The opening of Wolfkill Correctional Center, the first federal geriatric prison, was explained to the public in a television interview with the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons on the popular nighttime broadcast of Harry Ring Live. It went like this:
Harry Ring: "Explain to our viewers, if you will, Mr. Director, exactly what the reason is for this new federal prison."
"Certainly. The reason is quite simple. In the field of corrections, it is known as the 'greying' of America's federal prison inmates."
"Greying meaning what?"
"Aging. Growing older. Approaching one's final years."
"Has that become a problem in the federal prisons?"
"Yes. A very definite problem. One that becomes more acute with each passing day. At the present, there are more than two hundred thousand inmates, male and female, in federal custody. A significant percentage of them have now reached age sixty-five or older. Some are in their seventies, some even in their eighties. They present custodial problems that have become increasingly impossible to deal with in a conventional prison environment."
"What sort of problems?"
"The same sort of problems that elderly persons face outside of prison: diminishing eyesight and hearing, decreased mobility, lapses in memory, special nutrition and dietary needs, kidney and urinary-tract disorders, osteoporosis, rheumatism, depression, anxiety—"
"And conventional prisons, as you call them, are not equipped or staffed to handle such cases?"
"Not to the extent that the greying of the prison population necessitates. Conventional prisons have hospital wards and infirmaries, of course, but they are designed for inmates with temporary medical problems, conditions that can be cured or relieved in some way. But there is no cure for old age."
"Wouldn't it be possible to set aside a special area in each existing prison to accommodate these 'greying' prisoners, as you call them?"
"Possible, yes, but not very practical. The cost would be enormous. You see, Harry, modern prisons are designed for younger inmates. They were never meant to house senior citizens. Only in the last two decades has the corrections community encountered this problem."
"What, other than the obvious passage of time, would you say has caused this problem?"
"A number of things. Longer, harsher sentences, for one. More stringent parole and probation requirements, for another. Much longer appeals procedures. New medical treatments and medicines that help people live longer."
"So, since the cost to modify all the existing prisons is prohibitive, it was decided to build a geriatric facility to put them all in one place?"
"Exactly."
"How will this new prison differ from, say, Leavenworth or Marion?"
"For one thing, it is handicap-friendly; wheelchairs and walkers will be freely utilized. All custodial quarters are on one level; no stairs will be involved in daily activity. Upper floors will be for hospital treatment, and gurney-sized elevators will access them. Beds will be more comfortable and equipped with safety rails. There will be special toilets for the infirm. And the staff will be made up not only of correctional officers, but also nurses, practical caregivers, housekeepers, patient aides, and many other job classifications not found in conventional facilities."
"When will you begin transferring inmates to the new prison?"
"We've already begun. The first several dozen are already there."
"Incidentally, why the name 'Wolfkill'?"
"That's the name of the nearest community. It's a somewhat isolated little rural town in North Dakota, up near the Canadian border. The town donated the land to us hoping the new facility will provide much-needed economic stimulus to the area in these difficult times."
"Well, I hope, for their sake, that it does. Just one more question: Among the prisoners being transferred to Wolfkill are three former death-row inmates. What can you tell us about them?"
"They are leftovers from another era. All three of them were on the federal condemned row at Terre Haute Prison some years back when the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment as it was applied at that time was unconstitutional. These three men, along with seven other condemned inmates, had their death sentences commuted to life in prison without parole. After that ruling abolished capital punishment, the death-row inmates were transferred to other maximum-security federal prisons. In the years that have passed, four of them have died natural deaths, one committed suicide, and two—both of them child rape-murderers—were killed by other maximum-security inmates. The three who were left have quietly grown old in prison and are now candidates for transfer to our new geriatric facility at Wolfkill."
"Can you tell us a little about these three men?"
"Their cases are very old, of course, going back some forty years, so many of your viewers might not be familiar with them. One of the men is Cleveland McCoy, a notorious bank robber, condemned for the murder of a security guard during the holdup of a federally insured bank. Another is Antonio Ginetta, a professional hit man for one of the Chicago crime families, who killed an FBI agent who had infiltrated the mob. And the third is Andrew King, who murdered his wife and her lover when he caught them having sex in a car parked on federal property behind the post office where the lover worked as a federal employee."
