Carlo had used his status in the prison underground to find out what he could about José Ospina, and had obtained a copy of Ospina’s official file. He had learned that José Ospina had been transferred to Lompoc after two years of good behavior at Marion, Illinois, where he had been serving five to ten on a conviction for possession of counterfeit money and an arsenal of automatic weapons, including an M-60 machine gun. Under “Distinguishing Marks and Scars” was a description of the greenish tattoos, which the prison rumor establishment later told Balacontano had been done in Marion by Ospina’s partner, a talented engraver named Cardero. Under “Place of Birth” was the entry “Lexington, Kentucky,” suspicious since Ospina had a thick Spanish accent. But when he double-checked “Eye Color,” the form said “hazel,” the category in which the United States government placed all colors other than brown or blue. Ospina’s eyes were certainly not blue or brown; they were bright golden yellow, which was to say “hazel.” There was no sign that he was a card mechanic or a gambler or even intimate with gamblers. So Carlo had concluded that Ospina was merely riding a streak of luck like the vein of gold under Sutter’s mill, long and deep, but still finite, and he had decided to wait it out.
He had been waiting it out for three and a half years of frustration and simmering anger, having run up a tab of $344,000 in the process. In that time he had stepped up his purchases of decks of cards, sometimes bringing out a fresh one twice in a single day. He had also been treated by the prison doctor for an incipient ulcer and given a rubber mouthpiece to keep him from grinding his teeth while he slept. In 1958, when all of the East was at war over territory and dominance, and every three days somebody was found mutilated in the trunk of his car or broke loose from his anchor and popped to the surface of a river, Carl Bala had been able to eat heaping plates of hot sausage and peppers, then sleep like a hibernating bear. But not now; the effort of containing the anger had begun to threaten his robust constitution. The only release he had for his hatred was to send messages to his employees, subordinates, relatives and colleagues who lived in the outer world, demanding that they find the man who had framed him and get him out. Lately his demands had become more urgent, the implied rewards more princely and the veiled threats more dire. There were already those who believed that, like others before him, Carlo had gone mad in prison. But a madman with untold millions of dollars might overspend to reward those who humored him, and nobody doubted that, mad or not, Carlo Balacontano would be capable of finding strong hands to carry out any form of revenge that stayed in his agitated imagination long enough to turn it into words.
These threats had become particularly worrisome to some of the lieutenants who were now serving as stewards and trustees of his empire: Giovanni “John the Baptist” Bautista, Antonio “Tony T” Talarese, Salvatore Callistro, Peter Mantino. These men had covered themselves in advance by mentioning Carl Bala’s mad desires with exaggerated seriousness to their soldiers at more frequent intervals as the years passed and Balacontano’s parole was becoming more easy to imagine. Bautista and Mantino had also quietly discussed the possibility that if the culprit didn’t turn up before the old man’s first parole-board hearing, it might be inconvenient or even suicidal to let him walk out of prison alive. Talarese had come to the same conclusion independently, spurred by the possibility that the old man might figure out that Talarese had been stealing some of the profits.
Carlo Balacontano had intuited much of this, and informers had kept him abreast of the rest. He could easily have taken his revenge from the prison yard, but he needed these men for now. Thinking that they were working to fill their own pockets, they were amassing a greater hoard that he would come back and reclaim later. But he needed their memories more than their greed. They were all old enough to have seen the man he wanted. The young wise guys, the little weasels who were so eager to sell their bosses to the imprisoned chieftain and take over their fiefs, were too young. The Butcher’s Boy hadn’t been seen by anyone in ten years.
Carlo Balacontano knew how the system worked. In order to get out, he would have to supply the system with someone to take his place. The replacement could be dead, as long as something linking him to the murder of Arthur Fieldston was found with him: a forged suicide note with a confession, the cigarette lighter that Bala had pocketed at Fieldston’s office in the old days, when he had been there to discuss a deal—anything. A reasonable doubt might be enough excuse for someone to sell him a pardon, and would almost certainly be enough to get him a parole after eight years. Then he could get away from this place and from José Ospina, the man who was driving him mad.
Elizabeth Waring sat in the small cinder-block building just inside the gate of the prison, watching the other visitors go through the formalities with the prison guards. There were a pair of lawyers who seemed to know each other, one tall, thin and bespectacled and the other a squat little blond man with a brown suit that looked as though he had bought it cheap in a store that had a fat boys’ department. They kept calling each other “counselor” and “learned colleague,” as though it were a longstanding joke.
Fidgeting nervously on a bench across from her were three women who bore the same dazed, sickly expression on their faces, but had nothing else in common. One was a young, coffee-colored girl who seemed no more than nineteen. She wore a shapeless brown-and-black outfit that seemed to include a kind of sweatshirt and something below that could have been a pair of pants from an Israeli paratrooper’s uniform, but in sizes so large that her shy, cringing posture allowed her to hide in the material. Beside her was a tall, thin blond woman who might have been fifty but had such tight skin on her cheeks and forehead that she might as easily have been thirty-five. Her nose had likewise felt the surgeon’s scalpel, and seemed rightfully to belong to the sort of teenage girl who waited on tables in a short skirt and luminous panty hose. She wore no jewelry except a gold wedding band and an engagement ring with a diamond that might have been two carats. The third woman was about thirty, and Elizabeth had grouped her with the lawyers until she sat down with the other women and her face assumed the same fixed, humiliated expression. She wore a business suit and a white silk blouse with a bow at the neck that wasn’t a good idea. She even carried a briefcase. When the guard called, “Henley,” she stood up, walked to the desk and handed the briefcase to the guard, who opened it and removed a black lace negligee. The guard left the garment on the desk while he went through the briefcase for contraband, and Elizabeth could see that the woman’s ashen face was aimed downward, her eyes not on the guard but on the negligee, as though she were willing it to disappear. The two lawyers stopped talking and stared frankly at the proceedings, then listened while the guard repeated a short orientation speech on the rules of conjugal visits. The young black woman seemed to shrink still deeper into her clothes, but the older woman turned to wood, staring straight ahead like the figurehead on the prow of a sailing ship.
“Miss Waring.” The voice was behind her. She stood up and turned to see a man in a suit waiting for her. He looked like a dentist, serene and well scrubbed, with a shiny bald head. He held the door open and Elizabeth went through it to the concrete steps outside, then shook the man’s hand. “I’m Assistant Warden Bateson,” the man said. “I was told to expect you. Anything special you need?”