'Just about. They take him to the execution chamber and sit him in the chair and get him ready and then the assistant warden comes in and reads the prisoner the death warrant. And then the assistant warden makes a final call to the Attorney General to see if there's been a last-minute reprieve of any kind. And if not… Well, if not, Bev, the prisoner receives approximately two thousand seven hundred volts AC and five amperes of electrical currentand he usually dies within a few minutes.'
'Usually but not always?'
'Well, there was a case last year in New York where the electrodes weren't fitted snugly and it took the prisoner more than twelve minutes to dieand he was crying out for help all the time. I'm told it was a pretty grisly'
'Hold on, Michael. They're telling me something in my ear.'
The camera held on the trench-coated reporter. You could hear the protestors chanting off-camera.
Then: 'Michael, we've just been informed that the Governor's officeand this is official as of 11:07 p.m. will not (repeat: will not) issue a stay of execution. So Peter Emerson Tappley will be put to death in the electric chair tonight in, according to the studio clock, just fifty-three minutes.'
Jill thumbed off the TV.
Sat there unmoving in her frivolous pink pajamas in this ancient, worn motel room that smelled of cigarette smoke and mildew, and whispered of loneliness and adultery.
Soon now, it would be over, the life of the man she'd once loved so much but hadn't really known at all.
Not a word of remorse for what he'd done: that's what bothered her most.
Not a single word of remorse.
She went to the bathroom.
When she came back, she found a Honeymooners rerun and made a singular effort not to look at her little portable alarm clock.
She didn't want to know.
She didn't want to mark his passing.
Ralph Kramden said, 'Honey, you're the greatest!' just as she heard somebody on the rainy drive outside let out a cowboy yelp. 'Yahoo! Fry, sucker, fry!' She hadn't wanted to stay in this rundown place but it was the only accommodation she could find. All the decent motels had been commandeered by the press.
'Yahoo!' somebody else shouted.
They were celebrating.
They sounded drunk, and absolutely delighted.
The Boogeyman was dead.
She did not sleep well, waking several times to the eerie shifting shadows, and the eerie shifting silence, of this battered old room.
She rose early, packed and checked out.
Just as she turned away from the registration desk, the desk clerk said, 'Oh, I forgot. Somebody dropped this off for you.'
A fancy buff-blue envelope. She recognized the author at once. Evelyn Tappley.
Jill didn't open the envelope until she was in her car.
There was a handwritten note in the middle of the elegant blue page:
I hope you're happy, you bitch. You'll pay for what you did to my son, I promise you.
Evelyn Daye Tappley.
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
21 October
His ass was tired. But then, when Rick Corday pulled a surveillance job, his ass was always tired. He lifted his right cheek now and scratched. It was numb. He'd been sitting too long.
He looked at the array of stuff he always took with him when he pulled surveillance. Wrigley's Spearmint gum. Life Savers peppermints. Johnson amp; Johnson Dental Floss. A penknife for cleaning his fingernails. A copy of the new Guys! Guys! Guys!.
His car phone rang. 'Uh-huh?' he said after picking it up.
'It's me. Adam.'
'She's still in there. Saw a couple of people carrying stuff in and out. She must have a session.'
'I have to go to New York.'
Corday didn't say anything.
'Are you still there?'
'What's this New York crap?'
'You seem to forget who I used to work for.'
'So that means New York?'
'I have to make a little correction on a job I did awhile back. Somebody else connected with the case.'
You might think, from some of the language, that Rick and Adam were cops. They weren't. Rick was a former employee of a large investigative agency here in Chicago, while Adam was a former Los Angeles police detective. One of the things they had in common was that they killed people. Sometimes for fun. Sometimes for profit. Rick always preferred the former.
'Nothing's going to happen.'
'Right.'
'I told you, Rick. I'm really trying to change.'
'So far I haven't noticed. I mean, you were pretty drunk when you got home the other night. And pretty late.'
'Perfectly innocent. Hit a few bars was all.'
'Right.'
'When we wrap this upwith Jill, I meanhow about we take a vacation?'
'Just you and me and one of your new friends, huh?'
'There's no sense talking to you when you're in this kind of mood.'
'This New York thing pisses me off.'
'I'll be back in a week. Just keep watching Jill. But don't do anything till I get back, all right?'
'Yessir, your highness.'
'You can really be hard to take sometimes, Rick, you know that?'
'And you can't?'
'I'll call you from New York.'
'Right,' Rick said. And broke the connection.
The sonofabitch, Rick thought. The unfaithful sonofabitch.
CHAPTER 2
24 October
