by Adam Hamdy
Ash shook her head at Parker’s terrible ass-kissing. Still, suck-up Parker still had a better assignment than Ash; he was on the Domestic Terrorism Taskforce working the Foundation, a militant anti-capitalist network that had surfaced two years ago and had been implicated in a cyber attack on the First Atlantic Bank and Square Pillar Trading, an online brokerage. In both cases the Foundation had attempted to devastate the companies with a total shutdown, but, while the attacks had crippled the firms for a few hours, they were ultimately unsuccessful. The Foundation had dropped off the radar in recent months, but the Bureau had picked up cyber chatter that suggested it was about to gear up its activities.
Ash longed to work such an interesting case, but had instead been assigned historic profiling. She tried to tell herself that she’d been stuck with a bunch of cold cases because the other teams were over-resourced, but she knew that wasn’t true. Historic profiling was the type of assignment given to rookies straight out of the Quantico; Alvarez was trying to make a point, maybe even trying to sideline a potential rival. But the truth was Ash was no longer Alvarez’s rival. Washington’s death had knocked her back to the starting blocks. Alvarez was way ahead; she was now racing dumbasses like Parker.
Ash looked down. Pushed into the corner, where her desk met the felt-lined panels of her cubicle, was the framed photograph of Ash with her mother. They were both smiling in the California sun, standing high in the Santa Monica Mountains, the hazy City of Angels sprawling out behind them. It was the only photograph Ash had of her mother and whenever she was feeling blue, it reminded her of what some people had to endure. Don’t be afraid, baby. The last words her mother ever said to her, and Ash repeated them to herself almost every day.
The phone on her desk rang. ‘Ash,’ she answered.
‘Special Agent Ash?’ a man’s voice said. He was somewhere loud and busy. ‘My name is Scott Herson, I’m with the Public Defender’s Office. I’ve got a client, real pain-in-the-ass guy by the name of John Wallace. You know him?’
‘We’ve met,’ Ash replied.
‘So he’s not totally nuts,’ Herson observed. ‘That’s good to know. He’s refusing to talk to me until I give you a message, so do with it what you will. He says you should check out Ken Pallo.’
‘The porn guy?’ Ash asked.
‘Yup,’ Herson replied. ‘Wallace says it’s the same killer.’
‘OK, thanks,’ Ash said as she wrote ‘Ken Pallo’ on a scrap of paper. ‘Hey, Scott, how’s he doing?’
‘Who? Wallace?’ Herson’s disembodied voice dripped with unmistakeable condescension. ‘He’s in Rikers. It’s the closest thing New York has to hell. You know how he’s doing. Listen, I gotta go.’
‘Thanks,’ Ash tried to say, but Herson had already hung up.
Ash turned to her laptop and Googled Ken Pallo. Dozens of sensational headlines filled her screen. Porn King Snuffs It. Porn Mogul Swinging. Suicide Takes Porn King. Most of the articles used the same image, a wide landscape photograph of Malibu Pier with Pallo’s body hanging beneath it. Pallo had killed himself three days ago, but Ash had only caught the soundbites. As she read the details, she wondered how Wallace could think this was anything other than suicide. Pallo, a multi-millionaire mogul who owned five of the world’s top ten porn sites and was alleged to have been worth more than two hundred million dollars, posted a lurid suicide note to Facebook in which he catalogued his drug addiction and terrible exploitation of the young men and women who worked for him. Wallace was nuts; there was nothing to this. Ash scrolled down the New York Post article. Under the picture of Pallo beneath the pier there was another photograph of the pasty-looking fat man at a movie premiere the night he killed himself. He had his arm around a gorgeous young brunette in a gold dress and both of them were smiling at the camera, their wide, glassy eyes reflecting the lights that surrounded them. Something about Pallo made Ash hesitate. The look in his eyes was one she’d seen before: self-obsessed, greedy and narcissistic, it reminded Ash of her father, and she knew that people like that rarely gave anything up, least of all their own lives.
She couldn’t see any harm in checking out Pallo’s death. It was probably a snipe hunt, but it beat shuffling through old files of the long dead.
