(1982) The Almighty Read online

  ‘Yes, that’s what I believe. I think being on a newspaper is one of the last romantic things in the world.’

  ‘Honey, this is big-time, big commercial time, and you’re going to lose your girlish laughter fast. Maybe newspapers were romantic once. When your father was a young newsman, battered felt hat, ancient Underwood typewriter, stubby pencils, underworld connections, making deadlines, Extras in the street. Honey, that world is as dead as the one-hoss shay. You know what a newspaper is now? Something you read if happened to miss last night’s television. Something that shovels in words between the ads. No more regular

  typewriters, no more stubby pencils, no more Extra-read-all-about-it. Just one big electronic rig-up, filled with computers and tapes. It’s one big bore, with no future. Take my word for it and spare yourself a lot of grief.’

  ‘I hope you’re wrong,’ she said.

  ‘For your sake, I hope I am.’ He signaled a passing waiter and held up his empty glass. ‘One more for the road,’ he

  called.

  When he turned back, he found her eyes hard on him.

  ‘Nick,’ she said, ‘why do you drink so much?’

  He gave her a wicked smile. T don’t know,’ he said. ‘You’re

  the investigative reporter. You find out.’

  The next morning, at her desk early, Victoria Weston was still thinking about Nick Ramsey when she heard her name on the loudspeaker. It was a summons from the managing editor. Taking up a notepad and ballpoint pen, she hurried to Ollie McAllister’s office.

  Studying the contents of a manila folder, he told Victoria to

  draw up a chair.

  ‘Your first assignment,’ he said.

  ‘I am ready,’ she said, indicating her pad and pen and wondering what the assignment would be.

  ‘Since Edward Armstead has just taken over, we haven’t as yet had time to determine what investigative stories we want to get into. However, to keep you busy we have some news features that need doing. Especially one we want to get into the works right now.’

  Victoria waited tensely.

  McAllister looked up. ‘Ever heard of Sam Yinger?’

  ‘Who hasn’t? He murdered all those kids.’

  ‘He’s going to die in the electric chair at Green Haven prison two days from now. Since his crime - horrendous as any I’ve heard - has imprinted itself on the public consciousness, we figure there’s wide interest in how Yinger spends his last hours or last day. Especially now that the state has restored capital punishment. He’ll be one of the first big names to burn under the new law. What we want is a color story, really. There you are in a cell on Death Row. Soon you are going to be extinguished as a human being. How do you spend your final hours? What are you doing? What are you

  thinking? Do you get the picture?’ ‘I get it.’

  ‘Is it scary, or isn’t it for a subhuman like Yinger? We don’t know. We hope to find out. Unfortunately we - and all of the press - have been refused visits or interviews. We can’t get to Yinger directly. But as it turns out, we can get to him indirectly - that is, at second hand.’ ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  ‘You will in a moment,’ said McAllister. ‘Here at the Record we have on the payroll a large number of tipsters in every field. We have some in city hall, some in the D.A.‘s office, some in the state capitol.’ He paused for effect. ‘And we have some in the underworld.’

  Victoria was not surprised. But because McAllister obviously was playing it for effect, she said, ‘Really? Isn’t it terribly dangerous for them, informing on their friends?’

  ‘Yes, it is, although they rarely give us anything important. But they are people always short of money. They tip us off to small things, when they think they can do it safely. Well, one of our more productive underworld tipsters is a man named Gus Pagano. Does the name mean anything to you?’ ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Probably not, because Gus Pagano was a local story and

  you were in Chicago at the time. Three years ago Pagano was a

  minor crime figure. Not a killer, but a thief. One night the

  cashier of a hotel on the Park, on Fifth Avenue, was held up.

