The Stand:BOOK I(42)

                       
       
           



       Chapter 24

Lloyd Henreid, who had been tagged "the baby-faced, unrepentant killer" by the Phoenix papers, was led down the hallway of the Phoenix municipal jail's maximum security wing by two guards. One of them had a runny nose, and they both looked sour. The wing's other occupants were giving Lloyd their version of a tickertape parade. In Max, he was a celebrity.

"Heyyy, Henreid!"

"Go to, boy!"

"Tell the DA if he lets me walk I won't letya hurt im!"

"Rock steady, Henreid!"

"Right on, brother! Rightonrightonrighton! "

"Cheap mouthy bastards," the guard with the runny nose muttered, and then sneezed.

Lloyd grinned happily. He was dazzled by his new fame. It sure wasn't much like Brownsville had been. Even the food was better. When you got to be a heavy hitter, you got some respect. He imagined that Tom Cruise must feel something like this at a world premiere.

At the end of the hall they went through a doorway and a double-barred electric gate. He was frisked again, the guard with the cold breathing heavily through his mouth as if he had just run up a flight of stairs. Then they walked him through a metal detector for good measure, probably to make sure he didn't have something crammed up his ass like that guy Papillon in the movies.

"Okay," the one with the runny nose said, and another guard, this one in a booth made of bulletproof glass, waved them on. They walked down another hall, this one painted industrial green. It was very quiet in here; the only sounds were the guards' clicking footfalls (Lloyd himself was wearing paper slippers) and the asthmatic wheeze from Lloyd's right. At the far end of the hall, another guard was waiting in front of a closed door. The door had one small window, hardly more than a loophole, with wire embedded in the glass.

"Why do jails always smell so pissy?" Lloyd asked, just to make conversation. "I mean, even the places where no guys are locked up, it smells pissy. Do you guys maybe do your wee-wees in the corners?" He snickered at the thought, which was really pretty comical.

"Shut up, killer," the guard with the cold said.

"You don't look so good," Lloyd said. "You ought to be home in bed."

"Shut up," the other said.

Lloyd shut up. That's what happened when you tried to talk to these guys. It was his experience that the class of prison corrections officers had no class.

"Hi, scumbag," the door-guard said.

"How ya doin, fuckface?" Lloyd responded smartly. There was nothing like a little friendly repartee to freshen you up. Two days in the joint and he could feel that old stir-stupor coming on him already.

"You're gonna lose a tooth for that," the door-guard said. "Exactly one, count it, one tooth."

"Hey, now, listen, you can't-"

"Yes I can. There are guys on the yard who would kill their dear old mothers for two cartons of Chesterfields, scumbucket. Would you care to try for two teeth?"

Lloyd was silent.

"That's okay, then," the door-guard said. "Just one tooth. You fellas can take him in."

Smiling a little, the guard with the cold opened the door and the other led Lloyd inside, where his court-appointed lawyer was sitting at a metal table, looking at papers from his briefcase.

"Here's your man, counselor."

The lawyer looked up. He was hardly old enough to be shaving yet, Lloyd judged, but what the hell? Beggars couldn't be choosers. They had him cold-cocked anyway, and Lloyd figured to get twenty years or so: When they had you nailed, you just had to close your eyes and grit your teeth.

"Thank you very-"

"That guy," Lloyd said, pointing to the door-guard. "He called me a scumbag. And when I said something back to him, he said he was gonna have some guy knock out one of my teeth! How's that for police brutality?"

The lawyer passed a hand over his face. "Any truth to that?" he asked the door-guard.

The door-guard rolled his eyes in a burlesque My God, can you believe it? gesture. "These guys, counselor," he said, "they should write for TV. I said hi, he said hi, that was it."

"That's a fuckin lie!" Lloyd said dramatically.

"I keep my opinions to myself," the guard said, and gave Lloyd a stony stare.

"I'm sure you do," the lawyer said, "but I believe I'll count Mr. Henreid's teeth before I leave."

