Ransom

“I'll be in San Francisco for the next year,” Peter said pleasantly. “I just hope they let me go back east for a visit soon, to see my girls.” He hadn't even had a photograph of them for four years, and hadn't laid eyes on them in six. Isabelle and Heather were now respectively eight and nine, although in his mind's eye they were still considerably younger. Janet had long since forbidden him to have contact with them, and her parents endorsed her position. Peter's stepfather, who had paid for his education years before, had long since died. His brother had disappeared years before. Peter Morgan had no one, and nothing. He had four hundred dollars in his wallet, a parole agent in San Francisco, and a bed in a halfway house in the Mission District, which was predominantly Hispanic and a once-beautiful old neighborhood, some of which had gone downhill. The part Peter was living in had worn badly. The money he had wouldn't go far, he hadn't had a decent haircut in four years, and the only things he had left in the world were a handful of contacts in the high-tech and venture capital worlds in Silicon Valley, and the names of the drug dealers he had once done business with, and fully intended to steer clear of. He had virtually no prospects. He was going to call some people when he got to town, but he also knew there was a good chance he could be washing dishes or pumping gas, although he thought that unlikely. He was after all a Harvard MBA, and had gone to Duke before that. If nothing else, he could look up some old school friends, who might not have heard that he'd gone to prison. But he had no illusions that it was going to be easy. He was thirty-nine years old, and however he explained it, the last four years were going to be a blank on his résumé. He had a long uphill climb ahead of him. But he was healthy, strong, drug-free, intelligent, and still incredibly good-looking. Something good was going to happen to him eventually. Of that much, he was certain, and so was the warden.

“Call us,” the warden said again. It was the first time he had gotten that attached to a convict who worked for him. But the men he dealt with at Pelican Bay were a far cry from Peter Morgan.

Pelican Bay had been built as a maximum security prison to house the worst criminal elements that had previously been sent to San Quentin. Most of the men were in solitary. The prison itself was highly mechanized and computerized, and state of the art, which allowed them to confine some of the most dangerous men in the country. And the warden had spotted instantly that Peter didn't belong there. Only the vast quantities of drugs he'd been dealing, and the money involved, had wound him up in a maximum security prison. Had the charges been less serious, he could just as easily have been incarcerated in a minimum security facility. He was no flight risk, had no history of violence, and had never been involved in a single incident during his time there. He was a quintessentially civilized person. The few men he chatted with over the years respected him, and he steered a wide berth of potential problems. His close relationship to the warden made him sacrosanct and gave him safe passage. He had no known associations with gangs, groups known for violence, or dissident elements. He minded his own business. And after more than four years, he seemed to be leaving Pelican Bay relatively unscathed. He had kept his head down, and done his time there. He had done a lot of legal and financial reading, spent a surprising amount of time in the library, and worked tirelessly for the warden.

The warden himself had written a glowing reference for him to the parole board. His was a case of a young man who had taken a wrong turn, and all he needed was a chance now to take the right one. And the warden was certain he would do that. He looked forward to hearing good things from and about Peter in future. At thirty-nine, Peter still had his whole life ahead of him, and a brilliant education behind him. And hopefully the mistakes he'd made would prove to be a valuable lesson of some kind. There was no question in anyone's mind that Peter would stick to the straight and narrow.

Peter and the warden were still shaking hands, as he was about to leave, when a reporter and photographer from the local newspaper got out of a van, and walked up to the desk where Peter had just collected his wallet. Another prisoner was just signing his release papers, and he and Peter exchanged a look and nodded. Peter knew who he was—everyone did. They had met in the gym and in the halls from time to time, and in the last two years, he had frequently come to the warden's office. He had spent years unsuccessfully seeking a pardon, and was known to be an extremely savvy unofficial jailhouse lawyer. His name was Carlton Waters, he was forty-one years old, and had served twenty-four years for murder. In fact, he had grown up in prison.