The brothers stood at opposite ends of the room, each at the end of the separating table. It was a short table, but the distance was measured in years.
“We don’t have much time.” This from Henry
“How about getting me out of here?”
“That’s a little more difficult than it might seem. There will be a formal arraignment tomorrow before a federal magistrate, and bail will be set. Then … well, I have to get your side of the story.”
Cory sat across the table from Henry Rockwell and began again.…
“And that’s it?”
“All of it.”
“That’s the goddamnedest story I ever heard!” His brother ground out another cigarette.
“You don’t believe me?”
“It’s dumb enough to be true. No one, but no one but you could have gotten into such a mess.”
“I think there’s a conspiracy here,” Cory said.
“Lewis doesn’t back up your story.”
“I know, and that, combined with the death of Robinson …”
“I know Norm Lewis well,” his brother said. “He’s a responsible, conservative individual who wouldn’t get involved in any conspiracy. If by remote chance he did, why involve you?”
“It didn’t have to be me; I was merely convenient. I was the goat. The goat that would allow the real gunman to get away.”
Henry Rockwell placed his pen neatly along the top edge of his legal pad and removed his reading glasses. “What is your theory?”
“I don’t think that it is a particularly difficult thing to shoot a President. As long as the men who hold that office persist in riding in motorcades in open limousines and continue speaking at large open meetings … anyone with a rifle or pistol who’s willing to sacrifice his own life or risk capture can do it.”
“Where does that fit?”
“I was their diversion. They wanted me in that window with a rifle. Before hell broke loose, a bunch of cops rushed into the Faber Building, next door to where I was. That’s where Lewis thought I would be. Don’t you see? When the shots were fired, the Secret Service would not immediately be able to tell the true trajectory … and I would be the fall guy.”
“If you hadn’t shot the other man your rifle would not have been fired.”
“By the time tests were run, the real gunman would have been in another state or out of the country.”
“You were their insurance?”
“Why else would Lewis lie and Robinson be dead?”
“That’s a fairly elaborate scheme, when all they had to do was hire some hit man.”
“Hire who? Someone to kill the President, with the almost certain knowledge he would be caught?”
“It’s still complicated.”
“The stakes are high.”
Henry Rockwell shook his head sadly. “It all may be, Cory, but we must have corroboration.”
“Lewis must tell the truth.”
“He’s been consistent. He says that you came to him with a demand for money in order to leave the country.”
“That’s a lie!”
“We have to get something more than that.”
“Joe Page! I know he will confirm everything that happened at the club. Simple enough, we get a statement from Joe.”
His older brother leaned across the table. His hands were folded into fists that were nearly white from the pressure of his grip. “Joe Page is missing. Do you understand? No one can find him.”
CHAPTER 8
Cory Williams stood at his cell window and looked out through the heavy mesh toward the industrial section of the city. A haze hung over the area, composed of an inverted air mass containing car exhaust, industrial waste, and other pollutants. It was a depressing sight, hardly better than the graffiti-covered walls of the cell.
“Your brother brought you some clothes, Williams.” A jailor opened the cell door and threw a garment bag on the bunk.
“Thanks.”
“Court’s at ten. You better snap to.”
He made a careful toilet, using the electric razor and washing in the tepid water issuing from the small sink. He dressed slowly, methodically, as if extreme care might improve his appearance.
They came for him at nine-thirty, carrying chains. There were four of them. One stood in the cell doorway, slamming a billy club into his open palm while the others stalked him across the cell.
“There’s no need for those,” Cory said and gestured toward the handcuffs and leg irons.
“We don’t want nothing to happen to you, Cory boy.”
He was unceremoniously pushed against the wall while they cuffed his hands. One knelt by his feet, and he felt the snap of leg irons, and then a chain belt was locked around his waist, through which the handcuffs were laced with a short chain.
“This is ridiculous!”
“You better believe it.”
“Come on, buddy boy.”
They led him through jail corridors, into a freight elevator, and down into the basement. They took him through a tunnel laced with a labyrinth of ceiling pipes so low that they had to duck to make passage.
The jail abutted both the municipal and federal courts, and Cory was taken to a holding cell. The manacles and cuffs were not removed.
It was eleven before they escorted him to the courtroom. His brother sat with Henry Rockwell at the defense counsel table, and both attorneys stood when he approached.
The three men walked toward the bench.
Later, when he was taken to the defense attorney’s room, the short court appearance was a hazy remembrance, as if viewed through a veil of time.
He had pled not guilty and stood stunned as bail was set at five hundred thousand dollars.
“Of course I’ll move for an immediate reduction in bail,” Henry said.
They had taken the identical places in the small room that each had occupied on the previous day: Steve by the window, chain-smoking; Henry at the table, with his laden brief case; and Cory pacing.
“Have you guys talked to the FBI?” Cory asked.
“Of course.”
“There’s got to be verification of my story somewhere.”
“Lewis is still standing pat on his statement.”