"So all three killings were federal offenses?"
"Yes."
"Well, Mr. Director, I want to thank you for a very interesting and enlightening interview. Best of luck to you and your bureau in this new endeavor.
"And that concludes our show for tonight . . . "
#
The first of the formerly condemned men to arrive at Wolfkill was Cleveland McCoy, the bank robber, who was transferred from Leavenworth. He was met by Captain Carl Meadows, who had previously been in charge of the federal death row at Terre Haute.
"Hello, McCoy," the longtime corrections officer greeted him.
"I'll be damned," McCoy said, surprised. "Meadows. I thought you'd be dead by now."
"You thought wrong."
"Not retired yet?"
"Sixteen months to go." The guard captain looked him up and down. "If I take off your hardware, you going to give me any trouble?"
McCoy grunted softly. "My days of giving anyone trouble are long gone, Meadows."
"Glad to hear it." Meadows unlocked the handcuffs and ankle shackles, and undraped the belly and shoulder chains from McCoy's body. "Come on, I'll show you around."
The pair left the intake area and walked down an immaculately clean and shiny corridor.
"How was the trip up from Kansas?" Meadows asked.
"A little scary," McCoy admitted. "First time I ever flew in a jet plane. Food wasn't very good, either. And my two U.S. Marshal escorts were assholes."
"Well, most guys in the Marshal's service are FBI dropouts, that's why they're assholes."
Meadows glanced at the prisoner. "You know, McCoy, I always liked you back on the Row. I mean, you were a throwback to the old days. A good old-fashioned bank robber. Different from some of the weirdos I've had to put up with: child kidnappers who raped and killed kids, and crossed a state line in the process; punk fed cons who killed a guard to prove how tough they were; heartless dickheads who leave a locked van full of illegals out in the desert to suffocate: psycho snipers who murder people going to work at the Pentagon—you know, people like that."
"How well I know," McCoy said. "I had to live with them, remember?"
Meadows led the way into a common area off the corridor that had a single cell on each of the back and two side walls, their solid doors, each with a window, standing open. In the common area was a metal picnic-type table, a counter with a sink, a full-size refrigerator, and a coffee maker. In one corner was a television set facing three metal folding chairs.
"All the comforts of home," McCoy cracked.
"Find the one with your name on the door," Meadows said.
"Who are the other two for?"
"Andy King and Tony Ginetta."
"What!" McCoy moaned. "You mean I have to spend the rest of my golden years with a wife-killer and a Mafia hit man?"
"It'll be okay, McCoy," Meadows assured him. "You'll like it here. Wait and see."
"Don't have much choice," McCoy reminded him.
#
The confinement rooms at Wolfkill, for public-relations reasons, were not called "cells"—in many ways they resembled hospital rooms. Beds were movable, mattresses adjustable, nightstands had three-way lights, desks had drawers, chairs had rollers. The doors were solid but had large plexiglass windows for observation. They were unlocked from seven A.M., when breakfast was served on the community table from a food cart, until ten o'clock at night for lock-down.
After Captain Meadows left, an orderly, a guy about forty, came in with McCoy's reception bundle. Besides toilet articles and Wolfkill's rules-and-regulations manual, it contained red cotton trousers, matching buttonless pullover shirt, soft red slippers, and miscellaneous socks and underwear.
"Everybody's color coded in here," the orderly said. "The psychos wear yellow, seniles green, elderly but manageable blue. You three guys in here will wear red so's you can be easily spotted. Oh yeah, the screws wear khaki and orderlies like me wear white." He looked the newcomer up and down. "So you're McCoy, huh?"
"That's me."
"I read a lot about you in the crime magazines. I'm Zeniak. Just call me Zen. Doing forty as a habitual. I was a hospital orderly at Lewisburg. Volunteered for this gig. Figured it would be an easier stint. Let me know if you need anything; I'll see what I can do."
