Last Shot

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Four men. Sure, they could take him, but it wouldn’t be worth the injuries. Walker repeated his mantra. Sixteen months. Two weeks. Four days.

  Boss made a noise of assent, though nothing had been said. “Walk don’t talk much, ya see. He keep to hisself. Ain’t that right, Walk?” He picked up the knight, tapped it to his lips thoughtfully, set it back down. “Things are coming to a head. Jiggers are watching all my regulars. You’re a fighter. All that army time. I need you to blade up Spook when he comes off lockdown.”

  “What do I get?”

  “Protection.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  Boss snorted, waved a hand at the wall of Marlboros. “You can live like a king. Hell, you never know when someone wants in for better living.”

  Walker took in Marcus wiping himself. “Thanks anyway.”

  “You’ll be part of the new order.”

  “I don’t even like the old order.”

  “Right. Serve your time like a good Christian and get back to the world. Like it’s always been.”

  “Like it’s always been.”

  “Okay,” Boss said. “Okay, okay, okay.” He raised his head slowly, gave Walker the famous blue stare. “I keep order ’round here. Don’t you go forgetting that.” With sudden violence he added, “And keep the fuck outta my way.”

  Sweet Boy lowered the book to his chest. It took a moment for Marcus and Kelly to untense. Walker waited to see if he was dismissed, but Boss had returned his attention to the makeshift chessboard. He occupied himself with his fingers, fussing with the miters of the Ivory bishops.

  Boss finally grimaced and settled his weight back. “Never was any good at this game.” A resigned sigh. “How many moves he gonna beat me in, Walk?”

  Walker’s eyes flicked to the board. “Three.”

  He stepped back and walked out.

  Plastic picnic tables bolted to the concrete. Crumbly meat loaf, watery corn, a stiff cube of cake on a white saucer. Despite the food, Walker had gained fifteen pounds on the inside, mostly lats and chest. A joint body, they called it, built by barbells and bench presses and having nothing better to do. The added weight—and a few early, effective displays of his hand-to-hand prowess—had earned him the right to eat alone. Nonaligned. Even LaRue left him be during meals, preferring to zip around and work chow-hall deals.

  That’s why Walker was pissed when Moses Catrell ambled up to his table at dinner and took a seat. On Moses’s ebony forearm, the Black Guerrilla Family dragon coiled around a prison tower, a correctional officer in its clutch.

  “Spook was just retaliating,” Moses said, picking up the strain of an argument Walker didn’t know he was having. “Boss had him ganged in the learning lab, two big fuckers. Eight stitches.”

  Walker had sixteen months, two weeks, and four days to go, and the last thing he needed to be concerned with was the state of Spook Roberts’s asshole. He choked down a mouthful of meat loaf, took a pull of apple juice.

  “If Boss gonna escalate this motherfucker,” Moses said, “people gonna die up in here.”

  “I got no beef with Boss. I keep outta his business, he keeps outta mine.”

  “You the only one could do something ’bout the shit comin’ down the pipeline.”

  “Not my concern.”

  “Shit, fool.” Moses blew air through pursed lips, seemingly unimpressed by Walker’s grasp of altruism.

  Walker knew his type—little-boy temper backed up by a hood’s body. Still trying to wrangle fair from life. Never learned that the world doesn’t care about just and right, not when it comes to fuckups and down-and-outs like them.

  “You take Boss the peace pipe,” Moses said, “he’ll listen to you.”

  Walker let corn juice drain through his plastic fork. “That so?”

  “Hell, yeah. I heard about how you fight.”

  “Stories.”

  “Then why’s even the AB stay off your back?”

  “Don’t involve me.”

  “That all you got to say?”

  Walker considered for a moment. “Get off my table.”

  Moses’s mouth twitched to one side in an elaborate display of indignation. He sucked his teeth at Walker and withdrew. Walker downed the rest of his juice, chased some more corn around the plate. When he looked up, he saw LaRue coming toward him—not quite a run, more a walk with a charge in it.

  Walker said, “Well?”

  LaRue bent over, breathing hard from making double time, his whisper humid against Walker’s cheek. “Left.”

  Walker did his best to take in the news calmly, his fist tightening around the fork until his fingers went numb like the rest of him.

  LaRue gave him a concerned glance, tapped him on the back solemnly, and darted away.

