Free All the Flowers Are Dying by Lawrence Block Page A

which wasn’t something I thought about often, I must say, I thought they happened in the middle of the night. Somebody throws a switch and lights go dim all over the state. I must have seen a movie at an impressionable age. And I seem to remember newsreel footage outside a penitentiary, with one crowd there to protest the death penalty and another bunch having tailgate parties to celebrate that some poor bastard’s getting the shock of his life. You can’t have parties like that in the middle of the day. You need a dark sky so everyone can get a good view of the fireworks.”
    The words are bitter, the tone lacking in affect. Interesting.
    “The judge who sentenced me never said anything about the time, just the date. The particulars are up to the warden, and I guess Humphries doesn’t want to keep anybody up late.”
    “Have they told you what to expect?”
    “More than once. They don’t want any surprises. They’ll come here sometime between eleven and eleven-thirty to collect me. They’ll walk me to the chamber and strap me to the gurney. There’ll be a physician in attendance, among others, and there’ll be some spectators on the other side of a glass wall. I’m not sure what the purpose of the glass wall is. Not soundproofing, because there’s going to be a microphone, so they can hear my last words. I get to make a speech. I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to say.”
    “Whatever you want.”
    “Maybe I’ll stand mute. ‘Mr. Chairman, Alabama passes.’ On the other hand, why miss a chance to deliver a message? I could come out for national health insurance. Or against capital punishment, except that I’m not so sure I’m against it.”
    “Oh?”
    “
I never was, before all this happened. And if I did what they say I did, then I ought to pay with my life. And if I didn’t, and there was no death penalty, well, I could spend the rest of my life in a cell that’s noisier and a lot less comfortable than this one, roundly despised by people I wouldn’t want to associate with in the first place. I’d probably be killed in prison, like Jeffrey Dahmer
.”
    “The people behind the glass wall,” he prompts.
    “Some reporters, I suppose. And relatives of the victims, looking to see justice done, looking for closure. I remember what some of them said during the penalty phase of the trial, and my immediate response was to hate them, but hell, how can I blame them for hating me? They don’t know I didn’t do it.”
    “No.”
    “If they get some relief from my death, some of that blessed commodity they call closure, well, then I could say my death won’t be entirely in vain. Except it will.”
    “Any other witnesses?”
    Applewhite shakes his head. “Not that I know of. They told me I could invite somebody. Isn’t that rich? I tried to think who would possibly welcome an invitation like that, and if there is such a person, how could I stand to be in the same room with him? My parents are long gone—and thank God for that, incidentally—and even if my wife had stuck by me, even if I was getting regular visits with my kids, would I want their last sight of me to be with a needle in my arm?”
    “Still, it strikes me as an awful time to be alone.”
    “My lawyer offered to come. I guess that comes under the heading of professional noblesse oblige, something you have to do at the end of one of your less successful cases. I told him I didn’t want him there and he had to work hard not to look relieved.”
    Come on, he urges silently. What are you waiting for?
    “Arne? Do you think—”
    “Of course,” he says. “I’m honored to be chosen.”
     
     
    He’s up late Wednesday night watching pay-per-view porn on the motel set. Even in the Bible Belt, money calls the tune. A man’s home is his castle, even if it’s a cubicle rented for the night, and within its confines you can do as you please, as long as you’re willing to pay $6.95 for each XXX-rated feature.
    The films don’t