THE THOUSAND DOLLAR BREAKOUT: Colt Ryder Uncovers A Deadly Fight Club At San Quentin State Prison . . . Will He Escape With His Life?

by J. T. Brannan

  “Mankell?” he said, wary now and causing me to wonder why. “Why you askin’ ’bout that fuckin’ racist sonofabitch for?” He looked around like a prey animal on the Serengeti, eyes pausing for a moment too long on a table at the far end of the hall that was populated entirely by whites.

  “He sent a message to me when I was in the hole,” I told him, “said to ask for him when I was out. You any idea why?”

  “Any idea why?” he said with a small laugh. “You damn sure I got an idea why, and it’s a good enough reason for me not to be sittin’ here with your white ass.”

  He made to get up, but my hand shot out, gripped his forearm. “Wait,” I whispered. “Tell me. Who is he?”

  “Get your damn hands off of me, man” he said, jerking his arm back out of my grasp. But then he leaned in toward me, and whispered close to my ear. “He recruits new fish for the fuckin’ AB, man. That’s all he does. Been in Reception for five fuckin’ years, never left.” His gaze hardened. “If you go with those boys, you better watch yourself, bitch. You just watch yourself. Remember, there are one hell of a lot more of us than there are of you.”

  “You boys making a date?” a gravelly voice said from behind us, and I turned to see the smiling face of Officer Herbert L. Bush standing there, slapping his nightstick into the palm of an open hand.

  “Not me,” the homeboy said, sloping away quietly. He’d read the situation right, and taken advantage of it; Bush only had eyes for me, and my friend from the bus hightailed it out of there.

  “You didn’t come visit me in the hole,” I said, not sure how to play it. I wasn’t going to apologize and lose face – that would make my seven days in the hole completely pointless; and yet I also didn’t want to make the guy so angry that he lashed out again, forcing me to do something I’d inevitably regret.

  “Oh, I never visit isolation,” Bush said. “I like to operate out here, in the open.”

  I just nodded, keeping my mouth shut – for now, at least.

  But I could sense that all eyes were on us, wondering how this thing was going to work out. There were more than two dozen of these guys that had seen, or been involved in, the fight in the reception center foyer – and that meant that every single person here would have heard about it. They’d know that Bush had hit me with the baton, and I’d fought back, and they’d all be wondering what was going to happen now.

  I wondered the same thing myself.

  Much of it, I knew, would depend on what Bush said or did next.

  “Well,” he said, looking around the dining hall, “it looks like we’ve got ourselves an audience, so I’ll be on my way. But we’ll see each other again, maybe have some quiet time together, you know?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Bush strolled off, leaving me to my breakfast – for now, at least.

  I took a bite of the unidentifiable sludge in my bowl while I mulled things over. Nobody else came to sit with me.

  I ate some more, then pushed the bowl away and stood up, looking across at the whites-only table.

  The note said to ask for Mankell; so why wait any longer?

  I wasn’t a patient man, and I didn’t like the breakfast anyway.

  Chapter Five

  “Are you Mankell?”

  All eyes were on me again, including those of Officer Bush and the other guards, who observed the table from afar.

  Out of the dozen guys sitting around the refectory table – all white, but a mix of haircuts, body types and ages – I’d picked out one guy that I thought might be Mankell. He was a tall man, fit-looking and tough, although in no way muscular like some of the others. He looked to be in his early forties maybe, a similar sort of age to me, and his head was completely shaven, while he sported a long beard. He kind of looked like a bald, Swastika-tattooed ZZ Top. But it wasn’t his physical appearance that singled him out; it was more the way he appeared to command the group. It was in the way he sat, or maybe in the way that the others sat around him.

  Rather than answer, the man merely nodded at the man sat opposite him, who immediately stood and moved away to another table; he then nodded at me, and gestured to the empty seat.

  “You don’t waste any time,” he said, his voice strangely high-pitched.

  “I don’t have a lot of time to waste,” I responded, sitting down.

