Vincent Zandri - The Innocent

“So Cassandra Wolf of Eddy’s Blue Bayou, what would you like to talk about?”

“What if I were to tell you I was in possession of information that could change your life?”

“What’ll it cost me?”

“How’s about a drink?” she said, a smile now planted on her face.

“You read my mind,” I smiled. “How’s a Beaujolais circa 1995 sound to you?”

“A very happy year as I recall.” She started for the cabin door.

“Funny you should say that,” I said. “That was the last year I remember being happy.”

“IT WAS SUPPOSED TO be a simple operation,” Cassandra said, as we stared into the dying firelight, an empty bottle of Beaujolais on the wood-plank floor between us beside the full bottle I had just uncorked. “Eddy would handle the trade and the customers, while Washington Pelton handled the upfront money and the security. To make the whole thing work, Eddy had to latch onto some guards he could trust. Guards who had no problem taking a bribe.”

It was going on three-thirty in the A.M. Neither of us had slept, except sporadically. And although Cassandra had finally started on the information I needed to know, I got the sense that she was choosing her words carefully, stopping midsentence to take little breaths or to release a sigh that I assumed contained as much guilt as it did sadness.

“Let me think,” I said, as sarcastically as possible, “guards from Green Haven Prison who have no moral quandaries about taking a bribe. Must have taken Vasquez forever to find two men to fit those qualifications.”

“Of course, he immediately found two men willing to sell out,” Cassandra confirmed, taking a swallow of wine.

“Money talks in the iron house.”

“Loud and clear,” she agreed. “They came up with a system of outside visits, all of them under the pretense of visiting a dentist. Pelton had to get them on the outside, free, at least for a while. You see, Mister Marconi – “

“Keeper, remember?”

“Okay then, Keeper,” Cassandra said, catching her breath. “When it comes to making some serious cash, those iron bars and concrete walls can be a real problem.”

I nodded.

“There’s this dentist,” she added. “Has a weird name. A. J. Royale.”

“We’ve met,” I said with a roll of my eyes.

“A real ladylike kind of guy. He agreed to work with Eduard and Pelton for a price. He got paid a flat fee per visit and in turn did some kind of dentistry work on Eddy’s teeth, just to make the whole thing look good. Afterward, he’d cosign the release form in exchange for a pile of cash, I don’t know how much. Since Eddy had to be on the outside at least six or seven times in order to make the plan effective, A. J. Royale agreed to do a root canal on a perfectly good tooth. A molar that eventually had to be pulled because the tooth went bad. For six months Eddy saw the dentist once every three weeks. You should know about that, Keeper. You signed the releases for his outside visits.”

“I recall them,” I said. “All six or seven.”

“Don’t you see?” Cassandra said. “You were the main man, Keeper. The whole operation would have been dead in the water without you.”

“Glad to be of service,” I said under my breath, but the humor was nowhere to be found.

“Pelton and Eddy figured that in three months they could clear six hundred grand, cash. They would split four hundred, fifty-fifty. The remainder would be divvied up between whoever helped out indirectly.”

“Even a serial killer like Giles Garvin?”

“That’s correct. And it worked out all right, for a while anyway. Until Eddy and those guards, Logan and Mastriano, started taking stupid chances.”

“How stupid?” I said, pouring some of the wine into my coffee mug, taking a drink.

“After visiting the dentist, they’d change into civilian clothes right there inside the prison station wagon, and they’d find a nice cozy bar and they’d set up shop for a while. Eddy would meet me in some hotel room we’d prearrange and we’d have sex for an hour. Or at least, he’d try, but it was all pretty useless. I just didn’t want him anymore. Not like that.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“Afterward, Logan and Mastriano would rendezvous at the hotel room and they’d change back into their corrections officer grays, Eddy into his yellow jumpsuit. They’d head back to the prison but not before I produced a list of buyers and the up-front money that came from Pelton.”

“You did his dirty work.”

“Pelton wouldn’t meet with Eddy directly,” she said. “Claimed it was too risky.”

“Then who would supply you?”

“The lists came directly from Pelton’s second-in-command, Jake Warren. He’d meet us at the prearranged spot, which was usually the hotel. He’d toss us the list and we’d toss him Pelton’s cut of the money. Then, on their way back to Green Haven, Logan and Mastriano would pull into the Stormville airstrip where Marty Schillinger would be waiting for them. He’d oversee the retrieval of the drop and the payoff for the dealer. After that they’d bring the stuff in through the service entrance around back and begin dispersing the rest of the payoffs and the buys.”

My God, I thought. The operation had been going on at the airstrip directly across the street from my house in Stormville, and I’d never known the difference. I thought about all the nights I’d sat outside slow-drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes while the planes came in and took off again.

“Tell me more about Garvin,” I pushed. “He seemed pretty agitated when I tried getting some information off of him on Tuesday.”

Cassandra ran her hands through her soft brown hair and touched her heart-shaped tattoo with two fingers.

“Giles Garvin,” she said, “that horrible man.” Hesitating for a minute, as though choking on her own words. “I’m sorry, but it’s hard for me to believe I was involved with a creep like that.”

I drank some more wine while I waited for her to compose herself.

“Giles Garvin, Martin Schillinger, Tommy Walsh,” she said along with a deep breath, “all of them assisted Eddy in handling the inside trades to prisoners and guards. But mostly, his customers were visitors coming into the prison to see their quote, loved ones, end quote.” Cassandra made quotation symbols with her fingers. Then she said, “Schillinger and Walsh would get their payoffs directly from Pelton, but Garvin was supposed to get his payoff from Eddy since they were both on the inside. You have to understand, I never once met Garvin, but I knew who he was and what he had done to those poor kids.”

“So why’s he so bent out of shape now?”

Cassandra’s face lit up.

“Jeez, don’t you get it, Keeper?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

“Listen, when Eddy took off on Monday, he left with Garvin’s share for three months’ work. Ninety thousand dollars. Cash Eddy had already shipped to Olancha, California, where I keep a trailer just outside Death Valley. He stuffed the cash into three plastic baby dolls and packaged them inside a cardboard box. I shipped them out by way of the Athens post office.”

I pictured the envelope I’d found in Vasquez’s cell with the Olancha address and the Athens postmark. Then I pictured Schillinger traipsing around Vasquez’s cell in his Burberry trench coat like he had no idea in the world who the cop-killer was or how he could have escaped from Green Haven. I pictured Tommy Walsh standing in the door frame of my Stormville home and I knew he would have been capable of tearing me in two if Pelton gave the order because sometimes loyalty and devotion to duty have nothing to do with right and wrong.