The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape Read online

  In the end, what was it all about? What did it all add up to?

  But when he paid attention to the ghost cat draped over his shoulder, one paw resting playfully against Lee’s neck, to the frisky, small ghost, he knew what it all added up to: If Misto had transcended from earthly life into a vast and more complicated dimension, why would humans be different?

  Lee felt uncomfortable thinking about such matters, but Misto was the living—more than living—example that something more lay ahead, after this life. Not just the dark weight of evil, that was only part of it. Something more, so bright it shamed the golden wheat fields through which the car sped. Crushed in the limo beside the cigar-stinking deputy, Lee was embarrassed by such thoughts, but the proof of a better life was right there, draped over his shoulder, warm, heavy, invisible.

  IT WAS A long pull, a two-day trip moving south, crowded against the sweaty deputy. And the layover in Tennessee was no picnic. Lee was lodged in Jackson’s dirty county jail while the two deputies went off to a hotel and a steak dinner. Lee’s meal, shoved through the cell bars, was some kind of watery stew that had been around too long. The coffee was the color of dishwater and tasted like it. He ached from sitting in the car and his back was sore where the belly chain gouged him. He lay on the jail’s dirty cot thinking there wasn’t one damned person in the world who cared whether he made it to Atlanta or dropped dead before he got there. But then the ghost cat nudged him, and Lee smiled; and soon, eased by the insistent presence of the ghost cat, Lee slept.

  The next day’s travel was worse than the first. The weather grew hot and humid, and Lee’s seat partner, without his smokes, grew increasingly cranky. They made half a dozen extra stops, pulling over at some turnout or campground so Ray could light up a stogy. Afterward he would heave himself back in the car stinking all the worse. At seven that evening when they pulled into Atlanta, Lee was done in. He wanted only to fall into a prison cot, to stretch out with no chains binding him, and ease into sleep. Moving through the city he could see, off to the right, a fancy section of big, beautiful homes with their spreading shade streets. “Buckhead,” the driver said when he saw Lee looking. “Too fancy for you, or me neither.”

  They moved down Peachtree past closed, softly lit shops until they hit narrower streets, shabby little houses packed close together. In the fading evening, kids played ball in the street, running and shouting. The deputy honked impatiently at a bunch of Negro boys in a game of kick-the-can. Ahead loomed the penitentiary: thick concrete walls, one guard tower that Lee could see, the glint of rifles reflected from big spotlights glaring across the entry doors.

  Belly-chained, Lee slid awkwardly out of the car and climbed the marble steps, aching tired. Once inside and through the sally port the deputy marshals freed him of the cuffs and chain. He stood rubbing his sore wrists where the cuffs had eaten in, rubbing his back, listening to the hum of the heavy barred gate sliding closed behind him.

  Down both sides of the long passage were vaulted openings that led to the cellblocks. He followed along beside the uniformed admissions officer, a trim, dark-haired young man with a full mustache. Down at the end of the corridor he could see open double doors and could smell greasy dishwater and boiled cabbage, could hear pans clanging and male voices. The corridor was hung with inmates’ paintings, some crazy paranoid, some nostalgic. An oil painting of a cowhand riding across open prairie struck him hard.

  When he had showered and been issued prison clothes he was led into a cellblock five tiers high. He had stuffed his savings book and Mae’s picture, which he was allowed to keep, into the pocket of his loose cotton shirt. He followed the officer up the metal stairs that zigzagged back and forth between metal catwalks. Some fifty feet above the main floor were barred clerestory windows, their glass arching up another thirty feet. He craned his neck to look up, the height dizzying him. “Some hotel, Lieutenant.”

  “Sorry, no elevator,” the officer said in his soft Southern speech. “You’ll be on the third tier.” They climbed in silence as the rumble of a train broke the night from behind the prison, its scream shrill and demanding. By the time Lee reached his tier he was breathing so hard he had to stop twice to get enough air. “Long drop,” he said when the train had passed and he could talk again. “Anyone ever cash it in and jump?”

  “It’s happened,” the guard said. “Not often.”

  At midpoint of the catwalk he was ushered into a single cell.