A slight, angry discomfiture passed over the guard's face, and he exchanged a glance with the two that had brought Lloyd in. Lloyd smiled. Maybe the kid was okay at that. The last two CAs he'd had were old hacks; one of them had come into court lugging a colostomy bag, could you believe that, a fucking colostomy bag? The old hacks didn't give a shit for you. Plead and leave, that was their motto, let's get rid of him so we can get back to swapping dirty stories with the judge. But maybe this guy could get him a straight ten, armed robbery. Maybe even time served. After all, the only one he'd actually pokerized was the wife of the guy in the white Connie, and maybe he could just roll that off on ole Poke. Poke wouldn't mind. Poke was just as dead as old Dad's hatband. Lloyd's smile broadened a little. You had to look on the sunny side. That was the ticket. Life was too short to do anything else.

He became aware that the guard had left them alone and that his lawyer-his name was Andy Devins, Lloyd remembered-was looking at him in a strange way. It was the way you might look at a rattlesnake whose back has been broken but whose deadly bite is probably still unimpaired.

"You're in deep shit, Sylvester!" Devins exclaimed suddenly.

Lloyd jumped. "What? What the hell do you mean, I'm in deep shit? By the way, I thought you handled ole fatty there real good. He looked mad enough to chew nails and spit out-"

"Listen to me, Sylvester, and listen very carefully."

"My name's not-"

"You don't have the slightest idea how big a jam you're in, Sylvester." Devins's gaze never faltered. His voice was soft and intense. His hair was blond and crewcut, hardly more than a fuzz. His scalp shone through pinkly. There was a plain gold wedding band on the third finger of his left hand and a fancy fraternity ring on the third finger of his right. He knocked them together and they made a funny little click that set Lloyd's teeth on edge. "You're going to trial in just nine days, Sylvester, because of a decision the Supreme Court handed down four years ago."

"What was that?" Lloyd was more uneasy than ever.

"It was the case of Markham vs. South Carolina," Devins said, "and it had to do with the conditions under which individual states may best administer swift justice in cases where the death penalty is requested."

"Death penalty!" Lloyd cried, horror-struck. "You mean the lectric chair? Hey, man, I never killed anybody! Swear to God!"

"In the eyes of the law, that doesn't matter," Devins said. "If you were there, you did it."

"What do you mean, it don't matter?" Lloyd nearly screamed. "It does so matter! It better fuckin matter! I didn't waste those people, Poke did! He was crazy! He was-"

"Will you shut up, Sylvester?" Devins inquired in that soft, intense voice, and Lloyd shut. In his sudden fear he had forgotten the cheers for him in Maximum, and even the unsettling possibility that he might lose a tooth. He suddenly had a vision of Tweety Bird running a number on Sylvester the Cat. Only in his mind, Tweety wasn't bopping that dumb ole puddy-tat over the head with a mallet or sticking a mousetrap in front of his questing paw; what Lloyd saw was Sylvester strapped into Old Sparky while the parakeet perched on a stool by a big switch. He could even see the guard's cap on Tweety's little yellow head.

This was not a particularly amusing picture.

Perhaps Devins saw some of this in his face, because he looked moderately pleased for the first time. He folded his hands on the pile of papers he had taken from his briefcase. "There is no such thing as an accessory when it comes to first-degree murder committed during a felony crime," he said. "The state has three witnesses who will testify that you and Andrew Freeman were together. That pretty well fries your skinny butt. Do you understand?"

"I-"

"Good. Now to get back to Markham vs. South Carolina. I am going to tell you, in words of one syllable, how the ruling in that case bears on your situation. But first, I ought to remind you of a fact you doubtless learned during one of your trips through the ninth grade: the Constitution of the United States specifically forbids cruel and unusual punishment."

"Like the fucking lectric chair, damn right," Lloyd said righteously.

Devins was shaking his head. "That's where the law was unclear," he said, "and up until four years ago, the courts had gone round and round and up and down, trying to make sense of it. Does ‘cruel and unusual punishment' mean things like the electric chair and the gas chamber? Or does it mean the wait between sentencing and execution? The appeals, the delays, the stays, the months and years that certain prisoners-Edgar Smith, Caryl Chessman, and Ted Bundy are probably the most famous-were forced to spend on various Death Rows? The Supreme Court allowed executions to recommence in the late seventies, but Death Rows were still clogged, and that nagging question of cruel and unusual punishment remained. Okay-in Markham vs. South Carolina, you had a man sentenced to the electric chair for the rape-murder of three college co-eds. Premeditation was proved by a diary this fellow, Jon Markham, had kept. The jury sentenced him to death."