  She set off a silent alarm. Just as the robber was making his

  escape, a squad car arrived and two of the city’s finest got out

  of it. The robber gunned them down, killed them, and got

  away. The police, as you know, don’t take murder of a

  policeman lightly. A wide net was thrown out. Suspects were

  pulled in, and among them was Gus Pagano. Immediately

  three witnesses pointed him out as the police killer. He denied

  it, protested his innocence, but then what else would one

  expect from a hardened criminal? Anyway, Pagano was tried,

  found guilty, sentenced to the chair. He was incarcerated at

  the Green Haven Correctional Facility. He continued to

  insist upon his innocence. Although unlettered, he liked to

  read, and he began to read up on the law. Then Pagano began

  to file appeals, as well as write letters to all the New York

  newspapers. A few of us on the Record were impressed by his

  letters, and we decided to have our legal staff monitor one of his appeals. As a result, there was a long delaying action and his execution was put off time and again. Finally Pagano lost his last appeal, and a firm date was set for his execution. He was on Death Row, getting ready to meet his Maker, when another man was picked up for murder in Atlanta and confessed to the killings of which Pagano had been accused. In fact, the real murderer very much resembled Pagano, so the mistake by all the witnesses was understandable. Anyway, Pagano was released from Death Row and released from prison and was a free man.’

  ‘And now he’s working for you?’

  ‘Yes. It came about quite simply. Some time after he’d gotten out of prison he came up here one. day to see us, ostensibly to thank us for our help in appealing his case. Actually he was looking for money. He admitted to being back in the mob, back into petty crime, but the pickings were poor. He wondered if we’d pay him to be an informant. We were wary. He could hardly be regarded as the most trustworthy of parties. But Dietz said he was street-smart and ordered me to give him a chance. Se we put him on a modest retainer. Most of his leads were too vague and cautious to be of any value, but gradually he began to phone in tips - three, four, five - that led to fairly big stories. We’ve kept him on the payroll ever since.’

  ‘What’s he got to do with Sam Yinger?’ asked Victoria.

  ‘Pagano knew Yinger slightly before either of them was in Green Haven. I don’t know if that amounts to much. More important, Yinger now occupies the cell on Death Row that Gus Pagano occupied before he was found innocent and released.’

  McAllister waited for Victoria’s reaction, and she reacted almost at once. ‘I get it. Since we can’t get to Yinger, we find out what he’s going through in that cell before his execution from Pagano, who went through the same experience.’

  ‘You’ve got it. Get the material from Pagano - and write it about Yinger.’

  ‘When do I see Gus Pagano?’

  ‘Any minute. He’s on his way here. He has an idea what we want from him. You can talk to him in our conference room next door. Here’s a file of clips about the Yinger crime. Brief

  yourself on it. When you’re finished with Pagano, go write the story. No more than eight hundred words. Turn it in to me this afternoon.’ He directed her to a side door. ‘Good luck, young lady.’

  Gus Pagano proved to be a dapper, slender, youngish man, perhaps thirty-five, who looked like a fugitive from an Edward G. Robinson gangster movie. His five-foot-eleven-inch frame was encased in a tight pinstriped double-breasted blue serge suit. He wore blue suede shoes. He had a full head of curly black hair, close-set eyes, a long hawklike nose, thick lips, and pocked cheeks. He was indeed street-smart, and book-smart, as well as a fast and glib talker.
/>   Setting eyes on Victoria, he removed his snap-brim felt hat, carefully placed it on the round conference table and offered her a small bow. ‘I’m Gus Pagano,’ he said. ‘You’re the first looker I’ve seen on this paper.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr. Pagano.’ She settled into a wooden chair. Although there were eight chairs around the table, Pagano took the one next to Victoria.

  ‘So you’re writing about Sam Yinger,’ he said, ‘and what it’s like to get ready to die.’

  ‘What it feels like, waiting for the electric chair, and what a cell on Death Row is like.’

  ‘They can’t get to Yinger, so they want to know what I know.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘They told you I was on Death Row right up to the wire, before I was sprung? You know about that?’ ‘Mr. McAllister told me.’

  ‘And Yinger’s in the cell I used to have. Okay, I can’t tell you from my feelings what Yinger feels like today. I was a special case. I was in there on a bum rap, and all I could think was that I was going to roast for something I didn’t do. I was bitter, just plain bitter. Yinger’s another case. He finally admitted he did it. You know what he did, don’t you?’

  Victoria tapped the folder on the table. T read the coverage of the trial by the Record.’

  Pagano shook his head. ‘A real crazy, and sick as hell. He goes out with this woman - what was her name -?’ ‘Caroline.’

