J. Kerley - The Broken Souls

“Paid performances,” I said.

“Sure sounded like it,” Malone said, tossing the file back on his desk and looking between Harry and me. “Harwood’s a white guy. Thirty-one years old. Probably establish a better bond with Detective Ryder. I’d suggest the visitors’ room, not the interrogation facility. He’ll clam in an interrogation room. But Leland’s a talkative sort in a visitors’-room environment. Probably yap your ear off.”

“Outside of chatty,” I asked, “what’s Harwood like?”

“An eel,” Malone said. “Or maybe a chameleon.”

“Whatever he needs to be,” Harry said. It was a common trait in the con community.

“I have a new girlfriend here in the joint, Detective Ryder. She likes for me to use Listerine. You use Listerine, Detective? My little girlie thinks the Listerine keeps me kissing-sweet. Fresh, you know?”

I looked through an inch of smeared Plexiglas at the face of Leland Harwood, babbling into the phone. It was a short-distance call: three feet to the visitor’s phone in my hand. Harwood had a scrinched face set into a head outsize for his body, like his mama birthed the head a couple years before the rest of him dropped out, the head getting a head start on growing.

“There’s only one problem, Detective Ryder …”

I shifted my gaze to Harwood’s hands. Scarred and ugly, tats scrawled across them, the classic LOVE on one set of knuckles, HATE on the other. Couldn’t these guys ever think of something different: DAMN/DUMB or LOST/LIFE or FLAT/LINE?

“The Listerine kinda burns when I rub it on my asshole.”

Harwood started laughing, a start-stop keening like the shower scene from Psycho. He laughed with his mouth wide, showing a squirming tongue and the black ruination of his molars. He tapped the glass with his phone, stuck it back to his lips.

“Hey Dick-tective, stop daydreaming. I’m telling you about my love life. You should be takin’ notes or something.”

“All I want to know is what you talked about with Taneesha Franklin.”

“Who?” The outsized head grinned like a jack o’lantern.

“A reporter. From WTSJ in Mobile. She signed in for a visit a week back. The sheet shows you spent twenty minutes talking to her.”

Harwood pretended to pout. “Why isn’t the little sweetie coming to see me anymore? You’re cute, Ryder. But she was cuter. A touch plump, but I like cushion when I’m pushin’.” He did the Psycho laugh again.

“She’s dead, Leland.”

He froze. The smart-ass attitude fell from the milky eyes, replaced with a glimmer of fear. “How’d she die?” No more comedian in his voice.

“Robbery, looks like. She took a bad beating, Leland. Torture, even.”

Harwood leaned toward the glass. “Torture how?”

“She had three broken fingers, Leland. That sounds like something an enforcer type might do to get information. Wasn’t that your line of work?”

“I had a lotta lines of work. Man’s got to make a liv—” His lip curled. I thought it was a sneer, but it turned into a pained face. He punched his sternum, belched. I swear I could smell it through the glass.

“I’m clean, Ryder. I been behaving. Taking classes. Working in the library. Being a good boy. First time I get up before the parole board, I’m out.”

“For about two weeks. I know your type, Leland. You got no other talent than crime.”

He grinned, a man holding four aces with a backup ace in his shoe.

“I’m set up this time. No more day laborer. I’m made in the shade from here on out.” Harwood caught himself. Winced.

“What is it?” I said.

He belched again, thumped his belly with his fist. “Indigestion. A year of eating the crap they serve in this joint.”

“You reserved your table here when you killed a man, Leland. Bon appetit.”

“Fuck you.” He winced again. “Jeez, I need a fucking tub of Bromo.”

Another prisoner entered the convict side of the visitors’ room, a man with piercing gray eyes and dark hair falling in unwashed ringlets. His forehead was deeply scarred between both temples, as if an ax blade had been drawn through the flesh like a plow. He was rock-muscled, and I took him for one of those guys with nothing to do but pump iron all day. I’ve never understood why prisons give violent criminals the equipment to turn themselves into weapons. They should give them canasta lessons.

The guy walked over and sat two chairs down from Harwood, dividers between sections allowing a modicum of privacy. Harwood shot the guy a glance, frowned, looked quickly away.

The door to the visitors’ side opened. I glanced over and saw a wide-shouldered Caucasian with curly yellow-blond hair, eyes deep-set above high cheekbones. He was dressed in a suit: silk, brown. A gold watch flashed from his wrist. He seemed guided by unseen currents in the room, pausing, turning, evaluating. Then pulling out the chair one booth over, a half-dozen feet away. His eyes looked through me, then turned to the man across the Plexiglas. He picked up the phone, started a whispered conversation. A lawyer, I figured.

I turned back to Harwood. He was spitting on the floor, wiping away saliva with the back of his hand.

“I’m done talking, Ryder. I’m sorry about the little sweetie. She was nice. Sincere, you know. But naïve.”

“Naïve?”

“It’s a mean old world, Detective. Little sweetie-tush was too busy playing reporter to understand there are people out there who can …” Harwood paused, swallowed heavily, made a wet noise.

“You all right, Leland?” I asked. “You’re looking strange.”

“’Flu coming on, maybe. I don’t feel good.”

“What didn’t Taneesha understand, Harwood?”

Harwood wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’m feeling rotten all of a sudden.”

“Tell me about Taneesha. Then you can head to the infirmary.”

Harwood suddenly stopped speaking and looked into his lap. His eyes widened.

“Jesus.”

“What is it, Leland?”

“I pissed myself, and didn’t even feel it. What the hell’s happening?”

He dropped the phone to the counter and stood unsteadily. His blue institutional pants were dark to the knees with urine. His face was white, his hair sweat-matted to his forehead. He convulsed from somewhere in his midsection, dropping to his knees, toppling the chair.

“Guard,” I yelled to the uniformed man in the corner of the visitors’ area. “Sick man here.”

Harwood clung to the counter with his tattooed fingers, weaving. I watched him shudder to restrain vomit, saw his cheeks fill, his mouth open. A flood of yellow foam poured over his tongue. His eyes rolled into white and he slid to the floor.

Doors on the containment side burst open and two uniformed men rushed to Harwood. He convulsed on the floor, heels and head slamming the gray concrete. His bowels opened.

I suddenly found myself alone on the visitors’ side, the man beside me having retreated from the horrific spectacle. The monstrous convict visitee was still across the glass, watching as the two guards rolled Harwood onto a stretcher. I saw the convict lean over for a closer look, his eyes a mix of fear and concern.

Then, for the span of a heartbeat, I saw him smile.

We pulled away from the prison. Harwood had been taken to the infirmary. When we’d gone a couple miles, I climbed in the back seat, lay down with my hands behind my head. Harry and I had traveled this way often, him driving, me reclining in back. When I was a child and my father’s psychotic angers would infest his brain, I slipped from the house and hid in the back seat of our station wagon. A back seat felt secure to this day. It wasn’t the officially sanctioned method of travel, thus we limited it to backroads and anonymous highways.