well, it back on. I'll take Crusher over having my brains sizzled any day."
"We go to the yard today, you know."
"Today?" Popcorn croaked.
"Today. "
"Shit. I forgot it was today. Shit. I done ate my last meal, then."
"I wouldn't go up against Crusher if I were you."
"My life ain't worth the squirt that brought me into the world, man. I want my death to amount to something. You my only friend in the joint, Remo. Shee-it."
"What?"
"I just realized I threw up for the last time. And now I'm gonna take me a last piss." The zipper sound came next.
"Why don't you save it?" Remo suggested. "For what?"
"For Crusher."
"Good thinkin'. Uh-oh, here come the man with the mop."
A guard pushed a steel-wheeled cart with one hand and carried the mop in his other. He had trouble managing both tasks simultaneously. The mop slipped from his held-high grasp and he cursed and let the yarn head fall. He was dragging it after him as he passed Remo's field of vision.
Popcorn's cell grated open and the guard said, "I'll trade you. A new mop for an old tray."
"Deal, sucker," said Popcorn.
"Hurry it up. I gotta wait for the mop."
"Be just a second." The mop made sloppy sounds in the adjoining cell.
Remo, contemplating the ceiling, was suddenly aware of the guard staring at him through the bars of his cell.
"The night shift has been talking about you, Williams. "
"Good for them." Out of the corner of his eye Remo noticed the guard clutched a folded newspaper in his hand. His eyes kept going back to the paper. It was a tabloid.
"Ever been in Yuma, Williams?" he asked.
"No."
"How about Detroit?"
"Never."
"Then you got a twin who should be on the Letterman show or something."
"I'm an orphan."
"They call him Dead Man too," the guard said.
"Who?" Remo forced his voice to be bored. But curiosity was creeping into it.
"Your twin. The one they call the Dead Man."
"We're all Dead Men on this block," Remo said. He shifted position so that he could see the foldeddown top of the newspaper. The upside down headline seemed to say: STARTLING NEW EVIDENCE. SAME ASSASSIN KILLED ROY ORBISON, LUCILLE BALL, AND AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI!"
Remo didn't have to look any closer. The guard obviously had hold of a copy of the National Enquirer. Remo instantly lost interest. Only morons read the Enquirer.
"Well, this Dead Man makes Schwarzenegger look like Rick Moranis," the guard was saying as he opened the paper. "Says here he was sighted in Arizona breaking tanks with his bare hands during the Japanese occupation."
"Can't be me," Remo said. "I was born after World War II."
"The Japanese occupation of Yuma, Arizona. Last Christmas."
"If you believe the Japanese invaded Arizona," Remo grunted, "then I guess you can believe a man can break a tank with his bare hands." He sighed. Sometimes the guards had it worse than the prisoners. Most prisoners got out, one w
ay or the other. But most guards were lifers in their way. It often took a toll. Some went mean. Others got simple. This guard was obviously one of the simple ones.
"They must have buried you pretty deep in Jersey for you not to know about the Japanese thing last Christmas."
"Never heard of it," Remo said.
Popcorn's voice broke in. "I'm done," he said. The guard retrieved the mop and then came to Remo's cell for his tray.
"Mind leaving that paper?" Remo asked casually, his eyes on the paper wadded under the guard's arm.
"You know the rule. Dead Men aren't allowed to read in their cells."
"We're not allowed in the prison library either."
"I don't make the rules." And the guard went on down the line, collecting trays.
When the din began to settle down, Popcorn called out, "Why were you jivin' him, man?"
"I wasn't jiving him."
"You serious? You mean you didn't hear about the Jap thing last Christmas?"
"We beat the Japanese nearly fifty years ago."
"Maybe so. But a few of them snuck back and spit in Uncle Sam's face. Wonder what that Dead Man thing was he was runnin' off at the mouth about?"
"Search me," Remo said. Disinterest crept back into his voice like a sluggish tide onto a mud flat. He wondered if the guard had been trying to make a duck of him and if Popcorn hadn't joined in just to amuse himself.
