Chapter 32.

Eddie arrived in upstate New York tired and wind-chapped, sunburned and bow-legged, with an aching back and a sore a.s.s. He left his helmet and goggles on The Late Chuckie's rat bike, took a thin cardboard box from the saddlebag and went inside the prison.

The guard's eyes narrowed at the box. "You can't bring anything into the visiting room," he informed Eddie.

"Call the O.I.C.," Eddie said, using the slang for officer-in-charge.

The guard pressed the phone to his head, shooting Eddie glances as he spoke. He hung up and shrugged. "You got friends in high places. You're all set."

Eddie didn't bother to mention that he had a friend in Congress, who happened to sit on a House committee with the congresswoman who represented this section of the Empire State.

The guard looked in the box, to make sure it did not contain a machine gun or a grappling hook. Satisfied, he led Eddie into the visiting room.

"Sit at number five," he advised. "The phone's busted at six."

Eddie sat. Waited. Checked the clock. Waited.

There's so much to say, hardly any time.

No, Eddie thought, there was time. This was a marathon. You don't win a marathon in the first hundred yards. The two brothers had the rest of their lives to get to know each other.

A door beyond the gla.s.s opened and Henry came out, cuffed and shackled and looking precisely as he had before. He nodded at Eddie, smiled, and sat.

Eddie took the phone.

Henry did not.

He stared at Eddie for a minute, a little smile at the corners of his mouth. Henry looked to the telephone, and then nodded toward the guard's station, the next room over. Then he pantomimed listening to a telephone with his hand over the mouthpiece.

He was pretending to eavesdrop. So the guards eavesdrop.

Henry smiled and nodded as understanding spread over Eddie's face. Then Henry mouthed five words, slowly so that Eddie could read his lips: "Do."

"You."

"Want."

"The."

"Gold."

Eddie had expected the question. He had spent the past two weeks, after the confrontation at the Grotto, rationalizing about all the good Eddie Bourque could do with six million dollars in gold. But he couldn't take it. He could melt down the gold and recast it into any shape he liked, but he would never strain out the blood.

"No," Eddie mouthed back.

Henry laughed without sound on his side of the gla.s.s, and then picked up the telephone.

"You got my letter?" Eddie asked.

"Next time include beer."

"I'm sorry about your wife."

"Marriage isn't prison."

Eddie looked for pain in his brother's face. There was thirty years' worth. "I'm taking some time off," Eddie said. "For the mountains. I thought you could pick one you'd like to visit. I'll camp there, make some notes, tell you about it."

Henry nodded. "I killed those two guards," he said.

"I know."

They met eyes, understanding each other. Eddie had dreaded this moment. He was glad when it was over.

"You could still file motions for a new trial, or for clemency," Eddie said. "It's been thirty years."

Henry shifted in his chair, looking uncomfortable. "Maybe some day," he said. Looking away, refusing to meet Eddie's eye, he added: "I need to be sure it would never happen again."

A lump grew like a tumor in Eddie's throat.

"Maybe some day," Eddie repeated at a whisper.

Henry switched the phone to his other ear. "I've done what you asked-pet.i.tioned for a transfer to a state pen in Ma.s.sachusetts, maybe Gardner-that's not too far from you."

"Naw, just forty-five minutes. That would be perfect."

"Probably take a few months, but I'm first on the list when a bed opens up. Next time somebody gets shanked, I'm in." He made a bright, hopeful face and held it, batting his eyelashes.

Eddie couldn't help himself and burst into laugher.

"You're good at puzzles," Henry said. "Their whole plot was based on misdirection. You cut counter-grain to solve it."

"I get lucky sometimes."

"Are you going to try to solve any more puzzles?"

Eddie shrugged. "If any come up."

"I have a lot of time to think about puzzles."

"I could use the help." Eddie was beginning to learn how Henry communicated. Keep it moving. Henry had not even glanced at the box on the counter on Eddie's side of the gla.s.s. Eddie patted the box. "This is for us." He took from it a small black-and-red checkerboard. He set up the plastic chess pieces-white for Henry, black for himself.

"I've been playing chess every day since you wore diapers," Henry warned, a little smile on his lips. "You can't possibly beat me, not in a hundred tries."

"You're probably right," Eddie said. "But prepare yourself for that glorious day when your little brother learns to kick your a.s.s. Now move!"

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