Passion's Promise (11 page)

Her mental image of Johns was clearer now. Beady eyes, nervous hands, hunched shoulders, protruding paunch, and thin strands of hair covering a shiny balding forehead. She didn't know why, but she knew that she knew him. She could almost see him speaking as she read the book.

A man of massive proportions was making an introduction to Lucas Johns' speech, sketching in bold strokes the labor-union problems in prisons, the rough scale of wages (from five cents an hour, to a quarter in better institutions), the useless trades that were taught, the indecent conditions. He covered the subject easily, without fire.

Kezia watched the man's face. He was setting the stage and the pace. Low-key, low-voiced, yet with a powerful impact. It was the matter-of-fact way that he discussed the horrors of the prisons that affected her most It was almost odd that they would put this man on before Johns; it would be a tough act to follow. Or maybe not. Maybe Johns' nervous dynamism would contrast well with the first speaker's easier manner—easy, yet with an intense control. The fiber of this man intrigued her, so much so that she forgot to scan the room to assure herself that there was no one there to recognize her. She forgot herself entirely and was swept into the mood of the speech.

She took out her notebook and jotted quick notes about the speaker, and then began to observe the audience in general. She noticed three well-known black radicals, and two solid labor-union leaders who had shared their knowledge with Johns in the past, when he was getting started. There were a few women, and in the front row a well-known criminal attorney who was often in the press. It was a group that already knew the business at hand for the most part, and one that was already active in prison reform. She was surprised at the large turnout as she watched then- faces and listened to the last of the introduction. The room was surprisingly still. There were no rustlings, no little movements in seats, no noisy gropings for cigarettes and lighters. Nothing seemed to move. All eyes stayed fixed on the man at the front of the room. She had been right the first time; this would be tough for Lucas Johns to follow.

She looked at the speaker again. He had the coloring of her father. Almost jet black hair, and fiery green eyes that seemed to fix people in then- places. He sought eyes he knew, and held them, speaking only to them, and then moving on, covering the room, the voice low, the hands immobile, the face taut. Yet something about the mouth suggested laughter. Something about the hands suggested brutality. He had interesting hands, and an incredible smile. In a powerful, almost frightening way, he was handsome, and she liked him. She found herself watching him, probing, observing, hungry for details—the shoulders impacted into the old tweed jacket, the long legs stretched lazily out before him. The thickness of his hair, the eyes that roved and stopped, and then moved on again, until they finally sought her out She saw him watching her as she watched him. He held her long and hard in the grasp of his eyes, and then dropped her and let his glance move away. It had been a strange sensation, like being backed against the wall with a hand at your throat, and another stroking your hair; you wanted to cringe in fear, and melt with pleasure. She felt warm suddenly, in the room full of people, and quietly looked around, wondering why this man was taking so long. It was hardly an introduction. He had been speaking for almost half an hour. Almost as though he intended to upstage Lucas Johns. And then it dawned on her, and she had to fight not to laugh in the quiet room: this had never been an introduction. The man whose eyes had so briefly stroked hers was Johns.

"Coffee?"

"Tea, if possible." Kezia smiled up at Lucas Johns as he poured a cup of hot water, and then handed her a tea bag.

The suite showed signs of frequent guests—half-filled paper cups of coffee and tea, remains of crackers, ashtrays overflowing with peanut shells and stale cigarette butts, and a well-used bar in the corner. It was an unassuming hotel, and the suite was not large, but it was easy and comfortable. She wondered how long he had been there. It was impossible to tell if he'd made his home there for a year, or if he'd moved in that day. There was plenty to eat and drink, but nothing was personal, nothing seemed his, as though he owned the clothes on his back, the light in his eyes, the tea bag he had handed her, and nothing more.

"We'll order breakfast from downstairs."

She smiled again over her tea, and watched him quietly. "To tell you the truth, I'm not really very hungry. No rush. And by the way, I was very impressed by your speech last night. You seem so at ease on the stage. You have a nice knack for bringing a difficult subject down to human proportions without sounding self-righteous about what you know firsthand and your listeners haven't experienced. That's quite an art"

"Thank you. That's a nice thing to say. I guess it's just a question of practice. I've been doing a lot of speaking to groups. Is the subject of prison reform new to you?"

