by Susanne Beck
The very corner of her mouth twitched upward. "I know. I missed you too." Turning her head in the direction of her cell, she gestured with one hand. "Did you have anything to do with my trees still being alive?"
"Guilty as charged, so to speak. I couldn’t stand the thought of such beauty wasting away." As I spoke, it hit me how much more meaning those casually used words held for me. Squeezing her once again for the sheer pleasure of it, I released her and backed away. "So . . .need any help cleaning up your cell?"
"Nah. I can take care of it later. I wanna go down and check out the library first."
An icy fist of dread clenched in my belly, drying my mouth from within. The library! Corinne! "Um . . .mind if I come down with you?"
"C’mon."
I barely kept myself from running as we started toward the stairs. I was suddenly sure that the library had been destroyed and my friends injured or even killed.
I cried out in horror as my fears seemed to be confirmed. As we ran down the final hallway, in the feeble light cast from the library’s open door lay Sonny on her back, the crude handle of a shiv sticking obscenely from her upper abdomen. "Sonny!" I cried, running over to her and kneeling down. "What happened? Who did this to you?"
Barely conscious, my friend turned her head painfully toward the sound of her voice. Licking her lips, she tried to speak. "The library . . .attacked . . . . Corinne . . . .hurry . . . ."
"Stay with her. I’ll check it out." Ice ran past me and into the library. "Son of a bitch."
The quietly uttered expletive jerked my head up in alarm. I was torn between wanting to stay with Sonny and wanting to go into the library to see what had caused Ice’s reaction. Sonny solved the problem for me, putting a hand on my shoulder and pushing me away weakly. "Go . . .help her. I’ll . . .be alright."
"I should stay."
"No! Go . . .please. Help them. I’ve . . .managed to make it this long. Please." Helpless to resist the pleading in Sonny’s dark eyes, I rose to my feet and turned toward the library. As I stepped inside, I couldn’t contain my gasp of horror.
The room itself looked as if a tornado had hit it. Books and pieces of books lay scattered on the floor. Most of the tables and chairs, rickety to begin with, were now kindling. The bookcases we’d painstakingly crafted were overturned and shattered. Even Corinne’s heavy desk was upended, her precious papers and texts littering the floor around it.
Next to the desk, Critter and Pony lay in a tangled heap, Critter bleeding heavily from a cut to her scalp. Ice stepped past me and squatted down next to the two, laying a gentle hand on Critter’s shoulder and pulling her over to her back. "Critter. Critter, c’mon, wake up now."
Critter started and her eyelids fluttered open. I stepped over to the pair, squatting down next to my blonde friend. "Ice? You’re . . .oh my God!" Critter tried to sit up but was restrained by Ice’s grip on her shoulder.
"Relax. It’s over. Who did this?"
Sinking her hand into her golden curls, Critter moaned in pain. "It was Derby’s gang. We tried to fight ‘em off but there were to many of them. They just kept coming. We couldn’t stop them." Her eyes widened and she struggled against Ice again. "Pony! Where is she?"
"It’s alright," Ice consoled her. "She’s right here. Looks like she took a pretty big knock to the head too. I think she’ll be alright, though."
Critter relaxed. "Thank God. My leg got trapped when they turned the desk over and she went at them. I saw her go down, then . . . .nothing. I must have gotten clonked from behind."
I had to ask. "Critter, where’s Corinne?" Looking around the destroyed room, I couldn’t find my friend anywhere and it terrified me.
My friend turned her head, her dark eyes darting around the room. "She’s . . .God, I don’t know. Last time I saw her, she was holding off some of Derby’s gang with her damned tea pot and then . . . .I don’t know."
Standing quickly, I walked past the overturned desk and over to the hidden little alcove that housed Corinne’s hotplate and tea cozy. There, lying on a heap on the ground, her brass-coated teakettle battered to almost non-recognizability in one clenched fist, was Corinne. Her half-glasses had one lens shattered and lay askew on her nose and a magnificent shiner decorated one puffy eye. A small line of dried blood traced a path from one corner of her mouth.