When McCoy was alone, smelling the newness of his clothes, he stretched out on the bed in his room and stared up at the ceiling. So this was how it would end, he thought. Locked down in a sterile cocoon until he shriveled up and died. All because of one lousy mistake . . .
The mistake had been in deciding to take down a bank that required three men for the job instead of two. For years, McCoy and his partner had been knocking over three or four banks a year, small ones, in small towns, the total netting them about half a million each—enough to live quite well, since it was tax-free. Then they decided on a single job, a bigger bank, the net from which would last them a year. But the bigger bank needed a third man to take down. They found a kid just out of the joint after doing five for burglarizing a dozen electronics stores. He came highly recommended by a fence who bought his merchandise. They took him on, this kid. McCoy laid down the one ironclad rule that he had: Never take a loaded gun on a job. Just as much could be accomplished with an unloaded gun as with a loaded one. And it eliminated the risk of ever killing anyone. A fall for bank robbery was one thing; a fall for murder was something else entirely.
Unfortunately, the kid failed to see the logic of that philosophy. He carried a loaded gun into the big bank they had chosen to storm. A security guard, refusing to give up his weapon, tried to be a hero protecting other people's money. The resulting shootout left McCoy's original partner and the guard dead, and the kid riddled with police bullets as he tried to escape the bank.
As an accomplice to a murder committed during the attempted robbery of a federally insured bank, McCoy got a death sentence. The Supreme Court knocked that back to life without parole when it abolished capital punishment.
One lousy mistake . . .
"Well, well," a voice said from the doorway to McCoy's room, ending his reverie, "look who's here. Public enemy number one. John Dillinger, Junior."
McCoy looked up to see Antonio Ginetta standing there, smiling.
#
Tony Ginetta had all but grown up in the mob. His father, four uncles, and two brothers were all made men, and Tony, the youngest, was just days away from an Omertà ceremony of his own when he was given an assignment that would change his life. The job: assassinate a rival gang boss so that the head of his own family could take over the dead man's organization. The hit was set for a Wednesday night outside Bruno's Steak House on the lower West Side. The target, a Don named Philip Iacobucci, was in the habit of having a late supper every Wednesday night, usually accompanied by his chief lieutenant, his driver, and a bodyguard.
On the night of the hit, Tony Ginetta was standing in an unlighted doorway just down from the entrance to Bruno's with a sawed-off twelve-gauge automatic shotgun, loaded with eight specially made shells containing razor chips as well as buckshot. In a nearby alley thirty feet away was a fake brown UPS delivery van with two backup soldiers in it, for Tony's getaway.
To connoisseurs of such events, it was to be a classic hit. As the targets alighted from their limousine to turn it over to Bruno's parking valet, Tony emerged and pumped one shell each into the lieutenant, the driver, and the bodyguard, and the other five into the main target, the Don, Philip Iacobucci, obliterating the entire left side of his body. The parking valet, who had gone around the limousine to drive it away, was unscathed, but got a clear view of the shotgun-wielding shooter. Five hours later, he picked Tony out of a photo lineup.
Normally, unofficially, off the record, and always vehemently denied, the U.S. Department of Justice and its minions do not give a rat's ass when mobsters kill mobsters; it just makes for that many less scumbag hoodlums federal agents have to chase. But in this particular case authorities took a keen personal interest in the hit.
Reason: The driver of the Don's limousine was an undercover FBI agent who had infiltrated the mob two years earlier.
Antonio Ginetta had shotgunned an FBI agent.
For that he was eventually tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.
#
At the sight of Tony Ginetta standing in the doorway of his room, Cleve McCoy pursed his lips as if in thought. "Haven't I seen you somewhere before? Aren't you Al Pacino?"
"I'm taller," Ginetta said. He frowned. "Jesus, you really got old."
"Me? Take a look in a mirror, Ginetta. Your wrinkles have got wrinkles."
McCoy rose and the two lifers went out to the table in the common area and sat down.
"So," Ginetta said, "you, me, and that fruitcake Andy King are the only ones left, huh? So where is he?"
