Into the Fire

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Evan slotted the pages back into the clipboard and signed Paytsar’s name. Lowering his hand to his side, he returned the clipboard.

  The deputy snapped his fingers. “Nice try.”

  “Oh,” Evan said, “sorry.”

  He gave back the pen.

  But kept the staple that he’d managed to pry free from the form. He straightened it with his thumbnail and squeezed it lengthwise between his ring and index fingers.

  Another deputy had appeared behind him, tapping him on the side of the neck with the butt of a hefty Maglite. “The jail sergeant signed off for you to come with me, sweet cheeks. You’ve got a history of drug use. Which means it’s time for your cavity search.”

  Evan grimaced.

  “I leave that to Horace,” the beefy deputy said. “He’s got a stronger stomach than me.”

  Horace led Evan to a box of a room with a concrete bench. He held the flashlight like a baton, fist curled around the thick metal base. Evan’s neck still throbbed from the love tap.

  “Strip,” Horace said.

  Evan undressed, keeping his back turned as if in shyness. When he removed his sock, he shoved the staple through the tough, callused skin of his heel just beneath the surface.

  “Turn around,” Horace said.

  As Evan rose, a blue fishnet bag hit him in the chest.

  “Put your shit in here.”

  Evan obliged.

  Horace clicked on the Maglite and adjusted his grip, clenching it up near the lens. At the slightest provocation, he could snap his hand forward and bring the metal shaft to bear. “Open your mouth. Tongue up. To the side. Other side.”

  Evan obeyed.

  “Now turn around. Bend over. Spread.”

  After a moment Evan heard the light click off behind him.

  “If you’re lucky,” Horace said, “you won’t have to do that again. Now get dressed.”

  A perfect square of folded jailhouse clothes rested on the concrete bench. White boxers made from a papery fabric. An undershirt flimsy enough that the color of his skin showed through. Gray cotton socks. Vans-style slip-ons with thin soles, clearly manufactured by the lowest bidder. Dark blue uppers and lowers, loose-fitting because jail took all shapes and sizes. The shirt had a pocket at the left breast.

  Evan followed Horace out of the concrete box to the next station, where Horace handed him off to yet another deputy. “This here’s Willy. Please let him know anything he can do to make your stay more pleasant. Hypoallergenic bedding, mint on the pillow at turn-down service, maybe a yoga mat in case you need to do some light strength work.”

  As Horace grinned and faded away, Willy shot out an exhale, bristling a broomlike mustache fringed brown with coffee stains. He didn’t wear a weapon, but a holstered Taser was one snap away. “I gotta classify you. Figure out who gets housed in which pod. We keep certain criminal elements together. So. State your affiliation.”

  Evan said, “I ain’t no gang member.”

  “Fine. I’ll just put you in with the Norteños. That should work out swell. Consider your cavity search a warm-up stretch.”

  Evan fiddled with his hands. “Armenian Power,” he said.

  “Shocking. Hovsepian.” Willy checked the monitor. “You got no priors with them, but I see your booking photo here. Nice look. I’m sure the judge’ll dig it at your arraignment.”

  “Yeah,” Evan said. “I heard that one already.”

  Willy gave him a droopy glare. “Arraignment ain’t till Monday. Sucks, that. Two nights in the can. You heard that one, too?”

  Evan looked away.

  “Gimme your left wrist,” Willy said. Evan complied, and the deputy fastened a bar-coded wristband on him, clasping it with plastic rivets. “You’ll be in 121 B-Pod with the other Armos. That’s here in Twin Towers, so consider yourself lucky. Old-school MCJ is bursting at the seams with prisoners trucked in from the overcrowded prisons—six, eight to a cell. We can thank the state budget, which seems to spring new leaks every quarter.”

  Twin Towers had less brutal arrangements for the prisoners than Men’s Central, but its precast cells, bolted steel furniture, and pod structure were also expressly designed to eliminate any access to tools, implements, or loose items. Every last object in Twin Towers was locked down and kept track of.

  “It ain’t exactly roomy here, but— Hey.” Willy snapped his fingers to get Evan’s attention. “I’m trying to help you out, punk-ass. I don’t care how many signs you throw, your drunk-in-public’s not gonna strike fear into the hearts of the motherfuckers on the other side of that wall.” He palmed his mouth, tugging his mustache down. “Ah, fuck it. Why do I bother? Get up.”

