A Bad Man (3 page)

Feldman said nothing.

“Answer me,” the warden said.

“I’ve done nothing.”

“All right,” the warden shouted, “I said that’s enough. Since you’ve been here you’ve spoken only of your own injuries. Granted! What else?”

It was no contest. He wasn’t free to remain silent. The thing to do was to yield, to throw himself not on the warden’s mercy but on his will. He wants words, Feldman thought, I’ll give him words. He wants guilt? Let there be guilt.

“It says in that paper on your desk what I did,” Feldman said hoarsely. “It says I did favors.”

“What else?”

“That I was a middleman, a caterer. That they came to me. That I didn’t even have to advertise. Ethical. Like a doctor.”

“This is nothing,” the warden said. “You’re wasting time.”

“All right. I filled needs. Like a pharmacist doing prescriptions. Did you ever know anyone like me? The hell. A woman needed an abortion, I found a doctor. A couple needed a kid, I found a bastard. A punk a fix, I found a pusher. I was in research.”

The warden shuddered.

“Wait,” Feldman said, “you haven’t heard anything. In my basement. In my store. In a special room. Under the counter. I’ve found whores, and I’ve found pimps for whores. You don’t see it on the shelf? Ask. You have peculiar tastes? Feldman has a friend. What I said about the doctor and the pharmacist—that’s wrong. I was like a fence. I was a moral fence. That’s what it
says
I did.” He stopped talking. “One more thing,” he said in a moment, looking around, “this isn’t a confession.” He raised his voice. “Warden Fisher wanted me to talk, so I’m talking. I’m just repeating in my own words what’s written in his paper. None of it is true.”

The warden stared at him.

“That last takes care of your tape recorders,” Feldman told him. “And if you’re thinking of clipping it just before I added that, let me point out that I wasn’t speaking in my natural voice.”

The warden shook his head.

“I never took a penny,” Feldman whispered.

“I can’t hear you,” the warden said.

I never took a penny, he mouthed. “I did favors. I helped people. The whole case against me turns on whether I accepted money. I never did. And if you want to know my justification, it was for fun I did it,” he told him softly.

He spoke again in his normal voice. “According to your records, Warden, I accepted money from a Mrs. Jerome Herbert for arranging an interview with a judge who was to hear a case against her husband. Mrs. Herbert had a charge account at my store. We had just installed a new billing system. She received an unitemized bill for five hundred dollars, which she paid with a personal check made out to me. God knows what she bought from me for five hundred dollars, but it wasn’t an interview with any judge. God knows, too, why she would pay an unitemized bill or why she would make the check out to me, but that’s what happened. That’s why I’m here now. It was the machine’s mistake.”

“I smell you,” the warden said quietly.

“What?” Feldman asked. “What’s that?”

“I smell you.”

The pee, Feldman thought, embarrassed. He looked down at his pants and touched one palm of his trouser leg. It was still damp. The altitude—pee didn’t dry. That deputy bastard.

“I told you,” Feldman said, “you want evidence? There’s evidence. Send my piss to your crime lab.”

The warden moved suddenly and grabbed Feldman’s trousers, bunching the damp material in his fist, squeezing it. “That,” he said, “that’s nothing. I smell
you
.”

“What do you mean?” Feldman said, genuinely angry. “What kind of thing is that to say? What kind of way is that for a warden to talk? The deputy was ignorant, but you’re supposed to know better. I won’t be insulted by you, by someone in authority. I’m warning you. I have plenty of friends in this state.”

“You still think this is a game, don’t you?” the warden said. “You still think some philosophical cat and mouse is going on here. You bad clown, you wicked fool with your nonsensical impersonations and your miming and your boastful confessions. You bad, silly man, this is no game. Can you understand? You’re here for a year in this state’s licensed penitentiary, and it’s no game. There are no tape recorders. When I want you to confess I’ll have you beaten up and you’ll confess. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir,” Feldman said quietly.

