I squatted down in front of Willie. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Willie’s expression didn’t change.

“Grandma,” the inmate to his left said in a high falsetto voice, “Chaplain want to talk whichya.”

Willie didn’t respond.

A gray officer’s station building stood in the center of the rec yard. Part of it was open, housing free weights and Ping-Pong tables. Scattered all around it were card tables where small groups of inmates played checkers, chess, and dominoes.

“Grandma,” he said again, this time patting his cheek as he did, “wake up, old girl. They’s a man what wants to talk whichya.”

Willie’s eyes drifted slowly back down to earth, landing somewhere in my vicinity. Then he said in a soft, airy voice, “Who—” he breathed out and paused as if this would require the last bit of life that was left in him “—is . . . it?”

“It’s the chaplain. The new one,” he said.

“The fine one,” the other one said.

Willie leaned down and whispered something in the ear of the inmate to his left. He was obviously the spokesperson for the group. His name tag read Jefferson.

“Grandma wants to know if you think homosexuals have no hope where God concerned.”

“I don’t think anybody has no hope where God is concerned.”

Willie leaned down again and whispered something else in Jefferson’s ear.

Around us the other inmates on the rec yard were loud and active, sounding like children on a playground. And, in many ways, that’s what they were.

“Grandma say you all right,” Jefferson said. “Whatcha wanna know?”

“Everything there is to know about Ike Johnson.”

“Grandma say he dead. What else they to know?” Jefferson said after receiving instructions from Grandma to do so.

“I want to know all about him while he was alive so I can find out why he was killed.”

Beyond the blacktop court where young black men played full-court basketball like they did in Miami, the elderly inmates played horseshoes like they did in retirement homes in Sarasota. Past them, the young white inmates played volleyball the way they did on Panama City Beach. Yet, beyond all of this, the wall of chain-link fence and razor wire served as an ominous reminder of exactly which part of Florida this was.

“Grandma say he a real ho. Do anything. Sooner or later his kind always gets stuck. Grandma say everybody think he belonged to Jacobson, but he didn’t. Grandma say he belonged to another inmate, and they both belong to a cop.”

“A correctional officer here at the prison?” I asked.

“Yeah. But the point is he wasn’t loyal. He’d do anything anytime. He also run his big mouth.”

“What else can you tell me?” I asked.

“Grandma say that all she can say, ’cause she ain’t got a big mouth.”