Triptych (16 page)

“Shelley?” a uniformed woman called. None of the guards had recognized him, but considering the volume of prisoners and visitors they had each week, this shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

“Shelley?” she called again.

John stood, clutching his grocery bag to his chest.

“Table three,” she said, nodding him in.

He put his bag on the X-ray belt, the third time it had been screened, and walked through the metal detector and into the visitors’ room. He stopped at the end of the belt, staring at the room, trying to see it the way his mother had. There were picnic-style metal tables bolted to the floor all around the twenty-by-thirty room. Men sat on one side, their wives or girlfriends or hookers they’d paid to come see them sitting on the other. Kids were running around laughing and screaming and, about every ten feet, there was a guard standing with his back to the wall. Cameras were everywhere, their lenses swinging back and forth in slow disapproval.

Ben Carver sat at one of the back tables, table three. He was dressed in his usual white shirt, white pants and white socks. He had a pair of matching patent-leather slippers that his mother had sent, but Ben seldom wore them outside the cell because he didn’t want them to get dirty.

Everybody had a persona in prison, a different personality they adopted that helped them survive. The thugs got meaner, the Aryans more cruel, the gays gayer and the loonies absolutely fucking nuts. Ben fell into this latter category, and he worked it like a master thespian. Not that John thought it was much of a stretch for the man. By the time the GBI caught up with him, Ben had killed six men in the surrounding Atlanta area. His particular twist was to cut off their right nipples for souvenirs. During his arrest at the main branch of the Atlanta post office where Ben had worked as a mail sorter for eighteen years, one of the cops became a little overzealous and slammed Ben to the ground. A piece of tissue-later identified as the right nipple of his last victim-flew out of Ben’s mouth where he had been sucking on it like a Lifesaver.

This lurid detail combined with Ben’s appropriate last name of Carver had made a big splash in the press. Unlike John, he made the national news, even got his own nickname: the Atlanta Carver. Ben had never been particularly pleased with the moniker, but then he was also angry with Wayne Williams, the man convicted in the Atlanta Child Murders case, for pushing him off the front page a few weeks after his arrest.

“My dear boy,” Ben said, smiling his thin smile as he sized up John. His lips were wet, a black stain at the center where he usually kept a cigarette. His teeth were likewise marked, nicotine drawing a bull’s-eye right at the center. One of the first things Ben had told John was that he had something of an oral fixation. “Better cigarettes than your right tit, my dear boy.” John had never complained about his smoking after that.

“So,” Ben said.

John stood at the table, not sure whether he wanted to sit. He told Ben, “You look good.”

“Of course I do.” He pretended to primp his hair, which was practically nonexistent, winking at someone behind John.

Though Ben was in protective custody, there wasn’t really a room set up to accommodate visitors in that wing, so he had to sit with the general population on the rare occasion someone came to see him. Any prisoner from the Level III mental health unit was at his most vulnerable during visitation. He had to rely on his fellow inmates being too distracted by their whores or too respectful of their wives and girlfriends to pull out a shiv and rip open his belly.

John said, “I had to see you.”

Ben tsked his tongue, and John tried not to think about what the man would have in his mouth right now if the cops hadn’t caught him. “Didn’t I tell you not to ever come back to this hell hole?”

“It’s good to see you,” John said, and he meant it. He hadn’t seen a welcoming face since he’d gotten out.

“Well,” Ben said, smacking his lips. “What have you brought me?”

John took the carton of unfiltered Camels out of the bag.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have!” Ben cradled the carton to his chest. “My sweetness, please do sit. You know I don’t like hovering even if it does give me a wonderful view of your package.”

John sat, feeling embarrassed by Ben’s language. He had forgotten how Ben spoke to him, the way he made you feel dirty even if he was just asking you what time it was. John had to remind himself this was part of Ben’s act, the way he got through the day without cutting his own throat open.

Ben confided, “Oprah is doing her favorite things today.”

Oprah
, the only program the entire cell bloc could agree on.

“I’m sure it’ll be a good one,” John said. He didn’t add anything else as a guard walked by, lingering near their table for a few minutes before moving on.

