“Hey, what’s wit’ you?” the man said to the boy. The boy didn’t answer. The man looked over him at the woman. “What’s wit’ him?” he said.
The woman answered in Spanish. She sounded annoyed.
“That’s not what he needs,” the man said. “I’ll tell you what he needs.” Wyatt noticed his hands: enormous, tattoo covered, half curled into fists.
Sonny saw where Wyatt was looking. “Best not to make eye contact with Hector,” he said. “Among other things, he doesn’t appreciate baseball.”
Wyatt looked quickly away.
18
More visitors came in, plus three inmates. It got a little noisier. Sonny Racine leaned forward so he wouldn’t have to raise his voice. “How’s Linda?”
“Good,” Wyatt said, but the mention of his mother’s name suddenly took him back to Hilltop Breeze: Your mom was involved?
“What’s wrong?” Sonny said. “She’s not having difficulties?”
“No.”
“Is she sick?” Sonny said.
“No, nothing like that.”
“Money problems?”
“No.”
“What does she do?”
“Works in an insurance office.”
“Married?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the guy like?”
Wyatt shrugged. “I’ve got a half sister-Cameron, but we call her Cammy.”
“You get along with the guy all right?”
“No complaints.”
“So what’s wrong?” Sonny said. “I got the feeling you had some kind of bad thought back there.”
Wyatt shook his head, and as he did his gaze passed over the little groupings, Hector’s and the others, all giving off waves on tension, unhappiness, even desperation, and nobody touching anybody else. “It’s only,” he said, “that you seem kind of happy.”
Sonny’s face changed, didn’t become hard, just unreadable and still. “Is that a crime?” he said.
“No. Sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“Go on.”
Wyatt took a deep breath. What was the point of coming into this horrible place and not asking the big questions? He plunged ahead. “I never expected you’d be happy.”
“Wouldn’t push that too far, the happiness thing,” Sonny said. “I’m happy to see you, of course, but we’re still waiting for a day at the beach in here.”
“Yeah, but, um, speaking of crimes, any innocent person in here would be…” Wyatt searched for the word, couldn’t find it.
“Beside himself?” Sonny said.
“Yeah.”
Sonny was watching him carefully. “You’re getting at something, I can sense it,” he said. “Problem is these visiting sessions have a time limit.” He smiled; a nice smile, with the eyes joining in, no longer probing. And even as he spoke, the CO with the dreads was glancing at her watch.
Wyatt made himself look Sonny right in the eye; that had to be the way to deliver information that might be unpleasant. “The thing is, we saw Mr. Wertz. Me and Greer, I mean.”
Sonny sat back. “Morrie Wertz is still around? Hasn’t drunk himself to death by now?”
“He’s at Hillside Breeze.”
“What’s that?”
“A nursing home behind the hospital.”
“In Silver City?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t know Silver City.”
Wyatt thought about that. Sweetwater State Penitentiary was across the river but still within the town limit, so Sonny had actually been living in Silver City for seventeen years.
“What were you seeing old Morrie about?” Sonny said. “Not legal advice, I hope.”
“Greer told me that everyone in here thinks you’re innocent,” Wyatt said. “That’s why.”
Sonny smiled, shook his head. “And every one of them also thinks he’s innocent, too. They really wind up believing that, all of them.”
“No, but-”
Sonny raised his voice, not a lot, but it carried across the room, and all the other conversations went silent and the COs suddenly looked wide-awake. “Hey, Hector,” he said. “You innocent?”
Hector looked up, the light from the overhead fluorescent strips shining bright on his Jesus-on-the-cross tattoo. “Hundred percent.”
A few people laughed, including the CO with the dreads; a few people, but none of the visitors. Conversations started up again. Sonny turned to Wyatt, the smile not quite gone from his face. Wyatt found himself reddening, not so much from awkwardness or embarrassment-although there was some of that-but more from anger.
“So what are you saying?” he said. “You’re guilty? You did it?” The biggest question of all.
It didn’t seem to throw Sonny the slightest bit. “A jury of my peers said so.”
“But I’m asking you.”
“I know, and you have every right,” Sonny said. “What did Wertz say?”
“He thinks you were innocent,” Wyatt said. “That you were protecting someone else.”
Sonny lowered his voice. “Like who?”
“He didn’t say,” said Wyatt. “But-but was it Mom? My mother, I mean. Linda.”
“Did Wertz say that?”
“No, but I couldn’t think of-”
“Because if he did, he must be demented. A woman like Linda could never be involved in anything like that. Out of the question.”
Out of the question: the exact same expression that had risen up in Wyatt’s mind when Greer suggested the possibility. “So why did you get up on the stand when he told you not to?”
“He went into that?” Sonny said. “Funny how some people’s grudges stay strong when there’s almost nothing left of the rest of them-seen that more than once in here.”
“His grudge is because he thinks you blew the case?”
“Exactly. But it was pretty clear to me at the time that I had a drunk for a lawyer-and the person blowing the case was him.”
“What happened on the stand?”
For an instant, Sonny’s face twisted up, as though he’d tasted something bad. “The DA made a fool of me. Which is what DAs can do to a kid, guilty or innocent.”
The CO with the dreads checked her watch again, rose, and said, “Time’s up.”
Everyone started getting to their feet. “Which one were you?” Wyatt said.
“Guilty or innocent?” said Sonny. “It’s not that simple.”
“Let’s move it, people,” said another CO.
Wyatt talked fast. “But you didn’t pull the trigger, did you?”
“Makes no difference under the law.”
