What plan?” I ask.
Philip Mackenzie nods at his son. Adam smiles and starts unbuttoning his shirt.
“You’re about to become me,” Adam says.
“Say again?”
“I would have liked more time to plan,” Philip says, “but I meant what I said. If you stay here, no matter how hard I try to protect you, it won’t end well. We got to do this now.”
Adam takes off his uniform shirt and hands it to me. “I’m wearing the smallest size I have, but it’ll still be loose.” I take hold of the shirt. Adam undoes his belt.
“Here’s the plan in a nutshell,” Philip continues. “You set us up, David.”
“I did?”
“You came to me yesterday for the first time—that meeting is on file—and you said that you wanted to be rehabilitated for your crimes. Gave me a whole big sob story of how you wanted to make amends and confess and get real help.”
I slip off my hospital gown and throw Adam’s white T-shirt over my head. Then I shrug into the uniform. “Go on.”
“You begged me to bring your old pal Adam in to see you. That’s where you wanted to start—with someone who’d listen and still accept you. Because of my loyalty to my old friend—your father—I fell for it. It made sense to me. If anybody could pull you back from the abyss and get you to confess the truth, it was Adam.”
Adam hands me his pants. He is grinning.
“So I arranged a long visit today—just like I told the correctional officers out there. You and Adam were going to spend the day together.”
The pants are too long. I roll them up and create cuffs.
“What I didn’t know was that you had a gun.”
I frown. “A gun?”
“Yes. You pulled it on us. You made Adam undress and then you tied him up and locked him in the closet.”
Adam smiles. “And me being afraid of the dark.”
I return the smile, though now I remember that as a child Adam had a Snoopy night-light near his bed. It kept me up sometimes when I slept over. I would stare at Snoopy and not be able to close my eyes.
Funny the memories that stay with you.
“Then,” Philip continues, “you put on Adam’s uniform, including his trench coat and cap. You forced me at gunpoint to take you out of here.”
“How the hell did I get a gun?” I ask.
Philip shrugs. “It’s a prison. People smuggle in a lot of things.”
“Not guns, Philip. And I just spent the night in the infirmary surrounded by three guards. No one is going to buy that.”
“Good point,” Philip says. “Wait, hold up.” He opens his desk drawer and pulls out a Glock 19. “You took mine.”
“What?”
Philip opens his suit jacket to reveal an empty holster. “I had the gun on me. We were reminiscing. You started to cry. I foolishly moved to comfort you. You caught me off guard and grabbed my gun.”
“Is it loaded?”
“No, but…” Philip Mackenzie reaches into his drawer and draws out a box of ammunition. “It is now.”
This plan is insane. There are a dozen holes. Big holes. But I am being swept out to sea in the riptide. There is no time for second-guessing. This is my chance. I have to get out of here. If Philip and Adam end up facing consequences or making sacrifices, so be it. My son is alive and out there somewhere. Selfish or not, that trumps all.
“Okay, so what’s next?” I ask.
Adam is down to his underwear. I take a seat and slip on his socks and start on the shoes. Adam is two inches taller and while we used to be around the same weight, he probably has twenty or thirty pounds on me now. I tighten the belt to keep my pants from falling down. I throw on the trench coat, which helps.
“I had Adam wear his cap on the way in,” Philip says, tossing me the police hat. “That’ll cover your hair. Walk fast and keep your head down. We only pass one checkpoint on the way out to the parking lot. When we get to my car, you will order me—at gunpoint, of course—to drive to my house. Stupid me, I went to the bank yesterday and took out five thousand dollars in cash. I would have taken more but that would be too obvious.”
Adam tosses me his wallet. “I have a thousand dollars in there. And maybe I’ll forget to cancel one of my credit cards. That Mastercard maybe. I never use it anyway.”
I nod and try not to get too emotional. I need to focus, stay in the moment, think it through while still moving. The Mastercard, for example. Could I use it? Or would that make it too easy to track me?
Later, I tell myself. Think about it later. Concentrate. “So when do we head to your car?”
Philips checks his watch. “Right now. We should get to my house before nine. You’ll tie me up, and I’ll escape at, say, six tonight. That should give you a decent head start. I’ll be panicked when I finally get free, especially because you tied up my son and left him in the closet. I’ll rush back here to let him out before I tell anyone what’s going on. Then I’ll sound the alarm. Probably around seven tonight. That should give you a solid ten-hour head start.”
I tighten the laces of Adam’s shoes so they don’t slip off. I have the cap’s brim tilted down over my eyes. Adam thinks about putting on the hospital gown, but there’s no point in that.
“Get in the closet,” Philip tells his son.
Adam turns to me. We hug deep and hard.