“Yes sir,” the warden mocked. “You don’t understand yet, do you, actor? You still want me to say what’s always said. All right. ‘You play ball with us, we’ll play ball with you.’ All right. But don’t let that be any comfort to you. There aren’t any prizes for playing ball with us. I don’t care about your mind, and I promise no one will lay a finger on your soul. It’s your ass that belongs to us, Feldman. You want it back, stay out of trouble. Do the routines. Learn to think about your laundry. Keep your cell clean. Don’t put more on your tray than you can eat. Look forward to the movies. Make no noise after ten o’clock. Learn a trade. Try out for the teams. Pray for the condemned.”

Feldman’s heart turned. He felt the homunculus riding it twist.

“Stand up,” the warden commanded.

He stood slowly, forcing himself to look at the warden.

“There are some good men here,” the warden said. “I don’t want them corrupted by you.”

He watched the warden glumly.

“I don’t expect to see you again. Do you understand me? If we have business it’s to be conducted through a procedurally constituted chain of command, and the probability is I’ll initiate it. No more midnight meetings with the warden, actor.” He started to cough. “Get out,” he said. “Your stench gags me.”

3

F
eldman’s cell was ten feet wide and a dozen deep, about the size of the room in his father’s house when he was a boy. This struck him at once, and since he noticed that the cells varied in dimension, and even in their basic shapes, he wondered if perhaps this information had not also been in his records, and if putting him there had not been meant as some subtle lesson.

When he knew him better he asked his cellmate, a man named Bisch, what his room had been like as a child.

“Like a kitchen,” Bisch said. “I slept by the stove.” The man was tall—Feldman thought of him at first as a mountaineer—with grayish bushy hair that tufted up from his temples. Everything he did he did slowly, moving deliberately to tasks with the loose moodiness of an athlete stepping up to a mark. He had great pulling-and-tearing power in his long dark hands. Feldman was afraid of him. A strangler, he thought, a chopper, a choker.

Bisch had not even looked up, though he was awake, when Feldman was brought in, or when, moments later, Feldman urinated, splashing loudly, in the lidless toilet. They were awake together for hours that night, and though Feldman coughed and shivered, catching cold, the man said nothing.

Maybe there’s a ritual, Feldman thought. Maybe a new prisoner is supposed to introduce himself and announce his crime. “Feldman’s the name, favors the game,” he said to himself experimentally. “Feldman, not guilty. Machine error.”

It was, at first, like being in a hospital. What they all had in common was not their crime or their back luck or their contempt. Being locked up was their mutual disease, but because he was the most recent arrival he thought of himself as the sickest, the one with the greatest distance to travel to recovery, the most to lose. It did not matter that many of these men would never, as he would in a year, see the outside again. They were used to it. To judge by appearances, they were habitual criminals or men for whom being inside a prison was somehow a relief. Later he would look for the one called Pop, the one whom age made spotless, harmless, a saint by weary default of health and ego. Who volunteered to remain there always, who would be dangerous only if let loose, and then just long enough to get back, who would plan his last crime against society with the precision of a scientist and the knowledge of a Blackstone or a Coke, who knew even as he picked the lock or jimmied the window just how long he’d get, where to go till they caught him—only enjoying that much freedom, the two weeks like a sailor’s shore leave it would take to catch him. Nervous even in the local jail, wondering as he awaited trial if he had done enough to discount their mercy, their solicitude for his white hairs, his years, and calm only when pronounced guilty, and serene only back in the penitentiary. There was no such man.

He did not really wonder very much about the other men, however. He gave them his thoughts when he was with them in the dining hall or as he watched them from his cell, exercising in the prison yard—because of his cold they allowed him to remain inside, though he saw no doctor—but most of the time he could think of no one but himself, again like a man coming into a hospital.

As he began to feel better—now he was counterfeiting his cough—he worried about what to do with his time. During the daily hour of free time, he left his cell to see the library, as he had gone, too, to the swimming pool and gymnasium and crafts hall, as he had gone to
all
the facilities, hearing of them and finding them greedily, as on ocean liners he had taken his preliminary inspections of the ship, going into each of its salons and bays, only to decide, finally, on lunch in his cabin, or to sit for long hours in a deck chair.