Dropping to my knees, I reached out a trembling hand toward her neck, beyond gratified to find her skin warm and dry, her pulse beating strong and sure in her throat. "Oh, thank God," I whispered. "Corinne. Corinne, it’s Angel. Time to wake up now, my friend. Corinne, come on, wake up!"
In response to my urgent summons, Corinne moaned, then fluttered her eyelids. Then, in a burst of quickness and strength that belied her advanced years, she brought up the battered teakettle and almost succeeded in knocking me senseless with it.
Ducking out of the way, I grasped her swinging arm gently but firmly. "Corinne, it’s Angel. You’re safe now. Just relax, alright?"
After a long moment, she slowly opened her eyes, blinking them rapidly as they watered in protest. A slow smile blossomed on her face. "I must be in heaven."
I couldn’t help the laugh of relief that spilled from my lungs. "No, you’re still in the Bog."
"Same difference, sweet Angel." She lifted her free hand to cup my cheek as awareness slowly came back to her eyes. The grin disappeared, setting her mouth in a hard line as she began to struggle against my restraining hand. "Oh, God, my poor library. That Derby is going to pay for this."
"It’s alright, Corinne. Derby’s dead. The riot’s over."
She looked up at me, eyes wide with shock. "Dead?"
I nodded and she followed my gaze over to where Ice knelt tending our wounded friends.
"Ice?" She looked back to me. "You did it. Bless you, Angel."
"I had a little help," I replied, gently aiding her to a sitting position. "Derby and some of her friends decided to finish Ice off while Sandra and I were up there. She wound up taking a high dive off the eighth floor catwalk." I winced. "It wasn’t pretty. Ice tried to save her but Derby was an idiot."
"I hope she felt every second of it."
I bit back words of reproof as Corinne released her teapot and eased the glasses from her bruised and battered face. We both startled as the sounds of sirens filtered through the thick library walls. "Are you alright for a moment?" I asked her. "I need to get back to Sonny. She was stabbed."
"Will she be alright?"
"I’m not sure. She told me to go on ahead and check in on you guys. You’ll know more as soon as I do."
"Go to her, Angel. And thank you."
"No problem." Jumping back to my feet, I brushed past Ice, Critter and a still unconscious Pony, then stepped out of the library. Sonny was still awake and aware by the time I made my way back out to her. "It sounds like help’s on the way," I told her. "You just hang on, alright? I’ll get someone back here."
"Everyone else . . .okay?"
"Yes, just a few bumps and bruises. Corinne’s a mean one with that teakettle. She could teach us a few tricks, I think."
The choked sound of Sonny’s breathless laughter followed me down the hall as I went off in search of help. As I stepped into the prison proper, I could see the floor and walls bathed in the red and blue lights of emergency vehicles. At least a dozen blue-clothed police officers were milling around the guard room where Sandra and some of the others were talking with them. Every so often the air would erupt in static as one officer or another would speak into his walkie-talkie.
After another moment, one of the officers raised a hand to the open door and paramedics and ambulance crews rushed inside bearing stretchers and emergency medical equipment nestled in bright orange boxes.
I hustled up to the nearest team, a group of three long-haired and bearded men in pale blue jumpsuits, and stopped in front of them. "Please, my friend’s been stabbed. We need your help."
The men looked at me, then over at the knot of police officers still clustered
around the guard room. Seeing what was happening, a harried looking Sandra stepped away from the group and waved the men on. "Go ahead and do as she asks. Hurry."
Nodding, the men followed me back into the narrow hallway, stopping just in front of Sonny’s splayed body. Despite their rough appearances, the men were gentle with my friend, checking her over carefully and stabilizing her for the trip to the hospital nearby. I held her hand on the trip from the ground to the stretcher, then placed a kiss to her sweat-soaked bangs before they wheeled her off back down the hallway and out of my sight.
One tech was left behind and he looked at me questioningly.
