Mark the Sparrow

by Clark Howard

  Klein unfolded his hands and leaned back in his chair. As he had been telling the story, his voice had become less stiff and more instructive, as if he were addressing a jury. His tone was calm, precise, exact.

  “Due to the crowded court calendar,” he continued, “the date for Billy Calder’s sentencing was still six weeks away at the time I checked on it for his mother. During that period I brought the Whitman case to trial. I also began seeing Mrs. Calder socially. The Whitman case was successfully concluded after seven trial days. Coincidentally, the date set for his sentencing was the same date set for Billy Calder’s sentencing. Since I was required to be present for Whitman’s sentencing, and since I had not up to that time had the opportunity of meeting Mrs. Calder’s son, who was being sentenced directly next door an hour later, I had the Calder boy’s case transferred from the deputy district attorney who had been handling it to me, and I represented the state when Billy Calder was sentenced. During that representation, however, I did nothing that the deputy originally assigned to the case would not have done.” Klein removed an immaculately white, neatly folded handkerchief from his inside coat pocket and blotted his upper lip. “Now then, Mr. Cloud,” he concluded, “do you think I intervened, as you put it, in this matter?”

  Before Cloud could answer, the district attorney spoke. “Whatever Mr. Cloud’s opinion, or the Ledger’s,” said the distinguished-looking man, “I want to go on record as saying that in my opinion you did not intervene in any measurable significance, and I do not consider your conduct in any way conflicting in interest.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Klein said. He looked at Robert Cloud again, then at Lew Lach. “Well, gentlemen?”

  Lach shrugged. “It was something the paper felt obligated to check,” he said by way of concession.

  “We understand,” the district attorney said. “The Ledger is a responsible publication; it should look into any matter involving possible malfeasance on the part of any public official. And I want to commend you and your editor, Mr. Hoskins, for the ethical manner in which you handled the entire affair. I’m afraid the other two papers in town would have put it on the front page first and done their investigating later.”

  We would have too, Cloud thought, if our publisher hadn’t supported you for election.

  “Well, no hard feelings,” Lew Lach said.

  “Of course not,” the district attorney assured him, smiling. The four men stood and shook hands all the way around, then Lach and Cloud left.

  “Are you satisfied now, Walter Winchell?” Lach asked as they waited for the elevator.

  “I guess I’ll have to be,” Cloud said. “But whether there was or wasn’t any conflict of interest, whether Klein is or isn’t straight as an arrow, and whether all of the witnesses were or weren’t right in their testimony, I still can’t help thinking that Weldon Whitman is being shafted. The punishment he’s been given just doesn’t seem fair.”

  Lach merely shrugged. “Who ever said life was fair?” He looked at his watch. “Listen, it’s still early and the morgue isn’t far from here. How about running over there with me so I can look at the body of that dead girl for Streeter?”

  “Sure,” Cloud said without enthusiasm. Why not? he thought. Might as well visit the dead. He didn’t seem to be doing much good for the living.

  Chapter Five

  Weldon Whitman went north to San Quentin in white coveralls and chains.

  He sat in the back seat of an unmarked car, a uniformed police officer on each side of him, his wrists cuffed together, his ankles shackled, and a restraining chain connecting the two links and then encircling his body.

  The trip began at six o’clock in the morning, two weeks after the sentencing. The car was driven alternately by a sheriff’s lieutenant and a sheriff’s sergeant; they stopped only for gas or to change drivers. The changes of drivers were accomplished on side roads next to open fields, and the men also used those opportunities to urinate. When they were hungry they ate sandwiches prepared by the jail kitchen. They drank water and coffee poured into disposable cups from thermos jugs. Throughout the four-hundred-eighteen-mile trip, there were twelve checkpoints which had to be radioed to California Highway Patrol stations. The man next to the driver kept a loaded sawed-off shotgun on his lap at all times.

