Cell 2455, Death Row Read online

  Whit tossed the cigarettes onto the seat of the coupe. “There’s something to smoke,” he said casually. Then he held up the bottle so Virginia could see it. “And here’s something to drink.”

  “What’s in the bottle?” Virginia wanted to know.

  “Champagne,” Whit said. “The best you can buy.” He popped the cork with a flourish.

  Virginia accepted the bottle, examined its label, and then put it to her lips, taking a long pull. She finished and exhaled audibly. Then she asked, “What’re you trying to do, little boy, buy me?”

  He should have expected such a question. He was angry because he hadn’t. “And what’re you doing now, selling what you used to give away?”

  Whit regretted the words the instant he spoke them.

  “Aren’t we funny today!” Virginia said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, ill at ease.

  “You make me laugh,” she said, and did. “You think you want to be bad and you don’t know how.”

  “Bad” had a non-dictionary meaning they both understood. The word connoted sometliing affirmative, forceful.

  “How come you know so much?” Whit asked. “You’re not much older than I am.”

  “If I told you we’d both know.”

  Virginia took another long pull from the bottle. “Say, this stuff is good.” She smacked her lips. “Here, little boy, have a drink.”

  “I don’t want a drink.”

  “Have I made the little boy mad?”

  “You’re not very nice, are you, Virginia?”

  “If I was nice, you wouldn’t have brought me up here.”

  “Maybe I made a mistake.”

  Virginia ignored that. “You think Barbara was a nice girl, don’t you, little boy?” she said slyly.

  Whit’s face twisted. “I know she was!”

  “How? How do you know? Did you get her cherry?”

  “Shut your dirty mouth!” Whit shouted. “Shut your dirty, filthy mouth!” He wanted to hit diis tormentor, to beat the vileness out of her. “If you keep talking like that I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you with my bare hands!”

  Again Virginia laughed, contemptuously. “Don’t you talk big for such a little piss ant! Well, go ahead and kill me. Only wait till I finish this bottle.” She took another drink, and the bottle was then almost half empty.

  Whit gave the ignition key a twist and stabbed at the starter; the motor turned over, coughed to life.

  “Where’re we going now, little boy?”

  “I’m taking you home,” Whit said stiffly, virtuously.

  “I thought you were going to kill me.”

  “You’re not worth killing.”

  “I know it.”

  He looked at her, suddenly, and he put into words what perplexed him: “What made you like this, Virginia?”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  Like what? As if she didn’t know!

  “You know. Like you are. The dirty way you talk all the time.”

  She said, “If you don’t like the way I talk, let’s stop talking and do somediing else. Got any suggestions?”

  He blushed. Virginia was too much for him; a girl was too much for him.

  “I think I better take you home,” he said, and he sounded apologetic. Slowly, he began backing the Ford to a wide spot where he could turn around.

  Words can sneer; Virginia’s did, when she said, “And I think you better take yourself home to mama!”

  I’ll make you run back home to mama, yelling for help. That was what she had told him yesterday, and today it was happening. But he would stop that from happening. Physical compliance with necessity was easy; the tough part was mental. In swift, violent movements he braked, shifted into low, slammed the Ford back into the place where they had been parked, killed the motor. That was the easy part.

  “Whoops,” Virginia said, as some of the contents of the bottle spilled on her. Then she giggled.

  “Yeah, whoops,” he said.

  “How does it feel not to be afraid of the Devil?”

  “Okay, Virginia,” he said. “You win.”

  “I win what?” She giggled some more.

  “Oh please shut up, won’t you?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I don’t want to be fighting with you all the time.”

  “That’s because you’re afraid of me,” Virginia said.

  “No, it isn’t either.”

  “Then what is it?” she demanded.

  “If I told you, you’d laugh. You make fun of everything I say.”

  “There you go again being mysterious. I suppose I’m some kind of a symbol, too.” She giggled once more. “What am I, a witch or a bitch?”