"There are more injured in the library. Could you follow me?"
"Sure lady." Lifting his medical kit, the young man followed me into the destruction of the library. "Holy shit," he breathed, taking in the scene. "What the hell happened here?"
Ice rose up from her place next to Pony and Critter, pinning him with her steely gaze. "We have two more injured down here."
"Uh . . .yeah . . .right. Ok." Hustling over quickly, he knelt down beside the two women and set his kit down. He turned his attentions first to Critter, checking her scalp wound and shining his small penlight into her eyes. "This cut’ll need a couple stitches, but you seem ok otherwise. Any nausea or anything?"
"Nothing except for a headache."
"Alright. If you wanna go back to the main room, one of my partners’ll get you into the ambulance."
"That’s alright. I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you."
"But lady, you need stitches!"
"I know, but I can get them at the infirmary. The doc’ll be here in the morning."
"You could bleed to death before then!"
Critter grinned, but her eyes were hard. "I’ll be fine. Trust me. Just look after Pony here."
A brief moment later, the tech looked away from the determination in Critter’s eyes and turned his attention to Pony. He looked her over quickly and professionally, humming quietly to himself as he did so. When he looked back up, his expression was grim. "She’s gonna need to get to the hospital as quickly as possible. I’m not sure, but there’s a chance she’s bleeding into her brain. Does anyone know how long she’s been unconscious?"
"Ten minutes, maybe more," Corinne said, coming over to join us. "It’s difficult to tell. We were all knocked out."
"I’ll go commandeer a stretcher," Ice said quietly, then left the room.
"Wow. She always that intense?"
"Yes," the three of us answered in unison.
Grinning wryly and shaking his head, the young man turned back to his patient, preparing her for her journey to the hospital. The sound of rattling steel was heard shortly, coming steadily closer. Two men in hospital whites blew through the doorway pushing a stretcher. Ice followed behind at a more leisurely pace, a self-satisfied smirk painting her lips.
I rose to join her as the two men crowded around Pony. "You sure lit a fire under them."
"Mmm."
"I don’t want to know how, do I."
"Probably not."
"Didn’t think so."
A moment later, they bustled past us with Pony’s unconscious form strapped securely to the stretcher and covered with a sheet to her chin. I sent out a swift, silent prayer for her recovery as she became lost to my sight.
Turning back to view the library, I let out a sad sigh. All the work we’d put into it gone in a flurry of violence without cause. A part of me wondered why I’d ever thought something like this couldn’t happen. This was a prison, after all.
Then I had a laugh startled out of me when Corinne retrieved her mashed kettle and shook it, glaring into its now tarnished finish. The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. "Corinne, in the library, with a teakettle. Who’d have thought it?"
I ducked as said kettle winged its way past my head and suffered the outraged groans of my companions. My mood lightened. Trashed though it was, the library was still there. My companions, though injured, were alive. And Ice was back.
In a place where hope and happiness were supposed to be foreign concepts, I felt filled with them both in the aftermath of one of the worst days I’d ever been through.
PART 7
THE NEW YEAR came and went with a marked absence of fanfare. The prison was slowly getting over the effects of the riot. Three inmates, including Derby, and one guard had been killed. Forty-seven had been injured, seven severely enough to require prolonged hospital stays.
Sonny and Pony were two of those seven, but lucky for us all, they came through their brushes with death with flying colors. Their scars became badges of courage; their bravery garnered new respect among the other inmates. They were seen as heroes in a world which had none.
In a move that surprised no one, it seemed, but me, Ice formally inducted me into the ranks of her Amazons. It wasn’t much, as inductions went; more along the lines of her saying, "You’re a good fighter. You wanna be an Amazon?" And me replying, "Sure, I’d love to." And her saying, "Alright, you’re an Amazon."
My friends welcomed me warmly into their ranks and I acquired a new job; one of protection of the weak. It felt good.
