by Tim Curran
Black Dog nodded. “Some shit happened at Brickhaven. You probably heard. Your fish was involved in that, somehow, some way. Was a dude over there, Donnie Fritz, he got done. Some people think your fish had a hand in it.”
Romero laughed. “Palmquist? We talking about the same guy?”
“We are.”
“This kid ain’t got it in him, Dog.”
“Some people think different.”
“Then some people are full of shit.”
“Go easy, man, go easy here.”
Even to Romero, Blackdog was fearsome. He stood an easy 6’6 and weighed 300 pounds and there was not a scrap of fat on him. His body was covered in prison tattoos and many of them, if you knew how to read them, told the story of who he was and where he’d been, the things he’d done and the bodies he’d left in his wake. On each huge bulging bicep there was an immense blood-red swastika.
He was not a man to cross.
Black Dog was not elaborating on these “people,” at least not yet. And knowing him and his connections it could have been anybody from the Italians to the Mexicans, his biker brothers or the ABs. Take your pick.
“Listen, Dog,” Romero said, standing his ground. “Palmquist is meat. He’s harmless. There’s no way he did someone like Fritz. Besides, way I hear it, Fritz and his cellie got done after lock-down. Now how the fuck could the fish be involved in that?”
Black Dog thought about that.
Even with the proper schooling, Romero doubted that Palmquist would ever make a good con. He’d never have the nuts to stand up for himself and that made him a victim, plain and simple.
When Romero was a young punk at Brickhaven, after he’d been processed into the general population, an old timer named Skip Hannaway came up to him and asked him what the state had sent him away to college for. Romero told him about the thing he had for stealing cars.
“Let me tell you how things work here, son,” Skip said. “Everything that happens in a hardtime joint revolves around fear and anger. These are the only two emotions you will encounter in this cesspool. The primary motivations behind everything. You got to learn how to control fear and use anger. It’s the only way to survive. Anybody gives you shit, you give it back in spades. You make that fucker wish he’d never been born. A pipe is a good thing. You see somebody coming at you, break ‘em with it. Lay it upside their head, crack their kneecaps with it, break their hands. Let ‘em all know that you have a wild, insane temper and they’ll keep away. Most cons are cowards. They like to come up behind you, throw you a beating or stick a knife in you when your back’s turned. Not too many that like to do it face to face and that’s because they don’t want to get hurt. You show ‘em pain, let ‘em see their own blood…you’ll be surprised how meek they become.”
Good advice that Romero put into play his second day there when some old pervert made a play for him.
But Palmquist?
No, he just didn’t have it in him.
He’d never make it.
Life in the joint was indifferent hacks and crowding, dehumanizing conditions and shitty food. You shivered in your bunk in the winter and sweated and stank in the summer. You tried to keep the flies off your face and the lice out of your hair and the rats from biting your feet while you slept. Some perv made a play for your asshole, you beat him. Some con tried to extort you or slide a shank into you when your back was turned, you crippled them.
Politics.
That’s all it came down to: politics.
And Palmquist would never be able to play the game.
“Listen to me, Romero. Hear what I say. Donnie Fritz was hooked up with some big players. They didn’t take kindly to what happened at The Brick and they want payback. They want the fish to suffer,” Black Dog explained. “Now I saw you today. When Weems went after your boy, it looked like you were thinking about intervening. Not good. You laying claim to the fish as your boy?”
“No.”
“That’s good. See, those friends of Fritz’s, they reached out to Papa Joe…”
Shit. Papa Joe was Joseph Scallati, an incarcerated heroin trafficker and a made guy in the mob. When he had your number, there was no hole deep enough to hide in. He had deep pockets and the cons and hacks were eating out of his hands. He had not only the Italians standing behind him, but the biker gangs he used for muscle and the Latin gangs that were lorded over by the Mexican Mafia. And if that wasn’t enough, he also had the Aryan Brotherhood.
The ABs were the most ruthless and savage white prison gang ever formed. They had began during the race riots at San Quentin during the ’60s and had carved themselves an especially bloodthirsty niche ever since. At Quentin, the ABs had a standing “kill on sight” order and they murdered every black they found. In the years since, it had mellowed somewhat, but they were still unbelievably violent and dangerous. Unlike most prison gangs who relied on strength in numbers, the ABs had a blood in, blood out rule: in other words, you had to kill someone to get in and only death could get you out. Even outside prison walls, the gang was involved in organized crime, a narcotics conduit for their imprisoned brothers.
The bikers were bad enough, but these guys were fanatics.
Romero didn’t want to see Palmquist victimized and broken…but he couldn’t stand up against something like this.
“So you see how things stand,” Black Dog said.
“I guess I do.”
Black Dog nodded. “Just wanted you to get this word of advice and look the other way. Papa Joe’s sending Tony Gordo after him and you don’t want to get involved in that shit.”
Romero felt sick to his stomach.
