“That isn’t my only concern.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Why did she suddenly want to hurt him? What was the point of that? But he was appealing to her, tempting her, like an overzealous agent for a resort she had hated, who insisted on luring her back. And there was no way she would go.

He didn’t mention the article again until they were waiting for a cab outside the restaurant. This had been one of the rare times they had discussed her business matters in public.

“You’re going to do it?”

“What?”

“The interview Simpson discussed with you.”

“I don’t know. I want to give it some thought.”

“Give it a lot of thought. Weigh in your mind how much it means to you, and how high a price you’re willing to pay for doing it. You might not have to pay that price, or you might well have to. But at least be prepared, know the chances you’re taking.”

“Is it such a terrible chance, Edward?” Her eyes were gentle again as she looked up at him.

“I don’t know, Kezia. I really don’t know. But somehow, I suspect that no matter what I say, you’ll do it anyway. Or maybe I can only make matters worse.”

“No. But I may have to do it.” Not for Simpson. For herself.

“That’s what I thought.”


Chapter 7


The plane landed in Chicago at five in the afternoon, with less than an hour to spare before Lucas Johns’ speech. Simpson had arranged the loan of a friend’s apartment on Lake Shore Drive. The friend, an elderly widow whose husband had been a classmate of Simpson’s, was wintering in Portugal.

Now, as the cab circled the rim of the lake, Kezia began to feel a mounting excitement. She had finally chosen. Taken a first step. But what if it turned out to be more than she could handle? It was one thing to work over her typewriter and call herself K. S. Miller, and quite another to pull it off eye to eye. Of course, Mark didn’t know who she was either. But that was different. His farthest horizon was his easel, and even if he knew, he wouldn’t really care. It would make him laugh, but it wouldn’t matter. Lucas Johns might be different. He might try to use her notoriety to his advantage.

She tried to shrug off her fears as the cab pulled up in front of the address Simpson had given her. The borrowed apartment was on the nineteenth floor of a substantial-looking building across from the lake. The parquet floors in the foyer echoed beneath her feet. Above her head was an elaborate crystal chandelier. And the ghostly form of a grand piano stood silent beneath a dust sheet at the foot of the stairs. There was a long mirrored hall which led to the living room beyond. More dust sheets, two more chandeliers, the pink marble of a Louis XV mantel on the fireplace glowing softly from the light in the hall. The furniture beneath the sheets looked massive, and she wandered curiously from room to room. A spiral staircase led to another floor, and upstairs in the master bedroom she drew back the curtains and pulled up the creamy silk shades. The lake stretched before her, bathed in the glow of sunset, sailboats veering lazily toward home. It would have been fun to go for a walk and watch the lake for a while, but she had other things on her mind. Lucas Johns, and what sort of man he might prove to be.

She had read his book, and was surprised that she liked the sound of him. She had been prepared to dislike him, if only because the interview had become such a major issue between her and Simpson, and Edward. But the issue was herself, and she forgot the rest as she read the book. He had a pleasant way with words, a powerful way of expressing himself, and there were hints of humor throughout the book, and a refusal to take himself seriously, despite his passion for his subject. The style was oddly inconsistent with his history, though, and it was difficult to believe that a man who had spent most of his youth in juvenile halls and jails could be so literate now. Yet here and there he slipped consciously into prison jargon and California slang. He was an unusual combination of dogmas and beliefs and hopes and cynicism, with his own flavor of fun—and more than a faint hint of arrogance. He seemed to be many different things—no longer what he once was, firmly what he had become, a successful blending that he above all respected. Kezia had envied him as she read his book. Simpson had been right. In an indirect way, the book related to her. A prison can be any kind of bondage—even lunch at La Grenouille.

Her mental image of Johns was clearer now. Beady eyes, nervous hands, hunched shoulders, protruding paunch, and thin strands of hair covering a shiny balding forehead. She didn’t know why, but she knew that she knew him. She could almost see him speaking as she read the book.

A man of massive proportions was making an introduction to Lucas Johns’ speech, sketching in bold strokes the labor-union problems in prisons, the rough scale of wages (from five cents an hour, to a quarter in better institutions), the useless trades that were taught, the indecent conditions. He covered the subject easily, without fire.

Kezia watched the man’s face. He was setting the stage and the pace. Low-key, low-voiced, yet with a powerful impact. It was the matter-of-fact way that he discussed the horrors of the prisons that affected her most. It was almost odd that they would put this man on before Johns; it would be a tough act to follow. Or maybe not. Maybe Johns’ nervous dynamism would contrast well with the first speaker’s easier manner—easy, yet with an intense control. The fiber of this man intrigued her, so much so that she forgot to scan the room to assure herself that there was no one there to recognize her. She forgot herself entirely and was swept into the mood of the speech.

She took out her notebook and jotted quick notes about the speaker, and then began to observe the audience in general. She noticed three well-known black radicals, and two solid labor-union leaders who had shared their knowledge with Johns in the past, when he was getting started. There were a few women, and in the front row a well-known criminal attorney who was often in the press. It was a group that already knew the business at hand for the most part, and one that was already active in prison reform. She was surprised at the large turnout as she watched their faces and listened to the last of the introduction. The room was surprisingly still. There were no rustlings, no little movements in seats, no noisy gropings for cigarettes and lighters. Nothing seemed to move. All eyes stayed fixed on the man at the front of the room. She had been right the first time; this would be tough for Lucas Johns to follow.

