From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [247]
“Whats going to happen?” Prew asked. “You found out what the deal is?”
“Hell no. They tell me nothin. But my trial ought to come up soon, and I’ve already served a month already. So even if I get a Special and they give me the limit, I’ll still only have five months more rehabilitation. I come out, I ought to be a thirdy year man myself.
“Listen,” Angelo said. “Dont worry about it. It’ll work out okay. I already done one month, see? They’ll take that off. It wont be so long. Have you still got that forty dollars?” He swung his eyes narrowly without moving his head, toward the MP behind him and back to Prew.
“Part of it,” Prew said. “I spent part.”
“Well, I wanted to tell you. That forty’s yours, see? You earned it. You spend it. Dont worry about what you owe me, see?” Again he swung his eyes narrowly without moving his head, toward the MP standing behind him and back to Prew.
“Okay,” Prew said.
“They check all your dough in the guard room anyway,” Angelo said. “So you just spend it.”
“I’m using it to work on Lorene,” Prew said.
“She give you a hard time Payday, dint she?” Angelo said.
Prew nodded.
“Well, you use it. And more power to you, buddy.”
“Okay,” Prew said.
“Looks like they gettin ready to get this show on the road,” Angelo said.
A police clerk had come out of the inner office with a long list in his hand. He called off a name. One of the men rose and followed him inside. The door remained closed for quite a while, then it opened and the clerk with the list called Maggio’s name.
“Thats me,” Angelo said, and got up. “I think I’m the decoy, or would you call it guinea pig?” He went in through the door, one MP with riot gun going in ahead of him, then him, then the other MP with riot gun following him. The door closed. In a few minutes Maggio came back out, one MP with riot gun coming out first, then Maggio, then the other MP with riot gun.
“Regular Dillinger, aint I?” Angelo grinned at the crowd. It got a general laugh, even in the nervousness.
“Shut up, Maggio,” the MP called Brownie warned. “Come on.” They took him on through and out another door in the opposite wall, not the corridor door which was on the left wall, but a door into another room. The fourth wall opposite the corridor door was all windows. There were no bars on them.
Pretty soon the man whose name had been called first came back out too and the clerk escorted him through the door where Maggio had gone and shut it. One of the Shafter MPs who had ridden in the trucks came and stood by it, when the clerk motioned for him. Then he called another name. The second man followed him through the door into the police lieutenant’s office.
“Looks like the old single shot routine,” somebody said nervously.
In a few minutes the clerk came back and went to the opposite door and called Maggio again.
“Told you I was the decoy, dint I?” Angelo grinned at the crowd. It got another nervous laugh and the tension relaxed a little, because everybody was comparing himself instinctively to the bony little Wop and deciding he was not so bad off after all.
“Shut up, Maggio,” the MP called Brownie said. “Come on.”
They went in. Pretty soon they came out and went back into the other room. Then the cleric led the man out and into the other room and called another name. That was the procedure that was followed down through the whole list.
When Prew’s name was called he got up and followed the clerk, his knees feeling loose. In the inner office the half-Hawaiian police lieutenant was behind his desk in his mustard uniform. In a big deep wooden arm chair beside the desk sat Tommy, a look of petulant sullen resignation on his face. The Shafter MP First Lieutenant sat against the wall. The two young-faced FBI stood unobtrusively across the room, seeming a dead part of the furnishings.
“You know this man?” the police lieutenant asked Tommy.
“No,” Tommy said wearily. “I’ve never seen him before.