32
Wallace looked at the kaleidoscope of colours and wondered how much longer he could stay alive. It wasn’t just the physical threat; he was acutely aware of the toll Rikers was taking on his mind. He hadn’t slept properly since his incarceration three weeks ago. He’d spend much of the night awake, worrying what the next day would bring. Eventually, exhausted, he’d pass out for a couple of hours and his subconscious would assault him with a vivid montage of violence. Connie’s death, the attempts on his life, and the attacks he’d experienced at the hands of Smokie.
Each morning, Wallace would wake, his eyes burning with ever increasing exhaustion. Sleep deprivation, hunger and relentless stress had shredded any excess fat, and, as he looked down at his badly bruised torso, Wallace knew that he would soon become dangerously emaciated. There was no obvious solution, and it needed to be obvious because his mind was struggling to simply make it through the day. He spent most of the time feeling light-headed, the world sliding around him precariously, taunting him with the sensation that it might spin violently out of control. His reactions were sluggish and his soul was steeped in the dirty lethargy of depression.
Food would be the obvious answer, but that was how the beatings had started. On his fourth day in Eric M. Taylor Center, the bleach and breezeblock detention building that was now his home, Wallace had his first encounter with Smokie, the noxious product of a depraved life. He was a recent addition to the Murdering Taylors, or MTs, the block’s offshoot of the Bloods which was run by Ole Creepy, a savagely scarred, one-eyed man. Smokie couldn’t have been much more than thirty, but he had the hard eyes and unstable temperament of an experienced killer. Wallace could tell that Smokie was ambitious and that he was looking for an excuse to challenge Ole Creepy for leadership of the thirty or so Bloods who made up the MTs. Some as young as sixteen, they all shared a wild propensity for violence.
Seated alone in the block’s vast canteen, Wallace had intended to eat quickly and then hide in a quiet corner of the day room, but Smokie rolled up with six of his psychopaths. It had all started so quietly. Smokie didn’t say a word as he helped himself to a hash brown from Wallace’s tray. Wallace turned and looked up to see the muscular young black man staring down at him with glaring insolence. His hair was closely cropped and his arms and neck were covered in a strange combination of military tattoos and murderous gangland ink. Smokie and his gang all wore white tops, dark trousers and the standard issue Rikers flip-flops. Smokie grabbed a piece of turkey and then nodded to his associates, who proceeded to strip the rest of the food from Wallace’s tray. Wallace looked over at Ole Creepy, who sat three tables away. It was hard to read the knotted scars that criss-crossed his face, but Wallace got the sense that Ole Creepy didn’t approve. When the food was all gone, Smokie stared coldly and only walked away once Wallace had lowered his gaze. They hadn’t spoken a word, but there was nothing that needed to be said; Wallace belonged to them.
That night Wallace had spoken to his cellmate, a twenty-six-year-old Dominican meth dealer called Pablo Matias who had spent two years in Rikers awaiting trial. Pablo had the face of a man twice his age. His skin was pulled tight over pronounced cheekbones, deep fissures crept from the corners of his eyes and his mouth was ringed by craggy pout lines, the legacy of too many pipes. Pablo’s listless eyes had showed no emotion as he’d explained Wallace’s situation. Without gang affiliation, Wallace was unprotected and fair game. Word on the block was that Smokie was a hotshot looking to make a name for himself within the MTs. The gang was splitting between those who wanted a new leader and those loyal to Ole Creepy. Wallace was a pawn in a much larger game. Smokie had staked a claim on him as a challenge to Ole Creepy’s authority. Smokie would start with food, move on to sex, and, whe
n he had finally taken all he wanted from Wallace, it would end in violence. Rikers was no place for false hope, so Pablo gave his bleakly honest diagnosis; no other gang would offer Wallace protection, he was too much of an outsider.
The following day, Smokie had taken Wallace’s breakfast, lunch and dinner. Wallace sank into desperation. When he’d seen news of Pallo’s death on the day room TV, he’d convinced himself it was his ticket out. He’d given Scott Herson a message to convey to the FBI agent who’d locked him up. Anyone with half a brain would see the pattern, but nothing had come of the tip and frustration had turned to unfathomable despair.
On the fourth day, they had taken all Wallace’s food and then Smokie and his gang had accosted him in the day room, surrounding him with promises of sexual violence.
