‘I’ll write you,’ said Klein. ‘Soon as I get settled.’
‘Be the first letter I ever got in here,’ said Claude. He mustered a big smile. ‘Shit man, that’s great. Great news. It’s right too. It’s right.’
He wanted to tell Klein about his own upcoming shot at parole but he did not dare. Stokely would see how he was using them and would find some way to fuck him up. Claude reached across the table and pumped Klein’s hand.
‘It’s right,’ he said again.
‘I just wanted to pay my respects before I left.’
Claude’s heart squeezed. Pay his respects. No one paid their respects to Claude Toussaint. People had kissed his ass when he was Agry’s wife because they knew he – or she – could have them worked over by Agry’s men. And sometimes she had done so just because she could do it. But they hadn’t respected him. They’d feared Agry.
‘Thanks, Klein, I,’ he was lost for words. ‘I mean, good luck, man. Take care of yourself out there.’
‘I’ll try,’ said Klein. ‘I’d best get back for third count. Don’t want to collect a penalty on my last day.’
‘Sure,’ said Claude. He fought with a lump in his throat.
Klein stood up. ‘When you get out, you look me up.’
Claude clambered to his feet. ‘Jesus, man, you better believe it.’
‘Well.’ Klein stuck out his hand. Claude shook it again. Klein smiled at him.
Then, from the rear gate sally of the mess hall, came a scream. A wet, blubbering scream that pierced Claude’s bowels as it peaked and then shuddered to a halt in a breathless sob.
Klein turned his head. The smile on his face dissolved into an expression of pure dread. Claude turned in the direction of Klein’s stare.
‘Wounded man coming through!’
Stumbling down the centre aisle, half-dragged, half-carried by a man on either side, was Sonny Weir of A block, a small time thief and supposed stool pigeon. Cradled in his right hand was the stump of his left arm, cut clean through six inches below the elbow. He was covered in blood and his face was crazed with pain and terror. His mouth twisted into grotesque shapes, sucking for more air to scream with.
‘Wounded man coming through!’ hollered Bubba Tolson again.
Bubba, his beard powdered with grey cement dust, had one massive tattooed arm wrapped round Weir’s waist. On the other side was the psycho’s psycho, little Hector Grauerholz.
Up and down the canteen there was a commotion, a clamour of gasps and obscenities, as the men of B block stood up in their seats. The bloody huddle veered towards Claude’s table. Klein started forward, Claude guessed to help the bleeding man. Stokely was on his toes, watching, tensed and suspicious. All attention was on the gruesome spectacle of the wounded man.
Claude turned away, nauseated.
From the corner of his eye he saw a bulky figure emerge from behind the serving hatches and glide, fast and silent, towards Stokely Johnson.
It was Nev Agry.
Claude’s bowels turned to slime water. He opened his mouth but his throat was paralysed.
To his left Grauerholz and Tolson suddenly heaved Weir’s body through the air towards Klein. Weir toppled forward in a shower of blood and fell, smashing his face on the back of a plastic chair before Klein could catch him.
Nev Agry was five paces from Stokely’s back, his eyes glittering. Stokely, fists clenched and cocked, was focused on Bubba Tolson, who bore down on him screaming something about niggers.
The dull whomp of an explosion and a gust of flame erupted from the back of the mess hall. Then another.
Yells of panic crowded Claude’s head.
Inmates began to clatter from their tables, spilling trays of food, falling over each other to escape the fire.
Stokely kicked Bubba Tolson in the belly and stepped back to regain his balance. Agry closed in, his face shining with malice. His hand came up from his side. A razor winked as it rose to strike at Stokely’s neck. Stokely still hadn’t seen him in the confusion. Claude’s voice tore free of his throat.
‘Stoke!’
As Stokely turned to face Agry, Hector Grauerholz raised a pistol and shot Stokely Johnson through the side of the face. Blood splashed Claude’s cheeks as Stokely spun and went down.
Klein fell on Grauerholz, wrestling for the gun in his hand.
