I stepped up to the counter.
“Package for Marconi,” I said.
“First name,” the kid said.
“Pasquale,” I said.
“What?” the kid asked, eyebrows upturned.
“Pasquale,” I repeated. “It’s Italian for Patrick.”
“Hang on,” the kid said. He turned and went through the swinging, restaurant-style door that led to the distribution area in back. It seemed like the entire operation would be a piece of cake. But then I spotted a stack of the FBI’s most wanted posters tacked to the bulletin board on the plaster-coated wall beside me. I imagined my face there for all of Ironville to see as they retrieved their junk mail. All twelve hundred people. The five-by-seven, black-and-white poster would show my face, head-on, and a left-side profile. In the photo, I would be frowning, my mustache covering my upper lip, my eyes dark. My face would not have been shaved in many days and the salt-and-pepper stubble would match the slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair on my head. My thick, muscular neck would meet my overdeveloped trapezius muscles at the bottom of the photograph. My neck would support a thin chain supporting a placard with a seven-digit ID number, and to the innocent bystander, I would appear more like a hit man than a lawman.
Kurt Cobain returned with a box cradled in his skinny arms.
“This just came in, overnighted from California.”
I signed for the box and took it in my arms. Then I did something very strange. What I mean is, I should have sprinted for the door, jumped into the Pontiac, raced back to the cabin. Instead I found myself hesitating for a second or two.
“It’s a shame,” I said, nodding toward the Kurt Cobain T-shirt. “I understand he was a father.”
“Yeah,” the kid said, “so what?”
“Maybe,” I said, “old Kurt never thought life was worth living. Not even for the sake of his child.”
“You sound like my old man,” the kid said, now leaning against the counter. “He likes to sit inside the trailer, watch satellite TV, drink beer, and talk about the good life. Whatever that is.”
“It’s life anyway you look at it,” I said. “And it’s the only one you got.”
The kid frowned.
I left.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
BACK AT THE CABIN, I opened the package with a steak knife, slicing through the layers of duct tape and cardboard, careful not to destroy any of the contents in the process. When I peeled back the folds, I found three plastic baby dolls inside, just like Cassandra said I would. The dolls were protected with piles of crumpled-up newspaper. I pulled out the paper and tossed it into the fireplace where it quickly caught fire.
Beneath the newspaper, I found the money, neatly stacked.
There had to be hundreds of hundred dollar bills. Thousands actually.
“You took a real chance shipping cash this way,” I said.
“What choice did I have,” Cassandra argued, “UPS?”
For a moment or two, I just looked at her.
Then I said, “Yeah, UPS would have been good.”
I picked up the first doll, placed it against my right ear, shook it, discovered a slight rattling.
Cassandra held her hands out to me, took the doll into her arms and cradled it, as if the doll were a real baby. She turned it over and pulled up the white taffeta gown the toy-maker had dressed it in. The back of the doll had been cut up and down along the spine and then sewn back together with fishing line. Not a very neat job, but it seemed to have done the trick. Cassandra placed the doll down on the table.
“Cut along there,” she said, pointing to the suture in the doll’s back.
I opened the baby doll’s back with the steak knife and uncovered more money and one compact videocassette. The cassette was a lot smaller than the VHS-style cassette I was used to-more compact, more modern, I supposed. The cassette contained no stick-on label, no identification of any kind.
I cut through the backs of the other two dolls and found three hundred thousand dollars, of which I would owe Tony Angelino one hundred thousand. The remainder would go to Cassandra Wolf. For Mexico and a new life, for her and her baby.
I held the videocassette in my right hand, held it up to Cassandra’s face.
“How do you know for certain that this is the one?”
With her right hand she pointed to the TV and the attached VCR.
She said, “I put the package together myself. But if you have to be sure…”
“Not a bad idea,” I said. “That is, if you don’t mind me looking at the film.”
Cassandra looked at me with sad eyes and a slight smile.
“If it’s for our freedom,” she said, “then I suppose it’s for a good cause.”
I smiled and for a second or two we said nothing.
I reached out for her arm.
“You going to be okay?” I said, slipping the cassette out of the transparent plastic protector.
She crossed her arms tight, as though embracing herself.
“Maybe we should pop some popcorn,” she said, “really make a show of it.”
“Hey,” I smiled, “a flick isn’t a flick without the popcorn.”
But it wasn’t the least bit funny.
***
The picture on the video was blurry, with only a bed and a bare wall for background.
“Where did Pelton film this?” I inquired.
Cassandra sat behind me on the wood floor in what had become a near permanent perch beside the fire. She had both arms crossed and locked tightly at the chest, a wool blanket wrapped around her torso. She was rocking back and forth, as though freezing.
“At the Coco’s Motor Inn,” she revealed, “near the Albany airport.”
“Hotel-no-tell,” I said.
