“I’m afraid there’s really nothing I can do to help you unless you help me, Mr. Wilson. I promised Father Ryan I would at least come and talk to you.”
Abraham Wilson gave her a toothless grin again. “That’s mighty white of ya, sweetheart. Ya sure ya don’t wanna change your mind ‘bout that piece of ass?”
Jennifer rose to her feet. She had had enough. “Do you hate everybody?”
“Tell ya what, doll, you crawl inta my skin and I’ll crawl inta yours, and then you’n me’ll rap ’bout hate.”
Jennifer stood there, looking into that ugly black face, digesting what he had said, and then she slowly sat down. “Do you want to tell me your side of the story, Abraham?”
He stared into her eyes, saying nothing. Jennifer waited, watching him, wondering what it must be like to wear that scarred black skin. She wondered how many scars were hidden inside the man.
The two of them sat there in a long silence. Finally, Abraham Wilson said, “I killed the somabitch.”
“Why did you kill him?”
He shrugged. “The motha’ was comin’ at me with this great big butcher knife, and—”
“Don’t con me. Prisoners don’t walk around carrying butcher knives.”
Wilson’s face tightened and he said, “Get the fuck outa here, lady. I din’t sen’ for ya.” He rose to his feet. “An’ don’t come round heah botherin’ me no more, you heah? I’m a busy man.”
He turned and walked over to the guard. A moment later they were both gone. That was that. Jennifer could at least tell Father Ryan that she had talked to the man. There was nothing further she could do.
A guard let Jennifer out of the building. She started across the courtyard toward the main gate, thinking about Abraham Wilson and her reaction to him. She disliked the man and, because of that, she was doing something she had no right to do: She was judging him. She had already pronounced him guilty and he had not yet had a trial. Perhaps someone had attacked him, not with a knife, of course, but with a rock or a brick. Jennifer stopped and stood there indecisively. Every instinct told her to go back to Manhattan and forget about Abraham Wilson.
Jennifer turned and walked back to the assistant warden’s office.
“He’s a hard case,” Howard Patterson said. “When we can, we try rehabilitation instead of punishment, but Abraham Wilson’s too far gone. The only thing that will calm him down is the electric chair.”
What a weird piece of logic, Jennifer thought. “He told me the man he killed attacked him with a butcher knife.”
“I guess that’s possible.”
The answer startled her. “What do you mean, ‘that’s possible’? Are you saying a convict in here could get possession of a knife? A butcher knife?”
Howard Patterson shrugged. “Miss Parker, we have twelve hundred and forty convicts in this place, and some of them are men of great ingenuity. Come on. I’ll show you something.”
Patterson led Jennifer down a long corridor to a locked door. He selected a key from a large key ring, opened the door and turned on the light. Jennifer followed him into a small, bare room with built-in shelves.
“This is where we keep the prisoners’ box of goodies.” He walked over to a large box and lifted the lid.
Jennifer stared down into the box unbelievingly.
She looked up at Howard Patterson and said, “I want to see my client again.”
6
Jennifer prepared for Abraham Wilson’s trial as she had never prepared for anything before in her life. She spent endless hours in the law library checking for procedures and defenses, and with her client, drawing from him every scrap of information she could. It was no easy task. From the beginning, Wilson was truculent and sarcastic.
“You wanna know about me, honey? I got my first fuck when I was ten. How ole was you?”
Jennifer forced herself to ignore his hatred and his contempt, for she was aware that they covered up a deep fear. And so Jennifer persisted, demanding to know what Wilson’s early life was like, what his parents were like, what had shaped the boy into the man. Over a period of weeks, Abraham Wilson’s reluctance gave way to interest, and his interest finally gave way to fascination. He had never before had reason to think of himself in terms of what kind of person he was, or why.