The Hot Rock

6

From his cell window Alan Greenwood could see the blacktopped exercise yard and the whitewashed outer wall of Utopia Park Prison. Beyond that wall hunkered the small Long Island community of Utopia Park, a squat flat Monopoly board of housing, shopping centers, schools, churches, Italian restaurants, Chinese restaurants, and orthopedic shoe stores, bisected by the inevitable rails of the Long Island Railroad. Inside the wall sat and stood and scratched those adjudged to be dangerous to that Monopoly board, including the gray-garbed group of shuffling men out there in the exercise yard at the moment and Alan Greenwood, who was watching them and thinking how much they looked like people waiting for a subway. Next to the cell window someone had scratched into the cement wall the question "What did the White Rabbit know?" Greenwood was yet to figure that one out.

Utopia Park Prison was a county jug, but most of its inmates belonged to the state, the county possessing three newer jugs of its own and no longer needing this one. The overflow of various state prisons was here, plus various charged men from upstate who'd won change of venue for their trials, plus some overflow from the boroughs of New York City, plus some special cases like Greenwood. No one was here for long, no one ever would be here long, so the joint lacked the usual complex society prisoners normally set up within the walls to keep themselves in practice for civilization. No pecking order, in other words.

Greenwood was spending most of his time at the window because he liked neither his cell nor his cellmate. Both were gray, scabrous, dirty, and old. The cell merely existed, but the cellmate consumed a lot of the hours in picking at things between his toes and then smelling his fingertips. Greenwood preferred to watch the exercise yard and the wall and the sky. He had been here nearly a month now, and his patience was wearing thin.

The door clanged. Greenwood turned around, saw his cellmate on the top bunk smelling his fingertips, and saw a guard standing in the doorway. The guard looked like the cellmate's older brother, but at least he had his shoes on. He said "Greenwood. Visitor."

"Goody."

Greenwood went out, the door clanged again, Greenwood and the guard walked down the metal corridor and down the metal spiral stairs and along the other metal corridor and through two doors, both of which had to be unlocked by people on the outside and both of which were locked again in his wake. This was followed by a plastic corridor painted green and then a room painted light brown in which Eugene Andrew Prosker sat and smiled on the other side of a wall of wire mesh.

Greenwood sat opposite him. "How goes the world?"

"It turns," Prosker assured him. "It turns."

"And how's my appeal coming?" Greenwood didn't mean an appeal to any court, but his request for deliverance to his former pards.

"Coming well," Prosker said. "I wouldn't be surprised if you heard something by morning."

Greenwood smiled. "That's good news," he said. "And believe me I'm ready for good news."

"All your friends ask of you," Prosker said, "is that you meet them halfway. I know you'll want to do that, won't you?"

"I sure will," Greenwood said, "and I mean to try."

"You should try more than once," Prosker told him. "Anything that's worth trying is worth trying three times at the very least."

"I'll remember that," Greenwood said. "You haven't given my friends any of the other details, I guess."

"No," Prosker said. "As we decided, it would probably be best to wait till you're free before going into all that."

"I suppose so," Greenwood said. "Did you get my stuff out of the apartment?"

"All seen to," Prosker said. "All safely in storage under your friend's name."

"Good." Greenwood shook his head. "I hate to give up that apartment," he said. "I had it just the way I wanted."

"You'll be changing a lot of things once we get you out of here," Prosker reminded him.

"That's right. Sort of starting a new life almost. Turning over a new leaf. Becoming a new man."

"Yes," said Prosker, unenthusiastically. He didn't like taking unnecessary chances with double entendres. "Well, it's certainly encouraging to see you talking like this," he said, getting to his feet, gathering up his attache case. "I hope we'll have you out of here in no time."

"So do I," Greenwood said.