So Frank must have left town pretty soon after that day at Union Station because, as I say, I haven’t seen him since. Even that last time, we didn’t approach each other or speak or anything. I just looked up from where I was in front of the mall and got a look at him. He was standing on the sidewalk by the parking lot. His little girl, Gail, was tugging on his fingers, trying to pull him along, but he’d stopped where he was, because he’d spotted me. Bonnie was standing next to him, her head wrapped in a kerchief. From what I could see, she looked tired, but she was laughing and smiling broadly, and she seemed healthy enough.
“Come on, Daddy, come on!” Gail said again.
She tugged at him some more, but Frank stayed where he was another moment. Slowly, as I watched him, he raised his hand to me. He lay his finger against the shock of hair on his brow and then lowered the finger and pointed it my way. A salute, you could call it, or maybe a farewell.
I raised my cigarette and tilted it back at him, and he laughed. Gail was pulling him away, along the sidewalk. He wrapped his arm around his wife’s shoulder and pulled her to him and the three of them went off together toward the carousel.
I watched them moving off through the snow. I watched them until they passed out of sight behind the edge of the building. Then I glanced around.
The Pussy Man’s streaked red-and-yellow eyes were staring at me out from under the furry fringe of his elf’s cap.
“Shit,” I said.
I dug my hand into my pocket and pulled my wallet out. I snatched out a ten and stuffed it roughly into his tin can.
“You might as well take it before my wife does,” I said. “Now get out of here. Go drink yourself to death.”
“Hey,” said the Pussy Man. “A ten? You got more money than that, you got money on …”
I glared at him.
“Okay, okay,” he said. He plucked the bill out of the can, crushed it in his fist and stuck his fist in his coat pocket. “Thanks, newspaper man. I been out here two hours. I’m freezing my ass off.”
I shook my head. “What the hell,” I said. “For all I know, you really are Santa Claus.”
I tossed my cigarette into the gutter and started walking off across the parking lot toward my car.
What the hell, I thought. For all I know, he really is.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research for this novel was extensive, and I spoke with too many people and read too many books and articles to list them all here. A few acknowledgments, however, seem essential to me. I am especially grateful to Richard Lowenstein for his expertise and kindness in showing me the ins and outs of St. Louis. Various attorneys at the Missouri Capital Punishment Resource Center were also very generous with their time. Of the written material I read, two books proved particularly useful. Stephen Trombley’s excellent The Execution Protocol provided a wealth of details on Missouri’s execution procedure, and Helen Prejean’s Dead Man Walking movingly described the feelings of people on death row and those who minister to them. I recommend these books to anyone who wants to know the facts of the matter as I, of course, felt free to invent and change things to suit the demands of storytelling. As Steve Everett observed, this is not one of those modern works that mingle fact with fiction. It is all fiction, every word.
Andrew Klavan
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