“Now,” Ben said, “you know I can’t stay away from my nicotine for long. What do you desire?”

John leaned in close, keeping his hands fiat on the table so the guard could see he wasn’t doing anything to break the rules. “I’ve got a problem.”

“I assumed as much.”

The guard had moved on. John resisted the urge to look over his shoulder. Ben was scoping out the situation behind him just as John was keeping his eye on everyone behind Ben.

“Precious,” Ben said, “let’s keep in mind the walls have ears.”

The tables, more like. John wasn’t sure whether it was true or not, but everyone in the prison believed there were bugs all over the visitors’ room- some under the tables, some overhead in the fluorescent lights. The cameras were visible enough, sweeping the room back and forth, zooming in on suspicious visitors. You couldn’t trust a priest in here.

In low tones, John told Ben about the television, the credit report, the post office. He told him about the man with the umbrella, careful not to say his name because who knew if the rumors were true.

When he had finished, Ben said, “I see.”

John sat back a little. “What should I do?”

Ben’s full lips pressed together and he put his finger where the black dot was burned into the flesh. “The question, my love, is not an easy one.

“He’s jacking me up for something,” John said, then, because he wasn’t sure, Right?“

“Oh, indeed,” Ben agreed. “There’s no other reason for this type of behavior. No reason at all.”

“He’s using me as a cover.”

“He’s framing you, my love.”

John shook his head, leaning in close again. “It doesn’t make sense. This started six years ago. I was in here six years ago. It’s an airtight alibi.”

“True, true,” Ben agreed, tapping his finger to his lip again. “Did he know you got out?”

John shrugged. “He could find out.”

“But did he know?” Ben said. “I must say, my darling, that it came as a surprise even to me when you spoke so eloquently to the parole board. Such a silver tongue.”

John nodded. He had surprised himself.

“Let’s pose a what-if,” Ben suggested. “What if your friend assumed you would rot away here in our little Maison du Feces?”

“Okay.”

“And what if, much to his surprise, he found our little darling boy got out?”

“Yeah?”

“And what if he felt threatened by your return?” Ben leaned in closer. “He has something going, obviously.”

“Yes,” John agreed.

“And he doesn’t want you to interfere with this little side thing, does he?”

“Right.”

“So, what does he do?”

Both men went quiet, tried to think it to the next step.

“I don’t know,” John admitted, frustrated. “I need to find him.”

“You’ve tried all the obvious routes?”

“Yeah.” He had checked the phone book, but the guy wasn’t listed. He’d even tried the computer at the library, feeling like an idiot as he followed the printed directions on how to do an Internet search. Nothing.

John said, “I have to find out what he’s up to.”

Ben fingered the carton of cigarettes, picking at the edge. John knew he was running out of time. “Of course, I could use the contacts from my previous life to get you this fella’s current address.”

“You’ve still got people?” John was surprised Ben was admitting this where he might be heard. There had been “sources close to the case” at the time of Ben’s trial who claimed that he had used the post office’s intercompany mail to send some of his souvenirs to fellow fetishists.

Ben slapped on a wide smile. “Through rain, sleet and snow… but you have yet to tell me the information I need to know.”

The name. He needed the name. John glanced around, opened his mouth, but-

“Hush, hush,” Ben warned.

Another guard walked by, standing just opposite their table. Both men fell silent again, and John stared at his hands, questioning the logic of coming here. Who else could he talk to? He couldn’t get Joyce wrapped up in this. The only people he knew were convicted felons and whores.

The guard moved along and Ben made a funny face. In a lot of ways, this man had been a father to John. How had that happened? How could somebody so evil, so absolutely without any redeeming qualities, be his friend?

There was no explaining it except to say that Ben thought he and John were two of a kind.

“I’ll tell you what,” Ben said. “I have a car.”

“What?”

“It’s at my mother’s house. I’ll call her today and say a friend is going to borrow it.”

Ben was smarter at this than him. John was just going step by step, not even thinking it through. So what if he found out the guy’s address? It’s not like he could follow him around on a MARTA bus.

John asked, “Does it still run?”

“Mother used to drive it to church every Sunday but her gentleman friend, Mr. Propson, takes her now,” Ben said. “Beulah Carver. I daresay she’s the only one in the book. She’ll give you the key, but don’t tell her how you know me.”

