The Viper

GURNEY ARRIVED ON the outskirts of Attica twenty minutes early.

Just past an area of modest village homes was the region’s gloomy center of gravity—a century-old penal fortress with concrete walls two feet thick and thirty feet tall, host to two thousand of the most dangerous convicts in the country, and location of one of the worst prison riots in modern American history.

The last time he had been here was on an equally dreary day shortly before his retirement from the NYPD. He’d come to interview a convict who claimed to have information on an open homicide case, the details of which were particularly grotesque.

Pushing those disturbingly vivid thoughts aside, Gurney locked his wallet and phone in the car and entered the medieval-looking tower that housed the prison’s main entrance. He was led to a large, windowless space filled with small pedestal tables and flimsy chairs, about half of which were occupied. The acoustics muddied the mixture of unhappy voices, and an odor of sweat and pine-scented disinfectant permeated the room. Six corrections officers were spaced out around the perimeter walls.

Soon after Gurney was seated, he saw Ziko Slade in a standard green convict uniform being directed to his table. That strange combination of soft, pampered features and calm, intelligent eyes Gurney had first noted in the trial video made the man instantly recognizable.

He took the chair opposite Gurney. He made no effort to force a handshake. Leaning forward, he spoke softly. “Thank you for coming here, sir. Your kindness means a great deal to me.”

“Emma believes in you.”

“Her belief is a blessing. Especially since so many facts appear to incriminate me. Every night, before I fall sleep, I wonder if the case will ever be understood, or if the person who killed Mr. Lerman will ever be found. But I must let go of these questions and focus on what’s good in my life.” He paused. “Thank you for making the long drive. I hope it wasn’t bad.”

“Not bad at all.”

Slade smiled. “The land is beautiful.”

“Yes.”

“It’s hard sometimes to see we’re surrounded by beauty. We do too much thinking. When I believe my ideas are real, what is real becomes invisible.”

Gurney wondered if Slade’s philosophizing was the product of serenity, psychosis, or manipulation. “How are you dealing with the reality of being here?”

“Often I wish I were somewhere else. Some people see this place as hell. I try to see it as purgatory.

“Meaning?”

“The fire of purgatory is purifying. The pain of clarity. The fire of hell is nothing but remorse. I agree with whoever said that hell is the truth seen too late. I’ve been blessed to have seen the truth while there was still time to live by it.”

“Even here in prison?”

“Wherever you are, you can live an honest life. But you know this already. I suspect you’ve always been an honest man.” He smiled, showing perfect teeth. “For me honesty is a relatively new concept.”

“How do you like it so far?”

Slade laughed as if Gurney had made a clever joke. “Honesty is astonishing. A key to another world.”

“A world Emma Martin introduced you to?”

“At the precise moment I was ready for it. Do you know I was stabbed and near death?”

“Emma told me.”

“Something happened while I was in the intensive care unit. I had a sudden vision of my life as a selfish, cruel, useless progression. A life of lies. I felt a desperate desire for my life to be the opposite of everything it was. That’s when I was brought to Emma. A magical connection.”

Gurney was skeptical of dramatic conversions, and particularly of their staying power. “So, that was the end of the old life? No thoughts of going back?”

The perfect smile reappeared. “Why would I go back to being the old me? That man was an idiot. I was drowning in money and buying one useless piece of junk after another. I had a fifty-thousand-dollar gold watch. Why? Because my East Hampton neighbor had a thirty-thousand-dollar gold watch. I was also fucking his very expensive wife. In fact, I fucked her in my laundry room the night of my own wife’s birthday party. I fucked her twice on her husband’s yacht. And I fucked their daughter for three days straight in a hotel room on a ten-grand crack buy. This was not unusual. This is what I did.”

“There are people who might envy that old life of yours.”

“People who don’t know what it really is. People who’ve never seen themselves as the scum of the earth, desperate to stay high because the crashes are devastating, and the crashes only get worse, and you get crazier and more terrified and more desperate. The dark is full of devils, and the light is unbearable. You want to die, but you’re terrified of dying—the claustrophobia, the paralysis, the suffocation—and the only way to escape the grave is to grab for another woman, another hit, another delusion of power. Then the next crash drives you back to the grave, and you can’t breathe and your mind is going to explode.”