The Killing Floor Blues (2 page)

Jablonski’s hand hovered over the hilt of his baton. Then, slowly, it eased back.

“Let’s go,” he called out, turning away from me and addressing the entire line. “Processing time. Strip down.”

Guards slid big cardboard boxes down the line. Grumbling as loudly as they dared, the convicts undressed like they were in the locker room at the neighborhood gym. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t see any other option. I kicked off my shoes and socks, tossing them into the nearest box, and unbuttoned the orange jumpsuit. I blinked as I tugged it down.

Tighty-whities?
I thought.
Those weren’t my sneakers, and this sure as hell isn’t my underwear. Whose clothes are these, and where did I get them?
That gap of missing time, night to noon, kept gnawing at the back of my mind as I stripped down.

I stood with my bare toes on the line and tried to ignore that I was stark naked. At least I wasn’t alone. The inked-up skin around me must have kept a tattoo parlor in business for a year.

“As I come to you,” Jablonski bellowed, “you will squat with your knees spread, lift your scrotum, and cough. If I suspect you are attempting to smuggle contraband into my house, you will be dealt with
most
severely. Am I understood?”

I didn’t join the tepid chorus of “yes, sirs.” I just waited my turn, squatted down at his feet, and completed my part of the humiliating ritual before he moved on to the next man. A sullen silence felt like my only defense. A cardboard shield is still a shield if that’s all you’ve got.

“Lice?” Jablonski called out. Another guard walked the line with an industrial-sized bottle of green, goopy liquid. “Not in
my
house. You will thoroughly rub the disinfectant into your scalp and pubic hair, assuming you are old enough to grow any.”

Two pumps of the goop squirted into my cupped hands, ice cold and vaguely tingling. I massaged it into my hair and tried to think of white-sand beaches.

At least the next step was a change of clothes. One by one, guards dropped a neatly folded bundle into each waiting prisoner’s arms. Eisenberg Correctional’s uniform was military tan. I ended up with a button-down shirt and trousers—the pants one size too large, the shirt one size too small—an undershirt, socks, underwear, and beige canvas shoes with cracked rubber soles. I was just happy to be dressed again. They marched us up the hall, where a pair of inmates stood beside antique barber chairs.

“Just a little off the top,” I told him when it was my turn in the chair.

“Funny guy,” he said, firing up his electric clippers.

Stroke by shrill, whining stroke, I watched the remnants of a twenty-dollar haircut tumble to the floor. As he ushered me out of the chair and waved over the next prisoner in line, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Crude buzz cut, prison fatigues, and a haunted look in my eyes.

I looked just like everybody else.

The guard with the clipboard, a thin guy with peach fuzz for a mustache, surveyed the room. “Prisoners! When your name is called, step forward. Bachman, MacGillis, Posner, Faust!”

I approached in a cluster with the other three, and he lined us up in front of him.

“I’m Correctional Officer Emerson,” he said, handing the first prisoner a long envelope and working his way down the line as he spoke. “You four are being housed in Hive C. These envelopes contain your admissions paperwork, orientation and rules, commissary and deposit information. You will be evaluated for work assignments tomorrow morn—”

He paused in front of me. No more envelopes on the clipboard.

“Damnit,” he sighed. “I’d like to go just one shift without a paperwork screwup. All right, Faust, just get situated in your cell and we’ll send someone with your file once the front office finds it. Don’t worry, this happens every day.”

“I’m not even supposed to be here,” I told him, but I knew I was wasting my breath.

“If I had a nickel for every time I heard that.” He rolled his eyes. “All right, men, listen up. For better or for worse, you’re here now, and Hive C is your new home for the duration. Do your time, follow the rules, and we’ll get along just fine. And just in case you’re having unhealthy thoughts, here’s a fact you should take to heart: Eisenberg Correctional was built in 1997. In this institution’s history, there have been
zero
successful escapes. You will not be the first.”

*     *     *

From the outside I’d seen the great concrete hives rising up from the desert waste. Now, on the inside, I realized that was exactly what they were: hives for human beings.

Cells ringed the conical base. Above it, a second tier, slightly overhanging the first and slightly smaller. Then another, and another, floor after floor.
Not a hive after all
, I thought,
a warehouse. And a damn big one
. A guard tower stood at the heart of the hive, connected by steel mesh walkways to the outer tiers at various levels. Warped one-way glass covered the shaft of the tower, reflecting back at the cells like the mirrors in a carnival funhouse. At the top, where the tower flared outward like a mushroom cloud, guards with sniper rifles kept watch from their perch.

“Observe that red line,” Emerson told us, gesturing to the ring of red paint that circled the base of the tower. “If you cross that line, or attempt to enter the tower, you will be killed.”

