Last Chance for Glory (20 page)

Somehow it doesn’t work. Billy’s made too many mistakes in his life, even after he thought about things for a very long time. He has no way to predict the outcome of any but the simplest actions.

“Backfire,” he says out loud.

Kamal once explained what a backfire was, that you hold the gun and press the trigger and it shoots back at you. It kills
you.

Billy looks down at the open page, runs a finger along the binding. The twelve apostles are huddled together in a small boat. The wind has torn its tiny sail to shreds and even Billy can see that the bearded figures are at the mercy of the storm. The sea boils around them; huge waves loom high over their heads, ready to come crashing down.

Billy imagines himself in the boat, helpless and afraid. He closes his eyes, not wanting to see Jesus yet. Wanting to see the darkness first. Chaplain Squires told him the apostles meant to use the stars to guide their boat, but the clouds covered the stars and they got lost.

That’s the way he felt after his mother died, when they put him in a shelter. He felt lost. Everything was bigger than he was. Stronger. He didn’t know what to do or where to go. When he left the shelter and began to drink, things only got worse. People took his money, his clothes, his wine. And there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing. He was as helpless as the apostles in their small boat.

Then Kamal found him.

Billy remembers telling Chaplain Squires that Kamal was something like Jesus. Only he wasn’t
really
Jesus, because Kamal couldn’t help him after the cops came.

Chaplain Squires hadn’t gotten mad, like Billy was afraid he would. “The real Jesus never goes away,” he explained. “Once He enters your heart, He’s there forever and ever. But you’ve got to want Him, Billy. Jesus can’t do it by Himself. You have to open your heart to make room for Him.”

Billy opens his eyes, looks down at the page. Jesus, in His white robe, surrounded by light, approaches the apostles in their boat. He isn’t really walking on the water, like Chaplain Squires said. He’s floating just above it, as if He didn’t want to get His toes wet. One hand points at His heart, the other to the sky above.

The apostles are looking right at Jesus, but as far as Billy can tell from their faces, the apostles are still afraid. And that doesn’t make sense, no matter how Chaplain Squires tries to explain it. Why aren’t they happy? Now that they’re going to be rescued?

Billy puts the book down, lies back on his bed. The Screamer has started up again. “You fucking bitch, you dirty fucking bitch. I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you.”

Jackie Gee says it’s only a matter of time until the Squad takes The Screamer away to the psych annex. Jackie Gee also says that Billy will be taken to the psych annex if he complains to the COs. Which is kind of funny, because the COs must already know from the makeup and the way he moves around the prison. But what’s not very funny is that Jackie Gee has said that before he goes out on parole, he will sell Billy to the highest bidder.

Footsteps sound on the catwalk outside his cell. Soft footsteps. Billy wonder if it’s Jackie Gee come to get him. He is very surprised when a CO stops in the open doorway.

“Hello, Billy. Do you remember me?”

Billy looks directly at a CO for the first time in two years. His memory is much better, now that he can’t drink, and he recognizes Officer Brannigan right away. Officer Brannigan looks just the same, with his big smile, except that he’s wearing a CO’s uniform instead of a regular suit.

“Yes, I remember you,” Billy answers. “What do you want?”

“I’m going to take you out of here. I know you didn’t kill that woman.”

“I know I didn’t kill her, too.” Billy does not believe the cop has come to help him in any way, though he can’t imagine what the cop wants.

“Your lawyer, Max, he sent me to get you.”

“Mister Steinberg?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I spoke to Mister Steinberg today. On the telephone. He told me that I had to stay here for a while.”

“Are you afraid of me, Billy? Did I ever hurt you?” Brannigan steps into the cell, sits down next to Billy, puts his arm around Billy’s shoulder.

Instead of answering, Billy shuts his eyes. He wants to open his heart to Jesus, tries with all his might. When nothing happens, when the pressure of the cop’s hand on his shoulder increases, Billy wishes for Kamal Collars, then Jackie Gee. From off in the distance, he hears the rush of booted feet, the terrified howl of The Screamer in his cell. The Squad has come for The Screamer just as the cop has come for him. Somehow it makes sense.

“Billy? Are you with me here?”

“Yes.”

“I have some medicine for you. To make it easier.”

“But I’m not sick.”

“I know, Billy. This isn’t for sickness. It’s to make your mind rest. I was going to give it to you later, but I think it’ll be better if I do it now.”

