Double Life of a Cell Block King novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Bookkeeper

Amos Carmody confirms the ledger and the real will exist outside the walls. The guard has him moved to the infirmary.

The next morning the landlord moved his own men out of the prison library so I could talk in there.

I hadn't asked him to.

That was how fast a block changes when it decides you're in charge.

Amos Carmody sat across from me at a scarred table with a book open between us.

He wasn't reading it.

He was watching the door.

"You shouldn't be here," he said. "Gordon's boy doesn't belong in D."

"Gordon's boy punched his stepbrother in front of two hundred people to get here."

Amos's mouth fell open.

"You did that on purpose?"

"I wrote to you."

"I never got a letter."

"I know. Somebody reads your mail."

Amos took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and put them back.

His hands were shaking.

He was fifty-eight, but he looked seventy.

"Prove who you are," he said. "I've been tricked before. Dalton sent a man in here once who said he was a lawyer."

I thought about it.

"My father had a nickname for his first truck," I said. "A red Peterbilt he bought used in 1994."

"Go on."

"He called it Old Number One. He used to drive me around the lot in it on Sundays."

"Go on."

"He sang along with the radio, off-key, to the same Jolene song every time."

Amos let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob.

"It was always Jolene," he said. "Gordon couldn't sing a note."

"No."

"Fifteen years I sat across a desk from that man."

His eyes were wet.

"All right, son. All right."

He leaned forward.

"Gordon told you about the book."

"He said you have it. He died before he said anything else."

"I have it."

My heart thumped.

"Where?"

"Not here. The guard searches my cell every Tuesday." He lowered his voice. "It's outside these walls, in a place only I would know."

"Tell me."

"Not yet."

"Amos."

"Not until I'm sure you can read what's in it and still stand up."

I frowned.

"What does that mean?"

He didn't answer.

He looked at his hands, and for a moment I saw something on his face that wasn't fear.

It was shame.

"There are two things in that box," he said instead. "The book, and your father's real will."

"The real will?"

"He signed it three weeks before he died. It leaves you fifty-one percent."

"And Eugenia's will?"

"A forgery. Dalton had it typed in an afternoon."

He gave a thin smile.

"I told Gordon to change it sooner. He said there was time."

I sat very still.

I had known it for two years, but knowing and hearing it were different.

"Then I need that box."

"You will have it."

"When?"

"When I trust you with it."

He glanced at the library door.

A guard had stopped there and was looking in through the little window.

It was the thick-necked guard.

Amos stood up quickly, and his chair scraped.

"Read the book on the table," he said. "It's a good book. Read it."

I looked down.

It was a cheap paperback western.

I picked it up and pretended to read, and I watched the guard's eyes pass over us and move on.

When the footsteps faded, Amos sat down again, gray in the face.

He pressed his hand flat against his chest.

"Are you all right?"

"My heart," he said. "It's nothing. I need my pills, that's all. They've been late all month."

"Late?"

"That guard brings them. Sometimes he forgets."

I looked at the door.

Sometimes he forgets.

I thought of the thick-necked guard's smile at intake, and I felt something cold open under my ribs.

"I'll get you your pills."

"Don't do anything rash. If you hurt that man, they'll put you in the hole and I'll never see you again."

"I won't hurt him."

Not yet.

We talked for twenty more minutes, in low voices, about little things.

He asked about my mother.

I told him she died when I was nine.

He said Gordon had cried at the funeral so hard that Amos had to drive him home.

I hadn't known that.

I wished I had.

At the end the bell rang, and the guards began to call the block back.

Amos stood and had to hold the table.

"There's something else," he said.

"Anything."

"I have a daughter. She's twenty-seven."

I hadn't known that either.

"Katie. She comes on Saturdays, and she has no idea what any of this is."

His voice shook.

"She thinks I'm innocent and that your family put me here."

"They did."

"Some of it." His eyes were bright and frightened. "She doesn't know the rest. I need you to keep her out of it."

"I will."

"If that guard ever gets near her, if he ever so much as looks at her sideways, promise me you'll stop him."

"I promise."

The library door opened.

Two guards stood there.

One of them was the thick-necked guard, and he was smiling.

"Carmody," he said. "Infirmary. Doctor wants to check that heart."

Amos's face went blank.

"Now?"

"Now."

I stepped forward.

The guard raised his baton a few inches, not quite at me.

"Easy, Mason. Day two. Don't make a mess."

They led Amos out between them.

At the door he turned his head and said in a rough whisper, "Saturday. Don't let her near him."

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