“Are you lawyers?”
“No, Martha, we are investigators for the president.”
“Don’t like him. Didn’t vote for him.”
“Well, there’s one thing we agree upon already, Martha,” Janice said. “Do you fully comprehend the seriousness of your situation?”
“Like I told that lawyer fellow, I know I did it. I don’t know why I did it, but I know I did. It was like I was dreaming or sleepwalking it. I did things and knew things I didn’t even know I knew.”
“Like what?” Hiccock asked.
“How to cross-connect wires in a signal block vault, thus reversing the polarity and the direction of a main line interlock cutout relay switch.” She stopped, frozen, and shook her head. “You see! I don’t even know what I just said but I knew how to do it.”
“Do you listen to rap music?”
That remark earned Hiccock a swift kick under the table from Janice as she asked, “What were you going to do after you derailed the train? Did you have an escape plan?”
Martha started to tremble and cry. “I knew I had to kill myself. I don’t want to die. But I know I have to kill myself. I got knocked out by a piece of something or other from the wreck or I would have.”
The short hairs on Hiccock’s neck prickled up while Janice turned white and shivered as if it were twenty degrees cooler in the eight-by-eight cubicle.
“She tried to off herself the moment she woke up in the hospital. Twice more since she’s been here,” the guard said, nodding to the shackles around her thin wrists.
“I don’t want to die,” Martha said, looking down at eternity through the tabletop.
Hiccock’s eyes sank, too, and then rolled over to Janice. He expected her to be as moved by this as he was, but she sat intensely focused, observing Martha.
The flowers were well-tended and thriving, Hiccock thought, as he and Janice strolled the colorful little garden area off the prison exercise yard. It was a peaceful respite after the chilling interrogation of Martha. Hiccock realized the “free” labor here at Leavenworth must be the reason for the meticulously maintained patch. For a second he imagined that Martha’s gardening talents could be put to good use here. Then he remembered that she would kill herself as soon as someone put a shovel or rake in her hand. Maybe when this was all over, Janice could help her. They stopped at a bench looking over some kind of flowers. Maybe they’re irises, he thought.
“So, doc?” he asked.
“She is a case study in and of herself.”
“Glad I got you mixed up in it now, aren’t you?”
“Don’t push it. I think Martha might be exhibiting bi-stable concurrent schizophrenia. It’s rare.”
“Because if I remember correctly schizos don’t remember the other personality,” he said, dragging up Psych 101 from some obscure part of his brain.
“Yet she is fully cognizant of both her realities. Amend that. She is aware of her violent side. I want to call in Professor Wallace Jenkins from Harvard.”
“Can’t. He’s not on the list of cleared consultants.”
“What is this, a friggin’ HMO? Bill, he’s the guy!”
“No, you’re the guy! They want this contained.”
“What if …?”
“Listen, you can do this. I know you can.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Joey Palumbo had been the coolest guy on Gunhill Road. He was part bad boy, part Franciscan monk. He managed the perfect balance between good and mischievous. If you were a young male, you could do worse than trying to be like Joey. To the surprise of no one, Joey became an FBI agent. He was really the perfect cut for one. He had smarts, kept his wits, and made everyone feel as if he had everything under control. He must have had a canary, Hiccock thought, when the director of the FBI called him to Washington, D.C., from his field office in San Francisco just to discuss his old friend, Bill from the Bronx, whom he hadn’t seen in eight years.
Hiccock sat at the bar in “The Prime Rib” on K Street. It was a Georgetown approximation of a place on Webster Avenue where they used to throw back a few and add two-inch, medium-rare increments to their LDL cholesterol count, way before anybody was counting. The waitress brought him his Dewar’s and soda, snapping Hiccock out of his thoughts.
“What, no egg cream? Who friggin’ ordered that?”
Hiccock made a 90-degree turn on the rotating bar stool to see Special Agent in Charge Joseph Palumbo standing behind him. Hiccock got up and, unexpectedly for both of them, gave his old schoolyard buddy a hug. Joey still wore cologne.
They ordered Joey a drink and took a table in the corner. As they sat, Hiccock almost forgot that Joey was here in an official capacity. Hiccock noticed a whole size difference in Joey’s face; not fat, but more filled out from the skinny Italian kid who could take a broomstick and smack a “Spaldeen” over three sewers with ease. Hiccock wondered what game they were going to play tonight. He chided himself for not having brought a Spalding rubber ball with him just for laughs.
“So how ya been, Billy Boy?” Joey said with a warm smile.
“I can’t complain.”
“Understatement of the century. You’ve come a long way from Bing’s.”
That was a name Bill hadn’t heard in a while. Bing’s Carousel was a candy store on Burke Avenue. It became the official headquarters of the Red Wings, a two-hand-touch football team that played its home games on the cracked cement of the big schoolyard on Bronxwood Avenue. Because of the concrete, the player who had the ball wasn’t tackled. Of course, the young stallions of the Bronx were not delicate in their application of the two-hand touch and turned it into various forms of two-hand crunch, two-hand crack, and two-hand smash. The results usually ended up like a tackle. For years the only equipment the players employed was a football shirt bought from Gunhill Sporting Supply. They asked Joe Mastruzzi’s mother to sew on the letters to save the 25-cents-a-letter sew-on charge. Eventually shoulder pads were used, but not by the real tough, real stupid guys. Bill’s basic athletic ability was hard crafted on the cold, sometimes snow-covered concrete “field” with spray-painted hash marks. When he got to Spellman High School and tried out for varsity, he was already the most experienced quarterback, including seniors, in the New York High School Football League.
“Football was your game and I hit a pretty mean stickball, but let me show you the future MVP, Gold Glove, batting ‘champeen’ of all time.” Joey reached into his wallet and pulled out a picture of Joseph Palumbo Jr. in a Bay Area Little League outfit, a small aluminum Louisville Slugger propped over his right shoulder. The kid had the same look his father had in the old days, confident and cocky.
“Geez, Joey, he’s got your ugly mug and probably your gift for swinging at the high ones.” Hiccock smiled to show Joey he was kidding. “He’s a great-looking kid. You must be out of your mind with all that Italian macho pride shit.”
“Better that than the WASP, ice-water shit you got flowing through your veins.”
“Irish and English ya Dago bastard!” Hiccock accentuated the familiar ethnic slur by flicking his right thumb under his top teeth, then adding Joey’s mom’s favorite exclamation “Fa!”
“You fucking hard-on, it’s good to see ya,” Joey said, his right cheek tightening as he half-smiled in that cool, I am straight but I still missed ya, way.
“You, too, Joey, you too.”
“So I figured your big mouth got you into this?”
“Geez, if I only kept it shut, I probably wouldn’t be seeing you for another few years,” Bill said, offering an opening for Joey to get down to business. But Joey decided not to take it. Instead he laughed. Bill looked over at him, “What?”