Lights Out

27

The clouds disappeared, just like that. The sun came out. The skies were blue. The snow melted. It was spring.

Eddie was too busy to notice. He lit a fire in Jack’s fireplace and burned every scrap of paper in the suite. When the fire was at its hottest, he added all the computer disks. Not knowing how to erase the computer’s internal memory, he unplugged it, unscrewed the back panel, tore out everything that would tear out, and tossed it in the fire too.

The rest-clothes, books, pictures, office equipment-he packed in boxes addressed to Uncle Vic. Then he phoned the desk.

“Mr. Nye is checking out,” he said. “What’s the bill?”

“Checking out? But he just paid his account to the end of the month.”

“Change of plan.”

“I’m afraid we have no prorating mechanism for situations like this.”

“Meaning there’s no checking out?”

Tentative laugh. “Meaning there’s no refund. Regrettably.”

Eddie called the Mount Olive Extended Care Residence and Spa.

“The account,” he was told, “is paid up to the thirtieth.”

“What’s the monthly rate?”

“Three thousand dollars.”

“Mr. Nye would like to pay for a year in advance.”

“I’m afraid we have no discount mechanism in situations like that.”

Eddie waited for her to add “regrettably.” When she did not, he said, “Cash a problem?”

“Cash is never a problem, sir. Checks are the problem.”

Then there was nothing unburned or unpacked but the phone and the bottle of Armagnac. Like cognac, Jack had said, but snobbier. Eddie sat by the fire with the bottle in his lap, facing away from the window. He had noticed those blue skies. He didn’t drink, just sat with the bottle in his lap.

The phone rang.

“Hello?” he said.

“Jack?” It was Karen.

“No.”

“Eddie. You sound so much alike.” There was a pause. He could feel her thinking, as though the electric impulses in her brain were somehow feeding into the wire. “Is Jack there?”

“No.”

“When will he be back?”

Eddie searched for the right sort of lie, settled on one, opened his mouth to utter it only to find he physically could not. Something was choking him. He was all right as long as he didn’t speak about Jack. He saw himself in the mirror, completely distorted.

“Eddie?”

“Yeah.”

“I think you and I’ve had a little misunderstanding.”

“Have we?”

“I’d like to clear it up,” Karen said. “Maybe I could see you.”

Eddie said nothing.

Karen said: “Could I come over?”

It hit him then: the desk clerk had called her, told her that Jack was checking out. Why not? She was some kind of cop, and it was an obvious cop move.

“Why don’t I come over there?” Eddie said.

“Over here?”

“What’s your address?”

She gave it to him.

“See you in an hour,” Eddie said.

Eddie called down for a cardboard box, wrapping paper. He opened one of the canvas bags and counted out $230,000. There was a knock at the door.

He opened it. The bellman. “Can you wait a minute?” Eddie asked him, taking the box and the wrapping paper.

“Certainly, sir.”

Everyone was calling him sir all of a sudden, as though money had a smell. Eddie closed the door, leaving the bellman in the hall. He put the $230,000 in the box, wrapped it, wrote Karen’s address on the front, adding, “From Windward Financial Services,” gave it to the bellman.

“I’d like this delivered right away,” Eddie said. “By you.” He gave the bellman fifty dollars.

“Right away,” said the bellman, but there was no “sir.” Maybe fifty wasn’t enough.

The bellman left. Eddie counted out another $36,000, for the Mount Olive Extended Residence and Spa, dropped it in a shopping bag. What else? He remembered Raleigh, and then forgot him.

He counted the rest: $488,220.

Eddie stuffed it into the backpack, threw the canvas bags on the fire, slung on the pack. He looked around the room. He had taken care of Jack’s obligations and destroyed the records of any possible financial impropriety. That didn’t make him feel any better. He hadn’t belonged in Jack’s world and Jack hadn’t belonged in his. Bringing them together had been a mistake. He toyed with the idea that the two worlds had come together within him, due to circumstance, and therefore it was no one’s fault. A bad idea. Jack was dead and the fault was his.

Eddie picked up the Armagnac bottle and was on his way out when he noticed the Monarch lying by the couch. He tossed it in the fire. Then he went down to the street, where Jack’s car was waiting. A uniformed man held the door for him. Eddie gave him money.

“Nice day, isn’t it, sir?”

