The Four Stages Of Cruelty Part 19

35.

I had two days off and nothing to do but think-about Fenton and the drugs, about Josh and Roy, about the comic book and the Ditmarsh Social Club. I tried the number of the couple in the BP who'd pa.s.sed me the drugs. I wanted to explain, without providing any detail, why I hadn't gone through with it yet. But the number didn't work, like it had never existed. What made everything worse was the disconnect with Ruddik. Since my talk with Melinda he'd stopped answering my calls. Normally, I antic.i.p.ated rejection as a natural matter of course. If I ever liked a guy and let myself ease up around him, I knew he'd back away from me soon after. But this wasn't some boyfriend-girlfriend bulls.h.i.+t. This was real commitment, based on my willingness to sacrifice my entire f.u.c.king career for his machinations. I got tired of ringing him from pay phones and started thumbing my cell phone at random spare moments, hoping to catch him. Going silent was the worst thing he could have pulled on me at this particular moment. I was sitting on a Baggie full of pills, waiting for my next s.h.i.+ft, wondering what the h.e.l.l to do. I called him three times the night before my day s.h.i.+ft, then a dozen more times the next morning, from the moment I woke up at 5:00 until I pulled into the parking lot at 7:30, finally leaving him a message. I stuck to the anger and fought down the paranoia. It was probably something stupid, a lost phone or low battery. But why hadn't he contacted me?

I left the drugs in my truck, then walked into the north gate. Somehow that day I needed to make contact with Fenton and explain to him personally why I hadn't made the drop. I wanted the drugs out of my life. I worried that going to Fenton had been a serious mistake. I knew he played people. And once I did one job for Fenton, he'd compel me to do others. Julie Denly had probably moved stash for him, too. Julie would have done anything for Fenton.

At Keeper's Hall, I checked the board, hoping to see a little color-coded dot next to Fenton's name, a doctor's visit or a counseling session, some break from routine that would allow me to approach him more easily. Then I couldn't find Fenton's name at all. Keeper Pollack came around the corner and greeted me with his usual cheer, like all was forgiven between us.

"The coffee's for s.h.i.+t," he told me, shaking the pot. "I been waiting for Cutler to bring me my latte, but he ain't showed up yet this morning."

Then I saw Fenton's name. His tab had been pulled off B block and slapped onto dis.

"I see you had some action in dis," I said, as casual as I could manage. I needed to find out why Fenton had been transferred, but Pollock went on about Roy Duckett instead.

"Oh, you know," Pollock said. "That f.u.c.king Wobbles sure can complain."

"I thought he was in the infirmary," I said with all the false naivete I could garner.

"The Pen Squad sent him to dis," Pollock confirmed. "Said they got enough drug-related suspicions on him to warrant a little isolation time. The warden okayed it personally. Called Wobbles an imminent threat to the security of the inst.i.tution. I had to laugh. The only security Wobbles imminently threatens is his own f.u.c.king balance."

Pollock liked his joke enough for both of us.

"What about Billy Fenton?" I asked. My voice was fine, but my face had flushed up. The questions were above my pay grade. I had no official reason to care who was in dis. Wallace would have stared me down and told me to get out on my beat, but Pollock didn't mind talking.

"Fenton. Now there's a happy camper. Wobbles flew a kite on Fenton, and we found a whole s.h.i.+tload of contraband in the laundry cell on B-three, exactly where Wobbles said it would be. Don't think I'd want to p.i.s.s off Billy like that. Bad move from a Darwin standpoint."

He grinned at his own morbid take. "That's not the real excitement around here, though, or haven't you heard?"

I had no interest in more gossip but forced myself to ask. Pollock showed me the city newspaper, tapping the local section with a thick finger, and let me read for myself. Another article by Bart Stone. A corrections officer, name withheld, currently working at Ditmarsh Penitentiary had once been arrested for downloading child p.o.r.nography.

"Oh f.u.c.k," I said, not even knowing why I felt such unease. "Who's our diddler?"

Pollack just grinned. "You're going to love it."

And I waited, knowing I was not going to love it.

"Our own superspy, Michael Ruddik. He missed his s.h.i.+ft yesterday, and I haven't seen him yet today. Doesn't have the b.a.l.l.s to show his face."

I leaned against the counter, as if a cramp had hit me in the stomach.

"Another demonstration that informants of any stripe are a species not to be trusted," Pollock continued. He got on his high horse about sticking together, watching each other's backs. I withstood it until Cutler showed up with the Keeper's latte, taking an earful about being late.