  “You’ll see Mr. Hamilton, the section custodian, in the morning. Then the classification officer. After that you’ll be able to move around the prison.”

  His cell was no different than the others he’d lived in: stainless steel washbowl, stained metal toilet. A cot bolted to the wall, with a cotton pad, a worn-out pillow, and a gray prison blanket. He didn’t bother to undress. He pulled off his shoes, lay down and drew the blanket up around him, listening to the familiar prison noises, men snoring, metal clanging, the crinkle of paper as a candy bar was unwrapped. Maybe life was just one long cellblock after another until they planted you outside the wall.

  But this thought brought a flurry of hissing. The cat leaped heavily onto the cot, right in Lee’s face, as solid as any living beast. Solid and very visible, shocking Lee. Quickly he looked up and down the corridor at the cells on the other side.

  He saw no one looking back, and saw no guard near. Misto grinned, flicked his tail, and vanished again—but when Lee lifted the blanket the invisible cat crawled underneath, warm against Lee’s shoulder, the comfort of his purr easing Lee into sleep.

  8

  THE CLANG OF metal and the echo of men’s voices woke Lee. Morning light flooded the cellblock, striking down from the high clerestory windows. He staggered out of his bunk in automatic response to the wake-up call, stood at his barred door in his wrinkled prison clothes and stocking feet while the count was taken, then turned to the metal basin. He splashed water on his face, used the toothbrush and toothpaste he’d been issued. He was sitting on his bunk putting on his prison-issued shoes when a big-bellied custodian in blue pants and white shirt slid the barred door open. His nametag read HAMILTON. He stood looking Lee over.

  “You sleep in those clothes?’

  Lee pulled the shirt straight, tried to brush out the wrinkles.

  “Once you’ve made up your bunk, Fontana, you can go from here to the mess hall. Then to classifications, then return to your cell. You’ll stay here until you’re notified, until you’re allowed to move around the prison and exercise yard.”

  Lee listened to Hamilton’s directions to the various buildings, then followed him out, moving away along the metal catwalk among straggling inmates and down the iron stairs.

  The prison cafeteria smelled of powdered eggs, bacon fat, and overcooked coffee. Inmates pushed in around him half awake, grumbling and arguing or shuffling along silent and morose. Again a train rumbled and screamed passing outside the wall. None of the men paid any attention. Lee guessed they were used to it. Maybe the siren’s call didn’t stir their blood the way it excited him, the way it made him want out of there, made him feel all the more shackled. He kept to himself in the crowded line until he was jolted hard from behind by two men horsing around, pummeling each other. Lee didn’t look at them, he left it alone, he didn’t want to start anything.

  Not until one of them bumped him hard, did he turn. The man was right in his face. Lee stood his ground. The guy would be a fool to start something here, with half a dozen guards watching. He stared challengingly at Lee, his face hatched by deep lines pinched into a scowl. Dark hair in a short prison cut, a high, balding forehead. It was the look in his black eyes that brought Lee up short, a stare so brutal Lee paused, startled by the sense of another presence within that dark gaze.

  But just as quickly the man’s look changed to the insolence of any prison no-good. Lee could see the guards watching them, ready to move in. He took a good look at the man’s companion: blond pompadour combed high above his weathered face, pale, ice-blu
e eyes. A pair of twisted inmates that a fellow wanted to avoid. Lee moved on with the line, picked up a tray and collected his breakfast. Turning away, he crossed the room to a small, empty table.

  The two men joined a crowded table in the center of the big cafeteria and in a moment all seven inmates turned to watch Lee. He ate quickly, ignoring them, trying not to think about the spark he’d seen in those dark eyes, that quick glimpse of something foreign peering out.

  He didn’t look at the crowded table as he left the mess hall. Pushing out into the prison yard, he headed for the counselor’s office. To his right rose the stone buildings that would be prison industries. Beyond, at a lower level, sprawled the exercise yard, surrounded by the massive stone wall that enclosed the prison grounds. The wall must be thirty feet high. From this position he could see only one guard tower, two guards looking down, rifle barrels glinting in the morning sun. He had started toward the classifications building when a short man crossing the yard stopped, stared at him, then approached Lee with a dragging limp, a stocky man with husky arms and shoulders. His voice was grainy. “Hey, Boxcar, is that you?”