"Not here yet."
"This is bullshit, you know. I had it pretty good at Lewisberg. Everything lined up. Commissary money coming in regularly from the family. Nice private open cell in the hospital unit. Special mattress. Yard time with selected cons: no punks, no black, brown, or Aryan Brotherhood members, no crazies. We had a nice Super Scrabble Tournament going."
"What did the winner get, a parole?"
"Very funny. The winner got a year's subscription to National Geographic."
"Tell me something, Ginetta, when did you start playing Scrabble? When you first came onto the old Row, the only words you knew were obscenities, and you couldn't spell most of them."
Ginetta shrugged. "I started reading books. And I got a dictionary. Pretty soon I knew lots of new words. Even some new obscenities."
From somewhere a buzzer sounded and the door to the corridor opened. Captain Carl Meadows entered the room escorting Andrew King, the third and last formerly condemned prisoner being transferred to Wolfkill.
"Now my life is perfect," Tony Ginetta grumbled.
"Well, hi, Andy!" McCoy greeted the newcomer with obvious derision.
"The name is Andrew, not Andy," King said disdainfully. "I know you're a bit slow, McCoy, but surely you can remember that." Looking at Tony Ginetta, he rolled his eyes forlornly. To Captain Meadows he said, "I'd like to request a transfer to another institution, please."
"Where would you like to go?" Meadows asked in a placating tone.
"God, anywhere! Devil's Island, Alcatraz—"
"They're both closed," McCoy pointed out.
"Then reactivate my death sentence and execute me! Anything to keep me from having to live with these two retards!"
"Who you calling a retard, wife-killer?" Ginetta challenged, rising.
"Cool it, all of you!" Captain Meadows ordered. "Now listen to me! This is where you're at, and this is where you're going to stay at! Now you'd all better learn to get along!"
His authoritarian tone softened. "Look, you guys can have it pretty good here if you'll just shape up. Look around. Private oversized rooms with a daytime open-door schedule; nice common area out here with a color TV, little kitchenette alcove, refrigerator, cabinet full of games, open library privileges—and, a surprise I've been saving: Each of you gets two cans of light beer with supper. Hell, this is better than the retirement home my sister's in."
The three convicts fell silent, weighing the guard captain's words. Among themselves, they exchanged furtive glances, like kindergartners being gently scolded for rowdiness during recess. Meadows took their silence as acquiescence. He had been a corrections officer long enough to know that when a convict did not argue about an order it meant he probably thought it was fair.
"Now then," he said, "you're all scheduled for complete physicals tomorrow morning, after which the deputy warden will come in and have a little talk with you. If you know what's good for you, you'll be on your best behavior. Get out of line and your room doors will be locked down twenty-four-seven. At your ages, you don't want to do hard time like that."
After Captain Meadows left, Andrew King looked steadily at McCoy, then at Ginetta, sighed audibly in resignation, and finally went over to the room that had his name stenciled on the door and entered. But Tony Ginetta's words were soundlessly reverberating in his mind like a summer night full of fireflies.
Wife-killer.
#
Andrew King was the last person in the world anyone would expect to end up on federal death row.
Since high school, Andrew had been a quiet, unobtrusive, painstakingly polite, meticulously studious young man. He never got a grade less than an A minus in any subject. Academic scholarships permitted him to pursue his sole abiding interest in life, sociology, and took him all the way to a doctorate degree and a faculty position at Stanford.
Andrew's long-range goal in life was to establish a new charity for the aid of homeless children, on the order of Boys Town and its expanded facility, Girls Town. Andrew envisioned calling his new foundation Children in Distress. CID.
Along the way, Andrew met and married Karen Landis, a librarian at one of the undergraduate schools where he taught summer classes. Karen, with only a Dewey Decimal System level of intelligence, was entranced by the vast scope of Andrew's wisdom, and he, with his limited experience with women, was captivated by Karen's body and lovemaking ability. Brainy and brilliant as he was, for some incomprehensible reason, Karen's expertise in bed never gave Andrew pause for thought. He simply allowed himself to enjoy it immensely.