“I don’t want it.” Billy pulls away from the cop. He stands up and looks around, wondering if he should run out onto the catwalk. Or call for help. He knows what happens to convicts who disobey the COs, has seen merciless beatings with his own eyes. But is a cop a CO? Could a cop get into a prison if the COs didn’t want him there?

He can’t decide. It’s the same problem all over again, the problem that doesn’t ever go away. Deciding, deciding, deciding.

“Jesus, help me,” he whispers, but it is not Jesus who spins him around. And it is not Jesus’ fist that sends him crashing onto the bed.

“Shit,” Tommy Brannigan says aloud. “All this trouble for a fuckin’ retard.” He jams the syringe into Billy Sowell’s shoulder, jams it right through the shirtsleeve, depresses the plunger. “Here, this’ll slow your faggot ass down to a crawl.”

He watches Sowell’s eyes flutter, lets him drop, hopes the little prick’ll die on the spot, though it’s not supposed to come off that way. But, no, slowly, very slowly, Billy pulls himself to a sitting position.

“Now, listen up, Billy. What’s gonna happen here is that you and me are gonna take a walk. Just you and me, real sweet, like I was one of your fucking boyfriends. You get that?”

Brannigan doesn’t wait for an answer. He grabs Billy by the arm, digs his fingers into Billy’s flesh, reminds himself that he doesn’t have to be here. That he wanted to do it himself, that he volunteered for the job, that he intends to enjoy it.

“Up ya go, motherfucker.”

They make their way along the catwalk, down the stairs, past the first and second tiers, into the bowels of C Block. It’s a warm evening and most of the population is out in the yard. The few prisoners in their cells refuse to so much as glance at Sowell and Brannigan. Brannigan doesn’t bother to speak, either. There’s no point; Sowell is too stoned to resist; he follows alongside like a fawning puppy. When they reach the long tunnels connecting C Block to the other buildings in the prison complex, Brannigan stops to get his bearings.

“Where are we going?”

To
hell,
is what Brannigan wants to say. He looks at Billy, shakes his head, again wonders why Steinberg would lift a finger to save this retarded piece of shit. Why Bell Kosinski would turn on the job, on his whole life.

Well, he decides, Kosinski’s doing it because he’s a drunk and Steinberg’s doing it because he’s a Jew. But this time the bleeding-heart routine is gonna backfire. It’s gonna blow up right in their faces.

“I’m taking you out of here, Billy. You’re goin’ far, far away.”

Brannigan starts up the tunnel, notes Billy hanging back, slaps him in the face.

“Jeez,” he says to no one in particular, “the echo is amazing. I gotta remember this.”

He starts out again, fingers wrapped in Billy Sowell’s hair. The corridor, as far as Brannigan can see, is deserted, as it’s supposed to be. At the far end, a hundred yards and two sharp bends away, three COs man a regular post. They will keep all foot traffic bottled up for the next ten minutes. Plenty of time for what Tommy Brannigan has in mind.

When he reaches the second utility room, he pauses, listens for a moment, then turns the handle. The room is dark, but this doesn’t surprise him. He pushes Sowell inside, closes the door behind him, gropes for the light switch.

“Well,
Señor
Officer Brannigan, we meet again. How you like my world?”

“Cut the shit, Hinjosa. We don’t have a lotta time.”

Hinjosa laughs softly, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “No time? I got mucho time, Officer Brannigan. I got fifteen years to life.”

And you deserve it, too, Brannigan thinks, knowing that Hinjosa, an NYPD sergeant, murdered his wife and that it wasn’t a crime of passion, that the prick had been after the insurance money. His confession had bought him ten years less than the maximum.

“Tell me something, Hinjosa, the other cons know you’re an ex-cop?”

“We call ourselves
offenders,
not cons.” Hinjosa laughs softly. “You got to stop livin’ in the past,
maricon.”

Brannigan sneers at the insult, decides to ignore it. “So, how do you survive? Most cops do their time in protective custody.”

Hinjosa holds up a brick. “Look,
mamacita,
no fingerprints.” He smashes the brick into Billy Sowell’s skull. “No mercy, either. Tha’s how I survive, Officer Brannigan.”

“Yeah?” Brannigan refuses to give an inch. “Well, if I was you, tough guy, I’d watch out for that blood. Most likely, the faggot’s got AIDS.”

Hinjosa tears at Billy Sowell’s uniform. Metal buttons fly across the room, rattle on the concrete floor. Pieces of torn khaki flutter to the ground like tan butterflies. When he is satisfied, he pushes Billy, chest down, onto the top of a table and mounts him.