  He steered Evan down the hall. Tile floors, endless windows. They passed the inmate property room, a vision from a dystopian future, part deep-freeze coat check and part grapevine. Thousands of blue fishnet bags hung from racks, filling the bay from floor to ceiling. All those worldly possessions suspended in time and space. Each blue sack matched a beating heart warehoused behind metal and concrete.

  Evan’s bag dangled somewhere among them, a drop in the ocean.

  At the end of the wall waited a cart loaded with supplies. Before Willy had to prompt him, Evan grabbed one item from each stack. Sheet, towel, soap, rubber toothbrush. With his thumbnail he tested the end of the toothbrush, but the rubber yielded under the pressure. Too soft to whittle into a shiv.

  “We had a stabbing last week, which means no disposable razor,” Willy said. “If you stay longer, we will allow you to shave under supervision.”

  Evan’s mouth had gone dry. He nodded, rasped a hand over his two-day growth. He’d purposefully gone without shaving today.

  “We’d give you a TB test, but results take three days and you’ll be out by then. So: Try not to cough on anyone.”

  Evan nodded. Willy shoved another clipboard at him. “Sign this.”

  “What is it?”

  “It says if you contract Hep C or AIDs, the county’s not liable.”

  Evan forced down a swallow.

  “Kidding. It says you haven’t requested that any prescription meds be supplied.”

  Careful to keep his pinkie lifted, Evan signed. Gave back the clipboard.

  “Nice try,” Willy said, and snapped his fingers.

  Reluctantly, Evan handed over the pen.

  Willy signaled to a guard in the control room. The electronic doors gave a bone-jarring clank and hissed open. Willy marched Evan into a mantrap, the door behind them sealing before the one ahead could release. They drew parallel to the guard window, Evan’s wristband bar code was scanned, and the door before him rumbled open.

  “You’re in Cell 24,” Willy said. “Try’n play nice with the others.”

  He prodded Evan forward, and the door slammed shut behind him, sealing him off from the world.

  45

  Deploying a Mop-Based Weapon

  As Evan eased forward into 121 B-Pod, he was enveloped by a dull roar of background noise, a wave about to break. The unit smelled like death, the decay of organic matter deteriorating, uncleaned and unnourished.

  The wall at his side held painted instructions with green arrows: COURT, VISITORS CENTER, RELEASE.

  He couldn’t help but note that they all pointed opposite the direction he was walking.

  Two levels of rooms overlooked a central bay with bolted-down picnic tables sprouting up at intervals like brushed-metal mushrooms. The circular tables sat only four at a time to keep commiserating to a minimum, and they were occupied now. Punks and jockers, hustlers and cell lieutenants with muscle-swollen joint bodies—Evan could read the dominance hierarchy from their postures and positions. A few inmates dotted the stairs and catwalk, watching Evan’s entrance with casual menace. The deputies stayed safely behind the glass, the prisoners left to police themselves. If the deputies did come in, they’d come with full riot gear, pepper spray, and stun grenades.

  The walls were stained with water damage from the sprinklers, white paint
bubbled out from the concrete. Dousing the two hundred or so prisoners jammed into the fifty cells was a common anti-fire, anti-riot, and anti-agitation technique.

  From Joey, Evan knew all the camera positions and sight lines in here, when to lower his head and when to turn his face. She could glitch the cameras now or wipe the footage later, but he didn’t want to make more work for her than necessary.

  He kept on across the bay toward the stairs. An ACLU flyer fluttered by his head: Do you not have a bed? Floor sleeping is a violation of your rights! He noted the thickness of the paper, the dab of tape connecting it to the concrete. Passing a table of men playing poker, he next considered the playing cards, how they might be repurposed as something useful. He came up blank. Two prisoner-workers distinguished by yellow jumpsuits slid a bucket around, slapping mops across the floor. Evan did a quick mental breakdown: wooden mop handles, metal band wrapping the head, brackets holding the wheels, shatterable yellow plastic.

  Promising.

