The headlights from the car shined on the front of the cabin but not in my eyes. From my position on the roof I was able to see Tommy Walsh squeeze his massive body out from behind the steering column. And I was able to see Wash Pelton get out of the passenger side. And I saw Marty Schillinger crawl out of the backseat.
“What the heck is going on here?” Pelton said. “Keeper Marconi, you here?”
His strained voice echoed against Old Iron Top and then drifted out over the grassy fields opposite the Ironville road. When Pelton took three or four steps forward I was able to see that he wore a black business suit tailored to fit his soft, middle-aged body. He wore a bright red tie that showed well in the light that came from the headlamps on the Taurus. He looked out of place in the middle of the Adirondack forest. Unfortunately for him, the tie would make a good target if I needed one.
Tommy pulled out his service pistol and assumed a sharpshooter’s stance-legs spread, feet flat, knees cocked, arms out straight, two hands supporting the Glock’s grip. Like the turret on a tank, he shifted his aim from left to right to left again. He seemed more suited to the occasion, with his work boots and jeans and jean jacket with the sleeves cut off.
“Keeper Marconi,” Pelton shouted again, this time with his hands cupped up around his mouth like a megaphone.
I felt the old wood shakes snapping and breaking underneath me.
Tommy pivoted, waving the Glock in the direction of the east-west road, as if suspecting an ambush.
“Put that thing away, Tommy,” Schillinger ordered, “before you get lucky and shoot yourself.”
Schillinger looked like a Sam Spade detective out of Hammett novel with his shin-length Burberry trench coat.
“This your idea of a joke, Marty?” Pelton said, now looking at his partner.
I held my breath and considered Pelton’s and Schillinger’s attitude toward each other a good sign. No conveyance of even the most minimal courtesies between them. Antagonistic allies at best.
“I don’t joke,” Schillinger spat. “You should know that by now.”
“Let’s just get back in the car and go,” Pelton said, now stepping toward the Taurus.
It was then that I shined the barrel-mounted flashlight on the three men.
Schillinger and Pelton brought their hands up to their foreheads in a mock salute to shield their eyes. Tommy Walsh pivoted on the balls of his feet, aiming the barrel of his piece at the source of the light.
“Lose the cannon, Tommy!” I shouted.
All three looked up at me, squinting their eyes as if straining to see me.
“Lose it now!”
But Tommy wouldn’t listen. He just planted a solid bead on me with his weapon as I spread my legs and anchored my weight against the roof. I pulled open the chamber on the Remington 1187 and, purely for effect, released it again. No other sound in the world carries more weight than the sound of a twelve-gauge semiautomatic when it’s locked and loaded. The metal against metal sound echoed and bounced off the south face of Old Iron Top, as if, somehow, the old hilltop were alive and well and on my side.
“Do it, Tommy,” Pelton said with an even, businesslike voice.
“Yeah, dummy,” Schillinger said, “lose the toy.”
Tommy turned and gave Pelton and Schillinger a disgusted, sour look. He tossed the piece a few feet away, onto the lawn. “I told you he was gonna try and shoot us,” he said. “Just like he blew that drug addict Moscowitz away.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Pelton said.
“Moscowitz wear a wool overcoat?” I said.
“Yeah,” Schillinger broke in. “The drug addict wears a wool overcoat. Cold, all the time, the freak.”
“Old Tommy here is not so dumb after all,” I said.
Tommy let out a laugh.
“Told you, douche bag.”
Schillinger bobbed his head.
“Keep laughing, fat ass,” he said. “Pretty soon you’re gonna be road-kill, too.”
“Both of you, stop it,” Pelton shouted while remaining perfectly still, hands up. “Let’s hear what he’s got to say.”
“Move closer to the cabin,” I said, feeling the sharp sting of the splintered wood shakes piercing my black jeans, needling the skin on my stomach, chest, and thighs.
No one moved.
“Closer to the cabin,” I said again. “Move away from the car.”
“This wasn’t part of the deal,” Pelton said.
