Vincent Zandri - The Innocent

“Because if you left him,” I said, “he’d have had you killed.”

“I was a part of his brood, his property.”

“Branded property.”

Cassandra took a deep hit off the bottle.

“But with Eddy Vasquez,” she said, now looking into my eyes, “you always knew where you stood. You were either his friend or his enemy; you were either alive or dead.”

Three o’clock was approaching, fast.

If time is relative, then the speed of time had doubled since Cassandra and I had made it to the cabin just a few hours before. But for now there was little to do but look at the fire and drink the wine left behind by the summer people and hope that Eddy Vasquez’s girlfriend could feed me all the information I needed to know. I also had to be sure I could trust her and that she wouldn’t go running off on me somehow. On the other hand, it would not be a bright idea to tie her up again if I was to consider her my ally. These were the things that were going through my head that night.

But in my thoughts I pictured that rookie cop on his knees on the damp concrete of a New York back alley. I imagined the feel of the barrel pressed up against his head and I wondered if he’d known for certain that his time was up. I wondered if he’d known what had hit him when the first shot exploded. I wondered if he’d heard the sound of the exploding round before the bullet had penetrated his skull.

I knew that only a cold-blooded killer was capable of that kind of execution. An animal who flew off the handle when provoked. As the keeper of the iron house, cold-blooded killers were my business, my trade.

Cassandra put her hand on my leg and leaned in close.

“I heard about your wife,” she said. “You must think about her a lot.”

She kept her hand on my leg.

“I’m having a little trouble shaking her,” I confessed.

“Oh,” she whispered, squeezing my leg a little. “I see.”

“What do you see?”

She tried to work up a smile.

“Looks like you haven’t gotten far beyond the guilt and remorse stage.”

“Hark, the correspondent student, slash, exotic dancer speaks.”

There was a thick silence that seemed to cover everything in the room like glue.

“Keeper, hear me out,” she said, removing her hand from my leg, her voice trembling. “I speak from my own experience.”

When she started to cry again, I felt the sudden urge to hold her tightly against my chest. I wanted her to hold me, too. But I didn’t know her and she certainly didn’t know me. Not that knowing one another was a prerequisite for commiserating together, each of us over our separate losses. But then, I also knew that getting so close to her at a time when she was so vulnerable would be a grave mistake. For me and for her.

She wiped her eyes and forced a smile.

“I’m not just sad,” she said, “and I’m not just wiped out with a token dose of the guilts.”

“What is it then?”

“I’m happy, too,” she went on, letting go with a strange-sounding laugh drowned in tears and sniffles.

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“I’m all mixed up,” she said. “Right now, I’m sad and I’m guilty and I’m scared and most of all I’m happy because that son of a bitch is dead, and I feel like I don’t deserve a second chance at living my life without Eddy over my head.”

Then Cassandra did something extraordinary. She took off her boots and socks and sat up straight. She took another long drink of wine, and she stood up and began doing a dance, moving her narrow hips from side to side, gyrating with her stomach and midsection. She closed her eyes and let her hair fall to one shoulder so that I could see the heart-shaped tattoo pulsing with the muscles in her neck. She held her arms out away from her breasts and twisted her hands and fingers in and out and all around, her every limb and digit separated from her body but somehow in sync and all the time whispering a song I’d never heard before but beautiful and seductive. With the firelight surrounding her, she was like an angel or an apparition.

For a moment she seemed suspended, her bare feet hardly touching the plank floor. But then she was suddenly in my arms, her face only inches from mine, and I could feel her heart beating, and I could smell her sweet breath, and I was taken in by her teardrop eyes, and I wanted to touch her. Time had just stopped and all that she’d confessed about living with a cold-blooded cop-killer had never happened and I badly wanted to kiss her and feel her mouth with my mouth, but I knew it was not me who wanted to kiss her, but someone inside of me whom I could not trust to take control.

I pushed her away.

“No,” I said.

“No,” she said, “as in no you can’t? Or no you won’t?”

“Both.”

“Your wife is dead and gone, Keeper.”

I stood and pulled Cassandra up by her arms. I put my face in hers and shook her, hard.

“Now look,” I said, “since your boyfriend took off from my prison my life has gone to hell and it’s taken a Herculean performance to keep some semblance of it together.”

Cassandra was wide-eyed now and silent, regardless of the tears that streaked down her face.

“So you listen to me, little sister. What I don’t need now is some half-baked psychoanalysis or exotic dances or temptations of any kind. Do you hear me? What I need is answers, you got that?”

I let her go.

“I’m sorry,” I said, brushing back my hair with both hands in an attempt to regain control. “Maybe I don’t know what I need.”

Cassandra stepped back, wiped her eyes.

“What you need,” she said, now picking up her socks and boots from off the floor, “is a really long steel shank.”

“What for?” I said.

“To kill the bug that is lodged inside your ass.”

What was supposed to be a safe house suddenly didn’t seem so safe anymore. I had to get the hell out, even for a few minutes. I went outside and lit up a cigarette. As I smoked I looked up at the stars and breathed in the cool mountain air and tried my best to regain some semblance of my ever-diminishing composure. The stars were so bright up north, unencumbered by the lights of the city. Layers and layers of them. I thought about Fran and I thought about the rookie cop lying dead in a back alley and I thought about the overcoat man rotting in the woods and I thought about going to prison and I thought about Attica and I thought about the way Cassandra had just danced for me and I thought about so many things I didn’t know what the hell to think next.

None of this stuff matched the warden’s job description.

Then she came out, took the cigarette out of my hand, and took a deep drag. She raised her head just a little when she exhaled, allowing her hair to fall back against her shoulders. In the light of the moon, she was truly beautiful. There was no other way to put it. But I couldn’t allow myself to be taken in by the beauty. I had to concentrate on the problem at hand. Hell, the problems.

“Hey,” Cassandra said, her arms crossed at her chest for warmth, “I’ve got an idea.”

“I’m all ears,” I said, as antisocial as possible.

“Let’s start over.” Handing back the cigarette. “Like we never even met until this very moment.”

The two of us had our eyes locked on the moon and stars. But then we both turned to each other at the same time.

“What the hell,” I said, cigarette tucked in the corner of my mouth, right hand extended for her to shake. “Keeper Marconi, Green Haven Prison.”

“Cassandra Wolf,” she said, taking my hand, curtsying slightly. “Eddy s Blue Bayou.”

“Pleased to meet you, Cassandra.”

“Same here, Keeper.”

I stamped out the butt with the sole of my boot, blew out the last breath of smoke.