  ‘Yeah, Caroline, a schoolteacher. Yinger goes out with her twice, and she finds him too weird to go out with him anymore. She doesn’t answer his calls. One night he spots her with another guy on a date, and he goes berserk. Next day he goes to her school, in the classroom where she’s teaching English to six young ethnics - six young kids eight to ten years old, one little boy and five girls - and he shoots Caroline dead, and then he goes around the classroom and murders all six kids.’ ‘I know all that,’ Victoria said.

  Ignoring her, Pagano went on. ‘He almost gets away, until someone spots him a few days later.’ Pagano shook his head again. ‘He went into Green Haven after I got out. It’s loons like him who give all of us a bad name. I can’t help you about Yinger.’

  ‘What about his living conditions? How does he live? How does he spend his time?’

  Pagano waited for Victoria to find her notepad and take out her pen, and then he began talking. ‘Death Row is on the third floor of the Hospital-Segregation Building. It’s actually the wing called K gallery. The cell I was in, the one Yinger is in -well, what’s to say about it? A cell’s a cell. You’ve seen plenty of them in prison movies.’

  ‘Yes, but I’d like you to describe it.’ ‘It’s a small, gloomy room. There’s a cot. There’s a toilet with no seat. There’s a sink on one wall. Also a water fountain. There’s a peephole in the ceiling so the guard on the walkway above can check you out from time to time. You don’t get what the other cons get.’ ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Meaning you don’t get to eat in the mess hall with the rest. You get your rations in your room. You can have cigarettes, but no matches. You want a light, a guard lights you up. Your pants better fit, because you can’t have a belt. Same with your shoes. No shoelaces. You can borrow a safety-lock razor, but you’ve got to give it back after shaving.’ ‘Do the guards ever let you out of the cell?’ ‘One hour a day, for supervised exercise. And when you have visitors.’

  ‘You can have visitors?’ Victoria asked.

  ‘My old lady used to visit me, and my older sister. Also my

  lawyer. Also a doctor, and my old lady’s priest. Anybody else has to have a court order.’

  ‘How did you spend your time, Mr. Pagano? I mean in the days before your proposed execution date.’

  ‘Me, I was different. I read books, mostly legal books. I kept writing up briefs, appeals, letters to the press. I had no time for nothing else. But Sam Yinger - naw, no chance he’d ever crack a book or write a single thing.’ ‘Would he read newspapers?’

  ‘No newspapers allowed. My guess is he’s probably watching television most of the time.’

  ‘Television?’ said Victoria. ‘You mean they let you have a television set?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Didn’t I tell you? Green Haven’s a so-called civilized slammer. But Yinger’s never going to know how the characters in his favorite soaps make out.’

  He grinned at Victoria, and she tried to smile back. Gus Pagano appraised her awhile as she wrote.

  After she had finished writing, he said slyly, ‘Of course, I didn’t tell you how I spent all of my spare time.’

  She knit her brow. ‘I’m not sure I understand you. I thought you had no spare time?’

  ‘I had some,’ he said mysteriously. ‘Hey, mind if I smoke?’ She pushed an ashtray toward him as he put the flame of his lighter to a cigarette.

  He inhaled deeply once, seemed to consider saying something, and finally said it. ‘Tell you a funny thing,’ he said. His demeanor and tone were serious. ‘The funny thing is, I could have got him out.’ ‘Got whom out?’

  ‘Yinger, Sam Yinger. I could have got him out of prison, saved him at the last minute from getting fried, but I didn’t do it because he doesn’t deserve to live. Anybody that kills six poor little children - anybody like that deserves to die. But I could have got him out if I wanted.’ ‘You could? How?’

  Pagano reconsidered briefly. He drew on his cigarette in silence, then gave Victoria a wink. ‘Just between us, for the hell of it,’ he said quietly. “Off the record. Do I have your word?’ ‘You have my word,’ she said wonderingly.

  ‘Just to show you what goes on that people don’t know about, not even Yinger. I can trust you?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll tell you.’ He waited for Victoria to put down her pad and pen.

  Rapidly, in an undertone, he began to talk again.

