Claudine’s thoughts returned to the present as Stokely’s fucking got faster and deeper. She gripped the sheet in her fingers. Stokely ejaculated, smoothly and without violence, and paused for a moment with his weight resting on big fists placed on either side of her head. His sweat dripped down onto her back in big warm splats. The pause lengthened and Claudine feared its end. It came with Stokely’s rough, contemptuous withdrawal and she jerked away with a loud grunt as her pelvic muscles went into a painful spasm.
‘Shut it, bitch.’
The softness in Stokely’s tone had gone until next time. Now his voice was filled with the self-loathing he couldn’t contain within himself.
‘Look at me,’ ordered Stokely.
Claudine kept her face turned away. ‘Give me a break, man, shit.’
Stokely pitched her over onto her back and she rolled into a ball, arms over her head, knees pulled up to her chest. Stokely slipped his hand over her mouth and punched her in the ribs. She grunted against the fingers clamped over her face. When she heaved in a lungful of air she smelled the stink of rubber on his hand. Stokely let go and stood up. He walked to the back of the cell and flushed away the condom. As Claudine rubbed her ribs and Stokely took a piss she reminded herself that if Hobbes kept his word she wouldn’t have to take it for too much longer.
Hobbes had promised Claudine that if she stopped dressing and acting like a woman the parole board, upon his recommendation, would look favourably on her upcoming review. Hobbes had pointed out that the members of the board could hardly be expected to release a man who turned up with long red-painted nails and lipstick and fluttered his false eyelashes at every question. Claudine, in her turn, had pointed out that she had no choice: Nev Agry would’ve had her killed on her way back across the yard. Hobbes had guaranteed her safety – but only if she transferred to B block. Claudine had been unconvinced. Even seg wasn’t safe from Agry. Then Hobbes had told her about the lockdown. Not even Agry could get to her there. And by the time the lockdown was over she would be paroled. There was still a risk, of course, but if Claude wanted to take it Hobbes would make the arrangements.
And for a moment Claudine had become Claude again and he had known that it was worth it. Worth anything to spend some time walking round the Quarter again. She – no, Goddamnit, he – would stand and breathe the gas fumes on Bourbon Street and feel his cock grow hard as he watched them long-legged bitches in short skirts strut by on their high heels. Then he’d go take a stool in Alfonso’s and drink One Hundred Pipers through a straw. Yeah. With a big roll of twenties in his pocket. He wondered if any of the bitches would remember him. He hadn’t been blown in a long time.
So Claude had said yes to Hobbes and here he was, with his new cell mate fucking him in the ass.
He. His. Him. He was getting there.
‘Get dressed,’ said Stokely.
The violence in Stokely’s voice had peaked and subsided back to its normal growl. The splashing of water came from the back of the cramped cell as he washed himself down. The Ice T album came to an end and the tape deck snapped off. From down the block came the sound of someone chording a guitar and singing an Albert Collins number. Claude swung onto the edge of his bunk and reached for his pants. His. He needed an urgent shit but Stokely’s heavily muscled frame still occupied the tiny bathroom area.
‘Wilson should be back soon,’ said Claude.
Stokely turned from the sink and wiped water from his face with a white towel turned grey with use. ‘You tryin’ to say somethin’?’
‘No.’ Claude wished he hadn’t spoken.
‘You think I can’t run things right while he’s away?’
‘I didn’t say no such thing,’ said Claude.
Stokely threw the towel down and walked over to where he could tower over Claude and make him cringe. Claude cringed.
‘Wilson took you in ’cause you a disgrace to the brothers and he want to show them ofay muthafuckas we big enough to have you back.’ He clenched his right fist. ‘Cause we solid, man, you unnerstand? This is the Valley of the Long Distance Runners. The hangin’ tree’s still standin’ out there and one of these days we gonna turn the fucking sky red – but while we in here we cut it together. Otherwise we nothin’.’
‘That’s why I came back,’ said Claude.
‘Bullshit.’ Stokely stuck his finger in Claude’s face. The smell of rubber still lingered. ‘You usin’ us. I don’t know how but you usin’ us.’
