The Pariot GAme (5 page)

“Yup,” Riordan said, “called him this morning.”

The guard stood in the sun and thought about that. He looked at the credentials again. “Something to do with a prisoner, sir?” he said.

“Yes,” Riordan said, “something to do with a prisoner. Why the hell else would anybody come here, if it didn’t have something to do with a prisoner, can you tell me?”

The guard looked thoughtful. “I’ll call the office, sir,” he said. The guard went back into his cubicle and shut the door
behind him. Through the tinted glass, Riordan could see him pick up the phone and push buttons. The guard talked. He nodded. He put the phone back in its cradle and nodded at Riordan. He pushed a button. The main gate rolled open.

Riordan drove down the slope and parked in the visitors’ lot, deserted except for his car in the afternoon sun. He got out of the car, removed the sports coat, took the credentials from his pocket, put the coat in the car and locked the doors. Swiveling the right leg, he walked up to the main entrance and opened it.

Inside it was cooler. There were two wooden benches to his left. In front of him there was a green barred door. Behind it there was a second, identical door. There was a desk behind a glass window to his right. It had a steel counter under it. There were three signs:
ALL WEAPONS MUST BE CHECKED; VISITORS MUST IDENTIFY THEMSELVES; STATE NAME AND PURPOSE OF VISIT TO ATTENDANT
. There was a sliding drawer under the glass and a speaking port about five feet off the brown linoleum floor in the center of the glass. Two guards sat on stools behind the glass, arguing about something. Riordan could not hear what they were saying. He rested his hands on the counter and rapped on the glass. The guard on the left interrupted the conversation and leaned forward. He spoke into a microphone. “Name, sir?” His voice was amplified, and carried through the room and the barred doors to Riordan’s left.

Riordan spoke through the port. “Open the drawer,” he said.

“Name, sir?” the guard said.

“Open the drawer,” Riordan said. “My name’s on this.” He displayed the black morocco case. “I’ll put this in there.”

“I have to have your name, sir,” the guard said.

“You’re about to get it, if you’ll open the drawer,” Riordan said. “You think I’m going to climb into it, ride in and bite you?”

The guard glared through the glass. “Come on, come on,” Riordan said, “open the drawer. I don’t know if you’ve got all day, but I haven’t.” The drawer slid open. Riordan put the credentials into it. The drawer slid shut. The guard removed the credentials on the other side of the glass and looked at them. He leaned toward the microphone. “Shut up,” Riordan said at once into the port. “I don’t want my visit announced to the whole damned prison population. That’s who I am. No damned need to treat me like the Duchess of Windsor at a goddamned cotillion. Put that back in the drawer and slide it back to me. I’ll take it out and put something else in it that you’ll want to keep until I come out.”

The guard on the left looked puzzled. The guard on the right got off his stool abruptly. “Do what I tell you,” Riordan said. “Have your partner call the Superintendent.” The second guard told the guard at the mike that he was calling the Superintendent. “I read lips,” Riordan said. “Glad to hear it. Now open the damned drawer and be quick about it.” The drawer slid open with the credentials in it. Riordan took them and removed the magnum from its holster. He opened the cylinder and pushed the ejection rod to clear the chambers of the bullets. From his right front pocket he removed a trigger guard lock and snapped it onto the gun. He put the revolver, cylinder open, and the bullets, into the drawer. He spoke into the port. “You be damned careful with that thing,” he said. “It was balanced when I came in here and it’d better be balanced when I get it back.”

The guard at the mike opened the drawer and removed the magnum. He tagged it. He took a small brown envelope from a drawer under his desk and put the bullets in it. He put the magnum and the bullets in a pigeonhole behind him. The guard on the telephone hung up and nodded to the guard on the stool. The guard on the stool pushed a button.

The barred door to Riordan’s left began to slide open. The guard who had used the telephone left the booth. Riordan
walked toward the door. The guard came out of the booth as Riordan waited at the barred door. When it was open, Riordan went in and the guard patted him down. The barred door slid shut behind Riordan. The guard who had conducted the frisk opened the door to the booth and backed in. When it was shut, the second barred door in front of Riordan opened slowly.

