The Unwilling(68)

Three in the morning.

Lots of dark left.

Taking a breath to steady his resolve, he broke the seal and started reading. It was all there in photographs and plain print: the lost years and the war, the life of his middle son. It took an hour to skim the file, and two more to read it again more slowly. Turning off the light, French tried to understand the things he’d learned of his son and the darkness of this particular war. It was not easy. There was no clear path. He was exhausted and hurting, but when the sun rose, he was still at the desk, still dumbfounded, thunderstruck, blown the absolute fuck away.





24


Jason woke on a hard bunk, and knew, even without windows, that it was not yet sunrise. That was the rhythm of war and prison. Too many bloody dawns and dead friends. In the dark, he did push-ups and stretched, then trained for forty minutes, not just the close-quarter combat techniques taught to every marine in Force Recon—the combination of Okinawan karate, judo, tae kwon do, and jujitsu perfected by Bill Miller in 1956—but also a devastating blend of Van An Phai and Vovinam, learned across two years from a colonel in the South Vietnamese army. The movements were fluid, fast, precise. He worked until the sweat poured and the guards came to take him back to death row. One, he knew. Kudravetz. The other was new to X’s detail. They shackled him in silence, and no one spoke on the long walk. No one needed to. At death row, they removed the restraints and sent him down to X.

“Good morning, Jason.”

Jason took the final step down, and met X where he stood beneath the stone arch. “It’s a little early.”

“And yet you’re not my first visitor.”

Jason frowned because X did nothing without reason; said nothing without reason. He wanted Jason to ask about the visitor, so Jason did not.

Eventually, X shrugged. “You remember Reece, I’m sure. A blunt instrument, admittedly, but predictable when such things matter.”

Jason was still trying to gauge the moment. A smile. A frown. In the subbasement, they rarely meant the normal things. “How about you tell me why I’m here.”

“You’re here because I found yesterday unsatisfactory. Because I went to bed unhappy, and woke thinking we should try again.” X turned for the cells, and Jason followed with the same wariness. At the second cell, X gestured at a table set for breakfast. “Bacon and eggs, grapefruit and pastry. This is honey from the warden’s wife. She’s begun to keep bees, apparently.”

He offered a chair, and Jason sat stiffly, watching X do the same. He was clean-shaven and finely dressed, but his face was bruised and taped, his knuckles scraped raw. X noticed the studied glance, and shrugged a second time. “One of the Pagans, late last night. I think his name was Patterson.”

“Was Patterson?”

“Was. Is.”

“Why a Pagan?”

“I may spend my days below ground, but I do hear things, rumbles of displeasure from some of the Pagans. They seem to believe you stole from the club and put a few bullets in one of their shot callers. I made it known that you are under my protection.”

“Is that why I’m here? So I can thank you?”

“For now, it’s about breakfast. For later…” X made an expansive gesture. “Discourse. Debate. A few well-fought contests in the days which remain.”

“Discourse and debate.”

“Honest discourse. Vigorous debate.”

“You had Tyra killed for the sake of a conversation?”

“In part, yes.” X frowned for the first time, shaking his head. “But also because she was cruel, selfish, and vain, an utter waste of life.”

“And what of my life?”

“You’ll lose a few days of it. A small price.”

“No, X. Not a few days. I’ll be here long after they kill you. The lights will flicker, and I’ll be here to see it happen. Ten years later, I’ll still be here. You’ve assured as much: the photographs, the murder weapon.”

“Yes, well…” X poured coffee for them both. “You’ve known for some time that I am not a nice man.”

He lifted a cup, his attitude so dismissive that Jason found it impossible to keep his anger in check.

Tyra’s death.

His freedom.

X must have seen the conflict in Jason’s face, yet acted oblivious. “Tell me again, Jason. How long since you left this place?”

“Two months and nine days.”

“And, in that time, did you think of me? Beyond what I’d chosen to share, were you curious about my life before this place? Did you search out the articles, the documentaries? The public record is quite extensive.”

“No.” Jason clenched his jaw. “I left here knowing everything I needed to know about your life and the people you killed. If I forgot half of what you told me, I’d still know too much.”

“Do you know how they caught me?”

Jason did, in fact, know a lot about X’s life before prison. In spite of what he’d said, he’d watched both documentaries, read the articles and police interviews, the in-depth profiles in the glossy magazines. No journalist had all the facts, of course, and no cop alive knew how many people X had actually killed. But Jason could name them all. He knew what they’d looked like and how they’d died and what small flicker of life had drawn X like a moth from the dark. He knew their last words and how they’d begged and what they’d felt like and smelled like, and how X had placed his tongue, once, on a still-beating heart that tasted of salt, and felt like warm vinyl.