Bullet Point (9 page)

“ARE YOU SAYING HE WAS INNOCENT?”
Greer said.

“Wouldn’t go that far.” A tear rolled out of Morrie Wertz’s droopy eye, but he didn’t look sad, more annoyed, if anything. “No one’s innocent—not even a newborn babe, don’t fool yourselves. I’m talking about—” He made that gulping sound and went silent. His good eye got a faraway look; the bad one closed up even more. Oxygen hissed. Somewhere in Hillside Breeze a beep-beep-beep started up.

Wyatt and Greer crouched in front of Wertz’s chair. “Maybe we should call somebody,” Wyatt said.

Greer shook her head. “They’re like this,” she said.

Wertz gulped again. His bad eye quivered open a bit. “Reasonable doubt—that’s all I’m talking about. Understand the concept of reasonable doubt?” He looked at Greer. “You do, but what about Mister Handsome over here?” He turned his head, glared at Wyatt. “How come my goddamn legs hurt so much if I can’t even use them?”

“I don’t know,” Wyatt said.

“You should be a doctor,” said Wertz. He nodded to
himself. “Booze destroys brain cells, but are they still in there, dead and black, or do they get flushed out? Am I pissing brain cells? I ask myself these questions.”

Greer rose, leaned against the wall. “What about reasonable doubt?”

“That’s an easy one,” Wertz said. “Reasonable doubt means inventing some crackpot story and making sure there’s at least one crackpot citizen on the jury to swallow it.”

“So what are you saying?” Greer said. “He wasn’t innocent, but you couldn’t come up with the crackpot story or a crackpot citizen?”

“Finding crackpot citizens is a snap,” Wertz said. His good eye blinked a few times. “Who are we talking about?”

“Christ,” said Greer, her voice sharpening; Wertz flinched. “Sonny Racine.”

“You blame me for losing that one?” Wertz said.

“Is that what happened?” Greer said.

Wertz shook his head. “Sonny Racine lost it himself.”

Wyatt didn’t understand any of this. “So he was guilty?” he said.

“I thought so when I first looked at the file,” Wertz said. “But then he insisted on taking the stand, testifying. Which was how he lost the case—a crazy thing to do, against counsel’s strong advice, although counsel wasn’t at his strongest at the time. The DA was practically salivating, tore him apart on cross. Sonny Racine gave himself a life sentence. See what I’m saying?”

“No,” Wyatt said.

“Nurse! Nurse!” The man in the other bed suddenly cried
out. Wyatt jumped up, his heart pounding. The man was still on his back, eyes still closed, looked as though he hadn’t moved.

“Lid on it, you sack of shit,” said Wertz, not turning to look. The man began to snore again.

“I jumped a mile,” said Greer.

“That’s Mr. Coffee,” said Wertz. “Just ignore him.”

“What did that mean,” Wyatt said, crouching down again, “Sonny Racine gave himself a life sentence?”

The good eye was back on him. “You’re not completely stupid, are you?” Wertz said. “Course the girlfriend here’s smart as a whip, nothing could be more obvious. Two of you making big plans?”

They didn’t answer.

“And if you were, why tell me, right?” He made a gravelly sound in his throat that might have been laughter. “Okay, it’s simple. You tell a guilty guy, stay off the goddamn stand or you’re done, and he stays off. You tell an innocent guy the same thing, and he has a tough time buying it. He thinks, hey, I’m innocent, I’ll tell my story and this will all go away. Usually a ticket straight to the pen, but…oh well.”

“Oh well?” Greer said.

Wertz shrugged. “Sometimes there’s nothing you can do.”

“But you’ve admitted you didn’t handle it well,” Greer said.

“I’m starting not to like you,” said Wertz, “despite how easy you are on the eyes. I never admitted any such thing. And you know what? I’ve had enough. So here’s your takeaway, children—Sonny Racine was covering up for someone.”

“Who?” Wyatt said.

“Don’t know,” said Wertz, his gaze fastening on Greer. “But if I had to guess, I’d say a girlfriend.”

Girlfriend? Wyatt didn’t understand. There was no girlfriend, just his mom. And then he remembered that his mom had never married Sonny; a wedding was in their plans but the crime had come first. Things shifted in his mind, and suddenly came a scary question: his mom was the girlfriend?

“What girlfriend?” Wyatt said.

