In the Dannemora library: Ivy at one end of the table, Harrow at the other; plus the wall clock. A very old wall clock, Ivy noticed for the first time. The red second hand paused with a click sixty times a minute, audible to her now with just the two of them in the room.
“You don’t have to finish the hour on my account,” he said.
“How about showing me what you’ve written?” Ivy said.
“I understand if it shook you up,” Harrow said. He looked her in the eye, then away, then back again. Their gazes met; as they weren’t supposed to in prison. “Scary shit like that,” he added.
“You didn’t seem scared,” Ivy said.
“I’m used to it,” said Harrow. “But there’s a big gap between what just went down and your Twizzlers caper.”
“What did just go down?” Ivy said.
Harrow shrugged. “Guess they want to talk to Morales about what happened.”
“To Felix Balaban.”
“Yeah.”
“Meaning they think Morales was involved?”
“Oh, Morales did Felix, all right,” Harrow said. He started folding his sheet of writing paper, making an airplane. “The only question is why it took them so long to figure it out.”
Ivy felt her face getting hot, as though she were guilty of something bad.
“You okay?” Harrow said.
Ivy nodded. “Felix was so harmless,” she said.
“What did he steal?” Harrow said. “Fifty mil?”
“I meant in here,” Ivy said. “He was so harmless in here. Just a little guy, and all the others are so…physical. Why would anyone bother to hurt him?”
Harrow laughed. “You’re funny.”
“What do you mean?”
“People bother easily in this place,” Harrow said. “The Kings especially.”
“The Latin Kings?”
“They have a thing about respect,” Harrow said. “Their only thing, really, and Felix had a way of talking that didn’t go over well.”
“They killed him for that?”
“Beats getting killed for nothing at all.”
The clock ticked a few more times. Harrow finished his paper plane, sleek and tapered, making a tiny adjustment on one of the swept-back wings: a beautiful plane, actually.
“I hear you looked out for him,” Ivy said.
Harrow glanced up “Who told you that?”
“His wife. I saw her a few days ago.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Harrow. “Natasha, right?”
“Yes.”
“How did that go?”
“She’s very upset.”
“Maybe she’ll feel better soon,” Harrow said. He paused, held Ivy’s gaze. “When she finds out about Morales.”
“You think so?” Ivy said.
“Wouldn’t you?” said Harrow.
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do,” Harrow said. “Revenge feels good.”
“Not to everybody,” Ivy said.
“Call it justice, then,” said Harrow. “Same feeling.”
“What will happen to him?” Ivy said.
“Morales? He’s a lifer already.”
Ivy looked away. Nothing further was going to happen to Morales plus he’d done a horrible thing, so why did she feel ashamed of herself? “And Perkins?” she said.
“Perkins they’ll throw in the hole for a while,” Harrow said. “He just got caught up in the excitement. Lots of the guys in here are like that.” He flicked the plane across the table. It flew in a long curve and glided down in front of her, landing smoothly.
Ivy unfolded it and read:
The Cop Who Busted Me
Let’s call him Ferdie, maybe not as good a name as any, but it fits. Ferdie knocked on my door and said, “Police. Open up or we break it down.” Or some similar cop hello that I didn’t hear over the sound of the vacuum. Housework time, and I was just finishing up in the family room. Do I need to describe the family room? The only thing that might interest you was one of the photos on the mantel. Ferdie and I are both in it—Ferdie in the front row, beside the coach, holding the football, me in the back row at the end, smiling like I’d thought of something funny. Long gone, whatever that was.
Ferdie was nothing to me back in football days and less than nothing now. I’m happily going after dust balls under the tray table and the next thing I feel is his hard muzzle at the back of my head. Am I expecting company? No. That explains my overreaction and I don’t even recognize Ferdie till he’s down. Course he has backup—procedure is how they get control of the wild boys—and they work me over for a bit, completely understandable, no problem. Then Ferdie’s back in the picture, a little different with missing teeth. One of them’s in my hand; I’ve been clinging to it during the working-me-over part for some reason. Ferdie asks the big question, the one about where the money is. I can only laugh.
