Beyond Justice (21 page)

"Yeah?  What?"

"I want to talk to the warden!" Howls went up and echoed throughout the pod.  Butch was laughing too.  "Oh, so you want to see the warden, huh?  What, you want an upgrade to the presidential suite?"

More laughter.

"I'm going to tell him about the prisoner abuse down here," I said.  "About the cock-fighting racket you're running."

"Oh, right.  That.  Yeah.  He'll believe
you
over at decorated C.O. of fifteen  years."

"You can't do this!"

"Right."  Another smack against the door and he walked away, spat his toothpick on the ground.  "Liked you a whole lot better when you weren't talking."  He swaggered away, footfalls slow and fading.  "Might just have to fix that."

Chapter Thirty-Six

By the time the beating stopped, I found myself alone on the floor of the shower stall, cold water still spraying my back.  Because they jumped me while I had shampoo in my eyes, I never saw my attackers.  But judging by the way I was held face down while simultaneously punched and kicked on all sides, there must've been at least three of them.  Felt more like twenty.

My last conscious recollection was a crimson stream gathering and spiraling down the drain.  I suffered a mild concussion and spent the night in the infirmary with three broken ribs.  The message was clear.  Don't cross your C.O.  That, and keep your big, stupid mouth shut.  The stitches and scars would serve as a constant reminder.

Each week, the gladiator fights continued, though Butch made it clear that no one was to be shanked.  Try telling the nation's most violent criminals to use restraint.  Eventually, the paper work must have become too much of a nuisance.  The fighters were now instructed to fight to the death.  The winner would sometimes be shot—no doubt the official result of attacking another inmate and disregarding warnings from the C.O. to stop.  If anyone outside ever heard of our gladiator matches, they simply would not believe it possible.

Somehow, I managed to avoid becoming one of the contestants.  They probably figured someone as soft as me would've been disappointing to watch.  No fun watching a guy get wiped out in less than a minute.  I earned the nickname "Silkworm."

For safe measure, though, I started working out again.  I was up to seventy five pushups a set, even twenty, one-handed.  Some of the inmates liked to flaunt their musculature by wearing cutoffs and tanks.  I kept it to myself, always wearing a loose fitting California Department of Corrections shirt over my undershirt to hide my progress.  The element of surprise might come in handy one day.

Butch and I seemed to have settled into an understanding where we didn't cross each other's paths.  But this wouldn't last forever.  Simply ignoring me didn't suffice.  Eventually, he had to gain the upper hand.

"Here's the deal," Butch said, after I finished showering.

"Do you have to talk to me only when I'm naked?"

  He wagged his eyebrows.  "I'm going to give you a paper bag.  Leave it under the bench in Cage-D tomorrow, during exercise time.  That's all there is to it."

I toweled off and wrapped myself.  "You want me to smuggle contraband for you?"

"You got a point?"

"Just what side of the law are you on, anyway?"

Butch leaned against the doorframe and chortled.  Then he looked me up and down.  I didn't like the way he was leering, it made me feel filthy.  "Within these walls, Silk, I
am
the law.  Gonna do it or not?"

"Not."

He stuffed the bag back into his jacket.  "I'm disappointed."

"You'll get over it."  Why did he need me to do this when he could easily have slipped the contraband into whatever cell he wanted to?  There had to be something more to it.

"You're looking pretty buff these days, buddy."  He pulled out the toothpick and admired its badly mangled end.  He put it back between his lips and puckered, making a sick, kissing noise.  If Dog or any of the other inmates had made the pass at me, I might only have been repulsed, not surprised.  But the thought of Butch...I was going to be sick.

He came closer and yanked the towel off my waist, leaving me more vulnerable than I'd ever felt in my entire life.  The gust sent a shiver up my spine.

"Back off!"  I was up against a wall, completely naked.

Butch reached over and began to touch my face.  "Why can't you just get with the program like the others?"

I smacked his hand away and slid out of his reach.  "I'd rather die."

"Careful what you wish for," he said and let out a sigh.  Acquiescing with his bushy unibrow, Butch stepped away and dropped my towel on the floor.  "One of these days, you'll look back and wished you'd been more... open to possibilities."

___________________

Back in my cell, I tossed and turned uncertain if it was because of Butch's thinly veiled threats or the images of the past that continued to haunt me, first in my sleep, and now preventing it.

God, I missed my family.  Sometimes I thought of them all together, sometimes individually.  Every now and then, I'd hear door hinges sing a high-pitched tone.  The sound would remind me of a delicate solo violin line and think of Bethie.  At twelve years old, she was already a virtuoso violinist, soloed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Eleven.  Our pride and joy. How could this be?

The sound of my cell door sliding open jolted me from my nightmarish sleep.  It must have been four in the morning.  "Get up!" C.O. Cummings barked.  He bound my wrists behind my back and shackled my feet, while Butch stood with his gun aimed straight at me.  They checked me for shanks and then shoved me out the door.

"Let's go!  Move it!"  Cummings said.

"Where?" My eyes hadn't yet adjusted to the light.  I could barely open them.

"Get going!" Butch shouted.  "I told you that I was the law.  You break it, I break you."

All the way on the ride in the truck to wherever we were going, Butch kept talking to me about how lucky I had been in the SHU, especially with him as my C.O.  "I didn't ask too much.  Never made you fight.  Didn't want to get your pretty face messed up."

"You tried to set me up."

"Yeah, that contraband was just a test. 

"Your bitch test?"

"You failed."  With a perverse grin he said, "Come on.  It was just a couple of nickel bags and a cell phone."  He put his arm around me and played with his toothpick.  "Would've made you my own special connie.  With all the benefits."