“Show’s over,” Wertz said. He turned to the window. A dark bird swooped by.

“What does that mean?” Greer said as they drove away from Hillside Breeze. “Your mom was involved?”

“No way,” Wyatt said. The idea was out of the question, impossible, unthinkable.

“Then what’s he saying?”

“I don’t know. Probably nothing. He’s kind of out of it, right?”

Greer nodded. She took his hand. Hers was trembling a bit. “If I ever get like that, shoot me,” she said.

“You? Get like that?” He glanced at her, couldn’t imagine her any different from the way she was right there in the passenger seat, her hand on his.

Greer was quiet for the rest of the ride back to her place. As Wyatt pulled up in front, she said, “Doesn’t it make sense to pay him a visit? I’m talking about Sonny Racine.”

No explanation necessary: Wyatt had been thinking the same thing. “Don’t want to,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

“But then we’ll never know what really happened. Don’t you want to find out? I do.”

“Why?”

“For your sake,” Greer said. “I care about you, in case you’ve missed that somehow.”

Wyatt parked the car, shut it off, and turned to her. Her lips were slightly parted. “What’s it got to do with me?” he said.

“It’s part of your past.”

“I wasn’t even born.”

“Yeah,” said Greer. “But.”

The next day, when Wyatt got to school, Dub was waiting for him in the parking lot. He had a red welt on the side of his powerful neck. Catcher was a tough position: Wyatt could even see the imprint of stitches left by the ball.

“That hurt,” Wyatt said.

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

Wyatt pointed to the welt.

“It’s nothin’,” Dub said. “What’s going on with you?”

“Headed for class,” Wyatt said.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it. What are you up to? How come you’re not back home?”

“How come you’re not?”

“For fuck sake, ’cause of baseball, you know that,” Dub said. “Answer the question.”

“I’m staying here.”

“Why?”

“It’s a good school.”

“Since when do you give a shit about school?”

Wyatt shrugged. In fact, and to his surprise, he was starting to get more interested in school, English especially. He’d even done the homework last night, reading all of Act Three, Greer sitting nearby, playing her acoustic guitar.

“You’re throwing your life away, man,” Dub said.

“How’s that?”

Dub stared at him—more of a glare, really—and shook his head. “Talk to Aunt Hildy,” he said.

“About what?”

“I mean if your stupid-ass mind is really made up about staying here,” Dub said. “Apologize. Be nice. Maybe she’ll take you back.”

“To her place?” Wyatt said. “Uh-uh.”

“What do mean—uh-uh?”

“I’m fine where I am.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Hey, easy.”

Dub was getting flushed; the welt caused by the baseball disappeared in the general redness. “She went to this school,” he said. “Graduated two years ago.”

“I know that,” Wyatt said. “So?”

“So word is you’re not the first.”

Now Wyatt felt himself reddening, too. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“No big secret,” Dub said, sticking out his chin, an aggressive habit he’d had since they were little boys. “She fucked half the football team.”

Wyatt didn’t think, just threw the hardest punch he could,
right smack on the stuck-out chin. He felt the jolt all the way back down his arm and into his shoulder. Dub’s head snapped to the side and he staggered backward, almost fell. Wyatt was just starting to feel a bit bad about what he’d done, pretty close to a sucker punch, when Dub yelled, “Son of a bitch,” and came roaring at him, both fists flying. Wyatt blocked one but not the other, which landed on his nose, exact same spot where Rusty had connected. Blood spurted out and Wyatt sank to his knees.

“Maybe that’ll knock some sense into you,” Dub said. “Sure as hell need it.” He turned and walked away.

Wyatt sat on the pavement, leaning against the Mustang. He felt his nose—crooked again. He took a deep breath, counted a silent one-two-three, and snapped his nose back into place. That hurt, but not as much as the first time.

Wyatt found a sweatshirt in the trunk of the car, changed into it. When the bleeding stopped, he picked up his books and went into the school. The hall monitor wrote him up for tardiness, two demerit points, and glanced once or twice at his nose.

Ms. Grenville passed quiz sheets down the rows.

“Quiz?” said the funny kid in back. “Can’t just give a quiz with no warning.”

“Warning’s a bit dramatic for a mere quiz, don’t you think?” said Ms. Grenville. “I made an announcement at the end of class yesterday, but perhaps not loudly enough.”

“What does it count for?” the funny kid said.