Ivy looked up. Harrow was watching her.
“Where did you learn?” she said.
“Learn what?”
“To write like this.”
“Is it any good?”
“Don’t you know?”
He shook his head.
“Did you go to college?”
“Have to graduate from high school first,” Harrow said.
“You didn’t?”
“Came close,” Harrow said.
Ivy read the story again. “What made you decide to change tenses?”
“How do you mean?” said Harrow.
“Paragraph one’s in the past, two’s in the present.”
“Yeah?” said Harrow. He got up, came around the table, read over Ivy’s shoulder. His leg pressed a bit against the back of her chair. “Hey, you’re right,” he said, and returned to his seat, simple, everyday movements that should have made no impression on Ivy, but because of their economy and ease, did.
“You must have read a lot, growing up,” she said.
Harrow shook his head. “But now I do.”
“What do you read?”
“Right now I’m going through a Louis L’Amour phase.”
Ivy had heard the name, couldn’t quite place it. Harrow went to the shelves, brought over a worn paperback with a hard-eyed gunslinger on the cover.
“Never read him,” Ivy said.
Still standing behind her, Harrow said, “I like the wide-open spaces.”
Ivy felt a funny feeling down her spine, as though someone had blown in her ear. She lowered her voice. “How did you get my number?” she said.
“Information,” he said, lowering his voice, too; and now she actually felt his breath in her hair. “Is there a problem?”
Ivy rose and faced him. “In terms of the preapproved lists and calling collect there is,” she said. “Not to mention cell phones.”
“Yes,” said Harrow. “Better left unmentioned.” He smiled. “But in terms of being the writing teacher—any problems there?”
Ivy thought about that. She was still thinking when Harrow backed quickly away. Taneesha stuck her head in the room.
“Time,” she said.
Harrow put Louis L’Amour back on the shelf, started for the door. He stopped, turned to her. “Any chance I could see something you’ve written?”
Ivy checked her folder. She had El-Hassam’s poem about the knife, Harrow’s jacket, Tony B’s article on the Gold Dust verdict, Whit’s rejection letter—and a copy of “Caveman.” She handed it to Harrow.
“Cool title,” he said on his way out.
Ivy walked up the hill to her car, the prison wall on her right, the long view toward Lake Champlain scrolling up on her left. The intense fall colors were long gone, and now the dull ones were gone, too. The red Saab was the brightest thing around, by far. Ivy was unlocking it when she noticed a business card stuck under one of the windshield wipers.
Sergeant Tocco’s card, with his name, position, and phone number printed on the front. She turned it over and found a single handwritten word.
Thanks.
Ivy ripped it up, tossed the pieces away. Getting in the car, she saw a guard watching from a tower high above.
Ivy drove out of town, came to the highway, pulled over. Bruce had left an old road atlas in the glove box. Ivy opened it to upstate New York, found Raquette, a little dot on the south side of the St. Lawrence. She totaled up the miles from Dannemora: 67.
Ivy got out her cell phone, called Verlaine’s. Dragan answered.
“Ivy? This is you?”
“Is Bruce there?”
“Thanks God, no,” Dragan said.
“Is something wrong?”
“Big dusting up with Chen-Li.”
Chen-Li was the cook. “Don’t tell me he fired him.”
“Oh, no,” Dragan said. “Chen-Li is quitting first. I am just now finished mopping up the damages.”
“God.”
“Any messages?” Dragan said.
“Tell him—” Ivy paused; she’d never done this to Bruce, not once. “Tell him I can’t make it tonight.”
“Cannot work the shift?” Dragan said.
“No.”
“You are sick, or—”
“No. Just tell him I can’t make it.”
“I? I am telling him?”
“Put Anya on,” Ivy said. “Maybe she’ll work a double.”
“Anya?” said Dragan. “She is quitting with Chen-Li.”
