by Tom Barber
‘You sure about doing this?’ Rainey asked. ‘If you’re going to, now’s the time to change your mind.’ Nicky chewed his slice of cake; but as skilled as he’d become at hiding his emotions, here in the cell with just Prez for company he could let the mask drop slightly. The biker saw he looked both pensive and nervous.
‘She still won’t answer her phone,’ Nicky replied. ‘She’s gonna get herself killed or locked up if I don’t try to do something. I spend twelve years in here, then get out and she goes down the same week? No way. I’m not letting that happen.’
‘But this is what you wanna do? Last time I ask.’
Nicky took a deep breath, then nodded. So Prez let it be.
‘My celly before you showed up here made me one of these cakes, night before his release,’ the biker said. ‘He was from some town called Barrow, in Alaska. Told me it goes dark for almost two months straight, up there in winter. At the end of spring, it stays light for another two months too. Night sun, they call it.’
His eyes met his younger cellmate’s.
‘That’s what it’s gonna be like for you once you get past that wall, kid. Be nowhere in the dark you can hide for long. Maybe never again, so listen to me good.’ He paused to emphasize what he was saying. ‘Every chance you get, you refuel, you rest up and you use that time to think. The warden, guards and State police take escapes personal. Don’t matter your record in here, they’ll put you down hard if they have to, and they’ll hunt you day and night to get the chance.’
Nicky listened in silence.
‘Assuming I can get Janks in your bunk, if the screws find him before you get to Ohio they’re gonna be all over your girl in Cleveland before you can reach her,’ Prez continued. ‘You won’t be able to contact her on the phone. Be like a conference call with police and US Marshals listening in.’
‘She’s not gonna pick up anyway.’
‘You make it in time, is she ready to run with you? Even if you stop her taking part in this robbery? Might be so pissed at you for interfering, she won’t listen to anything you got to say.’
‘Maybe not, but if I can physically stop her getting involved, that’s all I care about. I can handle more time inside. She can’t. It’ll break her for good. She’s pretty close anyway.’
Prez ate the rest of his slice, then levered himself off another with the edge of the book. ‘If you do get there, where you gonna go after?’
‘Don’t know yet. Like I told you, she’s thinking Canada.’
‘You get a chance to make a new life, you don’t stop for a second to take it,’ Prez re-emphasized. ‘Even if something happens to her. You understand me?’
Nicky nodded.
‘Say it.’
‘I’ll take it.’
The next morning Nicky and Prez were waiting, both of them on edge, the doors around the block open now breakfast was over and the inmates were on inside rec time. Nicky had tried Kat another fifteen times this morning, but the call always went to voicemail. She’d meant what she’d said.
‘So if Hoff, Kattar and Lupinetti are getting out too,’ he said to Rainey, who was beside him. ‘How are they getting that door open?’ he asked, looking down at the main entrance to the block.
They got their answer a few minutes later, when Lupinetti’s two-CO escort came to collect him for his transfer to a new prison and were promptly ambushed by Hoffmeier and Kattar.
As the other inmates flooded out of their cells and chaos erupted, Prez and Nicky quickly moved through the mayhem unnoticed, Prez watching in case anyone tried to come at Nicky with the kid’s release date coming up. No-one did.
Once out, they started running through the prison. Prez had kept his eyes on an inmate who’d taken the CO called Pena’s keys, one of which he knew would be for the SHU block. This was the only sticking point in the plan they’d cooked up and getting those keys was a necessity; he caught up on the guy just as he was trying to unlock a door, rushing him from behind before slamming his head into the wall, knocking him out.
‘Truck’s gonna be outta here any second!’ Prez said, taking the keys before they cut back and hurried on down the corridor where they were going to go their separate ways, Nicky to the laundry, Prez towards SHU housing. The two cellmates then stopped for a second, knowing it was almost certainly going to be the last time they’d ever see each other.
Holding several straps made from a sheet, Nicky gripped Prez’s hand with the other.
‘Give them everything you got, kid.’