Eddie glanced up at the blue sky. It hurt his eyes. He drove away from the Palazzo with Jack’s heat on full blast and the icy feeling on the back of his neck.

He was out of the northeast and out of Armagnac before the obvious lines lit up in his brain.

The man hath penance done,

And penance more will do.

Then he couldn’t get rid of them.

28

Karen de Vere knelt in front of the fireplace. She saw a half-burned canvas bag, warped computer disks, ashes. Mostly ashes. She pinched some in her fingers and sniffed them.

“Smell anything?” asked Raleigh Packer.

“The end of your parole.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re going back to finish your sentence. What else?”

He reddened. “Why? I cooperated, didn’t I?”

Raleigh was whining. Karen didn’t like whiners. “With no result.”

“I did everything you asked. I tried.”

“Try harder.”

“How.”

“Think of where he might have gone. You know him.”

“Yeah, I know him. He’s out romancing a prospective client, or sucking around for tips, or having a few down at the Seaport or some place like that. He’ll be back soon.”

Karen blew the ashes off her hands. Raleigh was wrong. Jack Nye was gone, period. She was left with a fireplace full of ashes, $230,000 in well-used currency, and no case against him. And a question: why had he run? She could understand running and not paying, or paying and not running; she couldn’t understand running and paying.

No explanation. No note with the money, not even his business card. Just a scrawl on the wrapper: “From Windward Financial Services.” Karen had compared it to samples of Jack’s handwriting, found it didn’t match. She wished she had a sample of Eddie Nye’s handwriting too.

“Are you trying to tell me that he’s taken off?” asked Raleigh.

“No interpretation required,” Karen said. She poked at the ashes with the toe of her shoe, saw something red and charred. She picked it up: a fragment of the cover of the Monarch Notes guide to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

“Taken off?” said Raleigh. “And not coming back, you mean? The fucking bastard.” He pounded the wall, although not hard enough to hurt himself.

“I’m sure it’s nothing personal,” said Karen, dropping the fragment in her bag.

“The fucking bastard,” was Raleigh’s only reply.

Karen waited on a bench. A guard in a gray uniform sat at the other end, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. Through the closed office door across the room came a laugh that made her think of crows. Then the door opened and a red-haired man in denim came out. He reminded her immediately of Goya’s portrait of Charles IV of Spain. The guard rose. The red-haired man nodded toward her-it was almost a bow-and smiled. He had beautiful teeth but was missing a canine. He left the waiting room with the guard following close behind.

The receptionist said: “You can go in now.”

Karen entered the office, smelled a piney smell she didn’t like. She handed her card to the man behind the desk. He studied it. She studied him. He looked like Santa Claus gone sour.

“Take a pew, uh, Miss de Vere,” said Floyd K. Messer, M.D., Ph.D., sliding her card across the desk. “I haven’t heard of this agency of yours, but I made some calls and apparently it’s legit.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Messer blinked, sat farther back in his chair. “I’m a little pressed for time,” he said, “what with this bit of business we’ve got lined up for tonight. So if you’d tell me how I can help you.”

“What bit of business?”

Messer looked surprised. “Wasn’t there a lot of media outside when you came in?”

“I didn’t see any.”

Messer checked his watch. “They’ll be along. Just like vultures. Execution tonight, Miss de Vere. We’ll be going into a precautionary lockdown in forty-five minutes.”

“Who’s being executed?”

She’d surprised him again. “You haven’t heard of Mister Willie Boggs? I thought he was a national figure by now.”

“What did he do?”

“Found a way to wrap a lot of bleeding-heart lawyers around his little black finger.”

“I was referring to his crime,” Karen said, noticing the photographs of Messer posed with dead fish on the walls.

“Killed a liquor-store clerk in a robbery,” said Messer. “Or was with the guy that killed him. Or drove the getaway car. Can’t remember. It was a long time ago, Miss de Vere. Now how can I help you?”

“I’m looking for a former inmate of yours.”

“Name of?”

“Eddie Nye.”

Messer went still.

“What is it?” Karen said.

“Nothing.”

“You recognized the name.”

“Oh, sure,” said Messer. “I was thinking, is all.”

“Thinking what?”

“Thinking-that was quick.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ol’ Nails’s been gone hardly more’n a week and he’s screwed up already, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Not a record, fifteen minutes is the record, but quick just the same.” Messer glanced at the closed office door. “I take it you don’t know where he is.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“You think we know where he is?”

“Any information might help.”