  Lee hadn’t heard that name in fifty years. “Gimpy, you old safecracking buzzard.”

  Hobbling along fast, Gimpy joined him, his eyes laughing beneath bushy gray brows. His hair was gray now, and he was maybe some heavier. “When the hell did you get in, Boxcar?”

  “Just transferred in from Springfield. How long have you been here?”

  “Two years, doing five. I might make parole one of these days.” The little man scowled. “My last safe job went sour.”

  They’d been just kids when they’d pulled a few jobs together, Gimpy opening the train safes slick and fast. He was the best man with a punch and hand sledge Lee had ever seen. “Do you remember . . .” Lee began. He was silenced by the loud blast of a Klaxon, the sudden blare brought ice gripping his stomach. Gimpy nudged him out of the way as four guards ran by, followed by two medics carrying black bags and a stretcher, their white coats flapping.

  “It’s in the furniture plant,” Gimpy said. They moved toward the industries building, where a short spur track ran from the loading platform out through a sally port in the prison wall. A freight car sat on the track, guards and inmates milling around its open door, pulling out heavy crates.

  “Furniture crates,” Gimpy said, “desks for the military.” There was a lot of shouting, the sound of wood being pried and splintered. A guard and two prisoners eased a body out from the collapsed wooden crate, lifted the bloody figure onto a stretcher.

  Once the injured man had been carried off, four inmates pulled the crate out. Lee could see the false bottom the man had built, splintered now and crushed. Gimpy said, “He must have squeezed into it after the crate was loaded. Maybe the crates on top shifted. Doesn’t say much for his carpentry.”

  Lee shook his head. “An ugly way to go.”

  “Hell, Boxcar, no one’s ever broke out of this joint, something always goes bad. One guy had a gun smuggled in by a guard, got himself rifle shot before he got through the main corridor.”

  Lee looked up with speculation at the thirty-foot wall, but Gimpy snorted. “Not over that wall, nor under it neither. Wall’s a dozen feet thick at the bottom, and sitting on solid rock. I’ll do my time right here,” he said, shifting his weight. “No one could get over that baby.”

  When they parted company Lee headed for the classifications office, moving up the steps and inside past rows of desks where prison personnel sorted though files or sat talking with inmates, men fidgeting nervously in straight-backed chairs or slouching with bored disdain. The room stunk of sweaty bodies and stale cigarette smoke. Lee’s classification officer was a soft little fellow in his forties: slick bald head, white rumpled shirt, his tie pulled loose and his collar unbuttoned. He laid his unlit pipe on the desk among stacks of jumbled papers. “I’m Paul Camp. You’re Lee Fontana? You just came in from Springfield.”

  Lee nodded. Camp gestured for Lee to sit down and handed across a printed set of rules, a meal schedule, and a laundry and mail schedule. “I do three jobs here. Classification, parole, and counseling.”

  “You think I can get a job in industries? I like to be doing something.”

  “You’ll have to see the doctor first. When I get a slip from him, you’ll have more freedom, we’ll see what we can do. You can go on over to the hospital from here.” Camp gave him directions. “He’ll want to see you every week for a while, to check on the emphysema.” Then the jolt came. “Twice a week,” Camp said, “you’ll be attending group counseling sessions.” He handed Lee another short schedule.

  “I don’t need group counseling. What do I want with that?”

  Camp studied him, then thumbed through Lee’s file. “You may not think you need the sessions, but I do. If you had used a little restraint, Fontana, if you hadn’t gotten into trouble in Vegas, you’d still be out on parole.” He fixed Lee with a hard look. “Unless, of course, you wanted to be back behind bars.”

  Lee’s belly twisted. “Sure I did. I have what the shrinks call a subliminal need to be confined, to be shut in by high walls, safe from the outside world and with all the prison amenities.”

  Camp just looked at him. Lee couldn’t decide whether the counselor’s eyes reflected anger, suspicion, or a suppressed desire to laugh. “The Federal Bureau of Prisons, Fontana, has moved into the age of treatment. Just go to counseling, it’s the policy. Just go and endure it.”

