“Whatever they’re charging me with.” He grinned, inviting me to think he was clowning, but I didn’t smile back. Whatever else he might be, Johnny Merton was no buffoon.
Johnny was past sixty. During my brief stint as his lawyer when I’d been with the Public Defender’s Office, he’d been an angry man whose rage at being assigned yet another new-minted attorney made it almost impossible to stay in the bull pen with him. He’d earned his nickname, “The Hammer,” because he could bludgeon anyone with anything, including his emotions. The twenty-five intervening years—many behind bars—hadn’t exactly mellowed him, but he had learned better ways of working the system.
“Compared to you, my wants are so simple,” I said. “Lamont Gadsden.”
“You know, Warshawski, life in prison, it takes away so much from you, and one of the things I’ve lost is my memory. Name does not ring a bell.” He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. The snakes coiling around his biceps, looping down so that the heads rested on his wrists, seemed to writhe against his dark skin.
“Word is, you know where every Anaconda past and present is. Even to their final resting places if they’ve left the planet.”
“People do exaggerate, don’t they, Warshawski? Especially when they’re in front of a cop or a state’s attorney.”
“I’m not looking for Lamont Gadsden for my health, Johnny, but his mama and his aunt want him found before they die. Even though he hung with you, his auntie continues to think of him as a good Christian boy.”
“Yeah, every time you mention Miss Claudia, I start to cry. When I’m by myself and no one can see me, of course. You can’t afford to get a reputation for softness in the joint.”
“I doubt your tender heart will ever be your downfall,” I said. “You remember Sister Frances?”
“I heard about her, Warshawski. Now, there truly was a fine Christian woman. And I hear you was with her when Jesus took her home.”
“You hear a lot.” I put just the right amount of admiration into the sentence, and Johnny preened. But he didn’t say anything.
“You don’t care what she said to me before she died?” I prodded.
“You can make up anything a dead person said. It’s a good angle, but I’m not biting.”
“What about the living, then? You care about what your kid has to say about you?”
“You been talking to my girl?” This was news to him, and rage swept him off his feet, making the veins in his throat bulge. “You been harassing my family, and I hear about it from you in here first? You stay away from my girl. She’s living a life any father’d be proud of, and I won’t have scum like you bring her down. You hear?”
The guard came over from the corner and tapped his arm. “Johnny, take it easy, man.”
“Take it easy? Take it easy? You take it easy when this bitch, this cunt, comes after your family . . . I wouldn’t run you as a whore, Warshawski, you stink so bad.”
The guard was summoning help. Someone came in with manacles for Johnny.
“The Innocence Project, huh?” I pulled my papers together. “About the only thing you’re innocent of is the smarts to keep your sorry ass out of jail.”
I went through the search even lawyers undergo on their way out of Stateville. I hadn’t brought anything in with me, and I was leaving empty-handed, too: Johnny and I certainly hadn’t exchanged anything in our forty-five minutes together. Just to be on the safe side, the guards searched the trunk of my car.
As soon as I was clear of the prison grounds, I pulled off the road to stretch my arms. Tension builds in the calmest muscles when those gates close on you, and nothing about time in the Big House made me calm.
Joliet, where the prison stands, lies on the far side of Chicago’s heaviest exurban sprawl, and I’d be hitting the road at the same time everyone in the western suburbs was going home. The thought of the traffic knotted my shoulders even more. As I crept forward, I jotted a note in my time log. Forty-five minutes on the Lamont Gadsden inquiry. I’d long passed the point where I was making money on the case, but I couldn’t let the inquiry go, not as deeply mired in it as I’d become.
I oozed through the I-PASS lane at Country Club Plaza and finally found myself near streets I recognized, where I could take shortcuts around the expressways. It was almost seven, and the September sun was close to the horizon, blinding me every time the road curved west.
I needed to run in the fresh air with my dogs. I wanted to blow Stateville out of my lungs and hair, then curl up with a drink and the Cubs-Cardinals game. But I had two reports to finish for my most important bread-and-butter client. Best swing by my office and get them done so I could enjoy the game.