‘I need a shit,’ said Claude. He tried to stand up. Stokely put a hand on his chest and shoved him down.
‘You usin’ us like you used that Agry muthafucka.’
He couldn’t tell which part of him spoke, Claude or Claudine, but suddenly he was brave with anger. ‘Agry took from me same thing you take. What’s the difference, Stokely?’
He twisted the last word as it left his tongue, camped it up high and shoved it into Stokely’s ass. Then regretted it. Stokely took a half-step backwards and clubbed him with his fist, backhanded across the mouth. Claude tasted blood. A big hand closed round his throat. Stokely lifted him off the bunk until their faces were two inches apart.
‘You talk back to me when you prove you a man again. Till then yo’ faggot ass is mine. Now go take yo’ shit, Claudine.’
Stokely let go of her and backed off. When she stopped coughing she went over to the pot, dropped her pants and sat down.
She. Her. Claudine. Fuck this, man. Get it together.
He wondered if Wilson would ever let him see Klein again. He wanted to talk with him. There was no one else he trusted. And even if there had been they wouldn’t have wanted to listen. His bowels lurched and gurgled beneath him. From the other side of the curtain he heard Stokely bellow with disgust.
‘Jesus Christ. You come out of there I’m going to fuck you up good, you bitch.’
Claude sighed and reached for the toilet roll. He liked being back on B block. He really did. As he wiped his ass he let his mind drift back to those long-legged bitches in their high heels and short skirts – and prayed he’d make it back to Bourbon Street before Nev Agry made it back to him.
SIX
SINCE THE SECOND lock and count Nev Agry had lain prostrate and alone on his bed, lighting one Lucky Strike after another, each from the butt of the last, whilst his body trembled with pain.
His eyes were wide but the ceiling of his cell did not register in his brain. Instead he saw Claudine. Her face. Her lips. Her skin. Her long, immaculate thighs. Then a picture, pornographic, too repulsive to behold, flashed before him and a bolt of nausea pierced his guts. He sat up and dug blunt, savage fingers into his eyes until the blackness before his retinas danced with flashing light. The picture disappeared. He calmed. He realised that the tape deck was playing Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys singing ‘San Antonio Rose’. Agry did not consider himself an overly sentimental kind of guy but rarely did ‘San Antonio Rose’ fail to throw a tightener round his throat. Right now it brought him close to tears.
It was there I found, beside the Alamo,
Enchantment strange as the blue up above.
A moonlit path, that only she would know,
Still hears my broken song of love . . .
Agry reached over and snapped off the cassette. The time for tears would come – his tears, the tears of others – but not right now. Nor was it yet time to eradicate the vile pictures that Perkins had seeded in his mind for only blood would wash them away. But soon, he promised himself, soon. Perkins, the white screw from B block that Agry kept in his pocket, had confirmed the truth that Agry had known in his water for some time.
The stinking black nigger scumdog Stokely Johnson was fucking his Claudine in a regular and anal fashion.
Again: the picture. Blurred bodies. Slow motion. Humping thighs. Black skin. Sweat.
Agry’s stomach rolled and tumbled. He ground his teeth against scalding bile and the breakfast eggs he had not been able to digest. He swallowed. He hauled himself to his feet. The wall
s shifted about him. The Lucky Strike clenched in his fist burned into the web of his fingers and he looked down. He saw the red tip of burning tobacco scorching his skin. He smelt the burning hairs. Yet the pain seemed far distant. He reached out for it, called it in. Suddenly it was there: stinging and bright. His hand jerked and unclenched itself. The butt fell to the floor. Slowly, Agry’s head cleared of pain and doubt. He’d made his plans. The Warden had had the gall to warn him off, as if the old fool believed he really ran this joint. Well, Nev Agry would show him different. He’d weighed the cost and the consequences and he was ready to pay. He was ready to make them all pay. Agry trod on the butt and stripped off his shirt. It was time to bring Claudine back home.
