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I knew the name of the man he was talking about. He worked for the Miami Better Business Bureau and received paychecks from one of our national political parties as well. He also ran a car-theft ring. I knew that no one could have cared less.
“You just gonna look at me like that?” he said.
“I’ll see if I can help out with the interstate parole situation.”
“No kidding?”
“Why not? You said you’re going straight.”
“Like maybe you can get me a job?”
“Got any car wash experience?”
He lowered his eyes. He shrugged. “I’m up for whatever it takes.”
“That was a joke. You’d better not burn me, Marcel.”
“You still tight with Clete Purcel?” he said.
“He’s my best friend.”
“That’s like saying clap is my favorite shade of pink.”
I rattled the door again and this time called for the screw. “Don’t get your expectations up.”
“Come here,” he said.
There it was, the dictatorial command, the smugness and condescension that constitute the tone of every narcissist. I stepped toward him. “Change your tone,” I replied.
“I tole you I had some information. I was working your crank. I cain’t do time no more. I got too many bad things in my head. Maybe I got to get something off my conscience.”
I didn’t want to become his confessor. But neither was I an admirer of the Texas prison system. I propped my arms on the table, my back to the door, blocking the screw’s view of Marcel. His face was narrow and furrowed, his cheeks unshaved, dirty-looking, as though rubbed with soot.
“I was the driver on a whack for the Balangie family,” he said. “The guy was a child molester. He’s in the swamp on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. There’s people in New Iberia who want to know where he’s at.”
“I don’t.”
“Are you serious?” he said.
Like most recidivists, Marcel had spent much of his life inside the system, and his knowledge of the outside world was like a collection of old postcards someone had to explain to him.
“Hey, you listening?” he said. “There’s no statute of limitations on homicide.”
“Put it in your memoir,” I said.
“Why’d you come here?”
“I wondered if you were born without a conscience or if you made yourself that way.”
“You cocksucker.”
“I’ll see what I can do about the parole.”
“I don’t want your help. Stay away from me. Don’t use my name.”
“A deal is a deal,” I said. “You’re stuck with me, Marcel. Disrespect my mother again and I’ll break your jaw.”
Ten minutes later, as I walked outside through the redbrick complex, I wondered which building had housed the electric chair, called Old Sparky by people who thought shaving the hair off a human being and strapping him to a chair and affixing a metal cap to his scalp and frying him alive was the stuff of humor. I also wondered again if the entirety of our species descended from the same antediluvian soup. My guess is that our origins are far more diverse; I also believe that the truth would terrify most of us. What if we had to accept the fact that we pass on the seed of the lizard in our most loving and romantic moments? That the scales of the serpent are at the corners of our eyes, that bloodlust can have its first awakening when the infant’s mouth finds the mother’s nipple?
