Punishment (7 page)

Lou was long gone, burned out. “Where did you run into him?”

“In a liquor store,” she said and chuckled. “He lives near us, retired. But he mentioned you. And he talked about how some of you came in with such great intentions. You were going to turn the system inside out. Full of progressive ideals.”

I drank from my glass, tried not to squirm. Shrugged and looked out the window.

“What happens to idealism, Tony? That’s a real question. I see it all the time. People losing their ideals.”

“I suspect you know the answer,” I said. “You’re the psychologist.”

“Strickland doesn’t belong in max,” she said.

“Where would you put him?”

“Medium for sure. Probably Warkworth. Maybe minimum, Bath or Archambault. He grew up on a farm, didn’t he?” She sipped her wine now, staring intently into my eyes.

And by the end of lunch I’d told her that I had already agreed to put in a good word for Strickland, to help him on his way to Warkworth. She reached across and grasped my hand. I remember the expression, the smile, the eye-warmth.

“Thank you, Tony. You won’t regret this.”

Two weeks later Sophie called me. “My turn to buy lunch,” she said.

“What’s the occasion?”

“I’ve just come out of a meeting,” she said. “Dwayne Strickland will be moving to Warkworth any day now.”

In Strickland’s final weeks in Kingston Pen, while Sophie worked the system to get him out of there, he and I established a rapport of sorts, talking about the place we knew as home—whatever that means—and “normal” people that we knew.

“Maybe we could change your name to MacInnis,” I told him. I was trying to be helpful.

“Nah,” he said. “Why would I do that?”

“Word will be out in the system, you ratted out the Horse and Driscoll.”

“I didn’t fuckin rat out anybody.” His face was flushed. So much for anger management.

There had been no formal charges in the death of the Italian as the only evidence was circumstantial. So corrections punished the suspects as best we could. Mess up their miserable lives a bit more. “Fuck them up,” was how we put it in our private justice system.

“They’re being shipped out,” I’d informed him. “One to the
Special Handling Unit at Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, one to the max in Renous. Let’s just say life is gonna be a bit more complicated now. Their families are back here, Ste-Anne is infested with bikers, and Renous is in the middle of nowhere. They’ll know there’s a reason for the change and they’ll know what the reason is. You’ll get the blame, just based on the rumours.”

“So what help would that be, turning me into a MacInnis?”

“Strickland kind of stands out. Why not make it easy on yourself?”

“Thanks but no thanks. I always kind of got off on being who I really was.”

“Suit yourself,” I said.

Rat. How glibly I had used the word. I knew that I was taunting him, knowing every time how that simple word would get a rise, briefly knock his irritating cockiness aside. Dealing with them is a constant struggle for control.

The rain was pounding down when I got to the corrections centre, and I ran from the parking lot to the reception area, folded newspaper over my head. Sullivan was waiting for me, impatiently, I sensed. He wasn’t what I had expected. He was tall with squared-off shoulders and maybe fifty years old. His face was smooth and tanned and his hair was prematurely silver. He had a white mustache, a crushing handshake.

They put us in a tiny room with a small table and three chairs, a door with a wired window. We made small talk waiting for Strickland. I noticed from Sullivan’s ring that we had gone to the same university, at different times of course. But it
turned out we knew a lot of the same teachers. I’d just mentioned that my ex was a lawyer, practicing in Kingston when the door opened.

Strickland was wearing baggy prison green but he seemed relaxed, self-assured. He might have been holding court in a high-end hotel. His smile was unreserved and boyish. I felt a sudden pang of pity, but then I thought of Caddy and her sorrow and the pity turned to guilt.

“Hey Bro’,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand.

“I think
‘Mister
Breau’ might be more appropriate,” said Sullivan.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s a little inside joke from Kingston Pen. The dark complexion, I guess.”

“It’s a Cajun name, Breau?” said Sullivan.

“Yes,” I said. “My biological background is Acadian.”

“Biological?”

“It’s a complicated story.”

“The black guys started it,” Strickland said. “And of course it suited—this was one of the rare human beings in the joint.”

I felt the heat in my face.

“It’s true,” said Strickland, sitting down. He folded his hands and studied me. It’s how they psych themselves, I thought—the facial calm, the bold assertions, the silences. They’re never in a hurry when in custody. Sullivan slid his chair back slightly.

