Free (1982) The Almighty by Irving Wallace Page A

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