The floor beyond the second door was steel. Riordan turned right, his boots making a clanking sound, and went to the Superintendent’s office. He went in to the receptionist’s area and shut the door behind him. He grinned at the short, dark-haired woman behind the desk. “Ruthie” he said, “does the boss really think I came to see
him?
”

She grinned back at him. “Oh, no, you don’t, you fickle bastard,” she said. “You start that line of stuff on me, and this time I really
will
tell my husband.”

“Ruthie, Ruthie,” Riordan said, “you hurt my feelings. Besides, Ben knows my intentions’re honorable.”

“I don’t think he does, actually,” she said. “
I
do, because you haven’t got anything in your holster. But Ben’s a suspicious man, and a crack shot, too. I don’t think he trusts you.”

“Jeez, Ruthie,” Riordan said, “he did the night we had those guys holed up in the cellar in Uxbridge and I got this scar saving his life.” He rolled up his right sleeve. “I did more for Ben that night’n I did for other guys the whole time I was in Nam.”

“That’s not the way Ben tells it,” she said. “Ben says if it weren’t for him and the other Staties, you wouldn’t be drawing breath now, and it’d probably be just as well. You okay, Riordan? We haven’t seen you since the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, seems like.”

“Well,” Riordan said, “yeah, I guess so. I’m doing all right.”

“You got a girl?” she said.

“Broads,” Riordan said. “Broads always ask the same question. There’s one thing you can’t stand, it’s the thought of some guy walking around with no responsibilities and no nagging.”

“Well,” Ruthie said, “there’re some good things about responsibilities and nagging. You had a girl, you probably would’ve taken a bath today. And the chances are you would’ve gotten a decent haircut. Or you wouldn’t’ve gotten yourself into the condition that you’re obviously in.”

“Now, now, Ruthie,” Riordan said, “I’m in no condition to listen to stuff about the condition I’m in. Which I would have to do if I had a girl, I bet. Besides, you and I and the fellow behind the door’ve got work to do. Can’t stand here all the day long, flirting. He in there?”

“He’s in there,” Ruthie said. “But, fair warning: he’s got another guy with him.”

“Dietz?” Riordan said. “I’m used to Dietz.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, “everybody is, now. Dietz’s just like that, is all. All Assistant Superintendents’re like that. No, this is a new one. Dietz brought him in here, about six months ago, and they go everywhere together, like Flopsy and Mopsy. If Dietz gets hungry, this guy Mayes eats a hot dog. God help us all if they ever find Cottontail and Peter.”

“What the hell is Mayes?” Riordan said.

“Good question,” Ruthie said. “Truth of the matter is, he was invented by the legislature, I think. He’s a robot. Oh, Peter, you are going to
love
Mayes. He’s the new man that’s here to rehabilitate these seven-hundred-plus animals we’ve got waiting around for a chance to do something worse’n they did before. He’s a piece of work, Peter. A day without him is like steak for breakfast and wine with dinner by candlelight.”

“Uh-huh,” Riordan said. “Counselor?”

“The very best,” she said. “Just ask him. He’ll make it plain to you, because he’s not sure anybody else is bright enough to
park a car straight. Even if you don’t ask him, he will tell you. You know why a man commits rape and then kills and mutilates the victim?”

“No, as a matter of fact,” Riordan said. “Unless it’s because he’s a madman and so she can’t identify him later.”

“See?” Ruthie said. “You don’t know anything either. Nobody knows anything about anything except Mayes, and he knows everything about everything. Everything has deep-seated roots in the psyche, see? It’s all very complicated. Mayes is the only one in the world who understands it.”

“Grand,” Riordan said. “What is he doing at this little gathering? I haven’t raped and mutilated anybody lately. All I do is ask politely, and if I get turned down, well, you can’t win ’em all. I don’t take it personally.”

“Maybe if you took a bath and got your hair cut, and that sort of thing,” she said, “you wouldn’t get turned down so often.”

“No,” he said, “I want my chums to love me for my mind, not my body. Can I see Walker now that you’ve prepped for this nitwit in there with him?”

“Sure,” she said. “But I warn you, I’m going to go get a clean glass and listen through the wall.” She pushed the intercom button.