  The bearded man laughed. “Buddy, in here, time is all you’ve got.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”

  “You planning on escaping?” he asked, smile wide on his bearded face.

  “Are you Mankell?” I asked again, ignoring his own question.

  “Yeah,” he said slowly, in what sounded like a Texan drawl, and I wondered how he’d ended up in California. “That’s me. What’s your name, fish?”

  “You know my name.”

  “Watch your fuckin’ mouth when you speak to him,” the guy right next to me warned, “or you’re going straight back to that fuckin’ infirmary.”

  I turned to the man, taking in his missing teeth and golden crowns, the prison ink that covered his neck and face. “One of us will,” I told him.

  I could see the look of anger contort the man’s face, veins popping everywhere as his brain processed my comment, deciding what – if anything – he should do about it.

  “Stand down, Loki,” Mankell told him, and the tension slowly, unwillingly, left his body. “Yes,” Mankell continued, turning back to me, “I know your name, Mitchel Delaney. What I don’t know is, are you connected?”

  “Connected to what?” I asked innocently.

  “Don’t shit a shitter, Mitch. You know who we are.” He pointed at me over the table. “I see you got some interesting tats there. Nurses tell me you got a Swastika right across your belly, is that right?”

  “It’s a peace symbol in some religions.”

  “Hah. Yeah, maybe it is. But not in yours, am I right?”

  “Why am I here?”

  “Drugs offences, so they tell me.”

  It was my turn to smile. “Why am I at this table? What are you offering?”

  “Ah. Well, I’m the scout, you see, the recruitment agent, if you will, for our little organization here.”

  “Who you working for?”

  “The big dogs,” Mankell replied honestly, “the guys who live in the big house, the world beyond the reception center. I’m just a cog in a wheel, that’s all I am.”

  I knew he was right, and yet wrong at the same time. He was just a cog, but he was a big one; and I would fuck with him only at my peril.

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “Aryan Brotherhood,” Mankell confirmed. “You’re in the birthplace of the movement, son. 1964, born right here at San Quentin. A beautiful thing, right? We protect our own Mitch, we always have. Now, you seem the independent sort, and I respect that. Didn’t take any shit off Officer Fat-Ass either, and I respect that too. But one thing you gotta know son, is that if you’re not with us, then you’re with them.” He glared over at a blacks-only table. “Or them.” His gaze turned toward the Latinos. “Or them.” This time, the Asians.

  I looked around the hall. “How about them?” I asked, gesturing to one mixed table, then another.

  “Don’t let that fool you,” Mankell said. “It’s early days, they just got here and they still don’t know shit. They think the rules from outside apply in here.” His eyes darkened. “Well, my friend, they don’t. We’ve got a different set of rules in here altogether. And I suggest you learn them fast.”

  “Can I think about it?”

  Mankell laughed again. “This ain’t a job offer, son. There’s nothing to fuckin’ think about. You’re either with us, or you’re against us, now what’s it gonna be?”

  I stood and held Mankell’s gaze. “I’ll let you know, okay?”

  The angry guy next to me couldn’t help himself any longer, he grabbed his fork and thrust it fast toward my leg; but I turned my body and caught his arm at the wrist, twisting it hard and using my other
hand to ram the guy’s head into the table. It bounced off and the body sagged to the floor.

  Guards started moving, but Bush looked at them and shook his head, making them stay in their spots. Now I was back in his yard, he didn’t want me being put in segregation again.

  He nodded his head at me, sharing a secret only we knew about. We’d be seeing each other again soon, I was sure of that.

  Mankell, too, was staring at me, not believing that I’d taken out one of his own men, at his own table.

  “I think I’ve made my mind up,” I said to him, and then I turned and made my way straight to the mixed table.

  Chapter Six

  I lay on my bunk, hands behind my head, wondering if I should dare try and sleep.

