TWENTY-SEVEN

MAY 1985

FLORIDA STATE PRISON

Seven minutes.

That’s how long it took for Jesse Tafero to die.

If you’re fucking someone you’ve been trying to get into for a while, seven minutes is no time at all. But if you’re being electrocuted by the state of Florida, seven minutes takes a while.

He refused to go back to prison. So he shot two cops . . . and went back in prison. But it could have been worse. Sure. Could have been him in malfunctioning Old Sparky, six-inch flames shooting out of his head. The official story: A rookie had used a machine-made sponge instead of the standard sea sponge. Sure. Accidents happen. Even in prison. Especially in prison.

He wasn’t sure he believed that. The rumor was, the legal system fucking hated cop-killers, and found new and interesting ways to torture them. Like “forgetting” to tell the new guy to use a real sponge, not something they picked up on sale from Walmart. That, he believed.

The guys close to Tafero’s cell could still smell him for a week afterward. That smell—you can’t ever get it out of your nose. Even if it’s gone, it’s not really gone.

So, yeah. Could’ve been worse—could’ve been him. And, yeah, Tafero’s kids were pretty much orphans, because the lie that killed their dad had also put their mom—Sunny Jacobs—in prison. She was found guilty of capital murder and, like Tafero, got a death sentence, like Tafero. Unlike Tafero, there wasn’t a death row for the ladies. ’Cause Florida was old-fashioned, maybe? Weren’t up to speed on the equality thing? Anyway, she got solitary confinement. For five years. Death maybe would’ve been better.

No, he didn’t believe that.

You gotta live, is all. No matter what you have to do. No matter what you have to say. Because when you were done, when God or the state of Florida put out your lights and burned you alive, that was it. There wasn’t anything else. That whole past-lives bullshit? Pure goddamned fantasy, thought up by chickenshits: Oh, don’t worry about dying, you’ll be born again and you’ll get it right next time!

What. Fucking. Bullshit.

So he testified Jesse had been the one to shriek about not going back to prison. He told the jury that Jesse had been the one to shoot Officer Black and Constable Irwin. That Jesse wasn’t just a cop killer, he was an international cop killer—Irwin was Canadian, his bad luck to be visiting his pal, Black.

Walter didn’t even know what the fuck a constable was; his lawyer’d had to explain it.

After condemning Jesse, Walter turned his attention to Sunny. Who’d let it happen, he testified, and she’d hadn’t cared even a bit. Thought it was funny. And she wasn’t trying desperately to calm her babies, and she sure never begged him to stop, to Stop already, please stop. You’re scaring them YOU’RE SCARING ME! Naw, she was in on it. Or if she wasn’t in on it, she didn’t care when it all went wrong.

Just tell the truth, they prompted, though nobody in that room wanted any such thing. Tell the jury what happened, that’s all. Tell ’em and we’ll talk to the DA. No problem. But you gotta do the right thing.

So he did the right thing and his reward was second-degree murder and life in prison. And yeah, that was bad, but guess what was worse? Six-inch flames shooting out of your skull, that was worse. Stopping the execution three times to put out the flames, then starting it up again, that was worse. Your friends smelling you a week after your bad death, that was worse. Never a doubt in his mind. Nope. He did it. Not me.

Oh, sure, when it was all done, when the papers weren’t writing about it anymore, when everyone was locked up and the cops were in the ground, he had his slipups. His conscience—miserable, useless thing—had prodded him to recant not once, or even twice. Three times he lost his guts, then spilled ’em: ’77, ’79, and ’82.

But that worked out, too. ’Cause the guards, the cops, the DA—they didn’t want the truth. Not on a closed case. Not after all the publicity. So he’d have an attack of conscience; but a few days later, sanity returned and he’d recant his recantation and the years slid by.

But then it was May 4, 1985, and the thing that hadn’t seemed real, something to think about but unlikely to happen . . . well, it happened. They killed Jesse, and his bad death couldn’t be undone.

So he’d fess up. Again. But he wouldn’t recant recanting this time. Not because he was pussying out. Not because his conscience was the boss. It was because he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in years. Because when he closed his eyes he saw Jesse burning and when he took a deep breath he smelled him. He got the shakes. His belly hurt all the time. He felt like puking all the time and when he did, there was red in it and he instantly flushed so he wouldn’t have to think about it.

It couldn’t go on. He was disintegrating. He’d talk again. Not because it was the right thing to do; that was for fairy-tale suckers. He’d talk to save himself. That’s what it was.

That’s all it ever was.