‘Leave him be!’ Ole Creepy’s words had echoed off the walls.
Smokie had backed away from Wallace and sidled up to the mutilated leader of the MTs with ill-concealed contempt.
‘Get out of here!’ Ole Creepy commanded Wallace, who didn’t need any further encouragement, and ran from the day room as fast as his weakened legs would carry him.
Unable to sleep, his stomach gnawing with two days’ hunger, Wallace had made the mistake of going to the authorities. On his way into the canteen for breakfast, he had spoken to Will Grover, one of the section supervisors, who had smiled warmly but dismissed Wallace’s ‘settling in problems’. When Smokie and his gang came to take his breakfast, Wallace had yelled for Grover, but the tall guard in the black uniform simply stood on the high gantry that ringed the large room and kept his head turned studiously away. That night Wallace had learned the nature of his mistake. Pablo told him that Grover and the other guards had a deal with the Bloods. Ole Creepy and his crew helped keep order, and in return the guards did not interfere with them.
The violence had started the following day. Smokie and a dozen of his followers had jumped Wallace on the way back to the cells.
‘Creepy ain’t gonna save you!’ Smokie yelled as he beat Wallace. ‘Time for some new blood.’
Smokie and his men kept the brutality away from Wallace’s face, and, once they got him to the floor, had buried him beneath a barrage of kicks. Two Department of Corrections officers had finally managed to pull Wallace out of danger and haul him into his cell. The beatings had continued daily, and although they were never enough to put Wallace in the infirmary, they gave each day a grinding haze of pain.
Wallace pressed his hand against the worst of his angry bruises and winced. He pulled his sweatshirt down and noticed that Pablo was watching him from the top bunk. There was sadness in the Dominican’s eyes. It was not the first time he’d seen Rikers destroy a man, but it was the first time he’d shared a cell with the victim. Wallace nodded at his cellmate. The only reason he was still standing was because Pablo had been sneaking small scraps of food back to the cell for Wallace to eat in secret.
‘Maybe today will be better,’ Pablo said as he rolled down from the bunk and stood over the toilet.
Wallace looked away as his cellmate took a leak. The gun-metal grey door was covered with the marks of previous inmates, runic records of others whose humanity had been chipped and scored away by this diabolical place. Wallace heard the familiar sound of the klaxon, followed by the electromagnetic buzz of the locking mechanism on the cell door. A moment later the door slid open to reveal the two-storey atrium beyond. Wallace stepped out on to the metal mesh balcony that ran the length of the block, and Pablo followed him.
They filed along, following thirty of their neighbours towards the stairs. Ole Creepy was near the front of the line, with a couple of his loyal followers in tow. Three DOC guards shepherded the group down the stairs and into the corridor that led to the canteen. At an intersection halfway along the corridor, they were joined by another group of prisoners from the cells on the opposite side of the block, and when Wallace caught sight of Smokie, he immediately realised that something was very wrong. Smokie jacked forward, breaking ranks, and rushed straight for Wallace. He was followed by a dozen Bloods, all eager for violence. The three guards responsible for Smokie’s group held back the prisoners who hadn’t run, and Wallace’s guards focused on restraining his neighbours, allowing him to be swept down the corridor at the head of Smokie’s violent gang.
Wallace saw Ole Creepy and three of his men break free of the guards and sprint towards him.
‘Don’t you fucking do it, Smokie!’ Ole Creepy yelled, his gravelly voice echoing off the walls.
Wallace felt himself forced through a door, and, propelled by the momentum, he tumbled into one of the block’s processing rooms where prisoners were mustered before being led to different sections of the facility. He rolled to his knees and Smokie surged forward, launching a vicious kick to his gut. Wallace felt something rupture and his stomach spasmed, forcing up a gob of blood that he coughed on to the melamine floor. Wallace ignored his wretched innards and tried to push himself to his feet, but was beaten back by a bombardment of blows. Smokie’s gang hit and kicked him with such ferocity that Wallace stopped thinking about anything other than survival. He curled into a ball, trying his best to protect his head. The Bloods were hitting him so hard and fast that Wallace could not register any individual strike; he was lost in a storm of powerful violence. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the onslaught ceased and Wallace looked up to see Ole Creepy and his followers holding Smokie and his men.
