“To you, it might be.”
Bush laughed. “Yeah, to me, anyway. I guess you won’t be wanting to lose, though. I can see it in your eyes, you’ve got that look. Win or lose, you’ll hang in there to the bitter end, won’t you?”
“No other choice, if you want to survive.”
Bush looked around at the various gangs spread out around the yard, and nodded his head thoughtfully. “You got that right,” he said. “You damn well got that right.”
That night, for the first time in a good long while, I felt relaxed. My body ached from the fight – and from everything else that had happened over the past few days – but it wasn’t enough to bother me too much. Bush had promised he’d keep the gangs away from me, and – with money riding on this upcoming tournament – I decided to take him at his word.
I’d still sleep with one eye open, but it was better than two.
I was now housed in the maximum-security wing of the prison, known euphemistically as the “Adjustment Center”. It was where the worst, most dangerous criminals were housed, the deepest hole at San Quentin.
It occupied a short, three-floor building crammed into the yard at the back of North Block, and the staff were required to wear full riot gear at all times when inside. And to even get inside took them forty-five minutes, at which stage they were locked in here with the rest of us for their entire shift. Another three quarters of an hour to get back out when their shift finished. Security was taken seriously here, that was for sure.
It made me a little paranoid about how the hell I was going to get out of here, even if I did accomplish the mission. If it took forty-five minutes for the guys who worked here to get signed in and out – and that was just this single building, never mind the prison as a whole – then what chance did I have?
But I didn’t want to worry about that now. I would keep my eyes and ears open, and hope something came up. If I didn’t concentrate on the problem too hard, maybe I’d see the answer.
It might not even get to that stage anyway, I knew; I might not survive the damned tournament in the first place.
The cells here were all single occupancy, and the bed filled most of the tiny, six by nine room. It was smaller than your average parking space. But what the hell – in the RRD, I’d been forced to lie in a foxhole for days on end, watching and observing the enemy, taking note of their numbers, dispositions, movements. On watch, I’d not even been able to move; and during my breaks, things hadn’t been a lot better. We’d had four men in a space probably smaller than this cell, and we’d had to eat cold food and crap into plastic bags, that we’d then stuff into our backpacks.
Things might be bad here, but not that bad.
As I stretched out on the thin mattress, I considered the fact that Higgins had never mentioned anything about an illegal fight-club, and nor had anybody else that I’d spoken to. I was surprised – in a community like this, it was hard for things to remain secret for long – but at the same time, it hadn’t been a complete shock. If it had been common knowledge within the prison, Powell would probably have heard the rumors and given me the lowdown.
If the prisoners didn’t know about it, that meant the betting was more likely coming from outside. Bush had told me that a lot of money was exchanging hands, but whose money? And if it was outsiders, how did they watch the fights? Did they come into the prison? Or were the fights televised in some way, maybe livestreamed over the internet?
I had no way or knowing, and it bugged me; I was making progress, but I still didn’t have the details I needed.
What had happened to Patrick Murphy? Who had killed him, and why? Given what I’d seen, it seemed likely that he’d been killed during one of these organized prison fights, but I had no evidence, just guesswork. And who else was involved? Bush claimed to have instigated this whole thing, but did Gordon know about it?
I still didn’t have all of the information I needed, and knew there was no point in trying to contact Powell. For one, they probably wouldn’t even give me a phone call; and then, even if they did, there still wasn’t anything concrete I could give her.
And so I would wait for the tournament, and fight in it; with luck, I’d be able to identify some of the people watching it, and would finally know who else was involved.
Maybe I would even be in a position to put a stop to this whole thing? Cut Powell out of the equation completely, because how realistic was it that her human rights group would put an end to things? It would take too long, if they were successful at all, and who knew how many more people would be hurt before then?
I had no idea how I would stop things, but being on the inside would at least let me examine the options.
But for now, I told myself as I closed my eyes, a good night’s rest was what the doctor ordered.
I would deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.
Part Two
Chapter One
Two days passed, and nothing happened. No news about the tournament, no comeback from the incident in the shower block. Like being in isolation back in reception, I was in the cell for twenty-three hours a day, with just an hour’s turn around an empty yard. Meals were taken in my room, passed to me through the security grate in the thick metal door. The was no news from Officer Bush, no calls to see the warden and – luckily – no visits from any of the gangs.
I supposed that was one of the reasons I’d been placed in the Adjustment Center, so that the rest of the cons – the ones I’d upset – couldn’t get to me. It was also, I was sure, to stop me from talking to anyone about what was going on here. If I went back to general population and talked, then word would soon get back to the outside world, lockdown or no lockdown. News like that would spread like wildfire.
It made me think about the other fighters; were they all housed here? What happened to the ones who lost?
I just didn’t know, but I had a feeling that there was more to this thing than met the eye. They couldn’t just let the fighters – win or lose – back into the mainstream prison population. So what did happen to them? And what if they were released?
I supposed that maybe Bush and his cronies just picked men who were here for a long time, so release dates weren’t something that had to be worried about. But Patrick Murphy hadn’t been a lifer, he’d have got out at some stage. Or would he? I wouldn’t have put it past Bush to manufacture some sort of incident that increased a prisoner’s sentence, if it came close to their release. A fight perhaps, or drugs found in their cell, maybe a weapon. Bush could do it easily.
