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section where no natural light ever makes its way in.
    Prison has sounds like no other place. An echoing roar of male voices, almost like a buzzing hive of killer bees. Bars clanging, buzzers sounding, shouts, screams, catcalls, whistles, televisions blaring. If you watch carefully, you can see men communicating with hand signals. Gang signs flash. When I arrived at Dannemora, I waited to be processed, identified as one of Marcus Hopkins’s defense-team members. Eventually I was shown to a meeting room where Marcus and I could talk.
    Guards in dark-blue uniforms brought him in. Marcus sat down and flashed me a half smile. He had two deep-set dimples and was still boyish despite packing on forty pounds of muscle in the prison yard over the years. In a world where justice worked perfectly, he would have been off at college, flashing that smile at girls, and spending his days in the library. His IQ was 139. He had a lock on a scholarship out of the projects until he was railroaded.
    “Hi, Marcus.” I smiled back at him. I was a poor substitute for C.C., who had made prison ministry her life. I couldn’t quote the Bible or Camus or Sartre, or Buddha or Thich Nhat Hanh, or any of the thousands of wise words and quotations she had for these men. I knew she combed Emerson, C. S. Lewis, and the Bible for bits of hope. A phrase to hold on to when the nights were dark and the days seemed darker. I had only a passing acquaintance with God. C.C. and God, on the other hand, were on a first-name basis.
    “Anything new on my case?”
    “We went to the basketball court to retrace the crime. We tested the drop of blood—not a match for you or Kenora. So that’s something. We’re tracking her down to interview her. She left the projects. Any idea where she might have gone? You hear anything?”
    He shrugged. “My grandmother died. Don’t have anybody living there anymore.”
    “We’ll find her. You doing okay in here?” I internally berated myself. What was he supposed to say?
    “Drives me crazy not being free. When I get out of here, it’s going to take me a long, long time to wash the stench of prison off me. I sometimes picture it. Taking a shower with near-boiling water and scrubbing my skin until it’s raw and bloody. But I still don’t know if that will do the trick.”
    I thought of David. I could see the times he was far away from me. Back in prison—in his mind. Sometimes, I came home when he was in the middle of doing his sit-ups and push-ups. He could do five hundred of each without blinking. While he was doing them, his face was intense, stoic, as if he was in his cell doing them in a fury for the injustice done to him.
    “Marcus.” I squinted at him. He was bouncing his leg up and down as he talked, fidgeting. “You nervous about something?”
    He nodded and looked down at the table. Then he looked up at me. “I was in the library. Looking up some stuff pertinent to my case. Just reading up in some law books. Got to talking to another guy in there. Mentioned the foundation taking on my case.”
    He fidgeted with his fingers. “Next day, I’m in the yard. I ended up being asked to go sit with some white guy who kind of runs The Mob boys.”
    I was familiar with the way the yard worked. Mob boys—Italians. Mob boys—Irish. Black guys. Black Muslim guys. Gang bangers divided by gang. Mexicans. Mexicans who identified themselves as Chicano. Prison was really a microcosm for how most of the world worked. Everyone stayed with their own kind. Land of the free, home of the brave, but most people wouldn’t break bread with someone from another race in their day-to-day lives.
    “Okay. What did he want?” I presumed it was for us to take his case, too. And I thought it would be a very hot day in January in Little Siberia before I got involved defending The Mob.
    “His name’s Marty O’Hare. And he wanted me to give you a message. Says to tell you he’s your old man’s rival, and everyone knows your old man