Word has leaked and there’s a mob waiting outside. The town of Milo will never believe anyone but Gardy killed the Fentress girls, regardless of the evidence. This is what happens when the cops act on one of their smart hunches and march off in the wrong direction, controlling the rumors and taking the press along with them. The prosecutor joins the parade early on, and before long it becomes an organized and semi-legitimate lynching.

I slip through a side door to where Partner is waiting. We make our escape, without an escort of any sort, and as we speed away from the courthouse two tomatoes and an egg splash onto our windshield. I can’t help but laugh. Once again, I’m leaving town in style.

PART TWO THE BOOM BOOM ROOM

1.

Rich people tend to avoid death row. Link Scanlon has not been so lucky, though you couldn’t find three people in this city who care about Link or his luck. There are about a million people here, and when Link was finally convicted and sent away, virtually everyone felt some measure of relief. Drug trafficking was dealt a severe blow, though it soon recovered. Several strip clubs closed, which pleased many young wives. Parents of teenage girls told themselves their daughters were safer. Owners of fancy sports cars relaxed as auto thefts plummeted. Most important, the police and narcotics agents relaxed and waited for the dip in crime. It happened, but didn’t last long.

Link was sentenced to death by an untampered jury for killing a judge. Soon after he arrived on death row, his lead defense lawyer was found strangled. So I suppose the City’s bar association was also relieved to see Link put away.

On second thought, there must have been several hundred people here who truly missed Link, at first. Morticians, strippers, drug runners, chop shop operators, and crooked cops, to name a few. But it doesn’t matter now. That was six years ago, and once in prison Link proved capable of running most of his businesses from behind bars.

All he ever wanted was to be a gangster, an old-style Capone-like character with a lust for blood and violence and unlimited cash. His father had been a bootlegger who died of cirrhosis. His mother had remarried often and badly. Unrestrained by a normal family life, Link hit the streets at the age of twelve and soon mastered petty thievery. By fifteen, he had his own gang and was selling pot and porn in our high schools. He was arrested at sixteen, got a slap on the wrist, and thus began a long and colorful relationship with the criminal justice system.

Until he was twenty, his name was George. It didn’t fit, so he adopted and discarded several nicknames, jewels such as Lash and Boss. He finally settled on Link because he, George Scanlon, was so often linked to various crimes. Link fit him nicely and he hired a lawyer to make it legal. Just Link Scanlon, no middle initial, nothing stuck on the end. The new name gave him a new identity. He was a new man with something to prove. He became reckless in his desire to become the toughest mobster in town, and he was quite successful. By the time he was thirty, Link’s thugs were killing regularly as he took over the City’s skin business and cornered his share of the drug traffic.

He has been on death row for only six years and his execution is scheduled for 10:00 tonight. Six years is not long on death row; on the average, at least in this state, the appeals drag on for fourteen years before an execution. Twenty is not unusual. The shortest was two years, but that guy begged for the needle. It’s fair to say Link’s case has been rushed along, or expedited. Kill a judge and all the other judges take offense. His appeals were met with surprisingly few delays. His conviction was affirmed, affirmed, and reaffirmed. All rulings were unanimous, not a single dissent anywhere, state or federal. The U.S. Supremes refused to consider his case. Link pissed off those who truly run the system, and tonight the system gets the ultimate revenge.

Judge Nagy was the one Link killed. He, Link, didn’t actually pull the trigger; instead he sent word down the line that he wanted Nagy dead. A career hitter called Knuckles got the assignment and carried things out in splendid fashion. They found Judge Nagy and his wife in bed, in their pajamas, bullet holes in their heads. Knuckles then talked too much and the cops had a wire in the right place. Knuckles was on death row too, for about two years, until they found him with Drano packed in his mouth and throat. The cops quizzed Link but he swore he didn’t know a thing about it.

What was Judge Nagy’s offense? He was a tough law-and-order type who hated drugs and was famous for throwing the book at traffickers. He was about to sentence two of Link’s favorite henchmen—one was his cousin—to a hundred years each, and this upset Link. It was his town, not Nagy’s. He, Link, had been wanting to knock off a judge for years; sort of the ultimate takedown. Kill a judge, walk away from it, and the world knows you are indeed above the law.

After his defense lawyer was murdered, folks thought I was a fool to take his case. Another bad outcome for Link, and they might find me at the bottom of a lake. But that was six years ago, and Link and I have gotten along just fine. He knows I’ve tried to save his life. He’ll spare mine. What would he gain by killing his last lawyer?

2.

Partner and I pull in to the main gate at Big Wheeler, the maximum security prison where the State maintains its death row and does its executing. A guard steps to the passenger door and says, “Name?”

“Rudd, Sebastian Rudd. Here to see Link Scanlon.”

“Of course.” The guard’s name is Harvey and we’ve chatted before, but not tonight. Tonight Big Wheeler is locked down and there is a thrill in the air. It’s execution time! Across the road, some protesters with candles sing a solemn hymn while others chant support for the death penalty. Back and forth. There are TV news vans lining the highway.

Harvey scribbles something on a clipboard, says, “Unit Nine,” and as we’re about to drive away he leans in and whispers, “What are your chances?”

“Slim,” I say as we begin moving. We follow a prison security truck with gunmen standing in the back; another one trails us. Floodlights nearly blind us as we inch along, passing brightly lit buildings where three thousand men are locked in their cells and waiting for Link to die so things can return to normal. There is no sensible reason for a prison to go nuts when there’s an execution. Extra security is never needed. No one has ever escaped from death row. The condemned men there live in isolation, and thus do not have a gang of friends who might decide to storm the Bastille and free everyone. But rituals are important to the men who run prisons, and nothing gets their adrenaline pumping like an execution. Their little lives are mundane and monotonous, but occasionally the world tunes in when it’s time to kill a killer. No effort at heightened drama is to be missed.

Unit Nine is far away from the other units, with enough chain link and razor wire around it to stop Ike on the beaches of Normandy. We eventually reach a gate where a platoon of jumpy guards can’t wait to search Partner and me and our briefcases. These boys are far too excited about the evening’s festivities. With escorts we enter the building, and I’m led to a makeshift office where Warden McDuff is waiting, chewing his fingernails, obviously wired. When we’re alone in a room with no windows he says, “Have you heard?”