"Howard Waldrop - The Wolf-man of Alcatraz" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

"Your other doc friend has jabbed me somewhere every two hours since last night. He's running out of
places to put the needle to draw blood."

"Maybe we should knock off awhile, then. I want to give you some simple tests this afternoon."

"All this is fine by me, Doc. You guys are earning me a dozen extra books this year."

"And that's what you want?"

"Look, Doc," he said. "I'm going to be here the rest of my life. Books are the only way I'll ever get to
experience the outside, or see the world, or meet a woman or fish for bluegills in a pond. I can do all that
in books. They're all I have except these walls, those bars, my cell and the exercise yard."

"What if we can find some way to cure you?"
Howlin laughed.

"Doc, there is no cure for this but death. There's nothing you or I or anyone on this planet can do about
that. Don't go dreaming there is."




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Before the next full moon, they had installed, high up in the isolation vault, an 8 mm camera, the lens of
which was behind a small opening eleven feet up one wall, pointed toward the concrete bunk area.
The two doctors had turned it on at ten-minute intervals throughout the night from within the gun gallery
where the second guard with the tommy gun stood.

Before they turned on the camera they turned on the single light bulb in its reinforced metal cage, which
was on the ceiling fifteen feet up.

When they went in with the prison doc the next morning, they found Howlin naked, his clothes and the
bedding destroyed, his toes and fingernails bleeding. The prison doc gave him vitamin and painkiller
shots, and he was in a deep sleep. They saw that some of the torn bedding had been stuffed into the hole
hiding the camera lens, eleven feet up.

They retrieved the camera from its drilled-out space in the wall above the vault door. They took the
prison boat over to San Francisco and had the film developed. They returned in six hours. From the boat
they watched the ritual of the docking. The lieutenant in charge of the boat took the ignition key out and
sent itтАФvia a clothesline pulleyтАФthree hundred feet up the hill to the guard tower. It would not be sent
down til the boat was ready for the return run and the lieutenant gave an "all okay" signalтАФwhich
changed every day. They went from the boat directly to the warden's office, where the warden, prison
doc, and captain and sergeant of the guards waited with a projector rigged to run on the island's DC
electrical system.

They pulled the blinds, turned off the lights, and started it up.

Fibidjian read off his notes by the light as the leader went through. "First one should be 7:14 PM, a couple