After twenty-four hours of fruitless searching, they’d covered a hundred miles around the prison.
Work on the new wing was halted, most of the prisoners existed in a state of frisson, and the guards kept their heads down. Local cops crawled over nearby towns, checking barns and silos and bunkers. Farmers woke in the night to flashlights on their land. A man was arrested in Arrow Port simply because he had lost an eye in Vietnam. Diners filled with out-of-town cops sipping coffee, already weary from the chase.
In Monta Clare reporters stood at the basin of Main Street and spoke of the pirate. They found the Mad House and photographed it, still standing so beautiful because Charlotte now tended it each week. She called it an investment in her future. Saint knew it was a little more than that.
By late morning Warden Riley was so mad he put his hand through the glass cabinet beside the painting. His secretary fetched a handkerchief for the cut, then beat a retreat because his mood bounced from every surface. He summoned guards and screamed at them, his cheeks crimson as spittle flew and landed on their faces. He fired the new guard, and the entire construction crew even though the delays would be costly.
“Who the hell was he close with? Someone knows something,” Riley spit.
A half hour later Tug was pulled from the yard and sat in front of the warden.
“You’re the one who started the trouble,” Riley said.
“No ventilation…this place ain’t fit for cattle.”
“The morning count was missed because of you.” Riley slammed a hand on the desk between them and issued all kinds of threats. Tug smoothed his moustache, crossed one leg over the other, and glanced at the painting, and then at the fine paneling and Persian rug.
“I once heard that there ain’t much more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Riley said, looking to Blackjack, who shrugged.
“It means…there also ain’t much more frustrating to you than a man with nothing to gain.”
Riley paced, weighing up how many ways he could make the old man’s life worse, and just how likely that was to work. “What do you want?”
An hour later a barber was fetched from the city of Hartville. He worked right there in the warden’s office, Tug’s white hair falling to the plush carpet. The pompadour rose high, the sides and back cut short. The barber held out a mirror, and Tug smiled at himself. “This still how they wear it?”
Blackjack dropped his head to shade his smile, bit his lower lip when Tug requested a wet shave and a little shea butter to cool the skin.
“I also like a dot of apricot kernel for moustache maintenance. Y’all still carry that?”
The barber looked to Blackjack, who looked to Riley, who walked from the room. Tug raised a hand; he’d ridden it further than he’d hoped.
When the barber was dispatched, the room vacuumed, and the warden returned, Tug leaned back in his chair.
“I want assurance you’ll bring him back safe. He’s as decent a man as I ever met.”
Riley nodded.
“He’s got a girl up there in North Dakota. Bismarck. Ain’t nothing stronger than the want of the human heart.”
Riley ordered Blackjack to take Tug straight to solitary.
They walked out into the sun together in silence.
At the door Blackjack handed Tug a large book on soap production. “Cooper said this came in for you.”
In that small and dank cell Tug breathed the richness of sandalwood oil, lay back on the mattress, and flipped open the book.
Inside was the June 1965 issue of Playboy.
He flipped to the twelve-page pictorial and smiled at Ursula Andress.
And then he closed his eyes and smiled again, this time at the thought of Riley and his cops heading a thousand miles in the wrong direction.