The Stand, Page 23

  The dark man walked and smiled. Bradenton represented just one end of one conduit, and there were thousands of them--the pipes the crazies moved through, carrying their books and bombs. The pipes were interconnected, the sign-posts disguised but readable to the initiate. In New York he was known as Robert Franq, and his claim that he was a black man had never been disputed, although his skin was very light. He and a black veteran of Nam--the black had more than enough hate to make up for his missing left leg--had offed six cops in New York and New Jersey. In Georgia he was Ramsey Forrest, a distant descendant of Nathan Bed-ford Forrest, and in his white sheet he had participated in two rapes, a castration, and the burning of a nigger shanty town. But that had been long ago, in the early sixties, during the first civil rights surge. He sometimes thought that he might have been born in that strife. He certainly could not remember much that had happened to him before that, except that he came originally from Nebraska and that he had once attended high school classes with a red-haired, bandy-legged boy named Charles Starkweather. He remembered the civil rights marches of 1960 and 1961 better--the beatings, the night rides, the churches that had exploded as if some miracle inside them had grown too large to be contained. He remembered drifting down to New Orleans in 1962, and meeting a demented young man who was handing out tracts urging America to leave Cuba alone. That man had been a certain Mr. Oswald, and he had taken some of Oswald's tracts and he still had a couple, very old and crumpled, in one of his many pockets. He had sat on a hundred different Committees of Responsibility. He had walked in demonstrations against the same dozen companies on a hundred different college campuses. He wrote the questions that most discomfited those in power when they came to lecture, but he never asked the questions himself; those power merchants might have seen his grinning, burning face as some cause for alarm and fled from the podium. Likewise he never spoke at rallies because the microphones would scream with hysterical feedback and circuits would blow. But he had written speeches for those who did speak, and on several occasions those speeches had ended in riots, overturned cars, student strike votes, and violent demonstrations. For a while in the early seventies he had been acquainted with a man named Donald DeFreeze, and had suggested that DeFreeze take the name Cinque. He had helped lay plans that resulted in the kidnapping of an heiress, and it had been he who suggested that the heiress be made crazy instead of simply ransomed. He had left the small Los Angeles house where DeFreeze and the others had fried not twenty minutes before the police moved in; he slunk away up the street, his bulging and dusty boots clocking on the pavement, a fiery grin on his face that made mothers grab up their children and pull them into the house, a grin that made pregnant women feel premature labor pains. And later, when a few tattered remnants of the group were swept up, all they knew was there had been someone else associated with the group, maybe someone important, maybe a hanger-on, a man of no age, a man called the Walkin Dude, or sometimes the Boogeyman.

  He strode on at a steady, ground-eating pace. Two days ago he had been in Laramie, Wyoming, part of an ecotage group that had blown a power station. Today he was on US 51, between Grasmere and Riddle, on his way to Mountain City. Tomorrow he would be somewhere else. And he was happier than he had ever been, because--

  He stopped.

  Because something was coming. He could feel it, almost taste it on the night air. He could taste it, a sooty hot taste that came from everywhere, as if God was planning a cook-out and all of civilization was going to be the barbecue. Already the charcoal was hot, white and flaky outside, as red as demons' eyes inside. A huge thing, a great thing.

  His time of transfiguration was at hand. He was going to be born for the second time, he was going to be squeezed out of the laboring cunt of some great sand-colored beast that even now lay in the throes of its contractions, its legs moving slowly as the birthblood gushed, its sun-hot eyes glaring into the emptiness.

  He had been born when times changed, and the times were going to change again. It was in the wind, in the wind of this soft Idaho evening.

  It was almost time to be reborn. He knew. Why else could he suddenly do magic?

  He closed his eyes, his hot face turning up slightly to the dark sky, which was prepared to receive the dawn. He concentrated. Smiled. The dusty, rundown heels of his boots began to rise off the road. An inch. Two. Three inches. The smile broadened into a grin. Now he was a foot up. And two feet off the ground, he hung steady over the road with a little dust blowing beneath him.

  Then he felt the first inches of dawn stain the sky, and he lowered himself down again. The time was not yet.