He recalled his initial tours of their grounds when his son was a small boy and they had first moved to their house in the private suburb. In the back, set a good distance from the house and closed in by a low wall, was a large patio. One night Lilly had made supper out there—big steaks like great meaty South Americas, long fat cobs of corn, potatoes like brown, warm rocks, pale yellow butter, sour cream, rye bread, deep wet lakes of cream soda. Afterwards she went back into the house to do the dishes.

Feldman laid down along the wide top of one of the patio walls and stared up at the just dark sky. One bright star blazed directly above him.

“Come here, Billy,” he said to his son. The boy came and Feldman touched his cheek. “Bring Daddy a pillow from the house,” he said. When his son came back with the pillow, Feldman pulled him up on his stomach. “I’ll be
your pillow
.” He pulled him gently along his body. “Be careful,” he said, “don’t hurt me with your head.” Billy snuggled against Feldman. “Let’s look up at the night sky,” Feldman said. “I’ll give you all the stars you can count.”

The boy counted four pale stars and the bright one Feldman had seen when he first lay down.

“No you don’t,” Feldman said, “that bright one is mine.”

“You said I could have all of them,” Billy said.

“Not the bright one.”

“What makes that star so bright?”

“It’s closer.” He thought about light years.

“Is that one Mars?”

“Mars is a planet,” Feldman said. “It’s red.”

“I can’t see it.”

“It’s not out yet.” Feldman had never seen Mars.

“What’s a planet? Is a planet a star?”

“There are nine planets,” Feldman said. “Earth is a planet. And Mars. There’s Jupiter, and Saturn. Saturn has rings.” I’ve never been able to see the damn things, Feldman thought irritably. “Uranus is another planet.” He couldn’t think of the names of the other four. Maybe there were just two more. He couldn’t remember. He was pretty sure there weren’t just five. So much for the night sky.

“I tell you what,” Feldman said, “I’ll trade you your four stars for my bright one.”

“All right,” his son said.

“Done,” Feldman said. By this time more stars had appeared.

Feldman counted off eleven. “Those eleven stars are mine,” he said. “Daddy has fifteen, Billy has one.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Look alive then.”

“I’m mixed up,” his son said.

Feldman had hoped that as the sky grew darker one of his stars would outshine his son’s, but it hadn’t happened. He saw that he had to get the bright star back from the kid. “Billy,” he said, “I’ll give you that new star for your star.” There wasn’t any new star, but Feldman pointed vaguely into the heavens.

“No,” Billy said.

“Billy, I think that new star is a planet.”

“How do you know?”

“It looks like a planet.”

Billy looked into the sky.

“All right,” he said.”

“It’s an even trade,” Feldman said. “I get the bright star.”

“All right,” Billy said. After that, Feldman grew tired of the game and made his son get up.

“Billy has no sense of values,” he told his wife later. “He doesn’t have any idea how to do business. I killed him. You can tell him anything.”

It bothered him, however, that he didn’t know anything about the stars except how to trade them. The next week he brought home a high-powered telescope from Cameras, but he never learned how to focus it properly.

He saw at once on his tour of the prison that he would never use the gymnasium or the pool or go back to the crafts hall. But Jesus, he thought, remembering the warmth of his son’s body, what’s a man like me doing in prison?

In the mornings a bell rang at 6:30, and the men had twenty minutes to dress and shave and clean their cells.

His cellmate had told him the first morning that Feldman would have to clean the toilet and that he would do the sink himself.

“Why don’t we draw straws?” Feldman asked cheerfully.

“I already drew straws,” the man said. “You do the crapper.”

It’s my new concern with shit, Feldman thought darkly. Some gesture must have revealed his repugnance, for a man directly across from him stood at the front of his cell, watching as Feldman, still in his blue suit, scrubbed the inside of the bowl, flushing it constantly as he worked. The man said nothing, but Feldman could hear him come forward each morning he kneeled into position above the toilet.

One day Feldman watched as the man cleaned
his
toilet. That ended it—their caged inefficacy must have seemed as ridiculous to the man as it did to him, as if contempt without the possibility of blows and wounds was too wasteful, too extravagant. Perhaps it was for this reason that though arguments between men in the same cell were frequent and violent, conversations between cells were for the most part gentle. If their impotence taught them tolerance, it taught Feldman that the emotions were the first to go. There was comfort in this. Was that good?