Muriel grunted softly, a word or two that I couldn't understand. I found that no words formed on my own lips, or even in my mind.

Olsen looked at another card. "Mr. Sweeting ordered a sirloin steak dinner, a pint of chocolate ice cream with hot fudge, a CocaCola, and a large-size b.u.t.tered popcorn-all of which we were able to provide. This meal was served at approximately four-thirty A.M. this morning, following the condemned's final visit with a clergyman of his choice. In this instance Mr. Sweeting met for one hour with the prison chaplain. ... Do you have any questions thus far?"

Muriel and I shook our heads in the negative.

He was spooning up his hot fudge sundae, I calculated, when I was chewing my poached eggs in that Starke diner.

Olsen said, "The rest has to do with the execution procedure, which you'll witness shortly. Witnesses will be escorted at five forty- five A.M. to the witness room of the execution chamber in Q wing. At six A.M. an FSP administrative a.s.sistant, namely myself, three designated electricians, two FSP correctional officers, a physician, and a physician's a.s.sistant will be a.s.sembled in the death chamber. Mr. Crocker will establish telephone contact with the office of the governor, in case there should be any last-minute clemency."

"Will the governor be awake and in his office at six A.M.?" I asked.

"That's a good question," Olsen said, "and frankly I don't know the answer. Meanwhile the condemned will have his head and right calf shaved to better conduct the electrical charge. He will take a supervised shower, and he will be dressed in his new burial clothes, omitting the suit jacket and shoes. Conducting gel will be applied to his scalp and shaved leg. The prison superintendent, Mr. Tate, will read the death warrant one final time to the condemned. The condemned will be strapped into the chair. He will be permitted to make a last brief statement. A conducting sponge and cap will be placed on his head. I might mention," Olsen added, "that last night I and my colleague, Clive Crocker, who as I've said is over at the other table with those other folks, noticed that the sponge to be used this morning was, to say the least, dirty. So we went out and purchased a brand-new clean sponge to be used for this occasion. I don't think they ever had changed that other sponge, if you can believe such a thing."

Under the Formica table I dug my fingers into the muscles of my legs.

"Mr. Wright, the a.s.sistant superintendent of this facility, will then engage the circuit breaker. The chief electrician will activate the panel, Mr. Tate will signal the executioner to throw the switch, and the automatic cycle will begin. Once it's run its course, the physician will p.r.o.nounce the condemned as dead. You will all exit the viewing chamber, to the rear."

"Who's the executioner?" Muriel asked quietly.

"An anonymous local private citizen dressed in a black hood and robe," Olsen said.

"Jesus, a volunteer?"

"Yes, except that he'll be paid one hundred and fifty dollars for his services."

"How many volts?" I asked.

"Two thousand four hundred."

"And it takes?"

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"How long to kill him?"

"Oh, instantaneous. Perhaps a few seconds. You may see some movement in the condemned's body, but I a.s.sure you, consciousness ends instantly."

Fred Olsen excused himself to go to the bathroom.

I stared into Muriel's eyes. The pupils were dilated. She said, "I don't know if I can go through with this."

"Then let's skip it."

"No, I've got to do it. I took a vow on the Virgin. Chinga la madre! What was I thinking? This man Olsen is certifiably insane. Will you come with me? Can you do that for me?"

I shook my head. I had come this far, but it seemed far enough. She gripped my wrist. She had thin fingers, and strong. "Please. Help me."

"All right," I said, my stubbornness melting before the heat of her plea.

A van took us in a group to Q wing. A rosy sun was inching above the pines to the east. During the ride, no one spoke. The appeal attorney nodded at Muriel Suarez; he knew who she was, even though they had never been in court together.

I whispered in Muriel's ear. "Can you see Mrs. Sweeting? Next to the appeal attorney?"

"Yes."

"She stumbled getting on the bus. She's brought her coffee along. Just poured something into it from a flask. How old a woman is she?"

"Sweeting's twenty-seven. She's probably in her fifties."

"She looks seventy, for Christ's sake."

"Dios mo. I hate this."

"Let's get the h.e.l.l out when the van stops."

"I'll be all right. Just hang tight with me. I'll shut up, I swear I will."

Inside Q wing we were led by Clive Crocker to rows of white wooden chairs. The chairs faced a gla.s.s wall. On the other side of the gla.s.s, about fifteen feet away, stood a high-backed, solid oak chair with black straps-as large as a throne. Behind the chair an open panel contained coils and lights. Two domed light fixtures hung from the ceiling.

I shifted in my chair, pulled my suit jacket a little closer. The witness room was damp.

