fucking my wife. Nice little bonus for you. I got to have her when she didn’t have a pot to piss in. Helped support her mother and her brain-dead kid. Now they’re both dead, and I’m in this shit hole and she’s richer than stink. But that’s okay, the boozehound who put me here is banging her. And now he wants to swoop in and get a little information. Maybe wants me to help with a little problem he’s got. But gee whiz,” he said, and then stood straight up, leaned out across the table and screamed in my face, “what would be my motivation?”
The door to the room snapped open. A short, stocky Latin-looking guard pointed the end of a nightstick at Roy.
“Sit down, man,” the guard said.
Roy sat.
The guard looked at us.
“You want I should stay?”
“No, we’re fine,” said Jackie, in a steady, clear voice.
“You sure?”
“We’re okay,” I said.
He left us to look at Roy slumped in his chair, back to bunching and reforming his hat.
“So you’re sure that parole hearing’s going to be a walk in the park?” I asked Jackie.
“That’s what it’s looking like,” she said.
Roy looked at her then back at me as we talked.
“I wonder what could mess it up,” I said.
“Roy would have to somehow fall out of favor with the prison authorities.”
“By doing something in here?” I asked.
“Or causing something out there,” said Jackie.
“Or maybe something from the past might re-emerge,” I said. “Maybe just enough to put a crimp in the proceedings.”
If Roy was turning pale you couldn’t tell under the prison pallor. In fact, you couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling at all. He just looked at me in silence, crumpling his hat. Then his face lit up with a grotesque simulation of a smile.
“Wouldn’t that just be a kick in the ass, huh Sam? Golly, what a mess that would be.”
I looked over at Jackie. She was the one turning pale.
“But none of that’s going to happen, Roy,” she said, calmly. “So there’s nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not worried,” he said quietly. “I have every confidence in you. Everything will go according to plan.”
“Well, then, that’s that,” he added, his half grin planted back on his face. “Sorry I can’t help with this Milhouser thing. I didn’t know he was a friend of yours,” he said to me. “When they catch the guy who did it, he won’t be coming here. Rap like that is strictly maximum security. You don’t even want to think about that kind of time. I have lots of new friends who’ve been there. And they have friends, too. They’ll be sure to give Robbie’s killer a fine reception.”
Then he stood up abruptly.
“You’ll have to alert the guard I’m ready,” he said. “If I touch that door I’m liable to get a stick up my ass.”
Jackie did as he asked, and he left after a goodbye handshake. His hand was dry as a bone, his grip surprisingly strong. Roy had apparently been seeing a lot of the gym, probably for the first time in his life.
Jackie was silent as we worked our way back through the security gauntlet on the way to the car. She waited while I let Eddie pee and sniff-search the parking lot. She was staring out the window when we got back.
It wasn’t until we were on the highway that either of us felt like talking.
“Holy crap, Sam,” she said. “What have we wrought?”
It was generous of her to say ‘we’ when I was the one who engineered Roy’s downfall. I was the one who forced him into the fraud rap and spared him prosecution for the murder of a couple little old ladies.
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t what I found. The fleshy, terrified and remorseful Roy Battiston disappeared into the penal system and was replaced by something else. A vindication of the old canard—that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Or was that the real Roy Battiston, his outer layer of obsequiousness stripped away with the fat, revealing the true nature beneath?
He knew what we could do to him, and he didn’t care. Or worse, might even welcome it, counting on the collateral damage.
There was no more threatening Roy Battiston. No more leverage.
I recognized what it was. There’s nothing you can do to a man who has nothing to lose.
——
“Somebody named Dan Ned is looking for you,” said Jackie, looking up from her cell phone.
“That’s Dan
“They left a number. Do you want to call?”
“Sure.”
She dialed the number and handed me the phone. Dan picked up.
“This is Sam Acquillo,” I said. “Calling from the Throgs Neck Bridge.”
“Did you know Ned’s a genius?” Dan asked.
“I wouldn’t dispute it.”
“We poked holes in that site all the way from the south gate to the north fence.”
“The one facing the lagoon,” I said.
“Yeah. There’s a stretch of ground that runs between the fence and the water. About thirty feet wide and three hundred feet long, curved like a crescent. It’s so overgrown you’d think it’s at the same elevation, but it’s not. There’re no topographicals on the site map, but on a hunch Ned pulled one off the Web. The crown is about fifteen feet above sea level.”
“No kidding. It must have been a defense against high water, storm surges.”
“Probably, since it’s made out of stone,” said Dan.
“Really.”
“Yeah, but here’s the kicker.”
“It’s hollow.”
“Oh yeah. Honeycombed more like it. We used the radar to find the cavities. We counted three in symmetrical succession running east to west. My guess the pattern holds the whole length of the embankment. It’s old, probably from the earliest days of operation. Ned thinks it supported the docks and served as a holding area for cargo going in and out. That close to the lagoon it would have to be raised. The water table’s barely eight feet down.”
It was getting hard to hear what he was saying with Jackie chirping at me from the other side of the Grand Prix.
“Hold it a second,” I said to Dan.
“What is it?” she asked again.
“They found the cellars at the WB plant.”
“Wow. What’s in them?”
“I bet if I can hear him speak I’ll find that out.”
“So why are you talking to me?” she said.
I went back to Dan.
“So, what’s in them?”
“That’s why I’m calling you. I think you and Ms. Anselma and her attorney ought to be there when we open them up. Call it half courtesy, half cover our asses.”
“Okay. Where are you now?”
“I’m at our office in Stony Brook. We came up here to download our data into the central servers and make some sketch maps out of the radar images. Gives us a rough guide to dig the holes.”
“I’d like to see them.”
“You’re actually not that far away,” he said. “We’ll be here for a while. Come on over.”
He gave me directions to the office, located at the Stony Brook SUNY campus. Jackie reminded me to check in with Ross before nightfall to confirm I was back where I was supposed to be.