“What about ballistics? I shot twice at the man in the far window. A comparison of the slugs to the rifling in my weapon should match.”
“They have verified that your rifle was fired, but contend you took two shots at the President and missed.”
“I couldn’t have missed at that range. What about the slugs in the other guy?”
“Mashed nearly flat. There’s no way to prove they came from your rifle.”
“You know, Cory,” his brother said, “in Massachusetts we have a mandatory prison sentence for anyone carrying a concealed weapon. The reason for the law is that guns are used for killing people. They are designed and devised and carried to harm other men.”
“For God’s sake, Steve. I don’t need moral platitudes.”
“I’ve never understood your fascination with weapons. You never seemed to like to hunt game that much.”
“I shoot well. Does that explain?”
His brother shrugged. “Why did you carry live ammunition?” The remark was an allegation.
“I’m not quite sure. It wasn’t really a conscious decision.”
“And you put a bullet in the chamber.”
“Yes.”
“Did it occur to you that you really wanted to kill the President?”
“No, of course not.”
“No one can represent you without the truth.”
“What does that mean?”
“If there was any president in recent years that you hated, it was the man in your sights that day.”
“I’m not even political.”
“The same man, the same bastard that you almost shot, made his initial reputation at our expense. He got a reputation as Mr. Clean in the U.S. Congress by railroading Dad.”
“That was never a consideration
.”
“He killed our father!”
“That’s not the way it was. I was at those hearings. You were overseas in the Navy, Steve.”
“He crucified Dad.”
The picture of his father dead in the young woman’s apartment was vivid to Cory. He had never mentioned it, either to his mother or older brother, and now that secrecy would aid in his own destruction.
Henry looked surprised and brushed the end of his nose tiredly. “You know, Cory, maybe you should consider another law firm to represent you. You need a man who specializes in this type of criminal law. Someone like Kunstler, Belli, or F. Lee Bailey.”
As a boy Cory had once lain for hours on a small creek bank on the outskirts of Deerford and watched a spring freshet erode the soil until an overhang swayed and fell into the rushing water. Enough pressure at a constant rate could do that with the quality of faith also. He knew, as strongly as if they had shouted their disbelief, that his brother and his attorney were beginning the march of disenchantment.
“What I mean,” Henry continued, “men who handle criminal work on a constant basis are better equipped than we are. I’m more at home at a real-estate closing, and your brother’s a municipal-bond man.”
“I’ll think about it,” Cory said
CHAPTER 9
When they took Cory to the visitors’ gallery, he expected Steve at the far side of the glass.
But Ginny was sitting there, on the edge of her seat. Her hands twitched nervously in front of her. She smiled when he sat down.
Cory slowly took the telephone receiver from its bracket at the edge of the glass, and she mirrored his movements. “Hello, Ginny.”
“I thought maybe you’d want something. I didn’t know exactly what, so I brought you some things to read. I didn’t really know what you like, so I brought a little bit of everything.” She was nervous, her speech fast. “I gave the shopping bag to a guard at the door. He said you’d get them later. I guess they have to check for files and stuff.”
“That’s fine, hon. You shouldn’t have come.”
“I wanted to.” Her voice now soft and forlorn. “I’ve heard a lot of things about you. I want you to know that I don’t believe them.”
He laughed. “You’re the only one.”
“When will they let you out?”
“According to latest estimates, in about twenty years.”
Her eyes widened. “You have to have a trial.”
“Of course, but it looks bleak. You look like a gamine. Did I ever tell you that?”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, someone who’s a little demure, a little fey.”
“I’m not fey. I’m wincing from all the pinches I’ve gotten on my bottom, at the Clock and Chime.”
“Listen, Gin. Every time I go over my story, I’ve always left you out. There’s no sense in your getting involved.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“Please do what I say. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on, but it’s pretty complicated. I don’t think you should come here again. I don’t want you to write or contact me in any manner.”
She looked hurt. “You don’t want to see me?”
“It’s not that. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Promise me that for the time being you won’t visit or write. I’ll contact you when things settle down. When it’s safe.”
“I think I love you, Cory.”
“Oh, God, Gin. Please promise.”
“I promise.”
She left, and he was very alone.
Later that day, back in his cell, they brought him the shopping bag of paperback novels she had purchased. They were, as she had said, an assorted lot: two science fictions, two murder mysteries, a western, a satire, and a thick book entitled, Voyager—A towering saga of men and women larger than life.
The assortment had cost her a good deal of tip money.
Cory awoke during the night, unsure of the time. A diffused light fell through the door bars and made a yellow swatch across the cement floor.
Good thoughts seldom occur during the predawn. He knew with clarity that all legal avenues would be explored, appeals would be filed, and yet he was going to spend the prime of his adulthood in a federal penitentiary.
There was only one alternative—he had to escape.
He somehow knew it was a dream but was compelled to continue acting his orchestrated role. The place was a bar and cocktail lounge with a distorted resemblance to the Clock and Chime. The other participants hunched over bar stools in front of a faceless man mixing drinks.