The condemned shuffled into the death chamber. He was manacled at his ankles, and his wrists were cuffed to a chain.

Sweeting looked like a freckled boy dressed for an adult party. He wore a red and blue striped tie that hung well below his waist, a white b.u.t.ton-down dress shirt that was too big for him, baggy dark-blue suit trousers, black socks. He was about five feet four, thin and sinewy. His ears stood out at right angles to his head, like a mongrel dog. His k.n.o.bby shaven skull glistened where it had been rubbed with gel.

His mother waved to him.

Our guide, Fred Olsen, was in the death chamber, as was a doctor in a white coat, the doctor's a.s.sistant, the prison superintendent, the a.s.sistant superintendent, three electricians, two bulky correctional officers of the Death Watch squad, and a small man dressed in a black gown and a hood with a slit for vision.

For some time I had been hearing a regular rhythmic sound, like a feebly ticking drumbeat. Now it grew louder. I looked to my left, two seats away, where Olsen's colleague, Clive Crocker, was seated. I raised my eyebrows by way of inquiry.

Crocker leaned over to whisper. "The men on death row know our schedule. They tap on the bars with plastic spoons. I think we can a.s.sume it's a form of saying goodbye."

The correctional officers unchained Sweeting. One of them said, "Sit down here, please." Through the gla.s.s, although a trifle blurred, the words were still audible.

The men helped Sweeting up into the chair. His stockinged feet dangled in the air. The men cinched the various leather straps around his waist, legs, and arms.

We heard Olsen ask him, "Would you like to say a few words now?"

"Yes, please," Sweeting said, and turned toward the visitors.

"You'd better speak up to be sure they hear you," Olsen cautioned.

Sweeting nodded. "Goodbye, all. Goodbye, Mama."

"'Bye, son," Mrs. Sweeting called. "Give my love to Jesus. Tell him to take good care of you."

"Merciful G.o.d," Muriel murmured.

I took her hand, gripped it as if we were husband and wife.

"Is that all?" Olsen asked Eric Sweeting.

"Well, I'm sorry for what happened," Sweeting said. "But I guess y'all know that. I have no hard feelings, and I want to thank everyone, what they done for me. So ... I'm ready to begin my journey."

Muriel groaned. I clasped her other hand as well.

The superintendent read the death warrant a final time. The distant sound, the rhythmic beating of the plastic spoons against the bars, continued without pause. One of the correctional officers tilted Sweeting's head back and fastened a chin strap around his small jaw. The other correctional officer placed a black rubber hood on Sweeting's face. The new sponge was wedged inside the top of the hood. Electrodes led from the hood to the control box set in the wall. The first man parted Sweeting's right trouser leg; it had been slit up the side, almost to the knee. He fastened a second set of electrodes to Sweeting's slender and shaven milk-white calf.

He signaled to the hooded executioner. Thumbs up. The executioner pushed the b.u.t.ton in the control box.

The automatic cycle began. Lights dimmed. Sweeting's body jerked, and he moaned softly as if in sleep.

Blue-and-yellow flames shot from Sweeting's head, firing radiantly upward and outward like the corona of the sun during a total eclipse. Sweeting screamed like a pig being slaughtered. The flames crackled, while his flesh sizzled audibly. We couldn't smell it, but we did hear it.

In the witness room with us, Clive Crocker, Fred Olsen's a.s.sociate, jumped to his feet. In the death chamber, two of the electricians were tugging at the sleeves of the prison superintendent.

... Perhaps a few seconds. You may see some movement in the condemned's body, but I a.s.sure you, consciousness ends instantly.

Sweeting kept screaming. The flames continued to leap upward from his head. His toes stretched and tapped angrily on the concrete floor. The skin of his leg, as everyone could see, began to scorch and turn black. In the witness chamber, Mrs. Sweeting started to blubber.

The executioner released the switch.

"We seem to have a problem," Crocker said quietly to the rest of us in the witness room. "But I'm sure it will be remedied."

The electricians busily readjusted the straps and the electrodes. In a minute or so they seemed satisfied. They signaled to the executioner. Thumbs up a second time. The executioner didn't see the signal. One of the electricians came over and whispered in the ear of his hood. Nodding, the executioner pushed the switch a second time.

The flames jumped forth from Sweeting's shaven skull and out on all sides through the rubber hood. A video record kept by the physician's a.s.sistant later demonstrated that these flames varied between three inches and fifteen inches in length. Their color was mostly blue, although they were interfused with yellow streaks. Sweeting's piglike screams became the baying of a hurt dog. His little body twisted against the straps; at times he seemed to be dancing in place. A thick dark-brown fluid flowed out from under the rubber hood and down the front of his white shirt. Liquid, as well as bloodied white and yellow kernels of popcorn and bits of chewed, charred sirloin, landed in his lap, then spattered on the floor in a pool of undigested CocaCola, ice cream, and black fudge.

