The beeper erupted again.
“She’s up there at her bedroom window watching us with binoculars. That’s all she does all day. The colored woman who works for her, it’s her day off, so Reverend Bob makes me be her gofer.”
“This is quite a setup here.”
“Yes,” she said, grinning her nasty grin. “Isn’t it, though?”
4
What most people don’t know about prison is that it’s a bureaucracy and that you have to treat it that way.
Early one spring, he decides he wants to start writing — just give him something to do other than listen to all the jailhouse lawyers talking about how they’re going to get themselves out early, or listening to some con whining about how unlucky he’s been all his life, or watching this one guard just drool at the prospect of cracking a skull or two. But the assistant warden won’t let him have a typewriter.
Why not? he asks.
I wasn’t aware I had to give you any reasons for my decisions, the assistant warden says.
According to Anderson you do.
Ah, yes, Anderson. God, I get sick of jailhouse lawyers.
I could file a form, you know.
The assistant warden doesn’t say anything for a time. Just stares out the window. Then says, A BP-9.
What?
A BP-9. That’s the form you need to file. Its official title is an administrative remedy appeal. File the form, maybe the warden’ll give you that typewriter you want. Of course Anderson, being a good jailhouse lawyer, he can tell you about the BP-9 or the BP-10 or the BP-11.
Then the assistant warden pauses a long time and says, You killed that dog didn’t you? The one with its legs cut off.
Don’t know what you’re talking about.
You think I don’t know about you? You think I buy all this altar-boy stuff you spread around? You’re the most dangerous man in this entire prison system.
He says nothing. Just watches.
Did it get you hot, when you cut up that dog that way? Did it make you feel good about yourself?
The assistant warden shakes his head wearily.
I can handle the thieves and the con artists and even some of the killers — but it’s the monsters I can’t deal with any more. The people like you.
Sounds like you need a vacation.
I want you to know something.
Yeah? What?
If I can ever figure out any way to do it, I’m going to kill you. Cut your throat the first chance I get. That’s a promise.
Is there a complaint form for that?
For what?
For when somebody threatens to cut my throat?
You think this is funny?
I was just asking a question.
I couldn’t sleep for a month, thinking about what you did to that little dog.
You think you can prove it?
I don’t need to prove it. Not to my satisfaction, anyway, because I already know you’re guilty.
I’m going to ask Anderson about that form. That BP-9.
You do that.
You want to put a little side bet on whether the warden lets me use that typewriter?
Just get out of here.
Yes, sir, your majesty.
He leaves the office, smirking.
“Assistant warden says I need to file a BP-9,” he says to Anderson that afternoon on the yard.
“He still won’t give you that typewriter?”
“Huh-uh.”
“What a jerk. And damn right we’ll file a BP-9. And we’ll file it right up his ass, too.”
Time passes.
A) Obviously the assistant warden never cuts his throat.
B) Two months and three forms later (Praise the Lord for those BP-9s), he gets his typewriter.
C) Fourteen months later, the assistant warden is diagnosed with liver cancer. Thirty-eight years old. Wife and three kids. Good upstanding Methodist. And he gets liver cancer.
D) Six weeks after the diagnosis, the assistant warden is dead.
On the afternoon of the announcement, Anderson — they’re on the yard again, a really ball-chilling April afternoon — comes over and says, “You’re a dangerous guy.”
“Yeah?” he grins.
“Yeah. I mean, I got my BP-9s ’n stuff but you must have voodoo or something. I mean, that assistant warden gettin’ liver cancer and all.”
The grin again. “Yeah, maybe that’s what I do have.”
“Voodoo?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Voodoo.”
5
A dozen people said hello to me on the way back to my motel. Half a dozen waved. I’d never seen any of them before but they reminded me that the twin of small-town suspicion was small-town openness. I saw dogs chase butterflies, bees seek honey, and cats loll in sunlight. Walt Disney would have had all of them singing merry little songs. He had the right idea. Even if the universe wasn’t a merry little place, what was the harm in pretending it was every once in a while? Of course, my generation didn’t believe much in Disney, except for Fantasia, which had just been another giggly excuse to get stoned. No, my generation would have shown the dogs taking a crap on the lawn, the bees stinging innocent babies, and the cats eviscerating doves.
I was two blocks from my motel when I saw the Caddy. My first reaction was, No, you’re imagining things. Must be a number of blue Caddies around. Anyway, what would Nora and Vic be doing here?
A block from my motel, I saw the blue Caddy sitting in an alley. The windows had been darkened so that I couldn’t see in. But I had the clear impression that I was being watched carefully. I also had the clear impression that it was Nora and Vic in the car. Why were they following me around?
In my motel room, I called a friend of mine at the State Bureau of Investigation in Des Moines. I asked him to run a check on the good minister and on both Kenny Deihl and Mindy Lane. I was not exactly a trusting soul. He said to call him back in a few hours.
Before leaving, I looked around the room. It smelled of disinfectant and was dark enough, on this sunny afternoon, to give the House of Usher a few pointers on gloom. I opened the drapes, cracked the window a quarter-inch, spent a long minute watching a jay perched on the window ledge, and then raised my eyes and looked across the street to the parking lot adjacent to the steak house.
Big blue Caddy just sitting there.
I left the room, found the rear EXIT sign and took it.
If they were going to follow me around, I’d make them work for it.
They were going to be sitting there for a long time waiting for me to walk out the front door.
Lochinvar Antiques was a refurbished Queen Anne Victorian that had enough gingerbreading for at least three such houses. It sat on its own acre lot on the edge of a residential area. The grass was in need of a quick trim.