  The car arrived at San Quentin at three-thirty in the afternoon. It was passed through the reception gates into the small arrival yard. Whitman’s leg-irons were removed so that he could walk into the waiting room of the processing unit. The prisoner and his guards were met by a deputy warden, a guard lieutenant, and a service guard. The deputy warden signed Whitman’s delivery papers, and the sheriff’s lieutenant released him from his handcuffs and torso chain.

  “This way, Whitman,” the guard lieutenant said. He and the service guard led Whitman through a door marked RECEIVING, into a second room which contained green wooden benches and a tripod-mounted camera in front of an adjustable stool. An inmate in blue denims stood near the camera. He glanced professionally at Whitman’s height, then lowered the stool three turns.

  “Sit on the stool and face the sign,” the lieutenant instructed.

  Whitman sat. Two floodlights bathed his face. His eyes sought out the sign, slightly off to his right: a hand-lettered card which read LOOK HERE. It was stuck over the public area of a black woman with huge breasts posed obscenely with her fleshy legs spread wide.

  In seconds the picture had been taken and the lieutenant was giving him further orders. “Strip off your coveralls and throw them in the laundry basket. Put your shoes in the wooden box next to it.”

  When Whitman was naked, the lieutenant called him over to a white square painted on the floor.

  “Listen carefully and do exactly as I tell you,” he said. “First, lift your arms all the way up with your hands over your head.” Whitman did so and the guard carefully examined his armpits. “All right, bend your head forward and run your fingers through your hair. Okay. Put your arms at your sides. Open your mouth, wide.” He shined a penlight into Whitman’s mouth, then clipped it back to the shirt pocket. “Lift your dick up. All right, now lift your balls. Now turn around, bend over, and spread your cheeks. Okay, let’s see the bottoms of your feet. Good. Now spread your toes apart one at a time.” Finally it was over. “Get a set of blue coveralls from that shelf and a pair of shoes from the bin. Sizes are marked on each section.”

  Whitman selected his clothes and dressed. Then he was led out a rear door and across a small, grass-lined yard to a building marked DISTRIBUTION. Inside, at one end of a long counter, Whitman was issued his cell supplies: two unbleached muslin sheets, and one pillowcase, two brown wool blankets, a toothbrush and a package of tooth powder, a bar of soap, a set of earphones, and a book of San Quentin rules and regulations.

  Carrying his cell supplies, Whitman was directed to the other end of the counter. There, a tall, hawk-nosed convict glanced at stenciled size numbers on the sleeves of the coveralls and the toes of the shoes Whitman had selected. Without turning around, he reached behind him and pulled out of a bin two sets of underwear and two sets of blue denims. As he started to reach under the counter for a pair of high-top, lace-up work shoes, the guard lieutenant stopped him with a shake of his head.

  “Slippers,” he said in a neutral tone.

  The hawk-nosed convict looked curiously at Whitman for the briefest of moments, then moved down the counter to a special bin and selected a pair of bluish-gray felt house slippers that only the men of Death Row wore. He put them on top of the clothes and piled it all on top of Whitman’s cell supplies.

  “This way,” the lieutenant said. In single file—the lieutenant leading, then Whitman, then the service guard—they left by the rear door of Distribution and walked down three wooden steps into the big yard.

  The yard was a long, blacktopped rectangle, bounded on the inside by outer cellblock walls, and on the outside by the forty-foot-high prison wall. It was now late in the afternoon; half the rectangle was in sh
adow, half in waning sunlight. Since it was approaching suppertime, the yard held, at that moment, about twelve hundred men.

  A walkway, separated from the yard by a foot-wide white line painted on the blacktop, extended the length of the yard next to the cellblocks. Along this walkway, Whitman was taken by the two correctional officers, carrying his pile of newly issued belongings with the soft felt slippers riding the top of the stack.

  The men on the yard nearest to the Distribution steps all paused: since he was entering the prison alone instead of in a group, he was no ordinary prisoner. And when they saw the felt slippers, they knew at once where he was going. Turning to the men nearest them, they passed the word.

