Vincent Zandri - The Innocent

“You know what I’m gonna do after that, Officer Mastriano?”

…now, and at the hour of our death…

“I’m gonna fire your ass. I’m gonna have you brought up on charges for conspiracy in the aiding and abetting of an escaped convict. Are you getting all this, Mastriano? I don’t think you’re getting all this, Mastriano. You’ve got to pay attention.”

… Amen.

Mastriano lay perfectly still. Too still. I mean, he never even flinched. Maybe he was out cold. One thing was for sure, if he’d been awake, he’d have known by now that I’d already been arrested for harboring his pistol and ammo. If he’d been awake, he’d have known I was bluffing.

I had to consider this: Maybe he was injured, after all.

But there was something else to consider. Maybe his unconsciousness was chemically enhanced and not simply faked. What I mean is, if Dr. Fleischer could get away with slapping a bandage on his head, poking an IV into his arm, and allowing all these people and their cameras to invade hospital corridors where the truly sick were trying to get well and the truly terminal were trying to die in peace, then he would have no trouble putting Mastriano to sleep. In the end, it all depended on one thing and one thing only.

Money.

Just how much was Fleischer getting and who the hell was greasing him?

I turned and looked out the open door. A flash went off, stung my eyes, blinded me for split second. A tall man stood behind the photographer. He supported a video camera on his right shoulder. The cameraman must have been filming me the entire time I’d been speaking to Mastriano. The media people weren’t leaving anything to chance. And I suppose it was pretty reckless of me to be seen inside Mastriano’s room like that, after what had gone down in Albany that very morning.

I sat back, blinked, tried to regain my eyesight.

There was some kind of commotion going on outside in the corridor.

Behind me, the nuns went on praying, unaffected.

Our Father who art in heaven…

When I looked up, the false image of a black flashbulb had nearly faded from my line of vision and I was able to make out the face of a plump gray-haired woman dressed in black. Mastriano’s mother. On one side of her stood Dr. Arnold Fleischer. On the other stood Chris Collins from the Newscenter 13. Collins, in all her tenacity, must have followed me from Stormville, across Route 84, over the Newburgh Beacon Bridge, all the way to Newburgh General. And I hadn’t noticed even for a second in my rearview mirror. She looked at me with that chiseled face and those deep black eyes. She wore a blue skirt with a matching blazer and a white oxford shirt buttoned all the way to the top, a silver brooch pinned where the knot of a tie might have been. She held a microphone to Mrs. Mastriano’s face-a face that became distorted with rage when she recognized me.

“You,” the little woman shouted in a trembling, accented voice. “You…you sent my boy out with that criminal, that cop-killer.”

She pointed an index finger, thick as a sausage, at my face.

…Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done…

She clenched her hand into a fist and lunged at me. But Collins dropped her mike to the floor and grabbed hold of the woman’s right arm while Dr. Fleischer grabbed hold of the other.

“Mr. Marconi,” Fleischer said, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises.”

Collins wasted no time going to work on me, waving her hand at the cameraman who was still shooting the scene from outside the door, then using the same hand to pull down on her skirt and straighten her hair. The bright white light shined in my eyes again. Collins turned to face the camera. “We have Keeper Marconi, warden of Green Haven Maximum Security Prison in nearby Stormville, with us today. As warden, Mr. Marconi is the man directly responsible for sending Corrections Officer Bernard Mastriano outside the prison walls with Eduard Vasquez, who, until Monday afternoon of this week, had been serving a life sentence for the notorious 1988 slaying of a rookie policeman.”

Collins turned to me. At the same time, she pulled Mastriano’s mother away from Fleischer and into the picture with me. Behind us, serving as a backdrop, was Mastriano, laid out on the hospital bed. Before I knew what was happening, Collins was subjecting me to the third degree. “Mr. Marconi, can you tell our viewers why you chose Bernard Mastriano for this particular, potentially life-threatening job?”

Mrs. Mastriano broke into tears at the sound of her son’s name.

…and forgive us our trespasses…

Caught off guard, I looked into the camera and said, “That’s strictly police business now. I’m here simply to check on the condition of my officer.”

“We don’t want you here,” the old woman screamed. Fleischer took hold of her once more, pulled her out of the way of the camera.

“Can you tell us, Mr. Marconi,” Collins went on, “what Mr. Mastriano’s injury reveals about the nature of prison policy in general and about the disintegrating nature of the corrections system in this country?”

I looked straight into those black eyes. “Lady,” I said, “you have no idea.” And then I walked away. But before I left the room, I approached Fleischer, who stood in a far corner between Mrs. Mastriano and the group of four nuns.

I pointed my index finger at his face. “I don’t know what you’re pulling here,” I said, “and I don’t know who’s paying you off. But in the end I’ll have your medical diploma tacked to the wall of a prison cell.” Then I made a mistake by poking his chest with my finger, forcing Fleischer to stumble back a little. “I think maybe F- or G-Block for you, pal.”

…but deliver us from evil…

“Listen, buddy!” Fleischer screamed, releasing Mrs. Mastriano’s forearm. “I’m a Harvard-educated doctor of medicine. You were the one arrested, Mr. Marconi. Not me.”

I turned back to him quick.

“Then let’s get away from this circus, Harvard boy, and talk about it like real men.”

The white camera lights grew even hotter against the back of my neck. You could probably smell the testosterone in the room. For a second or two, I had forgotten about the cameras. Mrs. Mastriano crossed the room, sat down on the chair beside her son. Tears dripped from her chin. Chris Collins stared wide-eyed at the entire scene; her cameraman was almost all the way into the room now, bulky camera mounted on his right shoulder. I knew that if I stayed any longer, I would do something I’d regret.

“Okay,” Fleischer said. “You want to talk, Marconi, let’s talk.”

He went out the door and disappeared into the crowd.

…For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, now and forever…

“Amen,” I said, glancing back at the two nuns. And then I followed Fleischer out of the room.

IT WAS AS QUIET as a morgue inside Dr. Arnold Fleischer’s first-floor office in Newburgh General. I stood alone in a square-shaped room decorated the way you might expect from a physician who relied on boasting about his Harvard Medical School education to elevate his character. Numerous diplomas were tacked to the walls along with more than a dozen citations, plaques, and other advertisements for himself, most of them for delivering papers on the benefits of one medical drug or another, the spelling and pronunciation of which were beyond my energy and will at that point.

I was busy going over how unimpressed I was with Fleischer’s credentials when he stormed in, slammed the door behind him, and sat down hard behind his desk. He scanned the desktop, opened the drawer, pulled out a pen, and sat back in the swivel chair, clearly relieved that he had something to fiddle with while we had our little discussion.