“Name of prisoner?” the guard said.
“Gordon Pryne.”
The woman thumbed through a list, going back and forth between pages. My heart stopped. If his name wasn’t on the list, he was still in Huntsville and hadn’t been transferred up for his hearing.
Her pen stopped on a name and put a little red check by it. My heartbeat resumed.
She squinted at the page. “Says here he’s got a hearing on Tuesday.”
“That’s right. First thing.” I handed the woman my ID and pulled a file out of my bag.
She studied the picture, matched it to my face, wrote down my name, and began thumbing through the visitors list.
“I may not be on there,” I said, trying to sound helpful.
She looked up. “You can’t go in unless you’re on the list.”
“I know. I’m with his attorney’s office.”
“Which one?”
Once again, my weak preparation skills were inhibiting my already meager prospects for success. I cast about for the name but drew a complete, black-hole blank.
She kept her pen poised over the page, bored and impatient. “Eschenbrenner or Vittato?”
A little gift from Joe Riley. I breathed a quick sigh of relief.
“Eschenbrenner. I just need ten minutes. I promise.”
She held her hand out for the file, which I had stuffed with some random mail I’d had on my desk at home. I pulled it back and held it to my chest.
“I’m sorry. It’s privileged.”
She looked at me over her glasses, her eyes landing on the hole in my jeans. “You don’t look like you work for a law firm.”
“I’m technically off today. Everyone else is out of town for the holiday. You know how it is.”
She didn’t seem sympathetic.
“Look, I just need to take care of this and get back to Ms. Eschenbrenner. Ten minutes.” I smiled, pasting on a look of apologetic sincerity. “I promise.”
She gave me a disapproving look, wrote my name down on the allowed list, and waved me through. I completed the rest of the security-check obstacle course—another flash of my ID, a verbal review of the procedures for prisoner visitation, and another guard, who wrote my name down again.
“Name of prisoner?”
“Gordon Pryne.” I repeated my explanation, smiled innocently, and was eventually led to a seat. I waited almost half an hour before someone came and got me and escorted me into the visitors’ area—a grimy room with a thick wall of glass down the middle, divided by little booths with phones on both sides of the glass. Prisoners were hunched on one side, huddled over the phone, talking to attorneys or relatives through the phone lines. One woman had brought her children with her. The littlest girl—she looked to be about three and was wearing a pink ballerina tutu—had pressed herself up against the glass and was trying to kiss her father, who was crying on the inmate side of the window.
I sat where I was told to sit and waited by the phone. The Formica was filthy. I couldn’t even contemplate what was on that phone. I kept my hands in my lap and lambasted myself mentally for arriving without a bottle of hand sanitizer gel and a fresh pack of Handi Wipes.
A few minutes later, Gordon Pryne sauntered in, wearing his prison whites and a pair of bright orange Keds loafers.
When I’d seen him last, he’d been shackled at the hands and feet and was three days into detox from a wicked meth addiction. He’d also just been arrested for murder and had a recent run-in with Peter Terry. Not surprisingly, he had looked like death on toast. Old, dry, cracked toast. With an extra helping of sour mayonnaise.
Today, though, he was clear eyed and rested. The rage was still there, but five months without drugs had brought some color back to his face and straightened his back. He didn’t look broken anymore. He looked arrogant and mean.
He picked up the phone and sneered at me. “Lookee who’s here,” he said in a flat redneck drawl.
“Mr. Pryne. Do you remember me?”
“He said you’d come.”
I furrowed my brow. “Who said I’d come?”
He glared at me with those muddy green eyes. “You take me for a fool?”
“Pardon?”
“You think you can walk in here and lie to me like I don’t know who you are?” He leaned toward the window and whispered. “I know who you are.”
I leaned back from the window reflexively. “I’m not sure what you mean about knowing who I am, Mr. Pryne. I’m just here to ask you a few questions.”
I shot a nervous glance at the security camera in the corner. I was living on borrowed time. The second they figured out I wasn’t who I said I was, I’d be kicked out on my rear end into the bright May sunshine without the answers I’d come for.
“We’ve only got a few minutes,” I said. “Do you mind, Mr. Pryne, if I ask you a few questions?”
“Mr. Pryne? Ain’t we formal, now?” He sat back and crossed his arms tightly across his chest. “I got some questions for you too.” He spat out a foul epithet, one he’d used repeatedly the last time I saw him.
“You won’t get any answers out of me using language like that, Mr. Pryne,” I said firmly.
He shot the word at me again.
I took the phone away from my ear and was preparing to slam it onto its hook when I heard his voice, tinny and distant through the phone line: “I got what you want.”
I eased the receiver slowly back to my ear, Martinez’s advice ringing in my ears. “These people are not on our side. You can’t trust anything they say.”
“Give it to me, then,” I said. “If you’ve got what I want.”
“I’ll give you what you want.” He looked me up and down hungrily. “But you gotta pay.”
I thought of my two-hundred-nineteen-dollar investment, which had yet to fully pay off. I hoped Pryne didn’t have anything more graphic in mind.
“What’s the price?” I asked warily.
“You give me what I want,” he said through gritted teeth. “What I asked you for last time.”
