The three of them stopped about fifteen feet from where Boggs sat, next to a tall wall of red brick. Ascipio said, "Yo, man. Here. Now." Boggs looked at him but didn't get up. Ascipio pointed to a small shaded area out of sight of the towers. The prisoners called it Lovers' Lane. Ascipio stepped into the nook and unzipped his fly. "Yo, man, I'm talking to you. You deaf, or what?" His friend said, "You, man, on your fucking knees. Gonna turn you out, man, turn you out. You do that an' you'll live. Big nigger ain' here to save your pretty cheeks." The other: "Come on, man. Now!" Boggs looked back at them. He said, "Don't believe I will." He measured the distance to the nearest guard. It was a long, long way. The other inmates were all studying very important things in the opposite direction from Boggs. This's going to be bad. Ascipio spit out, "Don't believe you will? Motherfucker say he don't believe he will?" Then Boggs's eyes lowered to his own right hand, which rested on his knee. He glanced down at it. Ascipio followed his gaze. A long fingernail. It kept growing. One inch, two, three, four, six. Boggs looked back into their eyes. One by one, his head swiveling.
Seven Washington had given it to him last night, this piece of double-strength glass, a clear stiletto honed on one side so sharp it would shave hair. The handle was taped. Metal-detector-proof. The fingernail could do the most damage glass could ever do. Boggs had said, "Would Allah, you know, approve of this?" Washington had reassured him, "Allah say it's okay to fuck up assholes try to move on you. I heard Him say that personally."
Ascipio laughed. "Put that 'way, man. Get you pretty white mouth over here, man." They'd get him on his knees, then the other two would hold him and Ascipio would beat him to death and then they'd find the body in the laundry room, where the official word would be he'd died by falling down the stairs. Boggs shook his head.
Ascipio said, "Three of us, man. More, I want. That" - he nodded at the knife - "that do you shit." "Man," one of the others growled at the insubordination. Boggs didn't move. The blade blasted light off its point. Ascipio walked close. Slowly. And he looked into Boggs's eyes. He stopped. He stood for a long moment as they stared at each other. Finally the Latino smiled and shook his head. "Okay, man. You know, you got balls. I like that." Boggs didn't move. "You okay, my friend," Ascipio said, admiration in his voice. "Nobody else ever try that shit with me. You fuckin' all right." He extended his hand. Boggs looked down at it.
A bird swooping in. Boggs half turned as the fist of a fourth man, who'd come up behind him silently, caught him under the ear. A loud thwock as knuckles bounced off bone and he felt Ascipio's hand grabbing his right wrist with fingers that wanted to pierce the skin. The knife fell to the ground and Boggs saw it tumble, appearing and disappearing as it fell. "No!" The word didn't come out as a shout, though. It was muffled by the meaty forearm of the man who'd hit him.
There were no guards, there were no Aryan Brotherhood protectors, no Severn Washington, there was no one in Lovers' Lane except the five men. Five men and a glass knife. Ascipio leaned forward. Boggs smelled garlic on his breath - garlic from his private stocks of food. Tobacco from the endless supply of cigarettes. "Yo, man, you a stupid motherfucker." No, Boggs thought in despair. Don't cut me! Not the knife. Not that, please . . . As the blade went in, Boggs felt much less pain than he'd expected, but the sense of horror was far worse than he'd thought. The knife retreated and returned into his body and he felt a terrifying loosening inside him. Then there were other shouts, from a dozen yards away or a hundred. But Boggs didn't pay any attention; they didn't mean anything to him. All he was aware of was Ascipio's face: the grinny-mean eyes that never flinched or narrowed and the smile, one that might please children.
14
She heard the news on another station. Not even a network O&O but one of the locals. The one that broadcast M*A*S*H reruns and whose best-seller was a talk show that did stories about sexual surrogates and discrimination against overweight women.
Rune's own Network News hadn't even thought Randy Boggs's stabbing was worth mentioning. Rune sweet-talked Healy into taking Courtney for a few hours. She figured this was a major abuse of the relationship, but he was so happy she'd gotten the girl back (she was a little vague about how exactly) that
he didn't complain at all.