The successful guys, the ones that brought in the money, he would look after. But the other ones? Maybe he’d keep them in segregation, maybe . . .
Yeah, I figured, maybe he’d just have them killed. I was a realist, and – if morals weren’t your thing – then that would be the easiest way of ensuring a prisoner’s silence.
It was a disturbing thought, and made me even more determined to win, when it was my time to fight.
I used the two days in my cell as well as I could, keeping up with my routine of hundreds of push-ups, squats, dips and crunches. I practiced my fighting movements into fresh air, from boxing combinations to wrestling sprawls; and then I propped up my mattress into the corner of the cell and used it as a punching bag. It didn’t provide a lot of protection between my hands and the concrete wall, but it was better than nothing. Knowing the impact would damage my knuckles if I punched it, I kept to open-handed techniques – palm-heels, slaps, chin-jabs and edge-of-the-hand blows – and allowed myself to go hell for leather on the thing. Crashing my hands into the mattress-covered wall still jarred the joints, but it was good practice; skulls were pretty hard too, and I’d have to hit a few before I was done here.
It was a Friday night when they came for me.
“Move to the rear of the cell,” the command came through. “Turn and brace against the wall.”
I was familiar with the routine, as it was the same one they used when they took me to the exercise yard, and I moved across the
room, doing as I was told, hands against the concrete wall at the far side of the cell.
But why was anyone coming in here at this time? Meals had all been eaten, and I’d had my allotted time in the yard.
So what was this?
The guard’s voice was unfamiliar to me, but nobody had ever come into the room at this time before; maybe it was a different shift?
I heard one of the men unlock my cell door, and I started counting in my head as I stared at the wall.
I already knew that it took them two and a half seconds to enter and cross the room to me, one of them chaining my ankles up while another pulled my arms down and secured them with cuffs behind my back.
That was two and a half seconds, I told myself, that I could use if I needed to in the future; in that time, I could have whipped myself away from the wall, turned and met them in the middle of the cell.
The guards bound me tight, as they always did. “Stay there,” one of them said, another voice I didn’t recognize.
I did as instructed, although it went against all my instincts; but then I heard the cell door being locked again, and – panic suddenly gripping me – I turned around, sure I was going to get a shank right through the heart.
Instead of the gang attack I’d feared though, I was confronted by the sight of a single man, keeping a respectable distance from me, over by the cell door.
“And who the fuck are you?” I asked, although I knew all too well. Bush had already pointed him out to me, back in the South Block yard.
In his fifties, a short fireplug of a man, Celtic tattoos all over him, shaven head, neatly trimmed, greying beard.
The man was Trent Michaels, head of the Aryan Brotherhood here at San Quentin.
“You know who I am,” he said. “Trouble is, who are you?”
“What do you mean?”
Michaels smiled, and the effect wasn’t pleasant. “I mean, you’re here under the name of Mitchel Delaney. But I’ve had word on the street that Mitch Delaney is out and about, free as a bird. Tried to get cut in on a meth deal with the Nazi Lowriders, a group we’re connected to.”
Aw, shit.
Delaney, you dumb sonofabitch, why couldn’t you have just laid low for a while?
“I guess your guys must have made a mistake,” I said, trying to sound confident but all too aware that I was handcuffed and chained, and this guy had a serious rep for extreme violence.
It figured that I hadn’t recognized the voices of those guards – they weren’t working a different shift, they’d been bought off by Michaels, which proved the power he had in this prison. He was a man who could make things happen.
“No,” he said, taking a seat on the edge of my bed, “no, I don’t think so. You don’t mind if I sit down, do you? At my age, standing’s a real pain in the ass.”
“Go ahead,” I said, knowing that he wasn’t really asking my permission.
“So,” he said, “who are you, son? Who are you, really?”
“I’m Mitch Delaney,” I persisted. “Why would I be here otherwise?”
“That’s a good question,” Michaels said, eyes narrowing. “My best guess would be that you’re here undercover, and you’re using the Delaney identity to give you some credibility.”
Damn – he wasn’t far from the truth.
“The only question is, who are you working undercover for? DEA? FBI? Local cops?”
I shook my head and continued to protest my innocence. “I’m not working for anyone,” I said.
“Okay,” Michaels said, nodding. “Okay. Let me say this – I don’t believe a fucking word you’re telling me. Not a fucking word. And I’m not a man you should be lying to, do you understand?” He pulled out a long piece of metal, wrapped with cord at one end and filed into a sharp point at the other, and held it up in my direction. My heart constricted hard, and I could feel my balls pulling up back into my body.
Then Michaels shrugged his shoulders, put the pick down on the mattress next to him. “On the other hand, if you are what I think you are, some fucking piece of shit cop, then maybe I don’t want to go and cut you up. Might be bad for business, if you know what I mean.” He pulled out a cellphone from his jumpsuit, and held it out to me. “But maybe this might make you open up to me a little.”