It came out at Andrew's trial for murder, that Karen had remained faithful to him for no longer than three months after their wedding, and had been unfaithful with at least nine men during their three-year marriage. Those who were aware of Karen's ongoing promiscuity thought it nothing short of incredible that it took Andrew so long to discover the truth. But discover it he did, entirely by chance, when he saw Karen's car parked in a motel parking lot as he was driving downtown to a Chamber of Commerce luncheon one day to promote his CID foundation. Skipping the luncheon, he parked his own car nearby and waited—and watched. Eventually, Karen and her lover of the moment emerged from one of the motel rooms, kissed, parted, and went their separate ways.
The next day, a brooding Andrew went to a gun shop, selected a pistol, filled out the requisite state forms, managed somehow to continue living with Karen for the ten-day waiting period, then returned to pick up his purchase. And a box of cartridges.
At this point, he had not decided exactly who he was going to shoot: Karen, the lover, or both. He just knew that he was going to shoot somebody. That, in his set, bookish mentality, was what he was supposed to do. But that same mind also cautioned him to research the price he would have to pay for exacting his revenge.
In the university law library, Andrew read case law, going back several decades, of husbands who killed wives, their lovers, or both, in acts of reprisal for infidelity. In the state of California, killing both guilty parties had generally resulted in life sentences in prison, or in some especially heinous cases, a death penalty. Killing only the wife's lover, however, and not the wife, in the heat of jealous passion, had put the betrayed husband in prison, usually in minimum-security status, for some twelve to fifteen years.
That, Andrew decided, would not be too bad. He would probably be allowed to teach. Have fairly decent housing and privileges. And obtain a parole while still at an age at which he could recoup his academic career and enjoy a good life, having, after all, simply done the honorable thing.
So he decided to kill only Karen's lover. And perhaps shoot Karen in the foot, just to make a statement.
He carried out his plan on a night when Karen was supposed to be going to a movie with coworker girlfriends. Andrew followed her, carefully. To his surprise, she did not drive to a motel, as he expected her to, but rather to a large parking lot behind the post office. There she parked and got into another car already on the lot. Andrew turned off his headlights nearby and waited for them to drive away. After fifteen minutes, when they were still there, he crept over to the car, pistol in hand, and peered inside. Even in the indistinct vapor lights of the parking lot, he was able to make out their forms in the rear seat, Karen's naked legs propped up, pantyhose hanging from one ankle, her lover's bare buttocks squirming lewdly—
In their lust for each other, they had not even locked the car door. Snatching it open, Andrew raised the pistol. Seeing him, Karen screamed and scrambled frantically. The boyfriend thrashed about in bewilderment. Andrew fired. The bullet missed the boyfriend by inches and bored into Karen's temple, killing her instantly.
In the interior light of the car, Andrew saw blood gushing from the hole in Karen's head, and froze. Panicky, the boyfriend twisted toward Andrew for the gun, and Andrew fired again, point-blank, into the boyfriend's heart.
Bottom line was that Andrew did not receive the lenient sentence he had planned on. Instead, he was tried in a federal court. His victim was a federal employee who worked for the U. S. Postal Service. Worse, the crime was committed on federal property: a post office employee parking lot.
Andrew was given a federal death sentence.
#
On the morning after the three convicts arrived at Wolfkill, the orderly Zen arrived to escort McCoy to the infirmary wing for his intake physical exam. For the first time, McCoy got a good inside look at his new home.
The configuration of the Wolfkill facility was like a wheel, with the axis being the Administration and Control Center, and five wings, like spokes, extending out. To get from Corridor Red, where McCoy and the other two former death- row inmates were housed, Zen guided McCoy into the inner control circle and around toward Corridor White, where the central medical unit was located. Along the way, McCoy and his escort passed the entrances to the other corridors.
"These are the color-coded areas I told you about yesterday," Zen said. "Corridor Yellow is the psych ward; Corridor Green the dementia ward; Corridor Blue the elderly-but-mobile ward. The joint is like a Technicolor cartoon." He took McCoy through the double doors to Corridor White, into a shiny new waiting room. "Take a seat. The doc will be out for you in a minute. They'll call for me to come get you when you're finished."
