A Garden of Vipers

by Jack Kerley

  I slipped into cutoffs, T-shirt, and running shoes a half mile short of disintegrating. At the kitchen sink I slapped cool water over my face and glanced out the window. Dani paced beside the deck table; on it something was hidden beneath my kitchen towel. I dried my face on an oven mitt and went to the deck.

  The waning day remained beautiful and springlike, enhanced by a salt tang breezing up from the strand. Gulls followed a school of baitfish in the small breakers, keening and diving. Several pleasure boats bounced across the Gulf, including a big white Bertram I’d seen a lot lately. High above, a single-engine plane banked at the far edge of the sky, so small it looked like a lost kite.

  Dani stood beside the towel-shrouded tabletop in white shorts and red tank top. Sunlight shimmered from her ash-blond hair, her big gray eyes made blue by the bright sky. I raised my eyebrows at the table.

  “A magic show? You’re going to make a rabbit appear?”

  She snapped off the towel. Centering the table was a bottle of pricey champagne iced down in a plastic salad bowl, flanked by my two champagne flutes, $1.49 apiece at Big Lots.

  Dani thumbed the cork from the bottle and froth raced out behind it. She filled the glasses, handed one to me.

  “We’re drinking to my elevation from reporter to”—she lifted her glass in toast—“a full-fledged anchor.”

  I stared like she was speaking in tongues. “What?”

  “They’re making me an anchor, Carson. I start this week.”

  “This is out of the blue.”

  I saw the edge of a frown. “Not really. I’ve felt it coming for a few weeks, caught hints. Heard a few feelers.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s June, Carson. When was the last time we had a real conversation? Early April?”

  “I was working.” I heard myself get defensive.

  “I tried to tell you a couple weeks back. But one time you shushed me and went on writing in your notepad, and the other time I looked over and you were asleep.”

  “Why not a third attempt?”

  She didn’t appear to hear the question.

  “I’ll start by subbing for anchors when they’re out. Do weekends. Get viewers used to me.”

  “They’re already used to you.”

  “People only know me as a woman holding a microphone. It’s important the audience comes to know me as an approachable presence. Someone they want to spend time with. Someone they trust. It’s like a relationship with the viewer, something you give them.”

  It sounded like the kind of hoo-hah she’d always laughed at in the past. I was wondering what I’d missed and who she’d been talking to about viewer relationships and approachable whatevers.

  “What’s this lead to?” I said.

  “Regular hours, at least for this biz.”

  “All we have now are weekends, and only sometimes at that. Didn’t you just say that’s when you’ll be—”

  “A trial period, that’s all. Break-in period. Things will change.”

  “Seeing less of each other is better for each other?”

  “I can’t help it, Carson. This is my chance to try a high-profile position. Plus the money is almost double.” She changed subjects. “You already rented your tuxedo for Saturday, right?”

  I slapped my forehead. Channel 14 was having their annual to-do on Saturday night, a formal event. I guess I’d figured if I didn’t have a tux, I didn’t have to attend; sartorial solipsism, perhaps.

  “Get it tomorrow, Carson. This is the big wingding of the year and all the honchos from Clarity will be there. I’ve got to make an anchor-level impression.”

  We sat on the deck and I listened as Dani told me things I probably should have heard weeks back. Her job change seemed rational and good for us in the long run: more time, regular hours. But somewhere, behind the hiss of the waves and gentle blues drifting from the deck speakers, I heard a faint but insistent note of discord, like my mind and heart were playing opposing notes.

  CHAPTER 8

  I arrived at the department at eight the next morning. It was quiet, a couple of dicks on the phones, digging. Most of the gray cubicles were empty. Pace Logan was sitting at his desk and staring into the air. I didn’t see Shuttles and figured he was out doing something Logan didn’t understand, detective work maybe. After grabbing a cup of coffee from the urn and tossing a buck in the kitty for a pair of powdered doughnuts, I headed to the cubicled, double-desk combo forming Harry’s and my office.

  I walked into our space, saw Harry on his hands and knees on the floor, looking under his desk.

