The Special Prisoner by Jim Lehrer

Author:Jim Lehrer [Lehrer, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-375-50577-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2000-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

“ARE YOU going to call her?” Henry senior asked the second they sat down.

“No,” Watson replied.

“You idiot.”

It was just after six-thirty the next morning, and they were off in a corner of the Sheraton coffee shop preparing to eat breakfast, which had always been the two old friends’ favorite meal to have together. Henry had called down ahead of time to ask for a table as isolated as possible. There were not only reporters and cameras to contend with but also other people—real people as distinguished from journalists, according to Henry—who wanted to get a word, a look, or some other acknowledgment from America’s newest celebrity killer, the retired Methodist bishop of San Antonio.

Their waitress, for instance, immediately asked for an autograph. A Hispanic woman in her thirties, she asked shyly, “Oh, Bishop, please, would you mind signing your menu for me? My husband’s a Catholic, but he thinks you’re innocent and a hero.”

“He’s both,” said Henry. “He’ll sign it but on one condition—that you keep everyone else away from us while we eat. I’ll have the cheese omelet, hash browns, Canadian bacon, a large glass of orange juice, and coffee, black.”

Watson wrote, as instructed, “To Michael Aleman—all the best, Quincy Watson” across the front of the large cardboard menu and ordered a toasted sesame bagel, half a grapefruit, and a cup of tea.

The coffee shop was huge and noisy, with that shiny cookie-cutter feel of hotel coffee shops everywhere. The tables were chrome and light blue Formica, their tops crowded with silverware, glass salt and pepper shakers, crocks holding packs of sugar substitute, and metal stands featuring colored cards advertising pepperoni pizza and other all-day specials. In an hour they were to meet the sons to talk more about plea bargain strategy. Final decision time was approaching.

But Henry wanted to talk about sex.

Watson didn’t. “Here I am charged with murder. And what would you have us do? Sit here like two old farts and talk about a mash note from some stranger across a crowded room.”

Henry replied, “Repeat after me, Quincy. We are not old farts. We are not too old to talk about mash notes. Call the woman, goddamn it. She’s hot for your deformed, dilapidated old body.”

“She wouldn’t be if she knew the exact condition of said body,” said Watson.

“She knows, Quincy. Everybody knows. It’s been in the newspapers and on every low-class cable-television program in America. Everybody in America knows you can’t get a hard-on. Think about that, Bishop. Think about that for being a celebrity. Look around this coffee shop. Just think—everybody in here knows that you have not had an erection in fifty years.”

It was all Watson could do to keep from laughing hysterically—like a hyena, say—at this glorious man across the table from him.

They had emerged from their prisoner experience bonded forever, as deeply as any two blood brothers could be. Henry had come out of Sengei 4 with less damage to his body and had left Brooke after only sixty days, during which he was mostly fattened up.

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