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“Twenty, sometimes. You know how it is.”

“I’ll just have to be patient. Thanks again for lunch. Your kids want my autograph?”

“Next year, maybe, Palmy. They’re still hooked on the Green Bay Packers. Retarded, I guess.”

Chapter Twenty-six

Sam Boylston watched the door swing shut as Crissy Harkinson left with the matron. The name for it was presence, he thought. Control so perfect there was mockery behind it. Today a little green dress with white trim. White gloves, shoes, purse, and jaunty little white hat on the sunstreaked casual hair. Wraparound glasses, very dark. Sensuous flavor of perfume still hanging in the air after the sway of the round hips under cool green fabric had disappeared into the corridor.

Scheff sighed and lifted a laundry case onto the table top and took out the bricks of white paper wrapped in manila bands.

“More funny tricks, Captain?” Palmer Haas asked.

“What this is,” Scheff said, “it’s from that time we had to fix up a dummy ransom, the guy was already dead before the FBI got into the act even.”

“Mr. Haas,” Lobwohl said, “I am not going to make any statement or ask any question about what might appear to be on the table when she comes back into this room. She knows nothing about any money according to her testimony thus far.”

Sam Boylston reached into his inner jacket pocket and took out the thick envelope and slid it down the table to Scheff. Scheff opened it and began to doctor each brick of paper by sliding a bill under the brown band on both sides of it.

Haas said, “I wish to make an official objection to Mr. Boylston being here.”

“You objected last time too,” Lobwohl said.

“Why should he be permitted to help you with your shabby little tricks, Captain?”

“If I requisitioned this much cash, how long do you think it would take me to get it?”

“Maybe two weeks,” Kindler said, “and with a guy assigned to it who wouldn’t let it out of his sight.”

“The way you’re handling this, Lobwohl, is offensive to me,” Haas said. “I’m letting you get away with...”

“With murder?” John Lobwohl asked.

Scheff finished doctoring the packages. He stacked them in an orderly and impressive heap on the table top.

Haas looked at his watch. “Isn’t this taking too long, just for a photograph?”

“Maybe,” Lobwohl said lazily, “I’ve got people down there beating her with rubber hoses.”

“I’m beginning to wonder. I think this case is too big for you, Captain. The publicity makes you dizzy. You keep getting these delusions. I don’t like this money nonsense. The minute my client comes back through that door I’m going to tell her to keep her mouth shut.”

“You do your job and I do mine,” Lobwohl said.

“You shouldn’t use your office to try to punish immorality, my friend. You are an officer of the law, not an avenging angel. I demand that I be taken to my client right now.”

Lobwohl asked Kindler to go see what the delay was. Kindler went out. As the door started to swing shut he pushed it open and said, “She’s being brought back right now, sir.”

Kindler had a tone of awe in his voice. He moved back into the interrogation room, holding the door wide. Little Annie, five ten, wide as two women, face of pale granite, nocolor eyes, gray hair pulled into a tight bun, marched in a swift choppy stride. Behind her came Crissy Harkinson, in a clumsy jolting trot, hair stringy damp, head humbly bowed, clad in a gray twill prison dress three sizes too large for her. Sam saw that Little Annie was using a come-along, a small loop of chain that went over the prisoner’s thumb and was tightened by turning a short metal bar the guard held in the palm of the hand. It would cause pain only when the prisoner tried to hold back.

Little Annie took her past the table and over to the blank wall. She slipped the chain off the thumb. Head still bowed, Crissy Harkinson backed against the wall. She was breathing hard. She knuckled a strand of the damp hair away from her eye. There was a vivid odor of lysol in the room.

Sam had the feeling that the shocking transformation had made everyone forget their lines and their plans.

“I must ask you to let me answer any questions asked,” said Palmer Haas in what struck Sam as a strangely mild tone.

She lifted her gaze a little further and saw the money. She held her breath and then began panting as before. She seemed to be chewing an imaginary wad of gum. She knuckled her hair back. She made a whinnying giggle. “She thought it was laughs one left. Not last. Laughs. Grabbed that silly nigger bitch and ran her into the crapper after lights out, beat on her for laughing. Oh Jesus, what a great place he picked, huh? Big old rusty boiler, he said. Half full of sand. Nobody’ll look there. Shit! That’s the ball game. Poor little Olly didn’t have the balls to cut his wrists even. Had to do it for him. Should have known you bastards would win. Botched the boat thing, let the little bitch float off. Ran over his own tow line for chrissake.”

The silence in the room was intense, awed, as deadly as fatal disease. She made a chewing sound. “Knew when it was sour. Stuck his little toy gun in his ear. Had it right up against the gunnel where I could pick it up in the dark. Sweet dumb jackassy kid thumping and banging around in the bottom of that boat. Nothing at all left in his head but getting laid. Nothing. Hit my knee getting off onto my dock. Aimed him off, southeast, loop on the tiller bar. Know what?”

“That’s enough!” Palmer Haas shouted at her, getting to his feet.

“I thought it was all roses,” she said. “Then I looked in at my bed and it was like something suddenly sliding sideways in my head. That thing I fixed in my bed was me! And the thing outside looking in, it was made of a wig and a pillow and towels.”

Haas moved toward her saying, “Stop talking, Cristen!”

She straightened herself from her hunched over position, her face showing strain. “I don’t know. I keep getting these cramps all the time, like I should woops my cookies, but I can’t make it.” She shook her head. “Funny. Like when I was thirteen, waiting down in that storage place off the furnace room, in the dark, wondering about rats, waiting for Mister Liborio to come and do it. I made him get me a whole five pound sack of that candy, then I didn’t have to give a shit whether old Satchel-Ass laid a demerit on me or not, but you know, it spoiled the game, jumping the squares to see who’d win, because what’s the point in winning when you got enough hid to make you sick of candy?”

Haas, standing near her, reached to take her arm, apparently to try to get her attention, to make her stop. When he reached, she dodged violently, arm coming up to guard her head from a blow. Still holding her arm up, she stood in a crouch, and looked up at Haas, wary eyes looked out from under the crooked elbow, mouth making the childish chewing motions.

“I’m your lawyer,” Palmer Haas said gently. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She lowered her arm and straightened up. “Oh hell, I know that. Let me tell you. I can make out. All you smart bastards don’t change that. I bet it all, baby, and I lost it all. So I take the lumps. Don’t worry about me. Write up something I can sign, and then get off my back. I’m not going anywhere I haven’t been before.”

“Mrs. Harkinson, I am your attorney and...”

She moved around him, closer to Little Annie. “Now I’m tired,” she said. “I feel awful tired. I think I want to go lie down somewhere.” She smiled at Little Annie in a humble, shy, placating way, and in a gesture that Sam knew would haunt him as long as he lived, Cristen Harkinson held out her thumb for the come-along chain.

Little Annie looked at Lobwohl. Lobwohl nodded. Little Annie took Cristen by the upper arm and walked her out. Kindler held the door. Little Annie went at the same swift muscular stride, and Cristen jounced along beside her in the obedient half trot, bowed head bobbing, paper slippers making a scuff-pat sound on the institutional flooring.