The Last Act by Brad Parks

Author:Brad Parks
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-03-12T04:00:00+00:00

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• • •

He walked away, leaving me with the pond to myself.

It was a stretch to say Doc was onto me. But I had this feeling he’d be watching me closely now. That alone made him a threat. The cell phone made him even more of one.

It was time to eliminate all those threats. And in one flash of inspiration, I already knew there was one sure way to do it.

Snitch.

The moment the thought occurred to me, I immediately recoiled at myself, which speaks to how thoroughly I had embraced the role of inmate. I had to remind myself that, thinking like a law-abiding citizen for a change, it actually was quite illegal for Doc to have a cell phone; and that, by snitching, I was furthering the public good.

No, the only real quandary here wasn’t the moral, should-I-or-shouldn’t-I issue. It was how to do it without getting caught. From what I had seen, Danny was right: Morgantown wasn’t a snitches-get-stitches kind of joint. But I would still be socially ostracized if anyone figured out what I had done. I’d be booted out of the poker game for sure, whether I paid off Bobby Harrison or not. And my chances of befriending Mitch would be shot, too. I’d be serving out the remainder of my six months with no chance of success.

The most direct method of snitching would be to go through the unit manager, Mr. Munn.

Except I could easily envision Munn going straight to Doc’s room and attacking it like it was a pretend Guadalcanal machine-gun nest. I worried Mitch would know that (a) he had slipped up and mentioned Doc’s phone, (b) Doc’s room had been raided, and (c) I was the new guy looking to get in good with my unit manager. It would be too easy to put a, b, and c together.

I sat on that bench, tossing around other possibilities in my mind. Then Karen Lembo walked across my sightline.

She wasn’t coming to see me. She was just crossing the middle of campus, on her way to another special snowflake in need of motherly love.

But it was all the prodding I needed. Mrs. Lembo was the perfect emissary for my snitching. There was nothing that tied the two of us together. And—unlike a socially inept, heart-disease-prone World War II reenactor—she would be prudent with the information.

I lifted myself off the bench and walked toward her office, which was in the education building, a safe space. I wasn’t creating any rumors by going there.

There was a secretary in the office suite when I entered. With a friendly smile, I borrowed a pen and a piece of paper and wrote in neat block letters:

JIM MADIGAN HAS A CELL PHONE. BUT PLEASE BE SMART ABOUT HOW YOU GO AFTER IT. I DON’T WANT ANYONE TO KNOW SOMEONE SNITCHED ON HIM.

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