“I think you’ve lost weight,” Strickland said.

“On the contrary.” I laughed. “I’ve been putting it on since I retired.”

“So you’ve gone to pasture.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“There was talk in Warkworth. Then someone said something about you being back in St. Ninian. I’d been meaning to look you up. You’re on the Shore Road too, the old MacDougall place. When did you get that?”

“Years ago,” I said. “Fixed it up. Been there since late spring.”

“And Anna. How is Anna?”

“Fine,” I said.

“She’s here with you?”

“No. She’s still working in Kingston.”

“That must be tough on both of you.”

I studied his face for evidence of knowledge.

He was nodding. “A loss for the system,” he said. “I’m not just saying that. What did it for you? Surely it wasn’t the Pittman thing … or was there just a point where you said …?”

You never know how much they really know. I laced my fingers, rubbed my thumbs together. “Spur of the moment thing,” I said at last. “They were looking for new blood, new ideas. Offered a nice package. I had the numbers. It was time, when I thought it over.”

“I seem to remember the last time we talked, maybe two years ago. I think it was about Billy Pittman …”

I nodded. “Yes. I think so. But in the end it was the big picture.” I smiled.

He went silent, and our eyes locked. Then he looked away, as if remembering his lawyer.

“Pittman,” he said. “That was—fuck. Tragic.” Shook his head.

Sullivan’s eyes shifted from me to Strickland, back to me, inquiring.

“Long complicated story,” I said. “Irrelevant.”

“Yeah,” Strickland said. “Probably.” He was studying his hands, face grave. Then he looked up. “I remember Anna saying how there were only a few guys like you left. Frustrated idealists, I think she said. Guys who went in during the early seventies, full of big ambitions. Then getting them beat out of you.”

The little voice kept saying:
Don’t engage
. My head was bobbing, noncommittal agreement.

“Anna would say you’d have had to be more like her old man to make it for any length of time. The old-timers, being tougher than the cons, learned to think like inmates. It’s all about your own survival.”

“The cons are usually passing through,” I said, the little voice now hissing,
Don’t engage
. “Most of us are there for life.”

He laughed. “Exactly. How often I thought exactly that.”

Sullivan intervened then. “Why don’t you guys talk about how you first got to know each other? I’d be interested. There’s quite a difference in your ages.”

“How do we know each other, Dwayne? You start. I’m trying to remember how old you are anyway.”

“Twenty-nine,” he said. “Heading for the big three-oh. What about yourself? I think you said you were in school with Aunt Maggie. But if you’re retired …”

“Went out early,” I said. “I’m fifty-five.”

“Wise.” Strickland was smiling at me, a private and communicative smile. We are from the same world, I thought. And not just home. I have more in common with him than with the lawyer in the suit.

“How are you passing the time here?” I asked.

“The usual,” he replied. “Reading a lot. Watching way, way too much television. You following that shit in the States?”

“Not really,” I said. “I haven’t got a TV. I read what’s in the papers. And of course it’s all they talk about in the store.”

“Ah,” he laughed. “The store. But you must have an opinion.”

I shrugged.

He tilted back in his chair. “For my money it’s all about the oil. The Americans will do anything to get control of oil. It’d be the same for us if we had oil they wanted.”

“We have tons of oil,” said Sullivan. “They’re buying it as fast as we can pump it.”

“My point exactly,” said Strickland nimbly. “You’d see how quick they’d be in here with their Marines if we ever decided not to sell it to them.”

Sullivan patted a jacket pocket, retrieved a pen and a folded wad of paper, unfolded what appeared to be notes, studied them briefly. “Now,” he said. “Let’s get down to it. You guys knew each other inside, I gather.”

“Not really,” I said, studying Dwayne’s face for some indication of how much I should reveal. “We had some dealings back in ’98 and ’99 about a particular situation. I didn’t see a lot of Dwayne after that.”

“But Anna, Mrs. Breau—after I went to Warkworth—became my salvation.” Dwayne was talking straight to Sullivan. “Her father was the warden there and I had a few little privileges. Nothing unusual. But like, for access to books and such. I was thinking of taking some university courses. Anna and her father helped me big time. I started. English lit. Made good marks, found I had a talent for stories. Wrote a few, actually.