Messer nodded. “What’s he done?”

“Nothing that I’m aware of. Why do you call him Nails?”

Messer smiled at some memory. “It’s a long story,” he said. “If he hasn’t done anything, why are you looking for him?”

“The investigation concerns his brother.”

“Didn’t know he had one.” Messer swiveled around to a computer, tapped at the keyboard. “He a jailbird too?” Words popped up on the screen. Messer scrolled through them. “Here we go. Nye, J. M. Residence: Galleon Beach Club, Saint Amour, the Bahamas. Fancy-dancy. One visit and one visit only, and that was fifteen years ago.” Messer looked up. “What’s he done?”

“He’s suspected of various securities infractions.”

“Can’t picture Nails involved in something like that.”

“Why not, Mr. Messer?” Karen said, realizing as she spoke that she was coming to Eddie’s defense in some way, and not stopping herself.

“Doctor, if it’s all the same to you,” said Messer. “I’ve got a doctorate in psychology.”

“Doctor,” said Karen, very distinctly, not mentioning her law degree from Harvard or her Ph.D. in economics from Penn.

“Thank you,” said Messer. “See, Nails is a criminal, all right, but not the white-collar type.” He glanced at the computer screen. “He got himself in here on a dope-smuggling conviction, five to fifteen, should have been out in three and a half, four, but then he killed three inmates and ended up pulling the full load. Not the white-collar type, if you see what I mean.”

“He killed three inmates?” She’d known about the dope conviction ninety minutes after Eddie had first knocked on Jack’s door.

“Not that we could ever prove in a court of law. No one’s going to talk for the record, right? Or he would’ve been here forever. But we didn’t need that shit to deny parole. Excuse my language.”

“Of course, doctor. Could you tell me more about these killings?”

“Like what?”

“The motives, for example.”

Messer turned to the screen, scrolled through. “The usual initiation thing, I guess you could say. Only he took revenge. Successfully, you might say. That hardly ever happens.”

“Initiation thing.”

“This isn’t summer camp, Miss de Vere. How specific do you want me to be?”

“They raped him, is that what you’re pussyfooting around?”

“One way of putting it,” said Messer. “You’ve got to look at it in context.”

“Context?”

“It wasn’t an attack on Joe or Joanne Normal. Ol’ Nails is a violent guy.”

“I’ve seen no sign of that.”

Messer leaned forward. “You’ve met him?”

“More than once.”

“In New York?”

“That’s right.”

There was a silence. “But you’ve got no idea where he is.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Karen said. “As I mentioned.”

“No idea at all.”

“That’s what I said.” Karen got the odd idea that Messer shared her interest in Eddie’s whereabouts.

Messer shot her a quick, angry glance from under his Santa Claus eyebrows. Then he heaved a deep sigh. “Sorry if I’m a little distracted today. These executions are a nuisance, if you want my frank opinion.”

“You’re against them?”

“Against capital punishment? Just the reverse. For all the usual reasons. Plus it just feels right, morally speaking.”

“To whom?”

He yawned, stretched. There were sweat stains under both arms of his short-sleeved white shirt. “I’m sure you didn’t come all this way for a philosophical discussion, Miss de Vere. Have you got any other questions relating to Mr. Nye?”

“I could use a list of all his visitors over the fifteen-year period, but if that’s too much trouble, the last two or three will do.”

Messer turned to the computer. After a moment or two he said, “You’ve already got it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There was just the one visit. His brother, two months after processing day.”

“That can’t be right.”

“It’s all in the computer,” said Messer. He checked his watch. “Now, if there’s nothing else…”

Karen rose, extended her hand. That took some effort. He shook it. “Good luck,” he said.

She was almost at the door when she had a final thought. She stopped, turned.

“Did Eddie know Willie Boggs?”

“All those longtimers know each other, more or less.”

“Did they spend time together?”

“The death-row boys don’t do much circulating. About the only place they might have run into each other was the library. That’s where Mister Willie Boggs went when he wanted to play lawyer.”

“And Eddie Nye spent time in the library.”

“Oh, yes, he was quite the reader.”

Karen drove away from the prison in her rental car. A crowd of people stood in a dusty field by the side of the road; a woman in black held up a sign: “Stop the Murder of Willie Boggs.” Karen pulled over and got out.