  Walker bailed out the toilet to make it a conduit for eavesdropping down the unit. He sat, head tilted over the empty metal commode, listening to a rape under way down in Boss’s house. The sounds of five or six large men moving quietly around a cramped space. Guttural cries stifled by a cloth gag, loud enough to reach Walker and maybe even the CO below, who sat at a sad little desk before the unit’s sole exit, a rolling steel-reinforced door. The kid getting initiated was Orange County, a surfer type with shaggy hair. He was tan and skinny and didn’t stand a chance. It was fifteen minutes past count time, so it wouldn’t be over for him till it was over for everybody. Terminal Island was medium security, no supermax, so no central lever locked the cells. The old-fashioned key-in-door setup meant lockdowns were few and night movement easy.

  Good for the wolves, bad for the sheep.

  Finally the muffled struggle ceased. Boss would make his trip to the shower room at the end of the tier. He was a creature of habit, Boss, and a stickler for hygiene.

  Walker moved to sit Indian style by his open cell door, looking out at the black drop beyond the railing. The silence, when it asserted itself, was awesome. A concrete warehouse, shocked at its own purpose. From time to time, the COs put on moccasins and crept into the pipe chases between cells to spy on the boarders. Of course, everyone heard them, shuffling behind the walls like giant mice.

  He could still smell the aftermath of the day. The musk of a hundred close-quarters men with poor ventilation. Lingering odors off illicit hot plates—rice, beans, noodles stirred in tuna cans. He closed his eyes, waiting for the creak of the catwalk. A stress that said 280 pounds, a familiar cadence of steps. He’d spent enough time alone in the dark to read the whine of the mesh underfoot, the identities behind the breath patterns. He hadn’t acquainted himself with the specific noises of men this intimately since his days with Recon.

  First the vibration came through the floor, then the faint groan of metal on a half-second repeat. Another few steps and the raspy inhale joined in.

  The harmonics of Boss Hahn on the move.

  Walker rose, staying just inside the dark of his cell. He counted the steps, gauged the approach, and pivoted onto the catwalk, face-to-face with Boss. A ragged white towel wrapped the big man’s waist and thighs. Exertion pulled Boss’s lips back, revealing oddly square teeth. His cheeks and chest shone with sweat. The startled expression gave way to an arrogant smile.

  Walker clenched the hard plastic against his palm. His hand was down at his side, and then it swung up and tapped Boss high on the neck. A black spray fanned two feet in the air, and Boss grunted and waved his dense arms as if trying to keep his balance. Walker put one hand on the bullish slick chest and one under the chin and flipped Boss over the rail. He fell into darkness, the white afterthought of the towel fluttering down in his wake.

  An instant of silence.

  Then he hit the floor. The CO flipped the lights, and there Boss lay, gasping and shuddering, limbs bent in the wrong places. Blood pumped lazily from beneath his ear, widening the pool that had already encircled his torso. One arm managed a single paddling rotation against the concrete, painting a sloppy arc, then stilled.

  The CO stared down at the pink body, its
mouth caught in a perfect O. He stepped slowly back to the single steel door that could make J-Unit airtight, his hand grabbing for the radio at his belt and catching it on the second try. A moment of breath-held anticipation as a hundred sets of eyes peered out from fifty cells. A giant roar came all at once, as if from a single throat, and then the convicts charged from their cells.

  Chapter 2

  Decked out in Spider-Man shoes, an empty belted scabbard, Evel Knievel helmet, and wearing a goatee of chocolate ice cream, Tyler rose from a crouch that dangled his pale butt to the carpet and sneezed a Spideyweb of snot into his spread fingers. He studied the result, impressed.

  “Bless you,” his mother said.

  An encore.

  “Bless you.”

  Yet again.

  “Enough already.” Dray grabbed a flailing arm and tugged Tyler around Bear’s legs toward a waiting Kleenex. Ty dropped his milk, kicking it across the floor, its airtight roll reinforcing Tim’s perpetual regard for the inventor of the sippy cup. In an act of nearly unprecedented stupidity, Tim and Dray had recarpeted the house—in white—shortly after Tyler’s second birthday. They still hadn’t figured out just to let the rug get appropriately stained, their neurosis about spills an indication of how basic their lives had become.