In person, a very tragic-looking Cassandra stared into the newly stoked fire-a fire on what had become a very warm afternoon. But then, I think the fire was necessary. I think the fire helped Cassandra cauterize her memory of Wash Pelton. In the video she wore black thigh-high stockings and a black garter belt, no panties. Despite the way the film moved in and out of focus, I could plainly see the heart-shaped tattoo on the left side of her neck. I knew the film was nothing more than a porn film, whether it was meant for Pelton’s private viewing or not. Still, I couldn’t help noticing how beautiful Cassandra looked with bare breasts and flat stomach, and there was the way she moved in the bed, smoothly, not the least bit abrupt, her eyes closed the entire time.
Pelton, on the other hand, looked terrible. He had undergone a drastic change in the years since we had been corrections officers together. His gut had become large and fleshy, his arms lanky, if not atrophied. The same went for his legs. His appendage was long, veiny, and purple. The little bit of hair he had on his head was snow-white. In a word, he had gone soft. Irreparably soft.
I knew I could have watched the film from start to finish without Cassandra interfering. She knew the stakes as well as I did. But once I saw the jagged scar on Wash’s neck, I knew without a doubt that I could make a positive ID in a court of law. And a positive ID is exactly what I needed to turn the tables on him.
But then another man appeared in the viewfinder. A tall, portly man. Schillinger, of course. He stood in front of Cassandra, took hold of her hair, pulled her up onto the bed.
I turned and looked at the real-life Cassandra sitting on the floor staring into the fire, that wool blanket wrapped around her on a hot spring day in May.
Enough is enough, I thought.
I got up, hit the eject button on the machine, pulled the cassette tape out, and slipped it back into the plastic case. I took a pot out of the kitchen and placed the video inside it, along with some of the cash. I filled two more pots with the rest of the cash. Then I took up the square panel from the floor and stored the pots in the far corner of the cellar, in the exact place where I had shot the snakes. When I was finished, I climbed back up the ladder, secured the cellar, and got two beers out from the fridge. One for me and one fo
r Cassandra, courtesy of my love, Val Antonelli, and my lawyer, Tony Angelino.
By that time, it was going on four o’clock. I needed to call Tony with directions to the cabin so that he could feed them to Schillinger and Pelton. But what if they decided to blow the whole thing off? What if they decided to take a chance on me exposing the video to the entire world? What if they figured I was already screwed or way beyond screwed, video or no video? What if they knew for certain I was going down, not only for the aiding and abetting of Eduard Vasquez’s escape, but also for his murder?
If it all happened that way, then prison was inevitable.
The corrections officers would not bother protecting one of their own. In the maximum security prisons of the 1990s, the gorillas were in charge, not the hacks or the screws. Certainly not “the man.” The COs would stand off to the side while the inmates held me down flat on the concrete floor and cut away my flesh piece by piece with a shiv made from a disposable, prison-issue razor. The inmates would hold me down by the arms and legs and cut along the back, making shallow slices, then deeper slices. They would peel the skin, roll it back, expose the fleshy-white under-layer until no skin was left on my back. Then they would string me up by the neck, maybe slice my gut so that my intestines would spill out onto the cold concrete.
Anything I imagined could come true, and worse.
Schillinger and Pelton had to take the bait.
I felt a hand against my shoulder. I turned fast, grabbed it.
“Jesus,” Cassandra said.
I dropped an open beer to the floor and pressed her up against the wall of the kitchen.
“Don’t ever do that again,” I said. I released my hold on her. “I’m sorry,” I said. I pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
Cassandra wiped her eyes, combed her brown hair with open fingers.
“You need help,” she said. “Maybe if you had found a way to resolve your wife’s-”
“Don’t,” I said, pointing the lit cigarette at her in place of my index finger. “You have no idea.”
The white foam spread out in all directions on the floor.
She took a step toward me. “Don’t talk to me about being alone. You’re not the only one who’s alone. You’ve got no right to think you’re the only one who is alone.”
I pictured her image on the video and I pictured what she was doing to Pelton in that white hotel room. I pictured what she did with Schillinger. Then I saw her tossing that black-plated.32 off the side of the granite clearing and into the heavy growth on top of Old Iron Top.
Maybe she was right.
More accurately: I had no right to feel like the only one who had suffered.
I bent over, picked up the now empty beer can, and set it on the kitchen table. Then I put my hands on Cassandra’s shoulders, pulled her toward me, into me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Maybe you’re just scared,” she said. “But then who isn’t?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
AT FOUR O’CLOCK, CASSANDRA and I changed into black jeans, black turtlenecks, and black lace-up combat boots. I pulled a black watch cap over my head. We painted one another’s faces with black face paint to make the get-up complete. I slipped on a pair of black leather gloves that fit so tightly that they might have passed as a second skin, and I spent the next half hour squeezing my hands in and out of fist position so as to loosen up the gloves and make sure my trigger finger was free.
I laid out the Remington 1187s on the kitchen table and loaded the weapons with five two-and-three-quarter eight-shot all-purpose magnum loads. I handed one of the shotguns, barrel up, to Cassandra.
“You know how to use this thing?”
She pulled back the chamber device on the semiautomatic and popped the release. The cabin was filled with the sharp, solid, metallic sound of a round being chambered.
