Vincent Zandri - The Innocent

But then, I knew I had to clear my head, stay focused.

I finished the pizza and wondered about the California return address handwritten on the envelope. Had Athens been a deception or merely a temporary stop-an out-of-the-way place for Vasquez and Wolf to regroup before making their escape to California? Connections and possibilities; possibilities and connections. Maybe Vasquez had simply planted the envelope. Like everything else I’d found along the way (the orgy stills, the.38, the key to Logan’s cuffs, etcetera, etcetera), maybe all of it had been a plant from the start, designed to manipulate me and the cops. Maybe Cassandra Wolf and Eduard Vasquez were hiding out in Athens for a few days until things died down, the road blocks taken up, the fugitives given up as missing. Or maybe, as a last possibility, they had attempted to deceive everyone, to make us believe that they were headed back out to California when in fact they had no other plan but to hole up in a small town located not far from Green Haven Prison.

As the young mother tried to maintain her composure while placing a stack of napkins on the orange soda her little daughter had spilled, I recalled the first rule about going after the location of an escaped convict: Check on his significant other, first thing. Nine out of ten times, an escaped convict could be found in bed with his girlfriend or wife or lover, making up for whatever time together they had lost. It would amaze some people to know just how many escapees could foul up a foolproof escape plan for a romp in the hay. It happened more than John Q. Public knew. It just wasn’t publicized.

As the young family got up and left their table, I wiped the last of the overpriced pizza from my mouth, pulled the envelope from my jeans pocket, took one more look at the California address and the Athens postmark. Just a red-lettered, mechanized postmark barely visible even in the light from the overhead fixture. Vasquez wasn’t your basic, run-of-the-mill prisoner. If I had to make a choice, I’d say he had set up a deception that hadn’t been entirely carried out yet.

But it was then, as I stacked the now-empty tray in its designated place on top of the Formica-covered garbage receptacle, that I noticed him again. The guy in the long wool overcoat who had been drinking coffee in the Miss Albany Diner. He was standing at the ATM machine, making a cash withdrawal. At first I thought I might have been imagining things. But after a few quick looks, I knew for certain it was him. I also knew for certain that I was being tailed, and not just by the cops. I knew I’d have no choice but to let him follow me until I was presented with the perfect opportunity to ditch him. But then, there was another option. I could always flank him, come up on him from behind, stick the.45 in his face, demand information on who had sent him.

But from the looks of things, he had other priorities. Because as soon as the cash dropped from the machine, he stuffed it into his overcoat and made for the exit.

By this time, it was already one-thirty on a Thursday afternoon. I didn’t want to chance going back home to

Stormville. The place would be surrounded by cops and reporters. Some of the cops would know me as a friend. Some of the reporters would know me, too, but not as a friend. I had no choice but to go back to Athens. I also had to dump the Toyota. The fire engine-red 4-Runner was more like a red herring in Athens and everywhere else in New York State, for that matter. The second the police found out I was nosing around Athens, an APB would go out with the red Toyota established as the vehicle to ID. Judging by the police sirens I’d heard in Athens, I had to assume that the bulletin had already gone out. And on top of it all, there was the matter of the overcoat man.

An information booth was located between the ATM and a small souvenir shop. The woman behind the booth was reading from an oversized fashion magazine, W , with a very attractive black-and-white photograph of Cindy Crawford on the cover.

Older, slightly overweight, with silver-gray hair puffed up like a beehive, the woman behind the booth was no Cindy Crawford. I must have looked at her for a full minute before she finally caught on that I was standing there. When she did look up, it was all very theatrical, with a long breath and the bifocals removed from the crown of the nose very carefully, very pompously. The temples of the diamond-studded half-glasses were attached to a hair-thin silver chain, and she allowed them to dangle against her chest.

“Yes,” she said, eyes wide but not interested.

Yes must have meant, Can I help you?

“Where can I rent a car?”

Old Beehive let out another breath and held her place in the magazine using her forefinger and thumb like a clothespin. She nodded over her left shoulder, drawing attention to the pamphlet shelves built into the same wall as her information booth. Dozens of pamphlets and colorful brochures had been neatly stacked and alphabetically organized, all of them promoting one rent-a-car agency after another. The usual -Hertz, Budget, Rent-a-Wreck, and about a dozen independents. I picked up a Hertz brochure and checked out the address stamped on the back.

755 Pelham Way, Catskill.

I stepped back to the information booth.

“This close by?”

I held the address out for Beehive to see. She licked her index finger and flipped a couple of pages of the magazine. She had those little half-glasses on again. The little fake diamond studs embedded in the cats-eye frames seemed to enhance her silver beehive, make it so luminescent that I almost had to stand back and take a breath.

“Next exit,” she said, “northbound. Go left off the exit.” She forced a fake smile. “Will there be anything else?”

Not to be outdone by old Beehive, I forced a fake smile of my own.

“You’ve been very helpful and courteous,” I said.

“Tell me another one,” she said, licking her index finger, flipping another page.

“Nice hair,” I said, but I don’t think that’s what she had in mind.

SOUTHBOUND ON ROUTE 87.

This time in a rented Chevrolet Impala with a white hood, off-white side panels, dark-green trim, and a license plate enclosed in a yellow plastic frame with the Hertz logo on top.

I’d felt less conspicuous in the Toyota.

I switched on the radio, hit scan, and surfed for a local news station. Station 540 appeared on the digital display in light-up yellow numbers.

“Day number four for a corrections officer struck down in the line of duty,” the anchorman announced, “and a warden indicted for corruption and manipulation of evidence. Those stories and more top our news.”

Then, without warning, I felt all the air leave my body. I tried to breathe but I couldn’t. It was as if my lungs had spontaneously collapsed. I felt cold, and the open highway in front of me turned to a wavy blur. My mind spun, and I swore an entire squadron of cops was tailing me. But I must have slowed down without knowing it because the man behind me in a pickup truck laid on his horn. I gripped the steering wheel so tightly that I could feel the tension in my wrists, and I had no choice but to pull off onto the shoulder of the road. I got out of the car and ran down into the ditch and back up the embankment, all the time trying to get a breath but getting only enough air to stay conscious.

Standing there, on the edge of the tree line, with the rented Impala parked where any cop who happened to be passing would notice, I wanted to die.

In my imagination I saw myself in shackles and cuffs.

I’m being led down a concrete corridor with a low concrete ceiling and a yellow line-stripe painted along the center of the floor. I’m brought into F- and G-Blocks, the ghetto blocks, and all the inmates come to the front of their cells to greet me, their former warden, the man who came down hard, the man who tried to empty their cells of the drugs and the booze. Big men, small men, black men, brown men, white men, all with their bodies pressed up against those bars, hollering, jeering, whistling, shouting and screaming for my ass. And me, with my head between my legs, knowing full well that I’m a dead man. No former warden in any prison has got a prayer of chance if he wants to stay alive.