The Chamber (14 page)

“You might be surprised.”

“It’ll be a helluva surprise, son, if you know your ass from a hole in the ground. You’ll be the first clown from Kravitz & Bane to possess such information.”

“They’ve kept you out of the gas chamber for the past seven years.”

“And I’m supposed to be thankful? There are fifteen residents of the Row with more seniority than me. Why should I be next? I’ve been here for nine and a half years. Treemont’s been here for fourteen years. Of course, he’s an African-American and that always helps. They have more rights, you know. It’s much harder to execute one of them because whatever they did was someone else’s fault.”

“That’s not true.”

“How the hell do you know what’s true? A year ago you were still in school, still wearing faded blue jeans all day long, still drinking beer at happy hours with your idealistic little buddies. You haven’t lived, son. Don’t tell me what’s true.”

“So you’re in favor of swift executions for African-Americans?”

“Not a bad idea, really. In fact, most of these punks deserve the gas.”

“I’m sure that’s a minority opinion on death row.”

“You could say that.”

“And you, of course, are different and don’t belong here.”

“No, I don’t belong here. I’m a political prisoner, sent here by an egomaniac who used me for his own political purposes.”

“Can we discuss your guilt or innocence?”

“No. But I didn’t do what the jury said I did.”

“So you had an accomplice? Someone else planted the bomb?”

Sam rubbed the deep burrows in his forehead with his middle finger, as if he was flipping the bird. But he wasn’t. He was suddenly in a deep and prolonged trance. The conference room was much cooler than his cell. The conversation was aimless, but at least it was conversation with someone other than a guard or the invisible inmate next door. He would take his time, make it last as long as possible.

Adam studied his notes and pondered what to say next. They had been chatting for twenty minutes, sparring really, with no clear direction. He was determined to confront their family’s history before he left. He just didn’t know how to do it.

Minutes passed. Neither looked at the other. Sam lit another Montclair.

“Why do you smoke so much?” Adam finally said.

“I’d rather die of lung cancer. It’s a common desire on death row.”

“How many packs a day?”

“Three or four.”

Another minute passed. Sam slowly finished the cigarette, and kindly asked, “Where’d you go to school?”

“Law school at Michigan. Undergrad at Pepperdine.”

“Where’s that?”

“California.”

“Is that where you grew up?”

“Yeah.”

“How many states have the death penalty?”

“Thirty-eight. Most of them don’t use it, though. It seems to be popular only in the Deep South, Texas, Florida, and California.”

“You know our esteemed legislature has changed the law here. Now we can die by lethal injection. It’s more humane. Ain’t that nice? Doesn’t apply to me, though, since my conviction was years ago. I’ll get to sniff the gas.”

“Maybe not.”

“You’re twenty-six?”

“Yeah.”

“Born in 1964.”

“That’s right.”

Sam removed another cigarette from the pack and tapped the filter on the counter. “Where?”

“Memphis,” Adam replied without looking at him.

“You don’t understand, son. This state needs an execution, and I happen to be the nearest victim. Louisiana, Texas, and Florida are killing them like flies, and the law-abiding people of this state can’t understand why our little chamber is not being used. The more violent crime we have, the more people beg for executions. Makes ’em feel better, like the system is working hard to eliminate murderers. The politicians openly campaign with promises of more prisons and tougher sentences and more executions. That’s why those clowns in Jackson voted for lethal injection. It’s supposed to be more humane, less objectionable, thus easier to implement. You follow?”

Adam nodded his head slightly.

“It’s time for an execution, and my number is up. That’s why they’re pushing like hell. You can’t stop it.”

“We can certainly try. I want the opportunity.”

Sam finally lit the cigarette. He inhaled deeply, then whistled the smoke through a small opening in his lips. He leaned forward slightly on his elbows and peered through the hole in the screen. “What part of California are you from?”

“Southern. L.A.” Adam glanced at the piercing eyes, then looked away.

“Your family still there?”

A wicked pain shot through Adam’s chest, and for a second his heart froze. Sam puffed his cigarette and never blinked.

“My father’s dead,” he said with a shaky voice, and sank a few inches in his chair.