“You’ve been in jail for almost thirty years. Don’t you think she’ll figure it out?”

“I kept men’s nipples in her refrigerator for three years and told her they were herbal treatments for alopecia. What do you think?”

John conceded the point.

“Okay.” Ben’s eyes darted somewhere over John’s shoulder, and he spoke quickly, dropping the act for a moment. “You need to follow him,” he said. “Follow this man and find out what he’s doing, where he’s going. Everything happens for a reason. Everything.” He stood as another guard walked by. “Now go, my love, and thank you for the lovely gift.” He tapped the carton of cigarettes.

John stood, too. “Ben-”

“Go,” he insisted, throwing his arms around John’s shoulders, hugging him close.

The guards converged en masse-physical contact was strictly forbidden-but Ben held on tight, his wet lips brushing just under John’s ear. He was laughing like a hyena when they pulled him off, but he had the presence of mind to hold on to the cigarette carton.

“Good-bye, sweet boy!” Ben called as they dragged him to the door.

John waved back, resisting the urge to wipe off Ben’s saliva until the man had been taken out of view.

About five years into his sentence, John had asked Ben why the older man never made a pass or tried anything with him. John was bigger then. Just like his mother had always predicted, he had finally grown into his hands and feet. Weights at the gym had bulked him up and he had enough hair on his body to warm a polar bear. • Ben had shrugged. “Don’t eat where you shit.”

“No,” John persisted, not letting him get away with a sarcastic non-answer. “Tell me. I want to know.”

Ben had been doing a crossword, and he was annoyed at first, but then he saw John was serious and set the paper aside.

“There’s no sport in it,” Ben finally said. “I like the seduction of the show, my boy. I am an actor on a stage and you…” He gave his wet smile. “You are a rube.”

The rube hadn’t done too bad this time, though. In the few seconds Ben’s face had been pressed close to his, John had been able to tell him all he needed to know.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

After the jury returned with his sentence, John had been taken back to his cell at the county jail. They had left the cuffs on but taken away his belt and the laces in his shoes so he wouldn’t do anything crazy. They needn’t have bothered. He was too stunned to move, let alone figure out a way to kill himself in his tiny five-by-eight cell.

Twenty-two to life. Twenty-two years. He would be thirty before he was eligible for parole. He would be an old man.

“It’s good,” his mother had said, tears in her eyes. She didn’t cry much after he was arrested, but now she let the tears flow. “It’s good, baby.”

She meant it was good because he had avoided the death penalty. A fourteen-year-old in Massachusetts had just made national headlines for beating another fourteen-year-old to death with a baseball bat. A twenty-eight-year-old in Texas had recently been executed for a crime he committed at the age of seventeen. Juvenile offenders were no longer a novelty. John could have been on his way to death row right now instead of looking at a lifetime behind bars.

“We can appeal,” his mother told him. “It won’t be long,” she said. “We’ll appeal.”

Behind her, his aunt Lydia looked dubious. Later, he would find out that but for one juror, a father of three boys, one of whom was John’s age, everyone else had voted for death. The rest had taken one look at John, then at the supersized photos of Mary Alice’s mutilated body, and wanted him to die, too.

In the holding cell, John kept going over and over everything that was said about him during the trial. The state’s psychologist had seemed nice enough when they talked a few months ago, but at trial he had told the entire courtroom that John was obviously a delusional psychopath, a cold-blooded killer who showed no remorse. Then, there were the kids from John’s school who had stood up during the sentencing phase to talk about what a good girl Mary Alice was and what a horrible person John Shelley had always been. Principal Binder, Coach McCollough… they had all talked about him like he was Charles Manson.

Who was that person they were talking about? John didn’t recognize him. Half of those kids hadn’t even said two words to him in the last three years, but now they acted as if they knew everything about him. There had been that split when they went from elementary to middle school, and the popular clique had left John behind. If not for sports, he would have been some kind of geek left to hang in the wind. When he was kicked off the football team, none of them would even meet his eye in the hallway. Now, according to these “friends” of his, John was some kind of… monster.