I didn’t dare nod my own head, not with Stoon behind me and Warden Gadmore in front of me, but I did risk a quick smile and a friendly lifting of the eyebrows. Then I lowered my gaze to the warden’s bald spot again, just as his finger began bunk-bunking on my dossier.
Should I argue with him, plead with him? Should I repeat my denials? In plain fact I hadn't sent that message; wasn’t there some way to convince him of that?
I wasn’t used to being innocent. I knew perfectly well how to pretend innocence, but when saddled with the real thing I was at a loss. All right; so what would I do to display innocence if I were in fact guilty? I would stand here silent, in order to avoid being accused of protesting too much. So that’s what I did.
Innocent, I pretended to be guilty in order to remember how to pretend to be innocent. There ought to be a simpler way to get through life.
Warden Gadmore lifted his head. He brooded at me. I met his gaze steadfastly, with all the false innocence I could muster, and at last he sighed and said, “All right, Kunt.”
I did not correct him.
“I don’t say I believe you or disbelieve you,” he said, clearly disbelieving me. “I’ll tell you this: any man can make a mistake. Any man can take a little while to adapt to the changed circumstances here.”
I wanted to scream that I hadn’t done it, I was really and truly innocent, this time I wasn’t kidding. I stood there, silent.
He said, “So we won’t say any more about this. And we’ll assume, Kunt, that it won’t happen again.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. And I was thinking, Don’t pull anything in this office. Don’t do it. I thought of a stunt involving the wastebasket, and I pushed it from my mind. Don’t do it.
“Because if it does happen again,” he said, “it won’t go so easy on you.”
“No, sir,” I said. Calmly, not protesting too much, I added, “But, sir, I honestly and truly-”
“That’s all, Kunt,” he said.
I swallowed. Do nothing, I told myself. “Yes, sir,” I said. Stoon and I left the warden’s office together. I did nothing, for which I was profoundly grateful.
Stoon accompanied me down the corridor, our shoes squeaking companionably together on the floor. He shook his head and said, “You really are a killer, Kunt.”
“I didn’t do it, you know,” I said. “This time, I’m really innocent.”
“Everybody here is innocent,” he said. That old wheeze. “Go on out and talk to the boys,” he suggested. “There isn’t a guilty man in this pen.”
What was the use of talking?
Stoon and I separated at the exit, and as I crossed the yard two thoughts suddenly dropped on my head like a barbell out of an upstairs window.
thought a: If I had managed to be more offensively guilty in the warden’s office, he would have taken me off privileges, and I would have ceased to be a member of the tunnel club, and I would no longer have a bank robbery looming up in my future.
thought b: Joe Maslocki and the others would want to know what the warden had wanted to talk to me about. The truth would necessarily bring out my past history as a practical joker. It wouldn’t take long after that for the boys to realize who they had to thank for the succession of dribble glasses, sticky door knobs and exploding cigarettes they’d been experiencing over the last few weeks. What they would do to me then I wanted even less than I wanted to become a bank robber.
As to Thought A, I felt a great ambivalence about my involvement with that tunnel. I loved being able to get out of prison, I loved being able to enter a world in which I was known as Harry Kent, and I loved the freedom from Joy Boys and other internal prison menaces. On the other hand, there was that goddam bank robbery looming up.
If I had a good solid chance to get away from the gym and the tunnel-as I’d almost just had, if I’d thought of it in time-would I take it to avoid the robbery, or avoid it to take the advantages? I really didn’t know, and the question was giving me a headache.
As to Thought B, I had no ambivalence at all. As soon as I thought of a convincing lie about my meeting with the warden, I would tell it to everybody I saw. And I would redouble my efforts to stop all this booby-trapping. I’d been looking forward to prison curing me of that bad habit, but so far it hadn’t helped much. I had managed to avoid doing anything in the warden’s office just now, but that had been pretty much of an extreme case. But hopeful, just the same. And I would lie.
In fact, here came the opportunity. Jerry Bogentrodder and Max Nolan were strolling across the yard toward me, and Jerry called, “Hey, Harry, you know the warden wants to see you?”
“I just came from there,” I said.
The three of us strolled together. Jerry said, “Any problem?”
“No,” I said. I wondered what I would say next, and listened hopefully. “It was about my blood type,” I said. I thought, What the hell does that mean?
Max Nolan looked puzzled. Even his droopy moustache looked puzzled. He said, “Blood type?”
I’d had to start off by lying to a college graduate. “There was some question in my records,” I said. I’m insane, I thought. Beavering on, I said, “If I was some special kind of negative, they wanted to know if I’d volunteer.”
“Oh,” Max said.
“I’m a different type,” I said.
The three of us strolled. Gazing back at the conversation just past, it seemed to me there was a certain believability about it. The damn thing had come out somewhere after all. I was both relieved and quite proud of myself.
As a result of some long-ago architectural rearrangement within the prison, there was now in the yard a flight of steps that went nowhere. Five wide steps went up to a blank concrete wall. The tunnel group had established those steps as their own territory, which all other cons kept away from. Jerry and Max and I strolled over there through a thin to moderate traffic of milling inmates, and took seats. None of the rest of the group was around. Jerry and Max sat on the top step, and I settled two steps below them.
With only half the prison population involved in work assignments, the yard was pretty much occupied all day long. Inmates walked around, chatted with one another, shot craps illicitly in corners, made assignations to meet later in the showers, got into fist-fights and less frequently knife-fights, discussed escape plans, described their civilian sex lives to one another, and generally worked off excess energy. Now, while Jerry and Max talked, I sat in the cold sunshine and watched the cons move back and forth. I thought my own thoughts, tied Jerry and Max’s shoelaces together, and thanked my lucky stars the warden hadn’t made a bigger thing about that message in the license plates.
No! Clenching my teeth, cursing myself under my breath I untied those damn shoelaces again. I thought, I have to stop that. I really do.
13
I WAS LETTING a tiny bit of air out of every basketball when Eddie Troyn came over and said, “Let’s organize our rendezvous.”
I looked up at him. His face was as clean and bony as a cow-skull in the desert. The crease in his prison denims was so sharp it made me squint. I said, “What?”
“We have surveillance detail this afternoon,” he said. I knew he talked that way-rendezvous, surveillance- but that didn’t mean I knew what he was talking about.
I said, “What surveillance? What rendezvous?”
He expressed displeased surprise. His eyebrows had some difficulty riding on that bony forehead. “Didn’t Phil tell you?’’
“Nobody told me anything,” I said. I’d been planning to spend this afternoon opening my local bank account, since the check had come from my mother yesterday.
“Breakdown in communication,” he said severely.
I tossed the basketball from my lap back into the bin and got to my feet. “What am I supposed to do?” I asked him.
“Bank surveillance,” he said. “We all take shifts.”