“The usual,” said Ms. Grenville. “Five percent of your final grade.”

“Two and a half,” said the funny kid. “That’s my final offer.”

Wyatt looked over the quiz. There were three questions.

Ms. Grenville demanded whole sentences. Wyatt wrote:

Wyatt wrote:

Wyatt couldn’t think of the word he wanted, stopped right there, went to the next question.

Wyatt wrote:

Although maybe you couldn’t really say, not until the end of the whole thing, and Wyatt hadn’t read past Act Three. Wyatt was wondering whether to add something about that when Ms. Grenville said, “Time.”

He passed in his sheet, realizing two things. First, he hadn’t gone back and erased the unfinished sentence on number two, where he’d been stuck on a word. Second, the word he’d been looking for:
confession.
He’d wanted to say:
The idea is about getting a confession out of the king.
But too late. Had he blown the quiz completely?

When Wyatt got back to Greer’s, she threw her arms around him and said, “How was school?”

“I’m going to go visit him,” Wyatt said.

“Sonny Racine?”

“Yeah.”

“Good idea,” Greer said. “What changed your mind?”

“I guess you were right.”

She took a long look at him. “Hey! What happened to your nose?”

“Nothing.”

“Were you in a fight?”

“No.”

She stroked the side of his nose, very gently.

YOU COULD WALK INTO A PRISON,
no problem. A sign over glass double doors read
PUBLIC ENTRANCE
. Wyatt entered and approached a desk where a woman in an olive green uniform was gazing at a computer screen.

“Uh,” he said. “The visitors’ room?”

The woman looked up. “You have an appointment?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Name?”

“Wyatt Lathem.”

The woman tapped at the keyboard, nodded slightly. “Visiting?” she said.

“Yeah,” said Wyatt. Like what else would he be doing here?

“Visiting who?” she said.

“Oh,” said Wyatt. “Sonny Racine.”

The woman made a mouse click. “Hours start at three today,” she said. She handed Wyatt a clipboard. “Fill this out.”

An unoccupied row of plastic seats, the kind all molded
together, stood along one wall. Wyatt sat at one end, filled out the form—his name, his address (he used Greer’s), his arrest record (never), his relationship to the inmate. He thought for a long time, then wrote “family friend” and handed in the clipboard.

“Have a seat,” said the woman at the desk. “We’ll call you.”

Wyatt returned to his plastic seat and opened a magazine. A fragment of a potato chip fell out, the ruffled kind. Wyatt set the magazine aside.

At 2:45 a woman came in. She wore a jogging suit but didn’t look like a jogger. She was short and heavy, had a baby in her arms; another kid, maybe Cammy’s age, trailed behind. The woman sat down with a grunt, not at the far end of the row, what Wyatt would have done in her place, but just three or four seats away. The baby was sleeping—a girl; she already wore earrings. The other kid, a boy, kept going, headed for a fountain in the corner. The woman called out to him in Spanish, obviously telling him to come back, but he ignored her. When he got to the fountain, he found he was tall enough to push the lever that started the water flowing but too short to drink. He turned and said something to his mother. He had a very loud voice. The mother again told him to come back. The baby awoke and started fussing. The uniformed woman tapped her fingernail on the desk and said, “If you can’t keep it down, you’ll have to wait outside.”

Wyatt didn’t get to see how that played out, because a man in an olive green uniform came through a door on the other
side of the room, picked up the clipboard, and said, “Wyatt Lathem?”

Wyatt rose and approached him. The man was short and muscular, had a neatly trimmed mustache and wore a badge that read
SHIFT SUPERVISOR
. “This way,” he said.

Wyatt followed him through the door and down a short corridor to a glassed-in booth. The uniformed man inside said, “License.”

Wyatt slid his license through the slot. The man took it, ran it through a scanner, checked a screen, tossed the license into a tray. “Wallet,” he said. “Keys, belt, anything metal.”

“Get it all back when you leave,” said the shift supervisor.

Wyatt nodded, but there was a problem already. The $200 was in his wallet, the plan being to give it back during the visit. How was he going to do that now? He had no idea, but he sensed that raising the issue wasn’t the way to go. In fact, he wanted to get out of the place already.

Wyatt handed everything over. The man in the booth dropped it all in the tray.

