“Oh, yeah?”
“Yes, you did. I figured you for the silent type, not the gregarious hail-fellow sort, not the kind of fella who makes friends that easy.”
Parker shrugged at that; what else?
“But here you are,” Turley said, “you got a couple buddies already.”
“I do?”
Turley consulted a sheet of paper on the desk in front of himself, the sheet of paper he’d been rolling that pencil on, though the consultation was clearly just a part of the play-act. Turley knew what names he was looking for. “Thomas Marcantoni,” he read; or said. “Brandon Williams.”
“Williams is my cellmate,” Parker said. “Why be rude to a cellmate?”
“Very wise,” Turley agreed. “And you play checkers with Marcantoni.”
“It makes the time pass.”
“And the three of you do weights together.”
“Sometimes,” Parker said. “You can get out of shape in here, just sit around, wait for your trial to come along. I’m still waiting on my arraignment.”
With a down-turning smile, Turley said, “I think your lawyer’s mostly the cause of that. I see, by the way, you weren’t happy with the lawyer the court provided.”
Parker said, “Mr. Sherman? He looks to me like he was overextended. I didn’t want to take up a lot of his time.”
Turley laughed, and it sounded real. He said, “What are you and Marcantoni and Williams up to?”
“Staying in shape,” Parker said. “Passing the time.”
“I hope you don’t have anything else in mind,” Turley said. He gave Parker his bright-bird look, then said, “Did you know this place was built seven years ago? Would you believe that? Seven years, and already look how it’s crowded.”
“Too many bad people around,” Parker suggested.
“That must be it,” Turley agreed. “But even with this overcrowding, this situation here being less than ideal, do you know how many escapes there’ve been from Stoneveldt since it opened?”
“Escapes? No. Why would I want to know about escapes?”
“Zero,” Turley said. He nodded to the guard. “Take Mr. Kasper back to his cell,” he said.
15
“We’ve got to do it soon,” Parker said. “They’ll give us a few days, just a few, but if they don’t figure anything out, they’ll move us, put us on three different floors.”
Marcantoni looked up from the checkerboard. “I told you, Jelinek has to die.”
“On our way out,” Parker said. “Otherwise, he’ll see us move, and start to talk.”
“That, too,” Marcantoni said.
16
“Looks like Thursday,” Parker said. “Five P.M.”
Mackey nodded. “I was wondering when you’d get around to it,” he said.
Thursdays, the third tier worked on its cases late in the day, starting at two-fifteen, finishing at four forty-five. At any time before four-fifteen you could decide to go down to the library, get a little work in on your case.
Jelinek didn’t work on his case, not in the same way the bozos did. Thursday afternoon, just a little before four, he was almost alone in the game room, spread on his back on a couch in the corner, reading Car & Driver. On the wall to the left of his head was a set of shelves where the games were kept.
He looked up when he saw Parker cross the room toward him, and would have gotten to his feet except that Parker made a down-patting motion in the air; stay there, no big deal, I just want to talk with you a minute. So Jelinek put the magazine down, looked expectant, and reacted just a bit late when he saw Marcantoni moving in from the other side, not hurrying but striding, diagonally across the room toward Jelinek’s feet.
“What—”
That was as far as he got before Parker’s left hand closed on his windpipe and pressed him down onto the couch. Jelinek’s hands snapped up to clutch at Parker’s wrist, straining to lift that arm. His legs started to writhe, but then Marcantoni casually sat on his legs, reached his hand leftward past Parker, and plucked Jelinek’s right hand from Parker’s wrist. Pushing that hand down onto Jelinek’s stomach, Marcantoni reached across himself with his free hand to pick up the magazine from Jelinek’s chest and start reading it himself, one-handed. He didn’t seem to notice the convulsions of Jelinek’s legs beneath him or the tense quivers of Jelinek’s wrist grasped in his hand.
Jelinek’s eyes and mouth were all wide open. He wanted to say something that nobody wanted to hear. His left hand gave up on the wrist pressed down on his throat, and he reached up to claw at Parker’s face. Parker’s free right hand plucked Jelinek’s hand from the air and forced it down onto the couch arm, behind Jelinek’s head, just as Williams arrived. Williams hunkered down in front of the shelves, in order to study the games on offer. His left hand reached over to take Jelinek’s left hand from Parker and continue to hold it tight against the arm of the couch.
Jelinek was going, his face turning red, the struggles of his limbs getting weaker. Parker watched him, waiting for the moment. They didn’t want a strangulation death, with eyes bulged and tongue protruded and flesh the color of raw beef. They needed to leave something that looked more natural than that. Inmates fell asleep on these couches all the time, with so little to do. No one would try to wake him until everybody was supposed to line up for dinner.
Now. Parker lifted his hand from Jelinek’s throat. Jelinek stirred, trying to breathe, to cry out, to do something to save himself. Parker clutched Jelinek’s jaw in his left hand and lifted. His right hand slid under Jelinek’s head, feeling the greasy hair. Both hands clamped to that head, he snapped it hard to the left. They all heard the crack.
Parker straightened, Marcantoni stood, Williams got up from the shelves of games. They all glanced around, but the few other people in the room were involved in their games or their reading.
Marcantoni sniffed. “He shit,” he said.
Parker said, “Cover him with a blanket. Williams, you go first.”
Williams left the game room, while Marcantoni went to the low table where a few thin gray blankets were kept folded, for when people napped in here rather than in their cells. He threw it over Jelinek, said to Parker, “See you later,” and left.
“You’re running it pretty close,” the guard at the stairway door said, looking at his watch.
“I just thought of something might help,” Parker told him.
The guard shook his head, but didn’t bother to point out that nothing was going to help any of these losers in here. Turning to his radio, he clicked it on and said, “Got another librarian coming down.”
“Make that the last,” squawked the radio.
“Absolutely.”
The guard buzzed the gate open, not bothering to look at Parker again, and Parker went down the clanging stairs for the last time. The guards below passed him on, along the standard route, and when he went into the inmates’ part of the library there were only five other cons there, including Williams and Marcantoni. Williams typed something or other at one of the electric typewriters, Marcantoni was in discussion with the volunteer lawyer at the chest-high counter separating the inmates’ space from the volunteer’s space, and the other three cons all doggedly typed, with just a few fingers.
Parker went over to stand on line behind Marcantoni, and to hear him say to the volunteer, “I’m gonna need one of those typewriters.”
“So am I,” Parker said.
There were three or four different volunteer lawyers. This one was white, tall, skinny, midthirties but already balding, and wore a yellow tie that made his pale face look even paler. Now, with a look at his watch, he called over to the cons at the typewriters, “Time’s up, fellas. You can come back tomorrow.”