  “I think you’re a fool,” Whit said. “And I know more about you than you think I do.” He had to take that gamble.

  “And I think I’m cute,” she said; and Whit knew he had won his gamble. She pulled her skirt above her knees. “I said I’m cute.”

  “All right, you’re cute.”

  “I mean I got bow legs, stupid. When a girl has bow legs they call her cute. Look.”

  She stretched out her legs and pulled her skirt higher. “I said look!”

  Whit looked. He looked because he didn’t know what else to do. He looked because Virginia had told him she knew a short cut to Hell. He looked, and he told himself that being an animal was enough; because that is what we all are, nothing but animals. He looked, and the animal part of him was excited by Virginia’s legs.

  “That’s better,” Virginia said. “You know, Ace always brings me up in the hills, too.”

  “Who’s Ace?”

  “Oh, a guy I know.”

  “You seem to know lots of guys.”

  She giggled. “Most of them are bigger’n you, though.”

  Whit didn’t answer. Virginia took another drink. “I suppose you think they call me Virgie because I’m a virgin.”

  “I’m not that stupid,” he said.

  “You think you’re smart,” she said obliquely. “You think you’re real smart. But you got a whole lot to learn, little boy, and you aren’t going to find it in books. Dummies like me are going to teach you, and we’ll make you damned sorry you ever wanted to learn in the first place. And you know why? Because you’re just like all the rest of them. You only got one thing on your mind, but you haven’t got the nerve to say so. You probably think you’re doing something real dangerous by bringing me up here. Well, I know what you want and you can have it. But don’t try to think you’re fooling me. Don’t feed me a lot of talk about how much you like me. I don’t want to hear anything like that. You see, little boy, I can see through you. You got a glass head. You’re just another male and all you want from me is one thing.”

  Virginia was drunk. The champagne had loosened her tongue; it had thickened her words, but they were still her words. Having unburdened herself, she lapsed into a scowling silence. The game of baiting Whit couldn’t satisfy her any longer, not when she knew he was caught in her web. Like a fog, her words hung there between them. And the fog the words produced was more pregnant with meaning than the words themselves.

  “You’re drunk,” Whit said. “You’re sloppy drunk. Besides, what makes you think you got anything I want?”

  “So now you’re a wise guy,” Virginia said, slurring the words.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I’m not a wise guy. How could I be when you just said I got so much to learn?”

  “You’re a damned fool,” she said.

  “Make up your mind. One second I’m a wise guy and the next I’m a damn fool. Which is it?”

  Virginia cursed him obscenely. He grinned. With her free hand she slapped him across the face, as hard as she could. He still grinned. She struck at him with the bottle. He caught her wrist and twisted it until she dropped the bottle. They struggled fiercely, twisting and turning, breathing hard. She was like a wildcat. His hand accidentally fell on her bare thigh. She ceased struggling and went limp, again giggling.r />
  “What’re you trying to do, grab a free feel? Well, go ahead and feel all you want.”

  He jerked his hand away, as though from an open flame. His breath was coming in gasps.

  “I told you—you’re afraid of me!” Virginia’s words were a taunt, a challenge.

  “No. No, I’m not.”

  “Then prove it. Prove it, if you’re man enough.”

  It was Whit’s turn to bait her. “How?”

  “How do you think, stupid? Do I have to draw you a picture?”

  When Whit didn’t reply immediately, Virginia said, “What’s the matter—think you’re a saint or something?”

  “I just don’t think we should,” he said, not meaning it.

  “You’re scared,” she said. “You’re either scared or else you’re a pansy. Maybe that’s it.”

  She stung his pride and he laughed. “I’m not scared,” he said, “and I’m not a pansy. In fact, if anybody’s a litde bit queer in diis crowd, it’s you.”

  She cursed him, and he made love to her, not expertly.