“We gonna need more than one sample, Officer Brannigan. To make it look good. If you ain’ got the heart to take a piece of his ass, maybe you could jus’ jerk off.”

“Y
OU KNOW, BELL, THERE
is nossing ze poor boy can do about hiss feelings. I knew his papa well and ziss is how Tony Loest was raised: if there is a problem in your life, you must to punch that problem in ze face. You, Bell, haf embarrassed ze poor boy und he simply cannot agzept it. If I wass you, I would watch my step.”

Kosinski nodded in what he hoped was a thoughtful manner. Heinrich Werther was a Cryders regular and therefore entitled to a certain amount of respect. He was entitled, for instance, to his moon face, his round, wire-rimmed glasses, his Aryan know-it-all manner. He was even entitled to play the psychiatrist when he’d spent the bulk of his working life as a forklift operator in a now-defunct Long Island City warehouse.

“So, what do you think I should do, Heinrich?” Kosinski glanced at the far end of the bar, the end nearest the door. Tony Loest was eye-fucking him over the heaped bandages covering his nose. This after bragging to Ed O’Leary that he was going to “kick that fucking cop’s fucking ass.”

Werther’s eyebrows rose, a pair of thick, gray crescents. He drained his eighth beer in one long gulp, then launched into his sixth explanation of the night. “By far ze simplest solution,” he insisted, “is to allow Tony Loest to beat you into submizzion. That will restore hiss ezzential dignity.”

“What about
my
essential dignity?” The question was purely rhetorical. Kosinski slid his hand in his pocket, fingered the sap he’d been carrying since his and Marty Blake’s visit to the Chatham Hotel. He’d dumped his .38 after leaving Max Steinberg’s office, put it on a closet shelf behind a box of long-unused Christmas lights, as far from his hand as he could get it. But he’d forgotten about the sap.

What I’ve gotta do, he thought, is use it fast. Whack this jerk the minute he talks out of line. Because there’s gonna be insults here. Tony’ll run his mouth before he runs his fists. I can use that to my advantage. Pretend I’m afraid, then turn his ribs into fucking dominoes.

“You must not to come down to ziss level. You are better than Tony. Besides which it would not do you any good. You see, Tony must to redeem hiz honor. Und he can only do it wiss violence. That is his ezzential nature. For you to humiliate him once again vould necessitate an escalation of zis violence.”

Kosinski drained his glass, motioned to Ed behind the bar. “So whatta ya think, Ed? Ya think if I kick Tony’s ass, it’ll lead to nuclear war?”

“Don’t worry, Bell, he ain’t gonna try nothin’ in my bar. I already had a word with the jerk.”

“That’s great, Ed.” Kosinski (and every other Cryders regular) knew that O’Leary kept a sawed-off .12 gauge and a baseball bat next to the lemon wedges. “But what happens when I go outside?”

O’Leary flashed a wicked grin. “You could always call a cop, Bell. I mean, if you’re worried about it.”

“You see, Bell? You see how zey always return to that macho bullshit? Zey are nossing but monkeys fighting over the big banana. That is all they know.”

“How ’bout another beer, professor?” O’Leary asked. “To sharpen your psychological insight.”

Heinrich managed a withering “peasant” before nodding assent.

What I think I’m gonna do here, Kosinski mused, is work up a little advantage for myself. What I’m gonna do is keep drinking, let Tony try to match me. By the time we get outside, he’ll be lucky if he can stand.

Still, what Bell Kosinski was hoping, in his heart of hearts, was that Candy Packert would show up to diffuse the situation. Despite the fact that Packert was unlikely to appear on a weekday when the bar was patronized exclusively by committed booze hounds. Candy was a businessman and his business was cocaine: he might be out in Bayside, working the nightclubs on Bell Boulevard; or in Forest Hills, working the Queens Boulevard circuit. Anywhere but Cryders.

Kosinski glanced past Tony Loest, glanced at the door as it opened, looking for Candy Packert and seeing Marty Blake step into the bar. He saw Blake lock eyes with Tony Loest, saw Loest’s expression slowly drift from out-and-out savagery to out-and-out fear. The transition, though it couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds, seemed to occur slowly, with confusion at its center. Tony’s narrowed eyes gradually widened, then his head slowly dropped, then he spun on his stool to face Ed O’Leary on the other side of the bar.