  But the time was soon.

  He began to walk again, grinning, now looking for a place to lay up for the day. The time was soon, and that was enough to know for now.

  CHAPTER 24

  Lloyd Henreid, who had been tagged "the baby-faced, unrepentant killer" by the Phoenix papers, was led down the hallway of the Phoenix municipal jail's maximum security wing by two guards. One of them had a runny nose, and they both looked sour. The wing's other occupants were giving Lloyd their version of a tickertape parade. In Max, he was a celebrity.

  "Heyyy, Henreid!"

  "Go to, boy!"

  "Tell the D.A. if he lets me walk I won't letya hurt im!"

  "Rock steady, Henreid!"

  "Right on, brother! Rightonrightonrighton!"

  "Cheap mouthy bastards," the guard with the runny nose muttered, and then sneezed.

  Lloyd grinned happily. He was dazzled by his new fame. It sure wasn't much like Brownsville had been. Even the food was better. When you got to be a heavy hitter, you got some respect. He imagined that Tom Cruise must feel something like this at a world premiere.

  At the end of the hall they went through a doorway and a double-barred electric gate. He was frisked again, the guard with the cold breathing heavily through his mouth as if he had just run up a flight of stairs. Then they walked him through a metal detector for good measure, probably to make sure he didn't have something crammed up his ass like that guy Papillon in the movies.

  "Okay," the one with the runny nose said, and another guard, this one in a booth made of bulletproof glass, waved them on. They walked down another hall, this one painted industrial green. It was very quiet in here; the only sounds were the guards' clicking footfalls (Lloyd himself was wearing paper slippers) and the asthmatic wheeze from Lloyd's right. At the far end of the hall, another guard was waiting in front of a closed door. The door had one small window, hardly more than a loophole, with wire embedded in the glass.

  "Why do jails always smell so pissy?" Lloyd asked, just to make conversation. "I mean, even the places where no guys are locked up, it smells pissy. Do you guys maybe do your wee-wees in the corners?" He snickered at the thought, which was really pretty comical.

  "Shut up, killer," the guard with the cold said.

  "You don't look so good," Lloyd said. "You ought to be home in bed."

  "Shut up," the other said.

  Lloyd shut up. That's what happened when you tried to talk to these guys. It was his experience that the class of prison corrections officers had no class.

  "Hi, scumbag," the door-guard said.

  "How ya doin, fuckface?" Lloyd responded smartly. There was nothing like a little friendly repartee to freshen you up. Two days in the joint and he could feel that old stir-stupor coming on him already.

  "You're gonna lose a tooth for that," the door-guard said. "Exactly one, count it, one tooth."

  "Hey, now, listen, you can't--"

  "Yes I can. There are guys on the yard who would kill their dear old mothers for two cartons of Chesterfields, scumbucket. Would you care to try for two teeth?"

  Lloyd was silent.

  "That's okay, then," the door-guard said. "Just one tooth. You fellas can take him in."

  Smiling a little, the guard with the cold opened the door and the other led Lloyd inside, where his court-appointed lawyer was sitting at a metal table, looking at papers from his briefcas
e.

  "Here's your man, counselor."

  The lawyer looked up. He was hardly old enough to be shaving yet, Lloyd judged, but what the hell? Beggars couldn't be choosers. They had him cold-cocked anyway, and Lloyd figured to get twenty years or so. When they had you nailed, you just had to close your eyes and grit your teeth.

  "Thank you very--"

  "That guy," Lloyd said, pointing to the door-guard. "He called me a scumbag. And when I said something back to him, he said he was gonna have some guy knock out one of my teeth! How's that for police brutality? "

  The lawyer passed a hand over his face. "Any truth to that?" he asked the door-guard.

  The door-guard rolled his eyes in a burlesque My God, can you believe it? gesture. "These guys, counselor," he said, "they should write for TV. I said hi, he said hi, that was it."

  "That's a fuckin lie!" Lloyd said dramatically.

  "I keep my opinions to myself," the guard said, and gave Lloyd a stony stare.

  "I'm sure you do," the lawyer said, "but I believe I'll count Mr. Henreid's teeth before I leave."