She walked through the crowd. She saw a priest, a nun, a Buddhist monk; a woman in business dress, a leathery man wearing nothing but cutoffs, a baby in a stroller; a cameraman, a soundman, a reporter fixing her lipstick. She didn’t see Eddie Nye.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t coming. She glanced in her bag, saw the red fragment of the Monarch. Maybe Eddie and Willie Boggs had had long discussions in the library. Maybe he would want to be here.

The sun was setting, but the air was still warm. In the middle distance, the prison rose like a castle in the kind of bloody fairy tales that have been dropped from the anthologies, its stone walls reddened by the last rays of the sun. A breeze stirred, raising dust off the field. When a vendor came by pushing a cart, Karen ordered a diet soda, just to wet her throat.

“I’ve got beer too,” said the vendor. “And wine coolers.”

“No, thanks.”

The leathery man bought a can of beer with change dug from the pockets of his cutoffs and sat down cross-legged to drink. Night fell. Lights shone on the walls of the prison, as though a son et lumiere show was in the offing. A few more people arrived, none of them Eddie. The reporter interviewed the nun and a man with a bottle sticking out of his pants, then went into the TV truck with her crew. Karen could see them passing around cartons of food.

She found herself standing next to the woman with the sign. The woman had a milk-white face, bony arms, hair as black as her dress.

“They don’t interview me anymore,” she said.

“Did they use to?”

“Every time. Now they say they want a fresh point of view. Just when it’s most vital that I bear witness.”

“Aren’t you bearing witness anyway?”

“It’s hardly the same if the camera’s not running.” The woman, who had been gazing at the prison, glanced at Karen. “Everyone knows that.”

“What’s special about this time?”

“Willie Boggs.”

“I don’t know much about him.”

“Willie Boggs is a great man,” the woman said. “I’ve written him hundreds of letters. I mean that literally. Hundreds. He’s a wonderful human being, and now they’re going to murder him, when they should be setting him free at last. He could do so much good, out here in the world.”

“Did he ever write back?” Karen asked.

The woman closed her eyes. “Once,” she said. “He wrote me a beautiful letter.” Her eyes opened. “He writes like an angel, you know. If he’d written a book, it would have been published. I guarantee.”

“What did he say?”

“Say?”

“In his letter.”

The woman reached into the pocket of her dress, pulled out an envelope. “I’ll let you read it, if you want.”

“Not enough light,” said Karen.

The woman had a pencil flash. She stood close to Karen, aiming its beam. Karen could smell her breath. She read:

Dear Luanne:

Thanks for your letters. It is good to get letters in here as you can imagine-or maybe you can not. Of course it is not always easy to anser every one. My time for such activities is limited and most of it I spend on my case, as I am sure you understand.

Sincerely,

W. Boggs

“Very sensible,” Karen said, handing back the letter.

Luanne shone the pencil flash in her eyes. “But doesn’t he write beautifully?” she said.

Karen shielded her eyes. “He writes well,” she said, “based on this sample.” But she’d noticed the single spelling mistake in the letter, like the flaw that had made him kill the liquor-store clerk, or be present at the killing, or drive the getaway car for the killer.

Luanne snapped off the light, said, “He’s a great man,” and moved away, holding up her sign.

Three or four more people appeared; but not Eddie. The vendor returned, sold another beer to the man in cutoffs, a hot dog to the nun, coffee to the TV crew, another diet soda to Karen. The air was dusty and her throat dry.

The reporter approached her.

“Are you going to be here till the end?”

“When’s that?”

“Midnight,” the reporter said. “They always do it at midnight, for some reason.”

“Like Cinderella.”

“That’s good,” said the reporter. “You’re articulate. We need someone for a short interview after it’s over.”

“Try Luanne,” Karen said.

As midnight approached, the priest led most of the vigilants in prayer, while the Buddhist monk and a few others went off by themselves to chant. Karen participated in neither ceremony.

The distance to the prison, so brightly lit in the night, seemed to have shrunk, and it kept shrinking all the way to midnight, the prison seeming to come closer and closer. “Give us a miracle,” said a man, raising his arms to the sky like Moses in a painting.

After that there was silence. Plenty of lumiere, Karen thought, but no son.

Midnight brought son. “No, no,” someone screamed at the prison walls. The baby in the stroller awoke and started to wail. The man in cutoffs hurled a beer can in the direction of the stone walls and yelled, “You fucking no-good faggot butchers.”

“I beg of you,” the priest said to him.

