Andrew Klavan - True Crime

Frank’s eyes met the Reverend Stanley B’s. He cleared his throat and measured the volume of his voice before he spoke again. Then, tightly, softly, he said, “You can get me this goddamned son-of-a-bitch out of here.” And lifting his cigarette yet again, his hand trembling so badly that the ash fell off of itself, he muttered: “Reverend Shit-fer-brains.”

The chaplain heard that. Oh yes. Oh, he knew that was his nickname, universally through the prison. Sure he did-and Frank bet that little detail didn’t figure in any of his dinner party stories. In fact, he bet it made the reverend kind of mad. Oh yes it did. It was making him mad right now. Frank could see it, with some very unchristian satisfaction, as Shillerman’s mouth twitched and his throat started working to swallow the insult down.

As the guard came up behind him, the chaplain managed to go on in that gentle, God-loves-you drawl: “Now, Frank. I’m being honest with you here. I myself would not want to be strapped to that table tonight with the wrongs I’ve done unspoken and unrepented of …”

Benson put his hand on the preacher’s shoulder. “Hey, Reverend, come on.”

“Because when they put that needle in your arm …”

“Jesus, Reverend,” Benson said. His eyes flicked at Frank, then back. “I’m telling you: come on.”

Not resisting, but not moving either, still keeping his hands clasped before him, the Reverend Stanley B. Shillerman looked at CO Benson as if down from a great height. “It may be upsetting, but I feel I have a job to do here.”

“Well, yeah, but … I mean, you know the rules, Chaplain. Spiritual counseling is strictly at the prisoner’s request.”

“Get him out of here,” Frank said.

“I’m sorry for you, Frank,” said Shillerman.

“I’m sorry too,” said Frank thickly. “Believe me.”

“Come on , Reverend,” Benson said, really nervous now, hearing the tone of Frank’s voice. “I’m serious here. We don’t want any trouble.” He even tugged at the chaplain’s arm lightly.

“All right, all right,” said the chaplain. He raised his two hands as if in benediction. He smiled his lofty blessing upon them all.

Benson kept his arm extended behind the man as they walked to the door together, as if he were afraid Shillerman would turn suddenly and make a break for the cage again. But the chaplain permitted himself only one last backward look of pity and sorrow. Then the guard at the door opened at Benson’s knock and Shillerman was gone.

Benson ran his fingers up through his slick black hair as he returned to his table. “Hey, forget it, Frankie,” he called toward the cage. “The guy’s an asshole.” He shook his head, sitting down, muttering, “Everybody wants to get in on the action, you know.”

Frank nodded. His temple pulsed as he fought for control. He crushed out his cigarette, pressing down hard to drive the energy out of his trembling hand. He dragged the back of his fist across his lips to dry them and, as he did, he looked across the cell at the clock. It was twelve-thirty. Thirty minutes to the visiting hour. And he felt as if he were choking. Just as he’d feared. Now that his anger was subsiding, there was a powerful urge to release the rest of it, all of it, everything. A great pressure of anguish rose up in him and Frank wanted to tear himself open to let it out. He wanted to stand and howl and sob and cry to heaven, and beat his hands against the bars, against the air. It wasn’t right. He hadn’t done it. It wasn’t fair . And a pernicious inner whisper told him: No one could blame you. It’s what anyone would do.

Frank shut his eyes. His lips moving silently, he appealed to that ever-watching God of his. He conjured Bonnie’s face and Gail’s. If they came in now-if they saw him-raging helplessly against his fate, weeping over the unfairness of it all-boo-hoo, boo-hoo-Christ, how that would torture them-in their beds at night-they would see him like that-forever after-husband and father-impotent and sobbing-their bitterness and pain-it would haunt them their whole lives long. He clenched his fist and rapped it lightly on the tabletop, nearly chanting in his mind: If you would give me strength, if you would give me the appearance of strength, the appearance of strength for them to remember, if you would give me the appearance of strength …

“Ach,” he said. He opened his eyes, annoyed, snarling all his passion back into its corner. He pulled a cigarette from the pack on the table and shoved it in his mouth and struck a match angrily. He sat at his table behind the bars of his cage and his long, sad face was still. The smoke trailed up from the cigarette in his hand. Expressionless, he waited for his wife and daughter to arrive.

This, after all, he told himself, is what a man does.

In my youth, I was a racer of cars. A dragster, I mean. The teenage terror of Long Island’s byways. Well, I’d seen it in old movies and it was as good a form of rebellion as any. My parents-my adopted parents-were softspoken, thoughtful and humorless attorneys, pater for a firm of environmental activists, and mater for a planning group that fought for housing for the poor. I could think of no better way to irritate them both than mindlessly vroom-vrooming jalops up and down the Guyland boulevards, pistons at the limit. My parents and I, we don’t speak much anymore, so I guess it must’ve worked.

I mention this only because the habit stuck. I drove a floppy-gutted Tempo these days. A slumping blue sad sack of a car. It could jump from zero to fifty in a generation, if you had the time. And still, I had managed to beat the bejesus out of it. Working it up to impossible speeds, screeching round corners, tatting through traffic like a lacemaker’s needle. I never had time to tune the poor machine, or wash it even. It was ratty with grime. It sputtered and popped and whined in its exertions. But I showed it no mercy, and I made it run.

I gunned it now out of the News parking lot, lanced it through a gap in the noonday stream of cars and joined the race along the boulevard. It was still twenty minutes before twelve o’clock noon. I’d promised my wife to be home by the hour, and it wasn’t going to be a problem, not the way I drove. Getting home in time seemed like a pretty good idea to me. I had a notion that this day was not going to end before word of my latest indiscretion reached Barbara’s ears. She had promised to leave me if she caught me cheating again, and I was pretty sure she meant it. Still, begging shamelessly had worked once and it might work once more. So I wanted to keep her in as good a mood as possible.

Getting home in time, taking Davy to the zoo: that was the ticket. Zip right on back to Skinker-De Balivere, that was the smart guy’s plan. What would’ve been stupid, on the other hand-what would’ve been, you might say, the Dunderhead Strategy-would be to detour round the park out to Dogtown to have a look at Pocum’s grocery. Just to get a gander at the crime scene, I mean. To get a feel for the murder’s choreography, if you will. That-on a story like this, on a human interest sidebar about a guy on death row-that would’ve been unnecessary, even obsessive. Even cruel, if you think about Barbara-waiting, martyred-if you think about what was in store for her today. Bad enough that she had given up her job so we could come to St. Louis and make a fresh start. She was also, as I say, an austere woman, and it had cost her God knows what price in pride to teach herself to trust me again. When she found out about Patricia, that sacrifice of hers, that trust, was going to turn round and slap her in the kisser like a vaudevillian’s fish. So getting on home to Skinker-De Balivere, taking that Davy to the good old zoo, giving her the sense that I was in there fighting on the conjugal front-these were the first steps in the groundwork of my salvation. Assuming there was any salvation to be had.