Another example of government budget cuts, apparently a lot of prisoner transport was now handled by private companies – and the cheaper, the better. And just as the government was trying to cut corners, so too were the private transport companies – why pay for two guards when one would get the job done just as well? And what did it matter if the pay was poor and the training was substandard? After all, the cons were all chained up, and we were just being taken from one secure location to another.
I stared out of the window, and saw Lafayette Park through the mesh. The sight made me feel hollow inside – I remembered all too well being there with Kane, and although I hadn’t enjoyed it at the time, now I yearned for it with surprising passion. I knew what it was though – it was the feeling that my freedom was gone, snuffed out in the blink of an eye. I was just a cog in the great machine now, a mere number in the prison system.
The park retreated into the distance, and the longing became worse, the feeling that I’d made the wrong choice with this job like a knife in my gut.
I was starting to miss Kane too, which I knew was ridiculous – it had only been a few hours since I’d last seen him, after all. But I’d been on the road with him so long, it was hard to imagine being somewhere without him, and my sense of loneliness and helplessness just grew and grew as the van worked its way north on Franklin Street.
You’re being an idiot, I warned myself. You’re giving in already.
What I needed to do was concentrate on the job at hand, not cry about what I was missing. Kane was quite happy being looked after by Powell, and – if push came to shove – I’d escape if I had to.
And so I reminded myself of what the job at hand actually was – to infiltrate the prison and find out what happened to Patrick Murphy, what was going on at San Quentin. Stop it, if I could.
Murphy had been nineteen years old, died of an apparent heart attack although his latest medical showed him to have an iron constitution, and witnesses claim to have seen his body, beaten black and blue. There was also a new warden in charge, under whose watch the death-rate had increased substantially. Was there a link? Was the warden to blame? And if so, why? And was there any link to the place being on lockdown while an investigation into its death row facilities was underway?
There were a lot of questions, and no answers. And as just one more con, how likely was it that I’d find those answers?
I needed a strategy, and the gang angle was one that would have to be played. On the outside, Murphy had kept himself relatively clean; and yet, to survive on the inside, apparently he had started hanging out with members of the Aryan Brotherhood, a nasty white supremacist gang that had been born inside San Quentin back in the 1960s. It had originated along racial lines after Californian jails were desegregated, although it had since spiraled into a huge organized crime syndicate, both inside and outside of jail. I didn’t blame Murphy for aligning himself with the gang – making choices like that was what surviving in prison was all about; if you’re not with them, you’re against them. And if the figures Powell gave me were true – that the Aryan Brotherhood was responsible for 30% of the murders in the federal prison system, despite only making up 0.1% of the population – then siding with them was a real no-brainer, no matter what your own personal attitudes were.
I wasn’t sure if Mitch Delaney – whose place I had now taken – was connected to the brotherhood in any formal way, but some of the Celtic tattoos that covered my body were decidedly suggestive of racist intent; and whatever Delaney’s own personal connections, I was sure they’d get me off to a good start with the guys inside. Racist shitheads they might be, but they would also be a valuable source of information on Patrick Murphy and would offer protection from the other gangs who might otherwise take exception to my skin-headed, tattooed, white-supremacist presence there.
Maybe.
But then again, maybe the whites would be just as keen to attack me as the blacks and the Latinos.
Getting in with the brotherhood – however unpalatable – was a strategy, however, and was definitely better than nothing.
I had to be cognizant of the fact that the brotherhood itself might be behind the increased violence – murder statistics like those Powell gave me made it a fair suspect for involvement at some level or other – and might actually have been actively involved in Murphy’s death. As a result, my prying might make them a little “unfriendly”, to say the least; but I would cross that bridge if and when I came to it.
Talking about bridges, we were rolling across the Golden Gate Bridge now, still heading north to our new home. In the thick, heavy mist below, I knew that out in the waters to the east lay Alcatraz Island, home – once upon a time, at least – to an even more notorious prison than San Quentin. At least, I consoled myself, I wouldn’t have to escape from there; rumors that the only people to have ever made it as far as the water were later eaten alive by sharks was enough to put anyone off, especially me. Sharks had freaked me out since watching Jaws as a kid, and were one hell of a good reason to stay on dry land.
With the mist closing in around us, obscuring my view of the world outside, I took another look around the van. Here we were, all the “new fish” that were about to be thrown to the lions. Everyone was nervous, I knew that; it was just like going into a combat mission with the Rangers. You could train for it, you could even have experienced it before, but the adrenaline surge was still there – muted perhaps, but there all the same. Everyone was nervous, but some knew how to channel that energy, the cons who’d been there before, or at least places like it. Some of these guys had probably be in and out of institutions like San Quentin all their adult lives. But I knew the nerves would be there anyway.
How could I be so sure?
Because I’d been into combat hundreds of times in my life, and I was still as nervous as hell.
And when the big black gates finally emerged out of the mist before us, floodlights illuminating the white signs that announced our arrival at DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS – CALIFORNIA STATE PRISON – SAN QUENTIN, I felt a chill go through my body as I realized we’d passed the point of no return.