The reporter said, “Remember to edit that out.”

The woman in business dress began to cry.

Someone turned up a portable radio. At twelve-fifteen it passed on the official pronunciation of death. Then there was more crying, more praying, more chanting.

Ten minutes later, the TV truck was gone. The Buddhist monk soon followed, and after him the priest, the nun, the others. The vendor sold one more beer to the leathery man in cutoffs, then locked up his cart and pushed it away. The leathery man wandered into the night.

That left Karen and Luanne. “He’s a martyr now,” Luanne said, still holding up her sign.

“To what cause?”

“You’re pretty cynical, you know that? Why did you even bother coming if you don’t care?”

Karen looked around, saw that the only car still there was hers. “Can I drop you somewhere?” she said.

Luanne shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere till he comes out. I always stay till I see them free.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’ll be taking him to the county after the show’s all over. You’ll see if you stick around.”

Karen stuck around. The night was pleasant, the moon was up, the prison glowed like an anti-Xanadu. Karen found herself thinking about Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Eddie Nye. Jack had got his hands on a bundle; it would probably take her months to discover how. Then he and Eddie had taken off; she might never find out where. Coming here had been a long shot. What next? She had no idea. She searched her mind for one; Luanne stood beside her, silent, holding up her sign.

An idea did come to Karen, but it was fuzzy. Something to do with bananas. Before she could bring it into focus, headlights appeared, and Luanne said, “Here he comes.” She hurried to the side of the road. Karen followed.

The headlights came closer. An ambulance. It wasn’t sounding the siren or flashing the light display. It wasn’t even going fast. There were two men in the front; Karen thought she recognized the one in the passenger seat. As the ambulance went by, Luanne stepped onto the road and cried, “Willie Boggs. Willie Boggs.” It almost hit her.

The ambulance drove on, rounded a bend, disappeared. Luanne dropped her sign where she stood, turned to Karen. “That’s it,” she said. “There’s nothing more I can do.”

They got into Karen’s rental car and drove off. They passed signs in the night: Motel 6, Mufflers 4U, Lanny’s Used Tires, Bud Lite, Pink Lady Lounge, All the Shrimp You Cn Eat $6.95, XXX Video, Happy Hour.

“Where can I drop you?” Karen said.

“There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts up ahead.”

Taillights shone in the distance, shrank quickly and vanished; someone going very fast. Then Karen noticed a second set of taillights that seemed not to be moving at all. They grew bigger, sharper. Karen sped up a little. She saw a car parked on the shoulder of the road at a funny angle. Not on the shoulder, actually, but in the adjacent field; and not a car but an ambulance.

Karen pulled off the road, got out of the car, walked toward the ambulance. Lights on, engine off, no sign of an accident. She looked in the front. The driver was alone, slumped forward on the wheel, as though he’d grown too tired to go on. Karen opened the door. The interior light went on, illuminating the bullet hole in the left side of his head.

Karen walked around to the back, tried the handle on the big door. It turned. The door swung open. No interior light went on; she saw shadowy forms.

“Luanne,” she called.

But Luanne was right beside her. “I’m here. What’s happened?”

“Give me your flash.”

Launne handed her the flash. Karen switched it on, shone it into the back of the ambulance. There was a man-sized bag on the floor, of the type the bodies came home in from Vietnam. A man slouched against the wall beside it, a piney-smelling man who was staring at nothing.

“Mr. Messer?” Karen said. No answer. “Doctor?”

She climbed up, bent over him. Messer had a hole in his head too, but in the back. She felt his neck for a pulse. There was none.

Karen knelt by the body bag, found the zipper, pulled it down, shone the pencil flash inside. The body bag was empty.

“Oh, God,” Luanne said. “He got away. He’s free, free, free.” She reached in for the bag, held it to her face.

“Don’t be stupid,” Karen said, moving into the front of the ambulance to call the police.

Luanne wasn’t listening. She was standing by the road, peering into the night for some sign of Willie Boggs, the body bag trailing behind her.

A few hours later they found Willie’s body, singed on the temples, wrists, and ankles from the electrodes, jammed into a locked supplies closet in the prison infirmary. The inmates were rousted and counted. All present, except for the occupant of cell 93 on the third tier of C-Block: Angel Cruz, known as El Rojo. The picture of the boy in the cowboy outfit that had been taped to the wall of C-93 was gone too.