“What do you want, Mr. Pryne?”
“I told you to get ’em to stop.”
“Get who to stop what?”
He growled at me. “You know what I mean, you lyin’—”
I flinched. There was that word again. I wasn’t about to leave, though, until I found out what he knew.
“They got their eyes on me,” he was saying, his voice raspy now. “In my head.” He jerked his head around wildly as though he was chasing a fly, then calmed himself and looked again at me. “You said you’d get rid of ’em.”
“I don’t know about any eyes in your head.”
He glared at me, still twitching. “You know ’em. You know who they are.”
“I don’t. I swear, I don’t.”
“You’re a liar,” he said quietly, his jaw tight.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Mr. Pryne.”
He leaned in. “He told me you’d lie.”
I pushed back from the glass again.
Pryne was still talking, almost to himself. “I said, ‘No sir, she wouldn’t lie. Not a citizen like her with her fancy life. She wouldn’t do nothing like that. Not when I got what she wants.’ ” He shook his head, his eyes locking on mine, a look of disappointed condescension on his face. “But he was right. You’re a liar. A lyin’ piece of trash. Just like he said.”
I felt my skin prickle. My hands felt like I’d plunged them into a bucket of ice water. “Who said I would lie?”
“Who do you think?” He sat back and narrowed his eyes at me, daring me to say it.
“Tell me. Who are you talking about?”
He waited a moment, then said quietly, “Peter Terry.” He said it like he was spitting out a broken tooth, wiping his mouth after the words came out. “That’s who I’m talking about.”
I blinked. Peter Terry knew Gordon Pryne. I was certain of that. But I hadn’t known until this moment that Gordon Pryne knew Peter Terry. Not by name, anyway.
<
br /> “How do you know Peter Terry?” I asked, the cold creeping from my hands into my arms.
“How does Peter Terry know me?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Honestly. I don’t.”
“Make him stop.” Pryne’s eyes darted around the room again.
“What’s he doing?”
“Watching me!” he shouted. Then more quietly, looking around suspiciously, “He’s always watching me.”
The cold had taken over my whole body. I shivered, feeling suddenly faint and tired. “Is he watching you now?”
He leaned into the window again and sneered, showing me his brown teeth. “What do you think?”
He began to laugh. Insane, cackling laughter, bursting out of him and hitting the glass like gunfire. I looked around nervously. The last thing I wanted was to draw attention to myself. But everyone was just going about their business. Even the guards seemed uninterested.
I needed to pull myself together. I shook my head and warmed up one hand on my jeans. The other, still holding the phone, stayed cold as a stone.
“Mr. Pryne …”
The laughter slowed.
“Mr. Pryne …”
He sing-songed, “Mr. Pryne, Mr. Pryne.”
Only a chuckle now.
“Mr. Pryne. Can you hear me?”
I glared at him silently.
He put the phone to his ear again. “What?”
“Listen to me.”
The manic laughter drained from his expression, leaving the raw hate and the impenetrable mistrust from years of a hard, bottom-scraping life.
I was the one who leaned in this time. “Are you listening?”
His eyes locked on mine.
I stared right back at him. “If I knew how to get rid of Peter Terry, I would tell you. I swear I would. He won’t leave me alone either.”
“We got something in common, then,” he said, a look of angry lust on his face. He ran his eyes over me again.
I shifted uncomfortably. “You’re right. We do.”
“You got something for me, then? Since we got so much in common?”
I considered my answer for a long minute before I spoke. “Do you know Joe Riley?” I said finally.
His look was blank.
“You don’t, do you?”
He shook his head, a quick no.
“I think he might be able to help you get rid of the … eyes in your head.”
“He a priest or something?”
I shook my head. “Just put him on your visitors list.”
“Ain’t got no room, what with all my friends and relatives,” he said sarcastically.
“I don’t know if he will help you. But if you listen to him, he might.” I swallowed. The feeling was coming back to my hands. “I would if I were you.”
The argument was already raging in my head. What are the rules pertaining to angel management? Is it even possible to loan out your angel? Surely even losers like Gordon Pryne have angels of their own. Maybe his was an apprentice or something. It was a theory, given the lousy job he was doing.
What was I thinking, offering up help to a scumbag like Gordon Pryne? But who more than he needed the help? Wasn’t that the point, after all—to offer the help to the ones who need it the most?
Pryne was looking at me like I was the one who was nuts.
“That’s all I have to give you.” I set my jaw firmly for the fight I knew was coming. “Your turn.”
He pushed back his chair and stood to leave.
“Who’s Googie?” I shouted into the phone.
He stopped, clearly shocked that I’d learned his accomplice’s name. He turned and stood, the phone still in his hand. I motioned for him to raise it to his ear, which he did reluctantly.
“Don’t know no Googie.”
“You don’t need to lie about it, Mr. Pryne. I know you know him. I just don’t know where he is. Tell me where to find him.”
“How should I know?” He shrugged. “He ain’t in here.”
“You’re the liar,” I said, my anger beginning to burn. “You want to keep the package safe? You tell me where to find Googie.”
His expression tightened.