  Two hours later, just before lunch, Victoria sat tautly in front of Ollie McAllister’s desk and strained to catch a flicker of reaction on his face as he read her feature story on Sam Yinger’s Death Row cell.

  The managing editor was a veteran nonreactor. There was no expression on his face as he continued reading Victoria’s story to the end and put it down.

  ‘It’s well written, of course,’ said McAllister, ‘but -‘

  The ‘but’ hung ominously in the air.

  ‘- I don’t know,’ McAllister concluded. ‘Basically, the piece is weak. No human information.’

  ‘I used everything Pagano gave me,’ said Victoria defensively, ‘only he wasn’t able to give me enough. He hardly knew Sam Yinger at all, let alone knowing anything about Yinger’s feelings and emotions. Their cell, well, what’s to say - there was nothing personalized about it. Pagano’s smart all right, but he simply didn’t have anything more to give. The best information he had was something we can’t use.’

  “We can’t use? Why not?’

  ‘Pagano said it was not for publication. He made me promise not to use it.’

  ‘Promise not to use what?’ McAllister asked mildly.

  ‘The story about the escape tunnel that’s been dug below Yinger’s maximum security cell across the prison yard and under the concrete prison wall.’

  ‘A tunnel, did you say?’

  ‘A tunnel that goes from Death Row to the outside.’

  ‘A real tunnel?’

  ‘According to Gus Pagano, it’s there and it’s real. After Green Haven was built and became operative, one of the first Death Rowers discovered a vent cover that could be detached in this particular cell, and there was room enough for a man to squeeze into the vent shaft and lower himself down a pipe to

  an abandoned subbasement. He calculated that a tunnel could be dug from this room to a place just beyond the prison wall, but it would take a number of years. Using some old tools that he found in the room, he started the tunnel. He desposited all dirt in that little-used storage room. He was executed before he got very far. But he was able to pass on word of it to the next occupant of his cell. So each occupant. dug
further, hoping to be the one to use it. When Gus Pagano was thrown into the cell, he soon learned about the tunnel. There wasn’t too far to go to complete it. With all the delays and postponements that Pagano got, he was able to finish the job. He planned to use the escape route if he didn’t receive a reprieve. But he did get the reprieve and he had no reason to escape. When he heard that Sam Yinger was to replace him in that cell, he decided not to tell Yinger about the tunnel. Because he hated Yinger and didn’t think he should be free.’ Victoria caught her breath. ‘Yinger has the means to escape, but doesn’t know about it. What a great story! What a pity we can’t use it.’

  McAllister’s eyes held on her. ‘It is a shame,’ he agreed. ‘And you promised Pagano we wouldn’t use it?’ ‘Yes. I gave a solemn promise, I swore to it.’ He sighed. ‘Then that’s that.’ He came to his feet. He held up Victoria’s story. ‘I want to go in and show this to Harry Dietz, our publisher’s assistant,’ he said. ‘See if we can do something with your story, salvage it in some way. Thanks for a good first effort. We’ll have something else for you tomorrow.’

  After Victoria had gone, McAllister pressed the intercom button on his telephone and stood by until he heard Harry Dietz respond.

  ‘Ollie here,’ McAllister said. ‘Could I come over and see you for a moment?’

  ‘Can it wait?’ Dietz asked. ‘I’m really busy.’ He paused. ‘Is it urgent?’

  ‘It’s urgent.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll see you now.’

  When McAllister entered Dietz’s office, he found Dietz standing before a wall mirror combing his sandy hair. Once he was satisfied, Dietz pocketed his comb and returned to his desk.

  ‘What is it, Ollie?’

  The managing editor handed him Victoria’s story. ‘It’s from Victoria Weston. Her first piece for us. She got the material from Gus Pagano. I’d like you to have a look at it.’

  Dietz gestured McAllister to a chair, sat comfortably in his tall suede-covered swivel chair, and skimmed the story. When he finished, he handed the typed pages back to McAllister with a show of disgust. ‘It’s a piece of shit,’ Dietz said. ‘She can write, but Pagano gave her nothing to write about. You didn’t come here to bother me with this story, did you?’