  A slight, angry discomfiture passed over the guard's face, and he exchanged a glance with the two that had brought Lloyd in. Lloyd smiled. Maybe the kid was okay at that. The last two CAs he'd had were old hacks; one of them had come into court lugging a colostomy bag, could you believe that, a fucking colostomy bag? The old hacks didn't give a shit for you. Plead and leave, that was their motto, let's get rid of him so we can get back to swapping dirty stories with the judge. But maybe this guy could get him a straight ten, armed robbery. Maybe even time served. After all, the only one he'd actually pokerized was the wife of the guy in the white Connie, and maybe he could just roll that off on ole Poke. Poke wouldn't mind. Poke was just as dead as old Dad's hatband. Lloyd's smile broadened a little. You had to look on the sunny side. That was the ticket. Life was too short to do anything else.

  He became aware that the guard had left them alone and that his lawyer--his name was Andy Devins, Lloyd remembered--was looking at him in a strange way. It was the way you might look at a rattlesnake whose back has been broken but whose deadly bite is probably still unimpaired.

  "You're in deep shit, Sylvester!" Devins exclaimed suddenly.

  Lloyd jumped. "What? What the hell do you mean, I'm in deep shit? By the way, I thought you handled ole fatty there real good. He looked mad enough to chew nails and spit out--"

  "Listen to me, Sylvester, and listen very carefully."

  "My name's not--"

  "You don't have the slightest idea how big a jam you're in, Sylvester. " Devins's gaze never faltered. His voice was soft and intense. His hair was blond and crewcut, hardly more than a fuzz. His scalp shone through pinkly. There was a plain gold wedding band on the third finger of his left hand and a fancy fraternity ring on the third finger of his right. He knocked them together and they made a funny little click that set Lloyd's teeth on edge. "You're going to trial in just nine days, Sylvester, because of a decision the Supreme Court handed down four years ago."

  "What was that?" Lloyd was more uneasy than ever.

  "It was the case of Markham vs. South Carolina," Devins said, "and it had to do with the conditions under which individual states may best administer swift justice in cases where the death penalty is requested."

  "Death penalty!" Lloyd cried, horror-struck. "You mean the lectric chair? Hey, man, I never killed anybody! Swear to God!"

  "In the eyes of the law, that doesn't matter," Devins said. "If you were there, you did it."

  "What do you mean, it don't matter?" Lloyd nearly screamed. "It does so matter! It better fuckin matter! I didn't waste those people, Poke did! He was crazy! He was--"

  "Will you shut up, Sylvester?" Devins inquired in that soft, intense voice, and Lloyd shut. In his sudden fear he had forgotten the cheers for him in Maximum, and even the unsettling possibility that he might lose a tooth. He suddenly had a vision of Tweety Bird running a number on Sylvester the Cat. Only in his mind, Tweety wasn't bopping that dumb ole puddy-tat over the head with a mallet or sticking a mousetrap in front of his questing paw; what Lloyd saw was Sylvester strapped into Old Sparky while the parakeet perched on a stool by a big switch. He could even see the guard's cap on Tweety's little yellow head.

  This was not a particularly amusing picture.

  Perhaps Devins saw some of this in his face, because he looked moderately pleased for the first time. He folded his hands on the pile of papers he had taken from his briefcase. "There is no such thing as an accessory when it comes to first-degree murder committed during a felony crime," he said. "The state has three witnesses who will testify that you and Andrew Freeman were together. That pretty well fries your skinny butt. Do you understand?"

  "I--"

  "Good. Now to get back to Markham vs. South Carolina. I am going to tell you, in words of one syllable, how the ruling in that case bears on your situation. But first, I ought to remind you of a fact you doubtless learned during one of your trips through the ninth grade: the Constitution of the United States specifically forbids cruel and unusual punishment. "

  "Like the fucking lectric chair, damn right," Lloyd said righteously.