‘I’ll send you a postcard,’ Nicky said. A pause. ‘Thanks.’
Then he turned and ran towards the laundry as the sound of the riot increased around them in the prison.
*
‘I gotta be real quiet,’ Rainey whispered in the present, a day later, going to the back of the cell. ‘Screws keep coming into the block. Where are you?’
‘Hiding in a garage,’ Nicky replied. ‘What happened with Janks? I was all over the radio before I made it into Ohio.’
‘COs pulled another count during lockdown. From what I heard, someone got suspicious when a 911 call came in for that laundry truck driver.’
‘They sweating you hard?’
‘Yeah, but I’m not giving them anything. Tell me what’s happened.’
‘I got to Cleveland in time. But Brooks, Billy and Lupinetti showed up too.’
‘What?’
‘They put down the entire crew Kat pulled the job with and one of them shot her before I got her out of there. We’ve been running in the city ever since. I found somewhere to hole up temporarily but there are cops everywhere and she’s in agony, Prez. I gotta do something.’
‘How the hell did the brothers know what was going down?’
‘Dunno, but we have to get out of Ohio right now, somehow. I’m running short on ideas.’
‘Did she leave with anything from the truck?’ Rainey asked, moving back towards the door of the cell. He got a nasty jolt when he saw Wesley trying to get his attention and doing a quick twisting motion.
A screw was back and on his way up here.
‘She’s got a bag of money and some expensive-looking jewelry. But it’s not-’
‘Good, that’ll help,’ Prez replied quickly. ‘Can you wait one more hour?’
‘Yeah, I’ll try but whoever left this house might be coming back any minute. And if police lock down the street and do a sweep, we’re toast. We can’t hide out here forever. There are choppers in the sky too, searching-’
‘Someone’s coming, I got your number now. I’ll call you back when I can,’ Prez said, cutting him off again as he heard footsteps on the gantry outside.
Having been told to carry out random checks despite the lockdown, convinced someone on the block had a cell phone they didn’t know about, the CO on the fresh shift change had heard faint murmuring coming from the upper tier in the quiet, and stopped outside Rainey’s cell.
He looked inside and saw the biker was sleeping, his arm hooked under his pillow; he watched him for a few moments, the inmate turning and murmuring in his sleep.
The CO considered unlocking the cell and tossing it, but then realized that might stir things up again and the warden would have his ass. Jobs were most likely gonna go after what had happened and he didn’t want his to be one of them.
Rainey waited, knowing the screw could easily be loitering just down the gantry again. Now Nicky was gone from here, they’d be suspecting him of helping the younger man to escape; they were right and his involvement wasn’t about to end either. He’d asked his absent cellmate to give him an hour, so he kept waiting, counting in his head, picturing the kid hiding in the darkness of a suburban garage somewhere, police checking house-by-house and getting closer and closer to finding him.
After just over eight minutes, he heard footsteps walk off from the tier and go back down the stairs, the main door closing as the guard left. Moving fast, the biker retrieved his cell from the light housing in the ceiling then called a number saved to
speed dial. ‘Yo Prez, your celly’s up to his neck in it,’ the vice-president of his MC chapter answered, having been bumped up when the former VP temporarily took Rainey’s slot as the head of the club. Their clubhouse was just outside Atlanta, three hundred miles away. ‘Some shit went down in Cleveland and cops are shutting down the city. Your boy’s all over the news. He still got the ride we left him?’
‘Had to dump it. But I need you to do something else, fast as you can make it happen.’
‘What is it?’
‘The club’s got a chapter in Cleveland, right?’
TWENTY FIVE
‘How’s the view?’ Brooks asked, from inside the gun store in the Lakewood suburb of the city as he quickly loaded shells into the shotgun his brother had been using, his rifle already holding a freshly loaded magazine.
‘No sign of PD,’ Billy said from where he was keeping watch by the front window with a handgun, the sign on the door turned from Open to Closed. ‘That bullshit tipoff bought us some time. Cops are dumber here than they are back home,’ he added with a grin.
