trying a hell of a lot harder.”
“What does that mean in the real world?”
“It means finding her a job and a place to stay. It means putting her into a position where she can develop some self-respect and dignity.”
“Sounds good to me,” I say.
• • • • •
I RUSH THROUGH my Monday morning walk with Tara so I can meet Richard Wallace at the prison. He’s scheduled to interview Randy Clemens at nine-thirty, and there’s no way I’m going to be late.
I arrive early enough to eat breakfast at a nearby restaurant called Donnie’s House of Pancakes. I order banana walnut pancakes, which when they are served turn out to be regular, heavy pancakes with bananas and walnuts on top. It makes me feel old, but I can remember a time when the bananas and walnuts would have been inside the pancakes.
I decide to share this piece of nostalgia with the waitress, since there are only three other people in the restaurant and she’s not busy. “It makes me feel old,” I say, “but I can remember a time when the bananas and walnuts would have been inside the pancakes.”
“Whatever,” she says, demonstrating a disregard for cultural history. “You want coffee?”
“Not until after the Olympics,” I say.
“Whatever.”
I head over to the prison at nine-twenty, carrying the pancakes around like a beach ball in my stomach. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to be taking them with me wherever I go for a while.
Waiting for me at the gate are Richard Wallace and Pete Stanton. I’m a little surprised to see Pete, since Richard hadn’t mentioned bringing him, but I suppose a police presence is called for, especially if Randy is going to implicate someone in the murders.
“Good morning, guys,” I say.
They don’t return the greeting. “Andy, I tried to reach you, but you had already left.”
There is probably a scheduling foul-up; such things are very common in the prison bureaucracy. “Scheduling change?” I ask.
“Andy, Clemens is dead.”
It is as if he hit me in the face with a four-thousand-pound medicine ball. “What happened?”
“Somebody slit his throat this morning, outside the mess hall. I’m sorry, Andy.”
All I can think of is Randy’s daughter, who will never get to know what a great guy he was and how much he loved her. When she’s old enough to understand, I’m going to look her up and tell her.
Pete puts his arm on my shoulder and speaks for the first time. “Come on, Andy, the warden is waiting to see us.”
They lead me inside, and by the time we get to the warden’s office, my sadness is beginning to share space with my certainty that this cannot be a coincidence. Randy has been in this prison for four years, never once having a problem or altercation of any kind, and the day he is going to talk to us about the murders, he is himself killed.
“There was a commotion in the hallway,” says the warden. “A fight, some yelling, everybody milling around. Clemens wasn’t involved, but it was probably staged so that he could be killed without anyone seeing it happen.”
“So more than one person was involved?” I ask.
“Definitely. It was an organized effort.”
“Suspects?” Richard asks.
“Plenty of suspects, but no evidence. But I can tell you, if something like this happens in here, it’s very likely that Dominic Petrone wanted it to happen.”
Dominic Petrone is the head of what passes for the North Jersey mob, an organization that is still functioning quite effectively. He and Randy Clemens are from different worlds. There is no way Dominic had ever heard of Randy, nor had any kind of grudge against him. If he ordered Randy’s death, it is because he was told that Randy was about to say something that could hurt him.
It has to come back to Linda Padilla and her alleged mob ties. And if it does, and if the mob is somehow involved in these murders, then my client is actually innocent. Too bad my other client had to die for me to realize it.
I drive back to the office, replaying in my mind the last visit I had with Randy. I remember the wariness in his eyes as he looked around the room, the way something caused him to briefly stop as he was leaving. He knew that what he had to say was dangerous, but he was so anxious to find a way out of the prison that he was taking that chance.
I also think back to the words he used,