  The guy in the bunk above me was called Billy Wade. White, but apparently unconnected to the AB. He was in for killing his wife’s lover after he’d found them in bed together; messed up, but not connected to the gangs in any way, and definitely not a career criminal. Just a normal guy who’d not been able to control the red mist when it came down on him that one time.

  It was a sad state of affairs when having a convicted murderer sleeping in the bunk above you was comforting.

  It would be better if the son of a bitch didn’t snore so damn loudly though.

  I stretched out my body and sighed deeply.

  I’d survived the day, but I knew the peace wasn’t going to last. The Aryan boys were out to get me, Officer Bush had a real hard-on for me, and the other gangs didn’t know what to make of me. Mankell ignored me completely at lunch and dinner, as did the other members of his posse. Even Loki, his nose bandaged, managed to keep his cool.

  It was their disinterest that disturbed me; if they’d been openly hostile, I could have accepted it. But the silent treatment meant they were planning something, and the anticipation sent a white heat through my gut. I didn’t know what, or when, or who, but I knew something was going to happen.

  In the end, though, I just thought fuck it. What good would I be without sleep, anyway?

  And so I closed my eyes, forgot about my problems, and within a minute, I was asleep.

  I heard the creak of the ladder maybe an hour later, opened my eyes just enough to see my cellmate reaching down toward me, bedsheet pulled taut between his hands.

  Son of a bitch – I guess I was wrong about him not being connected. Seemed that Mankell was right – in here, everyone needs to get connected, and Billy had made his choice, sold his soul to the devil.

  I saw him reaching down toward me, unsure if he was planning on strangling me or just restraining me; and then I heard the snick of the cell door’s lock, and knew the plan was for him to pin me down while his new friends did whatever it was they wanted to do to me.

  I opened my eyes wide, showing him the whites all around; he stopped for a moment, surprised, and I used the opportunity.

  I reached up out of my bed and grabbed the bedsheet he held, pulled him in close and rabbit-punched him in the face. Blood sprayed onto me from his nose, but I ignored it as I leaped from my bed and punched him again, harder this time, getting more leverage into the blow.

  I looked over his shoulder, saw light spilling into the cell from outside, and turned Billy around in my arms, clamping a forearm around his throat and using him as a human shield as four men poured into our cell, white shaven heads reflecting the light from outside. Beyond them, I could see Officer Bush – the man with the cell door keys – smiling in satisfaction.

  And yet the desire of the four men to get to me – they all probably wanted to be the one to get me first, to impress the bosses – actually worked against them; the cell was just too small for the six of us, and all it did was funnel them toward me in single-file.

  I kicked the first man to get to me in the gut, doubling him over and making him drop his shiv, or whatever makeshift knife he’d been carrying; I didn’t see it, but heard it hit the concrete cell floor.

  The sound raised my awareness to an even higher level; these guys weren’t playing, they weren’t here to just beat me up, to give me a warning.

  They wanted to hurt me badly.

  The next man got to me and I saw the flash of steel and turned Billy toward it, heard a muffled groan as his body blocked the shot from hitting me. I dropped Billy’s heavy body to the floor and slammed the heel of my palm into the skinhead’s face, then grabbed him by the ears and pulled him down onto my rising knee. I saw teeth fall out of his shattered mouth and let him drop to the floor after Billy, continuing to move forward to meet the next threat.

  I saw the next guy’s weapon clearly this time, a metal spike with a wire handle arcing fast toward me. I arched my belly out of the way and blocked the thrust with a forearm, delivering a punch to his chin at the same time.

  The shot stunned him but didn’t drop him, and I could see the last man struggling to get around him, a broken broom handle in his hands, one edge sharp and jagged.

  I carried on forward, pushing the guy I’d hit with both hands, knocking him backwards into the last man. I’d hoped to impale him on the last guy’s jagged broomstick, but I had no such luck – they just stumbled back together, close to the cell door now.

  I kicked out at the third man’s knee, heard it pop, then grabbed his head and rammed it into the concrete wall; and as he dropped, I backhanded the last man across the face.