‘Or they might be onto Reyes somewhere.’ Brooks pushed the last shell into the shotgun, then whistled and tossed the weapon to his brother, who caught it with one hand and then stuffed his pistol into the holster of the belt he was wearing. Still dressed as a Cleveland Heights PD cop, Brooks tucked another three boxes of shells and six of the correct caliber rifle bullets into the backpack they’d been using to transport their firearms since they’d taken it from the dead Lee County fisherman’s house, the bag from the bank truck still hooked over his brother’s shoulder; then he eyed up some pistols he’d laid out on the counter. Although they’d come expressly for more ammunition, he’d decided to swap their stolen city police sidearms for fresh-off-the-rack handguns with bigger magazine capacity and less safety trigger pull. However, he and his brother were sticking with the rifle and shotgun they’d taken from the fisherman’s gun safe as their primary weapons; they were getting used to the firearms by now and had sighted them in. With the bridge and truck robbery shootout, the two fugitives had made good use of the practice.
‘TV just showed a map, all the roads and bridges are blocked off,’ Lupinetti told them, coming through from the back of the store and wearing the owner’s t-shirt; he’d taken it off him as soon as they’d arrived, having also abandoned the bloodstained jacket he’d had on since last night. He picked up one of the handguns Brooks had laid on the counter and loaded it before pushing the weapon into a holster he attached to his belt, taking two spare magazines and pocketing them too. ‘I’ll stay on the back exit. When we out of here?’
‘Five minutes,’ Brooks told him, before Lupinetti disappeared again. As the oldest Loughlin opened a box and started pushing 9mm Parabellums into a mag for a pistol he’d chosen, Billy left his post at the front door to walk behind the counter and lift a Ka-Bar knife off the wall which had caught his eye. To reach it, he had to step over the gun store’s owner, who’d been gagged and restrained in the cuffs taken from the CHPD belts Brooks and Billy were now wearing. The man was looking more furious than scared; the flags on the wall and tattoos on his arms told them, if they’d been even slightly interested, that he’d served as a Marine.
Brooks finished loading the pistol magazine, slotted it into place and pulled the slide, then joined his brother on the other side of the counter. He dropped to his haunches and put the handgun to the owner’s head before he pulled down the gag.
‘Got a car parked outside we can take, Gunny?’
‘Your friend was lying to you, redneck,’ the owner growled. ‘He’s gone.’
‘What?’
‘He just took off.’
Brooks rose and quickly moved towards the back where Lupinetti had gone a few moments ago; he could hear the news still being reported on the small television, newsrooms covering the ongoing searches in the city, but was far more focused on the rear door which had been left open.
The owner was right; Lupinetti had disappeared.
‘Where is he?’ Billy asked, joining his brother as Brooks took a quick look around outside, but then they heard a toilet flush and the door to the can opened.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lupinetti asked, drying his hands. ‘We leaving?’
Brooks took his brother’s knife and went back into the main store, realizing the owner had been screwing them around; but in the time they’d been gone the bound man had shuffled his way down to the other end of the long counter. Brooks noticed a flickering red light just above the guy’s foot, next to a button which he hadn’t caught before.
The owner had just activated a silent alarm.
Labor Day traffic around Cleveland had been heavy since first thing that morning, but the armored truck robbery, shootout and now the knowledge that there were armed, dangerous escaped convicts on the loose had prompted the majority of visitors to cut their Saturdays short and start leaving town.
For the troopers and officers manning the roadblocks on the highways, this sudden increase of traffic was presenting a serious headache. On Interstate 90 leading east out of the city, a group of cops and Ohio State troopers were clearing cars one at a time when what sounded like a giant metallic swarm of hornets started approaching down the inside lane; they looked over to see a mass of bikers in jeans, leather cuts and helmets on Harleys roaring up the shoulder towards them.
One of the officers stepped out to block their way, his partner joining him with a shotgun as the first cop waved at the approaching group of men and a few women to slow down and stop. ‘There must be forty of them,’ another officer said, looking over at the bikers after letting a car through, addressing his Cleveland PD sergeant who was standing beside him.
