The Innocent

by Vincent Zandri

  This was no dream.

  Zoot Sims and Bucky Pizzarelli had stopped jamming.

  My palms and forehead were covered in a layer of sweat.

  Too late to reach for the.45 I kept stored under the mattress. Even under the circumstances, I made a mental note to store the weapon in a more accessible place. But then it dawned on me: If this man was a burglar, he hadn’t been very stealthy about breaking and entering. He wasn’t stealing anything.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the man said. “You up?”

  A polite housebreaker.

  I propped myself up on one elbow and squinted. Behind the man, I could see two more men. One tall. One short. They were moving around inside the living room of my state-appointed home examining the framed photographs of my wife on the walls and on the tables. They were picking up the picture frames, studying the different portraits, placing them back down again exactly where they had found them.

  “Come on in,” I said. “Who knocks anymore?”

  No smiles came from the big man in the doorway. Not even a crack in his stone face.

  “Mr. Marconi?” the man inquired, his low baritone voice now sounding somehow familiar.

  I nodded.

  “You’re wanted in Albany, sir, immediately.”

  “If not sooner, right?” Definitely a voice I recognized even if I couldn’t see the face all that clearly in the darkness of the bedroom. I sat all the way up in bed. “Who wants to see me?” I said. But I already knew the answer to that question. I knew that the men had come in through the front door without breaking in, simply because they’d had a key. No need to jimmy the lock or break a window or slide down the chimney for that matter. No need to call the police, because they were the police. They had a key to the place. In fact they probably had keys to all the identical, half a dozen or so, single-story, state-owned homes on this quiet rural road in Stormville.

  So that was it, then; that’s where I had heard that voice before. The voice of the man standing in my bedroom doorway belonged to a member of Pelton’s private staff. If he was the kid I remembered, his name was Tommy Walsh. Not a bad kid really. Just a young man robbed from my own staff of COs by Pelton himself when he had come down for one of his surprise inspections a year ago last April. What Tommy lacked in brains he made up for in muscles and loyalty.

  “Commissioner Pelton wants to see you now, Mr. Marconi.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, Tommy,” I said. “The state of New York includes a telephone in your boss’s budget. Tell him I said to use it.”

  “He’s your boss, too, Mr. Marconi,” Tommy tried to remind me. “And my orders are to bring you back with me tonight. So if you don’t mind.”

  I glanced at the digital display clock beside the queen-size bed. Two-thirty in the A.M., Wednesday. Tommy took a couple of steps into the bedroom so that now I could make out more of his clean-shaven face in the light that leaked in from the living room. He wore dark slacks, black turtleneck, black blazer, black mailman shoes. His black hair was crew-cut short and he had pork chop sideburns, like Elvis. He was only an inch or two taller than me, but his shoulders were wide enough to fill the doorjamb.

  I wiped my hands on my T-shirt. Then I reached over and flicked on the table lamp.

  Tommy took a small scrap of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, read it, and put it back.

  “Mr. Pelton wants to ask you a few questions about the escape of Eduard Vasquez before he faces the news media at a noontime press conference.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “Why don’t you and your boys get back in your car and tell Pelton I’ll see him first thing in the morning.” I turned out the light, slipped back into bed. “And don’t forget to hit the light in the living room on the way out.” I stretched my legs so that my bare feet slipped out from underneath the covers at the foot of the bed.

  First came the footsteps-heavy, power-lifter footsteps. Then the light went back on. Even with my eyes closed, the bright white light burned my eyes through the skin of my eyelids.

  “I’m real sorry about this, Mr. Marconi,” Tommy said in a deep, whisper voice, “but Mr. Pelton wants to speak with you now. So if you’ll get dressed and come with me…”

  I leaned up on one elbow, took a good look into the living room. I could see the two men who had accompanied Tommy Walsh. Nameless men who stood shoulder to shoulder in the hall just outside the bedroom door. They weren’t leaving without me.

  I turned over and let out a sigh. “No choice, huh, big fella?”

  “No choice, sir.”

