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She looked away again.
“Constance, look at me. No one understands you-except me. You are a pearl beyond price. You have all the beauty and freshness of a woman of twenty-one, yet you have a mind refined by a lifetime… no, lifetimes… of intellectual hunger. But the intellect can take you only so far. You are like an unwatered seed. Lay your intellect aside and recognize your other hunger-your sensual hunger. The seed cries for water-and only then will it sprout, rise, and blossom.”
Constance, refusing to look back, shook her head violently.
“You have been cloistered here-shut up like a nun. You’ve read thousands of books, thought deep thoughts. But you haven’t lived. There is another world out there: a world of color and taste and touch. Constance, we will explore that world together. Can’t you feel the deep co
Now, abruptly, Constance tried to pull her hands away. They remained gently-but firmly-clasped in Diogenes’s own. But in the brief struggle, her sleeve drew back from her wrist, exposing several slashing scars: scars that had healed imperfectly.
Seeing this secret revealed, Constance froze: unable to move, even to breathe.
Diogenes also seemed to go very still. And then he gently released one hand and held out his own arm, sliding up the cuff from his wrist. There lay a similar scar: older but unmistakable.
Staring at it, Constance drew in a sharp breath.
“You see now,” he murmured, “how well we understand each other? It is true-we are alike, so very alike. I understand you. And you, Constance-you understand me.”
Slowly, gently, he released her other hand. It fell limply to her side. Now, raising his hands to her shoulders, he turned her to face him. She did not resist. He raised a hand to her cheek, stroking it very lightly with the backs of his fingers. The fingers drifted softly over her lips, then down to her chin, which he grasped gently with his fingertips. Slowly, he brought her face closer to his. He kissed her once, ever so lightly, and then again, somewhat more urgently.
With a gasp that might have been relief or despair, Constance leaned into his embrace and allowed herself to be folded into his arms.
Adroitly Diogenes shifted his position on the settee and eased her down onto the velvet cushions. One of his pale hands strayed to the lacy front of her dress, undoing a row of pearl buttons below her throat, the slender fingers gliding down, gradually exposing the swelling curve of her breasts to the dim light. As he did so, he murmured some lines in Italian:
Ei's’immerge ne la notte,
Ei's’aderge in vèr’ le stelle…
As his form moved over her, nimble as a ballet dancer, a second sigh escaped her lips and her eyes closed.
Diogenes’s eyes did not close. They remained open and fixed upon her, wet with lust and triumph-
Two eyes: one hazel, one blue.
Chapter 42
Gerry sheathed his radio and cast a disbelieving look in Benjy’s direction. “You won’t frigging believe this.”
“What now?”
“They’re still bringing that special prisoner into yard 4 for the two o’clock exercise shift.”
Benjy stared. “Bringing him back? You’re shittin’ me.”
Gerry shook his head.
“It’s murder. And they’re doing it on our watch.”
“Tell me about it.”
“On whose orders?”
“Straight from the horse’s ass: Imhof.”
A silence gathered in the long empty hall of Herkmoor’s building C.
“Well, two o’clock is in fifteen minutes,” Benjy said at last. “We’d better get our butts in gear.”
He led the way as they exited the cellblock into the weak sunlight of yard 4. A smell of springlike decay and dampness drifted on the air. The sodden grass of the outer yards was still matted and brown, and a few bare branches could be seen rising beyond the perimeter walls. They took up positions, not on the catwalk above this time, but in the actual yard.
“I’m not going to see my corrections career get flushed down the toilet,” said Gerry darkly. “I swear, if any of Pocho’s gang makes a move toward the guy, I’ll use the Taser. I wish to hell they gave us guns.”
They took up positions on either side of the yard, waiting for the prisoners in isolation to be escorted out for their lone hour of exercise. Gerry checked his Taser, his pepper spray, adjusted his side-handle baton. He wouldn’t wait to see what happened, like he’d done last time.
A few minutes later, the doors opened and the escort guards filed out with their prisoners, who sidled out into the yard, blinking in the bright light, looking as shit-stupid as they were.
The last prisoner to come out was the special one. He was as pale as a maggot and looked a mess: face bruised and bandaged, one eye nearly swollen shut. Despite being numbed by years of working in pens, Gerry felt a creeping sense of outrage that the man had been put back in the yard. Pocho was dead, true enough; but that had been an open-and-shut case of self-defense. This was different. This was cold-blooded murder. And if it didn’t happen today, it would happen tomorrow or the next day, on their watch or someone else’s. It was one thing to stick the guy in a cell next to the drummer, or put him in solitary, or take away his books, but this was out of line. Way out of line.
He braced himself. Pocho’s boys were spreading out, doing their slow pimp-roll, hands in their pockets. The tall one, Rafael Borges, was bouncing the usual basketball, moving in a slow arc toward the hoop. Gerry glanced at Benjy and saw his partner was equally on edge. The escort guards made a gesture toward him and he gestured back, signifying the handoff was complete: they would take over the prisoners. The escort guards filed out, closing the double metal doors behind them.
Gerry kept his eye on the special prisoner. The man was strolling along the brick wall toward the chain-link fence, moving alertly but without undue alarm. Gerry wondered if he was all right in the head. If it were him out there, he’d have stained his shorts by now.
He watched as the special prisoner sidled over behind the basketball backboard and placed a casual hand on the chain-link fence, leaning against it. He looked up, then peered from side to side, almost as if waiting for something. The other prisoners slowly circled, none even looking in his direction, acting as if he didn’t exist.
When a call came over his radio with a burst of static, Gerry jumped. “Fecteau here.”
“This is Special Agent Spencer Coffey, FBI.”
“Who?”
“Wake up, Fecteau, I don’t have all day. As I understand it, you and the other one, Doyle, are in yard 4 on exercise duty.”
“Yes, yes, sir,” Gerry stammered. Why the hell was Agent Coffey talking directly to him? It must be true what they were whispering, that the special prisoner was a fed-although he sure didn’t look like one.
“I want both of you up here in Main Security, on the double.”
“Yes, sir, as soon as we hand over yard duty-”
“I said, on the double. That means right now.”
“But, sir, there’s just the two of us guarding the yard-”
“I gave you a direct order, Fecteau. If I don’t see you in ninety seconds, I swear to God you’ll be in North Dakota tomorrow, on the midnight shift at Black Rock.”
“But you’re not-”
His reply was drowned out by a short blast of static as the FBI agent signed off. He looked over at Benjy, who had, of course, heard everything over his own radio. Benjy walked over, shrugging his shoulders faintly.