I peered forward, and looked at the screen, which seemed to be showing a video – live or recorded, I couldn’t be sure. It was dark, but I could hear a man whimpering in pain.
“What is this?” I asked him.
“This is Mitchel Delaney,” Michaels answered, and then I could suddenly make out the images on the screen – a man, naked and tied to a chair in what looked like a trailer. A man who looked a lot like I did at the moment – the same age and build, the same haircut, the same tattoos. Exactly the same tattoos. The only difference was that this man had been beaten half to death. “After you disrespected Mankell and assaulted one of my boys, I took an interest in you. Began asking questions to my friends on the outside, and you better trust me when I tell you, I got a lot of those.” He sniffed. “Anyway, my buddies were looking into your background – or should I say, Delaney’s background – when I get this story from the Lowriders. So, I sent word for my boys to get ahold of this mysterious guy, you know? Because, how can there be two of you? It just didn’t make sense.”
He pointed at the man on the screen, slumped and bloody in his high-backed chair. “Got them to ask him some questions, right?” Michaels continued. “Weird thing is though, he doesn’t know who you are. Says you just turned up at the county jail, did a bit of quick-changing and sent him on his way.”
My mind was racing, thinking about how I could limit this damage. He already knew for sure I wasn’t Delaney, so what I had to do was make sure he didn’t let anyone else know. Contain it, and then take it from there.
“Have you told anyone else about this?” I asked.
“You ready to talk to me?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “I’m ready to talk.”
“Good. I don’t like it when guys don’t talk. I used to like it,” he said thoughtfully, as if reminiscing. His hand rested on the pick next to him, as if it was the source of many memories. “When people didn’t talk, I used to like it a lot – gave me a reason to go to work on ’em, you see. And I enjoyed that a lot. But I’m getting older now, and I guess I’m past all that, unless I really have to. Yeah, nowadays I prefer it if people just talk.” His hand came off the pick, and he looked me in the eye. “So, who are you?”
“I don’t work for the cops,” I said, getting that out of the way first. “You heard what I did to those black guys in the shower block, right? You know a cop wouldn’t do that.”
“Yeah,” Michaels said with a grin, “I did hear about that. Good work, by the way. Filthy fuckin’ niggers. Almost makes up for what you did to Loki. But if you’re not a cop, what are you?”
“Kind of like a PI,” I said. “I was hired by people connected to a man called Patrick Murphy, you know him?”
“Yeah,” Michaels said cagily. “I think so.”
“Died here recently, authorities registered it as a heart attack, but my clients believe it to be something else. His body was seen by someone, they described it as being beaten black and blue.” I shrugged. “So, they sent me here to investigate.”
“Shit,” Michaels said, “you take your job seriously, don’t you? You willing to get locked up in here, just to investigate the death of some fuckin’ loser? Shit, I hope they’re payin’ you one hell of a lot of money.”
“Not really,” I said.
“Oh,” he responded, nodding his head. “You’re one of those. A crusader, right? Only, you got a stinkin’ orange jumpsuit instead of a cape, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, my friend, maybe I can help you out a little, okay? You might have already figured this out, but Patrick Murphy didn’t die of a heart attack. He was killed here. In the fights.”
“You know about the fights?”
“Hell so
n, I know about everything that goes on in here. So yes, I know about the fights. And I remember Murphy, because I had high hopes for that boy. A professional MMA fighter, can you imagine! What a result. And the kid was white too, so I liked him right away. He signed on to our little crew here pretty quick, if I recall. Became brotherhood progeny.”
“Progeny?” I asked.
“Yeah, full members are kindred, they can recruit progeny, act as mentors for them, bind them into our family.”
“Sounds cozy.”
“It works, and that’s all that matters.”
“So, you knew Murphy.”
“Not too well. Had high hopes for him though, thought we could make some money off him. Won a few fights before Deke Jasper got to him. One hell of a fighter is Deke, he’s won a lot of bouts here. Now, Murphy was good, but too sporting, not used to the real stuff. Jasper rammed his head into a wall, if memory serves me correctly, then bit his fuckin’ throat out.”
“Bit his throat out?” I asked for confirmation.
“Damn right he did, tore a chunk out of the poor bastard’s throat, fuckin’ blood everywhere. Guy bled out in the end, and there was Deke, just lookin’ at him, bits of flesh hanging out of his mouth. He threw it up a few seconds later, coughed up that blood and meat right out, onto the arena floor.”
“Sounds like a nice guy.”
“He’s not,” Michaels assured me. “He’s a fuckin’ stone-cold, old-school psychopath.”
“He still fighting? I’ll be sure to watch out for him.”
“Yeah, he’s still fightin’, ain’t nothin’ gonna stop that boy but death. Anyway, now you know about Murphy. So what are you gonna do now? Escape?” He laughed, as if the idea was ludicrous. The trouble was, he was probably right.
“The thought had occurred to me.”
“Don’t,” Michaels warned. “Don’t even try it. You wouldn’t have a chance, anyway. And more importantly, I have something I want from you.”
THE THOUSAND DOLLAR BREAKOUT: Colt Ryder Uncovers A Deadly Fight Club At San Quentin State Prison . . . Will He Escape With His Life? Page 7