Life Expectancy

we'd have a better chance of persuading him to grant the request we had come here to make.
        The word ambience was too highbrow to describe the stark and forbidding mood of the conference room. It didn't feel like a place in which a hardhearted man could be persuaded to do a goodhearted thing.
        Remaining in the hallway, the guard who had escorted us now closed the door through which we had entered.
        Punchinello's guard departed by a connecting door to another room. He stood at a window in that door, out of earshot but watchful.
        We were alone with the man who would have killed us more than nine years ago if he'd had the chance, and who had been sentenced to imprisonment for life based in part on our testimony.
        Considering the likelihood of his responding with hostility to any request we made, I wished that prison rules had permitted us to bring cookies.
        Nine years behind bars appeared not to have left a mark on Punchinello.
        His haircut was less stylish and less well executed than it had been when he had blown up the town square, but he was as handsome as ever, boyish.
        His movie-star smile seemed genuine. His dazzling green eyes gleamed with lively interest.
        As we sat across the wide table from him, he wiggled the fingers of his right hand at us, a gesture most commonly made by grandmothers and accompanied by the word toodle-oo.
        "You're looking well," I said.
        "I'm well," he replied.
        "Hard to believe it's been nine years."
        "Maybe for you. Seems like a hundred to me."
        I found it difficult to believe that he harbored no grudge toward us.
        After all, he was a Beezo, therefore marinated in umbrage and steeped in resentment. Yet I wasn't able to detect any animosity in his voice.
        Inanely, I said, "Yeah, I guess you have a lot of time on your hands in here."
        "I've put it to good use. I earned a correspondence degree in law- though being a felon, I'll never be admitted to the bar."
        "A law degree. That's impressive."
        "I've filed appeals on my behalf and for other prisoners. You wouldn't believe how many inmates here were wrongly convicted."
        "All of them?" Lorrie guessed.
        "Nearly all of them, yes," he said utterly without irony. "At times it's difficult not to despair over the amount of injustice in this society."
        "There's always cake," I said, and then realized that without having heard my dad's favorite saying, Punchinello would think that I was spouting gibberish.
        Taking my puzzling comment in stride, he said, "Well, I like cake, of course, but I'd rather have justice. In addition to getting the law degree, I've learned to speak fluent German because it's the language of justice."
        "Why is German the language of justice?" Lorrie wondered.
        "I don't really know. I heard an actor say that in an old World War II movie. It made sense to me at the time." He spoke to Lorrie in what sounded like German, then translated: "You are quite beautiful this morning."
        "You always were a charmer," she said.
        He grinned at her and winked. "I've also learned to speak fluent Norwegian and Swedish."
        "I've never known anyone who studied Norwegian and Swedish," Lorrie said.
        "Well, I thought it would be polite to address them in their own language when I accept the Nobel Prize."
        Because he seemed dead earnest, I asked, "A Nobel Prize in what category?"
        "I haven't decided. Maybe a peace prize, maybe for literature."
        "Ambitious," Lorrie said approvingly.
        "I'm working on a novel. Half the guys in here say they're working on a novel, but I really am."
        "I've thought about writing nonfiction," I told him, "sort of biographical."
        "I'm on chapter thirty-two," Punchinello said. "My protagonist has just learned how deeply evil the aerialist really is." He spoke in what might have been Norwegian or Swedish, then translated: "The humility with which I accept this award surely is equal to the wisdom of your decision to give it to me."
        "They'll be in tears," Lorrie predicted.
        Though he was as looney as he was homicidal, I was nevertheless impressed by his apparent accomplishments. "A law degree, learning German and Norwegian and Swedish, writing a novel… I'd need a lot longer than nine years to do all that."
        "The secret is, I'm so