  I slipped out of bed, stood up, felt my lightheadedness give way to imbalance as I reached out for the end table. “Now I’m going to get dressed,” I said, “if you don’t mind.”

  Tommy glanced at the open window in the wall opposite the open door. Then he glanced back at me.

  “Look-it,” I said, just to be more difficult. “Could you please turn around.”

  Tommy stood there, his eyes moving from the open window to me and back to the window again, like I was guilty of something and about to use the window as a means for a quick getaway. But Tommy was a good kid really, and he had been a good guard before Pelton had taken him away from me. He was doing what he did best: following orders.

  “Afraid I might run off, Tommy?”

  No response other than that stone face staring at me between glances at the open window.

  “Lucky we’re just a bunch of dicks here,” I said, dropping my drawers, “or I’d really feel stupid.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I SAT BACK IN an expensive leather chair, not four feet away from Washington Pelton, Commissioner of Corrections for the state of New York, and one-time friend to both Mike Norman and myself. It was our first meeting since last Christmas at the governor’s wassail party. He hadn’t said a word to me since Tommy Walsh had escorted me in some twenty minutes earlier. Instead, he had buried himself in paperwork that, for some reason, had to be expeditiously processed at four-thirty in the morning.

  Pelton wore a neatly pressed, black pinstripe suit. A far cry from the stiff, navy-blue uniforms the two of us, along with Mike Norman, had worn when we’d started out at Attica all those years ago. The white shirt beneath his suit was finely pressed. Gold cuff links secured the sleeves at the wrists. The tie was silk. Sitting there, I tried to decide if Pelton was dressed for the new day or had never gone to bed the night before.

  Regardless of his sleeping habits, I could see through Pelton’s act.

  He would not look up at me until good and ready. I could have ranted and raved. I was pissed off enough to grab him by the collar, pin him down on the floor. Maybe that’s what he wanted. Maybe this was a test to see how far he could push me before I did something stupid like backhand him across the kisser. In the end it would not only have cost me my job and my reputation, it would have put me in jail. I was no longer bargaining from a position of power. Pelton was the commissioner and I answered directly to the commissioner.

  For now, I had to be content with looking over his shoulders and studying the many custom-framed photos that decorated the walnut paneling behind his desk. Photos of the commissioner embraced in handshake with the governor; another of him seated at a round table with Ronald Reagan; another with his arm wrapped around George Bush Jr’s shoulders, broad smiles on their faces. Proud Republicans, the entire bunch.

  I sat back and took in the floor-to-ceiling, French windows that overlooked the darkened Albany skyline and the Hudson River in the near distance. Outside I could see the occasional flicker of red neon that came from an electric billboard planted on the flat rooftop of a nearby office building.

  Pelton’s office was dimly lit from the green-shaded banker’s lamp positioned in the center of his mahogany desk. But here’s the strange part. When he finally looked up at me, his eyes went wide, as though my less than sudden appearance had taken him completely by surprise. He added further to the act by dropping his pen and sitting back
in his chair, locking both hands like a headrest behind his gray-haired head. He looked out the window into the early morning darkness.

  “Did you get any coffee, Keeper?” His voice was so soft and understated, I barely caught his words. He focused his glance beyond me and directed Tommy to get me that cup of coffee.

  “How’ve you been making out these past few months?” he asked. “Since Fran passed away, I mean.”

  I nodded, as though saying, Fine, the world is my freakin’ oyster. But I didn’t like Pelton calling me Keeper any more than I liked entering into any courteous small talk with him, especially about Fran. If it had been twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have minded. Twenty years ago, I might have welcomed the small talk. But that was then and since then, we had both changed and gone our separate ways, formed our own alliances and surrendered to our own ambitions. So now I minded.

  “They never did find the man who killed her, did they?” Pelton pressed.

  “You know full well they never found him,” I said.

  Tommy came back into the room and placed a china saucer and cup on the far end of Pelton’s desk. No Styrofoam cups in this right-wing office. Before the big man backed off, he placed a finely polished silver spoon on the saucer.

  “How’s Rhonda?” I said, not able to resist the temptation. “Word’s out she’s on the wagon.”