  A wide doorway led to the showers, another to the dayroom, where a television blared a talky news show. The screen was mounted behind armored glass, elevated above a few dozen chairs. Evan noted an assemblage of prisoners whose profiles he’d memorized with Joey’s help, the Armenian Power heavies he’d assumed would be closest to Benjamin Bedrosov. They sat in a cluster around a chair centered beneath the television—the best seat in the house. Evan couldn’t see the face of the man occupying the privileged position—just part of his shoulder and an arm—but he sensed immediately that it was the man himself radiating a nimbus of influence.

  One of the men with teardrops inked at the corner of his eye—Argon Sargsyan, aka Teardrop—noted Evan’s gaze across the bay and stood abruptly. A few of his compatriots rose as well, forming a human shield that blocked Bedrosov completely from view.

  Evan averted eye contact quickly and mounted the stairs. An old inmate sat on the landing, scratching his neck and reading a newspaper. A zoo-house musk hung over the second floor. Evan moved up the catwalk, counting down the rooms.

  He arrived at Cell 24.

  He entered.

  Two bunk beds at either side, a metal commode with a concave sink dimpling the top of the toilet tank, a window the size of a shoe-box lid with a browning miniature fern on the shaded end of the sill. The reek was stronger in here, a fight-or-flight hormonal dump shoved through pores and sweated into dank bedding. Contributing to the stench, a bulky bearded man around six-four crouched over the commode. His pants and underwear were dropped and pulled free of one shoe so they wouldn’t tangle his ankles if someone tried to jump him. His wristband was coded H for highly dangerous. Evan couldn’t retrieve his name, but he recalled his alias, Casper, earned for his ability to vanish from crime scenes. His magic powers had run out recently.

  On the top bunk, skinny legs dangling like a puppet’s, sat a nervous tweaker whose profile Evan hadn’t reviewed. He pegged the guy as a lowest-level offender, probably possession or trespassing. A patchy beard sprouted along the man’s jawline, and his eyes jerked sporadically. He twisted his hands in the rag he wore that used to be a shirt.

  “Welcome … um, hi, hi, hello, welcome.” The tweaker tilted his head, reading the name on Evan’s wristband. “Paytsar was my uncle’s name. You got any ramen?”

  “No,” Evan said.

  “We got a extra bed still, which is a treat, a real treat, since Gonzo is laid up in the medical bay. He got shivved with a pencil, so they put us on lockdown and took all our shit. Hot plates, lighters, matches—everything. And now I can’t make my ramen no more.”

  Casper wiped himself once and rose. “Shut the fuck up ’bout your ramen, Monkey Mouth.”

  “It’s like cash in here, man,” Monkey Mouth whined. “Better’n cigarettes.” He broke off a dry strip of noodles from the cake in his lap and sucked the end. “It’s my last one, don’t have no more. Got two cigs, but can’t light ’em, can’t smoke ’em. No money on my card. Most of the phones is broke, so you’re gonna wanna spring for cell minutes from one a the big shots.”

  The top bunk on the right was unoccupied, a mattress folded in half. Evan entered the tight space and flipped it open. He pulled the sheet neatly over the filthy mattress, hiding his soap and toothbrush beneath and then smoothing out the wrinkles as best he could. Three folds of the threadbare towel took it to pillow thickness. He set it down atop the sheet, perfectly centered.

  Casper sidled up to his side, breathed down on him. He dragged a dirty hand across Evan’s sheet, bringing up folds in the fabric.

  Evan stared at the mussed sheet but remained impassive, readying to protect his head if a blow came.

  “You’re gonna sleep on the floor,” Casper said.

  Evan thought back to all those years as a kid sleeping on the floor between bunk beds at Pride House Group Home. He wasn’t going to do it again.

  He ignored Casper, straightening the sheet once more. Then he ran his fingers along the metal rails of the top bunk, checking the soldering for a loose bead of metal he might be able to strip off. No luck. He checked the posts as well.

  Monkey Mouth rattled on, “Look, Paytsar, fighting’s against the rules. If you have to, though, stick to body blows. Don’t lump up anyone’s head too bad. Plus, there’re sharper bones in the face, right? They’ll get you abrasions on your knuckles, which the screws see and then, fuck. And if they ask you anything, you’d better hold your mud, ’cuz it ain’t good in here for snitches. It ain’t good at all.”

  Evan said, “Noted.”