"Not entirely. I did a couple of articles last year on riots in two Mississippi prisons. It was an ugly mess."

"Yeah, I remember. The real point about the whole subject of 'reform' is not to reform. I think mat abolition of prisons as we know them now is the only sensible solution. They don't work like this anyway. I'm working on the moratorium on the construction of prisons right now, along with a lot of good people who organized it. I'll be heading down to Washington next."

"Have you lived in Chicago long?"

"Seven months, as a sort of central office. I work out of the hotel when I'm here, lining up speaking engagements, and some of the other stuff I do. I wrote my new book here, just holed up for a month and got down to work. After that, I lugged the manuscript around with me and wrote the rest on planes." "Do you travel a lot?"

"Most of the time. But I come back here when I can. I can dig my heels in and relax here."

Nothing about him suggested that he did that very often. He didn't seem the sort of man who would know how to stop, or when. For all the stillness, one sensed a driving force inside him. He had a very quiet way of just sitting, barely moving, his eyes watching the person he spoke to. But it was more like the cautious stance of an animal sniffing the air for signs of attack or approach, ready to spring in a moment. Kezia could sense too that he was wary of her, and not totally at ease. The humor she had seen in his eyes the night before was carefully screened now.

"You know, I'm surprised they sent a woman out to do the piece."

"Chauvinism, Mr. Johns?" The idea amused her. "No, just curiosity. You must be good or they wouldn't have sent you." There was the hint of arrogance she had sensed in his book.

"I think it's mostly that they liked those two pieces I did for them last year. I suppose you could say I've skirted the subject of prisons before ... if you'll pardon the pun."

He grinned and shook his head. "That's a hell of a way to put it."

"Then call it 'a view from the sidelines.'" "I'm not sure that's an improvement. You can never see from the sidelines ... or is it that you see more clearly? But with less life. To me, it always feels better to be right in the gut of things. You either get into it, or you don't. The sidelines . . . that's so safe, such a dead way to do anything." His eyes sparkled and his mouth smiled, but it had been a heavy message. "Come to think of it, I've read some of your articles, I think . . . could it have been in
Playboy."
He was momentarily bewildered; she didn't look the type for
Playboy,
not even in print, but he was sure he remembered an article not very long ago.

She nodded assent with a grin. "It was a piece on rape. In sympathy with the man's side, for a change. Or rather on false accusations of rape, made by neurotic women who have nothing better to do except take a guy home and then chicken out, and later yell rape."

"That's right. That's the piece I remember. I liked it."

"Naturally." She tried not to laugh.

"Now, now. It's funny though, I thought a man had written it. Sounded like a man's point of view. I guess that's why I expected a man to do this interview. I'm not really the kind of guy they usually send women out to talk to."

"Why not?"

"Because sometimes, dear lady, I behave like a shit." He laughed a deep, mellow laugh, and she joined him.

"So that's what you do, is it? Is it fun?"

He looked boyishly embarrassed suddenly and took a swallow of coffee. "Yeah, maybe. Sometimes anyway. Is writing fun?"

"Yes. I love it. But 'fun' makes it sound rather flimsy. Like something you do as a hobby. That's not the way I see it. Writing is important to me. Very. It's for real, more so than a lot of other things I know."

She felt strangely defensive before his silent gaze. It was as though he had quietly turned the tables on her, and was now interviewing her.

"What I do is important to me too. And real."

"I could see that in your book."

"You read it?" He seemed surprised, and she nodded.

"I liked it."

"The new one is better."

And so modest, Mr. Johns, so modest. He was a funny sort of man.

"This one is less emotional, and more professional. I dig that."

"First books are always emotional."

"You've written one?" The tables turned again.

"Not yet. Soon, I hope." It irked her suddenly. She was the writer, had worked hard at her craft over the past seven years, and yet he had written not one but two books. She envied him. For that, and a lot of tilings. His style, his courage, his willingness to follow his guts and jump into what he believed in ... but then again, he had nothing to lose. She remembered the dead wife and child then, and felt a tremor for something tender in him which must have been hidden somewhere, down deep.