A half hour later she was on the train to Harrison, wondering if maybe she should buy a monthly commutation pass.
The infirmary surprised her. She expected it to be totally grim. More Big House, more Edward G. Robinson. But it was just a clean, well-lit hospital ward. A guard accompanied her, a large black man with a broad chest. His uniform didn't fit well. The glossy blue collar buttons, one a D, one a C, for Department of Corrections, came just to the level of her eyes. He was silent.
Randy Boggs didn't look good at all. He was shell-white, and the spray or cream that he used on his hair glued it out in all directions. The eyes were what bothered Rune most though. They were unfocused and still. God, they were eerie. Corpse eyes. "It's you, miss." He nodded. "You come all the way up to see me." "You going to be all right?" "Got me a pretty nice-looking scar. But the knife missed all the important stuff." "What happened?" "Don't rightly know. I was in the yard and I get pulled over backwards and somebody stuck me." "You must have seen him." "Nope. Not a glimpse." "Was it daytime?" "Yep. This morning." "How could somebody stab you and you not see it?" Boggs tried a smile but it didn't take. "People get invisible here." She said, "But-" "Look . . ." His eyes came to life for a moment then faded back to lifeless. "... this is prison. Not the real world. We got ourselves a whole different set of rules." He lifted his hand to his stomach and touched a large while pad under his tattered, overlaundered dressing gown. He leaned his head back into his pillows and pressed his thin, sinewy forearm over his eyes. "Damn," he whispered.
She watched him in this still pose for a long minute, wishing she'd brought the camera. But then decided that, no, it was better to keep this private. He was the sort of man who'd never want to be seen crying. "I brought you something." She opened her bag and removed an old book, flaky and scabbed. She held it out. The pages were edged in gold.
Boggs lowered his arm and looked at it uneasily as if no one had ever given him a present before and he was wondering what would be expected in return. "It's a book," she said. "Figured that out." He opened it. "Looks like an old one." He flipped open to the copyright page. "Nineteen oh four. Yep, that goes back a ways. Year my grandmother was born. How 'bout that?" "It's not like it's worth a lot of money or anything." "What is it, like fairy tales?" "Greek and Roman myths."
At least his eyes were reviving. He even had a slight smile on his face as he turned the pages, glancing at the pictures, which were protected with tissue. The smile of somebody who receives a present he likes but doesn't know what to do with.
Rune said, "There's a story I want you to read. One in particular." She flipped through the pages. "Here." He looked at it. "Prometheus. Wasn't he the guy made the wings out of wax or something?" "Uh, nope. That was another dude." Boggs squinted. "Hey, lookit there." She followed his eyes to the old plate. "Yeah," she said, laughing and sitting forward. Prometheus chained to a rock, a hug bird swooping down and tearing at his side. "Just like you - getting stabbed. Isn't that crazy wild?" He closed the book and picked a couple chips of spine off the thin blanket. "So tell me, miss, you a college girl?" "Me? Nope." "How come you know this kind of stuff?" He held up the book. She shrugged. "I just like to read." "I kind of regretted I never was smart enough to go-" "Naw, I wouldn't feel that way if I was you," she said. "You go to college, get a real job, get married, what happens is you don't ever get a chance to play chicken with life. That's the fun part." He nodded. "Never could sit still long enough to go to school anyway." He looked at her for a moment, eyes roving up and down. "Tell me 'bout yourself."
"Me?" She was suddenly embarrassed. "Sure. I told you 'bout me. Remind me what life's like on the Outside. Been a while." "I don't know . . ." She thought: So this is what the people I interview feel like. Boggs asked, "Where you live?" Houseboats took a lot of explaining. "In Manhattan," she said. "You can stand it there? It's a crazy place." "I can't stand it anyplace else." "Never spent much time there. Never could get a handle on it." "Why would you want to live somewhere you can get a handle on?" she asked. "Maybe you've got a point there. But you're talking to somebody who's a little prejudiced. I come to town and what happens? I get myself arrested for murder . . ." He smiled, then looked at her closely. "So, you're a reporter. Is that what you want to do?"