Myers reeled away screaming as Bubba Tolson dashed a jar of oven cleaner into his eyes and ran on past.
Shattering glass, more explosions – one, two – more flames. Molotov cocktails. Panic-stricken men scrambled down the hall, stampeding for the door in a mob. Noise and smoke swirled past Claude as he stood rooted to the spot, staring at his worst nightmare: Nev Agry.
And Claude suddenly knew that all this – all this– was for him. And he felt sick to his gut. All for him: Nev Agry had come to take his woman back.
After that something seemed to switch itself off in Claude’s brain. He watched without emotion as Agry raised his foot and stomped mindlessly on Stokely’s bloody head. As if in a slow motion underwater dream Claude felt himself dragged through space, felt a hand hook under his left armpit and clamp the back of his head in a half-nelson. He did not resist. His limbs were putty. He felt Agry’s blade against his neck, heard Agry’s voice bellow in his ear.
‘Klein!’
Klein had Grauerholz’s neck locked in the crook of his left elbow, the psycho’s gun wrist gripped in his right hand. He froze and looked up from Grauerholz’s purpling face.
‘Let the kid go,’ said Agry. ‘I need him.’
Klein glanced at Claude and tightened his arm round Grauerholz’s throat.
‘I need you as well, you stupid fuck,’ said Agry. Claude felt Agry shake him like a doll. ‘And this bitch too. But I can do without you all, I have to.’
‘I hate to say this, Agry,’ said Klein. His teeth were gritted with the effort of controlling his anger. ‘But you just made it to the top of my shit list.’
Klein let go of Grauerholz’s neck and with a fast move of both hands twisted the revolver from the psycho’s grip. Grauerholz fell coughing to his hands and knees. Klein cocked the pistol and held it down by his thigh. He stared at Agry. Claude felt the blade disappear. A hand shoved him in the back and he staggered forwards towards Klein. Klein, surprisingly light on the balls of his feet, moved over to give himself space.
‘Take her back to D block, Klein,’ said Agry.
Klein didn’t move. Agry grinned at him.
‘Understand right now, Doc, before you fuck yourself up. This is total war. Us against the rest. And there’s only one side of the line you can stand on.’
Klein looked at him and understood that Agry was right. His face became cold, expressionless. He walked over and took Claude by the arm. Claude still felt numbed by the chaos of which he was the centre. Klein spoke into his ear with quiet urgency. ‘Let’s go.’
A raw cough came from the floor. ‘I want . . .’ Another cough. Grauerholz pushed himself backwards onto his knees. ‘I want my fucking gun back, Nev.’
Agry sneered at him. ‘You just lost it, asshole. Johnson was mine, I told you. Mine. Now get the fuck up and get to work.’
Grauerholz stumbled to his feet. He stared at Klein with molten hatred. Klein, aiming from the hip, pointed the gun at Grauerholz’s chest.
‘There’s something you should understand too, Agry, before Hector here fucks up.’
Klein was white in the lips and trembling with rage. Claude had never seen him anything like this way before. Even Agry took a pace backwards. Klein, the gun rock steady on Hector Grauerholz, stared Agry in the eye.
‘If I have to I will kill this little fuck. And if I have to I will kill you too. And I will kill as many more assholes as get themselves in my way. Because I will tell you something: you guys have really rained on my parade.’
For a second Claude thought Klein was going to shoot Grauerholz where he knelt. Agry held out a pacifying hand.
‘Hey, Klein, take it
easy,’ said Agry. ‘What’s in a bunch of niggers?’
‘I was set to go home tomorrow,’ said Klein.
He swung the gun as if he might shoot Agry instead. He looked that close to losing it.
Agry, the master of losing it, recognised the condition when he saw it. ‘How the fuck was I to know ’bout your fucking parole?’ he said.
‘I only just found out myself, you cocksucker.’
If Claude had ever watched a more unlikely conversation – Nev Agry explaining himself to Klein and being told he was a cocksucker and Klein getting away with it – he couldn’t remember it. But amidst the smoke and blood of his dreamy state it all seemed natural enough.