I sat in the gym nest watching the inmates leap or loaf on the basketball court. The younger or smaller ones played all the time, energized and s.p.u.n.ky, chasing the loose ball, clapping sweat-darkened backs. Every so often one of the hefty king s.h.i.+ts would arise from his recline and muscle into the game, lumber for a few minutes, and swat a smaller player down with a move that would earn a suspension in college ball but was hardly worth protesting in the Ditmarsh gentlemen's league.

The news about Ruddik had left me sick, but I needed to deal with my own problems for the moment. A week after I ask Fenton for a job, I fail to come through on my end of the deal and he ends up in isolation. I needed to explain matters to him, immediately and without delay.

When the buzzer sounded, I stood and hollered, "Chow up!" The basketb.a.l.l.s got released to the floor, scooped up, and loaded into the bin by a punk I pointed to. The inmates lined up and walked to the locked fence, waiting docilely for my G.o.d-given okay. I spoke the magic words to my radio, and the door unhinged. The gym emptied and became silent, except for the clank of weights behind me in the weight pit.

I knew Harrison would keep hauling and clanking. He was a plate-pumping fool who always ignored the buzzer to get in one or two more reps. It was the kind of behavior that could p.i.s.s you off if you were a con-hating hard-a.s.s. Otherwise it wavered on the s.h.i.+t scale somewhere between mildly annoying and almost endearing. The inmates who cared about some hobby or self-improvement strategy were always a little easier to empathize with. An interest in life beyond the next meal or the next minute made them seem almost human.

On a normal day I would have kept the rest of the inmates waiting until Harrison was ready, yelling down at him from the nest to join them. Today I decided to accidentally forget about Harrison until everyone else was gone. I unlocked the door of the nest and walked down the steps into the weight pit.

There were no cameras in the weight pit. It was dank and dark. The stench rose up at me-moldy rubber, metal, and sweat. Harrison lay on the bench pressing a metal bar upward, arched down by the weight of the giant disks on each end. "Almost there, Officer," he grunted, and I watched him heave the truck axle up and down another five times, breath hissing with each hoist, squeezing his elbows tight on the last one and flipping the bar off the back of his fingers to clatter on the rests. He sat up and twisted his head one way and then back. His neck, shoulders, and chest were ripped with muscles, his biceps like round shot puts below vein-ridged skin, his knuckles callused. He was blind in one eye and missing an ear, the eye punctured and the ear ripped off his head in a fight. I approached him from the blind side and sprayed his face.

With surprise and the right tools, it's easy to take down a big man. Harrison collapsed onto his hands and knees and tried to crawl away. I leaned over him and brought the baton down on his shoulder repeatedly, like I was walloping the dust out of a carpet roll, then kicked him in the ribs, the air grunting from his chest. I clamped my hand down on the radio and called hoa.r.s.ely for help, the pepper spray getting to me. By the time Johnson and Tesco arrived, I had already zip-cuffed Harrison's hands behind his back and smeared pepper spray from the palm of my hand across my own eye. The welt came up immediately, a watery red furrow, as if I'd been clobbered or scratched bad. Johnson and Tesco were all business. Tesco kept his knee on Harrison's t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es while Johnson checked my condition. I was all right, I told him. "Big boy went apes.h.i.+t on me when I told him to give it up." Harrison, s...o...b..ring, was barely coherent. "She jacked me," he protested. So Tesco raised himself up and fell back down, his knee blading into Harrison's b.a.l.l.s, and Harrison rolled over, threw up, took a shot to the back, and collapsed in his own puke.

"He's mine," I choked. "I'm taking him to dis."

"Attaboy," Tesco said.

Johnson and Tesco lifted Harrison to his knees and told him to get up. Harrison didn't comply, so Johnson thwacked him in the kidneys with his baton. Harrison arched his back, struggled in the cuffs, and finally hauled himself to his feet. The boys loved the weight pit. It was the best no-camera room in the house.

I got a grip on Harrison's thumb, rather than the zip cuffs themselves, and twisted it on a hard angle to get him walking. Like a blind mule, he stumbled into the wall and up the stairs, hunched over, steps thudding. I tried not to listen to him sniff and moan.

Pus.h.i.+ng Harrison before me, I entered the receiving zone of the dissociation range, an octagonal s.p.a.ce with two other doors and a gla.s.sed-in cage on a platform. One hallway led to the standard isolation cells, one to the internal evidence rooms.