  “That’s right. Crawl, you miserable worm,” I snarled.

  He looked up and rolled his eyes.

  “There’s a couple photos missing from the murder book. I figured they dropped down here.”

  The murder books—binders holding the investigational records of cases—had sections with plastic sleeves to hold crime-scene and relevant photos, trouble being the sleeves didn’t hold very well.

  “What’s in the pix?” I asked.

  Harry stood, brushed the knees of his lemon-yellow pants, and cast a baleful eye at the wastebasket beside the desk. It wouldn’t be the first time something disappeared over the side, got dumped by the janitorial crew.

  “I dunno. I got the file numbers. I’ll call over and get some reprints.”

  I looked at the pile of materials on his desk. Harry had been checking records and information removed from Taneesha Franklin’s office, adding potentially useful pieces to the book.

  “Finding anything interesting, bro?” I asked.

  “Funny you should ask. I was going over Ms. Franklin’s long-distance records. Here’s a couple calls caught my eye.”

  He tapped the paper with a thick digit. I looked at the name.

  “The state pen at Holman?” I said. “What’s that about?”

  “Eight calls in two days. Seven are under a minute. The final one lasts for eleven minutes.”

  I nodded. “Like she finally got through to someone.”

  Harry jammed the phone under his ear, tapped in the numbers. “I’ll call the warden, see when we can come up and hang out. You want a king or two doubles in your cell?”

  The warden was a pro, not a bureaucrat, and said we’d be welcome anytime. We pointed the Crown Vic north. Two hours later, we were checking into prison.

  Warden Malone was a big, fiftyish guy with rolled-up white sleeves and a tie adorning his desk instead of his neck. His hair was gray and buzz-cut. Loop a whistle around his neck and he’d have been Hollywood’s idea of a high school football coach. We sat in his spartan office overlooking the main yard.

  “I had the visitor logs checked,” Malone said, patting a sheaf of copies. “T. Franklin was here on Wednesday before last, nine a.m. She designated herself as Media, representing WTSJ. Ms. Franklin spent twenty-one minutes with Leland Harwood. It appears to have been her sole visit to the prison.”

  “What’s Leland Harwood’s story?” Harry asked.

  Malone leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “Low-level enforcer type, leg breaker. A couple thefts in his package, assaults. He bought his ticket here last spring, when he shot a guy dead in an alley behind a bar. A fight.”

  “The guy he killed was in Mobile?” Harry asked.

  “Harwood and some other moke got into a tussle in a Mobile bar. Went outside. Bar patrons heard a shot, found the other guy dead. Come court day, everyone in the bar swore the other guy started the fight. The prosecution let Harwood plea to man two, light time.”

  “Maybe that’s how it went down,” Harry said.

  “My boy’s an attorney in Daphne,” Malone said. “Prosecutor, naturally. He knows a lot of folks at the Mobile Prosecutor’s Office, including the lady who handled Harwood’s case. She says the patrons weren’t so in tune with Harwood’s story on the night of the action. Only when they hit the stand did they sing his innocence. Note for note, too. Like they’d had some choral t
raining, you know what I mean.”

  “Paid performances,” I said.

  “Sure sounded like it,” Malone said, tossing the file back on his desk and looking between Harry and me.

  “Harwood’s a white guy. Thirty-three years old. Probably establish a better bond with Detective Ryder. I’d suggest the visitor room, not the interrogation facility. He’ll clam in an interrogation room. But Leland’s a talkative sort in a visitor-room environment. Probably yap your ear off.”

  “Outside of chatty,” I asked, “what’s Harwood like?”

  “An eel,” Malone said. “Or maybe a chameleon.”

  “Whatever he needs to be,” Harry said. It was a common trait in the con community.

  CHAPTER 9

  “I have a new girlfriend here in the joint, Detective Ryder. She likes for me to use Listerine. You use Listerine, Detective? My little girlie thinks the Listerine keeps me kissing-sweet. Fresh, you know?”