‘Shit, Klein, we all have our bad days,’ said Agry.
Klein glanced down at the gun in his hand. His shoulders relaxed. He took a deep breath.
‘Just stay out my fucken way,’ he said.
The hall was filling with oily smoke and alarms were going off. Four fires were burning in scattered pools. The stampede of the fleeing black convicts into the central atrium had left them alone. From the back of the hall came a new commotion.
Agry glanced towards the noise and said to Klein, ‘Might be easier if you stayed out of ours.’
Through the rear gate of the hall burst six of the biggest white convicts in the joint, led by Horace Tolson, Bubba’s equally bearded and monstrous twin. They charged in unison down the length of the near deserted hall, voices raised in battle. They were preceded by the first ten feet of a red thirty-foot iron girder that they carried between them. Claude watched vacantly as the bevelled tip of the girder sped towards him. His arm jerked painfully in its socket as Klein dragged him out of the way. As Tolson and the girder thundered past Claude read the number ‘99’ written on its side. He looked at Klein. The sight of the girder seemed to sober him.
‘Goddamn you,’ Klein said, quietly, to Agry.
Agry shrugged, smiled, back in control again. ‘Just do us both a favour, Doc, and we’ll forget what’s been said.’
Klein, accepting the inevitable, said, ‘What do you want?’
‘Walk the little lady back home for me. To D.’
Claude slowly realised that ‘the little lady’ meant him. That is, her.
Claudine.
Shit, he thought. Not Claudine again. A woman’s fucking work was never done.
Her arm jerked in her socket again and Claudine stumbled down the aisle of the canteen as Klein hauled her along behind him. From up ahead came a shattering crash of destruction as the girder found its mark in the central watchtower. Claudine didn’t care. She was dwelling on how unfair it was. She’d only just got used to being Claude again. And now it was back to her. Claudine. Oh well. She sighed and started thinking about what dress and which lingerie to wear. Something sexy, she supposed. A nice surprise.
For when Nev got back home from work.
FOURTEEN
KLEIN FLINCHED FROM the rending crash as the bellowing of Horace Tolson’s ramming squad climaxed in the destruction of the central watchtower window.
The reinforced plexiglass cracked without shattering but the bolts fixing it to the frame were torn free. The red girder penetrated six feet into the command and control room and its rear end clanged to the flagstones as the squad let go of their ropes. Keeping close to the wall as he led Claude around the atrium, Klein watched as Bubba Tolson ran up to the hole in the tower’s side with a flaming Molotov cocktail and pitched it inside. There was a blast of flame and smoke. Seconds later the door of the tower swung open and two scorched guards staggered out, carrying old man Burroughs between them. One of them dropped Burroughs’s legs and sprinted for the exit. The other hitched Burroughs over his shoulder and staggered after the first.
The smoking atrium was July 4th in a precinct of hell by way of Hieronymus Bosch. Whilst some men fled, guards and inmates alike, the guards ripping off their hats and shirts as they ran, others wheeled pointlessly back and forth emitting a pandemoniac whooping and screaming obscenities. A number of black inmates lay insensible on the ground, rolling with the random, frenzied kicks delivered to them by the revellers. From the stairway to the laundry came a stream of white guys, mainly from the Agry and DuBois cliques. They carried weapons from the garage, the machine shop, carpentry, the kitchen. Hammers, saws, wrenches; screwdrivers and crowbars; stumps of wood and steel; tyre irons, trowels, a blow torch, grease guns; cans of paint thinner and lumber preservative. Anything that might bludgeon, cut or penetrate. Anything that might blind, corrode or burn. They were all of them intoxicated, though not with alcohol or drugs. Not yet. The vast store of jailhouse wine and potato liquor, buried by the gallon in a thousand crannies, and of PCP and crack and weed and smack, stored by the ounce and the sixteenth of an ounce in hollowed out bricks and the seams of clothes and the soles of Reeboks, all this would be consumed later in a desperate search for oblivion. Now, welded into a single feverish consciousness, they were drunk with anarchy and parched by the thirst for annihilation.