Two COs looked down from inside the gla.s.s nest. I recognized Droune, but not the other, and hoped my relations.h.i.+p with Droune would allow me to skip the procedural route and get inside alone.

"Got a parking s.p.a.ce?" I asked.

Droune leaned down into the microphone. "That's a ten-four, Officer Williams. You got number seventeen, clean and waiting."

The door before me clicked.

"But not too clean," Droune added.

I pushed Harrison forward, and the hall became noise, as if a stereo volume k.n.o.b had been spun to the right. I could discern protests at bad treatment, lack of food, demands for shower or yard time, lawyers, and mail. I directed Harrison along, counting off cells, feeling vulnerable even though the door slots were shut. Each door had three slots, one at eye level for communication, one at waist level for cuffing hands, and one at the ground for shackling ankles.

Cell seventeen was waiting for us, the door cracked ever so slightly. I prodded Harrison, a soggy wall of flesh, with the end of my baton. There was a narrow metal bench inside, barely wide enough for his girth, and a chrome sink and toilet unit built into the wall. Nothing else. It was a s.h.i.+t existence. An isolated, mind-numbing, life-sucking waiting room. And it would be Harrison's home for the next six to ten days for striking a CO and failure to comply with a direct. He turned around, expecting it to continue, this psychotic b.i.t.c.h in a uniform who'd taken him down on his blind side. His lips and cheek were swollen, his skin crusty with puke and rubbed raw from the spray, a bright purple lump rising from the top of his forehead. I hadn't done my case against Hadley any good. One more testimony to add to the witness list, if Hadley's lawyer ever heard the rumor. For the first time in my CO career I wished I could utter the word sorry. Any trust between us annihilated, Harrison waited for me to step forward and continue the a.s.s kicking I'd started at the gym. I stepped out and closed the door instead, opened the waist slot, and told Harrison to stick his hands through the opening. A few seconds later I heard his back thud against the door, and his hands groped with the opening and popped through. I disengaged the zip cuffs and released him, then walked away, listening to his denials and protests spray after me like an unlocked hydrant.

Four cells back down the hall, I stopped and listened at the door. The cameras were on the hall, and the COs in the gla.s.s nest would be watching me, deflated and then perplexed to see me walking out so promptly from Harrison's cube, no blood on my stick, no wet strands of hair in my eyes. I didn't have time to worry. I opened the face slot and saw Fenton lying on the bench, one knee raised, watching me.

"Even in here I recognize those catlike steps," he said.

The words wouldn't come at first, and then I forced them out.

"I had nothing to do with this, and I don't know why you're in here."

He did not nod or blink or indicate in any way that he believed me or cared.

"The library was blown. I couldn't go."

"Those pills. Have yourself a party. I don't even want to look at you."

"Give me another chance," I whispered. How far I had fallen, begging an inmate to deliver his drugs.

"Aren't you sweet," he said. "I almost wish I could give you a hug."

He didn't move, didn't smile. I closed the eye slot and walked down the hallway as fast as possible. Some of the voices hissed at me. They'd figured out a female was on deck. They talked about how bad they were spanking it that very second. I'd heard it all before, but the Greek chorus of loathing was as menacing to my ears on this occasion as it had been on my first day on the job.

"Officer Williams!"

The voice spiked out above the others, more unwanted attention. But I knew who it was, and I judged through the cacophony where the sound was coming from. The voice seemed to know I had slowed.

"You need someone to steer you right!"

I was at the slot, and I shot it aside.

Roy stood at the back of his cell, good leg and peg leg splayed.

"All right, then you tell me!" I yelled, but I could barely hear my own voice.

Roy tilted his head back and bellowed at the moon, "Shut the f.u.c.k up, you G.o.dd.a.m.n f.u.c.knuts!" so suddenly and with such volume that the command drove my face back inches from the door.

But then, behold, with a few protests and grumbles, the shouting lulled like the release of crashed gla.s.s. No keeper, no warden, no c.o.c.ked shotgun amplified over a megaphone had that kind of imperial authority.

I think Roy read the startled blink on my face, because he tried to shrug it off. "What do you know? They listen!" Pleased as punch, his smile back, as if we were the oldest of friends and this the most coincidental of meetings.

"You get us a room with a little privacy, and I'll fill you in," he said.

"Fill me in on what?"

"Now, that would spoil my surprise."

I had no stomach for such s.h.i.+t. I threw the slot back across and strode away, the chorus of degradation rising again.