  I looked through an inch of smeared Plexiglas at the face of Leland Harwood, babbling into the phone. It was a short-distance call: three feet to the visitor’s phone in my hand. Harwood had a scrunched face set into a head outsized for his body, like his mama birthed the head a couple years before the rest of him dropped out, the head getting a head start on growing.

  “There’s only one problem, Detective Ryder….”

  I shifted my gaze to Harwood’s hands. Scarred and ugly, tats scrawled across them, the classic LOVE on one set of knuckles, HATE on the other. Couldn’t these guys ever think of something different: DAMN/DUMB or LOST/LIFE or FLAT/LINE?

  “The Listerine kinda burns when I rub it on my asshole.”

  Harwood started laughing, a start-stop keening like the shower scene from Psycho. He laughed with his mouth wide, showing a squirming tongue and the black ruination of his molars. He tapped the glass with his phone, stuck it back to his lips.

  “Hey Dick-tective, stop daydreaming. I’m telling you about my love life. You should be takin’ notes or something.”

  “All I want to know is what you talked about with Taneesha Franklin.”

  “Who?” The outsized head grinned like a jack-o’-lantern.

  “A reporter. From WTSJ in Mobile. She signed in for a visit a week back. The sheet shows you spent twenty minutes talking to her.”

  Harwood pretended to pout. “Why isn’t the little sweetie coming to see me anymore? You’re cute, Ryder. But she was cuter. A touch plump, but I like cushion when I’m pushin’.” He did the Psycho laugh again.

  “She’s dead, Leland.”

  He froze. The smart-ass attitude fell from the milky eyes, replaced with a glimmer of fear.

  “How’d she die?” No more comedian in his voice.

  “Robbery, looks like. She took a bad beating, Leland. Torture, even.”

  Harwood leaned toward the glass. “Torture how?”

  “She had three broken fingers, Leland. That sounds like something an enforcer type might do to get information. Wasn’t that your line of work?”

  “I had a lotta lines of work, Ryder. Man’s got to make a liv—” His lip curled. I thought it was a sneer, but it turned into a pained face. He punched his sternum, belched. I swear I could smell it through the glass.

  “I’m clean. I been behaving. Taking classes. Working in the library. Being a good boy. First time I get up before the parole board, I’m out.”

  “For about two weeks. I know your type, Leland. You got no other talent than crime.”

  He grinned, a man holding four aces with a backup ace in his shoe.

  “I’m set up this time. No more day laborer. I’m made in the shade from here on out.” Harwood caught himself. Winced.

  “What is it?” I said.

  He belched again, thumped his belly with his fist. “Indigestion. A year of eating the crap they serve in this joint.”

  “You reserved your table here when you killed a man, Leland. Bon appétit.”

  “Fuck you.” He winced again. “Jeez, I need a fucking tub of Bromo.”

  Another prisoner entered the convict side of the visitors’ room, a man with piercing gray eyes and dark hair falling in unwashed ringlets. His forehead was deeply scarred between both temples, as if an ax blade had been drawn through the flesh like a plow. He was rock-muscled, and I took him for one of those guys with nothing to do but pump iron all day. I’ve never understood why prisons give violent criminals the equipment to turn themselves into weapons. They should give them canasta lessons.

  The guy walked over and sat two chairs down from Harwood, dividers between sections allowing a modicum of privacy. Harwood shot the guy a glance, frowned, looked quickly away.

  The door to the visitors’ side opened. I glanced over and saw a wide-shouldered Caucasian with curly yellow-blond hair, eyes deep-set above high cheekbones. He was dressed in a suit: silk, brown. A gold watch flashed from his wrist. He seemed guided by unseen currents in the room, pausing, turning, evaluating. Then pulling out the chair one booth over, a half dozen feet away. His eyes looked through me, then turned to the man across the Plexiglas. He picked up the phone, started a whispered conversation. A lawyer, I figured.

  I turned back to Harwood. He was spitting on the floor, wiping away saliva with the back of his hand.

  “I’m done talking, Ryder. I’m sorry about the little sweetie. She was nice. Sincere, you know. But naive.”

  “Naive?”