  “Death-House fish,” they said in stiff-lipped prison whispers. “Death-House fish,” the whisper spread. “Death-House fish.” Like water running from a crack, the word flowed the length and breadth of the yard.

  As Whitman moved along the walkway, he was met by the stares of men who received the word, passed it along, and then fell silent. Slowly, the word reached the end of the yard far ahead of him and stopped. An unnatural blanket of quiet came over the twelve hundred men: voices ceased speaking, feet ceased shuffling, the grunts of men using exercise equipment stopped, the snap of dominoes on the asphalt halted, even the sound of their collective breathing seemed suspended in the presence of the man carrying the soft felt slippers.

  The walk to the opposite end of the yard took three minutes. Once there, the trio went around the corner of South Block to a locked sally port into a separately fenced section of the prison. Unlocking the steel door, they passed through to the side of the Condemned Row building. The lieutenant pressed a button next to the single side door of the building. The door slid open pneumatically and the three men entered a small isolation foyer. The door slid closed behind them; a second door, in front of them, opened. The men passed through the second door into a dead-end corridor. To their left was a door which opened into an enclosed walkway leading out back to the execution chamber. To the right was an elevator to the second and third floors of the building. The men boarded the elevator; the lieutenant spoke into a microphone.

  “Lieutenant Swain, Correctional Officer Bruder, and arriving inmate Weldon Whitman, to the third floor, please.”

  The elevator door slid silently shut, a soft whirring sound began, and the car started to rise, slowly but smoothly. On Three the car came to a soft stop and the door opened.

  A guard captain with bull shoulders and a big, square head stood waiting for Weldon Whitman. He wore a short-sleeved officer’s shirt open at the collar. His neck and arms were thick, the latter heavy with curly gray-black hair. On the top of his head was an iron-gray crewcut, so precisely trimmed that it looked artificial. He stood with his hands on his hips, facing the elevator door.

  “I’ll take him from here, Swain,” the big captain said. He flicked his eyes to Whitman. “Step out.”

  Whitman moved out of the elevator onto Death Row. He waited there with the captain until the elevator door had closed and his escort was gone.

  “I’m Captain Dukes,” the big man said. “I’m in charge of this entire building. Follow me.”

  They walked down a spotlessly clean white corridor with a concrete wall on one side and floor-to-ceiling bars on the other. Beyond the bars was a second corridor, eight feet wide, running the length of Death Row: a long tier of thirty cells, separated by wire grilles into groups of ten. When they got to the end of the middle group, the Twenty Section, Dukes unlocked a door in the bars and took Whit man into the cell corridor. As they walked along that corridor, other condemned men came to the front of their cells to look at Whitman. Presently Dukes stopped and signaled a guard in a bulletproof-glass control booth. A second later, the master locking bar at the top of one of the cells disengaged from the cell door.

  Dukes slid the door open. “This is you. Cell Twenty-two. Put your belongings on the bunk and step back out here.”

  Whitman entered the cell. It was larger than any he had ever seen: about eight by nine, he judged, almost square. The usual basin and toilet fixtures were mounted on the wall and floor; a cot, table, and chair, all steel, were bolted to the floor. Whitman put his prison issue on the cot and stepped back out.

  “Strip off the coveralls and shoes,” the captain ordered. He waited until the prisoner had obeyed. “Roll them together and hand them to me.” After he had tucked the bundle under his arm, Dukes said, “You’ll be kept in this cell around the clock except for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, when you’ll be let out into this corridor. Meals are served in your cell from a steam table at nine-thirty and four; you can eat or not, it’s up to you. You get up when you want to, sleep when you want to; the place stays lighted twenty-four hours a day just like it is right now. The earphones plug into a jack next to your bunk; there’s a three-position switch for three different stations that are on from seven a.m. until midnight.”

  Whitman, naked, shivered slightly. Dukes gave no indication of noticing. They both knew that he could have had the prisoner strip after the talk, and they both knew why he had not. Captain Dukes was establishing his authority.

