Cut to the Bone(65)

Covington arched a tapered eyebrow.

“‘Be careful what you wish for,’” the state’s attorney said. “‘You may get it.’”

“So what do you think, Doc?” Earl asked, swinging his black-and-blue legs. A trio of crew-cuts - that’s what he called the latest crop of guards, crew-cuts, for their horribly unstylish buzzed heads - delivered another “cop-killer” lesson last night. He’d managed to break two of three noses, so it wasn’t all bad. Didn’t even get tossed in solitary. That would have meant writing up the attackers, which nobody wanted because it was, well, Earl Monroe, not a more sympathetic orphan-drowner or baby-raper. “Furman gonna live or die?”

Doc lit a pair of Camels, handed one to Earl. “Die.”

“Why?”

Doc blew a stream at the infirmary window. It swirled around the thick-painted bars, disappeared toward Joliet. “Two words,” he said. “Bobby Kennedy.”

Earl winced. “Oh, yeah,” he muttered. “What year was it again that poor Irisher got himself whacked? I lose track.”

“Sirhan slew Bobby in 1968,” Doc said. “Just two years after you-”

“Not you, too,” Earl spat, more hurt than angry. “Thought you were different, being decent to me all these years. But you don’t believe me either, do you?”

Doc sucked the cigarette tip red.

“Darling!” Verna Monroe said. “It’s so good to hear your voice! Where are you?”

“London.”

“Calling long distance from England,” Verna marveled. “You’re attending that engineering conference, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. When NASA says ‘jump,’ I ask, ‘how high?’“

Even with the crackle she heard the off note. “Is everything all right? Why are you calling when you’re so busy?”

“No reason,” Daniel Monroe said. He was rereading the summary of the Furman arguments he’d obtained from a barrister friend. “Just wanted to hear your voice. With all the traveling I’ve been doing, I haven’t talked to you as much as I’d like.”

“Well, isn’t that just like you,” Verna said. “Thinking of your mother when you’re doing such important work for our president. But that’s not really why you called, is it?”

Silence.

Verna waited patiently.

“What do you mean we’ve got insurance?” Covington asked.

“Sirhan Sirhan,” the state’s attorney said.

Covington’s eyes lit up. He’d been so obsessed with what the Supreme Court might not do to Monroe that he’d forgotten all about that cockroach. On June 5, 1968, Sirhan emptied a revolver into JFK’s kid brother at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The assassin was tackled by a curtain wall of Rosey Grier, George Plimpton, and Secret Service, then charged, convicted, and doomed to breathe cyanide till his skin turned purple.

“You’re right, skipper,” Covington said, inner fists unclenching. “No way the Supremes boot Sirhan from the gas chamber. Not after he whacks a Kennedy.”

“Not for all the tea in Red China,” the state’s attorney agreed. “If they’re not partial to avenging Bobby, well, Charles Manson and Richard Speck are on Death Row, too.”

“If the justices overturn Furman, they overturn everyone,” Covington said. “The public uproar would make the Boston Tea Party look like a college prank.”

“And that, my worried friend, is why Earl Monroe will die in Stateville, on time, in that great good chair of ours.” He grinned. “Thank God for celebrity victims.”

“You’re thinking about Earl, aren’t you?” Verna said. “Because of the court hearing.”

“Uh-huh,” Danny said, rubbing his arm. It was raining - no surprise, this being London - and his forearm ached like loose dentures. Despite his vow to Earl, he’d tried going back to the hospital to redefine The Way It Was. Earl’s chief enforcer, a refrigerator-size biker named Theodore Rehnt, caught him. He drove Danny at gunpoint to Naperville Cemetery, opposite the hospital, and delivered an earful about staying away.

Then broke his arm with a lead-filled blackjack.

“Pipe down, Danny, it’s a small fracture,” Teddy said over his yelps. “It’ll set fine. Tell the emergency room docs you fell up some stairs. They’ll buy it.”

He jacked Danny’s other arm, but only hard enough to bruise. “Don’t write to your brother. Don’t call. Don’t visit. Not now, not ever. He loves and misses you. But he can’t see you again. He told you that the other day, and you agreed. Now you gotta accept it like a man. Beats me why Earl wants it that way, but he does.”