  Over by the fireplace, Tim finished duct-taping carpet scraps onto the corners of the raised hearth. Tyler had scraped a shin on one yesterday, and tonight the offending stone was paying the price. Bear reclined on the couch, a dessert plate on each knee.

  Bear fingered his own plate and licked the frosting, then regarded Tim’s untouched square longingly. Tim had doubted the wisdom of entrusting his piece of birthday cake, which amounted to the shaky th in Happy 38th, to his partner’s custody. Though enormous, Bear had little flab. He was more like a shaped block. It was a lot of mass to support, and his stalwart reliability ended when food entered the picture.

  Since Tyler’s screeching arrival, Tim and Dray had enjoyed staying home more. Slowing down and speeding up to a domestic pace. Eating dinner when it was still light out. Going to bed before Letterman. They’d had good practice for the seven years of Ginny’s life, and with Tyler’s birth they’d returned to the once-familiar lifestyle with renewed appreciation.

  Bear had filled in increasingly over the past year as Tim and Dray had started to spend some evenings out alone. Early on, Dray’s mother had trooped over religiously, bringing with her onion-intensive casseroles and a vast collection of unwarranted fears—“You’d better child-safe that toilet lid.” “There’s no juice in this juice!” “Do you know the crap in the air on this side of the freeway?” Dray, realizing that her mother was augmenting Tim’s own overprotectiveness, finally informally banned her from the house. They met once a week at a park or a mall, which was about fifty times a year more than they did before Tyler. Tim’s father, an inveterate and accomplished con man, had sent a postcard on Tyler’s first birthday saying he wanted to meet his grandson, but Tim had not replied. The card represented the sole correspondence between them since their latest falling-out three years before.

  Dray released Ty, who tottered around Boston, Bear’s Rhodesian Ridgeback, and regarded the pajamas he’d kicked off—yet again—moments before. “Kaiyer hot,” he declared.

  “So you’ve indicated,” Bear said. “Several times.”

  Dray, looking as if she had grave doubts about having extended her maternity leave from the Sheriff’s Department, regarded Tim’s work and shot a blond wisp out of her face with an expertly directed exhale. “Missed a corner or an edge somewhere.” Her index finger roamed, sweeping across the carpeted backyard step, the rugs muffling the kitchen linoleum, the foam taped over the corners of the coffee table. “Huh. Guess not.” Her smile tugged left—her smart-ass grin—and her hair fell across her light green eyes. Thirteen years of marriage, and still the impossibly pale shade of her irises could catch Tim off guard. She glanced over at the couch, and her eyebrows, two of her most expressive features, tilted sternly. “I said that’s enough cake.”

  Bear, Tyler, and Boston all reacted to her tone with hurt expressions.

  Tim rose from the hearth and dusted his hands. “Not you, Bear.”

  “Oh.” Bear glanced down and saw Tyler’s hand, sneaked around his midsection and embedded in frosting. “You little rat. Get outta here.”

  Tyler squealed and ran away, avoiding a tap on the naked rear end from Bear’s size sixteen boot. It was good to see Bear smiling again. He’d had to put his other dog down three months ago and had been smothering his grief with Two-Dozen Tuesdays at Krispy Kreme all week long.

  As Dray had suggested on more than one occasion, Bear needed a woman.

  Tyler stalked around the back of the sofa, licking his blue-smeared hand, coming back for another pass at Bear’s plate.

  “Don’t even think about it.” Tim claimed his cake, smashed by the hand imprint. To Bear he said, “Nice work.”

  Bear shrugged. “Off duty.”

  Tim checked his watch—9:05 P.M.—and set down his plate. “Come on, bub.” He swung Tyler up onto a hip. “Say good night.”

  Ty blew kisses, which involved knocking a sticky hand against his chin and then flinging it outward.

  “Night, Typhoon,” Bear said.

  “Night, Bautin.” More awkward gesticulation at the dog, who lifted his eyes solemnly in acknowledgment. Tim headed toward the back.

  Bear’s cell phone revved up into a flat rendition of Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.” He stood, hefting his jeans, tugging the Nextel from his belt. From his reaction, the text message was something more pressing than a confidential informant trying to sell a tip.

  Predictably, Tim’s phone vibrated next, startling Tyler. Tim handed him to Dray, tilted the screen, scowled.