A sign plastered to the mirrored wall, just left of the guards’ key-carded doorway, read “
NO WARNING SHOTS WILL BE FIRED
.”

I was feeling the warning shots from the gallery floor, myself. The open space around the tower was a free-for-all, prisoners milling around or sitting at round plastic tables with bench seats, some playing cards or flipping dominoes. I’d felt watched from the yard outside, but now that scrutiny was as focused and hot as a surgical laser.

It wasn’t like the movies. There weren’t any catcalls; nobody threw anything—not even a harsh word—but my quiet sense of apprehension grew worse with each passing glance. I knew the score: regardless of what Correctional Officer Jablonski wanted to believe, this was
their
house. And I wasn’t invited.

“Faust,” Emerson said, pointing up. “Your cell is two-thirty-two. Go up those stairs, hang a left.”

As he gave the other newcomers their cell numbers, I realized what little safety I’d felt was long gone. Emerson wasn’t here to protect me; he was here to process me into the system. Now I was processed and forgotten.

I walked into the mix, alone.

Chin up
, I thought, coaching myself.
Eyes front. Don’t walk too fast. If they smell fear on you, you’re finished. You don’t care about any of this. Repeat that until you believe it. You just don’t care
.

Nobody reacted to me, nobody said a word. I was a ghost. A ghost with a hundred pairs of eyes following his every move.

I wasn’t prepared for the stench. Air didn’t flow through the hive so much as hang there like a pair of dirty sweat socks. It smelled like body odor and stale piss and food from a dead refrigerator. More than anything, it reminded me of the monkey house at a zoo. I climbed up to the second tier and went looking for my new cage.

They squeezed a lot of furniture into a space not much bigger than Caitlin’s closet. Two narrow beds, one on each side, with beige blankets that matched my uniform, a stainless-steel sink, a toilet and a mirror, a narrow desk, and a pair of wall-mounted cabinets with sliding doors. My cell already had an occupant. He lay back on one bed and paged through a dog-eared paperback of John-Paul Sartre’s
No Exit
.

“‘Hell is other people,’” I quoted, leaning against the open cell door.

He lowered the book, tapped the pages, and smiled. He was maybe in his late forties, a little pudgy, with a wiry salt-and-pepper beard and cheap prescription glasses.

“Indeed it is,” he said. “Ever seen the play?”

“I’ve only read it.”

“Reading about hell,” he said, swinging his legs around and sitting up, “makes me feel better about being here. It reminds me that there’s always someplace worse you can go. I’m Paul, by the way.”

“Daniel.” I shook his hand. “I’m apparently your new roommate.”

“I already like you better than the last one.
His
ideal use for a book was hollowing one out to hide contraband. Not much of a conversationalist.”

“Well,” I said, “don’t get too used to me. I’m not supposed to be here.”

Paul smirked. “Because you’re innocent, right? Everybody here is innocent. Well, except for me. I’m the only guilty man in the whole place. You know anybody in here?”

“Not a soul. Mind giving me the lay of the land?”

He gestured to the opposite bunk, and I took a seat. The mattress was thinner than my index finger, layered over a slab of concrete.

“Here’s the high points,” Paul said. “First off, we just got off lockdown a couple of days ago, so tensions are running high. A couple of bangers brought their outside beefs in with them. That’s a big no-no, but it happens. This is a black-on-brown deal, we’re staying out of it, so do yourself a favor and keep strictly to the white corner of the yard until it all gets sorted out.”

“Gotta tell ya,” I said, “I’m not really big on the whole racial segregation deal.”

Paul snorted and pushed up a sleeve. “Hey, you see a swastika on my arm? Outside of those Aryan Brotherhood assholes—and stay clear of them, because they’re high
and
crazy—it isn’t a racist thing. Just a race thing.”

“Not real clear on the difference.”

“It’s not about hate. It’s about having a group of people around who’ll watch your back when the shit starts to fly. We all wear the same uniform, so what’s that leave us? Skin. Each color polices their own, and the shot-callers try to keep the peace. Keep in mind that whites are outnumbered five to one in here. Bad odds for a lone wolf.”

“So run with a pack,” I said. “Noted. What else?”

“Watch the guards. Emerson, Emerson’s okay—he just started working here, too new to pick up bad habits—but the rest of them…” He shook his head. “Never be alone with a guard if you can help it, and don’t try to get familiar. All you’ll do is end up on their radar, and you don’t want that.”

“I already met Jablonski in processing.”

“Jablonski’s a sadist,” Paul said, frowning. “Worse, he’s a stone killer. Likes to sit up in that tower and masturbate with a sniper rifle in his free hand, that’s what I think.”

“I saw him beat the crap out of a guy for nothing. How do they get away with that?”

Paul leaned over on his cot, glancing out the open cell door and up toward the top of the guard tower.