Tony Gordo was a mob enforcer who was doing two consecutive life terms for murder. A big, evil piece of work, the sort of scavenger only the streets could produce. Just a human monster that had been feeding off the bloated body of a diseased society since the very moment his eyes flicked opened in that death mask he called a face. That was Gordo. Tipping the scales at 400 pounds, he was just shy of seven feet tall and a born monster. Nobody liked him, but the Italians used him for muscle. Gordo’s biggest joy in life was sodomizing the new fish. Black, white, didn’t matter, if you had a hole in your backside then it was his duty to fill it. He started with beatings which were like foreplay to him that led up to the violent act of consummation.
“So Papa Joe is going to let that fucking freak have his fun?”
Black Dog shrugged. “Ain’t like any of us like it, but it’s business. Strictly business. You ain’t sweet on the fish, are you?”
Romero didn’t answer that one.
He walked away. He couldn’t trust what his mouth might say and what kind of shit it might get him into. Palmquist’s ticket was already punched. The hacks wouldn’t help him and nobody in the joint would dare intervene in Papa Joe’s business and especially with a meat-eater like Gordo involved.
Bunching his fists, frustrated and pissed-off, Romero began to wonder what he was going to do about it. Was he going to be smart and look the other way or was he going to jump feet-first into the fires of hell?
The thing was, he didn’t really know.
6
Lights out.
Romero was laying on his bunk, thinking and trying not to. There were a lot of things flying around in his head, a real shitstorm is what it was. He was thinking about the kid, about Palmquist, thinking how it was going to be for the little bastard when Reggie Weems and his crew started turning up the heat, started making these beatings a daily thing. How it was going to be when they all started using him, passing him around like a five-dollar hooker in a lumber camp. Because that’s where this trail always led. The kid was in for it. Maybe he already had a taste at Brickhaven, but it was going to be worse here.
Things were always worse at Shaddock.
Romero had seen it before and it always made him sick. Sick to watch some kid putting up with that, his dignity stripped away from him day by miserable day until there wasn’t anything left when those animals we
re through. Until Palmquist was a pale, trembling thing, a bitch that only spoke when spoken to, that would suck dick or spread his cheeks anytime some lifer snapped his oily fingers.
Romero couldn’t get involved.
He got in Weems’ way and there was going to be trouble. And it could only end one way, with Romero shanking him, stabbing that dumb fucking spade until he bled out. And if Romero did that, he made that choice, one of Weems’ crew would rat on him. See to it that he was sitting here at Shaddock Valley for another ten or twenty years. Jesus. The idea of that made Romero’s throat squeeze tight until he could barely fill his lungs with air. But to watch Palmquist go like that…
Reggie Weems is going to be the least of that kid’s worries and you know it now that Papa Joe is putting Tony Gordo on him. Even if the kid slips away from Weems there’s no way in hell he’ll get away from that fucking monster.
Romero had done his share of time. But never in all those years did humping somebody’s ass seem like a good alternative. It was that bad on you, you used your hand. But some of these guys, they liked it just fine, the sex you could get here in prison.
So you’re just going to let them degrade that kid, aren’t you? a voice of guilt hammered at him, just when he’d thought it was long dead. A con with a conscience of all crazy things. Let them turn him into their whore, break him wide open, tear his soul right out…and you’re just going to stand back and let it happen?
Romero didn’t know.
He didn’t know much of anything these days.
So he shut his eyes and tried not to see Reggie Weems or Tony Gordo. He let sleep take him, because tomorrow was just another day like this one and the one two years ago and the one two years from now. Day by day by pissing day, it never changed when you were doing time.
You hardened your heart and bleached your soul white and just looked the other way. It was the only way to get by.
7
Romero woke and he had no idea what time it was.
It was just late.
And dark.
Something was going on and he wasn’t sure what the hell it could be, but it was real or otherwise it wouldn’t have woken him. He listened. Heard his own breathing, the kid’s above him. But something else, too, something that made his throat go dry and the flesh at his scalp go tight and hot. It was a funny wet sort of sound, all squishy and slimy-sounding like something was being pulled out of a drain with a coat hanger.
The springs above him creaked ever so slightly and Palmquist shifted up there…only Romero could still hear him breathing deep and long. He was thinking that whatever was moving up there…it wasn’t the kid. He didn’t know what it was, but he could hear it sliding around with a moist unpleasant sound like a baby crawling free of afterbirth.
Jesus…those sounds…what the hell is happening up there?
Romero figured he didn’t want to know, because whatever it was, it was just plain bad, something you just didn’t want to look upon. The air had gone hot and dank with a gassy odor like rotting cabbage and Romero was gripping the edges of his bunk as if he was on a rollercoaster and was afraid the car might tip him out at any moment. It was a wild ride and his guts were slicked with cold jelly, his eyes wide and sightless in the darkness. He was thinking about that homemade knife behind the radiator…but he didn’t dare go for it, didn’t dare make a sound.
Didn’t want what was up there to hear him.
So he lay there, stiff as a plank, his muscles bunched and his nerve endings jangling like Christmas bells, a scream lodged in his throat in a sharp, cutting mass.
More movement.
Whatever was up there with the kid, it was in motion now, moving along the bunk with a stealthy, slithering sound. It found the wall, slapped wetly against it and started to inch along, making for the bars. Romero was thinking something like a slug here, but big and fleshy and horrible and he didn’t know all what. As it pulled itself along the wall, it made faint chirruping noises, clicking sounds like claws or teeth kissing that concrete.
