Vincent Zandri - The Innocent

I wasn’t entirely against Pelton. We’d been good friends early in our careers. Both of us had started out as COs at Attica only weeks before the riot that had nearly taken our lives. Not long after, both Wash and I, along with Mike Norman, had been reassigned by the commission to set up a training program for rookie cops and security guards, not only to better prepare them in the event of another Attica riot, but also to help prevent another riot.

In those days, Wash, Mike, and I were no strangers to the bars that lined Broadway in downtown Albany. Justins, the Lark, Jack’s Oyster House. Five solid blocks of bars, glaring neon, and the rich fish smell that used to come off the Hudson River in the days before the state cleaned it up. But those were the days before Wash quit the department to get a bachelor’s degree and then a law degree and before Rhonda came into his life. When Wash married Rhonda and Albany politics, whatever friendship we had took a backseat.

Now that Fran was gone, Pelton and I once again had more than a few things in common. Like me, he had no children to go home to. No dog, no dinner, no slippers waiting by the door. He was married, but Rhonda didn’t seem the type to greet him with open arms and a peck on the cheek. Like me he had his work and his booze, but that’s where the similarities ended.

Whiskey and loneliness didn’t make us allies.

I recalled the wassail party the Commission had sponsored at the governor’s mansion on Eagle Street just five months before. It was the first time I’d gone out on my own to a social function since Fran’s death. Now I was caught in a room full of friends, coworkers, and acquaintances with Nat King Cole singing from the grave and colored lights hanging off the walls and wrapped around a gigantic Christmas tree that took up the entire center of the grand living room. Rhonda, as usual, had drunk herself blind, and somehow the booze had caused her to take a liking to me. Or maybe the recent death of my wife had made me more attractive or pitiable; I’m not sure which.

Anyway, I felt this need to get away from it all so I stepped out onto the patio to have a smoke.

Rhonda followed me.

She asked me for a light. But as soon as I lit her smoke, she grabbed onto my arm, pulling me into her with that deceptive bullterrier strength. She let the lit cigarette fall to the stone patio, puckered up, and laid one on me, just like that, in the middle of the governor’s porch. I didn’t want to kiss her. But she’d taken me by surprise. I quickly pushed her away.

But by that time we’d been spotted and the damage done.

Not only had Wash seen us, but so had the governor and his first lady. In fact, the entire party had stopped and stared at us through the open, floor-to-ceiling patio doors.

In the months that followed, Wash never once mentioned the incident to me. We dealt with each other on a professional level. He called me for names to scratch from my roster, and I, with all the fight somehow gone out of me since Fran’s death, capitulated. I didn’t think much about Rhonda after that or about the incident at the governor’s mansion. But I knew, deep down, that it must have been eating away at him. And who could blame him?

I decided to wait until morning to place a call. Anything said between us tonight could only lead to a dead end. I lit another cigarette and watched the smoke boil in the white light from the desk lamp until it disappeared in the darkness. I glanced at the framed picture of Fran that I kept on the right side of my desk-the black-and-white photo taken shortly after her graduation from Albany High, the one with her hair pulled back taut and straight, her costume diamond stud earrings shining in the bright light of the flash, her eyes wide and brown, her mouth curved up at the corners in a subtle smile.

“Okay, Fran,” I said. “Here’s the rundown. We’ve got a missing file and an officer who claims he got the holy hell beaten out of him. But he doesn’t show any signs of being beaten. We’ve got another guard who’s checked into a hospital after taking a clip to the head with the butt end of a rifle. But the guy appears to be unharmed. He’s alive and well, but then, he’s out cold like Sleeping Beauty. I checked in with A. J. Royale down in Newburgh and found out that Vasquez did, in fact, make his dentist appointment. I know he had a series of root canal procedures performed to a bad molar and that, in the end, the good dentist had no choice but to pull it. And last, I’ve got a weapon, a pile of rounds, and the key to Logan’s cuffs. I’ve got an envelope with Cassandra Wolfs address and a package of stills that Marty Schillinger confiscated. I’ve even got a woman with a heart-shaped tattoo on her neck. That, my love, is where the facts stop and the speculation begins.”

I downed my whiskey and poured another shot. I wrapped my hankie around the.38 service revolver, gripped it, and aimed it at the white spotlight as it floated across my window, left to right. I laid the pistol back down and stood each of the six copper-jacketed bullets upright on the desk. I felt the key to the handcuffs. I touched everything with the hankie as though, in the touching, I’d get answers.

Tomorrow I would contact Mike Norman at the Albany Police Department’s downtown division on South Pearl Street. I’d see what he could do about dusting the stuff for prints. In the meantime, I’d consider why Logan would have lied in his statement and why he’d be stupid enough to leave evidence lying around the gravel pit, unless, of course, he wanted it found. I knew someone must have been paid off for something, but who, how much, and why?

I needed connections.

Maybe Cassandra Wolf would provide them.

But from the look of things she was in California. And if I had to guess, Vasquez was with her.

I stamped out my cigarette. In the distance I could hear the electronic buzzers sounding off in F- and G-Blocks. I heard the slam of iron gates. Lockdown. Time for evening head count.

“Are there any good officers left in this prison?” I said out loud, my voice strange and tired.

I looked at Fran’s photo one last time and brought my fingers to her lips. I downed the rest of my drink and locked the envelope with Cassandra Wolf’s address, the.38, the live rounds, and the rest of the evidence inside my briefcase. I stood up with the now weighted-down case in hand and turned out the desk lamp.

By law I should have gone straight to the Stormville police. I should have gotten on the horn with Marty Schillinger and told him what I’d found. But I had a feeling that I’d already made a mistake giving him the stills from Vasquez’s cell. Who knew what would happen to those materials now that I’d handed them over to Marty? Who knew what would happen to the evidence from the gravel pit once it was out of my hands for good? It was my ass that was at stake for Vasquez’s escape. I remembered having signed six or seven identical releases in the past few months. I could not deny a prisoner his right to receive proper medical care. It was a case of an inmate’s civil rights-rights established in the bloody aftermath of Attica. I’d had a responsibility then, and I had a responsibility now.

I knew I had to take control of the situation-bring the material to Mike Norman in Albany, have him dust for prints off the record. It was illegal and I knew it. But I wasn’t concerned with breaking the law, so long as it meant I could get to the truth quickly, avoid a lengthy investigation, prosecute those involved, save my job, save my ass.

I COULDN’T DECIDE IF I wanted to hear Sinatra or Billie Holiday. I chose neither. Instead I reached up to the highest shelf beside the fireplace in my living room, behind my four-piece, blue-sparkle finish, vintage Rogers drum kit. I pulled out an old album I hadn’t spun in ten years: Zoot Sims and Bucky Pizzarelli. I slipped the record out of its sleeve, held the disc up to my face and breathed in the smell of old vinyl, puckered my lips and blew off the excess dust. Then I slipped the relic of an LP onto the turntable and engaged the stylus.