"Thanks, Zen," McCoy said, bobbing his chin at the orderly.
I can't believe this place, McCoy thought after being left alone. All the way over from Corridor Red, he had seen only three khaki-clad corrections officers, half a dozen orderlies like Zen wearing whites, and a number of very old cons in blues shuffling around on walkers or with canes. Where the hell was the security? The alarms? The closed-circuit cameras? The deadlocks to isolate areas in case of a disturbance of any kind? Where were the riot guns, the Mace, the—
"Hello, Cleve," a husky female voice said.
McCoy looked around, startled. A still young-looking, sixtyish woman in a white physician's coat was smiling at him from an inner door. McCoy's mouth dropped open.
"Cora—?"
"Doctor Cora," she said easily. "Come on in."
He followed her through the door and along a short hall into an examining room.
"Cora," he said, astounded. The staff identification badge on her white physician's coat read: CORA SIMMS, M.D. "My God. When did you—? I mean—" He shook his head incredulously. "You're really a doctor now?"
"Sure am," she replied. "After twenty years as a nurse, I decided to move up the ladder. The Bureau of Prisons gave me a leave of absence to attend medical school, even gave me a federal grant to pay for it, then put me back on the staff after I got my degree. I've been a physician for eighteen years, Cleve."
Eighteen years. Was it possible? Of course it was, fool. You've been locked up for thirty-eight.
"I waited for you in San Francisco, Cleve," she said quietly. "I took my annual vacation from the nursing staff at Marion; we were going to meet at DiMaggio's on Fisherman's Wharf, remember? We were going to move to Honolulu and you were going to make a new start, leave your old way of life behind. I waited all weekend. Then on Monday morning I saw your picture in the newspaper."
McCoy slumped down in the nearest chair and stared into space. "Everything went wrong, Cora—"
"Sure, Cleve," she said without animosity. "What went wrong is that you decided to pull one last job. One last bank. One last grab for the easy money."
Nodding his head slowly, McCoy said, "I thought—you know, making a new start—I wanted to set us up nice—start right—"
"Start right? All we needed was each other, Cleve. A cheap little apartment would have been fine. If necessary, I could have waited tables, you could have pumped gas. As long as we had each other. Don't you remember how good it was, Cleve, just having each other?"
"I remember, Cora." He looked at her with beseeching eyes. "How could I not?"
Then they just stared at each other, silently.
#
They had both been so young back then.
Cora was just thirty, having worked her way through community college and then nursing school by waiting tables. Her first job had been at the Cook County jail in Chicago, and later she took the federal civil service exam and was given a job at the U.S. Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois.
That was where she met inmate Cleveland McCoy. He was in the last two years of an eight-to-twelve-year sentence for the holdup of a federally insured bank. Actually, he and a partner had committed a series of such robberies up and down Illinois and Indiana, but they had cut a deal with the federal prosecutors to save the government the cost of a trial by pleading guilty to only one of the charges in exchange for a minimum sentence.
Both McCoy and his partner had been exemplary convicts for six years and with two more years of good conduct would both be released with minimum time served. During his incarceration, McCoy had worked his way from the infirmary laundry gang to the infirmary janitorial crew to the infirmary aide detail, and finally to an infirmary office clerk's assignment. It was on the latter two jobs that he and Nurse Cora Simms began to come into daily contact with each other.
At first, their association was merely cordial, well within the strict parameters separating inmates and staff. But after a while it became more relaxed, more friendly, but in a reserved way. As time went on, they began to look forward to seeing each other every day. Then, one Monday morning, after Cora had been off shift for two days, when McCoy was helping her inventory surgical instruments, she said to him very quietly, "I missed you this weekend."
"I missed you too," McCoy replied, just as quietly.