  “It’s a mean old world, Detective. Little sweetie-tush was too busy playing reporter to understand there are people out there who can…” Harwood paused, swallowed heavily, made a wet noise.

  “You all right, Leland?” I asked. “You’re looking strange.”

  “Flu coming on, maybe. I don’t feel good.”

  “What didn’t Taneesha understand, Harwood?”

  Harwood wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’m feeling rotten all of a sudden.”

  “Tell me about Taneesha. Then you can head to the infirmary.”

  Harwood suddenly stopped speaking and looked into his lap. His eyes widened.

  “Jesus.”

  “What is it, Leland?”

  “I pissed myself, and didn’t even feel it. What the hell’s happening?”

  He dropped the phone to the counter and stood unsteadily. His blue institutional pants were dark to the knees with urine. His face was white, his hair sweat-matted to his forehead. He convulsed from somewhere in his midsection, dropping to his knees, toppling the chair.

  “Guard,” I yelled to the uniformed man in the corner of the visitors’ area. “Sick man here.”

  Harwood clung to the counter with his tattooed fingers, weaving. I watched him shudder to restrain vomit, saw his cheeks fill, his mouth open. A flood of yellow foam poured over his tongue. His eyes rolled into white and he slid to the floor.

  Doors on the containment side burst open and two uniformed men rushed to Harwood. He convulsed on the floor, heels and head slamming the gray concrete. His bowels opened.

  I suddenly found myself alone on the visitors’ side, the man beside me having retreated from the horrific spectacle. The monstrous convict visitee was still across the glass, watching as the two guards rolled Harwood onto a stretcher. I saw the convict lean over for a closer look, his eyes a mix of fear and concern.

  Then, for the span of a heartbeat, I saw him smile.

  We pulled away from the prison. Harwood had been taken to the infirmary. When we’d gone a couple miles, I climbed in the backseat, lay down with my hands behind my head. Harry and I had traveled this way often, him driving, me reclining in back. When I was a child and my father’s psychotic angers would infest his brain, I slipped from the house and hid in the backseat of our station wagon. A backseat felt secure to this day. It wasn’t the officially sanctioned method of travel, thus we limited it to back roads and anonymous highways.

  “Harwood exploded like a volcano?” Harry asked the rearview mirror. “Think it has anything to do with our case?”

&nbs
p; I thought a moment. “He was a smug smart-ass, a gamester,” I said to the back of Harry’s square head. “Probably didn’t make a lot of friends. Could have been payback.”

  “Or just some bad prune-o,” Harry said, referring to an alcoholic concoction brewed up in prisons everywhere. “What’d he say about Taneesha?”

  “He was being a funny boy, but when I mentioned her murder it was like throwing ice water in his face. He serioused up a bit, said she was naive and didn’t know how the world worked. And that he was going to be set up when he got out. He wasn’t going to be a day laborer anymore.”

  “Set up? Like being taken care of financially?”

  I said, “That’s what I took it to mean.”

  “So Harwood thought Taneesha didn’t know how the world worked?”

  “We’ve met a hundred guys like Harwood, Harry, how do all of them think the world works?”

  Harry thought a moment. Looked in the rearview.

  “You got enough money, you do what you want. When you want. To whoever you want.”

  “That about sums it up,” I said.

  CHAPTER 10

  To Lucas it looked like any deserted warehouse near the State Docks: brown brick, busted windows with boards behind, shattered glass on the sidewalk. There was a single door in front, rippled steel painted green, the kind of closure that retracted upward. A loading dock was to the side, strewn with crumbling pallets. He could smell the river in the distance.

  Lucas took a seat on a short wall a quarter block away, dropped shoplifted sunglasses over his eyes, and watched as twilight settled in. Friday night would be a good night, Lucas figured. If, that is, the name his five hundred dollars bought wasn’t bogus. If he’d been lied to by the guy, he’d go back to that bar and cut the obese bastard’s lying throat—what was his name? Leroy Dinkins?—slice Leroy’s fat throat open like a—

  “Clouds, Lucas. Concentrate on the clouds.”