  He moved to the window, Casper shadowing him. A single piece of tempered glass cemented in place with no handle or rail. Evan felt for any vulnerable metal around the sill, but it was just a concrete lip holding paint flakes and dust and nothing else. The precast cell was a seamless block cemented in place. No bars, no bolts, nothing usable. He eyed the plant, but it rose from a Styrofoam cup that was useless for repurposing.

  He kept part of his focus on Casper, idling in his blind spot, but Casper didn’t make a move.

  From the control room, deputies couldn’t see into the cells. There were no cameras in here, but even so, if Evan sent the guy out on a gurney in his first minute, it could compromise his mission objectives.

  Survive, kill Bedrosov, escape.

  When he turned, Casper blocked his way. “Give me your shoes.”

  Evan said, “They won’t fit you.”

  “I didn’t ask if they’d fit me.”

  “Let’s get this clear right now,” Evan said. “I’m not sleeping on the floor. I’m not giving you my shoes. I understand you’re bigger than I am and that H stamped on your wristband probably serves as a pretty big badge of honor for you in here. But I want you to look at me. Look at me closely. And ask yourself: Do I look scared?”

  He stared up into Casper’s bearded face. Unblinking.

  Ten seconds passed. And then ten more.

  Casper exhaled into Evan’s face, settled his shoulders. He raised a meaty arm, pointed at one of the bottom bunks. “That’s my Cadillac. You fuck with it, you so much as breathe on it, you’ll be dancing on the blacktop. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Evan said. “Same goes for my stuff.”

  He started out.

  “I know your type,” Casper called after him. “You’re a cell warrior. All tough talk in here. We’ll see how you do out on the floor, fish.”

  Evan headed back downstairs, giving wide berth to the guy on the landing buried in his newspaper.

  As he reached the main floor, the workers wearing yellow jumpsuits were just getting buzzed through a security door. A tempered-glass wall gave the deputies maximum observation of the pod with minimum exposure to the inmates. The deputies took the mops and the bucket, examining them thoroughly for missing parts, and then patted down the workers themselves.

  So deploying a mop-based weapon was out. Evan needed another plan.

  Actually, he needed several plans. As of yet he’d succeeded only in the easiest aspect of the mi
ssion: getting arrested.

  He worked his way to the center of the bay to get a clear view into the dayroom.

  The center chair was now empty, a throne awaiting the king’s return.

  Evan looked up along the catwalk, spotted two Armenian Power lieutenants standing watch outside the door to Cell 37. Clearly, Bedrosov moved with impunity throughout the jail. And now he’d withdrawn to his guarded palace.

  Evan shifted his gaze to the overhead lights. The bulbs were well out of reach even from the catwalks, recessed behind bolted panes. No getting his hands on the glass, then.

  Turning away, he drifted into the dayroom. A few men slumped in chairs, spaced out, arms crossed, resting dick faces on. No one was smoking, not after the deputies had confiscated lighters and matches in the wake of the shiv stabbing, but the room still reeked as if the tobacco had climbed into the walls. On the too-loud TV, the news cycled a story on President Victoria Donahue-Carr, the same panelists masticating the same tidbits about her assumption of the office and her predecessor’s untimely departure.

  Standing here breathing stale cigarette smoke surrounded by gangbangers, rapists, and murderers, he found himself considering again just how much he looked forward to ending this mission and beginning a different life.

  He sensed someone approaching fast and turned, hands rising in an open-hand guard, one foot sliding back to set his base.

  It was Teardrop.

  He lunged at Evan, swinging for his face.

  Evan flinched away hard, arms rising to cage his fragile head, his brain already aching in anticipation of impact.

  But Teardrop stopped the punch mid-swing, brayed a staccato roll of laughter at Evan’s overreaction. “Jumpy, ain’t you, bozi tgha?”

  Teardrop was Evan’s size and build, the start of a scruffy beard pushing through sallow skin. Evan felt an impulse to deliver a bil jee finger jab to his trachea, but if they fought out here in full view of the cameras, he’d be hauled off to solitary and miss his shot at Bedrosov. Teardrop was in for a parole violation, coming to the end of a ten-day flash. If history were a guide, he’d be out a few weeks and then back in, out and in, living between worlds until a bigger bust hooked him for good.