past a certain point, you have to explain where that money came from… and if your
explanations aren’t convincing enough, you’re apt to wind up wearing a number
yourself.
So there was a need for Andy’s services. They took him out of the laundry and
installed him in the library, but if you wanted to look at it another way, they never
took him out of the laundry at all. They just set him to work washing dirty money
instead of dirty sheets. He funnelled it into stocks, bonds, tax-free municipals, you
name it. He told me once about ten years after that day on the plate-shop roof that his feelings about what he was doing were pretty clear, and that his conscience was
relatively untroubled. The rackets would have gone on with him or without him. He
had not asked to be sent to Shawshank, he went on; he was an innocent man who had
been victimized by colossal bad luck, not a missionary or a do-gooder.
‘Besides, Red,’ he told me with that same half-grin, ‘what I’m doing in here
isn’t all that different from what I was doing outside. I’ll hand you a pretty cynical axiom: the amount of expert financial help an individual or company needs rises in
direct proportion to how many people that person or business is screwing.
The people who run this place are stupid, brutal monsters for the most part.
The people who run the straight world are brutal and monstrous, but they happen not
to be quite as stupid, because the standard of competence out there is a little higher.
Not much, but a little.’
‘But the pills,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to tell you your business, but they make me
nervous. Reds, uppers, downers, nembutals–now they’ve got these things they call
Phase Fours. I won’t get anything like that. Never have.’
‘No,’ Andy said. ‘I don’t like the pills either. Never have. But I’m not much of a one for cigarettes or booze, either. But I don’t push the pills. I don’t bring them in, and I don’t sell them once they are in. Mostly it’s the screws who do that.’
‘But-‘
‘Yeah, I know. There’s a fine line there. What it comes down to, Red, is some
people refuse to get their hands dirty at all. That’s called sainthood, and the pigeons land on your shoulders and crap all over your shirt. The other extreme is to take a bath in the dirt and deal any goddamned thing that will turn a dollar–guns, switchblades,
big H, what the hell. You ever have a con come up to you and offer you a contract?’ I
nodded. It’s happened a lot of times over the years. You’re, after all, the man who can get it. And they figure if you can get them a nine-bolt battery for their transistor radio or a carton of Luckies or a lid of reefer, you can put them in touch with a guy who’ll use a knife.
‘Sure you have,’ Andy agreed. ‘But you don’t do it. Because guys like us, Red,
we know there’s a third choice. An alternative to staying simon-pure or bathing in the filth and the slime. It’s the alternative that grown-ups all over the world pick. You
balance off your walk through the hog-wallow against what it gains you. You choose
the lesser of two evils and try to keep your good intentions in front of you. And I
guess you judge how well you’re doing by how well you sleep at night… and what
your dreams are like.’
‘Good intentions,’ I said, and laughed. ‘I know all about that, Andy. A fellow
can toddle right off to hell on that road.’
‘Don’t you believe it, ‘ he said, growing sombre. ‘This is hell right here. Right
here in The Shank. They sell pills and I tell them what to do with the money. But I’ve also got the library, and I know of over two dozen guys who have used the books in
here to help them pass their high school equivalency tests. Maybe when they get out
of here they’ll be able to crawl off the shitheap. When we needed that second room