Ivy drove into Raquette. First came a sign saying she was now on tribal land, then ramshackle houses with rusted-out car shells in the yards and glimpses of the river in between, followed by a gas station advertising the cheapest gas east of the Mississippi, plus tax-free cigarettes; and after that the Gold Dust Casino. She pulled into a half-full parking lot.
Ivy had been in a casino once before—spring break junior year, Paradise Island. She’d walked in, dropped a quarter in the first slot machine she saw, pulled the arm, and presto: $425, a silver torrent that spilled all over her lap. After that, she’d moved onto blackjack, losing every penny of her winnings plus a hundred dollars more, which meant skipping a few meals to make her money last the rest of vacation. The whole episode took twenty minutes. She’d walked out feeling punchy.
The Paradise Island Casino was a kind of cartoon palazzo. What had Tony B called this one? A pit? Ivy didn’t see it that way, not from the outside. The Gold Dust Casino was built of logs, like a frontier cabin, but gigantic. She went inside.
“Welcome,” said a middle-aged blonde in a buckskin miniskirt. “Here’s a coupon for a free drink excluding champagne.”
“Thanks.”
“Enjoy.”
Ivy wandered past banks of slot machines, most of them in use, onto a raised floor with roulette and blackjack tables and a deserted bar at the back. She sat down. A bartender appeared. Ivy asked for orange juice, sliding over the coupon.
“Juice is free,” said the bartender, sliding it back.
Ivy gazed around the room, tried to picture the crime: three men in ski masks, smoke bombs, shotguns. Hard to imagine exactly how it was supposed to work in such a vast space. “Where’s the office?” she said.
“The office?” said the bartender.
“The business office,” she said. “Where they keep the safe, and all that.”
“The safe?” said the bartender. “I wouldn’t know.”
He filled a dish with mixed nuts, pushed it toward her, then went off down the bar and made a phone call. Ivy sipped her juice, tried the nuts. Lots of Brazil nuts in there, her favorite. She realized how hungry she was, had a few more. A man in a business suit sat on the stool to her left. Another man, in a security-guard outfit, took the stool on her right. Kind of annoying, considering all the empty places, but Ivy had seen similar things at Verlaine’s. When it came to single women, men could be—
“Got some questions, miss?” said the man in the suit. “I’m the manager.”
Ivy turned to him: a copper-skinned man with glossy black hair. “Questions? I don’t—” In the mirror she saw another security guard step up behind her. “Oh,” she said. “You mean about the safe?”
“I do,” said the manager.
The bartender watched from a safe distance. Ivy laughed. “For God’s sake,” she said, “you don’t really think I’m—” What was the expression? She fished it up from her memory pool of bad movies. “Casing the joint?”
This was pretty funny, although no one else was laughing.
“Why else would you be asking?” said the manager.
“I—” What the hell was she doing, anyway? Ivy offered an answer that had some truth in it. “I’m interested in the robbery you had seven years ago,” she told him. “I’m a writer.”
“What paper?” said the manager. “You’re supposed to go through our PR department.”
“No paper,” Ivy said. “I write fiction.”
The manager was silent for a moment or two. “You want to write a fiction story about a robbery that really happened?”
“To use it as a base,” Ivy said. “A taking-off point.”
“Taking off to what?” said the manager.
“Good question,” said Ivy. “I hope to find that out in the process.”
The manager nodded, as though that made perfect sense. “What have you written?” he said.
The hateful question. “I haven’t actually published anything yet.”
“I’ll need some proof,” the manager said.
“Proof?”
“That you’re a writer.”
She had no proof—that was the whole goddamn point of her life right now. Ivy came close to saying: Or what? What happens if I can’t prove I’m a writer? But then she remembered Whit’s rejection letter. She reached inside her folder.
“Slow and easy,” said the security guard behind her. A holster snapped open.
Ivy took out Whit’s rejection letter slow and easy and gave it to the manager.
He put on reading glasses and read it. “I love their cartoons,” he said, handing it back. “How can I help you?”