Now that Claudine had gone Nev Agry lived alone in a four-man cell at the far end of ground tier, cellblock D, in the style befitting the most powerful of the Lifer crew chiefs. Colour TV and VCR. Porn video collection, hi-fi, an orthopaedic mattress on the bed, a wooden seat on his toilet. A refrigerator. A four-speed electric fan. The door of his cell was covered by a muslin sheet. The sheet gave him privacy but displayed the silhouette of anyone who stood beyond it. And at all times in the next cell were at least two of his men prepared to take any blade or bullet meant for him.
Agry was of medium height and suffered frontal balding, a fact his short cropped hair made no effort to conceal. The skin of his body was church-candle white and lightly coated with blond hairs. He was naturally thick-set and heavily muscled, though not cut like those faggot body builders. His forearms were like hams, the left one sporting a US Marine Corps death’s head tattoo and the motto ‘Death Before Dishonor’. From his medicine chest he took a number of bottles and in turn swallowed a Megavitamin, some ginseng, a gram of vitamin C, and a handful each of fish protein and dessicated liver tablets. He swilled his gullet clear with cold mineral water. Evian. He didn’t know if any of this shit did him any good, and it was expensive, but he reckoned he needed all the help he could get. In his cell were no illicit drugs of any kind. His men carried these for him as he needed them, usually for sex, much less frequently for acts of violence. Agry hadn’t had sex for what felt like a long time. Two fucking weeks. As he put the bottle of water away he noted that he was now possessed of a deep sense of calm. The calm confirmed as nothing else could that what he had set in motion was the only right thing to do.
Agry lifted his mattress and pulled out his body armour. The homemade vest promised protection against shanks and razors: two layers of leather sealed together with epoxy resin. Embedded in the resin was a sheet of fine-mesh steel wire. He slipped his head through the hole in the centre so that the vest covered his torso back and front, and tied it in place with thongs at either side. The leather against his skin felt like war. He put his shirt back on, buttoned it to the neck and tucked it into his pants.
Semper fucking fidelis.
From beyond the curtain came a discreet cough. Agry said, ‘Come on in, Tony.’
The sheet parted and Tony Shockner walked in. Tall, rangy, twenty-nine years old and wearing wire-rimmed prison issue glasses, Shockner had the look of a Midwestern basketball coach. He was serving one hundred and eighty years for murder and armed robbery. He had executed two men in Green River on Agry’s say-so. Agry knew him to be intelligent – more so than Agry, he admitted it – and good at taking orders. If he was the man who would be king – and Agry did not think so – he concealed his ambition real well. Now he stood inside the curtain with his arms long and loose by his sides. He nodded to Agry.
‘Boss,’ he said.
‘You got something for me?’ said Agry.
Shockner put his hand in his pocket and drew out a cutthroat razor. As a rule Agry did not carry weapons – an automatic ten days in the hole – and did not keep them in his cell. With his crew around him he had no need to. Now he took the razor from Shockner and opened it. He laid it lightly against his forearm and shaved off a patch of hair. He nodded. Shockner reached in his pocket again and produced a small plastic drum that once contained raw gland tablets.
‘You wanted this too,’ said Shockner.
Agry twisted the cap off the drum. It was three-quarters full of powdered sulphate. Agry shovelled a small pyramid onto the tip of the razor and snorted mightily up his left nostril. Good. Agry held cocaine in contempt as a popsicle drug for yuppies and niggers. God knew, as did Agry, that the Marines fought three major wars on speed and it hadn’t let them down. Him neither. To his regret he’d never seen action with the Corps, having spent most of his service time in the brig pending a dishonourable discharge. Now he would prove, at least to himself, that in battle he would have been worthy of wearing their colours. He took a second snort of sulphate then capped the drum and handed it back to Shockner.
‘Help yourself and see it gets passed round,’ said Agry.
Shockner tossed the drum in his hand and pursed his lips. Behind the wire rims his eyes were troubled.
‘Something wrong?’ asked Agry.
Shockner shrugged. ‘Nerves, I guess.’
Agry pointed at the drum with the razor. ‘That’ll give you all the nerves you want and get rid of the ones you don’t.’
‘You sure they’ll go for it?’ asked Shockner.
‘Who?’
‘DuBois and the others.’
‘This ain’t no fucken democracy, Tony.’