  The blow lacked power though, and the attacker swung the broom handle toward me. I caught it with two hands and slammed his arm into the wall, twisting it over until it was in the doorframe; and then I kneed him in the balls and swung the cell door shut on his arm. I heard the satisfying crack of bone, and he dropped the broom. I kneed him again and grabbed his head, putting it where the arm had just been and slamming the cell door on it once, twice, three times, again and again until I was covered with the man’s sticky, coppery blood; and then the alarm started to sound and I heard Officer Bush screaming at me like a wild man.

  “Get down on the floor, now!” he yelled, and I could see he had a handgun out, aimed at my chest. “Now, now, now!”

  All the lights were coming on now, all over the cellblock, and I could hear the sound of boots running through the corridors, on their way here.

  For a split second, I thought about going for Bush too, finishing him off for good before he had a chance to shoot me; but then I realized that if he was going to shoot me, he would have already done it.

  And so, reluctantly, I let the fourth man – half-dead – fall to the floor, put my hands behind my head, and followed him down there.

  Chapter Seven

  “Mr. Delaney,” Nathaniel Gordon said to me, “so we meet again.”

  I just nodded and kept my mouth shut.

  “Perhaps rather earlier than we’d both anticipated.”

  I shrugged. What was there to say?

  We weren’t in an office, just a makeshift interview area in another empty, whitewashed corridor. Gordon and I had metal chairs, while the half-dozen guards stood watching us closely.

  “A shame about your friend,” Gordon said, looking up from the notepad on his lap.

  “What friend?”

  “Billy Wade,” Gordon answered. “Got hit in the liver with that shiv. Bled to death before we could help him.”

  I nodded. “Yeah,” I agreed, “that’s a real shame.”

  “You don’t look sorry about it.”

  “I’d just met the guy. How sorry should I be?”

  “I think you should moderate your tone when you speak to me, Mr. Delaney. In here, I hold the power of life and death over you, I really do. It would be best if you remember that.”

  “Oh, I’ll remember,” I assured him. “What happened to the guys that attacked me?”

  “Guys?” Gordon asked with a quizzical look on his face, then shook his head. “No, from my understanding, there was only one guy – the same man you nearly killed by slamming the cell door off his head.”

  So that was the way they were playing it; the other
three were getting away with the whole thing. The only reason they admitted to one attacker was probably because of the mess he was in – there was no disguising an inmate with a broken arm and a cracked skull.

  I wondered if it was all engineered by Bush and Mankell, or if the warden also had a hand in it.

  “Okay,” I said, playing the game, “so what’s going to happen to the guy who attacked me?”

  Gordon shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “Mr. Delaney,” he said, “I rather think that perhaps you should be more worried about what is going to happen to you.”

  “I am worried,” I said, looking around at the guards. “I’m worried about how that ‘one guy’ managed to get into my cell. I thought you needed keys for that sort of thing?”

  “My Delaney,” Gordon said in mock offence. “I hope you’re not accusing anyone of anything.”

  “Heaven forbid,” I replied. “We can’t have wild, unsubstantiated accusations flying about the place, can we?”

  “No, we can’t,” Gordon agreed.

  “But I wonder how he did get in,” I persisted.

  “You criminals are a resourceful bunch,” Gordon said thoughtfully. “Who knows how you get things done? You’d probably have a better idea than me.”

  “Oh, I have an idea, alright,” I said, still looking around at the guards. “I have a good idea.”

  “Well,” Gordon said, “as long as you keep it as just an idea, we won’t have a problem.”

  I nodded. “Okay,” I agreed, “so what happens to me? Obviously, there are people here that want to hurt me, for whatever reason. Are you going to protect me? Put me in segregation again?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “No,” I said quickly, “I don’t want to go back there.” If I was in isolation, it would be more wasted time – and I wanted to move forward with this mission, not stay in one spot, spinning my wheels.

  “Good,” Gordon said, “because that’s not what I’ve got planned for you at all. But you’re right, you do seem to be a target here in Reception.”