S
EATS
L
OBIANCO
left his office in the State House and walked through the cool, dimly lit corridors on the ground level. He exchanged greetings with Capitol police and men in mussed suits and his heels rapped smartly on the tiled floors. He went out through the door leading into the arcade and walked toward the parking lot. There was a guard sitting on a wooden stool in the shade at the end of the arcade. The guard wore a long-sleeved white shirt, dark blue uniform pants, a black tie and a uniform hat. He was smoking a Tiparillo and he was reading
Sports Illustrated.
“Donald,” Seats said cheerfully, “a hot day like this and you got a necktie on still? Guys inna building took their fuckin’ neckties off, for Christ sake, and we’re supposed to have fuckin’ air conditioning in there. What’re you doing, for Christ sake?”

The guard lowered the magazine and looked at Seats. “Salvatore,” he said, having inspected him, “you are a fine figure of a man, I must say. You got some whore lined up for nooners I assume, and then after the bump it’s back to the grind, am I right?”

“Donald,” Seats said, “there you are, movin’ your lips, mostly lookin’ at the pictures, it’s summertime and the baseball teams got no cheerleaders, and so you go around accusing people like me of immoral behavior, and fucking, and things
like that. Is this any way for a good family man like yourself to be acting, going around and impugning the integrity of all us public-spirited citizens? I assume you stole the magazine.”

“Ways and Means Reardon left it in his car this morning,” Donald said. “Gave me so much shit, I took it. Son of a bitch. Drives up here like he’s some kind of goddamned emperor or something, stops inna middle of the street, goin’ the wrong way, sits inna car with the ice goin’ full blast and the windows up, waits till I get up and come down. He can see the lot’s full, for Christ sake. This is a secret? The lot’s full at eight-thirty, No shit, Ways and Means. You ever got here at eight-thirty, maybe you’d know, the lot’s full at eight-fifteen, you guys start fucking around with everything. Park onna street and walk up, you fat shit. Might even lose some weight, which he could afford. Sits there in his fuckin’ white Murr-kedees with the windows up, lookin’ at all the citizens walkin’ around, sweatin’ their asses off, he’s blockin’ the driveway. Does that matter to him? Not him.

“I get through with the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor and the AG and the Auditor and the Treasurer and everything else,” Donald said, “and then I come down here and I got cars backed up Somerset Street, cars backed up here, cars backed up on Cambridge Street? Shit, I probably had cars backed up in Fall River, all I know, and I see the white fuckin’ Murrkedees and I go up to it and there is Ways and Means Reardon, readin’ his fuckin’ magazine. Like he’s the only guy onna face the fuckin’ earth. And I rap on the window, you know? It was anybody else, I use a brick, but this guy’s a heavy hitter. He oughta get a punch inna mouth. He gets a polite question, all right?

“He don’t even appreciate that,” Donald said, his voice rising. “The son of a bitch. He looks up at me, like I woke him up when he was sleeping or something. I tell him,” Donald said, rolling his right hand in a circular pattern, “roll downa
fuckin’ window. He looks at me. Through the tinted glass of course. Fuckin’ car looks like a whorehouse with a wheel on each corner. I yell at him. ‘Rolla fuckin’ window down, Mister Chairman,’ I say. You know what he does? He looks around and then he finally finds a button. This is
his
fuckin’ car and he’s inside it and I’m out here inna fuckin’
heat
and he’s in there where it’s nice and cool and he dunno where the fuckin’ button is? Bullshit.

“He gets the fuckin’ window down,” Donald said, “and the son of a bitch looks at me. And he says, ‘Yeah?’ Like I was Cinderella and the glass fuckin’ slipper didn’t fit. The hell’s he think I came from, for Christ sake? He lost a tooth and the fairy left me under his fuckin’
pillow
, for Christ sake?

“I don’t get mad,” Donald said. “I am mad, but I do not get mad. I could kill the fuckin’ son of a bitch on less’n a minute’s notice, but I don’t get mad. I say to him, I say: ‘Uh, Mister Chairman. You know, I hate to bother you and everything, but the traffic’s pretty well screwed up here and, well, you’re gonna have to move your car and everything. Okay?’ And he looks at me. He looks at me like I was something he seen floatin’ inna flush or something. ‘I’m the chairman,’ he says. ‘There’s a guy in my place.’