Linwood Barclay: Never Look Away

“I believe he was there for part of the tour,” Stan Reeves said. “He helped facilitate a few things for the delegation.”

“Was there anyone else from the Promise Falls council who made up this delegation?” I asked.

“As I’m sure you already know, David, I was the council’s appointee to go to England and see how their operations have been over there. There were a couple of people from Albany, of course, and a representative from the state prison system.”

“Okay,” I said. “So what did you take from the trip, bottom line?”

“It confirmed a lot of what we already know. That privately run correctional facilities are more efficient than state-run facilities.”

“Isn’t that largely because they pay their people far less than the state pays its unionized staff, and that they don’t get nearly the same benefits as state employees?”

A tired sigh. “You’re a broken record, David.”

“That’s not an opinion, Mr. Reeves,” I said. “That’s a well-documented fact.”

“You know what else is a fact? It’s a fact that wherever unions have their clutches in, they’ve been taking the state to the cleaners.”

“It’s also a fact,” I said, “that privately run prisons have had higher rates of assaults on guards, and prisoner-on-prisoner violence, largely due to reduced staffing levels. Did you find this to be the case in England?”

“You’re just like those do-gooders out at Thackeray who lose sleep when one inmate tears into another.” Some of the faculty at Thackeray College had banded together to fight the establishment of a private prison in Promise Falls. It was becoming a cause célèbre at the school. Reeves continued, “If one prisoner ends up sticking a shiv in another prisoner, you want to explain to me exactly how that hurts society?”

I scribbled down the quote. If Reeves ever denied it later, I had him on my digital recorder. The thing was, making this comment public would only boost his popularity.

“Well, it would hurt the operators of the prison,” I countered, “since they get paid by the state per inmate. They start killing each other off, there goes your funding. Do you have any thoughts on Star Spangled Corrections’ aggressive congressional lobbying for stiffer penalties, particularly longer sentences for a variety of crimes? Isn’t that a bit self-serving?”

“I’ve got a meeting to get to,” he said.

“Has Star Spangled Corrections settled on a site yet? I understand Mr. Sebastian is considering a few of them.”

“No, nothing definite yet. There are a number of possible sites in the Promise Falls area. You know, David, this means a lot of jobs. You understand? Not just for the people who’d work there, but lots of local suppliers. Plus, there’s a good chance a facility here would take in convicted criminals from outside our area, so that means family coming here to visit, staying in local hotels, buying from local merchants, eating in local restaurants. You get that, right?”

“So it’d be like a tourist attraction,” I said. “Maybe they could put it next to our new roller-coaster park.”

“Were you always a dick, or is it something they teach in journalism school?” Reeves asked.

I decided to get back on track. “Star Spangled’s going to have to come before council for rezoning approval on whatever site they pick. How do you plan to vote on that?”

“I’ll have to weigh the merits of the proposal and vote accordingly, and objectively,” Reeves said.

“You’re not worried about the perception that your vote may have already been decided?”

“Why would anyone perceive such a thing?” Reeves asked.

“Well, Florence for one.”

“Florence? Florence who ?”

“Your trip to Florence. You extended your trip. Instead of coming back directly from England, you went to Italy for several days.”

“That was… that was all part of my fact-finding mission.”

“I didn’t realize that,” I said. “Can you tell me which correctional facilities you visited in Italy?”

“I’m sure I could have someone get that list to you.”

“You can’t tell me now? Can you at least tell me how many Italian prisons you visited?”

“Not offhand,” he said.

“Was it more than five?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Less than five, then,” I said. “Was it more than two?”

“I’m really not-”

“Did you visit a single correctional facility in Italy, Mr. Reeves?”

“Sometimes you can accomplish what you need to accomplish without actually going to these places. You set up meetings, meet off-site-”

“Which Italian prison officials did you meet with off-site?”

“I really don’t have time for this.”

“Where did you stay in Florence?” I asked, even though I already knew.

“The Maggio,” Reeves said hesitantly.

“I guess you must have run into Elmont Sebastian while you were there.”

“I think I did run into him in the lobby once or twice,” he said.

“Weren’t you, in fact, Mr. Sebastian’s guest?”

“Guest? I was a guest of the hotel, David. You need to get your facts straight.”

“But Mr. Sebastian-Star Spangled, Inc., to be more precise-paid for your airfare to Florence and your accommodation, isn’t that correct? You flew out of Gatwick on-”

“What the fuck is this?” Reeves asked.

“Do you have a receipt for your Florence stay?” I asked.

“I’m sure I could put my hands on it if I had to, but who saves every single receipt?”

“You’ve only been home a day. I’m guessing if you have one it hasn’t had a chance to get lost yet.”

“Look, my receipts are none of your fucking business.”

“So if I were to write a story that says Star Spangled Corrections paid for your Florence stay, you’d be able to produce that receipt to prove me wrong.”

“You know, you got a hell of a lot of nerve tossing around accusations like this.”

“My information is that your stay, including taxes and tickets to the Galleria dell’Accademia and anything out of your minibar, came to three thousand, five hundred and twenty-six euros. Does that sound about right?”

The councilman said nothing.

“Mr. Reeves?”

“I’m not sure,” he said quietly. “It might have been about that. I’d have to check. But you’re way off base, suggesting that Mr. Sebastian footed the bill for this.”

“When I called the hotel to confirm that your bill was being looked after by Mr. Sebastian, they assured me that everything was covered.”

“There must be some mistake.”

“I have a copy of the bill. It was charged to Mr. Sebastian’s account.”

“How the hell did you get that?”

I wasn’t about to say, but a woman who didn’t like Reeves very much had phoned from a blocked number earlier in the day to tell me about the hotel bill. I was guessing she worked either at city hall or in Elmont Sebastian’s office. I couldn’t get a name out of her.

“Are you saying Mr. Sebastian didn’t pay your bill?” I asked. “I’ve got his Visa number right here. Should we check it out?”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Mr. Reeves, when this prison proposal comes before council, will you be declaring a conflict of interest, given that you’ve accepted what amounts to a gift from the prison company?”

“You’re a piece of shit, you know that?” Reeves said. “A real piece of shit.”

“Is that a no?”

“A goddamn piece of shit.”

“I’ll take that as a confirmation.”

“You want to know what really gets me?”

“What’s that, Mr. Reeves?”

“This high-and-mighty attitude from someone like you, working for a newspaper that’s turned into a fucking joke. You and those eggheads from Thackeray and anyone else you got on your side getting your shorts in a knot because someone might outsource running a prison, when you outsource fucking reporting. I remember when the Promise Falls Standard was actually a paper people had some respect for. Of course, that was before its circulation started going to shit, when it actually had journalists reporting on local events, before the Russell family started farming out some of its reporting duties to offshore help, getting reporters in goddamn India for Christ’s sake to watch committee meetings over the Internet and then write up what happened at them for a fraction of what it would cost to pay reporters here to do the job. Any paper that does something like that and still thinks it can call itself a newspaper is living in a fool’s paradise, my friend.”