'I guess you know that I woulda never got convicted if you wouldn't have testified.' He held the knife loosely in his right hand.
'I just got out a month ago myself…What…are you going to do? What are you going to do to me?'
'I was going to choke you to death. Or maybe just cut off your tongue.'
Her fists clenched. After a moment of silence she began speaking, her voice shrill, staccato. 'I want you to do it,' she babbled, 'I want you to kill me right now. I want to get it over with. I deserve it for being a snitch. You were my baby and I snitched. I wanted to write you and tell you what happened but I knew you wouldn't understand…'
'Carol, don't try to con me. You're not talking to some bank turkey to set up a phony account. You're talking to Ronnie Boyce. And I'll tell you right off I'm six years smarter than I ever was. I'm
She fell silent as he spoke, but glanced toward the door.
'Don't look at the door, woman. You ain't going nowhere.' Ronnie sat down nonchalantly on the chair. It seemed that they had been staring at each other for hours.
'I heard you ended up in Corona three years ago. I guess you didn't have anybody to snitch off on that case.'
With a moan, Carol sat down on the edge of the bed, hands over her eyes and forehead.
'You were all I thought about the whole thirty months,' she sobbed, looking up, then covering her eyes again quickly.
Ronnie was quiet for what must have been ten minutes. 'Don't get the idea that you've conned me, Carol,' he said at last. 'Nobody does that to me. If I came here to ice you, that's just what I would have done.'
She looked up.
'I just want to make it up to you,' she said softly. Her chest was heaving, thrusting, under the silk blouse. Her eyes were piercing.
Ronnie did not answer immediately. Perhaps without admitting it, he had known all along he wanted her back. In prison, his mind had allowed her many fates. Now that he really was finally out, the choice was either to snuff her because of what she had done or to let her live and have things like they were.
He put the blade of the knife back in the handle and tossed it across the bed into her lap. She looked up, startled.
'I'll make it up to you. Everything will be okay again,' she said.
'The only way you could make it up to me would be to go down on it nonstop for six goddamn years.' His voice was sad.
She smiled cautiously, stood up, and stripped quickly, efficiently, jabbering away as if nothing had happened, as if the six years had been six days.
No reason to kill her now, he thought, it wouldn't prove anything.
Naked, she walked around the bed and faced him. He stared at the tattooed arrow on the thigh pointing upward toward the hair. Christ, in how many prison dreams had he seen the tattoo? Once, he had drawn the arrow on a photo in
'I ain't never going to go back,' he said.
Quickly, she dropped to her knees in front of him. 'Everything's going to be okay again. Come here now, let me see…' said Carol, reaching for him. He grasped the sides of her head.
SIX
The federal prison was located on the south end of Terminal Island, the gun tower being positioned next to sea rocks. The prison itself was separated from the steam-belching canneries on the island by various perimeters of chain-link topped with barbed wire. The canneries and dead seaweed along the rocks gave the whole place the smell of rotten eggs.
In the prison's parking lot, Charles Carr locked his gun and handcuffs in the trunk of the government sedan and headed for the two-story administration building. The drab brownstone structure accented a steel door with reinforced hinges. It was the only way in and out.
Inside the building he displayed his badge, signed the visitor's register, and filled out two useless forms.
In an interview room, he reviewed Freddie Roth's lengthy prison file, concentrating on the latest stretch.
Carr remembered his first meeting with Freddie Roth. The door of the print shop had gone down. Freddie was back-pedaling past the press with greenish hands in the air. 'Okay. You got me. You got me.'
Inside the print shop Carr had holstered his gun and bantered with Freddie for over an hour about where he had hidden the plates. 'On my mother's grave,' chanted Freddie, 'I destroyed 'em. Go ahead and look! Be my guest. You won't find any plates. I burned 'em with a blowtorch and dumped 'em in the ocean. So help me God!'
And there was the blank look on Roth's face when the plates were pulled out of the floor safe-not a smile or a frown, just a business-as-usual, do-my-time, see-you-when-I-get-out-again expression.
The interview room was neat. Two chairs, a table, a tiny aluminum-foil ashtray. The walls were freshly painted light green. The paint odor combined with a hangover caused Carr to feel slightly light-headed. He wished he had eaten breakfast.
He stopped turning the pages of Roth's prison file and looked up. The khaki — uniformed guard stepped in the door carrying a steaming mug of coffee. Carr noticed tattoos on his giant arms, a full head of thick hair combed backward with grease.
'You Carr? Treasury?'
Carr nodded. 'I'm waiting for Roth to be brought down from D wing…Frederick Roth.'
After another loud slurp, which caused Carr to stifle a gag, the guard leaned forward for coffee-breath emphasis. 'Before you talk to him, there's something you may want to know. He's been in my office begging for a gate pass for the past month. The pass would allow him to be assigned to the work detail in the minimum — security wing. I was going to approve the pass until I found out about his old lady.'
'His old lady?' Carr looked puzzled.
'She wrote him a Dear John last month. We read all the letters coming in. The bleeding hearts haven't taken that away from us yet. Seems she moved in with a colored gentleman since poor old Freddie's been in barbwire city. Freddie tried to smuggle a letter out to her.' The guard dug into his shirt pocket. 'Here's a copy of it.'
Carr read the letter as the guard lapped at the mug.
The last line of the letter read, 'I'll be getting out of here sooner than you think, bitch. Then you and your nigger are going to die.'
'The reason he's pushing for a gate pass is that the minimum-security wing gives him access to the highway. It's the easiest way to escape. You can rest assured the last thing he will
With the knock on the door, Carr handed the letter back, and the guard quickly stuffed it in his pants pocket. The guard stood up and motioned Roth to the table, stepped outside, and closed the door. Carr heard the snap of the lock.
A gaunt Freddie Roth sat down and gushed insincere greetings about how pleased he was to see the 'old fox.' Roth's bald head and his face appeared yellow, cadaverous, just as Carr remembered them. His glasses were much thicker.
'This place is a little different from my pad in Malibu years ago, eh? Remember?' Roth motioned to the green walls as if introducing a choir. 'It is really good to see yez. Really, I'm very serious about it. It really is good to see yez.' He spoke as if he were selling a vacuum cleaner.
'Got a date yet, Freddie?'
'I was supposed to have a date by now, but they turned over my house during a lockdown and found some seed, so they held up my date. The grass wasn't even mine…What do you want to talk to me about?' He pushed