  Pelton pretended to think about it for a second or two. Then he let out a fake laugh.

  “Keeper,” he said, “now you know full well she isn’t.”

  “So you drag me here at four-thirty in the morning to discuss our separate domestic and family affairs.”

  “No, Keeper,” Pelton said, shaking his cranium from shoulder to shoulder. “This has nothing whatsoever to do with your immediate family. This is all about your extended prison family. So perhaps I should get right to the point and dispense with any further niceties.”

  “Please do. I’d like to get a shave before work.”

  Pelton’s face went noticeably taut.

  “Tommy,” he said, waving his right arm in the air like a pointer, “send in Mr. Warren, would you, please?”

  I heard the door to the office open and then a man walked in and stood between me and Pelton’s desk. It was John “Jake” Warren.

  “Keeper, Jake,” Pelton said. “I’m sure you two know one another.”

  I didn’t get up, nor did I bother with a handshake. Warren had worked for the commission for almost as long as I had. Now he was Pelton’s second in command, the man directly responsible for security in and out of state prisons. Ironically he made more money than Pelton, the commissioner’s salary not having been raised in more than a decade. But then, Warren didn’t need the money, his family owning and operating a good-size machine works in a small Mohawk River town just north of the Albany city limits. Recently Warren had announced his candidacy for state senate on the Republican ticket. An escape, no matter who was responsible, could only hurt his chances for election, since it clearly represented a breakdown in the system that he oversaw. Warren took a seat behind Pelton’s desk. Clearly he hadn’t been asked to be here in the interest of discussing politics.

  “Keeper,” Wash Pelton said, “why don’t you tell Jake and I just what plans you’ve established for getting this man Vasquez back.”

  I took a quick glance around the room, because it suddenly dawned on me that Pelton could be taping this conversation. In that case, I had to answer carefully.

  “Taking it by the book,” I said. “All the procedural stuff. General lockdown, no authorized field trips of any kind, tightened security, better food.”

  “But you’re not answering my question,” Pelton went on. “Haven’t you taken any action to get Mr. Vasquez back?”

  “I’m not sure I understand?”

  “In other words, Keeper,” Pelton said, once again looking out his window, “your position in this matter is purely passive.”

  “What can I possibly do? There’s an investigation team on it now. Schillinger from Stormville PD is handling it. FBI’s been alerted.”

  “Yes,” Pelton said, “I know.”

  The room fell quiet for a moment.

  And then Pelton said, “Keeper, do you recall Deputy Commissioner Warren having called you about the possibility that Eduard Vasquez might escape?”

  “No,” I said, my eyes on Warren, getting a good look at his dark blue Brooks Brothers single-breasted suit. “All I’ve been getting from the commission are calls for names to scratch from my guard roster.”

  Warren pushed his horn-rimmed glasses farther up on the crown of his nose. Then he crossed his legs.

  “Are you sure?” Pelton pushed. I noticed that his voice was getting deeper, more inquisitive, slower than normal- trying his best to convince me of something that hadn’t happened at all.

  “Yes,” I said, sitting up straight in my chair, gripping the armrests with my fists. “No one ever called me about Vasquez. Only about names.”

  Outside the window, the full moon was plainly visible over the west bank of the Hudson River as it reflected off its surface. In just a little while, it would be the sun’s turn to reflect as it rose over the Berkshire Mountains to the east.

  “Well,” Pelton said, touching his thin lips with the back of his pen, “you’d better get your story straight.”

  I looked into his eyes. “Whadaya mean get my story straight?”

  “Mr. Warren seems to recall having contacted you.”

  The light of the full moon cast a pale luminescence over everything in the large room, including Pelton’s red face. Somewhere, a church bell sounded, one lonely chime after the other, and stopped after only five chimes.

  “No,” I insisted, “I don’t recall getting a call from Mr. Warren. I don’t think I could forget a thing like that.” I tried to make eye contact with Warren. But he sat behind Pelton’s chair, legs crossed, eyes gazing down at the floor. Pelton got up and went to the window.

  “I know Warren spoke with you,” he said.

