“learned colleague,” as though it were a longstanding joke.
Fidgeting nervously on a bench across from her were three women who bore the same dazed, sickly expression on their faces, but had nothing else in common. One was a young, coffee-colored girl who seemed no more than nineteen. She wore a shapeless brown-and-black outfit that seemed to include a kind of sweatshirt and something below that could have been a pair of pants from an Israeli paratrooper’s uniform, but in sizes so large that her shy, cringing posture allowed her to hide in the material. Beside her was a tall, thin blond woman who might have been fifty but had such tight skin on her cheeks and forehead that she might as easily have been thirty- five. Her nose had likewise felt the surgeon’s scalpel, and seemed rightfully to belong to the sort of teenage girl who waited on tables in a short skirt and luminous panty hose. She wore no jewelry except a gold wedding band and an engagement ring with a diamond that might have been two carats. The third woman was about thirty, and Elizabeth had grouped her with the lawyers until she sat down with the other women and her face assumed the same fixed, humiliated expression. She wore a business suit and a white silk blouse with a bow at the neck that wasn’t a good idea. She even carried a briefcase. When the guard called, “Henley,” she stood up, walked to the desk and handed the briefcase to the guard, who opened it and removed a black lace negligee. The guard left the garment on the desk while he went through the briefcase for contraband, and Elizabeth could see that the woman’s ashen face was aimed downward, her eyes not on the guard but on the negligee, as though she were willing it to disappear. The two lawyers stopped talking and stared frankly at the proceedings, then listened while the guard repeated a short orientation speech on the rules of conjugal visits. The young black woman seemed to shrink still deeper into her clothes, but the older woman turned to wood, staring straight ahead like the figurehead on the prow of a sailing ship.
“Miss Waring.” The voice was behind her. She stood up and turned to see a man in a suit waiting for her. He looked like a dentist, serene and well scrubbed, with a shiny bald head. He held the door open and Elizabeth went through it to the concrete steps outside, then shook the man’s hand. “I’m Assistant Warden Bateson,” the man said. “I was told to expect you. Anything special you need?”
Elizabeth would have preferred to hear a list of standard procedures for this kind of meeting. “I’d like to see him alone, and I suppose it would be better if the other prisoners didn’t know about it.”
Bateson smiled. “No problem there. We only have three conjugal visits, so we’ve got a couple of bungalows vacant. He’s been assigned to clean one of them.”
She sighted along Bateson’s pointing finger to a small, low cinder-block building just inside the fence. It looked like a communal bathroom in a trailer campground near a national park. “Can I be of any help?” asked Bateson.
“No,” Elizabeth said.
At the door of the little building, Elizabeth stopped and listened. There was a slow, rhythmic, scraping sound, then a splash and clank, then silence. She opened the door slowly, which set off another clank. She took the scene in at a glance. The mop had been set in the bucket and leaned against the door, so that it would warn Balacontano in time to get up off the bed.
When he saw her, the old man was swinging his feet to the floor, not looking toward the door at all, but reaching for his shoe and pretending to tie the lace. She hadn’t seen even a picture of him in ten years, but he looked about the way she remembered him. He was short and stocky, and wore his hair combed straight back, but close at the neck so that it didn’t touch the collar of his blue work shirt. The prison jeans looked odd and baggy on him, as jeans always do on old men, the unaccustomed informality of them evoking a businessman who had bought them to wear on vacation and never broken them in. Balacontano’s face was pinched and the nose hawklike, his little eyes glaring back at Elizabeth from behind a pair of glasses with a slight brownish tint. He finished tying his shoelace, then put the other foot up on his knee to tighten its lace to show he hadn’t been caught at anything.
“Keep your clothes on,” he said. “Your old man will be out here when I finish.”
“Mr. Balacontano?” Elizabeth began.
“That’s right.”
“My name is Elizabeth Waring.”
“Good for you.” The old man stood up, walked to the bucket, placed the mop in the wringer and prepared to go back to work on the floor.
Elizabeth reached into the inner pocket of her purse, pulled out a little leather wallet and held it out toward Balacontano. “U.S. Justice Department.” He glanced at it, but showed no interest. “I have a couple of questions for you if you’ve got time.”
Balacontano leaned on his mop, and the cold eyes turned on Elizabeth as though he had just noticed her presence and found it peculiar. “Is that some lame witticism?”
“No,” said Elizabeth. “Not at all.”
“Save your questions,” said the old man. He didn’t sound bitter or angry. “I don’t answer questions.”
Elizabeth had prepared herself for this. “These aren’t hard ones. They’re about an enemy of yours.”
“Just out of curiosity, what are you offering me?”
Elizabeth sighed. “I don’t usually have much to do with the people who run these places.” She looked around the sparsely furnished room with mild distaste. It looked like motels built fifty or sixty years ago, when they had consisted of six little shacks arranged around a gravel drive. “I plan to tell Warden Bateson that you cooperated. I don’t know if that buys you time off for good behavior or just two desserts at dinner.”
Carl Bala looked at her shrewdly. “Come back when you can tell me which.”
Elizabeth met his gaze. “Last night Antonio Talarese was murdered. The killer was somebody named the Butcher’s Boy. Do you know him?”
Balacontano considered his options in a new way. “You’re from the Justice Department?”
She nodded.
“What do you do there?”
She decided that telling part of the truth would give the right impression. “I’m an agent on temporary duty with the Organized Crime section. I’m here because I think there’s something unusual going on. I didn’t bring my resume with me.”
“What makes you think I know anything about this Tony Talarese or this other guy?”
Elizabeth took a deep breath. This man must be better at detecting lies than any prosecutor. The fact that he was alive and in his sixties proved it. She would have to work into it slowly. “The charts in Organized Crime show an arrow going up from Antonio Talarese to you. That means you’re his boss. If that’s not true, let me know and we’ll change the chart. It’s no trouble. We have to change it anyway because he’s dead.”
“This isn’t how it works, you know. I’m supposed to have my lawyers with me, and then we sit down and talk over your offer. If we can cut a reasonable deal, I tell you something. They can’t just send some special agent in here to flash a badge and ask me questions.”
“Okay,” she said. “I understand. I assure you that you won’t be bothered again for the rest of your sentence.”
Bala looked into her eyes, and the thought occurred to him that maybe she wasn’t lying. This was it, the first time in eight years that they had even bothered to come here. It was one thing to bargain hard, but it was another to see the only buyer on earth walking out the door. “Wait a minute. At least let’s talk for a minute.”
“All right.” She sat down on the chair across from the bed.
“Here’s what it amounts to from my point of view. You want me to do something that’s risky. I have a right to something in return.”
“Here’s what it amounts to from my point of view,” she said. “At the moment the Justice Department is interested in finding the man who killed Tony Talarese. I believe you are too. The difference is that you’re in jail and I’m not. Oh, and there’s another difference. You know who he is and I don’t.”
“You’re not offering me a pardon or an early release or anything?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I’m not at the level to make that kind of offer, and nobody would approve it. Those things have happened, but much more seldom than you’d think from the amount of publicity they get. And what nobody mentions is that they always involve special conditions.”
“What kind of special conditions?”
It was time for the lie, and she gave it apologetically so that she could look down and avoid his sharp little eyes. “Look, I don’t know an awful lot about your case.” She knew everything about his case. “But I don’t want to lie to you. As I understand it, you’re not a likely candidate. In addition to being cooperative, the person provides