A long minute passed as Sam sat poised on the edge of his seat. Finally, he said, “And your mother?”

“She lives in Portland. Remarried.”

“Where’s your sister?” he asked.

Adam closed his eyes and dropped his head. “She’s in college,” he mumbled.

“I believe her name is Carmen, right?” Sam asked softly.

Adam nodded. “How’d you know?” he asked through gritted teeth.

Sam backed away from the screen and sank into the folding metal chair. He dropped his current cigarette on the floor without looking at it. “Why did you come here?” he asked, his voice much firmer and tougher.

“How’d you know it was me?”

“The voice. You sound like your father. Why’d you come here?”

“Eddie sent me.”

Their eyes met briefly, then Sam looked away. He
slowly leaned forward and planted both elbows on both knees. His gaze was fixed on something on the floor. He grew perfectly still.

Then he placed his right hand over his eyes.

P
HILLIP NAIFEH WAS SIXTY-THREE YEARS OLD, and nineteen months away from retirement. Nineteen months and four days. He had served as superintendent of the State Department of Corrections for twenty-seven years, and in doing so had survived six governors, an army of state legislators, a thousand prisoners’ lawsuits, countless intrusions by the federal courts, and more executions than he cared to remember.

The warden, as he preferred to be called (although the title was officially nonexistent under the terminology of the Mississippi Code), was a full-blooded Lebanese whose parents had immigrated in the twenties and settled in the Delta. They had prospered with a small grocery store in Clarksdale where his mother had become somewhat famous for her homemade Lebanese desserts. He was educated in the public schools, went off to college, returned to the state, and, for reasons long forgotten, had become involved in criminal justice.

He hated the death penalty. He understood society’s yearning for it, and long ago he had memorized all the sterile reasons for its necessity. It was a deterrent. It removed killers. It was the ultimate punishment. It was biblical. It satisfied the public’s need for retribution. It relieved the anguish of the victim’s family. If pressed, he could make these arguments as persuasively as any prosecutor. He actually believed one or two of them.

But the burden of the actual killing was his, and he
despised this horrible aspect of his job. It was Phillip Naifeh who walked with the condemned man from his cell to the Isolation Room, as it was called, to suffer the last hour before death. It was Phillip Naifeh who led him next door to the Chamber Room, and supervised the strapping of the legs, arms, and head. “Any last words?” he had uttered twenty-two times in twenty-seven years. It was left to him to tell the guards to lock the chamber door, and it was left to him to nod to the executioner to pull the levers to mix the deadly gas. He had actually watched the faces of the first two as they died, then decided it was best to watch the faces of the witnesses in the small room behind the chamber. He had to select the witnesses. He had to do a hundred things listed in a manual of how to legally kill death row inmates, including the pronouncing of death, the removal of the body from the chamber, the spraying of it to remove the gas from the clothing, and on and on.

He had once testified before a legislative committee in Jackson, and given his opinions about the death penalty. He had a better idea, he had explained to deaf ears, and his plan would keep condemned killers in the Maximum Security Unit in solitary confinement where they couldn’t kill, couldn’t escape, and would never be eligible for parole. They would eventually die on death row, but not at the hands of the state.

This testimony made headlines and almost got him fired.

Nineteen months and four days, he thought to himself, as he gently ran his fingers through his thick gray hair and slowly read the latest opinion from the Fifth Circuit. Lucas Mann sat across the desk and waited.

“Four weeks,” Naifeh said, putting the opinion aside. “How many appeals are left?” he asked in a gentle drawl.

“The usual assortment of last ditch efforts,” Mann replied.

“When did this come down?”

“Early this morning. Sam will appeal it to the Supreme Court, where it will probably be ignored. This should take a week or so.”

“What’s your opinion, counselor?”

“The meritorious issues have all been presented at this point. I’d give it a fifty percent chance of happening in four weeks.”

“That’s a lot.”

“Something tells me this one might go off.”

In the interminable workings of death penalty roulette, a 50 percent chance was close to a certainty. The process would have to be started. The manual would have to be consulted. After years of endless appeals and delays, the last four weeks would be over in the blink of an eye.

“Have you talked to Sam?” the warden asked.