“This way,” said the shift supervisor, leading him to a metal detector. Wyatt walked through. Another green-uniformed man stood on the other side. “Arms up for the corrections officer, please,” said the supervisor. Wyatt raised his arms, got wanded.

He followed the supervisor down the corridor. A pool of water was spreading across the cement floor. “Plugging the toilets never gets old, for some reason,” the supervisor said. They avoided the wet section, came to a heavy steel door. The
supervisor punched keys on a keypad and the door swung open. They went inside.

VISITING ROOM
read a big notice on all four walls.

“Take a seat,” said the supervisor. Two rows of plastic seats, each backed against a wall, the seats a little different from in the first room—farther apart, three feet or so, and each row bolted to the floor. There was no one else in the room. Wyatt sat in the middle of the row opposite the door he’d come in through. The supervisor went to a second door, used the keypad, and left. As the door swing shut, Wyatt caught a snatch of someone yelling in Spanish.

He waited. It occurred to him that he actually couldn’t get out of this room on his own. He glanced up, into the lens of a video camera. His heart rate speeded up. He took a deep breath, thought about getting up, maybe pacing around a bit. At that moment, the second door opened and a man dressed in inmate khaki entered, followed by a green-uniformed corrections officer, a big woman with short dreadlocks. They both looked at Wyatt. The CO sat in a corner. The man in khaki crossed the room, his movements slow, even halting, and approached Wyatt.

Wyatt rose, probably in a slow and halting way also, although he was barely aware of that. All he was really aware of were his beating heart and this fantastic resemblance. The genetic bond was impossible to miss. Father and son: what could be more obvious?

Sonny Racine stopped about a yard away. Was this a moment for handshaking? Wyatt didn’t know; and then he remembered the sign: No physical contact of any kind.

“Wyatt,” Sonny Racine said. “Thank you for coming.”

In his mind, Wyatt had rehearsed a few things he might say first, but now he couldn’t remember any of them. He just nodded.

Sonny smiled. He had a nice smile, his teeth big and white, none missing. Wyatt would have expected bad teeth in prison. Also: no visible tattoos or scars, no evasiveness in the way he looked at you, no tics or twitches.

“I know it’s not the most pleasant atmosphere,” Sonny said.

“That’s all right,” said Wyatt.

Sonny gestured toward the plastic seats. He had strong, well-shaped hands, very much like Wyatt’s but older-looking, maybe because one or two of the fingers weren’t perfectly straight. Sonny was strong and well shaped in general, Wyatt’s height to the inch, a little thicker in the chest and shoulders.

They sat in adjoining seats about three feet apart, each half turned to face the other. Wyatt was relieved to sit down: a sudden feeling of weightlessness had overcome him.

“My heart is beating pretty fast right now, I can tell you,”
Sonny said. “But not your problem. First, I want to say how much I appreciate this visit.”

“That’s all right,” Wyatt said for the second time, feeling a little foolish about the inane repetition; but if it struck Sonny as foolish, he gave no sign.

“Second—I—” Sonny broke off, turned away, brushed the back of his hand over his eyes. When he turned back to Wyatt, his eyes were clear. “The natural thing is to say something about you being a fine-looking young man,” he said, “but it’s almost like giving myself a pat on the back.”

“Because of the resemblance?”

“Exactly. It’s…it’s uncanny.”

A silence fell over them, kind of awkward, at least for Wyatt, but he couldn’t think of what to say. He glanced at the CO with the dreads, seated in the corner. She was gazing off into space. Even sitting down, he felt weightless.

“You don’t have to stay,” Sonny said. “If this is too uncomfortable or anything.”

“No, no,” said Wyatt.

“But if it gets…,” Sonny began, then noticed a speck of dust on his knee and brushed it off. His khaki pants were spotless, with sharp creases down the fronts of both legs. He looked up at Wyatt and said, “Do you like the name?”

“What name?”

“Yours—Wyatt.”

“Yeah.” He did like his name, always had.

“Good,” said Sonny. “It was either that or Derek.”

“What do you mean?”

“In our discussions about what to name you,” Sonny said.
“I’m talking about Linda. Your mom. We’d narrowed it down to those two, when…when…” His voice trailed off.

Derek? That was news to Wyatt. So was the whole idea of this man’s involvement in the choice of his name. Wyatt had always just assumed his mom had picked it on her own.

