“A wise man speaks because he has something to say,” I say, quoting Plato back at him, “a fool because he has to say something.”
“And if you were a fool? What would you say, kid?” he asks. “Are you afraid of what I’d think about your grand plan for revenge?”
“Who said that was my plan?”
“Aristotle said it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it,” he says. “You’re an open book, kid, and even though I am against what you’re planning, I love you enough to tell you that if you’re going to succeed, you need to become more of a cipher than you are.”
“Meaning?”
Lester sighs.
“I had a son,” he says. “His name was Seth. Died when he was eight. It was the year I killed the prison guard. I don’t know, I think if he hadn’t died, I never would have tried a museum.”
“I thought you had a small van Gogh?” I ask. My blood rises. Even after all this time, I am afraid of being duped. There is still a small voice inside my head telling me Lester is a fake, a brilliantly colorful fake. That we will get out of this cell and there will be no manhole. No cistern.
He is laughing quietly at me, as if he knows what I’m thinking. He says, “I did. But everything I stole until Seth died was from private collections. The market for stolen masterpieces is every bit as lively and lucrative as the ones auctioned at Sotheby’s. Everything I stole was already stolen. Until Seth died… I guess I stopped caring.
“But,” he says, “my point is this. We would play chess, my kid and I. He was good. Exceptional, really. Had my noggin. Even more. But he was a kid, and so he’d always be looking at the pieces he wanted to move. I’d watch his eyes and know what move he was thinking about before he even did it. Like you, kid. I see it in your eyes. The hatred. The determination. Everyone else is gonna see it too.”
“I don’t care if they see it,” I say. I can feel heat in my veins. My voice is louder than it should be.
“Like Carl. He doesn’t care,” Lester says, and the image of that doughy mass murderer fills my mind. The ear-to-ear grin when he scoops up a spoonful of corn. The consternation over a plate full of olive-colored peas. An open book.
“You think I want to be here?”
“You’re safe here, kid, behind these walls,” Lester says. “Just like Carl. For instance, what are you going to do about her?”
The breath goes out of me.
“I… you…” I say.
“I read all about it,” he says. “The whole joint talked about it back then. But you were convicted and then that winter the space shuttle went down and then there was Colonel Ghadafi and Libya and people forgot about Raymond White.
“I did too, but I was interested in the players. To see how the tragedy played out. I saw in the newspaper when the girl married a cop and I watched him become a big shot in the casino world and move to New York City. Every once in a while you’ll see him standing behind the governor in some group shot. The DA, Villay, he’s a federal judge. Maybe on his way to the Supreme Court.
“Then there was the guy who got the congressional seat after you were arrested. Rangle. He’s out of politics now, but he made the most of it. He married one of those fancy society women and moves money around on Wall Street. I always found it… interesting how well all three of them did…
“The girl too, I suppose.”
“And why do you suppose that?”
“I just don’t know much about her,” Lester says. “They don’t write about her. Just him. He’s a little shady. Got caught up in a racketeering probe of some real estate development company. She’s still there, though. I saw a picture of her next to him in the New York Post when he got cleared.”
I realize that my hands are clenched around the folds of the bedsheet and my teeth clamped tight. I am breathing through my nose, practically snorting.
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” I ask.
“Next Tuesday is a new moon,” he says. “We’ll be leaving. I didn’t want you to dwell on it, but I don’t want you to do something stupid either.”
“Like walk up to him on the street and blow his fucking head off?”
“I’ve taught you almost everything I know, kid,” he says. “I’d hate to see all that go to waste. You could have a nice life for yourself. Isn’t it enough to be free?”
“No,” I say, “it’s not. You’re the one with the rule about exacting revenge.”
“That’s for in here,” he says.
“Not to me,” I say.
I get down from the bunk and hold out my hand for the drill bit. Lester gives it to me and I softly pound it into its block handle. I press the bit into the corroding plate next to last night’s hole. The toilet bowl is damp and cool against my cheek. I push and grind. Push and grind, letting the sharp steel edge bite into the plate, shaving out thin curly strips a micrometer at a time.
Soon, I hear the rattle of keys. The first walk-by always includes a night count. They do two a night. I climb into my bunk and close my eyes. I hear the footsteps of the guard. My eyelids glow briefly red as he swipes the beam of his flashlight over my face. In minutes, I hear him walking back down the company. Keys rattle again and the door hums and the latch clanks into place. I slip down off the bunk. Lester is asleep and I go back to work.
I was in jail eighteen years before I came here. I spent six months in the box. It’s been just over a year since we started to drill. The final week passes like a blink. Lester encourages me not to eat much. The thinner I am, the easier it will be to fit through the hole. That’s not a problem. I’m not hungry anyway.
It’s time.
25
MY HEART POUNDS against my ribs. I glance over my shoulder and up at the window. I see nothing but the faint reflection of bars. The moon is dark. Lester and I always whisper, but tonight our hissing can barely be heard. Our bunks are stuffed with quietly crumpled newspaper. We have saved our own hair clippings and stuck them onto the papier-mâché masks that Lester has painted to look like us. In each of our pockets is a small Ziploc bag that contains some cash Lester has hoarded over the years as well as a detailed road map of central New York.
I hear the quiet snap of metal, Lester twisting our escape hatch free from the thin mooring that held it in place. The other edges we have filed smooth. We have bailed out the toilet, draining it into the sink. The pipe lies on the floor in the corner.
Lester squirms through the hole and waves to me. I am naked, glazed in Vaseline. I pass my clothes through, then slip my head into the hole along with my right arm. My left shoulder gets stuck and I feel the bite of the steel. A bead of sweat falls from my nose. I squirm and a small noise sneaks out of my throat. Lester hushes me quietly and whispers that it will be all right. Relax.
I feel his twisted hands on my head and back. He turns me gently, the way a doctor will deliver a child, easing me through the hole. My hips stick, but only for a moment. I am out. I stand with my bare feet on the narrow iron grid of the catwalk. The stink of sewage rises up on the back of the exhausted heat, but my spirit soars. I stand there, greased and naked in this new world. I want to raise my hands over my head and cry out, but instead, I quickly pull on my clothes.
Lester has a black piece of paper that he tapes over the hole. We are in complete darkness now, but only for a few seconds. In his hand, Lester has a small bulb, taped and wired to a D battery. In this pitch, it sheds just enough light for us to see the twisted labyrinth of pipes and wires and ducts protruding from the cells on either side. The tangle of mechanical veins rises five stories.
Lester starts to lower himself through the space between the narrow catwalk and the cells. I follow him, and he guides my ankles as he said he would so that I will find the footholds that will quietly bear my weight. Even though Lester warned me against it, I look down. It is a long way to the oily filth, and I wonder if I will be able to keep from retching once I lower my feet into its murk.