It would ooze forward a moment or two, then pause…as if checking now and then to see if anyone was listening.
Romero was listening, but not moving. For hearing it was one thing, but seeing…no, the idea of that curdled his guts like sour milk.
And then it…leaped through the air, hit the bars with a splattering sound. Romero could hear it breathing, gurgling. In the wan light from the guard’s station, he could see something large and shapeless spread out on the bars like a huge, rubbery spider, contorting boneless limbs spread out in every direction. It was shuddering and pulsing, taking its time and Romero just squeezed his eyes shut, could not look at that thing any longer, told himself it was a nightmare and the thing was just some nebulous horror that had crawled alive and kicking from one of his childhood dreams.
And then…it was gone.
It went right through the bars with a sound like bacon grease dropped in a bucket or mush stirred with a spoon.
Romero was shaking, sweating, doing everything he could not to piss himself or vent that scream buried in his throat. He lay there, trying to catch his breath, wiping perspiration from the gutters under his eyes. Above him, Palmquist was dead asleep, breathing deep and even, lost to the world.
Romero started to think all kinds of awful things, but none of it made a lick of sense and his mind was full of shit and he wondered, really wondered, if maybe he could have dreamt it all.
And part of him latched onto that, told him in an authoritative, reasonable voice that, yes, of course it was a dream…what else could it have been?
About twenty minutes later, though, somebody started screaming.
And the screams…they didn’t last long at all.
8
Of course, the prison came alive.
Sometimes you heard screams at night, guys getting shanked or raped and sometimes it was just some con losing his mind, cracking up from the solitude and the cage they kept him in and dozens of things you would never really know about. His mind would go to sauce and he’d start thrashing around, throwing himself at the walls and biting the bars and throwing his shit at anyone that got near like a monkey in a carnival pen.
Sergeant Warres was in charge of the hacks on the graveyard shift and he came up the stairs to D Block, looking pissed-off and anxious to break some skulls with the stick he was swinging at his hip. He was on his walkie-talkie, wanting to know what in the name of Jesus H. Jumping Clusterfucking Christ was going on up there. He cut some orders straight away over his box and his guards did their thing, told the cons to shut their mother-raping, cunting mouths and go to sleep or the lot of them would be thrown in the hole.
It worked and D Block got real quiet, though everyone had to know that there were only thirty Ad-Seg cells to be had. Administrative Segregation, politically correct title, was where guys went when they got out of line and sometimes even when they didn’t. It was a nasty, dark, buggy place. And if you thought you’d been alone a lot in your life, you had no conception of what real solitude was until you were locked down in the damp, crawling darkness by yourself.
But it worked and Warres came down the corridor, ignoring his guard’s request to turn on the big lights. Security lights were fine, he figured. They were spaced every fifty feet and dim, so that the block corridors were thick with shadows. But that didn’t bother Warres, for once the switch was thrown and those doors were shut, nobody got out of their cells…except on the late, late show.
Houle was down there. He was one of the newbies and he looked just as green as frog shit, pale and sweating and about half out of his mind. Warres passed by all those cons pressed up against the bars of their cages, bulging white eyes in black faces and shining red eyes in white faces and damn, he’d never seen them looking so scared before. All the tough-guy, hardass con bullshit had dried up like a pond.
These guys were scared shitless.
Warres got up to Houle, said, “What do you got?”
Houle could barely
get a word out without gasping. “Don’t go in there, Sarge…Jesus, Weems…I think it’s Weems…he’s all ripped apart…”
The cell door was open and in his flashlight beam, Warres could see something wet and dark slicked on the bars, a puddle of it coming out under the door. He sucked in a breath and put his light in there, almost screamed himself. Weems looked like a pillow that had its stuffing scattered in every conceivable direction. His insides were on the floor, smeared on the walls, dripping from the ceiling.
His head was bobbing in the shitter, eyes wide and glistening in the flashlight beam.
Weems’ cellie, a skinny black guy everyone called Porker, was kneeling on his bed, the top bunk, holding himself and shaking, completely out of his mind. There was blood on him and bits of tissue. He was shivering and sobbing and whispering something no one else could hear.
Enough.
“All right,” Warres said. He got on his walkie-talkie. “We got an incident down here…”
9
After the scream, Romero did not get back to sleep.
He lay there like the rest of the inmates, bunched and tense and holding his breath, thinking about things that made his flesh crawl. There was electricity feeding through him, as it was probably feeding through everyone on D, like a wire had been stuck up his ass.
But Romero wasn’t like the others.
He knew things and maybe he did not know at all. He’d heard that scream just fine, long and high and sharp and cut short as if something wet had been stuffed in its owner’s mouth.
So he lay there until things began to die down and a silence that was heavy and thick lay over the prison. Around that time he heard something slither back through the bars and smelled the hot, yeasty stink of rancid fermentation. Palmquist started to moan and thrash.
Sometime later, he began to cry in his sleep.
Or maybe it was Romero himself.