"You're going to love it!" he yelled after me.

At the nest, they had the paperwork for Harrison's intake ready. n.o.body joked or smiled. I'd managed to arouse the suspicions of inmates and COs alike.

In the parking lot, sitting in the Land Rover, I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. The stress pounded in every vulnerable region, the insides of my elbows and the backs of my knees. I flipped the cell phone and dialed Ruddik's number yet again, my habit for the past three days, like fingering prayer beads. It shocked me hard when I heard his quiet voice.

I asked him where the f.u.c.k he'd been. He told me to calm down.

"Why haven't you answered my calls?"

"I've had company." And he told me where to meet him.

36.

The Mexican restaurant was one of those pink adobe haciendas at the end of a strip mall. I arrived as bidden, despite feeling sick, something heavy pressing me down, a cold, the flu coming on. The temperature had dropped, and I was chilled walking across the parking lot and into the restaurant. Busier inside than I could handle. I barely saw the hostess, just pushed past her. Ruddik occupied a booth opposite the bar. He told me I didn't look good, as if me looking good was important. He was drinking a lime margarita on the rocks. Virgin, he a.s.sured me. I ordered a tomato juice, craving vitamin C.

When the waitress left, he slid back to the corner of the booth and stretched out to get comfortable.

"Sorry I wasn't in touch before. They're monitoring my e-mail and my phone calls."

"Who's they?"

He didn't bother to answer.

"Is it true about the p.o.r.nography?"

"Of course it's not true." There was anger in the abrupt reply. "Two years ago I was investigating an Internet child p.o.r.n ring based out of a penitentiary in Tennessee."

The waitress returned with my drink and a basket of nacho chips. She asked what we wanted to eat. I had no stomach for anything and declined. Ruddik put in an order. Something chicken.

"A p.o.r.n ring inside a penitentiary?" I asked.

"A private enterprise operated a call center inside the penitentiary and used inmates as workers. We suspected credit card theft based on a spike in inmate bank accounts, but it turned out they were using the call center Internet connection to distribute p.o.r.nographic images and videos. Anyway, I surfed a few sites back then to research what was going on, set up a couple transactions to see where the trail would lead, and, just my luck, got caught up in a sting by a different agency. They cleared the charges right away, but the word got out to my brother COs. Now someone back there must have told someone here. Whoever leaked that information to the newspaper is trying to impede us. This is what happens when you get close. It's never clean. It's always messy. But I've been through it before, so I'm not panicking, and neither should you. Things will get worse, and then they'll get better. Trust me on this."

"I don't know if I can handle any worse. I have a bag of drugs in my truck, and Fenton thinks I put him away."

"They want the s.h.i.+pment. You'll get a call about the new drop. The drugs will take us somewhere interesting. You don't have to do any heavy lifting anymore. Just stay in position and handle the light stuff. I'm exposed. I'm in the open now. I'll do the rest."

He opened his briefcase and took out a file. Always a G.o.dd.a.m.n file.

"What you said about the comic book, the idea of money, pa.s.sing messages. That really gelled for me."

"How so?"

"What is money but a kind of message? In the old days, before the U.S. had a government-issued currency, any note could serve as money. Sometimes it was just an IOU between two people, but in mining towns, for example, it might be company-issued. They called it scrip. But the problem with scrip and any currency has always been, how do you make it counterfeit-proof? You need a stamp of authenticity, some kind of marking that's difficult to copy. Otherwise it's just worthless paper."

"You think Crowley was drawing scrip?"

"A possibility worth considering. Inside a prison, you would need to disguise the fact that scrip is currency, because of the illegal activity it symbolizes."

The waitress interrupted with a hot plate, whatever food Ruddik had ordered sizzling and spitting on the metal griddle. Some sides to go with it and a little basket of tortillas. The way he dug in made me wonder how often he took the time to eat.

"But that's just speculation. You're going to love what I found out about Hammond."

He folded a tortilla, overfilled it with chicken and peppers, and stuffed it into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed.

"I've talked to my contacts and learned some very interesting things. About twenty some years ago the FBI began investigating the possibility that conventional gang business operations in several regional centers of the country were being directed by gang leaders already residing within state and federal penitentiaries. Business hadn't ended when the leaders got put away. Business got better."

"What do you mean?"

"Once the leaders were locked inside, the organizations got more sophisticated and effective. They developed reporting and financial recording mechanisms and a.s.sumed vertical layers of control and supervision. They got better at using prison employees."