“Find him,” Adam says to me. “Find my godson.”
Philip tosses him a few candy bars along with restraints I might have used to tie him up. I don’t know if someone will buy that or not, but with luck, he won’t be found until later tonight—and by his father. Philip closes the closet door and locks it with his key. He picks up the Glock and presses the button on the hand grip, ejecting the magazine. I know that this Glock can hold fifteen rounds, but without an autoloader, arming it is slow. You have to insert ammunition one bullet at a time into the top of the magazine, making sure the rounded side is forward. Philip throws in six or seven bullets and then slams the magazine back into the handle.
He hands me the weapon.
“Don’t use it,” he says, “especially not on me.”
I manage a smile.
“You ready?” he asks.
I feel the adrenaline kick in. “Let’s do this.”
* * *
Philip Mackenzie is one of those guys who exude confidence and strength. When he walks, he walks big and with purpose. His strides are long. His head is high. I try to keep up with him, the brim of Adam’s cap pulled low enough to provide a modicum of disguise but not so low as to be conspicuous. We stop at an elevator.
“Press the down button,” Philip tells me.
I do as he asks.
“There’s a camera in the elevator. Flash the gun a little in there. Threaten me with it. Be subtle, but make sure the gun is visible.”
“Okay.”
“When I get back here, there will be questions. The more they can see I felt in mortal danger, the easier it’ll be.”
The elevator dings and the doors slide open. Empty.
“Got it,” I say as we step in. I have the gun in the pocket of the trench coat. It feels so playact-y, as though I’m threatening him with my finger. I take the gun out and keep it close to my side but in line with the camera overhead. I clear my throat and mutter something about not making any false moves. I sound like a bad episode of TV. Philip doesn’t react. He doesn’t throw his hands up or panic, which, I agree, adds to the realism of my “threat.”
When the elevator stops on the ground level, I put the gun back in my pocket. Philip hurries out of the elevator. I rush to keep up with him.
“Just keep walking,” Philip says to me in a low voice. “Don’t stop, don’t make eye contact. Stay a little bit behind me and on the right. I’ll block security’s line of vision.”
I nod. Up ahead I see a metal detector. I almost freeze, but then I realize it is only checking people incoming, not outgoing. No one is really paying attention to who is exiting except in the most cursory way, but then again this is the administrative branch. Inmates are never in here. There is only one guard. From a distance he looks young and bored and reminds me of a stoned hall monitor in a high school.
We are ten yards away. Philip steps on without hesitation. I try to slow down or speed up, gauging what angle would keep my face blocked by Philip’s big shoulders. As we get closer, as the young guard spots the warden barreling toward him, he throws his feet down and stands. He looks first at the warden, then at me.
Something crosses his face.
We are so close to that damn door.
I realize with something approaching dread that I still have the gun in my hand. My hand is in my pocket. Without conscious thought, my grip on the weapon tightens. I slide my finger onto the trigger.
Would I shoot? Would I really shoot this guy to escape?
Philip nods to the guard as we pass him, his face firm. I manage to make a nodding motion too, figuring that Adam might do that.
“Have a good day, Warden,” the guard says.
“You too, son.”
We are at the exit now. Philip presses hard against the bar, pushing the doors open.
Two seconds later, we are out of the building and on our way to his car.
* * *
Ted “Curly” Weston sat in the break room with his head in his hands. He couldn’t stop shaking.
Oh God, what had he done?
Messed up. Messed up big-time. He’d known better, hadn’t he? He’d tried to live his life on the straight and narrow. “A solid day’s work for a solid day’s pay.” That’s what his father had always said. His father worked as a butcher in a huge meatpacking plant. He woke up at three in the morning and spent his day in refrigeration and dragged himself home in time to eat dinner and go to sleep because he had to wake up the next day at three in the morning to get to work. That was his life until he keeled over and died at the age of fifty-nine of a heart attack.
Still, Ted had lived on the up-and-up for the most part. Did he take some graft in here? Sure. Everyone did. Everything in life is graft when you think about it. That’s life, man. We are all scamming one another. Ted had been better about it. He wasn’t a pig, but with the crap wages they pay you, you’re expected to skim to make up the difference. To supplement your earnings. That’s the American way. You can’t live on what Walmart pays you. Walmart knows that. But they also know the government will make up the difference with food stamps and Medicare or whatever. So yeah, maybe this is all self-justification, but when someone asks him to keep an eye on a prisoner, like he’d done over the years with Burroughs, or when a family wants to give him a tip—that was how Teddy viewed it, like a gratuity—to sneak a relative some sort of comfort item, well, why the hell not? If he said no, the next guy would say yes. It was expected. Everyone does it. It makes the world go round. You don’t rock the boat.
