The space between the prison wall and the four barred cells allowed guards and visitors a shallow walkway; the prison wall at our backs provided most of the light, with barred windows that let in air (and flies and mosquitoes) and cut down on, but did not nullify, the fusty fragrance of body odor, shit, piss, and general stagnation. None of that prissy, irritating disinfectant odor you run into in American jails; just pure, natural stench.
Each cell had a single high window, narrow and barred; eight feet by eight feet, the cells would have made generous closets. They had thatched sleeping mats and, in one corner, a built-in open-top concrete box three feet square, a toilet for prisoners, an airfield for flies.
Of the four cells that made up this small solid building, the one at far left was empty, the center two were occupied (a pair of Chamorro cattle rustlers, the chief said), and at far right, regarding us through his cell bars with skeptical eyes, his arms folded, stood a tall skinny white man with a bushy curly beard, dark brown mixed in with gray. He wore a filthy, occasionally ripped, crumpled-looking khaki flight suit; his feet were sandaled. Under a mop of widow’s-peaked, dark brown graying hair, he had a long, hawkish, weathered, grooved, defiant mask of a face, eyes dark and wild in deep sockets. A nasty angular white scar streaked his forehead. His teeth were large and yellow and smiling within the thicket of beard.
Fred Noonan was home, when I came calling.
“We honor you with visit,” Chief Suzuki said with low-key contempt. “American priest. Father Brian O’Leary.”
“I’m a Protestant,” Noonan said, his voice a gravelly baritone, “but what the hell.”
“In our culture,” I said to Suzuki, “it’s traditional for holy men visiting prisoners to have privacy.”
“Cannot open cell door,” the chief said, shaking his head, no.
“That’s fine,” I said, gesturing to the closed door between Noonan and me. “Just leave us alone like this.”
“I will have Jesus stay, protect you,” he said, nodding to the massive Chamorro.
“No thank you,” I said. And then I said, pointedly, “I need to be alone with the prisoner to do what I need to do.”
“Ah,” Suzuki said, remembering I was on a mission for him, and nodded. He bellowed a few Japanese phrases, and the warden, Lord Jesus, and the Chief of Saipan Police left me alone with my one-man flock.
I checked out the window and could see Sergeant Kinashi heading back into the main building, while the chief and his jungkicho were huddling for a smoke, standing well away from our cellblock bungalow.
Noonan stood near the bars with his arms unfolded; they hung funny, sort of askew.
My eyes were drawn to these poor twisted limbs. “What did they do to you?” I asked.
“I got smart with the bastards, Father,” he said, “and they broke my arms. It was that good-lookin’ fellow named after our savior. They didn’t set ’em or anything. No sissy casts. Just let ’em heal naturally. I coulda used a miracle, Father. But I didn’t get one... You wouldn’t have a drink on you, by any chance?”
“No.”
“Picked a hell of a way to dry out, didn’t I?”
I glanced out the window one more time; the two men were smoking, talking.
“Do your neighbors speak English?” I asked, nodding toward the cells where the dark faces of the rustlers looked at me curiously.
“They can hardly speak their own native gibberish,” he said, eyes narrowing in their deep sockets. “Why?”
“Listen,” I said, moving close. The smell from the cell was as foul as a rotting corpse. “We’re only gonna have a little bit of time.”
“To do what? Who the hell are you?”
“It’s not important... Nate Heller.”
His eyes narrowed even tighter, and glittered. “I know that name...”
“Old friend of Amelia’s.”
He began to nod, smile. “More than a friend...”
Apparently, on their long flight, he and Amy had shared a few secrets.
“Listen,” I said, “the Yellow Peril out there thinks I’m an I.R.A. priest...”
Noonan, an Irishman himself, chuckled. “Not a bad way to get onto this hellhole island. But why would you want to?”
“Our loving uncle sent me to see if you and Amelia were guests of Hirohito.”
“The answer is yes... I hope you didn’t come alone.”
“Afraid I did — I got a way out of here tonight, though.” I glanced around the concrete bunker. “Is there any way I can bust you out of this hatbox?”
He laughed the most humorless of laughs from deep in his sunken chest. “A small army couldn’t...” Then, with sudden urgency, he said, “But you can take Amelia! They got her in this hotel over—”
“I know. I spent the afternoon with her.” I slipped a hand through the bars and onto his shoulder; and squeezed. “But she won’t go without you.”
He backed away from my touch, eyes so wide they filled the sockets. “That’s crazy! She has to...”
“When do they let you into the exercise yard?”
“Not more’n once a week, and I was just out there yesterday. No set schedule.”
“Damn.” I checked the window again; Mutt-san and Jeff-san were still smoking. “Fred. If you’ll forgive the familiarity...”
“I’ll let it slide this once.”
My hands gripped the bars as if I were the prisoner. “Chief Suzuki sent me in here to see if you’d spill your guts to a priest... a last-ditch effort to get something out of a very stubborn prisoner.”
He was studying me like he must have studied his charts. “You sayin’ what I think you’re sayin’?”
“You’re under a sentence of death. Today, tomorrow, a week, maybe two. But probably no more. I’m sorry.”
Another hollow laugh. “You’re sorry...”
“Amelia’s under the same death sentence. She thinks she can manipulate these clowns, but we know better, don’t we? She’s already spilled a lot, Fred, about the souped-up aspects of the Electra...”
The yellow teeth clenched in the nest of beard, and he spat, “Damn it, anyway. That’s a pacifist for you. Damn it... Listen, Nate, you gotta get her offa this island. She doesn’t deserve this fate.” He shook his head. “Me, I knew what I was getting into. I’m military; she’s civilian. It was wrong how they used her... hell. How we used her. She didn’t even know we were flyin’ over the Mandates, till—”
“I can get her out tonight, Fred.”
“Then do it!”
“You have to do it. You have to help me convince Amelia to leave you behind. Can you think of some way to do that?”
He lowered his head; he laughed but no sound came out. Then he said, “Yeah.”
“I mean, some message...”
“I know what you mean.”
“...I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry.”
I was. It was a hell of a thing I was asking.
“I better go,” I said.
I offered him my hand, and, twisted arm or not, he shook it, with a firm grip worthy of the adventurer who had helped chart the Pacific for Pan Am, not to mention his country.
I turned away.
“Heller! Nate...”
“Yeah...?”
“I got a wife.” He swallowed and his eyes were brimming with tears. “Didn’t have her very long, but she was a honey. Mary Beatrice. Some people call her Bea, but I like Mary. That’s what I call Amelia, too... Smartest thing I ever did, marrying that girl, followed by the dumbest. Would you tell her something for me?”
“Sure.”
“...Make it something nice.”