Vincent Zandri: The Innocent

Coming to the end of the first corridor into A-Block, I walked past the square window embedded inside the steel door that accessed A-Yard. The window was thick and reinforced with heavy gauge chicken wire. There was a crack in the upper right-hand corner of the glass where an inmate had punched it. Outside, the weight-lifting platforms were now empty. So were the basketball and handball courts, while the COs took the late afternoon head count. Even with the bright sun shining down on the flat, hard-packed earth, all was colorless, lifeless.

All was burning hot.

Once past A-Block, I crossed through another tunnel that brought me to F- and G-Blocks. The guards at the gate, dressed in their prison grays, perked up when they saw me. The gatekeeper signed me in, asked me what I knew about Vasquez’s escape. “It’s why I’m Johnny-on-the-spot,” I told him. The short, bald-headed man turned away expressionless, like he should have known better than to pry at a time like this. And he should have. I wasn’t one to hold back information from my men, but he knew that nobody’s job in this prison was secure anymore, and I think he sensed the tension in my voice.

I climbed the wrought-iron stairway to F- and G-Blocks, the blocks designated “New York City” by inmates and guards alike, with F-Block being the East Side and G-Block the West Side. All around came the sounds of two hundred fifty locked-down prisoners talking, shouting, laughing. “Yo, Warden, I want my lawyer, Warden! Yo, Warden.” These were the voices I heard, voices that rose above the sounds of metal gates crashing into more metal gates, guards screaming out orders, bullhorns blasting over a nonstop rumbling that seemed to emanate from some deformed beast that lived far underneath the thick floor, like a stillbirth suddenly come alive.

Sound shocking?

Listen: Prison is not rehabilitation. Prison is incarceration. We admit that now.

I approached Dan Sloat inside Vasquez’s now empty cell. “You talked to Stormville PD yourself, little brother?”

During my three-year tenure as warden, I’d gotten used to calling Dan little brother because of our age difference, he being five years younger. Also, he was thinner, happier, better dressed-all those things I might have been if I had tried hard enough, or if I were still young enough to care.

Dan tugged on the loose-fitting waist of his brown slacks and ran a hand through thick, dirty-blond hair. “Marty Schillinger should be here anytime,” he said.

Martin Schillinger was a cop I’d gotten to know as well as any man can know an undercover cop. A big, slow-moving, middle-aged man, he rarely tackled much of anything in the small town of Stormville. An escape was a big deal for him and his department.

Vasquez’s cell was immaculate.

The bedsheet and blanket were army-barracks tight. Posters of Latino women were Scotch-taped to the walls. One of the posters depicted a woman dressed only in a skimpy G-string and black cowboy boots. She sported a ten-gallon Stetson and straddled the back of a live tiger instead of a horse. Her naked breasts were plump and taut and slick-looking. The index finger of her right hand touched the tip of her tongue. With the other hand she held a chunk of the tiger’s fleshy back like a rein.

In one corner of the ten-by-twelve-foot cell, opposite the exposed toilet and sink, Vasquez had set up a small shrine with a wooden crucifix and a little plastic statue of the Virgin Mary. A white plastic rosary was wrapped around the Virgin’s shoulders. The objects had been laid out on a fragile white doily that looked out of place in the cell. Behind the Virgin, leaning against the wall, was a reproduction of a painting that showed the agonized face of Christ, His forehead covered with a crown of thorns. Blood trickled down onto His mouth. His eyes were raised to the heavens. His suffering seemed to complement the cell. As for me, I hadn’t been to my Catholic church since Fran had been killed in a hit-and-run accident almost one year ago to the day.

I hadn’t prayed either.

Dan looked at me. “What now?”

“Take the bed apart.”

A shoe box had been laid out on one side of the small table holding the religious shrine. I opened it and found a shoeshine rag, a bottle of shoe leather cleaner, and some black shoe polish. Contraband technically. But stuff I normally ignored unless the prisoner was difficult to deal with. But even a cop-killer like Vasquez could be a peach of an inmate, so long as he had an agenda. And apparently he had.

I opened the can of polish, brought it to my nose, sniffed the oddly pleasant odor of ink and alcohol that immediately reminded me of my father shining his black Florsheims on Sunday mornings before mass. Nothing funny about it. Just shoe polish. I closed the lid on the little tin can, dropped it back into the box, picked up the plastic statue of the Virgin Mary and shook it.

The Virgin Mary was clean.

I picked up the photograph of Jesus, studied it, back and front. I shook it once and then laid it back down on the table.

Jesus was clean, too.

I turned and watched Dan strip down the bunk.

He found nothing when he pulled the sheet off the mattress. He found nothing when he pulled the pillowcase away from the pillow. But when he pulled the mattress off the metal springboard, a manila envelope slid out.

“Red flag,” I said.

Dan picked up the envelope. He bent back the clasps, opened it, and slid out four eight-by-ten photographs. “Not bad,” he smirked. He handed the envelope to me and sat down on the edge of the stainless-steel toilet like it was a chair.

I looked at the first photo. Blurry but clear enough. A picture of a naked woman’s backside. She knelt on the floor, her face buried between a set of pale legs that belonged to a man sitting on the edge of a bed. Her head was turned to the left just slightly, but enough for me to make out a heart-shaped tattoo on her neck, below the left earlobe. Another photo showed the same tattooed woman riding the man in bed. I still couldn’t see any faces, but I could make out a kind of jagged scar on the man’s neck between his chest and Adam’s apple. It looked almost like a birthmark or a burn. The last picture showed the woman lying on her back, legs spread. This time the man’s face was buried in her crotch.

Three very bad shots.

One scar.

One heart-shaped tattoo.

If I had to guess, the pictures were stills from a porn flick. No explanations, no faces, no names. Just a heart-shaped tattoo. Maybe just a meaningless pleasure tool for Vasquez. Maybe not.

I slid the photos back into the envelope, handed the package to Dan. “Hold on to these until I figure out what to do with them.”

Dan got up from the toilet, the envelope in hand. Just then, Detective Martin Schillinger of the Stormville PD showed up outside the bars of the cell, escorted by one of my COs.

“Big Marty,” I said.

“Keeper, Dan,’ he said, pulling out a small notepad from the right-hand pocket of his Burberry trench coat. “Anything good?”

Schillinger wore a trench coat because he thought it enhanced his image as a crime stopper.

“Some choice photos,” I said, nodding at the envelope in Dan’s hand. “Kinky stuff. Other than that, nothing.”

Dan handed the manila envelope to Marty. He took a look inside. “I’ll take these with me,” he said. He seemed to brighten up all of a sudden. “Mind if I take a second look around, Keeper, case there’s something you missed?”

I looked at Dan’s narrow, clean-shaven face. He made a rolling motion with his brown eyes. “By all means, Detective,” I said. “Dan’ll set you up with anything you need-a copy of Vasquez’s file once we come up with it, photo IDs, the whole kit and caboodle.”