“The package isn’t safe,” I said. “Not in the hands of someone like Googie. The package belongs with his mother. She’s the one who can keep him safe.”
He sat down, a look of dumb amazement on his face. I watched him struggle, his face twisting as if he were receiving a punch. He put his head in his free hand and ran his fingers through that shock of wild, curly hair, so like Nicholas’s. A few minutes passed in silence. His expression and body began twisting as if he were in terrible pain. I watched the battle rage in his mind as Gordon Pryne fought with what was left of his conscience.
“He wants the package,” he said at last.
“Who does?”
“Who do you think?”
My mind raced. “Peter Terry? Peter Terry wants Nicholas?”
He darted a look behind him at the guard, who was standing a dozen feet away.
“Don’t know no Nicholas, lady. I’m talking about a package. That’s all. Just a package.”
“Peter Terry wants the package?”
He nodded a quick, almost imperceptible yes.
“Did you have Googie pick him up to keep him safe?”
A long wait—an eternity—before he gave me another quick nod.
I could barely breathe.
“Why?”
He mumbled something.
“I didn’t hear you. Talk into the phone. Why did you have Googie pick up the package?”
He ducked his head and hunched over the phone. “Wouldn’t want him to have the eyes in his head.”
“A sudden burst of fatherly concern?” I couldn’t hold back the sarcasm.
He looked up at me with the first sincerity I’d ever seen on his face. “They shouldn’t go after the kids.”
My jaw dropped. I was stunned by this sudden burst of decency.
“His momma take good care of him?” he asked, his eyes cast downward.
“Yes, she does,” I said. “Where is he, Gordon? Tell me where he is. If you care about him at all, you have to tell me.”
“Don’t know.”
I felt the blood rush back into my extremities. My face was hot. “You lying pig,” I said, my temper finally beginning to boil. “You tell me where he is right this minute.”
He looked at me calmly. “If they told me, I’d know, now, wouldn’t I?”
I froze. “What are you saying?”
He leaned in, almost touching the glass, and said quietly, “If I know where the package is, I’m not the only one who knows. You see what I’m sayin’?”
“No. I don’t see what you’re saying.”
“If I know where the package is, the eyes can find out where the package is.” He licked dry lips, his eyes flicking from side to side. “And the package ain’t safe no more.”
We stared each other down for several long seconds. Finally I said, “How can I find the package, then? Tell me how to find Googie.”
He leaned back, stretched his legs out, and crossed his ankles. “Don’t look for Googie.”
“What, then? What should I do?”
“Look for May Ran,” he whispered into the phone, his eyes weary, defeated. “You find May Ran, you find the package.”
And then he stood, hung up the phone, turned his back to me, and walked away.
39
YBARRA AND TWO OTHER detectives were knocking at the door of the Little Blue School House day care an hour after Martinez’s flight landed from Phoenix. A brief interview with Juanita Garcia confirmed that her son’s nickname was indeed Googie, that he did live with her, but that she hadn’t seen him in several days. Not since he brought his girlfriend’s little boy over to play for a few hours before he left town.
“Is this the boy?” Ybarra had asked, hands shaking with rage as he showed a picture to Googie’s mother.
She’d nodded and lo
oked up at the cop, seemingly ignorant of what her son had done. “He’s not in some kind of trouble, is he? Is he hurt? You haven’t hurt my Googie, have you?”
They’d cuffed her, stuck her in the squad car, and called the day-care kids’ parents to pick up their kids, who had all been parked at day care on a holiday weekend by blue-collar parents who couldn’t afford to take the day off. Someone had lined them up in plastic kiddie chairs in the backyard with Popsicles melting on their hands. A couple of cops were talking to them gently, one by one, while others combed the day care. The Physical Evidence Section of CAPERS showed up in a white van and unpacked their gear.
The closet in Googie’s room was exactly as Christine had described. Venice’s drawing had been almost surgically correct. Boots, collared shirts—all worn, many of them plaid. The Phoenix Suns jersey was hanging right there. Nash. Number thirteen.
Martinez was there when they bagged and tagged the Nash jersey.
“Great floor vision,” the PES investigator had commented as he took a picture with gloved hands and folded the shirt into a brown paper bag.
As he left the house, Martinez called me and told me the whole story.
“Does he own a 1963 Ford Fairlane?” I asked.
“Ms. Garcia developed a sudden inability to understand English when we asked her that question,” Martinez said. “We eventually got her to admit that her precious Googie borrows it from a friend sometimes.”
“She give you a name?”
“Batiste. Carlos Batiste.”
“Is it the guy you were looking for?” I asked. “The one with the criminal record?”
“Nope. Just another unemployed loser living at his mother’s house.”
I gave him my news about Gordon Pryne.
He whistled. “If you hadn’t come out of there with this, I’d be hauling you to the woodshed right now. What were you—”
I cut him off. “Save the spanking for later. Who or what is May Ran?”
“How should I know?” Martinez snapped.
Over the next hours, the cops took the day care apart, confiscated everything in Googie’s closet, and emptied the sandbox into bags, hauling it all down to DPD headquarters for a thorough going-over by PES.
My Soul to Keep Page 29