But Ted had never hurt anybody.
That was important to note here. He may have turned his back when these animals wanted to clobber one another. Why the hell not? They’d find a way to clobber one another anyway. One time Ted had gotten in the middle of one of those scrums and an inmate who looked like a walking venereal disease had scratched him deeply with his fingernail. His fingernail! Damn wound got infected. Ted had to take antibiotics for like two months.
He should have stayed away from Ross Sumner.
Yeah, the money had been big and real. Yeah, he didn’t so much need a “better life”—he had a pretty great one, really—but man, to just get above that pile of bills that were smothering him, drowning him, just to be able to float above those bills, just to go through a few days and not worry about money, maybe have enough to take Edna out to a nice dinner—was that too much to ask? Really?
Ted searched for a donut on the table, but there were none. Damn. Some jackass had brought croissants instead. Croissants. Ever try to eat a croissant and not get the crumbs all over you? Impossible. Yet that was the thing now. They were French, someone said. They were cultured and classy.
Are you kidding me?
Two of his fellow correctional officers, Moronski and O’Reilly, stuffed croissants in their pie holes, the flakes sputtering out of their mouths like out of a wood chipper, as they argued over best bosom point-of-view on Instagram. Moronski favored “deep cleavage” while O’Reilly was waxing poetic on the “side boob” shot.
Oh yeah, Ted thought. The croissants add a touch of class.
“Hey, Ted, you got an opinion on this?”
Ted ignored them. He stared down at the pastry and debated taking a bite. He started to reach out for one, but his hands were shaking.
“You okay?” O’Reilly asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“We heard about what happened,” Moronski said. “Can’t believe Burroughs would try something like that. You do something to piss him off?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Not sure why you’d take him to the infirmary without letting Kelsey know.”
“I buzzed him,” Ted lied, “but he didn’t reply.”
“Still. Why not wait?”
“Burroughs looked bad to me,” Ted said. “I didn’t want him dying on us.”
Moronski said, “Leave him alone, O’Reilly.”
“What? I was just asking.”
Enough, Ted thought. The big question: What was Burroughs telling the warden right now? Probably his version of the truth—that Ted had been the one with the shiv, not him. But so what? Who’d believe a baby-killer like Burroughs over Ted Weston? And O’Reilly’s questions notwithstanding, his fellow guards would back him. Even Carlos, who seemed pretty shook up when he came upon the scene last night, would fall into line. No one in here makes waves. No one in here is going to buck the system or side with an inmate.
So why didn’t Ted feel safe?
He had to think about his next move. The first thing was, put it behind him. Get to work. Act like it was no big deal.
But my God, what had Ted almost done?
True, Sumner had backed him into a corner, had really blackmailed him into it, but suppose if Ted had been “successful,” he would have killed a man. Murdered a fellow human being. That’s the part he still couldn’t get over. He, Ted Weston, had tried to kill a man. Part of him wondered whether he had subconsciously sabotaged himself, that it wasn’t so much that Burroughs had been quick or good at self-defense, but rather that Ted, no matter what else was true, knew that he could not go through with it. He thought about that now. Suppose the blade had hit home. Suppose he had punctured Burroughs’s heart and watched the man’s life leave his body.
Ted was in a panic now. But if he had gone through with it, if he had succeeded, would he be any better off?
He grabbed a cup of coffee and scarfed it down like an aardvark on an anthill. He checked the clock. Time to start his shift. He headed out of the break room.
Ted Weston was starting up the stairwell, fear still coursing through every vein in his body, when something outside the caged window caught his eye. He stopped short and hard, as if some giant hand had grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him back.
What the…?
The window looked out over the executive parking lot. The bigwigs parked there. The correctional officers, like Ted, had to park way out back and take a shuttle to their respective wings. But that wasn’t what bothered him right now. Ted squinted and looked again. The warden had been pretty specific: He was going to spend hours, if not the entire day, with Burroughs.
Yeah, okay, whatever.
So why was the warden getting into his car?
And who was the guy with him?
Ted felt something cold slide down his spine. He couldn’t say why. In many ways, this was no big deal. Ted watched the warden get in on the driver’s side. The guy with him—some guy in a hat and trench coat—got in on the passenger side.
So if the warden was heading out, where the hell was David Burroughs? Ted had his radio. There had been no call about a prisoner pickup. So maybe the warden had put him in solitary. No, if that had been done, they would have been informed. So maybe the warden left Burroughs with someone else, an underling, to interrogate him further.
But Ted knew it was none of those things. He felt it in his bones. Something was wrong here. Something big.
He hurried over to the wall phone and lifted it.
“It’s Weston, sector four. I think we got a problem.”