And there was no going back now.
Chapter Three
“You eyeballing me, you piece of gutter-shit?”
We were lined up in the stark, white-walled foyer of San Quentin’s Reception Center, as the reception staff – led by this big, gruesome bastard who was shouting at me – had a good look at all of us.
The guy’s nametag read Officer Herbert L. Bush, and he must have weighed nearly three hundred pounds, a lot of it in his moustache. A couple of other guards looked on in amusement, while other members of administrative staff busied themselves with paperwork.
It reminded me of basic training, and I knew I could take it, no questions asked. It had been a long time, but I found the sound of this man’s gravelly voice hurling abuse at me strangely comforting.
At the same time, the Reception Center itself provided something of an obstacle to my progress; processing new inmates – which included compiling and evaluating criminal records, dental records, medical records, mental health and physiological records, life and social histories, among other things – could take up to 120 days.
Four damn months just to get inside the actual prison itself!
Now, as a young recruit in the Rangers, I quickly learned to keep my mouth shut; “become the grey man” was advice freely given, and I supposed the same would hold true here. If you don’t get noticed, you don’t get into trouble.
But the problem was, in the Reception Center, I had no real way of getting information from the people in the more important parts of San Quentin; and if I couldn’t learn about them, the next best thing was for them to learn about me.
“I don’t have to eyeball you,” I shot back to the guard, “I can fuckin’ smell you, you fuckin’ pig.”
There was a sudden, shocked silence that ripped through the foyer as everyone tried to process what I’d said.
So
far, so good.
Then the other inmates couldn’t help themselves and started to snicker, some to laugh outright.
And then the guard’s metal baton crashed hard into my face, and the laughing stopped immediately.
The pain was ferocious, and my head snapped back as if I’d been in a car crash. Tears came to my eyes and I felt hot blood wash down my face from my broken nose as I fell to my knees.
“Best you learn this lesson fast, gentlemen,” Officer Bush said with a grim smile. “You aren’t on the streets now, and I don’t give a good fuck who you think you were on the outside. In here, you’re fucking dogs, and I’m the dog trainer, you got me?” He tapped his name-badge with the tip of his steel baton. “Officer Herbert L. Bush,” he said proudly, “you boys better remember that name, because one day –”
Bush never got a chance to finish his pep-talk, as I surged forward in a low tackle, my shoulder digging deep into his large gut and knocking him flat on his ass. I tried to move forward, to capitalize on the attack, but the chains between my ankles slowed me down and I misstepped and almost fell; and the next thing I knew, another baton had smashed me in the back of the head and I was down again, dazed and clawing frantically at the air above me.
I saw a couple of the other inmates racing forward to stick the boot into Officer Bush, saw through half-closed eyes the other guards beating them back with their batons; then heard an alarm sounding, shots fired; the sound of running feet, heavy boots; the feeling of fists and batons hitting my prone body . . . and then nothing.
When I woke up, I was chained to a hospital bed; armed guards surrounded me, and a man in a suit sat on a metal chair next to me, just out of arm’s reach.
My head hurt like a sonofabitch, and as I adjusted position in my bed, I realized that everything else hurt too; I didn’t think anything was broken, but my body was pretty banged up.
“Ah,” the man sitting across from me said, “you’re awake.” His tone was brusque and efficient, like a surgeon’s; and yet I didn’t think he was a doctor. “My name is Nathaniel Gordon,” he continued. “I am the Warden here.”
It took me by surprise; the big shot had already come out to assess his crazy new prisoner in person.
“And your name is?” he asked, eyebrow arched.
“Delaney,” I said. “Mitch Delaney.”
“Delaney,” Gordon said, nodding his head as he consulted his notes.
The infirmary was stark and plain, white-washed walls and metal furniture. I counted six guards around me, two more next to him; they weren’t taking any chances this time.
Gordon was a dapper-looking man with the air of the accountant about him. Small and neat, he was the epitome of institutional efficiency; his hair was still rich and dark despite being in his fifties, and a pair of intelligent, raptor-like eyes sat behind tinted spectacles.
He looked up from his notes and regarded me coolly.
“It says here that you’re with us for eight years, on drug charges.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, shaking the cobwebs out of my head and answering the man cordially; there were no other inmates here to show off to, and this man was a potentially huge source of information. It was a gift to have met him so quickly, and I didn’t want to squander it with the same routine I’d used on Bush.
“No real evidence of violence in the reports,” he carried on, “nothing to suggest problems with anger or aggression – nothing unusual, anyway.”
“I guess that’s right, sir,” I agreed.
Gordon leaned back in his chair and tapped his teeth with the end of his pen as he thought. “Why the demonstration out in the foyer then?” he asked. “Don’t you know that we’re assessing you here at the Reception Center? Your actions, your behavior, your conduct here, that’s going to have very real repercussions for your time here with us.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at me. “Eight years,” he said, “could have been commuted to four with good behavior.” He shook his head sadly. “But now you’ve gone and assaulted a guard, caused a damned riot.”