The ten-o'clock head count same swiftly, and after that lunch, which consisted of leftover beef and rice from the previous day. Remo flushed the beef away and attacked the rice with eagerness. Compared to the night before, it tasted mushy, but it was rice. He ate ravenously, surprised at how much he enjoyed the rice. He never used to like rice all that much.
At three o'clock the call came. "Head count. Line up for the yard!" Remo felt his blood run cold.
"Showtime!" Popcorn said jauntily.
"You're not going through with it?" Remo hissed.
"Don't know. Maybe I'll fight. Maybe I'll hit the fence. But we'll both find out."
The cell doors all along death row buzzed open and the men stepped out in their apricot T-shirts and formed short lines between the sealed section-control doors. Then, all at once, these doors opened and they began to march through Grand Central and out into the yard.
Once out into the sun, Popcorn started for the fence. Remo grabbed him by the back of his T-shirt. "Where are you going?"
"I said maybe I'll hit the fence. Maybe I will." Remo spun the little con around. "Don't be a fool. Even if you make the first fence, the hacks'll nail you before you get to the second one."
Popcorn's eyes were bleak and flat as unpolished onyx. "A lead pill's bitter medicine, my man. But Florida juice is pure poison."
Popcorn turned to pull away, but Remo only tightened his grip.
"Oh, almost forgot," Popcorn said. He extracted a mashed pack of Camels from his dungaree pocket. A matchbook was wedged into the cellophane wrapper. He slapped it into Remo's open hand.
"No time for a last smoke," he said with a wide, devil-may-care grin. "Don't want to cut my breath for runnin'."
Those were the last words that Mohammed "Popcorn" Diladay ever spoke, because so suddenly that Remo received only a momentary sense of an approaching shadow, Crusher McGurk suddenly loomed up behind Popcorn. He towered over the little con like a human mountain.
Popcorn's eyes read the look on Remo's face and started to lift to the sky. His mouth opened to speak. He never got the words out.
For Crusher McGurk gathered Popcorn up bodily and turned him around. He brought his blubbery mouth to Popcorn's own surprised lips and attacked it like a human leech.
Popocorn's feet started kicking. His fists flailed. Remo moved fast. But not fast enough, because with a horrible animal cry, McGurk suddenly reared back, his mouth bloody. He dropped Popcorn to the shimmering asphalt and threw his head back, howling.
Remo froze, thinking that McGurk had gotten the worst of it. Then he saw Popcorn, quivering on the ground, trying to hold the squirting blood in his mouth with both hands.
And Crusher McGurk, his head thrown back triumphantly, made a show of swallowing what was in his mouth.
"You son of a bitch!" Remo blazed. He lunged for the burly con. McGurk lifted one massive paw and tried to swat Remo away. Remo ducked under the blow. He was conscious of the other inmates closing in, trying to keep the fight from the guards as long as possible.
"Take his head off, McGurk!" one hissed vehemently. McGurk's other hand swept around. Remo's forearm, all lean muscle and bone, shot up to intercept it. McGurk's fist struck and bounced off. McGurk howled and grabbed his injured hand. He froze, looking at his bone-shocked arm with stupefied eyes. Their focus passed his hand and locked on Remo.
"I'm gonna have more than your tongue, cop," he roared. Too loudly, as it turned out.
"Riot in the yard!" a guard howled.
Remo knew he'd have only a minute at most. He kicked McGurk in his huge beer belly. McGurk doubled over and Remo broke his front teeth with his fist. McGurk spit out more blood. This time it was his own. He went down on one knee as the guards started shoving and clubbing at the outer circle of inmates. Remo knew he would have to finish McGurk here and now if he wanted to live to see the electric chair.
Then a strange thing happened. Like sharks sensing blood, the other inmates turned on McGurk. He was kicked on all sides and rabbit-punched in the face.
Shock must have paralyzed the big convict, because he simply crouched there like a deformed idol as blow after blow rained down on him. But stubbornly, he wouldn't fall. Remo came around to the side and, without thinking, chopped at the back of his thick neck with the side of his open hand. The first blow sounded meaty; the second made a crunching noise.
