Warren Murphy: Death Sentence

It was a bare cell. The walls were pink-painted cinder block and in one corner was a stainless-steel toilet with a broken sink atop the water tank. Other than the cot and the toilet, the cell was as barren as a bald man's scalp. And just as pink.

Remo stood up in his boxer shorts and relieved himself into the lidless toilet. He stared at the wall as if trying to comprehend it. After he buttoned up, he found his blue work uniform folded on the floor, his leather state-issue shoes resting on the neat pile. He put on the pants first and then laced his shoes. They were new and felt like diver's weighted shoes when he took a tentative step around the six-by-nine cell.

Down the corridor he heard the sound of men, like himself, stirring in their confined spaces. A black voice cursed the new day bitterly. A younger voice simply broke down and sobbed. Jeers replied with a callousness that beggared understanding.

And mixed in with those rude sounds were those of footsteps. Booted feet. Free feet. Feet walking the corridor unfettered and heading in his direction.

"Head count!" an authoritarian voice barked. "Sound off."

"Fuck you, man!" another voice challenged. The booted feet stopped. There was a pause. Then the same voice answered again, this time more submissively: "Number Eighty."

Other voices called out: "Number Fifty-five."

"Number Thirty-seven."

"Number one-eighty-one." Finally, as Remo buttoned his short-sleeved workshirt, the feet stopped at the bars of his cell.

There were two sets of them. The two men wore identical gray uniform shirts with black epaulets and pocket trim. Their pants were black, with charcoalgray stripes running down the outer seams. Their Smokey the Bear hats were black and shaded hard mean eyes.

"How was your first night, Dead Man?" the taller of the two correction officers asked without looking up from his clipboard.

"Bend over and I'll show you," Remo snarled. Their accents were all wrong. Too southern. And the uniform colors were not right either. The thought sank into his mind slowly, like a water lily losing its buoyancy.

"Yeah," the second C.O. said. He was nearly as wide as he was tall, and he was not tall. "I heard you were a tough SOB."

"The name is Remo."

"You mean Convict Number Six."

"That's not my number."

"Up in New Jersey, maybe. But down here, you're Number Six. Now, stand back from those bars, boy. The warden wants to see you."

Remo let go of the bars and stepped back as the C.O. called down to the watch commander to rack Cell Number Two.

The electronic cell door buzzed as it rolled back. The pair of C.O.'s quickly stepped to either side of him and one knelt to attach the leg irons while the other stood with his clipboard at his side and the other hand resting on his gun butt.

Once the leg irons were in place, the C.O. rose, carrying the handcuffs linked to lengths of chain. The cuffs encircled his wrists and pinched off skin. "Dammit," the squat C.O. muttered. "What is it?" the other demanded.

"Just look at this guy's wrists. They're thick as suspension cables. The cuffs don't fit."

"Make 'em fit."

Remo held his wrists out, his hands balled into fists. The C.O. struggled to lock one cuff over his right wrist. The tongue fell short of the locking mechanism by a half-inch.

"Try the other wrist," the tall C.O. said impatiently. "He's probably right-handed. The left wrist will be thinner. And snap it up. The warden's waitin'."

The other handcuff also fell short of its task by a good half-inch.

"What do we do?" the squat C.O. asked in exasperation. "I never saw a con with wrists like these." Remo shot the guards a dark-eyed grin.

"What if I do this?" he suggested, unclenching his fists.

The C.O. squeezed the cuffs. They clicked into place.

"Cute," he said, giving Remo a shove. "Very cute. Let's take your little magic act to the warden.

As he stepped from his cell, Remo was urged to the right.

"Don't look back, boy. You don't want to see what's back the other way."

A long row of cells stretched before him. Hands, some folded, others limp-fingered and bored, hung out the bars all along the line. The corridor was beige cinder block, and terminated in a black electronic door with a square glass window.

"Walk four steps behind me and hug the wall," the tall C.O. said, leading the way. The other one fell in behind them. "Stay on the yellow line."

Remo started walking heavily. As he passed the line of cells, hard unfamiliar faces peered out from between the green-painted bars.

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty! I'm Prince Charming."

"Say, what's your name, cutie?"

There were catcalls, a few wolf whistles. A washed-out con with a gold ring in his ear wondered aloud if Remo was a virgin. Remo stopped in front of his cell and fixed him with his dead-looking eyes. The con shrank back from the bars involuntarily.

Remo walked on, one second ahead of the trailing C.O.'s uncompleted shove.

As they were passed through a series of electronic doors and through a four-way intersection of floor-to-ceiling cell tiers, Remo asked a question.

"Where am I?"

"What do you mean?" the lead C.O. snarled. Then, recovering, he added, "That's right. You came in sedated, didn't you?"

"You tell me," Remo said as they came to the warden's office. The lead C.O. knocked on the door while they waited.

"Boy, your new home is the state penitentiary in Starke."

"My geography isn't so good," Remo said as the other C.O. poked his head into the door and announced, "He's here, sir."

"Florida," the other C.O. said flatly. "The land of sunshine and alligators."

"Don't forget Florida juice," the first guard added, pushing the door open for Remo.

Remo stepped into the warden's office, his chains dragging on the floor. His hands hung manacled below belt level, but his head was up, his posture defiant.

"Sit down, Williams," the warden said in a nononsense but unbelligerent tone of voice. He waved for the guards to shut the door behind them. Remo slipped into a simple wooden chair. The hard chair made him feel instantly uncomfortable. He wasn't sure why, but it stirred some vague, unreachable memory.

The warden made a point of ignoring Remo as he leafed through a manila file folder. He was a short, pugnacious man with a smooth bald head. There was a small pit in the flesh along the bridge of his nose, as if someone had chiseled a chunk out of it.

When the warden looked up, he let the folder fall flat. He gave it a last glance before turning his full attention to Remo.

"Do you know why you're here, Williams?"

"The state says I killed a drug pusher."

"That's why you were sent up to Trenton State Prison. I meant why you were transferred to Florida State."

Florida, Remo thought. So the guards weren't lying. Aloud he said, "It must have slipped my mind somehow." He wondered what the warden was talking about.

"You're a very foolish individual, Mr. Williams. You were better off back in New Jersey, where they don't take advantage of their death penalty. Up there, you were just another lifer on death row. But you kept getting into trouble. According to your sheet, you maimed your cellmate. Put out his eye over a cigarette. That was bad enough. But on top of that, you killed a guard. I imagine that guard had family who had high political connections, because someone pulled a lot of strings to get you transferred to my prison. It's not legal, but when I protested, I was told, in no uncertain terms, to play along. So I am."

"Maybe I needed a change of scenery," Remo said flatly. He wondered where this bullshit was going.

"You're pretty casual now," the warden resumed. Remo noticed the nameplate in front of his desk said he was Warden McSorley. "But I'm told the Trenton officials had to sedate you for the transfer. So you must know what you've gotten yourself into."