They were all there: Norm Lewis, Eddy, Joe, and Jerry Granville, whose heavy haunches overlapped the small stool. Cory wanted to sit down, but there was no room. He tried to wedge between them, but they elbowed him away with sufficient force to make him stumble and fall.
Ginny Shelton helped him to his feet. He smiled into her gaminelike face. She returned the smile until a nude Ruth. Lewis walked between them. Her breasts were pointed and flushed as she touched him seductively.
He was torn between a wish to make love to both women and a compulsive desire to find a place at the bar.
The face of the man mixing drinks dissolved. The features wavered and flowed together until they were hauntingly familiar. He knew the man but felt the frustration of imperfect memory as he tried to place a name with the vaguely familiar face.
It was the man in the newspaper photograph. It was the man he had killed in the building across the way.
The men at the bar turned to face him. Their features were twisted and distorted with hate. The bartender slipped under the service counter and walked toward him. Hamlike fists were raised and ready to deliver anvil-smashing blows. Cory retreated until his back was against the wall.
The two women gestured to him provocatively. The man came closer with raised fists.…
He awoke in a cold sweat.
The nightmare instantly dissolved but left inchoate fear in its wake. He left the narrow bunk to walk across the dark cell and stare out the window. Outside was a dark and forboding wasteland.
He recalled a phrase of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s: “In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning.”
Questions chased sleep. Eddy Robinson had been killed—burned to death during a hidden tryst. Joe Page was missing. It all made quixotic sense.
He knew he was caught in a convoluted conspiracy and that Norm Lews was intimately involved. If that were the case, it would be imperative for Norm to dispose of the other witnesses to the wager.
He turned away from the window. He leaned forward as if that physical act would improve his hearing.
Something was wrong.
Prior to his commission in the army, he had lived with dozens of men in long barracks. There had always, in the deepest night, been an undercurrent of sound. Tonight there were no snores, no incoherent mumbles of unhappy men, ho protesting bunk springs. It was much too quiet.
There was a nearly inaudible click from the corridor door.
Cory crossed to the cell door and clenched the cool metal bars. If he turned his head far to the side, he could see the dim shapes of men in stocking feet moving down the hall.
They were coming toward his cell.
He retreated across the enclosure until his back pressed against the corner of the far wall. It was a scene reminiscent of the nightmare that had awakened him.
They were now at the cell door. They didn’t speak, although he could hear their heavy breathing. A key was inserted in the door lock. The door creaked as it swung open.
“Where the fuck is he?”
“In the corner. Over there.”
They came toward him, and then the blows started.
Cory fell to the floor. He pulled up his legs and braced his arms over his head. The blows were delivered with short lengths of hose. They rained across his buttocks, kidneys, and legs.
“No marks,” one of the men grunted. “Stay away from the head.”
&nb
sp; The blows continued and were made doubly menacing by the silent, angerless manner in which they were delivered. They didn’t speak but continued the careful and methodical beating. There was a fourth man in the corridor outside the cell. The light was too dim for Cory to make him out clearly, but the glow of a pipe, intermittently flared in the shadows.
A blow to the solar plexus knocked the wind from him, and then another kick to the midsection, and he lost consciousness.
He awoke on the floor, with his face turned sideways in a puddle of his own vomit. The door clanked open, and he turned to see a jailor standing outside the cell with a metal breakfast tray.
“You wanna eat before, or after, you clean up that mess?”
“Who were they?” he managed to mumble.
“Who you talking about?” The jailor put the tray on the bunk.
“The men who visited me last night.”
The jailor shrugged. “I come on at seven.”
“It’s not your job, huh?”
“That’s about it, buddy. You got half an hour to eat and get ready before we swab this place down.”
Cory sat on the edge of the bunk with the tray beside him. The scrambled eggs were hard and lukewarm. He held the metal mug of tepid coffee between both hands. His body ached. His back, sides, and abdomen were pulsating with throbs of pain. The beating had been a job performed by experts.
His legs trembled as he walked across the cell to stand before the metal mirror over the sink. His face was unmarked. The eyes were bloodshot, and there were deep lines of fatigue and a stubble of beard, but no outward evidence of the beating. He stripped off his shirt. Although it seemed as if every muscle in his body hurt, he was unmarked. He turned on hot water in the sink and began to wash himself as well as he could.
He had fallen asleep on the bunk, when a club clanked between the door bars.
“Get up, buddy boy. Time for morning chores.”
Cory stumbled out of the cell, into the corridor. A bucket of soapy water squatted near a mop. “I’m supposed to mop the floor?”
The guard grinned. “It’s the maid’s day off.”
Cory groaned in pain. He bent forward to wring out the mop.
The tier that held his cell consisted of twelve barred doors separated from the rest of the prison by a heavy door at the end of the corridor. As he suspected, the other eleven cells were empty. “You don’t seem to have much business,” he said over his shoulder to the jailor, who leaned against the wall and watched him through half-closed eyes.
Game Bet Page 8
