Asylum Earth. Charles Bragg

pale face. In his silver suit, steel gray tie, and aluminum ass he could have been the Tin Woodsman's uncle. The great Rembrandt could have rendered his portrait with nothing more than a No. 2 graphite pencil and gotten a perfect lifelike likeness. However, his appearance was a veritable rainbow compared to his personality, which was reported missing long before the 250 million dollars he had embezzled from trusting senile retirees-one of which was Warden Coots' mother.

      The wind chill factor in Keating's eyes was numbing. To picture him laughing or smiling would require the imagination of Salvador Dali.

      In short, Keating was the very image of what H .L. Mencken termed "that most dangerous of nature's predators the Christian businessman."

      He had been an elder at St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Scottsdale, Arizona. And he had not missed teaching his Sunday School Bible class in twenty years. Some believe that young children are morally strengthened when confronted with the torment of going to hell forever. A sample of what it might be like every Sunday morning could very well turn those young innocents into good God-fearing Christians.

      Warden Coots decided to bunk Keating with Icey Kool Jazzy Zee, who had won last year's Soul Train award for being the most irritating and incoherent rap artist of the year. He not only won the award but actually talked that way all the time.

      Coots was not only a superb prison administrator, but a world class voyeur and eavesdropper. He loved his Thursdays. That was when he relaxed at home, had a few belts of Jack Daniels, and reviewed his secret tapes to find out how his ingenious combinations of prisoners were working out. He had spent some time in London in the sixties and remembered that, after a week, he started talking with an English accent. Linguistically speaking, he wondered how the pairing of Icey Kool Jazzy Zee and Charles Keating would work out.

      Oscar Nerlman woke up in a cold sweat.

      This wasn't the first time he had survived a death sentence in his dreams. His recurring nightmares always ended with him going to the chair or scaffold-and always for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person. It was his gift. A gift that certainly didn't enhance his career as a criminal defense lawyer. As a matter of fact, it had turned many an otherwise brilliant defense into disaster. When he delivered his summations to the jury he invariably miss poke.

      "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it's better that a hundred guilty child molesting murderers go free than that one innocent man be imprisoned unjustly for even one day," he proclaimed and pointed to his client, the defendant Matt "Psycho" Terbloch, accused serial killer, rapist, and pederast.

      Somehow the jury didn't feel Terbloch should get the benefit of that doubt, and sentenced him to 4 50 years in Attica-after which he was to be executed. It took the jury four minutes to reach their verdict.

      That was long ago. Now Oscar Nerlman was in Allenwood himself. He had made a mistake by deciding to represent himself at his own trial for mail fraud.

      "No one has ever been hurt by an envelope! " he shouted with all the sincerity he could subpoena to his lips, " ... except for maybe by a paper cut." He then rested his case.

      He was sentenced to two years for an offense that usually got six months, and here he was in Allenwood in a dorm with three of his former clients.