Lights Out

“Don’t mention it.” El Rojo examined something in his hand: the tongue ring. Eddie couldn’t remember how he’d gotten it. El Rojo slipped it into his shirt pocket and looked at Eddie. He had liquid amber eyes, like pools of maple syrup. “Melodrama happens in real life?” he said.

Eddie shrugged.

El Rojo smiled at him. He had the whitest smile Eddie had seen in fifteen years, marred by a missing canine. “Smoke?” he said, as though they were sitting in a quiet club somewhere.

“I’m trying to quit.” Quitting wasn’t easy inside, where cigarettes were money and the American Lung Association had no influence.

“For when you are released?” asked El Rojo. His voice too reminded Eddie of maple syrup; smooth like some old black-and-white screen star’s, one with a trace of accent.

Eddie made that connection, but he said: “How’d you know I was getting out?”

El Rojo answered with a question. “You’re the one they call Nails?”

“Yeah.”

“Everybody knows you. Or almost everybody,” he added, glancing at the pool of blood. Then he laughed. There was nothing cultured about his laughter. It sounded more like the utterance of a crow than of some black-and-white smoothie.

El Rojo shook two cigarettes out of a pack. “How can one more hurt you?” he asked. One of Eddie’s rules for life inside was to take nothing from anyone, and he was in El Rojo’s debt already, but he took the cigarette. What the hell. He was getting out. El Rojo lit a match, offered the flame to Eddie, then sucked at it himself. They exhaled two smoke clouds that became one in the air. “My name is Angel,” said El Rojo, giving it the Spanish pronunciation.

“It is?”

El Rojo showed his beautiful teeth. “Angel Cruz,” he said. “Cruz Rojo, you see. Kind of a joke.”

“Because you supply the medicine.”

El Rojo laughed his cawing laugh. “That’s part of it,” he said. “You’ve got brains. I like that.” He held out his hand. Eddie took it, felt the long, slightly damp fingers wrap around the back of his palm. Those fingers reminded him of something in “The Mariner,” but he couldn’t think what. He drew deeply on the cigarette. Cigarettes helped you think.

“See?” said El Rojo. “What’s one more?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, blowing another cloud of smoke. “I’m getting out.”

2

He was nineteen, still in many ways a boy; an athletic boy with a swimmer’s body, light hair, unmarred skin. Three lifers got him in the showers. One was called Louie. Louie was the best bridge player in the joint; he’d been working on his game for twenty years. Before that he’d raped and killed a sorority sister in Pennsylvania, was still cutting her up when the police arrived. The other two were overgrown and mildly retarded brothers from the Ozarks who did what Louie said. Louie could have used one more helper. It took too long to get the boy down. They had to break his jaw and a few of his ribs. Even then, the boy kept thrashing until hit on the head with a cast-iron shower faucet ripped out of the wall. After that, they did what they wanted.

Day 5,478: his last. Eddie Nye awoke before six, remembered, disbelieved. Maybe it was only day 300 and he had dreamed the rest. “Christ,” he thought, but must have spoken aloud, because from the bottom bunk he heard Prof say, “What you got to be pissed about?” and he knew it was true.

Before breakfast, Eddie went through his locker. The clothes, all state issue, he tossed on the bunk. The books, magazines, and Remington cordless he left for Prof.

“Not takin’ the razor, man?” said Prof, watching from his bunk.

Eddie shook his head. He unstrapped his watch and handed it to Prof as well. “Hey,” said Prof.

“Just take it,” Eddie told him. He could feel Prof thinking: But I already got a watch; and What’s he pullin’? But Prof was too smart to say anything; at least, he wanted to leave the impression he was smart. Forgers were supposed to be smart, and maybe some still were. But Prof was a modern forger-he dealt in official documents, bribing government clerks for the real thing. And Eddie was past caring what was going on in Prof’s mind. All he wanted was to walk out of there clean, completely clean.

Eddie rummaged in the locker. At the bottom lay his mail. Four letters. The first, almost fifteen years old to the day, was a consolation note from his lawyer. Eddie had forgotten his name. He checked the letterhead: Glenn Weems, of Smith and Weems. Eddie tried to picture him and couldn’t.

The second, from Wm. P. Brice, Investigation and Security, was dated a few months later.

Dear Mr. Ed Nye:

As I informed your brother, all our best efforts to locate the individual known as JFK have to this point in time been unsuccessful. Lacking further funds to continue, we are obliged to terminate the investigation.

Sincerely,

Bill Brice

The third letter had come two years after that.

Dear Mr. Nye: