Page 31 of The Chain House

“We’ll see about that,” he said. “I now have millions of fans across the globe who are dying to read the final book in the series.”

“How clever of you,” said the warden, his face expressionless.

“And I’m not opposed to leaving the whereabouts of another body buried in the ground. Of having another family continue to grieve because they never found their loved one.”

Warden Wren said, “If you’re banking on a groundswell of support across the globe to plead for your life, you’ll lose.”

“No … well, maybe. But you’re going to have a hard time finding the book if I die. In which case you just might have a revolution on your hands. And an easy mark on your head.”

“Are you threatening me, Sal?”

“Wasn’t my intent, no.”

Sam felt like he was waiting to jump into a circling jump rope, and took the brief lull to ask, “So the book is written?”

“The book is written,” Batise said to Sam while staring daggers at the warden. “And it’s in a safe place outside of this prison.”

They watched each other coldly. Warden Wren swiveled in his seat and removed from the floor a two-foot-tall stack of typing paper he then dropped with a heavy thump atop his desk.

“My papers,” Sal said. “You kept them.”

The warden said to Sam: “For good behavior, believe it or not, Sam, ten years ago we allowed him, under supervision, to have a typewriter wheeled into his room for a few hours a day.”

“Heavy son of a bitch,” Sal said. “Old-school typewriter with the keys plopping up to the paper. Love the sound of it, Warden Adrian Wren, and so do the rest of the dead men on the row. Soporific almost, like rainfall, and I’m fast too.” He air-typed with his fingers. “I use the home keys, no chicken pecking.”

The warden placed his hand atop the tall stack of paper and fanned through a few inches of it just to show Sam they weren’t blank. “He types out his thoughts. Mostly incoherent gibberish. And then the typewriter is removed, as well as what he’d written. If you can call this writing.” He homed in on Sal again. “So tell me, if it’s as you claim, Sal, how did you write the books?”

Sal smiled. “It wasn’t rocket science. The top several pages of the pile I gave the guard was, as you say, incoherent gibberish, but the rest of it, the glorious world of Oliver Crown.” He tapped his head with an index finger. “It’s a story I’ve been writing up here for years. And years. My incarceration simply allowed me the time and focus to get it done.”

“And how then did the manuscript pages get pulled from the bullshit?”

“You mean who aided and abetted?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“It wasn’t like writing a book was illegal,” Sal said.

“But sneaking anything out of the prison is.”

“I sneaked nothing out of the prison.”

The warden’s face had grown red. “If it wasn’t illegal, then why didn’t you just tell us you wanted to write a book, Sal?”

“Then I doubt it all would have blown up like it has,” Sal said, pointing at Sam, as if gesturing to write this down. “Foresight, Sam Harper. Vision.”

“Not too unlike the forming of your cult,” Sam said.

“If you want to call it that.”

“What else would you—”

“Can we get back to the manuscript?” Warden Wren said forcefully to Sal. “I need the name of the guard who smuggled your manuscripts out of the prison.”

“I’m not a rat, Warden Wren.”

“Is it Billy? CO Billy Boyle? I see you all talking often enough.”

Sal said nothing, but his body language spoke volumes.