Life Expectancy

Constance Hammersmith paperbacks?"
        "Give me the photo."
        Releasing it to me, he said to the prison guard, "We need a few more minutes of privacy, please."
        The guard looked at me. "Sir?"
        Afraid to speak, I merely nodded.
        The guard retreated from the room and watched from behind the window.
        "Did you bring a medical release for me to sign?" Punchinello inquired.
        From the threshold of the drab room, where she had been holding open the hallway door for me, Lorrie said, "I have three copies in my purse, drawn up by a good attorney."
        "Come in," he said. "Close the door."
        Lorrie joined me on the sane side of the table, though I'm sure she suspected, as I did, that he was playing us for fools, setting us up for one more cruel reversal.
        "When would we do it?" he asked.
        "Tomorrow morning," I said. "The hospital in Denver is ready for us.
        They just need twelve hours' notice."
        "The deal we made…"
        "It's still yours if you want it," Lorrie assured him, removing the medical forms and a pen from her purse.
        He sighed. "I love those detective stories."
        "And Hershey's bars," I reminded him.
        "But when we negotiated," he said, "I didn't know I'd be giving up a kidney, which is a lot to ask, considering you've already gotten both my testicles."
        We waited.
        "There's one more thing I want," he said.
        Here's where he would surely hit us with the punch line and laugh at our devastation.
        "This is a private room," he advised us. "No listening devices because inmates usually meet here with their attorneys."
        "We know," Lorrie said.
        "And I doubt the moron at the window can read lips."
        "What do you want?" I asked, certain that it would be a thing beyond my power to grant.
        "I know you don't trust me like you should a brother," he said. "So I won't expect you to do this before I give her my kidney. But once she has it, you're obligated."
        "If it's something I can do."
        "Oh, I'm positive you can do it," he said cheerfully. "I mean, look what you did to the great Beezo."
        I couldn't read him at all, didn't know whether this was leading to a vicious joke or to a genuine proposal.
        Punchinello said, "I want you to kill that scab on Satan's ass, Virgilio Vivacemente. I want you to make him suffer and let him know I'm the one who sent you. And in the end, I want him deader than any man has ever been dead."
        This was no joke. He meant it.
        "Sure," I said.
        The white fluorescent panels in the gray ceiling, the white documents on the gray steel table, the granular snow blowing white out of a gray day, tapping the windows as the pen described his signature with the faintest whisper of ballpoint on paper… Punchinello's guard and the one who had accompanied us from the holding chamber stood witness. They signed their names under my brother's.
        Lorrie left one copy of the document with Punchinello and returned the others to her purse. The deal had been sealed, though the' conditions of it were not on paper.
        We didn't shake hands. I would have if he'd wanted to, a small un-pleasantry in exchange for Annie's life. But he didn't seem to feel that a handshake was required.
        "When this is all done and Annie's well," he said, "I'd like it if you'd bring her here to see me once in a while, Christmas at least."
        "No," Lorrie replied bluntly and without hesitation, though I would have said anything he wanted to hear.
        "I'm her uncle for one thing," he said. "And her savior."
        "I won't lie to you," she told him. "And neither will Jimmy. You'll never be the smallest part of her life."
        "Well, maybe the smallest part," Punchinello said, reaching back as best he could, in chains, to indicate the position of his left kidney.
        Lorrie stared him down.
        He grinned at last. "You're some piece of work."
        "Right back at ya," she said.
        We left him there and brought the news of his change of heart to Charlene Coleman in the hallway.
        From the prison, we drove into Denver, where Annie had been undergoing just-in-case prep at the hospital and where we were staying at the Marriott.
        The bruised sky spat granular snow like bits of broken teeth.
        In the city, patches of fresh ice mottled the pavement.