That was all there was to it. From then on, both knew that something emotionally intense was growing between them. And instinctively they knew that the utmost caution had to be adhered to when others, whether inmates or staff, were around to observe them. They managed to find stolen moments, of course; they had to—in broom closets, unoccupied examining rooms, closed nursing stations, even the operating room when no surgeries were scheduled. Over a two-year period, their circumstances generated many creative opportunities for a quick wink, a passing touch, a glance. It was difficult, even grueling at times, and their growing mutual passion, expressed in furtively exchanged daily notes, resulted in raw nerves more than once.
But they persevered. They survived the long wait until Cleve was finally discharged from custody. Cora took a week of her vacation and they met ninety miles south across the Kentucky line in the small city of Paducah. For five days and nights they left their little motel room at the edge of town only when hunger drove them to. The rest of the time, they satisfied other long pent-up hungers.
Unable to risk Cleve being seen near her apartment close to the prison, Cora helped him find a room in an inexpensive residential hotel in the college town of Carbondale, only a twenty-minute drive away. Together they spent their evenings eating in small cafes and strolling around the campus of Southern Illinois University, going to movies where they sat shoulder to shoulder holding hands, sometimes just sitting on a bench in the park talking about their future.
Their main plan was for Cora to arrange a leave of absence, ostensibly to be with a sister in San Francisco who was in the last stages of a difficult pregnancy. Cleve was to take a bus north to Chicago where he and his former partner, who had also been released, had a substantial amount of money in a joint bank account under assumed names. Then Cora and Cleve would meet in San Francisco and book passage on a cruise ship for Honolulu. Perhaps, they hoped, Cora would find a nursing position, and Cleve might even become a hospital orderly. They would get along just fine.
Except for one thing. Cleve had no money in Chicago. He and his partner had already planned to get together for one last job. As it turned out, that was the job on which they took along a third partner, a kid, who initiated a shootout that got himself, a bank guard, and McCoy's original partner all killed. And subsequently put Cleve McCoy on federal death row.
Cora read about it that Monday morning, so long ago, in the San Francisco Herald. With tears streaming down her cheeks, involuntarily she thought: Once a thief . . .
Dismally, she returned to her job at Marion Prison.
#
In the examining room at Wolfkill, they locked eyes, no longer young, no longer passionate.
"You never married?" McCoy asked.
"No, Cleve. I never found a man I could trust."
Her words were like an ice pick to his heart. He ran his tongue over lips that had suddenly gone dry. "Did you ever think about visiting me, letting me explain?"
"All the time," she admitted, a slight catch in her voice. "But how would it have looked, Cleve? A Bureau of Prisons staff nurse applying for permission to visit a condemned killer on federal death row? I had a life to somehow put back together. You were going to be executed. I was going to be alone."
"But after the death penalty was abolished—"
"That made no difference. Life without parole. You were still dead, just in a different way." Cora sighed a brief, hollow sigh and shook her head, briefly but emphatically. "What's the use, Cleve? Talking about it won't do either one of us any good." She pointed to an examination table next to an electrocardiograph machine. "Strip to your underwear and lie down there."
She gave him a full-body exam, head to toe, testicles to prostate, EKG to chest X-ray, and drew blood and took a urine sample for a chemical work-up. For McCoy it was a mortifying experience, but none of it appeared to bother Cora in the least. She was all professional.
"I'll send for you when the test results come back from the lab," she told him when she was finished. "Then I can evaluate your overall physical condition and decide whether you need treatment for anything."
She summoned Zen, the orderly, to escort McCoy back to his quarters.
"So, what did you think of the doc?" Zen asked on the way.
"Seems okay," McCoy replied neutrally.
"Yeah, she's aces," said Zen. "Everybody likes her. She didn't want to come here, but the Bureau's medical director insisted 'cause she was the only one on the staff with geriatric training. I think we were lucky to get her. She's really something with the senile and dementia patients. Great communication skills."
McCoy was only half listening to Zen. His own thoughts were divided. On one side was his continuing surprise at having encountered Cora. On the other was an ongoing amazement at the absence of serious security everywhere he looked. Wolfkill, he was beginning to conclude, was almost like an honor facility.
A place someone could almost walk away from