  Virginia was like an alley cat. She scratched and bit and cursed, but wouldn’t let him go.

  They lay there panting. Gradually his wheezing subsided.

  “I suppose now you got a guilty conscience,” Virginia said. “Either that or you hate looking at me. Well, I hope I spoiled all your big ideas for you. I hope I dirtied them up. Now you’re not any better than I am, and I’m no good at all. I’m just a slut. I like being a slut. I like being easy to make and after I’m made I like to make the bastard who makes me so sick he wants to throw up. I like making him hate himself and me and sex and everything about it. I like . . .”

  Virginia talked on and on. She couldn’t stop talking. She couldn’t help passing on her contamination. She talked even after the toughness, the hardness melted, after she began to cry, softly. She revealed to Whit the ugliness that was in her, not trying to hide it or to pretty it up, knowing the truth would shock and disgust him more than anything else she could say or do. She told him that all men are animals, that she had been cuffed, cursed, and then compelled to submit to them.

  So Virginia hated all males; this was her way of getting even. This was her way of fighting back.

  Whit listened until he could stand no more, until he felt weak and sick. He gripped Virginia by her shoulders, his fingers biting into the bare flesh.

  “You’re lying!” he shouted. “You’re making up that story!” And she had to be; what she was telling him was too terrible to be true. Dear God, he thought, surely You wouldn’t let anything like that happen!

  “It’s true,” Virginia said quietly. “Every word I told you is the truth.”

  Whit sobbed. He took Virginia in his arms and clung to her. She knew he was trying to hide and she didn’t intend to let him. Right then he was feverishly building his fortress. How desperately he needed its protection! And she was finding little satisfaction in making him suffer.

  “Oh,” she said, “it’s not as bad as all that.”

  “It’s wrong! It’s all wrong!” he sobbed.

  “Sure it is,” she agreed; “but what can you do about it?”

  The clarity was sudden, and absolute. Until that instant they both had been inexperienced actors clumsily playing a scene from a badly written play, not even knowing why or how it had happened that they had been cast in their respective roles. Then Whit knew why, and he knew what he could do about it.

  And Virginia was right. She had known a short cut to Hell and had shown it to him. Not Hell, a place; but hell, a state of mind. The worst hell of all. And probably the only one. This mental hell was still wanting to believe in something when you knew you were wrong; and it was insisting upon believing something when you had overwhelming proof that what you believed couldn’t possibly be true. It was wanting to believe in what was good and right and decent yet being obliged to question the goodness, the Tightness and the decency of all things. It was insisting upon believing in yourself; it was persisting in the belief you had a meaning, and yet knowing you lived in a jungle where men were capable of callously using their own daughters. Too, it was living in a jungle where the denizens either made you into one of them or found a way to torture you beyond endurance and ultimately to destroy you. It was living there, or with the bleating sheep in a pasture cleared in the middle of the jungle.

  What could Whit do about it? Well, he could start by believing in Virginia, by believing in her even when she refused to believe in herself. He could take her hate for his own. He could fight for her and himself too. He could make himself a strange sort of guinea pig.

  He told her so. And he said: “Don’t let them make you throw your life away. Don’t do that, Virginia. Don’t do it. Give your hate to me. Let me have it. I need it. I’ll use it against them. I’ll get even for both of us. I can get even where you can only get hurt. Don’t let them hurt you any more and don’t hurt yourself any more. There’s no reason for you to. Change, Virginia, and laugh at them. Be the kind of girl you really want to be. They can’t stop you. Show them they can’t. And let me do the fighting. Let me take your place in this dirty jungle. Please do me that favor. And we’ll always have our secret. We’ll never let anybody know about it.”

  “And we’ll always be friends,” Virginia said, fiercely. “Always! Forever!”

  “And we’ll always be friends,” Whit heartily agreed.

  And they always have been friends. Even after Whit was doomed.