Nothing you’d show anybody other than, say a friend, like Ann—Mrs. Breau.”

“She never used my name,” I said. “Always went by Moroz. Like her father.”

“There you go,” he said. “I just took it for granted. She was always Anna as far as I was concerned. The once I called her Mrs. Breau she corrected me. ‘Just Anna,’ she said. And that was that. You’ll give her my best?”

“For sure.”

There was a movement on my right and I realized that Sullivan was looking at his wristwatch.

“So the here and now,” Sullivan said. “Maybe you can tell Mr. Breau about why we’re here. All off the record—just to be clear. Let’s start with how you knew the deceased.”

Strickland studied his hands, furrowed his brow, looked up at me. “You know her family, I guess. Her mom, really her grandma, would be closer to your age.”

I nodded.

“If you’re talking to any of them, not that it would do any good … I um …” He shook his head and looked away briefly.

“How did you know her?” I asked.

“I didn’t really,” he said. “She was just a kid I saw around. I was living alone in the old place, the old home, and they’d drop in. There isn’t much around, no place for the teens to hang. The store, I suppose. But that’s discouraged. So they’d come to my place. I guess they felt comfortable there. It started with just one or two. Then there would be maybe a dozen regulars coming around when they wanted to get out of the house or didn’t want to go home. To tell you the truth, it got to be a bit of a pain.

They seemed to think they could come by at any time.” He paused, studied my face. “I suppose you heard all the rumours.”

“What rumours?”

“That I was dealing drugs, that I was a fag. You know the way the place is.”

I shook my head. “I keep mostly to myself.”

“Good policy,” he said.

“So Mary Alice, she was one of the regulars?”

“Not at all. It was mostly boys—kids from families that don’t care or don’t know their youngsters are hanging around with an ex-convict. Or kids who don’t give a—don’t care what their parents think. I don’t want to try to make myself sound pious, but I was actually trying to get through to them. A lot of the dads are away, out west, working.”

“How were you trying to get through to them?”

“You can imagine. They wanted to hear stories from the inside. Or about the crimes I’d done. The holdups. Like I’m Jesse fuckin James. Like there was something glamorous about crime and prison. I cleared that up, for sure. Couple of stories about the skinners and the chicken hawks and what happens to pretty kids like them inside.”

His tone and his expression projected a kind of sorrow.

“So how did someone like Mary Alice end up at your place?”

“She came maybe once with some young fellow who was one of the regulars. I thought a boyfriend, but I asked him later and it wasn’t like that. She was from a good family but was acting up a bit, wanting to hang out with the rougher guys. Anyway she landed in with one of them one night, I think in August. It was late. They had a six-pack. Wanted a place to sip
a few beers, watch a video. I said make yourself at home. I went to bed before they left.”

“This was in August?”

“Early August, I think.”

“Who was the guy?”

“I can’t remember. They all kind of blur together in my memory.”

Sullivan interjected. “We have the name of the young lad he’s referring to. I’ve spoken to him on the telephone and he’s able to confirm what Dwayne is telling us. He’s on an oil rig somewhere in northern Alberta, but he’d come back.”

“So imagine my surprise,” Dwayne continued, “when she arrived alone, maybe a couple of weeks later, looking kind of wrecked. I was getting ready to go to bed but I let her in—one of those moments I’ll spend the rest of my life thinking about. One tiny little action—you step aside, hold the door open, she walks in and, you don’t know it yet, but the rest of your life just flew out through that same open door.”

We sat in silence, Sullivan and I processing his words for truth.

“Anyway,” Dwayne said, clearing his throat. “She was a pretty girl—in a wholesome way, not at all sexy or anything. But she looked like shit that night. She told me that she’d had this big blowup with somebody at home. She said she needed a place to crash. I sympathized. I’ve been in her position a hundred times myself. I got a blanket and I put it on the couch, along with a pillow. I went to bed.”

“You didn’t talk to her at all?”

“Nothing that I can remember. Oh—she asked if I had
anything to drink. I think I had a heel of rum and she asked if she could make a toddy to help her sleep. ‘Sure, go ahead,’ I told her.”