“Tony told us no cops, no guns,” Schillinger added.
I braced myself and let off a round that shattered the windshield on Pelton’s Ford Taurus.
“Move!”
The explosion bounced off the south wall of Old Iron Top and echoed into the empty valley across from the east-west road.
“Move now!”
The three men made for the woodpile under the carport, in the direction of the door. It was all I wanted.
“Open the side door and walk inside,” I yelled, shifting my weight back down off the roof, maneuvering my legs onto the sill of the open bedroom window. “And lock it behind you.”
“You’re digging yourself into one hell of a giant chasm, Keeper,” came the sound of Pelton’s voice. “In my estimation, you’re about to put the proverbial screws to yourself.”
I slid back into the bedroom and ran toward the front of the cabin, shotgun barrel poised ahead of me. “Stand right where you are, gentlemen,” I said, loud enough for Cassandra to hear me through the floorboards.
The three men stood only a foot or two in front of the closed door, within perfect range of the video probe. “Now,” I said with a smiling face, “I hope you guys are movie fans.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
DRY-MOUTHED, HANDS WRAPPED tightly around the smooth wood stock of the Remington 1187, I aimed the barrel at the chests of men I had once considered fraternal brothers. I shined the barrel-mounted flashlight in their eyes, kept them in constant view, especially Tommy. No telling his capabilities in the name of loyalty, allegiance to duty, and good old-fashioned recklessness.
I sidestepped to the bookshelf, keeping the shotgun steady, and reaching under the lampshade, I hit the switch.
“You’re a wanted fugitive,” Schillinger said, his long arms dangling against his loose-fitting Burberry trench coat. “I should warn you, in case you’re planning something stupid.”
“Something more stupid than this?” Pelton said. “I thought we had a nice peaceful exchange set up?”
I could only hope that Cassandra was getting all this on tape under the floorboards of the cabin.
“Look, Marty,” I said, feeling the weight of the shotgun on my left arm, feeling the tightness of the leather glove on the trigger finger of my right hand, “I’m entirely aware of your partnership with Pelton. So stop the good-cop-bad-cop routine before my finger gets itchy.”
“You’re in a position,” Schillinger smirked.
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” I said, “but you know how it is when you don’t have control of your own future.”
“I do now,” Schillinger said.
“We kept our part of the bargain, Keeper,” Pelton said, arms out stiff by his side, fingers moving in and out of fist position. “Now give us the film and I’ll see about getting you cleared of this thing.”
If I squeezed the trigger of the twelve-gauge just a fraction of an inch, one round alone of the eight-shot magnum loads would have been enough to take off all three faces. Someone might live through the experience, but what would have been the point of carrying on without a face?
I picked up the remote control for the television and VCR with my left hand, all the time holding the shotgun in my right. I turned on the machines and began to roll the porn flick.
“Now, gentlemen,” I said, “watch carefully. What you see may change my life for the better.”
There were a few seconds of static on the screen. But through the blur, I could make out Wash’s face and the scar on his neck as he
sat on the edge of a bed inside a room at the Coco’s Motor Inn. Cassandra was down on her knees. All I could make out of her was her naked back, the garter belt wrapped tightly around her waist. But when she leaned into Wash-between his legs-you could clearly make out the heart-shaped tattoo on her neck, just above her left shoulder.
From where I stood by the bookcase, I could see the sweat break out on Pelton’s forehead. I could almost hear the anger flush into Schillinger’s face. As for the ever-silent Tommy, I could see his eyes moving from the screen to me, then back to the screen. I knew this: He was looking for the perfect opportunity to jump me. But I also knew this: I had to keep all three in one spot long enough for Cassandra to get a shot of them, long enough for them to admit to setting me up.
On the screen, Pelton scrunched the muscles of his red face. He was close to something, I could tell. I recalled the feeling. You could see his lips move but you couldn’t hear what he was saying. Cassandra moved her face out of the way when he finally did come to it. She turned to the camera, opened her eyes wide, disgusted and terrified. When Pelton was through, she held her face down. In a word, she looked defeated.
