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times had changed at Angola. It was now no better or worse than any other maximum-security prison.
    I stopped at the gate. Angola was a series of single-story buildings. Decorative coils of concertina wire topped twelve-foot chain-link fencing. Hopelessness permeated the place. After my credentials were checked, I went inside to the administration building.
    Deputy Warden Vance took me into an office where Alvin waited. He’d been in prison since he was convicted in 1983, more than twenty years ago. In the interim he’d lost his hair, his color, his vision and his body. He was a small, round dumpling of a man with a doughy complexion and Coke-bottle glasses. He sat behind a desk piled with papers. Two flies buzzed incessantly around him.
    â€œI’ve read some of your articles in the Miami paper,” he said as I sat down across from him. “I’m flattered that such a star is interested in talking to me.”
    â€œWhat do you know about the five bodies buried in the parking lot of your club?” I asked.
    â€œMitch Rayburn asked the same thing. Yesterday. You know I remember giving a check to an organization that helped put Mitch through law school. Isn’t that funny?”
    Alvin’s eyes were distorted behind his glasses, giving him an unfocused look. I knew the stories about Alvin. It was said he liked to look at the people he hurt. Rocco was the exception.
    â€œMitch had a hard time of it, you know,” he continued, as if we were two old neighbors chewing the juicy fat of someone else’s misfortune. “He was just a kid when his folks died. They burned to death.” He watched me closely. “Then his brother drowned. I’d say if that boy didn’t have bad luck, he’d have no luck at all.” He laughed softly.
    My impulse was to punch him, to split his pasty lips with his own teeth. “I found the building permits where a room was added to the Gold Rush in October of 1981,” I said instead. “The bodies were there before that. Sometime that summer. Do you remember any digging in the parking lot prior to the paving?”
    â€œMitch told me that it was the same summer all of those girls went missing,” Alvin said. “He believes those girls were buried in my parking lot after they were killed. Imagine that, those young girls lying dead there all these years.”
    â€œDo you know anything about that?”
    â€œNo, I’m sorry to say I don’t. My involvement with girls was generally giving them a job in one of my clubs. It’s hard to get a dead girl to dance.” He laughed louder this time.
    â€œMr. Orley, I don’t believe that someone managed to get five bodies in the parking lot of your club without you noticing anything.” I tapped my pen on my notebook. “I was led to believe that you aren’t a stupid man.”
    â€œI’m far too smart to let a has-been reporter bait me.” He laced his fingers across his stomach.
    â€œYou never noticed that someone had been digging in your parking lot?”
    â€œMs. Lynch, as I recall, we had to relay the sewage lines that year. Construction equipment everywhere, with the paving. I normally didn’t go to the Gold Rush until eight or nine o’clock in the evening. I left before dawn. I wasn’t in the habit of inspecting my parking lot. I paid off-duty police officers to patrol the lot, see unattended girls to their cars, that kind of thing. I had no reason to concern myself.”
    â€œHow would someone bury bodies there without being seen?”
    â€œBack in the ’80s there were trees in the lot. The north portion was mostly a jungle. There was also an old outbuilding where we kept spare chairs and tables. If the bodies were buried on the north side of that, no one would be likely to see them. Mitch didn’t tell me exactly where the bodies were found.”
    I wondered why not, but I didn’t volunteer the information.