‘Go check it out,’ he said over the growling roar of the bike’s engines. ‘I’ll cover here.’
‘Not real likely our suspects joined a biker gang in the last hour,’ one of the troopers ventured to the sergeant, looking at the large group in helmets and leathers. ‘Anyway, they said the girl got shot. She couldn’t be riding.’
‘We were ordered not to let anyone pass without showing ID,’ the police sergeant answered.
‘Sarge, PD-’ another officer called to him, but he couldn’t hear the rest of what he shouted.
‘What?’
‘PD think they’ve got a fresh draw on the Loughlins!’ the man repeated, louder this time.
‘I can’t hear shit,’ the sergeant answered, his temper fraying. With the bikers, the three lanes of clogged traffic and irritable drivers using their horns, at this rate they wouldn’t clear the first twenty lines before the sun went down. ‘Just wave them through!’ he called to his officers blocking the bikers. ‘Get rid of that goddamn noise!’
The armed officers on the inside lane stood back and did as their sergeant ordered. ‘Go!’ one of them shouted as the men and few women riding pillion zipped past the roadblock and disappeared down the highway.
Her NYPD Ford had been fixed ahead of schedule by the local mechanics, so she was ready to depart Lee County, but before she left town, Marquez had taken a detour and driven to the hospital in Jonesville one last time to see how the laundry truck driver was faring. Once she’d checked in on him, she was planning to head north to re-join Archer in Ohio and hopefully pick up on Lupinetti’s trail.
She’d been admitted to the ward and found the driver in a bed in a private room with his head supported by a large frame, wearing an oxygen mask. Marquez had just passed who she’d been told was the man’s wife with other members of the family in the visitor’s room. Among them were a boy and girl both less than five years old.
‘I can’t believe he survived,’ Marquez said quietly to the two doctors who’d treated him. ‘My experience, a cut throat means someone’s a goner.’
‘Ours too,’ one of the doctors replied. ‘Person who did it was careless, or in a hurry. Reason we were able to save him.’
‘I guess in the prison, if you attack someone you need to do it fast. Maybe it’s a hab
it for the Loughlins.’
‘He still would’ve bled out but the field dressing around his neck saved his life. Whoever applied it and called 911 did their part.’
‘Has he managed to communicate with anyone yet?’ she asked, looking in through the doorway at the driver before realizing what she’d asked. ‘Dumb question.’
‘Afraid not,’ the same doctor told her. ‘He won’t be able to speak again for a while. His vocal cords were sliced.’
‘Can he write?’
‘I guess,’ the other doctor said, glancing at his colleague who nodded. ‘He’s conscious. But if you’re gonna ask him anything, limit it to a couple of questions only. He’s still very weak and dosed up. You might not get a lot of sense out of him.’
As she looked around for writing implements, one of the doctors passed her a Bic while the other found a pad at the nurses’ station and brought it over; both men then followed her to the driver’s bed. Marquez saw the injured patient’s eyes slowly shift to look at her. ‘Hi Drew,’ she said, having seen his name on the whiteboard outside the room. ‘My name’s Lisa. I’m a cop from New York. It would really help me if you can answer a couple questions. You feel up to that, blink twice.’
After a pause, he did.
‘I’m putting a pad right here under your hand. Here’s a pen.’ She tucked it between his fingers. ‘If you can, write your answers for me. First: do you know who did this to you?’
The driver’s eyes drifted slowly from Marquez to the two doctors; then the Bic began to move, albeit very slowly, as the doctors joined Marquez on that side of the bed, curious to see what he was writing. The NYPD detective didn’t need to reverse the pad to read what the man scrawled, messy but readable.
Lofl-
‘Loughlins?’ she interpreted. He looked at her and she thought he was about to blink, but then he wrote his confirmation instead.
yes
‘How do you know it was them?’ Marquez asked. He wrote again, slowly.