Then Schillinger came into the picture.
At first all I could make out of him were his skinny legs. But then I could see all of him when he bent over, grabbed Cassandra by the hair, and pulled her onto the bed. I couldn’t hear the words he said, but I could plainly hear Cassandra crying out in pain when Schillinger yanked hard on her thick brown hair.
Now that Schillinger had clearly made his presence known inside the cabin and on the video, it was time for me to lose my weapon. To add emphasis (and drama), I slid back the chamber of the Remington 1187 four distinct times, forcing out four unspent shells. It was an important move losing that shotgun. But it was definitely not in my best interest to continue being the aggressor. It was important for them to think I was the victim.
The heavy shells made a thumping sound on the floor. I handed the shotgun over, stock first, to a shocked Tommy Walsh. He looked at me like my brain had suddenly oozed out of my face through my nostrils. I bent over, picked up each shell, one by one, and put them in the pocket of my black jeans.
“Sorry about the greeting, boys,” I said. “But I had to make sure it was safe.”
Wash appeared to be tongue-tied.
Schillinger appeared to have gone mute.
But then Tommy let the surrendered shotgun fall to the floor. He grabbed me, turned me around, threw me face first against the bookshelf, knocking the brass lamp over. A half-dozen or so books cascaded to the floor.
He held on to me, his thick forearm around my neck.
“Wait,” Pelton said. “Let’s hear what he’s got to say.”
I felt the pain shoot up my back and down my neck between the shoulder blades. Tommy had twisted my arms behind my back. He pressed them up, palms out. I took as deep a breath as I could with my constricted diaphragm, tried to stem the pain, tried to stay calm, clearheaded. It was my one and only shot.
“I say we off the motherfucker now,” Tommy said. “I say we kill him, take the video and our chances.”
“We need him alive,” Wash said.
Schillinger took a few steps forward. “You mean you’re nothing without your fall guy,” he said. Exactly what I wanted him to say. Precisely. That was the good-luck part of the proceedings. But there was the bad-luck part, too: Schillinger reached into his trench coat, came out with his own.9mm Glock. “I agree with Tommy,” he went on. “I say we kill him while we still have the chance. That’s the only reason I agreed to come up here in the first place. To see that the Keeper bites the big one.”
Schillinger handed the pistol over to Tommy, who then jammed the weapon against my temple. I heard the distinct sound of the hammer being thumbed back. My eyes watered, my heart skipped a beat and verged on stopping altogether.
But then Pelton screamed. “I said no!”
There was an explosion, and I felt my body freeze. Tommy broke his grip on me and dropped down flat and lifeless to the cabin floor. I turned fast and saw Pelton with a pistol in his hand, and I saw right away that it was a fancy chrome-plated.38 with an eight-inch barrel and a walnut grip, and there was a thin trace of smoke rising up from the barrel.
Pelton raised the weapon, aimed it at the back of Schillinger’s head. He cocked the hammer a second time, and Schillinger dropped the Glock. When I kicked the Glock away toward the other end of the room, it smeared the puddle of dark red blood that gushed out of the exit wound in Tommy’s head.
“Now,” Pelton said, “we listen to what he’s got to say. Got it? Then we decide what to do with him.”
Schillinger slowly backed away. It was hard to make out his face in the dim light. On the television, Cassandra was on her knees, straddling Wash like a horse while he lay on his back and pulled her long hair back like a rein. Her mouth opened painfully wide, I could clearly see the pain and strain on her face. But then I could see something else on the film too. Something I never would have guessed. Schillinger stood on the edge of the bed, very near the prone Wash. At first, what I saw didn’t register. At first, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. But then I knew I couldn’t deny it. There was no denying it whatsoever. In the video, Wash let go of Cassandra and flipped over on the bed onto all fours. Schillinger was on him from behind doing something I had seen happen to him once before at Attica; only this time, he wasn’t screaming or trying to get away.
In all the craziness, both Schillinger and Pelton must have forgotten about the video, because together they turned and looked at the screen.
