Vincent Zandri - The Innocent

A while back I had refurbished my stereo system with an eight-disc CD player and replaced most of my collection, and it’s a big one, with high-tech, more expensive evolutionary clones. But now it felt somehow soothing to hear the scratchiness that always precedes the music on a vinyl disc.

The sound brought me back, made me think of Fran and her funny, giggly laugh. I could almost see her lying on the couch, stocking feet up on the coffee table, head tilted back just so, eyes closed, a glass of red wine in one hand, a cigarette in the other, smoke rings floating all the way to the ceiling. But then my memory shifted in directions I did not want it to go and I recalled the black sedan that had come out of nowhere, blown the traffic light, plowed into the passenger-side door of my Ford Bronco…

Almost one year ago to the day.

I sat down at the drums and took the brushes in my hands. I thought about Vasquez as the first song came on and I placed my brushes to the snare to mimic the licks of the great Max Roach. I also pictured the heart-shaped tattoo. I thought about the way Schillinger had taken those photos from me inside Vasquez’s empty cell. Maybe I was putting too much into it, but I felt that, for some reason, Vasquez had left them for me to find. Let’s face it, he knew it was SOP to shake down a cell after an escape, and we’re talking about a very neat man here, a man who was not the type to overlook details.

I finished out the piece with a quick triplet and a cymbal crash and returned the brushes to the snare.

I didn’t have the heart for drumming tonight. The keeper of time was too concerned with the keeper of the maximum security joint.

I took a glance at my watch and thought about asking Val over for some reheated leftovers. But it was nine already and I knew it was too late to call. But then, I knew she’d be up. Like me, Val was no longer married, although she did have a twelve-year-old boy from her only marriage to keep her company. I even went to the wall phone in the kitchen and picked up the handset. But at the last second, just as I turned it over in my palm, just as I was about to punch in the numbers, I pictured her sitting on the couch beside her son-stocking feet up on the table, a bowl of popcorn between them-and I hung up.

I found the leftover spaghetti in a Tupperware bowl behind a twelve-pack of Budweiser long neck bottles in the refrigerator. I pulled down a frying pan from the rack, set it on the burner, turned the dial to medium, and tossed in a tablespoon of butter. When the butter had melted and the hissing sound was louder than the smooth licks of Bucky Pizzarelli’s jazz guitar, I added the spaghetti and fried it until it was finished. I ate while spinning the Zoot Sims album a second time. When I was through, I put the dishes into the sink and turned out all the lights. I let the record spin once more. Now that Fran was gone, music kept me company in the darkness.

I put my head on the pillow, closed my eyes.

I thought about Pelton and his phone messages.

Sooner or later, I’d have to give him an explanation for Vasquez’s escape. Sooner or later I’d have to give him two more names to scratch from the guard roster. I pictured Pelton’s puffy red face. I pictured his small, bloodshot eyes-eyes that seemed to have died during all the years that had passed since we’d been friends. I pictured his wife, Rhonda, laying one on me on the patio of the governor’s home. My mind raced. I pictured those two kids riding their bikes up and down that steep pit wall, their cherubic faces lighting up when they told me to screw. I felt the dentist’s gentle grip when we shook hands. I thought about a woman on her knees. A woman with a small, heart-shaped tattoo on her neck giving head to a man with no face. I thought about Logan and his lies, or what appeared to be lies, anyway. I saw Mastriano laid out in a hospital bed, maybe faking sleep, a smile plastered on his face. I couldn’t help but make a connection between Logan, Mastriano, and Eduard Vasquez, a connection that went beyond corrections officers and their prisoner.

I rolled over onto my side of the bed, put my face in the pillow, tried to forget about the whole thing. I tried to clear my mind and I tried not to think about a homemade shiv pressed up against Wash Pelton’s neck back in September 1971 during the Attica riots. I tried not to think about that Buick running the stop sign a year ago. Eventually, I would fall asleep to the angelic sounds of a jazz guitar and a soprano saxophone singing in my ears, like music by moonlight.

TUESDAY MORNING I WAS up before my six-thirty alarm. I tuned in to Good Morning America on the small color set as I sat on the edge of the bed and slipped into my running shorts and shoes. While I stretched, the local news came on for their small segment.

The headline came at me like a bullet.

“Eduard Vasquez, the convicted murderer of an area police officer, escaped from Green Haven Maximum Security Penitentiary yesterday afternoon,” announced the anchorwoman, “ after a vanload of shotgun-toting assailants took him away from the officers in charge of transporting him from the prison to the office of A.J. Royale, a Newburgh dentist who often works on inmates. We spoke with Robert Logan, the senior officer involved in the incident.”

Logan had his navy-blue Corrections baseball cap pulled far back on his round head. Someone had added gauze and medical tape to the small bruise above his right eye, making it look a lot worse than it had yesterday afternoon when he had given me his statement. Now he was all frowns as he balanced himself with a cane. The bastard was faking it, making it look like he had withstood one hell of a beating in the name of God, country, and duty.

“Those men came up on us with shotguns,” he said, his voice trembling, a glassy, wild look in his eyes. “They pressed the barrels against our heads, made us get down on our knees, threatened to shoot us if we didn’t do exactly what they said.”

He really poured it on.

“Then they beat us. My partner, Bernie Mastriano, got knocked out cold. We were gagged and locked up together with my own cuffs. They stuffed us into the station wagon and hauled us out to the gravel pit. They assaulted us, tortured us, did unspeakable things.” Logan looked shamefully to the floor, as though for effect. It was hard to tell whether his tears were genuine or fake. But to me, the report was like a cup of black coffee and just as bitter. I thought, here’s Logan’s and Mastriano’s chance to gain public sentiment before anyone has the true gen about the escape. Here’s their shot to get people on their side, to make themselves look like helpless victims.

The report shifted from Green Haven to Newburgh General. There, lying in his bed, just as still and silent as when I’d seen him yesterday afternoon, was Officer Bernard Mastriano. Now he had a white bandage wrapped around his head and an IV needled into his arm. A heart monitor was clearly visible in the background. If you listened closely, you could hear the steady beats of his heart over the small speaker of my old portable TV.

Many people surrounded Mastriano.

Family and friends. Standing room only. The crowd of people overflowed out into the hall; people were holding lit candles in their hands. A priest wearing a black habit with a purple cassock draped over his shoulders like a scarf stood just a few feet away from the hospital bed. Anchorwoman Chris Collins stood before the camera. Collins was a good looking woman with dark, nearly black eyes and black hair cut just to her shoulders. This morning she wore a tight, fire engine red mini-dress and matching blazer.

“We’re here in the room of Officer Bernard Mastriano,” said Collins directly into the TV camera, “one of the men in charge of Eduard Vasquez when he escaped from Green Haven Prison yesterday afternoon while on a routine trip to a dentist in Newburgh. From what we can make out so far, Mastriano was beaten severely about the head with the back end of a shotgun, until rendered unconscious. Now we’re going to speak with Dr. Arnold Fleischer, the physician attending Mastriano, to hear the diagnosis.”