“Eddy Vasquez was my lover,” she said, depressing the safety latch on the trigger as if that was answer enough. Then she went into the great room and pulled up the floor-board panel. She climbed down and leaned the shotgun against the wall beside the ladder. When she climbed back out of the hole, she said, “Maybe you’d better make that call now.”
“It’s the only thing left to do,” I agreed.
Using the old rotary phone in the kitchen, I dialed the number for Tony Angelino’s private line at his office inside Albany’s Council 84. The time was four-fifteen.
He answered after the first ring, not bothering with a formal hello. “Go,” is all he said in his raspy baritone.
It took me a little less than fifteen seconds to give him precise directions from Albany to Ironville and the cabin.
“Sounds like my L.A. Guinea Pig contingent came through,” Tony said.
“Pelton and Schillinger are definitely coming?” I probed.
“Pelton was happy you came to your senses. Said he’ll figure out a way to back you up, if you’ll only give him back that video.”
“They ask about copies? What if they think we made copies?”
“I told them it was a chance they’d have to take, paisan. I told them all you wanted was your name back, and your job, and that it would not be in your best interest to further piss them off. That you wanted to work with them now, not work against them. Capisce?”
“And Cassandra?”
“Told them you sent her on her way. That she’s probably in Mexico by now.”
“No cops,” I said.
“No cops,” Tony said.
“And you’re sure they bought it, Tone?”
“Sure as I’ll ever be,” he said.
“I’ll be in touch,” I said.
I drank two more beers over the next two hours. I could have drunk more. In any case, the adrenaline or the fear or both seemed to burn the alcohol away as fast as I put it in. Cassandra drank nothing. She seemed calm, casually sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace in her black jeans and turtleneck, the fire having been allowed to die completely for the first time since we’d arrived. For now, the cabin interior was lit with the dim light that came from the brass table lamp on top of the three-tiered bookshelf abutting the stone fireplace. We said very little. Not even small talk. I paced the cabin floor and said nothing.
Nothing seemed like the easier alternative.
CHAPTER SIXTY
BLOOD RUNS FROM THE base of Wash Pelton’s neck, down the front of his yellow inmate jumper. It hits me then: Why bother holding a shiv to a man’s neck if you already have the barrel of a.38 service revolver pressed up against his head?
In the four days since the rebel inmates took control of D-Block and D-Yard, they have not fired a single round. The murdered COs were cut open with shivs, not blown away by bullets.
Beatings and shivings, but not bullets.
The situation is simple, but deadly. The rebel inmates have firearms, but they don’t have bullets.
As the afternoon of the fourth day wears on, the rebel inmates make their demands once more. Demands for food, money, medical supplies, helicopters, weapons, freedom, and, of course, bullets. Lots of bullets. With fists raised high and bandannas wrapped around their heads and sunglasses covering their bloodshot eyes, they scream insane orders over government-issue bullhorns from the center of Times Square to the state troopers who line the west wall, sighting us in with their.270 caliber standard-issue sniping rifles. Their firearms are loaded and locked.
No question about that. The question, on the other hand, is this: Do the troopers have orders to take out three corrections officers in the interest of saving the lives of two dozen others?
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
AT EXACTLY ONE MINUTE past eight o’clock on a warm Saturday night in May, just five days after convicted cop-killer Eduard Vasquez escaped from Green Haven Maximum Security Prison-and just two days after his assassination- two egg-shaped headlights broke through the darkness of the north country. What I guessed was a state-owned, four-door Ford Taurus rolled slowly along the east-west Ironville road until
the driver turned off and pulled into the driveway that led to the cabin.
I moved away from the picture window and turned toward Cassandra.
“You know what to do,” I said, keeping my eyes planted on the headlights, remembering her pregnant condition.
“Yes,” spoke a voice in the darkness, “I know what to do.”
The white light from Cassandra’s four-battery flashlight sliced through the thick darkness like a laser beam. From where I stood, I heard her lifting the wood panel off the floor. I heard her steps when she climbed down the ladder. I heard her replace the panel.
What happened next was up to me.
And luck.
I pulled the.45 out from behind my back, pulled back the slide and felt the good solid feel of racking a live round. Using my thumb, I clicked on the safety and stuffed the piece, barrel first, behind my belt buckle. I jogged into the back bedroom and picked up the twelve-gauge Remington with the flashlight I had duct-taped to the barrel. I opened the bedroom window and climbed out, hind end first, so that I was sitting on the windowsill with my legs still in the room. Then I stood on the sill and heaved myself up onto the roof.
I shimmied up onto the wood shakes, crawled on my chest and stomach, propelled myself with my legs, arms, and hands, feeling the brittle wood shakes crack underneath my weight. I slid up to the apex of the A-frame and looked down on the driveway. From this position, I watched the headlights cut through the blackness of the early evening. The car moved slowly up the hard-packed dirt road, sweeping up pebbles and stones against the underside of the carriage until the driver turned into the driveway and stopped.
The Innocent Page 25