"I have this thing about films. I think I want to make documentaries. Right now I'm working for this TV station. I'll do it for as long as it excites me. The day I wake up and say I'd rather go have a picnic on the top of the Chrysler Building than go to work that's the day I quit and do something else." Boggs said, "You and me're kind of alike. I've done me a lot of different things too. I keep looking. Always been looking for that nest egg, just to get a leg up." "Hey, before this job, I spent six months at a bagel restaurant. And before that I was a store-window dresser. Most of my close friends are people I met at the Unemployment office." "Pretty girl like you I think'd be considering settling down. You have a boyfriend?" "He's not exactly the marrying kind." "You're young." "I'm not in any hurry. I think my mother's got this bridal shop in Shaker Heights on call. In case I tell her I'm engaged she'll be like SAC - you know, Red Alert. But I have trouble seeing me married. Like some things you can imagine and some you can't. That's one that doesn't compute." "Where's Shaker Heights?" "Outside Cleveland." "You're from Ohio. I spent some time in Indiana." Then he laughed. "Maybe I shouldn't put it that way. Not like I was doing time. I lived about a year there, working. A real job. As real as day labor can be. Steel mills in Gary." "Miss," the guard said, "I let you stay a little longer than you should."
She stood up and said to Boggs, "I'm working really, really hard on the story. I'm going to get you out of here." Boggs was running his finger along the edge of his book, touching it in awe, like it was solid gold. "I'll keep this." He said it as if that was the best thing he could think of to say to thank her.
As Rune and the guard walked back to the prison exit, the guard, without looking at her, said, "Miss, word been around about what you're trying to do." She looked up at him. Her eyes didn't get much past the huge biceps. "About you maybe getting him a new trial." "Yeah?" "I like Randy. He keeps to himself and doesn't give us any grief. But there're some people here don't like him much." "Other prisoners?" He didn't answer but said instead, "I'm not supposed to be telling you this and I'm hoping it won't go any further than here . . ." "Sure." "But if you don't get him out soon he's not going to live to parole." "The people who did that?" She nodded back to the infirmary. "There's nothing we can do to stop them." They arrived at the gate and the guard stopped. "But what did he do?" "What did he do?" The guard didn't understand her. "I mean, why did somebody stab him?" The guard's face snapped into a brief frown. "He ended up here, miss. That's what he did."
The place was pretty easy to get into. Like water through a sieve, Jack Nestor thought. Then laughed, thinking that probably wasn't the best word to describe a houseboat. The only problem had been there was a parking lot nearby and a booth with a security guard, who'd glance at the boat every so often like he was keeping an eye on it. But Nestor waited until the man made a phone call then walked past him and jogged up the yellow gangplank.
Once he was inside he pulled on brown cotton gloves and started at the back. He took his time. He'd never been on a houseboat before and he was pretty curious about it. He'd done some charters and been on more party boats than he could count and of course he'd done time in military LSTs and landing craft. But this wasn't like anything else he'd ever seen.
The decor sucked, for one thing. It looked like his nutzo stepmother's place. But he admired the pilothouse, if that's what you'd call it, which had beautiful brass fixtures and levers and grainy oak all yellow with old varnish. Beautiful. All the controls except the wheel were frozen and he guessed the motor was kaput. He resisted a temptation to pull the horn rope.
Downstairs he carefully went through the bookshelves and the cheap, sprung-fiberboard desk that was a sea of papers and pictures (mostly of dragons and knights and fairies, that sort of shit). There were a couple of dozen videocassettes. They were mostly that make-believe stuff too. Fairy stories, dragonslayers, the stuff he never watched. Some dirty films too. Lusty Cousins. And something called Epitaph for a Blue Movie Star.
So, this chick had a kinky side to her.
Then he rummaged through the closets and drawers in the bedroom and in the little supply room that had another dresser in it. He went through the kitchen and the refrigerator, which was the first place that most people who thought they were clever hid things and which was the first place most professional thieves looked.
