So far he had been passive with Coker and Delone, had played it low-key. But those two were half crazy, the kind who got a jolt from bullying and hurting and worse. That night after supper, alone in his cell, Lee checked the cells across the way to be sure no one was idly watching. The custodian had already done the count, the cells were locked for the night and that was the most privacy he’d get. He glanced the length of the cellblock, then, sitting on his bunk with his back to the bars, a pillow behind him as if he was reading, he got to work.
In the half-light from the corridor, keeping the materials close in his lap so he could pull the blanket up, he cut the cotton cord in two and unraveled the shorter piece to produce lengths of heavy-duty thread. He stretched out the other cord, and at one end he tied the heavy, half-inch-thick machine nut. Moving down the length of the cord he commenced to tie on the double-edged blades with the heavy thread, taking care not to slice his fingers. He was lucky to have gotten them. In the cellblocks the guards kept tight count of every razor blade a fellow was issued and collected them again pretty quick.
Down at the end of Lee’s cot the tomcat appeared as the faintest shadow watching with kneading claws the enticing lengths of thread twist and writhe as they unraveled, watching the heavier, snakelike behavior of the long cord. He wanted to leap into the tangle playing and rolling, biting at the threads. The sharp blades stopped him—though they couldn’t hurt a ghost, memories of past lives and sharp tools were too indelibly a part of his nature. Restraining himself, he only let his shadowy tail lash as Lee fished each thread through the narrow slot of a blade and around the cord and back.
In order for the weapon to be effective each blade had to be strongly secured at both ends. Working on the garrote Lee found himself thinking about Morgan Blake, puzzling over the young man’s story. Why did it keep nudging at him, why did he keep thinking about Blake’s version of the crime and the trial? He’d heard a million sob stories, all of them as fake as counterfeit twenties, so why did he believe this one?
But somehow he did believe, and that bothered him. They’d had breakfast together several times when Blake sought him out; each time Blake got onto the bank robbery and the events leading up to that day. Lee didn’t want to listen, but his instinct said Blake was telling the truth, said Blake had been set up, that a carefully planned robbery and killing had been smoothly pulled off at the young man’s expense.
Lee was irritated that he believed Blake; it bothered him that he’d begun to care about the guy’s predicament. Getting involved in someone else’s life, in prison, was the best way Lee knew to jeopardize his own life. There was no way he could help Blake even if he was stupid enough to try. Yet he couldn’t shake his growing interest.
It was late when Lee finished tying on the razor blades, working in the dim light of his own shadow. Every time he heard the guard’s soft footsteps walking the rounds he pulled up the blanket, picked up his pulp novel and bent over it. Sometimes he rattled and wadded up a candy wrapper, tossing it on the floor. When the guard had moved on, Lee would continue with the garrote. The weapon was about twenty inches long. At the opposite end to the nut he tied a loop large enough to slip his finger through. The blades, crowded close together, started ten inches from the loop and ended four inches from the steel nut. Turning to check the cellblock, Lee let the weapon hang from his right forefinger.
Along the rows of cells, the men he could see were either asleep or busy with their own concerns, lying in bed reading, writing letters. Satisfied no one was watching, he moved back into the shadows. “Get out of here,” he hissed at the ghost cat. Misto disappeared but reappeared at the head of Lee’s cot, the faintest shadow. Lee could just see his whiskers and ears flat to his head, but Misto’s toothy hiss was all bravado. Free of the cat, he swung the garrote in a circle, letting the weight of the nut pull the cord taut, whirling it until a faint light flashed off the sharp blades, then the garrote began a faint whistle. At the sound he stopped its motion, glancing across the way. Carefully he rolled the nut and blades up inside the cord until the finished product looked like no more than a ball of string. He dropped this in a Bull Durham bag he’d fished out of the trash behind the mess hall, slipped it under his mattress, and crawled into bed. If Coker and Delone wanted to play rough, he was ready.
14
THE COTTON LOOMS thrashed and banged as if they’d tear themselves from the floor; the big room rocked with rows of clattering looms, the thread feeding into them faster than Lee could follow. His job was to keep the spindles supplied to machines fourteen and fifteen so they’d never stop running, and he had to stay on his toes. Red lines painted on the floor cautioned him where to keep clear. As the canvas fabric edged its way out of each loom, Lee’s freckle-faced partner guided its dropping in folds onto a rubber-wheeled cart.
Gimpy had warned him that no matter what job a man did in here, he had to be careful, everything in the place was dangerous. When Gimpy had introduced him to the foreman, the middle-aged, military-looking man walked Lee through the routine just once and then put him to work. The cotton came into the mill already ginned, the seeds removed. It was air-blown in a big metal hopper up on the second-level loft, was sent from there through a large tube to machines that spun it into thread, wound the thread on spindles, and the spindles sent down to the busy looms. The room’s thunder seemed to rip right through Lee. He had put cotton wads in his ears, as his partner wore, but it didn’t help much. The air was murky with cotton dust, but he wasn’t wearing a sissy mask. He thought he could breathe shallowly until he was out in the fresh air again. Only when he left his machine to get more spindles did he find something to laugh about.
Glancing into the adjoining room he saw the woven canvas being sewn into large bags, and each stamped in black letters, U.S. MAIL. He was helping make the exact same bags he’d buried in the desert full of hundred-dollar bills. The bags he’d taken at gunpoint from the Blythe post office. And didn’t that make him smile.
By the end of his shift his cough was bad and his body ached from the noise, the clatter penetrated clear to his bones. The most positive thing about the job, he thought, was that it allowed him to drop out of group counseling—but even that didn’t work. As he left the noisy cotton mill, the guard stopped him.
“You’re to go from here to your counselor, Fontana.” The man had a face like a bloodhound, drooping jowls, no smile. “He’ll set up a new time for your group sessions.”
Lee swallowed back his reply, which would only have gotten him in trouble. Heading for Paul Camp’s building, walking back between rows of desks, he found Camp leaning over his own desk tamping tobacco into a dark, carved pipe. Leaning back in his chair, Camp took his time lighting up. Drawing the smoke in deeply, he handed Lee his new counseling schedule. Lee wanted to argue, but what good?