Vincent Zandri - The Innocent

I let out a breath.

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

“Of course,” Val said. Voice funny, distant.

“Listen carefully. I’m running out of change and time. You have to call me back.”

I read off the payphone number.

Val hung up without saying goodbye. I wasn’t entirely convinced she’d call me back, but it was a chance I had to take.

I took a quick look at the Pontiac while I waited (and prayed) for the pay phone to ring. Of all times to lose my cell phone. Cassandra sat in the passenger seat, gripping the two-and-a-half pound, unloaded.45 in her right hand, holding it steady on the pastor. She made a fist with her free hand and rested it in her lap. Her face lacked even a semblance of expression-mouth closed, teardrop eyes staring through the windshield, heart-shaped tattoo looking out of place but somehow natural on the smooth skin of her neck.

The phone rang.

I felt a wave of relief when I pulled the receiver and put it to my ear.

“Tell me what you know?”

“FBI came snooping around this morning,” Val said. “There was a bag of something. Dope, heroin, something; I don’t know what. A bag of cash, too, inside your desk drawer under lock and key.”

I felt like my legs had been chopped out from under me.

“They found two bags, Keeper. How am I supposed to feel about that?”

“Plants,” I said, taking a deep breath, trying like hell to regain my equilibrium. “Don’t you see, Val? Setup.”

“Of course,” she said, in that strange, unfeeling, monotone voice.

“Come on, Val. You have to believe me.”

The silence that followed verged on unbearable. I gazed into the Pontiac at the ever-still pastor and the ever-still Cassandra Wolf with.45 in hand.

“I told you before, Keeper,” Val said finally, in a whisper voice. “I work for you first.”

There, I thought. She said it. She said exactly what I’d wanted her to say. But it was the way she said it. A funny, unsure, trembling voice.

“You have to do me a favor,” I pressed. “I’m heading north to my cabin in the Adirondacks. I want you to meet me at Exit 28 of the Northway tomorrow morning at nine. Pull off the exit and wait. You won’t see me, but I’ll see you.”

“You have a cabin in the Adirondacks?”

“My grandfather’s before he died. Then my father’s until he died. He left the place to me. I haven’t been there since I was a kid, but I don’t know where else to go.”

“Sure,” Val said, as if she didn’t quite believe my cabin story either.

“Now,” I said, “you’re going to need a pencil and some paper.”

I waited until Val was ready.

“Go,” she said.

“I want you to bring me a first-aid kit and some food. Enough stuff to last two people a couple of days. Also, two shotguns.”

“And where am I supposed to find-”

“Just call Tony Angelino at Council 84. He’ll help you.”

Val wrote down the instructions.

“Two twelve-gauge shotguns,” I added. “Remington 1187s if he can get them. Four boxes of shells, plus a box of.45 caliber rounds. I need a pair of black jeans, black combat boots, black turtleneck, black watch cap. You know the sizes.”

“Guns,” Val whispered. “Guns and combat boots.”

“Here’s where I really need your expertise,” I said. “I need an identical set of clothing for a woman.”

“Cassandra Wolf sort of woman?” Val said.

“Yeah,” I said. “That sort of woman.”

“What’s her size?”

I took another quick look inside the Pontiac.

“She’s a little taller than you I guess, maybe a hundred seven, a hundred ten pounds, average hips, better than average chest, I suppose.”

“Sounds like a four,” Val said. “Lucky you.”

“Also,” I said, “I need some cash.”

“Anything else, Keeper?”

“Anything you can think of that I might have missed.”

“Who’s gonna pay for all this?”

“Just tell Tony to put it on my tab.”

“He’s gonna love that, Keeper. A union lawyer financing a fugitive.”

I could feel the uneasy silence oozing through the line.

“You have to be guilty to be a fugitive, Val.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that I saw you running away on TV. Away from the police, I mean. And there was the stuff in your drawer.”

“I didn’t do it, Val. Neither did Cassandra Wolf.”

“It’s just the way it looked.”

“Remember,” I said, “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

I pictured Val’s soft face, her brown eyes, and well-sculpted black eyebrows. I pictured the way she reached for the ceiling when she stood up from the swivel chair inside my office at Green Haven. Scared and anxious, that’s all she was. So was I.

“Keeper,” she said, releasing a quick resolved breath. “I’m with you all the way.”

“You do this for me,” I said, “you become an accessory after the fact.”

“Listen, Keeper, I’m thirty-six years old. My husband took off on me six years ago. Other than Mike Norman, I haven’t had a steady relationship in almost as many years. I have to do something for me. Take a stand. Maybe this is my stand.”

“I won’t let you down, Val. I swear it.”

I gazed once more inside the Pontiac. Neither the white-faced pastor nor Cassandra stirred. Just a blank look on her face, and a.45 in her hand.

“Remember, Val,” I said. “Exit 28 of the Northway. Nine o’clock sharp.”

“I’m already on it”

“You’re my angel, Val.”

“You bet your sweet ass I am,” she said.

1971 IS THE YEAR Attica State Prison goes insane.

Here’s how:

I sit cross-legged and barefoot in a mud puddle in D-Yard. Mike Norman sits directly across from me mumbling something that makes no sense. His eyes are dark and glassy, his face sunken and pale. His yellow jumpsuit is soaked through to the bone. He is covered in mud. So is Wash Pelton. He sits beside me, so close I can feel his trembling shoulder rubbing up against my own. His knees are tucked up into his chest, arms wrapped around his shins. He’s crying again. I feel my own eyes welling up. Everything around me-the stone wall, the soupy earth, the overcast sky-is gray-brown. A high-pitched whistle goes off inside my head. When I hear the screams of the CO who is being castrated with a double-edge razor, I have to hold back the tears and the shakes. My body goes numb as the officer is pushed to his knees. His pants are pushed down and his skinny legs are exposed, the white skin streaked with veins of mud. Two rebel inmates hold him by the arms and by the hair on his head. They press his knees into the mud. He screams in agony as the razor cuts through the pale flesh and opens up the purple artery, the blood spurting five feet into a rainy sky. The scream is the kind of primal scream you feel more than hear. It is a scream that goes beyond anything human. I try to turn my mind off to the blood, rain, mud, and death. I try to turn my mind off completely. But I know this corrections officer and because I know him I feel he is a part of me. He is fifty-four years old and the grandfather of a new baby boy.

John Pendergast has been emasculated with a razor blade.

He lies bleeding to death in the middle of D-Yard.

I am eighteen years old. My name means nothing to the rebel inmates. My death would mean everything.

“Our Father,” we begin to pray together on the muddy floor, “who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…“

AT FIVE O’CLOCK I got back into the white Pontiac and drove out of the supermarket parking lot. I knew I had to do something about the pastor. If I were a real killer, this would have been the part of the mystery where I’d have to bump him off, execution style. Just one shot from the.45 to the back of the head would do the trick. Then I’d lose his body in a patch of heavy woods somewhere off the highway, well above the Albany city limits. North, above Lake George.