Remo stepped back. Crusher's eyes rolled up in his head. His mouth went slack, but amazingly, he held his position, as if his body was unable to comprehend the damage done to it.
Then a convict came out of the packed crowd carrying a weighted sock. And while two others held McGurk, he laid blow after blow on McGurk's dumbfounded face.
In the time it took for Remo to step back two paces, Crusher McGurk's face had become a mask of chewed meat. But that didn't stop his attacker, a black man with only four fingers on his left hand. He continued to wield the weighted sock until it was torn apart, spilling its contents-broken razor blades and old C batteries.
McGurk went down on his ruin of a face, and the black con, hearing the guards' approach, hastily tossed the ruined sock on Popcorn's heaving stomach, saying, "That's for takin' my finger off, dickhead."
The crowd dispersed, giving the guards room to move in.
Remo hung back. Popcorn lay on his back, his eyes wide and catching the bright sunlight like black jewels, blood oozing up between his dark fingers. Remo knelt beside him.
"Just hold on, okay?" he urged.
Little red bubbles broke over Popcorn's fingers, and Remo had to turn away.
The guards swarmed over them then. Remo was rudely pulled off and shoved to one side.
"What happened here?" the captain of the guards demanded.
Before Remo could respond, one of the inmates called out, "MeGurk jumped Popcorn. Bit his tongue off, just like he did last year. Only Popcorn had a weapon. He paid McGurk back."
"Yeah, that right," another voice added.
"McGurk picked the wrong fish this time. Serve the cocksucker right." This from the black con who had attacked McGurk with the deadly sock.
There were no dissenting accounts of the incident and the guards quickly began herding the inmates back toward the compound. The inmates hesitated. More than a few wanted to know how Popcorn was. No one asked after McGurk.
The guards on the tower catwalks fired shots into the air to get them moving, immediately training their weapons into the crowd once they had the yard's attention.
Hastily the inmates formed three lines and filed into the main building. A voice behind Remo whispered in his ear, "You don
e us all a good turn, taking on McGurk. And we appreciate it."
When his cell door clanged shut on Remo, he felt emptier than at any time since he'd found himself in Florida State Prison.
The prison remained under lockdown into lights-out. Supper was not served, and Remo wondered if Popcorn had finally cheated the chair.
He hoped for Popcorn's sake it was true.
Chapter 9
In his dreams, Remo was a free man. Except for the old Oriental.
He was scaling a sheer wall. The old Oriental looked down from the thirtieth floor of the building to the twenty-eighth floor, where Remo clung to the tinted glass facade like a human spider.
"You must move faster," the old Oriental squeaked. "I am twice your age and you lag like an old woman on a hot day." His face was a map of wrinkles, like papier-mache drying in the sun. His eyes were as clear as agates, and as hard. They looked at Remo with contempt.
"I'm climbing as fast as I can," Remo returned. The sharpness of the old Oriental's gaze hurt him in an indefinable way.
The old Oriental's mouth thinned disapprovingly over the strands of straggly beard that fluttered from his chin.
"That is your mistake," he snapped. "I am not teaching you to climb this edifice, but to use its inner strength to lift you to your goal. Arms that climb, tire. Buildings do not tire. Therefore you will use the building's strength, not your own."
Remo wanted to say that was bullshit, but he had already gotten this far by following instructions. His feet were splayed outward on the quarter-inch molding around the big sandwich-glass window. His palms pressed the glass, fingers flat, not clutching, but allowing the surface tension of his skin against the smooth glass to hold him in place. He felt like a bug.
And above him the old Oriental resumed his ascent like a monkey in a jet-black silk robe. Even the bottoms of his sandals were black as old tires.
Remo raised his hands over his head. He took hold of the molding above the window with bone-hard fingertips. He pulled downward. And like a gargantuan window shade, the facade seemed to drop under him. Except that the building stayed on its foundation. It was Remo who went up, as effortlessly as if climbing a helpful glass ladder.
Floor by floor, he followed the old Oriental until they were together on the rooftop. The old Oriental led him to a trapdoor and they slipped down into a dim hallway.
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