  Bear said, “Happy birthday.”

  Tim started back again. He returned to the living room a moment later, holstering his Smith & Wesson. He leaned over, kissed his son on the forehead. Bear pocketed an oatmeal cookie.

  Dray raised an eyebrow. Tim nodded in affirmation, kissed her as well, and followed Bear out.

  Chapter 3

  Bear accelerated down the Harbor Freeway, his overused Ram protesting with a whine of engine and shocks. For a prison break, as with a missing-persons, the first twenty-four hours are key. Since 1979, when the Justice Department shifted responsibility for fugitives from the FBI to the Marshals Service, federal prison escapees had fallen into the Service’s domain. Tim and Bear had swung by the district office downtown to grab whatever files Guerrera had been able to pull together. Consigned to light duty in the squad room after a questionable use of force during a raid last spring, Guerrera had accompanied them down the hall on their way out, right up to the awkward moment when the elevator doors banged shut in his envious face.

  Bear, proud godfather, kept a photo rubber-banded to the cracked sun visor—himself holding Tyler upside down by the ankles before Legoland’s pint-size Empire State Building. He laid on the horn, then passed a soccer mom in a Hummer with a NO WAR FOR OIL bumper sticker, the Dodge, hardly fuel-thrifty itself, shuddering its disapproval.

  Tim thumbed through a sheaf of printouts, stopping at Walker Jameson’s presentencing report and squinting at the fax-squashed letters at the periphery. U.S. Marine Corps. Enlisted. MOS: Infantry Rifleman. If the brief, unofficial write-up of his nine years in the Corps was accurate, Jameson had seen action in Jordan, Kosovo, Somalia, Sudan, and Iraq. After 9/11 he’d requested to retrain on an Anti-Terrorist Task Force and attended Scout/Sniper School at Quantico, making corporal as a sniper with First Force Recon. A photocopy of a grainy picture showed a lean, powerful man, fist tensed around a combat knife. His camo-smeared face was turned to the shadows, a near-perfect seam of dark claiming the left side. His rifle was slung, stock to his right shoulder, barrel at his opposite knee.

  Having spent eleven years as a platoon sergeant with the Army Rangers, Tim was only too aware of the experience Jameson had amassed in his diverse
deployments. Tim studied his fugitive’s face. A Spec Ops warrior trained at taxpayer expense to think as Tim once thought, to stalk as he stalked, to shoot as he shot. Tim set the photo on the dash. His eyes pulled to the bottom line of the PSR. Dishonorable discharge. Reduced to E-1. Six months in Leavenworth. No further explanation.

  “Remind me to tell Guerrera to get ahold of Jameson’s SRB.”

  “His who?” Bear asked.

  “Service Record Book. His file.” He and Bear had worked together for so long he sometimes forgot that their shared lexicon didn’t extend to military jargon.

  Jameson’s personal section was surprisingly spare. Thirty-one years old. Married once, long separated, though the divorce wasn’t on paper yet. No kids. One sister, five years older. During his marriage he’d lived in Littlerock. The rural community of about ten thousand was located fifty miles northeast of L.A., smack in the middle of pretty much nothing. After his last deployment and vacation in Leavenworth, he hadn’t returned. From what Tim knew of Littlerock, it was easy to see why.

  The Dodge veered onto one of the Long Beach exits and flew across the channel on a green suspension bridge. Bear finally eased off the gas as they arced down onto Terminal Island. Home of the prison that had accommodated inmates ranging from Al Capone to Charlie Manson, the island was also an integral part of the Port of Los Angeles. Semis lined the roads end to end like building fronts. Shadowy container ships crawled in and out of berths, some large enough to give the illusion that it was the land that was casting off, washing the Ram with it. The white, ribbed tube of a pipeline twisted overhead through the island like a monorail.

  Jameson had been handed a five-year sentence for stockpiling explosives. He’d gotten rolled up in a federal sting attempting to acquire two crates of frag grenades. Good-behavior credits had won him a one-year reduction.

  “Five years seems a bit steep for a first-time weapons beef,” Tim said. “Did Guerrera give any background?” When Marshal Tannino, roused from sleep, had pulled Tim aside at the office to remind him in a rare facile lapse of the importance of a quick takedown, Tim had missed Guerrera’s full rundown.