"I have one more question, and then you can get into the piece. What's the 'K' for? Somehow 'K. S. Miller' doesn't sound like a name."

She laughed at him, and for the briefest of moments was about to tell him the truth:
Kezia. The "K" is
for Kezia, and the Miller is a fake.
He was the sort of man to whom you gave only the truth. You couldn't get away with less, and you wouldn't have wanted to. But she had to be sensible. It would be foolish to throw it all away for a moment of honesty. Kezia was an unusual name after all, and he might see a picture of her, somewhere, someday, and the next thing you'd know. . . .

"The 'K* is for Kate." Her favorite aunt's name.

"Kate. Sensible name. Kate Miller. Kate Sensible Miller." He grinned at her, lit another cigarette, and she felt as though he were laughing at her, but not unkindly. The look in his eyes reminded her again of her father. In odd ways they were similar . . . something about the way he laughed . . . about the uncompromising way he looked at her, as though he knew all her secrets, and was only waiting for her to give them up, to see if she would, as though she were a child playing a game and he knew it. But what could this man possibly know? Nothing. Except that she was there to interview him, and her first name was Kate.

"Okay, lady, let's order breakfast and get to work." The fun and games were over.

"Fine, Mr. Johns, I'm ready if you are." She pulled out the pad with the scribbled notes from the evening before, drew a pen from her bag, and sat back in her chair.

He rambled on for two hours, talking at length, and with surprising openness, about his six years in prison. About what it was like to live under the indeterminate sentence, which he explained to her: a California phenomenon which condemned men to sentences of "five years to life" or "three to life," leaving the term served to be determined by the parole board or the prison authorities. Even the sentencing judge had no control over the length of time a man spent in prison. Once committed to the claws of the indeterminate sentence, a man could languish in prison literally for life, and a lot of men did, forgotten, lost, long past rehabilitation or the hope of freedom until they no longer cared when they might be set free. There came a time when it didn't matter anymore. 

"But me," he said with a lopsided grin, "they couldn't wait to get rid of me. I was the ultimate pain in the ass. Nobody loves an organizer." He had organized other prisoners into committees for better working conditions, fairer hearings, decent visiting conditions with then- wives, broader opportunities for study. He had, at one time, been spokesman for them all.

He told her too of what had gotten him sent to prison, and spoke of it with surprisingly little emotion.

"Twenty-eight years old, and still stupid. Looking for trouble, I guess, and bored with the life I had. I was piss-eyed drunk and it was New Year's Eve, and well . . . you know the rest. Armed robbery, not too cool to say the least. I held up a liquor store with a gun that didn't even shoot, and got away with two cases of bourbon, a case of champagne, and a hundred bucks. I didn't really want the hundred but they handed it to me, so I took it. I just wanted the hooch to have a good time with my buddies. I went home and partied my ass off. Till I got hauled off to jail, a little after midnight. . . . Happy New Year!" He grinned sheepishly and then his face grew serious. "It sounds funny now, but it wasn't. You break a lot of hearts when you do something like that."

It seemed all wrong to Kezia. Admittedly it was an outrageous thing to do. But six years and his wife's life for three cases of liquor? Her stomach turned over slowly as her mind flashed back to scenes of La Grenouille and Lutece and Maxim's and Annabel's. Hundred-dollar lunches and fortunes spent on rivers of wine and champagne. But then, at those exalted watering holes, no one ordered his champagne with a shotgun.

Luke passed gracefully over his youth in Kansas. An uneventful period, when his worst problems were his size and his curiosity about life, both of which were out of proportion with his age and his "station in life." Despite Simpson's warning that Luke might be closed to personal probing, Kezia found him open and easy to talk to. By the end of the morning, she felt as though she knew all about him, and she had long since stopped taking notes. It was easier to hear the soul of the man just by listening—the political views, the interests, the causes, the experiences, the men he respected and those he abhorred. She would recapture it all later from memory with more depth. What surprised her most was his lack of bitterness. He was determined, angry, pushy, arrogant, and tough. But he was also passionate in his beliefs, and compassionate about the people he cared about. And he liked to laugh. The baritone laughter rang out often in the small living room in his suite, as she questioned him and he regaled her with stories of years long since past. It was well after eleven before he stretched and rose from his chair.