"Then you're going up to the Supreme Court." Proctor couldn't lie. He took a deep breath.
"I have to be honest with you, Williams," he said. "I did file, but I don't think I can continue with this case."
Remo's eyes tightened. "What?"
"Look, I don't know what's going on," Proctor said miserably, "but I put this before justice Hannavan, and he turned me down cold. The guy is an incurable softy." Proctor looked around the room before speaking, even though it was empty but for a single out-of-earshot guard. "I ... I think they got to him."
"They? Who?"
Proctor leaned forward, his eyes on the woodenfaced C.O. Even though this conversation fell under the client-confidentiality statutes, he dropped his voice.
"The same ones that got you transferred to this state," he said. "The ones who called me last night."
"Be straight with me. Who?"
"I don't know who, but they have to be connected on the federal level. I was warned that I had been videotaped doing cocaine at a party."
"Oh, that's just peachy," Remo said. "My lawyer, the cokehead."
"It was only a line. Maybe two," Proctor said quickly. "Strictly recreational. But they're threatening to slap me with a possession-with-intent-to-sell beef But I'm innocent. Really!"
"You sound like a con," Remo said nastily.
"I feel like a political prisoner, Williams. This is scary police-state stuff. Someone wants you dead. And they want you dead yesterday. I had no sooner left the hearing than I received notice that the governor had signed your death warrant. I filed for a stay with the U.S. Supreme Court and got us a short date."
"For when?"
"The day after tomorrow."
"What do you think our chances are?"
"Not great. Your excecution is set for tomorrow morning. "
Proctor steeled himself for the ex-cop's reaction. He didn't know what to expect. Remo's cop eyes seemed to recede into his head. Actually, it was an illusion caused by a slight bowing of the man's head. The overhead light threw his socket hollows into shadow, making them look like skull holes.
I'm looking at a dead man, Proctor thought, suddenly chilled. Poor bastard.
"They can't execute before the appeal is decided," Williams said quietly, not looking up. "Can they?"
"Normally, no. But in this case, I don't know. Look, I'm sorry, I shouldn't even be telling you any of this, but I would lose my practice if I took an intent-to-sell fall. And for what? A pro bono appeal that was dumped in my lap? Put yourself in my place. What would you do?"
"Put yourself in my place," Remo said between set teeth. "What would you expect from your lawyer?"
"I'm sorry. I really am."
"The least you could do is refer me to another lawyer," Remo grated. "Fast!"
"That's the other thing," Proctor added. "I called your former lawyer, hoping to dump this on him. I got a delicatessen. I redialed, figuring I had misread the letterhead, and got the same place. I checked with the Jersey bar. The man who represented you went out of business twelve years ago. He's been dead four."
"Impossible. I saw him only last ... month. I think. "
"Not unless there are two of him. For God's sake, Williams, who are you? Nobody gets railroaded like this. It wouldn't surprise me if they had the Supreme Court rigged."
"I'm Remo Williams," Remo said vaguely. "Aren't I?"
"If you don't know, who would?"
George Proctor watched as his client seemed to shrink in his tight-fitting apricot T-shirt. His eyes were staring down at his hands, which lay flat on the counter in front of the glass partition. He looked calm-calmer than Proctor thought he had any right to look.
"He said he had already killed me," Williams intoned without looking up.
"Who?"
Williams raised his face, his eyes bleak. "The executioner. They buried Popcorn this morning."
"I have no idea what you're babbling about."
"Mohammed Diladay. They called him Popcorn. He was executed this morning."
"That's odd. There was no press coverage."
"The executioner walked by my cell," Remo went on. "He did a double-take. Said something about having executed me up in Trenton State twenty years ago."
"You're not making this up, are you? I mean, it's a little late for an insanity plea."
"A few nights ago," Remo went on as if talking to himself, "I dreamed that I had been executed. At Trenton. It seemed real. And for some reason, the executioner's face looked familiar."
"Oh, Christ!" Proctor said hoarsely. He grabbed up his valise hastily.
"What does that tell you?" Williams asked tightly.
"It tells me that I should get the fuck out of here. Sorry, Williams. You have my sympathy. But I want no part of you."
"What about my rights? What about the law?"
"A few years ago I would have fought this tooth and nail, believe me. But I've got a wife now. Two kids. A condo. I get jammed up, she'll leave me and take the kids with her. I'm not an idealistic young guy anymore. Sorry. Good-bye."
Remo Williams watched his last hope in the world walk off in a six-hundred-dollar suit, his insides feeling like chopped liver too long in the refrigerator. He didn't hear the door behind him open and the guard shouting his name.
"Williams!" the guard repeated, taking him by the arm.
Remo tensed, nearly jumped to his feet and down the guard's open throat. Then his eyes refocused and, head bowed, he allowed himself to be led back to his cell.
His biggest regret was that Popcorn wasn't there to talk to. Already he missed the little con. But on this, the last day of his life, he had no interest in trying to start up a new friendship through pink cinder block.
Remo thought back to the night his fellow officers came to his apartment and apologetically informed him he was under arrest for the murder of a black drug pusher whose name, over twenty years later, Remo could no longer remember. An important fact like that, and he couldn't summon it up. The judge and the prosecution must have repeated it a thousand times throughout the trial. What was the judge's name? Harold something. Smith, that was it. Smith. A sourpuss, with his starchy white hair and puritanical mouth. The guy had worn rimless glasses, so he looked like a high-school headmaster gone old and sour.
"Wait a minute," Remo blurted out. "That face!" Suddenly he remembered. Judge Harold Smith. That was the face in one of his strange dreams. What did it mean?
Dinner was spaghetti with meatballs. Remo refused it. His appetite had fled.
"You sure?" the guard had asked. It was the one who had questioned him over the National Enquirer article the other day. His name tag said: Fletcher. "I hear this could be your last supper."
"Then it's true," Remo said, hollow-voiced.
"They're keeping mum about it. But that's the buzz. Pardon the expression."
"Look, I don't want the food. But you can do me a favor. "
"And I could lose my job," the guard said, his voice going from solicitous to crystal hard in midsyllable.
"It's nothing illegal," Remo assured him. "You had a newspaper the other day. It had my face on it. How about letting me have it, huh? Just something to read, to take my mind off my troubles."
The guard hesitated. He rubbed his undershot jaw thoughtfully. "Can't see that it'll do any harm," he admitted. "Just do me a favor. After you're done with it, shove it under the mattress. I'll get it after . . . you know."
"It's a promise," Remo said as the guard snatched up the tray from the cell-door slot.
Remo had to wait until the guard was finished feeding the row before he wandered back. His first words made Remo's heart sink.
"I checked the prison library," he said. "Couldn't find it. But the new one came in." He stuffed the folded paper into the slot. Remo had to use both hands to wrestle it through without tearing it to pieces.