“Jesus H. Christmas,” Schillinger said.
“What difference does it make what he knows?” Pelton said. “All you want is your name back. Am I right, Keeper? You just want out of this mess.”
“Something like that,” I said. “But first, I want to settle the score.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
“I GAVE YOU A chance to get out of this with a slap on the wrist,” Pelton said, standing near the cabin door, the chrome-plated.38 in hand, eyes on both me and Schillinger. “And I would have compensated you nicely for your troubles.”
I gazed at the screen. Schillinger’s head was hanging back in ecstasy while he worked on Pelton, faster now, the flesh on his white butt cheeks trembling as Cassandra sat back on the bed and stared at the floor.
“Maybe all of this could have been avoided,” I said. The hole in Tommy Walsh’s head was still gushing dark red blood.
“Sure,” Pelton said.
“Pelton would have killed you anyway,” Schillinger said.
“You shut up,” Pelton snapped, waving the gun at his head. “I never wanted anybody killed nor have I killed anyone…of importance, that is.”
“You’re forgetting about Vasquez.”
“Not my doing, Detective Schillinger.”
“Let me guess,” I said, shifting my eyes from the naked bodies on the television screen to the fully clothed bodies in the dimly lit cabin. “I’m sure it never once dawned on you, Wash, that if I took the blame for the escape, I would also be accused of running the drug racket that was about to hit the press once your partners managed to pull off their separate back-stabbings.”
“It wasn’t supposed to work that way, Keeper,” Pelton said. “I never counted on Mike Norman and,” nodding at Schillinger, “my good friend Marty here betraying me.”
“I just want what I have coming,” Schillinger said, looking directly at Pelton and the barrel of that.38.
“So what happened, Wash?” I said. “Let’s see. I’ll bet as soon as I left Mike’s office on Tuesday he got this bright idea and gave you a call and offered you a sale you couldn’t refuse? A few thousand dollars in exchange for evidence that could put Keeper Marconi away and make it look like he’d been perpetrating the drug racket inside Green Haven, maybe even make it look like I was the one who helped Vasquez escape. After all, I signed the orders allowing him outside the prison grounds, and no matter what, I w
as the one who approached Mike with illegally obtained evidence.”
“In essence,” Wash Pelton said, cocking his head, “that’s what happened.”
“I guess it’s true,” I said, “that I initiated the whole thing through Mike-created a window of opportunity for you. You might even say I could be hating Mike right now, cursing his soul. But, you know what, I’m convinced the poor pathetic bastard must have called you out of desperation, to make a quick buck. In my heart I can’t believe that he would have done anything to hurt me. Not really. And you might have given him a few bucks and his bad conscience might have been a lot easier to handle with a wallet of cash pressed against his backside. But maybe, just maybe, you’d had enough of paying people off.”
“After a while,” Pelton said, the.38 still steady in his hand, “people thought of me as Fleet Bank.”
“You’d already paid Logan and Mastriano to keep their mouths shut,” I said, catching the rapid, wet finish of Schillinger’s act with Pelton on the screen. “And this is after you paid off A. J. Royale for performing an unnecessary root canal on Vasquez. And you had to pay off Doctor Fleischer for putting Mastriano into a fake coma to gain public sentiment and, at the same time, make me look like the bad guy, the insensitive warden. Because all wardens are insensitive tyrants, am I right? You must have figured that you could either take care of Norman with a payoff or have him killed.”
“I had no intentions of going into the hit-man business,” Wash said, shifting his grip on the heavy pistol.
“Choosing the less violent alternative, you gave Schillinger one last payoff to be distributed to Mike Norman in exchange for the bag of evidence. On Tuesday afternoon Marty returned with the evidence you would use against me on Wednesday morning, but what you didn’t know at the time was that he’d kept the payoff for himself, probably telling Norman that it would be delivered within a couple of days. But when Thursday came around, all Lieutenant Mike Norman got was a visit from Marty Schillinger and Tommy Walsh.”
The Innocent Page 26