There wasn’t a screw left in sight. As Klein dragged a glassy-eyed Claude towards the gate of cellblock D he kept an eye peeled for Grauerholz. No one, including the shave-headed psychopath, came at them. From the gate of cellblock C came a cacophony of wailing voices and rattling bars. Caught in the middle of their third lock and count the Blacks and Latinos on C were sealed in their cells. The men from A block had finished their count and were out and the riot had broken before Klein’s own block, D, had started theirs. Klein glanced over his shoulder as he heard a rattle of wheels behind him.
From the mess hall came a large three-sided laundry trolley covered by a dirty tarpaulin, pushed by four Agry crewmen. Agry was with them, sweating with the exertion of power, egging them on with abuse, yelling at stragglers to drag them niggers out of their fucken way. The trolley trundled past the scorched watchtower and came to rest outside the arched gateway to cellblock B. Agry ripped the tarpaulin aside. On the bed of the trolley stood an oil drum and two crates of bottles with scraps of cloth stuck in their necks. Agry directed the men as they manoeuvred the open side of the trolley into the cellblock entrance. At his command they tipped the oil drum so that it crashed over the raised step of the doorway and emptied out its contents in a splashing torrent.
As the smell suddenly hit his nostrils Klein said, ‘Jesus.’
The stink was of gasoline. Gallons of inflammable liquid flooded down the main ground floor walkway of cellblock B. Agry’s men dragged the trolley away and Klein’s guts clenched with nausea as hysterical sounds – of desperate men trying to batter their way out of their locked cells – erupted from inside the block.
One whole half of the cellblock, three crammed tiers, was still full with those who’d been waiting their turn in the mess hall. Now they were staring through the bars with the stink of impending incineration scorching their lungs.
With a flourish Agry pulled a book of matches from his shirt pocket.
Klein squeezed the revolver in his fist and shut his eyes.
He could shoot the cocksucker now, and maybe it would make a difference. He could blow Agry’s mad brains out and maybe it would save the bastards inside from incineration. Maybe without Agry to lead it the whole riot would burn out in a single pop, before things escalated into total war.
Yeah. And maybe Agry’s guys would tear Klein limb from limb, when all he had to do was go back to his cell and shut the door. And wait for this shit to finish.
Not my fucking business.
In his time Klein had heard a lot of people in terrible pain. He remembered children mangled in car wrecks; the sobbing of a man who’d accidentally severed the arm of his eight-year-old son with a chainsaw when it bounced off a nail in the wood. Klein had steeled himself to those sounds and done his job. He tried to steel himself now. Not my fucking business. But here he had no job to wrap around him for protection. It wasn’t his job to kill Nev Agry. It wasn’t his obligation. His only obligation was to himself. To survive and go free.
/>
Yet despite all the suffering he had witnessed in the emergency room he was not prepared for this: the screams of the trapped men echoing and keening from the valley of the long distance runners was the most terrible sound he had ever heard.
No. The men in B block weren’t his business.
In the frame of the arched doorway Agry lit the book of matches and held it flaring above his head. He looked across the atrium towards them and Klein realised he was staring at Claude. He felt Claude’s fingers digging into his arm.
‘Semper fi!’ screamed Agry.
Agry pitched the flaming matchbook through the archway and bolted for cover.
Klein turned his face to the wall.
A second later a blast-wave of heat rolled over his back, the sound drowning out the frenzy of the condemned men. When he turned back Claude was on his knees, sobbing wildly and biting his hands, tears pouring down his face.
‘Jesus God,’ sobbed Claude. ‘Jesus God.’
Agry stood with his men dancing and cheering around him, waving their lumps of wood and steel in the air. Klein fought down a bolus of puke. Acid leaked from the membranes of his gut. He could have blown Agry away. He hadn’t.
Live with it.
He steeled himself. Against himself. Against that weakness within, against the pity which would destroy him.
Live with it.
Klein steeled himself.
‘Jesus God,’ chanted Claude.
Klein hauled him savagely to his feet. He shouted in Claude’s face.