  “Books are available from the prison library. You can order them from a catalog the morning service guard has. There’s also an approved list of newspapers and magazines you can subscribe to if you have any money on deposit. In the morning you’ll be issued stationery and a pencil; you can send out twelve letters a month, and receive as many as are written to you. You can have four visits a month, two hours each; a form will be given to you in the morning for you to list people for the warden’s office to approve as visitors.

  “As far as sanitation goes, we like to keep the tier as clean as possible. You’re responsible for cleaning your own cell; the corridors are cleaned by mainline orderlies. There’s a shower room at the end of the corridor; you’re allowed to use it every other day. There’s a surveillance window in it so you’ll be observed all the time you’re in there. No jacking off is allowed in there; do that in your cell. An inmate barber comes in twice a week to shave you. He uses a locked safety razor and the job is done under guard out here in the corridor. The same barber cuts your hair every twenty-one days.” Captain Dukes rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That’s about it, except for one last thing. If you’re caught in a homosexual act with any other inmate on the tier, both of you will be put in separate segregation cells away from the rest of the men on the tier.” Dukes bobbed his chin at Cell Twenty-two. “Okay, get in there.”

  Whitman walked naked into his cell. Dukes closed the door after him and signaled the control-booth guard. There was the sound of metal against metal as the master locking bar moved back in place at the top of the cell door.

  Weldon Whitman stood next to his cot until Dukes had walked away. Then he took everything off the cot except one blanket; with that, he lay down on the bare mattress, curled his legs up, and covered himself. He was shivering.

  This is Death Row, he thought over and over again.

  He felt an empty sickness in his stomach, and a dryness in his mouth. He huddled into a tighter ball under the rough wool blanket. Its coarse texture felt scratchy against his skin; the odor of some kind of disinfectant or moth spray invaded his nostrils. He sneezed, twice. He blinked his eyelids several times. He took a deep breath, bit his lower lip tightly, and exhaled through his nose. No, none of that shit, he told himself. No crying.

  But despite his efforts, a single tear managed to break through.

  To keep from dropping into the depths of depression, he forced himself to concentrate on the next morning, when he would be issued stationery for his twelve letters per month. The first letter he would write was to the head librarian of the state law library in Sacramento. The second was to a reporter in Los Angeles named Robert Cloud.

  Soberly, he began to compose them in his mind.

  Robert Cloud returned to his apartment after working his fourth night shift in five days. It was Tuesday and he had n
ot seen Laurel since the previous Wednesday. As a result, Cloud was not only tired, but at the moment very irritable.

  As he entered his apartment, snapping on the light and tossing his raincoat on a chair, he noticed several pieces of mail the cleaning lady had put on the coffee table. Because he was irritated about the job, and had a headache, and wanted a cup of coffee, and hadn’t seen Laurel for five nights, he ignored the mail and went directly to the kitchen to take care of the easiest problem: coffee.

  Waiting for the water to boil, he thought about Laurel, and how very badly he wanted her, even though, last time, he had accused her of being a wanton tease. But that had been momentary anger and frustration: she was not a tease; that was clear from the difficulty she sometimes had in mustering her last bit of self-control. He knew that she wanted him inside her as badly as he wanted to be inside her. But something always held her back; some last-second resistance swelled up in her, causing her to panic. When he saw the hint of fear in her eyes, he simply stopped trying and let her finish it whatever way she chose.

  He mixed some instant coffee and carried the cup into the living room. He settled down on the couch, lighted a cigarette, pulled his tie loose, and glanced through the mail. The usual: two advertisements, a monthly statement from the men’s shop, and an overdue notice from the main library. But there was also a plain white envelope, hand-addressed in pencil, postmarked the previous Friday at San Rafael. Cloud slit open the evelope raggedly with one finger and removed the blue-lined writing paper; across the top was imprinted CALIFORNIA STATE PENITENTIARY. At the bottom of the page was a neat, precise signature: Weldon Whitman.