  • 10 •

  “Sonny Boy, Keep on Like You’re Going . . . ”

  Sonny boy, keep on life you’re going and you’ll wind up in the gas chamber.

  To hell with the gas chamber!

  Whit kept on. He kept on through the summer. One reckless escapade followed another.

  Whit mastered the technics of his trade: how to make and use hot boxes, gadgets to start cars without keys; how to gain swift access to a locked car; how to soup up a car, make it go incredibly fast; how to do a dozen other, similar things.

  He stole—“expropriated,” he would say—car after car, mostly fast, sleek, new ones. With the same studied passion he had practiced playing the piano years earlier, he practiced driving or “tooling” these hot heaps. He learned to corner, to broadside, to speed and snap-shift them. He purposely rolled and crashed them. He sent them hurtling through traffic at high speeds. He sought out patrol cars and motorcycle cops and taunted them into chasing him, just for the thrill of ditching them, just for the hell of it, and for practice.

  For Whit, driving was a joyous form of creative expression. Driving made him free. Driving was his personal, triumphant accomplishment. His coordination, his timing was uncanny, and nature had given him perfect depth perception. With these assets, plus an open contempt for his own safety, he had learned to drive with such astonishing skill that his uncounted exploits behind the wheel soon multiplied and became legend. An exhilarating feeling of amoral triumph swept over him. Good and bad, right and wrong, were only blurred, unheeded abstract concepts, without real meaning. He had failed at being good, at fitting in, being a contributor. Now it was different. Now he couldn’t be ignored. He was only sixteen, but he was a factor.

  Quit stealing? Why? “Because honesty is the best policy,” they said. That made Whit laugh derisively. Thou shalt not steal. “Well, stop me then. Between the squares and Heaven, that shouldn’t be much of a job.”

  But it was. He saw to that.

  Whit was “only a boy,” they said. Just a confused, unhappy, emotionally disturbed boy. And they were not his apologists; they were society’s. They didn’t try to see him, and into him; they refused to look at their society through his eyes. Oh, no. He was per se “wrong,” and that was all there was to it.

  Except that it wasn’t all there was to it. “They” had stolen something from him. Perhaps even God had been a party to the theft. They had stolen his faith. So let them prove their mouthings. He would approach the problem scientifically; he would fling hi
mself into the inferno and find out what happened. He wouldn’t take anybody’s word for anything. He would find out the answers for himself, in his own way, without giving a damn for consequences, by trial and error. And without fear. Fear was an intolerable sickness. Fear was a bully, too, a tyrant to be hated.

  Don’t steal or we’ll put you in jail. We’ll punish you. Don’t sin or you’ll burn in Hell. Don’t! Don’t! DON’T!

  Whit continued stealing.

  Early one morning he snapped the padlock on a private garage and removed the radio from a car inside. The car was used by a burglar-alarm company; the radio in it would receive police calls. He installed this pilfered radio successively in the various stolen cars he used. He stole license plates from wrecked cars in junkyards and put these cool plates on the cars he drove, using wing nuts for quick changes. He experimented with smoke screens, testing kerosene at first and later stealing some skywriting fluid from an airport. From a burglary he procured an old, hammerless .32 revolver, fully loaded, and tried his hand at robbery.

  He was caught burglarizing a market when the lookout, another boy who had begged to go along and who had been carrying the gun, ran off and left him. Taken to the police station, Whit refused to give his name or to say a word. One of the detectives slapped him, called him a smart little punk. When Whit persisted in his refusal to say a word, the big, beefy dick who had slapped him growled, “We got ways of making you goddamed punks talk.” Then the dick stood on Whit’s arches, and the pain brought tears to Whit’s eyes. “Well, ready to talk?” the dick demanded. Whit nodded a violent affirmative. Then the dick was all patronizing reasonableness. “I told you we had ways of making you talk,” he said, “so you shouldn’t’ve been uncooperative. Now we’ll get along fine, kid. Just fine.”