Vincent Zandri - The Innocent

“Cut along there,” she said, pointing to the suture in the doll’s back.

I opened the baby doll’s back with the steak knife and uncovered more money and one compact videocassette. The cassette was a lot smaller than the VHS-style cassette I was used to-more compact, more modern, I supposed. The cassette contained no stick-on label, no identification of any kind.

I cut through the backs of the other two dolls and found three hundred thousand dollars, of which I would owe Tony Angelino one hundred thousand. The remainder would go to Cassandra Wolf. For Mexico and a new life, for her and her baby.

I held the videocassette in my right hand, held it up to Cassandra’s face.

“How do you know for certain that this is the one?”

With her right hand she pointed to the TV and the attached VCR.

She said, “I put the package together myself. But if you have to be sure…”

“Not a bad idea,” I said. “That is, if you don’t mind me looking at the film.”

Cassandra looked at me with sad eyes and a slight smile.

“If it’s for our freedom,” she said, “then I suppose it’s for a good cause.”

I smiled and for a second or two we said nothing.

I reached out for her arm.

“You going to be okay?” I said, slipping the cassette out of the transparent plastic protector.

She crossed her arms tight, as though embracing herself.

“Maybe we should pop some popcorn,” she said, “really make a show of it.”

“Hey,” I smiled, “a flick isn’t a flick without the popcorn.”

But it wasn’t the least bit funny.

The picture on the video was blurry, with only a bed and a bare wall for background.

“Where did Pelton film this?” I inquired.

Cassandra sat behind me on the wood floor in what had become a near permanent perch beside the fire. She had both arms crossed and locked tightly at the chest, a wool blanket wrapped around her torso. She was rocking back and forth, as though freezing.

“At the Coco’s Motor Inn,” she revealed, “near the Albany airport.”

“Hotel-no-tell,” I said.

In person, a very tragic-looking Cassandra stared into the newly stoked fire-a fire on what had become a very warm afternoon. But then, I think the fire was necessary. I think the fire helped Cassandra cauterize her memory of Wash Pelton. In the video she wore black thigh-high stockings and a black garter belt, no panties. Despite the way the film moved in and out of focus, I could plainly see the heart-shaped tattoo on the left side of her neck. I knew the film was nothing more than a porn film, whether it was meant for Pelton’s private viewing or not. Still, I couldn’t help noticing how beautiful Cassandra looked with bare breasts and flat stomach, and there was the way she moved in the bed, smoothly, not the least bit abrupt, her eyes closed the entire time.

Pelton, on the other hand, looked terrible. He had undergone a drastic change in the years since we had been corrections officers together. His gut had become large and fleshy, his arms lanky, if not atrophied. The same went for his legs. His appendage was long, veiny, and purple. The little bit of hair he had on his head was snow-white. In a word, he had gone soft. Irreparably soft.

I knew I could have watched the film from start to finish without Cassandra interfering. She knew the stakes as well as I did. But once I saw the jagged scar on Wash’s neck, I knew without a doubt that I could make a positive ID in a court of law. And a positive ID is exactly what I needed to turn the tables on him.

But then another man appeared in the viewfinder. A tall, portly man. Schillinger, of course. He stood in front of Cassandra, took hold of her hair, pulled her up onto the bed.

I turned and looked at the real-life Cassandra sitting on the floor staring into the fire, that wool blanket wrapped around her on a hot spring day in May.

Enough is enough, I thought.

I got up, hit the eject button on the machine, pulled the cassette tape out, and slipped it back into the plastic case. I took a pot out of the kitchen and placed the video inside it, along with some of the cash. I filled two more pots with the rest of the cash. Then I took up the square panel from the floor and stored the pots in the far corner of the cellar, in the exact place where I had shot the snakes. When I was finished, I climbed back up the ladder, secured the cellar, and got two beers out from the fridge. One for me and one for Cassandra, courtesy of my love, Val Antonelli, and my lawyer, Tony Angelino.

By that time, it was going on four o’clock. I needed to call Tony with directions to the cabin so that he could feed them to Schillinger and Pelton. But what if they decided to blow the whole thing off? What if they decided to take a chance on me exposing the video to the entire world? What if they figured I was already screwed or way beyond screwed, video or no video? What if they knew for certain I was going down, not only for the aiding and abetting of Eduard Vasquez’s escape, but also for his murder?

If it all happened that way, then prison was inevitable.

The corrections officers would not bother protecting one of their own. In the maximum security prisons of the 1990s, the gorillas were in charge, not the hacks or the screws. Certainly not “the man.” The COs would stand off to the side while the inmates held me down flat on the concrete floor and cut away my flesh piece by piece with a shiv made from a disposable, prison-issue razor. The inmates would hold me down by the arms and legs and cut along the back, making shallow slices, then deeper slices. They would peel the skin, roll it back, expose the fleshy-white under-layer until no skin was left on my back. Then they would string me up by the neck, maybe slice my gut so that my intestines would spill out onto the cold concrete.

Anything I imagined could come true, and worse.

Schillinger and Pelton had to take the bait.

I felt a hand against my shoulder. I turned fast, grabbed it.

“Jesus,” Cassandra said.

I dropped an open beer to the floor and pressed her up against the wall of the kitchen.

“Don’t ever do that again,” I said. I released my hold on her. “I’m sorry,” I said. I pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

Cassandra wiped her eyes, combed her brown hair with open fingers.

“You need help,” she said. “Maybe if you had found a way to resolve your wife’s-”

“Don’t,” I said, pointing the lit cigarette at her in place of my index finger. “You have no idea.”

The white foam spread out in all directions on the floor.

She took a step toward me. “Don’t talk to me about being alone. You’re not the only one who’s alone. You’ve got no right to think you’re the only one who is alone.”

I pictured her image on the video and I pictured what she was doing to Pelton in that white hotel room. I pictured what she did with Schillinger. Then I saw her tossing that black-plated.32 off the side of the granite clearing and into the heavy growth on top of Old Iron Top.

Maybe she was right.

More accurately: I had no right to feel like the only one who had suffered.

I bent over, picked up the now empty beer can, and set it on the kitchen table. Then I put my hands on Cassandra’s shoulders, pulled her toward me, into me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Maybe you’re just scared,” she said. “But then who isn’t?”

AT FOUR O’CLOCK, CASSANDRA and I changed into black jeans, black turtlenecks, and black lace-up combat boots. I pulled a black watch cap over my head. We painted one another’s faces with black face paint to make the get-up complete. I slipped on a pair of black leather gloves that fit so tightly that they might have passed as a second skin, and I spent the next half hour squeezing my hands in and out of fist position so as to loosen up the gloves and make sure my trigger finger was free.