“Briefly. I took him a copy of the opinion this morning.”

“Garner Goodman called me yesterday, said they were sending down one of their young associates to talk to Sam. Did you take care of it?”

“I talked to Garner, and I talked to the associate. His name is Adam Hall, and he’s meeting with Sam as we speak. Should be interesting. Sam’s his grandfather.”

“His what!”

“You heard me. Sam Cayhall is Adam Hall’s paternal grandfather. We were doing a routine background on Adam Hall yesterday, and noticed a few gray spots. I called the FBI in Jackson, and within two hours they had plenty of circumstantial evidence. I confronted him this morning, and he confessed. I don’t think he’s trying to hide it.”

“But he has a different name.”

“It’s a long story. They haven’t seen each other since Adam was a toddler. His father fled the state after Sam was arrested for the bombing. Moved out West, changed names, drifted around, in and out of work, sounds like a real loser. Killed himself in 1981. Anyway, Adam here goes to college and makes perfect grades. Goes to law school at Michigan, a Top Ten school, and is the editor of the law review. Takes a job with our pals at Kravitz & Bane, and he shows up this morning for the reunion with his grandfather.”

Naifeh now raked both hands through his hair and shook his head. “How wonderful. As if we needed more publicity, more idiotic reporters asking more asinine questions.”

“They’re meeting now. I am assuming Sam will agree to allow the kid to represent him. I certainly hope so. We’ve never executed an inmate without a lawyer.”

“We should do some lawyers without the inmates,” Naifeh said with a forced smile. His hatred for lawyers was legendary, and Lucas didn’t mind. He understood. He had once estimated that Phillip Naifeh had been named as a defendant in more lawsuits than anyone else in the history of the state. He had earned the right to hate lawyers.

“I retire in nineteen months,” he said, as if Lucas had never heard this. “Who’s next after Sam?”

Lucas thought a minute and tried to catalog the voluminous appeals of forty-seven inmates. “No one, really. The Pizza Man came close four months ago, but he got his stay. It’ll probably expire in a year or so, but there are other problems with his case. I can’t see another execution for a couple of years.”

“The Pizza Man? Forgive me.”

“Malcolm Friar. Killed three pizza delivery boys in a
week. At trial he claimed robbery was not the motive, said he was just hungry.”

Naifeh raised both hands and nodded. “Okay, okay, I remember. He’s the nearest after Sam?”

“Probably. It’s hard to say.”

“I know.” Naifeh gently pushed away from his desk and walked to a window. His shoes were somewhere under the desk. He thrust his hands in his pockets, pressed his toes into the carpet, and thought deeply for a while. He had been hospitalized after the last execution, a mild heart flutter as his doctor preferred to call it. He’d spent a week in a hospital bed watching his little flutter on a monitor, and promised his wife he would never suffer through another execution. If he could somehow survive Sam, then he could retire at full pension.

He turned and stared at his friend Lucas Mann. “I’m not doing this one, Lucas. I’m passing the buck to another man, one of my subordinates, a younger man, a good man, a man who can be trusted, a man who’s never seen one of these shows, a man who’s just itching to get blood on his hands.”

“Not Nugent.”

“That’s the man. Retired Colonel George Nugent, my trusted assistant.”

“He’s a nut.”

“Yes, but he’s our nut, Lucas. He’s a fanatic for details, discipline, organization, hell, he’s the perfect choice. I’ll give him the manual, tell him what I want, and he’ll do a marvelous job of killing Sam Cayhall. He’ll be perfect.”

George Nugent was an assistant superintendent at Parchman. He had made a name for himself by implementing a most successful boot camp for first offenders. It was a brutal, six-week ordeal in which Nugent strutted and swaggered around in black boots, cursing
like a drill instructor and threatening gang rape for the slightest infraction. The first offenders rarely came back to Parchman.

“Nugent’s crazy, Phillip. It’s a matter of time before he hurts someone.”

“Right! Now you understand. We’re going to let him hurt Sam, just the way it should be done. By the book. Heaven knows how much Nugent loves a book to go by. He’s the perfect choice, Lucas. It’ll be a flawless execution.”