Seaver saw the low, drab buildings, the fence, and the watch-towers undulating in the heat waves across a barren field far back from the highway. He turned up the long, narrow drive that led to the small parking lot outside the gate and glanced at his watch. The drive out here had taken longer than he had expected, but he supposed it wouldn’t much matter. In order to miss this guy, Seaver would have to be about twenty years late.
As he turned off his car engine, he stopped to glance in the rearview mirror. Then he got out and put on his coat. He had chosen his clothes carefully. He wore a dark-gray summer-weight suit that cost more than his first new car. His white shirt was marine-pressed with the front and collar starched stiff, and the cuffs showed only a glimpse of his Rolex Oyster watch. A naive observer would have interpreted the bow tie as a whimsical touch, but Seaver didn’t expect to meet any naive observers. He was going into a maximum-security prison, where it was well known that nobody with a functioning brain wore anything tied around his neck with a slip-knot.
He walked to the gate, handed his driver’s license to the guard, watched him compare it to the list on his clipboard, then obeyed the invitation to step inside. He held up his arms and stood with his legs apart as the second guard ran a metal detector up and down his body, then ran a hand through several of his pockets. He submitted to the preliminaries patiently. Security was his business, and he knew that each stage of the process had two purposes. Scanning the human body for chunks of metal or contraband was the easy part. The hard part was studying the visitor to see if he had something hidden in his head. Each of these meaningless little steps was a test. A normal person would gradually get used to following the unfamiliar rules that applied in a place like this. The person hiding some rash and violent scheme would either feel his nerve draining out of him or get frustrated to the point of blind, undirected rage. Security was mainly a question of finding out whom you were letting breach your perimeter.
Seaver was directed into a small anteroom where he could be kept isolated until they were sure that he wasn’t carrying anything that would make him a match for more than one man and that the identification he had given them was real. After ten minutes he was admitted to a room with a desk, where he could be observed while he signed in and had time to check off his compliance with each of the regulations listed on a form and acquaint the guards with the purpose of his visit on another form. It was only after his forms had been completed, read, and determined to be satisfactory that the next door was opened and his escort beckoned to him.
When he walked through the doorway, he noted with approval that there were two guards, the first to lead the way and serve as turnkey and the second to follow a half step behind and to his right, either to protect Seaver’s weak side or take advantage of it, as events dictated.
They took him on a long trek down hallways broken at intervals by steel grates that had to be opened with a key and an electronic code. They walked under surveillance cameras recessed in wall niches that one prisoner standing on another’s shoulders could not reach and covered with plastic plates that would probably stop a bullet. He admired the premeditation of the system and felt a tiny twinge of envy at its blatancy. Here it was an advantage to be obvious—to convince inmates that escape was ludicrous, that movements inside the complex were monitored, and that disturbances could be isolated instantly. Seaver had to work under more difficult circumstances. The few devices and precautions he could use legally had to be subtle and decorative.
The two escorts led him into a windowless room with a bare wooden table and two chairs. He sat down in the chair facing the door and waited. He had sat for twenty minutes before the two guards reappeared with Stillman, Ray Q. He was a little above middle height, but he slouched the way violence-prone convicts often did, the hips forward and the back hunched in a question mark stance that invited an approaching stranger to take the first swing.
When Stillman turned to hold his wrists out for the guards to unlock his manacles, his back looked like the hood of a cobra, spreading wide as it rose from the thin waist, and then rounding inward at the top because of the slouch that kept the hands and knees forward and the gut pulled back.
The guard wordlessly declined to unlock the manacles. He simply glared at Stillman and left. Stillman’s predatory eyes focused on Seaver as he sat down, his thin lips coming up at the corners a little to convey his interpretation of the demonstration: I’m too dangerous for you.
Seaver reached into his shirt pocket and produced a pack of cigarettes, pulled the strip to remove the cellophane, tore off the foil, and thumped the pack to raise a cigarette. He lit one with a match, then held it out. Stillman reached across the table with both hands, stuck it in the corner of his mouth, rested his hands in his lap, and waited.
Seaver looked at him for a few seconds, then said, “I’m Seaver. I can’t get you out of here. I can’t get you a new trial. If you ever get a parole hearing, I won’t be there to tell them you cooperated in an investigation. I won’t be there at all.”
Stillman looked at him expectantly, and Seaver knew he had begun well. They were all experts in the ways that the system could be manipulated, and the ways that it couldn’t. After about two convictions they also knew that false hope worked on them like poison, and they hated anyone who tried to force it on them. “Here’s what I can do. Captain Michnik is an old friend of mine. If you have the answers to my questions, he will help you right now, starting today. You don’t have to wait six months for an official letter that’s never going to come.”
“What kind of help are you offering?”
“A little slack. You’ll get a better job, if what you want won’t be so obvious it’ll get you killed. If a guard is down on you, he’ll be rotated to another block. If you’ve done anything recently that you need to skate on, he’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“What does that cost me?”
“I heard something, and I want to know more about it.”
“What did you hear?”
“I heard there’s a woman who hides people.”
Stillman blew out a quick puff of smoke. “A lot of women hide people.”
Seaver slowly shook his head. “This one is a professional. If you’re in trouble, you hire her to get you out of it. She comes and whisks you away—makes you disappear. I guess she must get you a new name and new papers, maybe a job.”
“Which are you?”
“What?” snapped Seaver.
“You thinking of disappearing, or are you looking for somebody?” His head was cocked to the side, and his eyes squinted through the smoke.
Seaver gave a half smile and a snort. “Do I look like somebody who has that kind of problem?” He shot the cuffs of his immaculate white shirt so he could be sure Stillman saw his watch and the perfect fit of his tailored suit.
Stillman shrugged. “You look like somebody who might develop some problems if you got sent to a place like this—or even if somebody in here got out. If you know the captain, maybe you put some of them in.”
“Could be,” said Seaver.
Stillman nodded with amusement. “That’s it, isn’t it? Somebody you don’t want to turn your back on dropped out of sight?”