I tried to struggle free but I was completely shackled.  If I tried to jump out of the truck, Butch and his men wouldn't hesitate to shoot.  He pulled out his toothpick and put his mouth right next to my ear.  His hot breath made my stomach turn.

"You might reconsider—if you live long enough."  His lip brushed my earlobe.   Fed up, I thrust my head into his face and hit it hard.   Butch let out a grunt.  His lip was bleeding.  But he remained cool and gave me a menacing smile.  "Oh, you're a feisty bitch."  He rubbed his busted lip, looked at his bloody fingertips, then started sucking them.  Sick.  "You'll be begging for me to take you back, trust me."

"Whatever."  Where were they taking me, anyway?

The answer came as we stopped and they brought me into another building.  A much larger one.   The guards buzzed me in, checked me head to toe, and led me to a cavernous area with countless cells lined up over two tiers.

Anxiety lodged in my chest as Butch began to chuckle and snort.  "Silk, you may already be famous.  But ain't it nice to be somewhere where everybody knows your name?"

"What are you doing?" I said.

"The good news is—your time in the SHU is over.  But the bad news is, so is your protective custody."

"No, wait!  You can't do this!"

"Already done, pretty-boy," he said, brushing my face with the back of his hand.  "Welcome to Gen-Pop."

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Lying awake in sheets soaked with cold sweat, I felt grateful the upper bunk of my new cell remained unoccupied.  Butch left me in there, promising that I wouldn't be alone for long.  Was that supposed to be good?

From what I knew about life in Gen-Pop, I'd be afforded a great deal more freedom: outdoor open yard time, access to the law library, the canteen, even phone calls and religious services.  One might almost think that Butch had done me a favor.

But when a rude buzzer announced the start of a new day, I knew he had a plan for me.  If I didn't get shanked the moment I came in contact with the other inmates, I'd surely be tortured by the suspense of not knowing exactly when and how it would go down.  I never thought it possible to miss solitary.

My first day in B-Yard was strangely reminiscent of my first day of Junior High School.  The sun began its frenzied ascent into the desert sky.  Cloud shadows crept across the verdant lawns and concrete basketball courts.   Three discernable groups dominated the scene—the blacks, the whites and the Mexicans.  Everyone seemed to know their place.  I stood alone in a corner.  

A couple of skin-heads did pullups on a steel bar, their muscular arms covered with tattooed swastikas.  On the other side of the yard, a black guy did dips while two brothers stood by his side, talking and gesticulating aggressively.  Not daring to make eye contact, I kept my head down.

Every time an inmate walked past me or looked my way, my blood pressure kicked up a few notches.  Did they know who I was, what I was in for?  What I wouldn't give to be invisible.  On the other hand, I was grateful for the fresh air.  It had been months since I'd been in an open, outdoor area larger than the Dog Walk.

I shut my eyes, faced the sky and let the warmth of the sun bathe my face.  I couldn't help but smile.  If only for that short moment, it felt almost as if I'd been released.  Until I caught a hard blow between the shoulder blades and fell to the grass. 

Dull but excruciating pain shot up my spine.  I saw nothing but several pairs of legs passing by.  From the laughs and insults in Spanish, I could tell that I'd just been welcomed by Northern Mexicans.  I didn't want to get up too quickly, lest they take it as a sign I wanted to fight back.  But if I stayed down too long, someone would notice and from now on, I'd be marked easy prey.  Great first impression.

I got up, dusted myself off and watched the backs of their heads as they strutted away.  One of them turned back and glared at me.   I frowned and nodded at him with my chin.  He pointed his chin at me.  If I wasn't mistaken, he just told me to watch my back.  Either that, or I was
carne muerto
.

Reaching around my back, I felt where I'd been hit and then examined my fingers.  No blood.  I exhaled in relief but kept looking over my shoulder as I started to walk.  The last time I looked there wasn't a wall in my path, but that's exactly what it felt I had walked into when I turned around.  My head recoiled and I nearly lost balance again.

"Watch it!" said the wall, a bald Caucasian man with a scar across the side of his face.  He towered over me.  I'd seen some big guys before, but this guy made them look like midgets.  He grabbed me by the shirt and slammed me against a concrete wall, squinting tightly at me.

I tried to apologize, but the wind had been knocked from me.  My mouth opened and shut like that of a dying fish.  Aside from his formidable stature, he seemed unremarkable.  The only thing that stood out in my mind was the  tattoo on his arm.  A crucifix with the bleeding Christ hanging on it.

I shook my head,
Please don't kill me
.  He let me down and shoved me back.  Nearly falling on my hindquarters, I braced myself against the wall.

"You stupid or something?" he said, glaring at me.  "Keep gawking at the sky like some kind of idiot and someone'll get the idea to kill you—just for the fun of it."

My chest heaving, I tried to speak.  "Sorry...I didn't—"

"Stay out of my way!"  Anything I might say would have sounded stupid.   Thanks for the advice—oh, and by the way, thanks for not squashing me like a cockroach.  I just nodded and watched him leave.  He strode directly into a mass of white inmates who quickly spread out and made a path. 

But what puzzled me was when he walked right into a group of black cons and they did the same, though with some furtive taunting.  Behind his back.  You could tell they respected him.  Or feared him, anyway.  Something told me it wasn't just because of his size.

___________________

That I survived my first day in the yard, that no one appeared to have recognized me as Sam Hudson, was highly suspect.  Butch was definitely up to something.  An inmate convicted of my crimes would be targeted right away.  But having me shanked right away would rob him of the fun of watching me wander like a kitten in a junkyard full of rabid dogs.  I would give him no such satisfaction.

That afternoon I had a visitor.  My heart skipped a beat when Rachel Cheng, came to visit.  As my defense attorney she had been filing for an appeal while Mack, the private investigator she hired continued looking for the real killer.