When Carver's first letter arrived, Max's mail was down to letters from his wife, in-laws, and friends. His fan base had moved on to more appreciative types, like O. J. Simpson and the Menendez brothers.
Carver met Max's silence over his first letter with a follow-up two weeks later. When that, too, elicited no response, Max received another Carver letter the next week, then two more the week after that, and, seven days later, two more again. Velasquez was pretty happy. He liked Carver's letters, because the paperthick, water-marked cream stationery with Carver's name, address, and contact numbers embossed in the right-hand corner in emerald-foil lettershad something in it that reacted fantastically with his weed and got him more stoned than usual.
Carver tried different tactics to get Max's attentionhe changed paper, wrote longhand, and got other people to write inbut no matter what he tried, everything went by way of The Incinerator.
So, the letters stopped and the phone calls started. Max guessed that Carver had bribed someone high up, because only inmates with serious juice or imminent retrials were allowed to take incoming calls. A guard brought him from the kitchens and took him to one of the conference cells, where a phone had been plugged in, just for him. He spoke to Carver long enough to hear his name, think he was English from his accent, and tell him what was what and never to call him again.
But Carver didn't give up. Max would be interrupted at work, in the exercise yard, at meals, in the shower, during lockdowns, after lights-out. He dealt with Carver as he always did: "Hello," hear Carver's voice, hang up.
Max eventually complained to the warden, who thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. Most inmates griped about hassles on the inside. He told Max not to be such a pussy and threatened to put a phone in his cell if he bothered him again with this bullshit.
Max told Dave Torres, his lawyer, about Carver's calls. Torres put a stop to them. He also offered to dig up some information about Carver, but Max passed. In the free world, he would have been curious as hell; but in prison, curiosity was something you gave up with your court clothes and your wristwatch.
The day before his release, Max had a visit from Carver. Max refused to see him, so Carver left him his final letter, back on the original stationery.
Max gave it to Velasquez as a going-away present.
* * *
After he got out of jail, Max was all set to go to London, England.
* * *
The round-the-world tour had been his wife's idea, something she'd always wanted to do. She'd long been fascinated by other countries and their cultures, their histories and monuments, their people. She was always going off to museums, lining up to get into the latest exhibitions, attending lectures and seminars, and always readingmagazines, newspaper articles, and book after book after book. She tried her best to sweep Max along with her enthusiasms, but he wasn't remotely interested. She showed him pictures of South American Indians wearing pizza plates in their bottom lips, African women with giraffe-like necks fitted with industrial springs, and he really couldn't begin to see the attraction. He'd been to Mexico, the Bahamas, Hawaii, and Canada, but his world was really just the USA, and that was a world big enough for him. At home, they had deserts and arctic wastes and pretty much everything in between. Why go abroad for the same shit only older?
His wife's name was Sandra. He'd met her when he was still a cop. She was half Cuban, half African-American. She was beautiful, clever, tough, and funny. He never called her Sandy.
She'd planned for them to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary in style, traveling the globe, seeing most of the things she'd only read about. If things had been different, Max would probably have talked her into going to the Keys for a week, with the promise of a modest foreign trip (to Europe or Australia) later in the year, but because he was in prison when she told him her plans, he wasn't in a position to refuse. Besides, from where he was, getting as far away from America as possible seemed like a good idea. That year out would give him time to think about the rest of his life and what best to do with it.
It took Sandra four months to organize and book the tour. She arranged the itinerary so they'd arrive back home in Miami exactly a year to the day they'd left, on their next wedding anniversary. In between they would see all of Europe, starting with England, and then they'd move on to Russia and China, followed by Japan and the Far East, before flying on to Australia, New Zealand, and then on to Africa and the Middle East, before closing out in Turkey.
The more she told Max about the trip during her weekly visits, the more he started looking forward to it. He took to reading in the prison library about some of the places they'd be visiting. In the beginning, it was a way of getting him out of one day and into the next, but the more he began to delve into the stuff of his wife's dreams, the closer he got to her, perhaps closer than he'd ever been.
She finished paying for the trip the day she died in a car crash on U.S. 1, which she appeared to have caused by inexplicably and quite suddenly switching lanes straight into the path of an oncoming truck. When they performed the autopsy, they found the brain aneurysm that had killed her at the wheel.
The warden broke the news to him. Max was too stunned to react. He nodded, said nothing else, left the warden's office, and went about the rest of his day pretty much as normal, cleaning the kitchen surfaces, serving at the counter, feeding the trays through the dishwasher, mopping the floors. He didn't say anything to Velasquez. You didn't do that. Showing grief or sadness or any emotion unrelated to anger was a sign of weakness. You kept those things well hidden, bottled up, out of sight and sense.
Sandra's death didn't sink in until the next day, Thursday. Thursday was her visiting day. She'd never missed one. She'd fly in the night before, stay with an aunt who lived in Queens, and then, the next day, she'd drive up to see him. At around two p.m., when he'd usually be finishing off in the kitchen or bullshitting with Henry, the cook, he'd be called out to the visiting room over the PA system. Sandra would be waiting for him on the other side of the booth, behind the glass partition and the wall between them. She'd always be immaculately dressed, a fresh layer of lipstick on her mouth, big smile on her face, eyes lighting up, just like she was on a first date. They'd talk about this and that, how he was feeling, how he was looking, then she'd give him back-home news, tell him about herself, tell him about the house, talk about her job.
Henry and Max had an arrangement. Henry would work around Max on Thursdays, giving him things he could finish up quickly so he could get out as soon as his name was called. Max always helped Henry out in the same way on Sundays, when Henry's familyhis wife and four kidscame to see him. They got on well enough for Max to ignore that Henry was doing fifteen to life for an armed robbery that had left a pregnant woman dead, and that he ran with the Aryan Brotherhood.