Through it all, the other men on death row beat with their spoons against the bars. Mrs. Sweeting buried her head in her arms and whimpered prayers to her Jesus.

The electricians shouted something again at the executioner, and again the executioner removed his finger from the b.u.t.ton.

Sweeting shrieked, "My eyes are on fire! ... I can't breathe! ..."

"Stop this!" Muriel yelled. She jumped to her feet. "In the name of G.o.d, stop it!"

Clive Crocker rushed over. "Ms. Suarez, please don't interfere. Control yourself!"

She began to curse at him, and Crocker tried forcefully to jam her back down into her seat. I half rose from my own chair, felt power in my thighs, bunched my right hand into a fist, and drove it straight into Crocker's face.

On the third try, fourteen minutes after the first jolt of electricity had surged into his body, Sweeting was p.r.o.nounced legally dead.

Olsen entered the witness room, wiping sweat from his neck. "The sentence of the State of Florida has been carried out. Please exit from the rear and proceed to the van."

In the hallway Muriel clung to my arm, shuddering. I looked in amazement at the raw-skinned knuckles of my hand, which was already beginning to swell.

Crocker's nose was broken. He pa.s.sed me in the hallway. "You can't get away with that kind of behavior"-he pointed a shaky finger-"even if you're a lawyer. I'll sue you."

"f.u.c.k you, a.s.shole," I said.

I couldn't remember the last time I had spoken that way and struck a man in anger. Perhaps never.

The dirty sponge that had stood the test of so many executions was a natural sponge. The one that Crocker and Olsen had bought at the Circle K in Starke was made of nylon, and when two thousand four hundred volts of electricity rocketed through it, it had caught fire. Blue fire.

My nightmare.

A few days later, the official FSP report to the media included an affidavit that read in part: "There was understandable human consternation, but there was no collapse. There was understandable human perplexity, but there was no panic. What was necessary was done. What was intended was accomplished. Under given circ.u.mstances that surfaced, the results were far less than aesthetically attractive. But with rare serene exceptions, after forty-odd years experience, it is held that most deaths are without aesthetic attractiveness, regardless of causation.

"Further affiant sayeth naught."

And it was signed by a medical director of Florida State Prison.

But long before I read that, I had moved from just being involved to a state of total commitment. I couldn't stand the thought that in some way I was responsible for Darryl Morgan's being sent to this place, where he would suffer, if not the same corrupt fate as Eric Sweeting, then a similar one. Whatever it took, I swore, I was going to save Darryl Morgan's life.

Chapter 12.

STILL WEARING HER nightgown under a terry-cloth bathrobe, Toba curled against silk pillows on one of the sofas in the living room. Slanting afternoon sunlight beat against the picture window facing west. A half-full bottle of chilled chablis stood on the coffee table. The phone plugs had been pulled out of the jacks.

The twenty-five-inch Sony console was turned on to CNN. Toba had been watching the news since early in the morning, she told me, but nothing of interest had happened in the world. In fact, it was practically the same news now at 4:00 p.m. as it had been at 9:00 a.m. "Isn't that ridiculous?" she said. "You would think that in six or seven hours something new would happen in the world. A new war, maybe, a revolution in some banana republic, a juicy s.e.x scandal in D.C.-something. But it hasn't. I mean, I'm sure it has, it's pretty impossible to believe that it hasn't, but they're not telling us about it! Why is that?"

"I'm going to brew coffee," I said. "While I do that, you drink this gla.s.s of water. Alcohol dehydrates the brain."

"Sounds like something you read in a magazine on the plane," Toba said, chuckling.

"Matter of fact, that buzz you get from alcohol, you know what that is?"

"Brain cells being destroyed."

"How did you know that?"

"Because I was at the same dinner party you were at where that pompous brain surgeon lectured us. But I figured out that there's probably a billion brain cells we never even use, so what's the difference?"

"I'll get the coffee. Then I'll cook some scrambled eggs and make whole wheat toast."

Toba sat up straighter and put down her gla.s.s. "Ted, you haven't asked me why I'm drunk."

I patted her shoulder. "I will, after I've fed you. I love you and I'm trying to be kind to you. Isn't that better than asking a lot of questions?"

She began to weep.

We sat by the edge of the pool in the early-evening light, while the sun began its meltdown into the green Gulf. A school of fish moved downsh.o.r.e. Pelicans circled, then plunged. Toba was drinking her third mug of decaf.