“You aren’t just a ward of the state, my friend. The Iceberg is a
private
prison. Corporate owned and taxpayer financed. The guards aren’t members of the state union, and they don’t answer to anybody but the bean counters at Rehabilitation Dynamics. On that note? Stay out of the bathrooms on tier three.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

Paul shot another glance toward the open cell door. “Worst-kept secret in Hive C: the security camera in there’s been broken for a month, and either nobody’s bothered calling in a repair order or the bean counters don’t want to pay for a new one. The guards only poke their heads in once a day. That place is Grand Central Station when it comes to dirty business.”

A snaggletoothed con with a head like a bullet loomed in the doorway. He jerked his thumb my way and looked at Paul.

“He ain’t seen Brisco yet.”

“Brisco’s the shot-caller for the whites in here,” Paul told me. “You should go talk to him, introduce yourself. It’s a respect thing. Respect is
very
important in here.”

I stood up and stretched. Moving, but taking my time.

“Well,” I said, “seeing as I’ve got an escort and everything, let’s go meet the man in charge.”

Bullethead led me down to the floor of the hive. Inmates got out of our way, and fast. It was a calculated action, though; gazes flicked the other way, or it was suddenly time to wave and walk over to someone on the far side of the lockup, any excuse to suddenly be elsewhere. Everybody wanted to keep out of Bullethead’s path, but nobody wanted to look like they were doing it because of him.

The man of the hour sat at a round plastic table, throwing down cards from a losing hand. He wore a permanent scowl, and he’d stripped down to his undershirt to show off muscles like steel cables under sleeves of cheap prison ink. I didn’t need an introduction to know he was the shot-caller. The way all conversation died when we walked up to the table, and the way the four other players looked his way, told me all I needed to know.

“Brisco, I presume,” I said, nodding his way.

He looked down at my empty hands. “That’s right. Where’s your jacket?”

“Jacket?”

His buddies had a snicker at that. Brisco sighed and laid his palms flat on the table.

“Your papers.”

“They lost ’em,” I said. “Emerson said he’d send them over as soon as the office got it sorted out.”

They didn’t like the sound of that. I wasn’t sure what I’d said wrong, but there wasn’t a friendly face at the table. They didn’t invite me to sit down, either.

“Listen, fish.” Brisco’s eyes went hard. “I need to know who you are, and where you’ve been. And jackets don’t lie. Now sometimes, just sometimes, we get new arrivals who think they can hide their tracks. Like rapists. People who rape kids, even.”

He left it at that, tossing me the verbal ball. I locked eyes with him. I knew I was standing in a minefield. Worse, the mines had been planted according to a specific list of rules, and nobody had bothered giving me a copy. The last thing I wanted was a fight with Brisco, and going on the offensive could buy me more trouble than I could handle. At the same time, backing down felt like a bad, bad idea.

“If somebody said that about me,” I replied, taking it slow, “they’d better be ready to back that up with some proof, or there’s going to be more than harsh words between us.”

He shrugged one shoulder.

“My boy Zap,” Brisco said, “he’s a trustee. He’s allowed up in the front offices, and it’s real easy for him to snag a few minutes of computer time. Now, when this conversation’s over, he’s gonna go check you out. So I ask you: is there anything in your jacket you wanna tell me about? Because if you man up and tell it straight, right here, right now, it’ll go a lot easier than if Zap finds something I don’t like.”

I thought about a fervent denial, but in the end I just shrugged right back at him. “Let him look.”

Everyone at the table turned to Brisco. He rapped his fingers on the fallen cards and nodded. “Okay,” he said, “we can do it that way. Probably wanna go back up to your cell.”

I obliged him.
This is bad
, I thought, climbing up the stairs. I didn’t have a jacket because I wasn’t even supposed to be in prison. What would Brisco’s guy say when a database search came up empty? This place ran on rules. Rigid, unbending rules, the kind that get enforced with a shiv in the kidneys. I didn’t think Brisco was the type of guy who’d be happy with an unknown factor in his house.

Paul glanced up from his book as I walked in. “I need to talk to the warden,” I told him.

“Jesus,” he said, setting the paperback in his lap. “What’d you do?”

“Like I said, I’m not supposed to be here. The guards won’t listen. I’ve got to go higher up the food chain.”

Paul waved a hand. “You don’t want that kind of attention. Look, just take it easy. Tomorrow you’ll get a work assignment. Earn a little money and you can use the pay phones, get in touch with your lawyer.”

“When do we get paid?”

Paul’s lips moved as he ran the numbers in his head. “Next…Thursday. But pay’s monthly, and there’s a one-month delay for new arrivals—”

“A month? Paul, I can 
not
be in here for a month.”

He laughed, but there wasn’t a speck of humor in it.

