“I’d like to ask you a few questions,” I said to Willie when I had squatted down in front of him.
Willie’s expression didn’t change. He continued to stare up, which made his pupils almost completely disappear, causing him to look like the blind dude in Kung Fu.
“Grandma,” the inmate to his left said in a high falsetto voice, “the chaplain want to talk whichya.”
Willie didn’t respond.
In the center of the field stood a gray officer’s station. Part of it was open, housing free weights and Ping Pong tables. Scattered all around it were card tables where small groups of inmates played checkers, chess, and dominoes. There was no gambling going on-just ask the inmates.
“Grandma,” he said again, this time patting his cheek as he did, “wake up, old girl. They’s a man what wants to talk whichya.”
Willie’s eyes drifted slowly back down to earth, landing somewhere in my vicinity. Then he said in a soft, airy voice, “Who . . .”-he breathed out and paused as if this would require the last bit of life that was left in him-” . . . is . . . it?”
“It’s the reverend. The new one,” he said.
“The fine one,” the other one said. I smiled.
Willie leaned down and whispered something in the ear of the inmate to his left. He was obviously the spokesperson for the group. His name tag read Jefferson.
“Grandma wants to know,” Jefferson said, “if you think homosexuals have no hope of salvation.”
“I don’t think there’s anybody with no hope of salvation. I say this because I am being saved or redeemed or whatever, and if I can, anybody can.”
Willie leaned down again and whispered something else in Jefferson’s ear. Behind us the other inmates on the rec field were loud and active, sounding like children on a playground. And, in many ways, that’s what they were-children who refused to grow up, men who could find no benefit in becoming responsible adults.
“Grandma say what do you think about priests who molest children?”
“I think they need help. I think they do not need to be priests.”
“Do you think that they do that because they fags?” Jefferson asked.
“Pedophilia and homosexuality are two different things, and rarely is a person both,” I said.
Behind me on the track that circled the entire field, two inmates passed by and snickered. They said something I couldn’t make out. Then they laughed some more. Again, Willie whispered something into Jefferson’s ear. Their actions brought to mind Moses and Aaron.
“Grandma say you all right. What you want to know?” Jefferson said.
“I want to know everything there is to know about Ike Johnson.”
“Grandma say he dead. What else is there to know?” Jefferson said after receiving instructions from Grandma to do so.
“I want to know all about him while he was alive so I can find out why he was killed,” I said.
Beyond the blacktop court where young black men played full-court basketball like they did in Miami, the elderly inmates played horseshoes like they did in retirement homes in Sarasota. Past them, the young white inmates played volleyball the way they did on Panama City Beach. Yet, beyond all of this, the wall of chain-link fence and razor wire served as an ominous reminder of exactly which part of Florida this was.
“Grandma say he a real faggot. A bastard of a faggot. Do anything. Worse than a ho. Say, him getting killed just a matter of time. Sooner or later his kind always get stuck.”
“Did he belong to someone?” I asked.
“You mean was he someone’s ho?” Jefferson asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Grandma say everybody think he belonged to Jacobson, but he didn’t. Grandma say he belonged to another inmate, and they both belong to a cop.”
“A correctional officer here at the prison?” I asked, though I didn’t believe it.
“Yeah. But the point is,” Jefferson continued, “he wasn’t loyal to his old man. He would do anything anytime. He also had a big mouth.”
“What else can you tell me?” I asked.
“Grandma say that all he can say, ’cause he ain’t got a big mouth.”
I thought about all the names that I had come across so far in this investigation. I wanted to ask him about at least one of them.
“Can you tell me who Johnson’s real old man was?” I asked.
“Can’t say,” Jefferson said, and Willie nodded his head in agreement.
“What can you tell me about Captain Skipper?” I asked.
Willie said nothing, but for just a split second the seemingly knocking-on-death’s-door old man was as alert as any twenty-year-old I had ever seen. He leaned over and whispered in Jefferson’s ear again.
“Grandma say, he won’t say nothin’ about that redneck son of a bitch,” Jefferson said.
“Okay, what about Jones, the inmate who works in the infirmary?”
Again the whisper, again Jefferson with the response: “Say all he know is he well looked out for. He in love with them nurses, especially Strickland. Jones say they do things for each other, but Grandma think it a one-way street. Grandma understand what Jones mean. Say if she was straight, she’d love Nurse Strickland, too.” All three inmates smiled widely.
“How about a young officer named Shutt?” I continued.
“Must be new, ’cause Grandma don’t know him,” Jefferson said.
“I don’t really know what else to ask you. I’m trying to find out who killed Johnson and why. Is there anything else you can tell me that would help me do that?”
He shook his head. And then he, and not Jefferson, said, “Look into sex and drugs. It gots to do with sex or drugs or both. Everything out here got to do with sex or drugs.”
“Only thing missing is rock ’n’ roll,” I said.
“We got a little of that, too,” he said.
Chapter 15
“Who can I get drugs from?” I asked a very surprised Anna Rodden.
“Excuse me,” she said, moving her head from side to side in mock confusion. “Have things gotten that bad?” She was wearing a colorful jumper with blooming spring flowers all over it. It fit nicely, though not too nicely, which would have violated her oath. Her long brown hair was worn down in long rolling waves. She was lovely.
“If an inmate wants to buy drugs on the compound,” I said, “how does he do it?”
I was seated across from her desk in a blue plastic chair that sloped down to the left. Behind her, through the window, I could see inmates mowing dead grass. The sun had taken a toll on everything this year, but the grass most of all. The waves of heat made the inmates look as if they were many miles away rather than a few hundred feet. An overweight officer with mirrored sunshades stood nearby to inspect their work.
“Well, let’s see,” she said, narrowing her eyes and tapping her pencil on her forehead. “First he would have to have something to buy them with. This could be cash from an outside account; personal property to trade-say, a watch, rings, or canteen items; or he could be willing to do something-sex, a hit, a favor.”
“Do many of them have what it takes to buy drugs?” I asked.
The officer inspecting the crew outside behind Anna turned slightly to the side. He looked pregnant in profile.
“Not many have money, but almost all can do some service or something. We’re talking about an economy like our own, the trading of goods and services.”
“Just how available are drugs on the compound?” I asked.
“Not as much as you might think after working here and seeing all the crime, but a whole hell of a lot more than a person on the street would think.”
Her phone rang. She picked up the receiver, tossing her head back and slinging her hair out of the way. It swung out to the right of her head and then settled back down to the center. It looked like silk and moved with the bounce of hair on a Breck commercial. If I had seen a more graceful or beautiful sight, I couldn’t remember when.