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Read Ebook: Criminal Negligence by McComas J Francis Freas Kelly Illustrator
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Ebook has 262 lines and 9788 words, and 6 pages
CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE
BY J. FRANCIS MCCOMAS
Illustrated by Freas
Warden Halloran smiled slightly. "You expect to have criminals on Mars, then?" he asked. "Is that why you want me?"
"Of course we don't, sir!" snapped the lieutenant general. His name was Knox. "We need men of your administrative ability--"
"Pardon me, general," Lansing interposed smoothly, "I rather think we'd better give the warden a ... a more detailed picture, shall we say? We have been rather abrupt, you know."
"I'd be grateful if you would," Halloran said.
He watched the lanky civilian as Lansing puffed jerkily on his cigar. A long man, with a shock of black hair tumbling over a high, narrow forehead, Lansing had introduced himself as chairman of the project's co?rdinating committee ... whatever that was.
"Go ahead," grunted Knox. "But make it fast, doctor."
"The country--what's left of it--has been split up into regions," the general said. "So many ships to each region."
"So," Lansing went on, "learning about you meant there was another batch of passengers to round up. And when I was told the warden was yourself--I know something of your career, Mr. Halloran--I was delighted. Frankly," he grinned at Knox, "we're long on military and scientific brass and short on people who can manage other people."
"I see." Halloran pressed a buzzer on his desk. "I think some of my associates ought to be in on this discussion."
"Discussion?" barked Knox. "Is there anything to discuss? We simply want you out of here in an hour--"
"Please, general!" the warden said quietly.
If the gray-clad man who entered the office at that moment heard the general's outburst, he gave no sign. He stood stiffly in front of the warden's big desk, a little to one side of the two visitors, and said, "Yes sir, Mr. Halloran?"
"Hello, Joe. Know where the captain is?"
"First afternoon inspection, sir." He cocked an eye at the clock on the wall behind Halloran. "Ought to be in the laundry about now."
The warden scribbled a few words on a small square of paper. "Ask him to come here at once, please. On your way, please stop in at the hospital and ask Dr. Slade to come along, too." He pushed the paper across the desk to the inmate. "There's your pass."
"Yes sir. Anything else, warden?" He stood, a small, square figure in neat gray shirt and pants, seemingly oblivious to the ill-concealed stares of the two visitors.
Halloran thought a moment, then said, "Yes ... I'd like to see Father Nelson and Rabbi Goldsmid, too."
"Uh, Father Nelson's up on the Row, sir. With Bert Doyle."
"Then we'll not bother him, of course. Just the others."
"Yes, sir. On the double."
Lansing slouched around in his chair and openly watched Joe Mario walk out. Then he turned back to Halloran and said, "That chap a ... a trusty, warden?"
"To a degree. Although we no longer use the term. We classify the inmates according to the amount of responsibility they can handle."
"I see. Ah--" he laughed embarrassedly, "this is the first time I've been in a prison. Mind telling me what his crime was?"
Halloran smiled gently. "We try to remember the man, Dr. Lansing, and not his crime." Then he relented. "Joe Mario was just a small-time crook who got mixed up in a bad murder."
Lansing whistled.
"Aren't we wasting time?" growled the general. "Seems to me, warden, you could be ordering your people to pack up without any conference. You're in charge here, aren't you?"
Halloran raised his eyebrows. "In charge? Why, yes ... in the sense that I shape the final decisions. But all of my assistants contribute to such decisions. Further, we have an inmate's council that voices its opinion on certain of our problems here. And we--my associates and I--listen to them. Always."
Knox scowled and angrily shifted his big body. Lansing picked up his cigar, relit it, using the action to unobtrusively study the warden. Hardly a presence to cow hardened criminals, Lansing thought. Halloran was just below middle height, with gray hair getting a bit thin, eyes that twinkled warmly behind rimless glasses. Yet Lansing had read somewhere that a critic of Halloran's policies had said the penologist's thinking was far ahead of his time--too far, the critic had added.
As Joe Mario closed the warden's door behind him, two inmates slowed their typing but did not look up as he neared their desks. A guard left his post at the outer door and walked toward Mario. The two of them stopped beside the desks.
"What's the word, Joe?" the guard asked.
Mario held out his pass.
"Gotta round up the captain, Doc Slade and the Jew preacher," he said.
"All right. Get going."
"What do those guys want?" asked a typist as he pulled the paper from his machine.
Mario looked quickly at the guard and as quickly away from him.
"Dunno," he shrugged.
"Somethin' about the war, I bet," grunted the typist.
"War's over, dope," said the other. "Nothin' behind the curtain now but a nice assortment of bomb craters. All sizes."
"Go on, Joe," ordered the guard. "You heard something. Give."
"Well ... I heard that fat general say something about wanting the warden outa here in a hour."
The typewriters stopped their clacking for a bare instant, then started up again, more slowly. The guard frowned, then said, "On your way, Joe." He hesitated, then, "No use to tell you to button your lip, I guess."
"I'm not causing any trouble," Mario said, as the guard opened the door and stood aside for him to pass into the corridor.
O.K.'d for entrance into the hospital wing, Joe Mario stood outside the railing that cut Dr. Slade's reception area off from the corridor that led to the wards. An inmate orderly sat behind the railing, writing a prescription for a slight, intelligent-looking man.
Mario heard the orderly say, "All right, Vukich, get that filled at the dispensary. Take one after each meal and come back to see us when the bottle's empty. Unless the pain gets worse, of course. But I don't think it will."
"Thanks, doc," the patient drawled.
Both men looked up then and saw Mario.
"Hi, Joe," the orderly smiled. "What's wrong with you? You don't look sick!"
"Nothin' wrong with me that a day outside couldn't cure."
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