Shockner nodded. ‘Well they’re waiting for us.’
‘Good.’
Agry turned to examine himself in the mirror. The grey eyes staring back were bright. Bitter liquid trickled down the back of his throat. He sniffed and swallowed. The sulphate was already a night train powering through the darker reaches of his nervous system. Semper fucking fi, man. He donned a pair of Ray Ban aviators and turned back to Shockner.
‘Let’s go.’
Agry and Shockner walked past the circular stairway from the third tier and out through the block gate and guard station into the central atrium. In the open top of the three-storey watchtower a guard – the old timer, Burroughs – lounged against one of the oak stanchions supporting the tower roof and picked his nose. The tower was a hexagonal cylinder of stone and wood with sheet steel reinforcing on and around the doors. From the first two storeys smoked plexiglass windows looked out on the central walkway of each of the six blocks. The ground floor of the watchtower contained the main watch command centre. Agry pictured the scene within: two guards dozing in front of a bank of black and white TV screens whose pictures changed every five seconds from one video camera to another. As did the guards, in their hearts, Agry knew that the screens were an exercise in futility. There was constant movement within the River: two and a half thousand men had to be fed, watered, exercised, clothed, laundered and provided with work. In addition the prison was vast and labyrinthine. The guards’ pitiful cameras covered only a small proportion of its total area and none of its darker reaches at all.
The basement of the guard tower housed a communications centre, now twenty years old and more, which was linked by cables running under General Purposes to the main gate reception complex. Alongside the video screens was the master control panel for the cell doors and block gates. From here the cells could be opened either individually or in whole tiers. At the gate to each cellblock was a smaller office from which alternative control of the doors was available, but which could be overridden if necessary by tower command. Agry knew it all and it was all in hand.
As Agry and Shockner turned right, away from the tower and into the mess hall, they hit the stink of spoiled food and old grease. The mess hall was quiet, empty except for those dozen or so inmates half-heartedly swabbing the floors and clearing the formica-topped tables ready for lunch. Agry cut behind the serving counters into the kitchen, into the blast of heat from the rows of blackened cooking ranges and stainless steel cauldrons. Here there was a frenzy of activity, with men in stained whites, mostly Mexicans and other ethnic losers, sweating violently over their work and trying to ignore the shrieking of Fenton, the
head chef.
‘Rice, cocksucker! Rice! Arroz! Comprendo?’
Fenton was a scrawny jig with two gold teeth that had miraculously survived seven years inside. Agry watched him with a dull stirring of disgust, dull because Fenton was an irrelevant and insignificant piece of scum unworthy of his hate. Yet, today, hate him he did because Fenton was a jig, a nigger black and vile, and not a one of them deserved the breathing of even this foul and filthy air. Not a one except Claudine. His Claudine, for whom he would sacrifice all in the holocaust of his rage. He would give them fire and sword. There would be no quarter. Agry’s intention was to burn the Valley of the Long Distance Runners into the ground and soak their nigger ashes with his piss.
At times, it seemed to him, his rage threatened to explode his body into atoms and with it the world itself. What energy he burnt in trying to contain it, what strength of will he needed to keep that fragile, leaking lid crammed shut, day by day, hour by hour. A lesser man, he knew, would long ago have cracked under the strain, but not Nev Agry. This was his pride. Yet Nev knew not where his anger came from; and vast though his portion was, it was no more than a shovelful flung upon the great unstable slag heap of anger, molten and dissolving at its core, that was Green River.
Fenton pulled off his tall chef’s hat and used it to swab his face and blow his nose. As he put the hat back on he saw Agry bearing down on him and stiffened. Fenton’s position permitted him to initiate a narrow spectrum of sycophantic banter and he was one of few jigs allowed to address Agry at all. Fenton flashed his gold teeth in a look-what-I-have-to-put-up-with type smile and jerked his head towards the Mexicans.
‘Mr Agry. Jesus Christ. Most of these fuckers too ignorant to even speak English.’
Agry kept moving and Fenton trailed along behind him and to one side. Agry spoke without looking at him. ‘Long as they know their place, Cookie. Know what I mean?’