A riot? I wondered what the two dozen other prisoners had done after I’d been knocked unconscious, and recognized that my little plan had perhaps been even more effective than I’d intended.
“Your sentence will go up,” Gordon said, looking at me over his glasses, reminding me for a moment of that preppy asshole at the park the other day. “You do know that, don’t you?”
I nodded my head, showing embarrassment and sorrow for my actions. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I’ve never been somewhere like this, I guess I was scared, wanted to impress the other guys, you know . . .”
“Well, I think you’ve done that, at least,” he said. “But at what cost?” His head started to shake sadly again. “I’ve seen guys like you here before, pulled in for a relatively minor infraction, a few years at most; but they can’t handle the ‘big house’, they get into trouble over and over again, and in the end . . . well, Mr. Delaney, the truth is that they never leave. They come in with four years for vehicle theft, out in two, but end up with an additional hundred and eighty years on their damned sentence.” He looked at me gravely. “Is that going to be you?”
“No, sir,” I said, as adamantly as I could manage.
“I hope not,” Gordon said, and I believed him. “Neither of us want that, I can assure you.” He scribbled some notes and then abruptly stood from his chair, guards scurrying around him before he stopped and turned back to me. “And if I can offer a further word or two of advice,” he said, “when they let you out of the infirmary, make sure you try and stay out of Officer Bush’s way. He is not a man who forgives and forgets easily.”
“Yes sir,” I said, “I’ll be sure to do that.”
The warden nodded, and I detected a hint of a smile on his otherwise business-like face; I suspected he didn’t believe me, and knew he would be hearing from me again soon.
I sighed, and settled back into my bed; and despite the pain that wracked my entire body, I knew he was right.
He would be hearing from me again, and soon.
The strategy seemed to be working so far.
Chapter Four
I looked around the dining hall with interest – I’d been at San Quentin a week already, and this was my first time at chow, because Gordon had given me seven days in an isolation cell as punishment for assaulting Officer Bush.
That wasn’t the last of it, of course; the incident would doubtless add several years to my sentence. But seeing as I had no intention of staying here beyond doing the job I’d been paid for, that didn’t bother me in the slightest.
I knew that Gordon was trying to make an example of me. Isolation – 23 hours a day in your cell, with only an hour’s walk around a small yard – was one of the worst punishments an inmate could get. Being alone wasn’t a natural human condition – we’re social animals, evolved to rely on the company of others.
Wandering around the States though, I was used to being on my own, sometimes for days on end. Kane was with me, sure, but he couldn’t chat back to me, and I’d long since grown accustomed to being apart from human company.
Sometimes I liked it, but I no longer needed it; and as a result, the seven days passed easily.
I was, however, extremely frustrated by the isolation for another reason – it meant I couldn’t investigate anything, which was the only reason I was at San Quentin in the first place.
Well, perhaps that wasn’t entirely true; on day six of isolation, a guard had passed a note into my cell along with my lunch. The piece of paper was folded into a tight little square, and when I opened it up, it was wafer-thin, the writing barely discernable. But with a little persistence, I could just about make it out.
When you get out, ask for Mankell.
That was it – no indication about who I should ask, or who Mankell was, or why I would want to ask for him in the first place.
But it was something to mull over as I repeated endless sets of bodyweight exercises in my cell – hundreds of squa
ts, burpees, pushups and dips, the only useful thing I could do in there.
And now I was in the dining hall – still only in the Reception Center, but at least out of isolation – I looked about for any indication of who this Mankell guy was.
“Hey,” said the lanky homeboy who’d sat next to me on the bus, sliding into the chair next to me, “so you’re out.”
“Looks like it,” I said. “You miss me?”
“We all missed you, man,” he said with a grin. “That was a hell of a way to start your fuckin’ sentence man, that’s for damn sure.”
I slopped my food from side to side on my plate, trying to identify it. It could have been porridge, but there was no way of knowing for sure. “Food like this every day?” I asked.
“Shit, man, that’s the good stuff you got there. Just fuckin’ wait until dinner, you feel me?”
“I feel you,” I said, leaving my spoon standing up in whatever was in my bowl as I looked around the hall. There were a lot of eyes on us, a lot of whispered conversations. I realized then that I was chatting to a black guy, which was a questionable act in a place like this; if I wanted to get in with the Aryan Brotherhood, I was going to have to change tactics.
For a brief moment, I considered reaching across and banging the homeboy’s head off the dining table; it was a move that would definitely get the right tongues wagging. But there were two problems with that – one, I didn’t want to waste another week in the hole; and two, I wasn’t a racist asshole. Maybe, I decided, I wouldn’t be joining the brotherhood after all. I was sure there would be other ways of getting what I wanted.
Just be yourself, my old grade school teachers had told me, and it was still good advice.
“Do you know a guy called Mankell?” I asked, and I watched as the guy’s eyebrows twitched upwards subconsciously.
THE THOUSAND DOLLAR BREAKOUT: Colt Ryder Uncovers A Deadly Fight Club At San Quentin State Prison . . . Will He Escape With His Life? Page 3