  Devins was shaking his head. "That's where the law was unclear," he said, "and up until four years ago, the courts had gone round and round and up and down, trying to make sense of it. Does 'cruel and unusual punishment' mean things like the electric chair and the gas chamber? Or does it mean the wait between sentencing and execution? The appeals, the delays, the stays, the months and years that certain prisoners--Edgar Smith, Caryl Chessman, and Ted Bundy are probably the most famous-- were forced to spend on various Death Rows? The Supreme Court allowed executions to recommence in the late seventies, but Death Rows were still clogged, and that nagging question of cruel and unusual punishment remained. Okay--in Markham vs. South Carolina, you had a man sentenced to the electric chair for the rape-murder of three college co-eds. Premeditation was proved by a diary this fellow, Jon Markham, had kept. The jury sentenced him to death."

  "Bad shit," Lloyd whispered.

  Devins nodded, and gave Lloyd a slightly sour smile. "The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which reconfirmed that capital punishment was not cruel and unusual under certain circumstances. The court suggested that sooner was better ... from a legal standpoint. Are you beginning to get it, Sylvester? Are you beginning to see?"

  Lloyd didn't.

  "Do you know why you're being tried in Arizona rather than New Mexico or Nevada?"

  Lloyd shook his head.

  "Because Arizona is one of four states that has a Capital Crimes Circuit Court which sits only in cases where the death penalty has been asked for and obtained."

  "I don't follow you."

  "You're going to trial in four days," Devins said. "The state has such a strong case that they can afford to empanel the first twelve men and women that get called to the box. I'll drag it out as long as I can, but we'll have a jury on the first day. The state will present its case on the second day. I'll try to take up three days, and I'll fillibuster on my opening and closing statements until the judge cuts me off, but three days is really tops. We'll be lucky to get that. The jury will retire and find you guilty in about three minutes unless a goddamned miracle happens. Nine days from today you'll be sentenced to death, and a week later, you'll be dead as dogmeat. The people of Arizona will love it, and so will the Supreme Court. Because quicker makes everybody happier. I can stretch the week--maybe--but only a little."

  "Jesus Christ, but that's not fair!" Lloyd cried.

  "It's a tough old world, Lloyd," Devins said. "Especially for 'mad dog killers,' which is what the newspapers and TV commentators are calling you. You're a real big man in the world of crime. You've got real drag. You even put the flu epidemic back East on page two."

  "I never pokerized nobody," Lloyd said sulkily. "Poke, he did it all. He even made up that word."

  "It doesn't matter," Devins said. "That's what I'm trying
to pound through your thick skull, Sylvester. The judge is going to leave the Governor room for one stay, and only one. I'll appeal, and under the new guidelines, my appeal has to be in the hands of the Capital Crimes Circuit Court within seven days or you exit stage left immediately. If they decide not to hear the appeal, I have another seven days to petition the Supreme Court of the United States. In your case, I'll file my appeal brief as late as possible. The Capital Crimes Circuit Court will probably agree to hear us--the system's still new, and they want as little criticism as possible. They'd probably hear Jack the Ripper's appeal."

  "How long before they get to me?" Lloyd muttered.

  "Oh, they'll handle it in jig time," Devins answered, and his smile became slightly wolfish. "You see, the Circuit Court is made up of five retired Arizona judges. They've got nothing to do but go fishing, play poker, drink bonded bourbon, and wait for some sad sack of shit like you to show up in their courtroom, which is really a bunch of computer modems hooked up to the State House, the Governor's office, and each other. They've got telephones equipped with modems in their cars, cabins, even their boats, as well as in their houses. Their average age is seventy-two--"

  Lloyd winced.

  "--which means some of them are old enough to have actually ridden the Circuit Line out there in the willywags, if not as judges then as lawyers or law students. They all believe in the Code of the West--a quick trial and then up the rope. It was the way out here until 1950 or so. When it came to multiple murderers, it was the only way."

  "Jesus Christ Almighty, do you have to go on about it like that?"

  "You need to know what we're up against," Devin said. "They just want to make sure you don't suffer cruel and unusual punishment, Lloyd. You ought to thank them."

  "Thank them? I'd like to--"

  "Pokerize them?" Devins asked quietly.

  "No, course not," Lloyd said unconvincingly.