  He left Camp’s office swallowing back a cough, hating modern prison ways. He’d rather take a beating than be forced into their fancy headshrinking show. Why couldn’t they leave him alone? They’d locked him up, they had him where they wanted, so why couldn’t they leave him be?

  As he headed for the dispensary beyond the officers’ mess, the thirty-foot concrete wall loomed over him and over the big exercise yard. He could see two tennis courts laid out, where six inmates in cutoffs were batting the little white balls. Two more guys were playing handball, and beyond the empty baseball diamond, on the oval track, several men were jogging laps—the place was a regular country club. His own first time behind bars, when he was eighteen, he’d had a rock pile to exercise on. Did the guards here in the South spoon-feed these punks and wipe their runny noses before they sent them out to play?

  The dispensary waiting room was painted pale green like most government offices he’d seen, a color that was supposed to be restful. He wondered how many billions of gallons of that stuff the government had bought, allowing some big company to make a killing. Half a dozen inmates sat on folding metal chairs waiting to be seen by the duty doctor. Lee took a chair. He’d waited maybe twenty minutes when he got a shock that spun him around, looking.

  “Lee Fontana?” a woman’s voice called out. A woman? In a men’s prison?

  A young woman stood in the doorway holding a clipboard, and she was some classy lady. Dark, wavy hair cut short and neat, curled softly around her smooth face, dark eyes smiling at him through large oval glasses. The skirt of her short white uniform hit her just at the knee, the uniform accenting the curve of her hips, and was zipped down the front low enough to show the soft curve of her tanned breasts. He stared at the nametag on her lapel, but taking in a lot more. Karen Turner. Every male in the room was staring, their expressions just short of a drool. She smiled and motioned to Lee. Rising, he followed her as eagerly as a hungry pup. When he glanced back, the men were still looking. She led him into an office, handed his file to the thin-faced doctor, smiled at Lee again and left, brushing past him. She smelled good, a clean soap-and-water scent. He stood looking after her, then turned to the drawn, tired-looking doctor. His nametag read JAMES FLOYD, M.D.

  Lee took off his shirt as Dr. Floyd directed, trying not to flinch as the icy stethoscope pressed against his bare chest. The doctor listened to his heart and chest as Lee breathed deeply, in and out, taking in as much air as he could manage. He took Lee’s blood pressure, looked down his throat, thumped his back
. While Lee pulled on his shirt again, Floyd made a number of notations in Lee’s file.

  “Everything’s as fine as it can be, Fontana. You had excellent treatment at Springfield.” Floyd handed him a slip of paper. “Give this to your counselor. I want you back here in three days. After that, once a week.”

  “Will I be allowed to work?”

  “I think you could take a job, something that won’t stress the breathing.” He filled out a release-to-work form and handed it to Lee.

  Lee said, “I’ve never seen a woman working in a men’s prison.”

  “Karen Turner?” Floyd smiled. “It’s good for the men’s morale to see a woman once in a while. She’s a premed student at the university, works for me part-time. She cheers the place up considerably; I think it’s a good change in the system.”

  Sure it is, Lee thought. Until you get her hurt.

  He doubled back to Paul Camp’s office, where he dropped off the medical form and the work form. Camp handed him a slip for his custodian that would let him move around the area more freely. When Lee asked about the jobs available, Camp said, “I’ll let you know later, Fontana. I’ll see what’s open in industries.”

  Outside again, as Lee cut across the yard from classifications, Gimpy turned away from a group of men and limped to join him. “They getting you squared away, Boxcar?”

  “Camp put me in one of those group counseling sessions,” Lee said sourly. “I start this afternoon,”

  Gimpy chuckled, and scratched his bald spot. “They had me in there for a while. Guess they gave up on me. But hell, Boxcar, it passes the time.”

  “I’d rather pass it somewhere else.”

  “Maybe you could work in the cotton mill with me. Noisier than hell, but I like it. I like the clatter and activity.”

  Lee nodded, interested. He’d feel better when he was doing something. “Let me know if they could use another hand.” He wondered if the doctor would allow it. Maybe, if he promised to wear a mask or kerchief, something to catch the lint, he could get permission.