In the next couple months, we also were able to rebuild the library into something even bigger and better than before. The fact that Ice pressed into service those women who’d wrecked it in the first place was a huge help. Not surprisingly, these women were excellent workers who bore up well, if shakily, under Corinne’s constant criticism and did their best to right the wrongs they’d perpetrated upon her precious home. The new teakettle I’d gotten for her was always nearby if any of them needed a reminder. Which, of course, they didn’t. Their still-healing bruises were reminder enough.
Like the sea at low tide, the gangs themselves settled back into a state of quietude. Under Ice’s expert guidance, another, more prudent leader was installed to head the white gang. The leaders of the four gangs met together, with Ice as mediator, and hammered out some hard and fast boundaries and rules to go along with them. After many days of debate, a peace treaty of sorts was brought into being, with the Amazons, as always, appointed overseers.
The passage of time also allowed Ice and myself to begin coming closer together once again; a closeness that was interrupted by Cassandra’s bloody assault and Ice’s subsequent hellish isolation. Though at the time she never said a word about her time in the hole, Ice did gradually open up to me enough to tell me who Josephine was and what the older woman had meant to her.
Salvatore Briacci had followed Ice’s case from the moment the police shot her down in the old abandoned warehouse. A big reason for this was because, except for her blue eyes, Ice was said to resemble Briacci’s only child, a daughter name Lucia, remarkably. Lucia was killed in an airplane crash when she was just twelve years old and both Briaccis had mourned her death every day since the accident. Ice told me that even at ten or more years later, her room was still set up as if just waiting for the young girl to walk back in and resume her life once again. The same magazines, getting further out of date with each passing year, sat upon the same vanity. The same hairbrush, replete with fine raven hairs caught in the thick bristles, waited patiently beside them.
Ice said that Briacci listened aghast to the news that she was to be incarcerated, at fifteen, in an adult prison for the rest of her life. On the day of sentencing, he sent his own lawyers out to investigate and challenge the case; a challenge that made its way up to the State Supreme Court, where the ruling was finally reversed. Because of Briacci’s persistence and money, Ice was released on her twenty-first birthday.
While in prison, she knew nothing about her hidden benefactor, nor did anyone else in the jail. On the day of Ice’s release, Briacci himself showed up in the back of a stretch limousine, bearing flowers, good wishes, and an offer she couldn’t refuse. Being penniless, homeless, and without significant educational skills to make it easily in the outside world, she accepted.
At first, she said, Briacci and
his wife treated her like a long lost daughter, lavishing her with expensive gifts and bountiful attention. At twenty-one, however, after six years in prison, she was streetwise and cock-sure and spent every day waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Despite her cool reserve, however, she felt drawn to Josephina, Salvatore’s quiet, elegant wife. She was the first person who ever took the time to reach beyond the brash, armored exterior and into the sensitive soul of the young woman beneath the mask. Josephina encouraged Ice, whom of course she called Morgan, to study for her GED, correctly spying a fine mind behind the icy eyes. When Ice passed the tests with ease, the older woman encouraged her to take college courses, which she did, even receiving an academic scholarship for her efforts.
From what Ice told me, Josephina was typical of the wives of the Mafia members she’d come to know. Purposefully naïve to her husband’s other life, she turned a blind eye to everything that wasn’t above board. Briacci himself also took great pains to keep his two lives separate and treated his wife as one might a precious object beyond price. The two were very obviously in love with one another, she said.
With Josephina’s further and loving encouragement, Ice tried to make a life for herself in a legal trade. But her past preceded her, stonewalling most every attempt she made to better herself and her circumstances. She readily admitted to me that she could, and should, have simply moved to another part of the country where no one had ever heard the name Morgan Steele. The Briacci’s weren’t holding her against her will.
But the love and support she received from Josephina filled a huge hole in her life; a hole that was dug on the day her parents died, leaving her an orphan. The hole was widened and deepened upon the death of her best friend, whom she’d known since childhood and who was the last link to a past she could never relive. Though a full grown and powerful adult, Ice was in many ways still that young girl craving love and acceptance of a family.