Sonny was watching him. “Hope that doesn’t bother you,” he said, as though reading Wyatt’s mind. “My being in on the naming and all. Obviously not my right, looking back from later events. Linda’s, but totally.”

“No,” said Wyatt. “It’s, uh…”

Another silence. Sonny rubbed his hands together, maybe trying to warm something up, like the room. “Is the Chuckwagon still around?” he said.

“Chuckwagon?”

“Guess not,” Sonny said. “It was a diner on Fremont Street, across from that little park.”

Wyatt knew the spot, back in East Canton. “A Laundromat’s there now,” he said.

“Yeah?” said Sonny. “I didn’t know that.” He turned back toward Wyatt. “It was tricked out to look like a covered wagon. Linda and I went there a lot. Does she still like BLTs, the bacon nice and crisp?”

“Yeah.”

“She ordered it every time, always with a chocolate shake.” Wyatt had never seen his mother drink a shake. “That’s where we had these name discussions,” Sonny went on, “at the Chuckwagon. Once—might have been the last time, now that I think about it—you kicked. I felt it, you know, in the womb. Linda kind of went still for a second, her mouth full
of BLT. I can practically see it.” He shook his head. “But enough of that. You didn’t come all this way to hear an old guy get sentimental. Main point is—you like your name. Got a middle one, by the way?”

“Errol.” A name he didn’t like and never used, not even on official forms, like his license. Also: it was impossible to think of this man as an old guy, and Wyatt wouldn’t have minded hearing more about the Chuckwagon.

“Errol—that would be after Linda’s dad,” Sonny said. “How’s he doing?”

“He died a long time ago.” So long that Wyatt had no memories of him.

“Errol was a good guy,” Sonny said. “Loved baseball.”

“Did he go to any of your games?” Wyatt said, taking a guess.

“Yeah, he did. How’d you know I played?”

“Coach Bouchard told me.”

“What a character. Hope he’s doing all right.”

“They had to cut baseball, on account of the economy.”

“I heard. No economy in here—one of the silver linings.”

“What’s another one?” Wyatt said; a question that came blurting out, mostly on its own.

Sonny laughed. He had a nice laugh, low and musical. “I’ll have to think about that,” he said. He gave Wyatt a quick sideline look. Wyatt had seen Mr. Mannion give Dub a look just like that, one day back in middle school when Dub had surprised everyone by winning honorable mention at the science fair.

“You heard the baseball story from Greer?” Wyatt said.

Sonny nodded. “She says you’ve got a nice compact swing. Interesting a girl would notice something like that.”

“I was hitting at the cage,” Wyatt said.

“Even so,” Sonny said. “You miss it?”

“No,” Wyatt said. “A little.”

“What position?”

“Center field.”

“Meaning you can run.”

“A bit.”

“More than that, I’ll bet. Coach Bouchard always wanted a burner in center—doubt that changed over the years.” He took a deep breath. “I still love baseball.”

“Uh,” said Wyatt, “do you get to throw the ball around and stuff?”

Sonny laughed again. Yes, a happy laugh. How was that happiness possible? “A baseball in the wrong hands is the kind of thing they try to avoid in here. But there’s a lounge with a TV. We’ve got a game pretty much every night during the season.” He smiled. “Not all the guys are baseball fans, of course, but we work it out.”

The visitors’ door opened and the heavy woman in the jogging suit came in with her two kids. They sat at the opposite wall, the baby in the woman’s lap, the little boy beside her but almost at once slumping down to the floor, then crawling under the seats.

“Hey,” said the CO with the dreads.

The heavy woman reached down, grabbed the boy by the pant leg, and pulled him out. The baby began to slide off the woman’s lap. She grabbed him, too. The baby started crying.
The boy sat back down on the seat beside his mother, crossed his arms over his chest, looked angry. At that moment, the other door opened and an inmate in khaki entered, followed by another CO, this one white and male. The CO was big, but the inmate was even bigger, a huge guy with a shaved head, goatee, a tear tattoo under one eye, and another tattoo—Jesus on the cross—taking up most of the other side of his face.

He glanced at Sonny and gave him a curt nod. Sonny gave him one back. Then the huge guy walked toward the woman and the kids. The woman and the baby didn’t take their eyes off him, but the boy kept staring straight ahead. The woman said something in Spanish. The man shrugged. He took a seat next to the boy, who still had his arms folded across his chest.

“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.