  “Listen, Wash,” I said, blood boiling inside my head, “I don’t care if you are my superior, but I’ve just been kidnapped from my home.”

  “Kidnapped,” he smirked. “We’re being dramatic.”

  “Yes, bloody-well kidnapped and brought here to answer questions about an escape I had no way of anticipating. Now you want me to agree to phone calls that never occurred. What the hell’s going on?” Now Pelton was looking out the window into the full moon.

  “Temper, Keeper,” he said. “I thought we were all on the same team here.”

  “Okay, Wash,” I said, my voice lowered a decibel or two, “I’ll tell you what. When I get back to work in a little while I can ask Val about any phone calls that might have been placed. She keeps excellent records. She’ll know if Warren called.”

  The room fell quiet for a minute.

  And then Wash said, “Keeper, I’m sure by now you have a pretty good idea about what’s going on here.”

  I nodded. “You want me to take the blame for the Vasquez escape.”

  “I didn’t say that exactly.”

  “You want me to take the blame so that you can save your precious posteriors…so that you can stay up here in this white tower and so Warren here can get his state senate seat. Am I right?”

  “I like my job,” Pelton said, “if that’s what you mean. Jake here, he has his aspirations also.”

  “This conversation’s over!” Standing. “I’m not about to take the blame for anybody else’s screwups.” I went for the door. But Tommy Walsh, loyal as ever, blocked the entire frame.

  Pelton shouted: “Superintendent Marconi!”

  I turned.

  “Sit down,” he said. “Please. You don’t have to take the blame for this.” He took a deep breath.

  “Excuse me?”

  “All you have to do is admit that Jake called you, warned you, and you simply forgot.” The moonlight was disappearing now as the orange haze of morning began to overtake the night. “
I’ll fix it so that it was all a mistake. All you have to do is admit it. And then I’ll take care of your little reward.” He hesitated a bit between “little” and “reward.”

  The orange morning light began to sneak its way in through the office windows, drowning everything in its rays, including Pelton’s face.

  “You’re not saying anything, Marconi!” Pelton shouted. “This is your life we’re talking about here. I’m trying to save it, just like you saved mine at Attica. Don’t let pride fuck it up. A lot of money for a lot of people could be at stake.”

  The morning light became almost too bright to look at.

  “Do you know I could have you fired for this escape and brought up on charges for negligence? I mean, for Christ’s sake, Keeper, you executed the releases that allowed a convicted cop-killer to just walk outside the gates of Green Haven.”

  The pressure in my head was suddenly replaced with a sickening, sinking feeling, like my organs were about to slide out from underneath my skin, spill all over the floor.

  “Admit it, Keeper, you just haven’t been the same since Fran passed on.” Pelton was smiling now. “I mean, you haven’t really been paying attention, have you?”

  I took couple of steps closer to him. “You’ll get nothing from me, Wash. Because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You didn’t do anything right either!” Pelton shouted. He ran his hands through his thinning gray hair, took a deep breath. He looked at me. I glared back at him until our eyes locked. His eyes were stone cold and wet, his lips taut and angry. So this is what it all came down to, I thought. This is what it was all about. Somebody’s dirty money.

  “Okay then,” he said. “That’s the way you wanna play the game.” He walked around to the opposite side of his desk, picked up the phone, pounded a button or two on the phone unit. He kept his eyes locked on me the entire time, as though I might just disappear into the woodwork. Warren, on the other hand, stayed seated, staring at the floor. A liar caught perpetrating his own lie in the name of might and right. I heard an electronic buzzing coming from outside the room. When it stopped, Pelton whispered something into the phone. I heard the sound of footsteps in the hall outside the door. There must have been two or three people, at least, making their way down the corridor toward Pelton’s office. Their leather soles slapped against the terrazzo floor of the state building. They were running, not walking. Their quick steps matched the rapid beating of my heart. My stomach collapsed, my chest tightened. I could feel them coming for me as Pelton slammed the phone down. The wood-and-glass door opened and two uniformed police officers came into the room along with Detective Martin Schillinger.