‘Get back!’ a Department of Corrections guard yelled, as he and two colleagues entered the room. They started peeling inmates off the ruck and their interference gave Smokie an opportunity. He pulled free of Ole Creepy’s grasp and rushed at Wallace. Smokie swung hard and punched Wallace in the face. The DOC officer caught Wallace, preventing him from falling to the floor where he would have been even more vulnerable. The guard pushed Smokie back, and the murderous gangster sidled back to his men, strutting in front of them, stamping the ground like an angry bull.
‘You ain’t the first buck I had to put down,’ Ole Creepy cautioned. ‘Every line on my face marks a grave.’
That’s when Wallace saw it. A young Blood who’d only just entered the room slipped Smokie a shiv. None of the guards noticed it, but the moment Wallace saw Smokie advancing, he knew that death was in the air.
‘He’s got a knife!’ Wallace yelled.
Wallace’s cry was like a starter’s pistol; it triggered a chaotic bout of violence that engulfed the entire room. The guards were thrown around as Blood fought Blood in a final battle for leadership. Through the mayhem, Wallace saw Ole Creepy square up to Smokie, but the old gangster was outclassed. Smokie lashed out, his hand snapping like a whip, the jagged blade of the shiv piercing Ole Creepy’s torso over and over again. Crimson spread across Ole Creepy’s top and he dropped to his knees clutching his chest. He looked up at Smokie, his face twisted by hatred. Wallace was certain the old gangster tried to say something, but the words never came and he toppled forward, dead.
Ole Creepy’s murder had an instantaneous effect. The MTs ceased their feud and fell silent as they looked at Smokie. As the DOC officers composed themselves, Smokie concealed the shiv up his sleeve.
‘Everyone against the wall,’ the nearest guard commanded when he caught sight of the growing pool of blood oozing from Ole Creepy’s body.
‘Fuck that!’ Smokie yelled. ‘Blood ghost!’
Wallace could only guess at the meaning of Smokie’s words, but the MTs in the room forgot their differences and surged forward, targeting him.
‘Move!’ the guard commanded. He bundled Wallace towards the only safe place: a holding room that was normally used to segregate violent inmates from the general population. The guard yanked the door open, thrust Wallace inside, and turned to try and stave off the horde of murderous Bloods.
Wallace collided with the far wall as the door swung shut. He turned and saw Smokie’s evil face peering through a picture window and the vicious gangster snarled as he pulled at the handle. The doo
r opened a few inches, then suddenly slammed shut as a guard managed to pull Smokie away. Wallace paced frantically, bouncing off the walls of the tiny room. Adrenalin was the only thing that prevented him from collapsing under the excruciating pain, and, as he heard the sounds of the melee outside, he had to suppress a powerful urge to scream.
The door was forced open and then snapped shut. Wallace couldn’t see any faces at the window, but he could hear the guards yelling, ‘Get back!’
Then came the sound of a body hitting the door, and Wallace saw the back of a guard’s head as it cracked the picture window. The guard slid down with the unmistakeable slump of unconsciousness, the door opened, and two Bloods rushed in. The door slammed shut behind them and there were renewed sounds of struggle from beyond it. Wallace squared up to the two intruders, a short, vicious-looking man with no teeth, and a rangy giant with empty eyes. He swung for Toothless and felt a satisfying crunch as the man’s jaw dislocated. The giant lunged for Wallace, who ducked and delivered a pair of punches to the man’s gut, but the blows only served to increase his anger, and the giant delivered a vicious kidney punch that winded him and gave his assailants the opportunity to each grab an arm. Toothless offered him a twisted, bloody smile as he resisted Wallace’s attempts to break free. He and the giant held fast, as the door opened to reveal Smokie. The gangster produced the shiv and brandished it as he approached.
‘It’s time, motherfucker,’ he growled. ‘Time to pay.’
Wallace tried to scream as Smokie stalked forward, but fear gripped his throat and choked his cries. Smokie was six feet away, his eyes blazing with murder. At four feet, he bared his teeth in a savage snarl, and Wallace saw the sharpened Perspex blade streak back as Smokie prepared to strike. Wallace shut his eyes and prepared to join Connie.