She looked at the speaker again. He had the coloring of her father. Almost jet black hair, and fiery green eyes that seemed to fix people in their places. He sought eyes he knew, and held them, speaking only to them, and then moving on, covering the room, the voice low, the hands immobile, the face taut. Yet something about the mouth suggested laughter. Something about the hands suggested brutality. He had interesting hands, and an incredible smile. In a powerful, almost frightening way, he was handsome, and she liked him. She found herself watching him, probing, observing, hungry for details—the shoulders impacted into the old tweed jacket, the long legs stretched lazily out before him. The thickness of his hair, the eyes that roved and stopped, and then moved on again, until they finally sought her out.

She saw him watching her as she watched him. He held her long and hard in the grasp of his eyes, and then dropped her and let his glance move away. It had been a strange sensation, like being backed against the wall with a hand at your throat, and another stroking your hair; you wanted to cringe in fear, and melt with pleasure. She felt warm suddenly, in the room full of people, and quietly looked around, wondering why this man was taking so long. It was hardly an introduction. He had been speaking for almost half an hour. Almost as though he intended to upstage Lucas Johns. And then it dawned on her, and she had to fight not to laugh in the quiet room: this had never been an introduction. The man whose eyes had so briefly stroked hers was Johns.


Chapter 8


“Coffee?”

“Tea, if possible.” Kezia smiled up at Lucas Johns as he poured a cup of hot water, and then handed her a tea bag.

The suite showed signs of frequent guests—half-filled paper cups of coffee and tea, remains of crackers, ashtrays overflowing with peanut shells and stale cigarette butts, and a well-used bar in the corner. It was an unassuming hotel, and the suite was not large, but it was easy and comfortable. She wondered how long he had been there. It was impossible to tell if he’d made his home there for a year, or if he’d moved in that day. There was plenty to eat and drink, but nothing was personal, nothing seemed his, as though he owned the clothes on his back, the light in his eyes, the tea bag he had handed her, and nothing more.

“We’ll order breakfast from downstairs.”

She smiled again over her tea, and watched him quietly. “To tell you the truth, I’m not really very hungry. No rush. And by the way, I was very impressed by your speech last night. You seem so at ease on the stage. You have a nice knack for bringing a difficult subject down to human proportions without sounding self-righteous about what you know firsthand and your listeners haven’t experienced. That’s quite an art.”

“Thank you. That’s a nice thing to say. I guess it’s just a question of practice. I’ve been doing a lot of speaking to groups. Is the subject of prison reform new to you?”

“Not entirely. I did a couple of articles last year on riots in two Mississippi prisons. It was an ugly mess.”

“Yeah, I remember. The real point about the whole subject of “reform’ is not to reform. I think that abolition of prisons as we know them now is the only sensible solution. They don’t work like this anyway. I’m working on the moratorium on the construction of prisons right now, along with a lot of good people who organized it. I’ll be heading down to Washington next.”

“Have you lived in Chicago long?”

“Seven months, as a sort of central office. I work out of the hotel when I’m here, lining up speaking engagements, and some of the other stuff I do. I wrote my new book here, just holed up for a month and got down to work. After that, I lugged the manuscript around with me and wrote the rest on planes.”

“Do you travel a lot?”

“Most of the time. But I come back here when I can. I can dig my heels in and relax here.”

Nothing about him suggested that he did that very often. He didn’t seem the sort of man who would know how to stop, or when. For all the stillness, one sensed a driving force inside him. He had a very quiet way of just sitting, barely moving, his eyes watching the person he spoke to. But it was more like the cautious stance of an animal sniffing the air for signs of attack or approach, ready to spring in a moment. Kezia could sense too that he was wary of her, and not totally at ease. The humor she had seen in his eyes the night before was carefully screened now.

“You know, I’m surprised they sent a woman out to do the piece.”

“Chauvinism, Mr. Johns?” The idea amused her.

“No, just curiosity. You must be good or they wouldn’t have sent you.” There was the hint of arrogance she had sensed in his book.

“I think it’s mostly that they liked those two pieces I did for them last year. I suppose you could say I’ve skirted the subject of prisons before … if you’ll pardon the pun.”

He grinned and shook his head. “That’s a hell of a way to put it.”

“Then call it ‘a view from the sidelines.’”

“I’m not sure that’s an improvement. You can never see from the sidelines … or is it that you see more clearly? But with less life. To me, it always feels better to be right in the gut of things. You either get into it, or you don’t. The sidelines … that’s so safe, such a dead way to do anything.” His eyes sparkled and his mouth smiled, but it had been a heavy message. “Come to think of it, I’ve read some of your articles, I think … could it have been in Playboy?” He was momentarily bewildered; she didn’t look the type for Playboy, not even in print, but he was sure he remembered an article not very long ago.

She nodded assent with a grin. “It was a piece on rape. In sympathy with the man’s side, for a change. Or rather on false accusations of rape, made by neurotic women who have nothing better to do except take a guy home and then chicken out, and later yell rape.”

“That’s right. That’s the piece I remember. I liked it.”

“Naturally.” She tried not to laugh.