“You can’t do a month? Friend, I’ve been here for eight years. Trust me. You can do a month.”

How long
before people start looking for me
, I wondered. By now, Jennifer would know about her dead pot dealer. Once the cops started scouring Vegas looking for Nicky,
everybody
would know something was up. And then there was Caitlin. I’d been on my way to see her last night before I walked into the Chicago Outfit’s trap; she’d be hunting for me already.

I slowed my breathing, willing my muscles to unclench, fighting panic. I had people on the outside. My people, my family. And once they discovered I was lost somewhere in the penal system, they’d raise hell to find me.

I almost wanted to smile. Daniel Faust, victim of the worst computer glitch in history.

Except that didn’t explain my twelve hours of missing memory.

“Look,” Paul said, “just get right with Brisco, keep your head down, and take it one day at a time. The days go faster than you think once you get used to being here.”

“And don’t drop the soap, right?”

Paul snorted. “It’s not like on TV. I’m not saying
nobody
ever gets raped in here, but that’s usually a revenge thing, not a sex thing. If somebody wants to get off and their right hand isn’t doing the trick, there are plenty of ways to get that taken care of with a willing partner. Willing and enthusiastic, if you’ve got trade goods.”

“Trade goods?”

“Commissary’s got all the comforts of home, or at least a halfway decent 7-Eleven. Expensive, though, and unless you’ve got family on the outside and they’re willing to put money on your account, you’ve gotta shop with the wages from your work detail.”

“How much does that pay?” I asked him.

“Thirty cents an hour.”

I arched one eyebrow.

“I know,” Paul said, “right? But I’ll tell you something: after you spend five hours mopping floors so you can afford a Hershey bar, that is the
finest
damn Hershey bar you will ever taste. Most of these guys, they don’t have anybody on the outside, so they don’t have much to shop with. You can get a lot of bang for your buck if you’re willing to trade what you’ve got and help them out a little. Lots of us have side hustles. Like Sully, three cells down, he brews prison wine. The stuff smells like dog puke, but it’ll get you higher than—”

He fell silent. Brisco’s shadow loomed in the doorway, flanked by two dead-eyed bruisers. Nobody had a smile for me.

Brisco held an envelope in his calloused hands.

“Paul,” he said softly, “let us have the room for a minute, would you please? Need a word with your bunkmate.”

“Sure, okay,” Paul said, nodding uncertainly as he made himself scarce.

Brisco and his boys came into the cell. Blocking the only way out.

“My boy found your paperwork,” Brisco said. “Checked you out.”

I stood up. Squared my shoulders.

“Yeah? Interesting reading?”

He glanced down at the envelope, then back at me. There was something in his eyes I couldn’t quite read. Something anxious, like his world just went into a spin and he was still sorting out why.

He held out the envelope.

“Jesus, man, why did you think you had to
hide
that from us?” He looked to the thug on his left. “This guy, do you believe this? He’s a for-real, no-bullshit
contract killer
. He’s a fucking hit man for Nicky Agnelli.”

I let out a sigh of relief. They’d found my real paperwork. Great. One step closer to getting this mess sorted, and one step closer to my bail hearing. Which I would gladly post a bond for—five minutes before fleeing the country.

“Well,” I said, improvising, “I didn’t want to come off like I was bragging or anything. And they really did lose my paperwork.”

“It’s all there,” Brisco said. “And hey, something else.”

He nodded to the guy on his right, who dropped a plastic shopping bag at the foot of my bunk. I peeked inside and found a cornucopia of goodies. Instant soup packets, powdered hot chocolate, a couple of candy bars, and mini bags of potato chips.

“It’s how we welcome all the new guys,” Brisco explained, “since it’ll be a month before you’ll be able to get anything at the commissary on your own. That should tide you over. Keep in mind, you’ll be expected to contribute to the next one. Everybody pays it forward.”

“I appreciate that,” I said and offered him my hand. He had a grip like a bear trap.

“Come on down once you get settled in,” he said, “and I’ll introduce you around.”

They left me alone with the goodies and the envelope. I sat back down and leafed through it, skipping the rules and regulations and heading straight for my rap sheet. It was nestled at the back, folded and printed on lime-green paper.

Then I started to read, and the entire world fell out from under me.

I read it a second time, then a third, as if the words might change. As if I was somehow misunderstanding them, and one more reading would make everything clear. As if it would make what I was reading any less insane. My eyes started skipping over the page, picking up words here and there.

…
Murder, First Degree, one count

Racketeering, two counts

Criminal Conspiracy, four
…

“No,” I whispered.

…Daniel Faust stands convicted on all counts and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

The page buckled in my hands. In the top corner, I read the date.

I hadn’t lost twelve hours of memory.

I’d lost four months.