Blood Cell

by Shaun Tennant

  Pulling into the parking lot on the grounds of Pittman Penitentiary, where he was one of the more senior corrections officers, Norris felt the weight of his crappy life lift away. Norris liked his job. It was ordered, structured, people here had discipline and rules. That was what he valued. Not to mention, the other perks.

  Norris picked up his ID badge from the dash and clipped it onto his shirt. Grabbing his lunch from the passenger’s seat, he headed into the prison. In the guards’ locker room, Norris saw some of the guys who were starting their shift at the same time. In his row, there was Matt Williams, a shorter guy with big cheeks who the inmates never saw as a physical threat; Chad Metcalf, the new guy who was so big and scary he looked more like a prisoner than a guard; and Danny Lewis, an old pro who looked like he was sixty but could disable just about anyone with his karate stuff. One time, this guy who was swear-to-God seven feet tall got knocked out cold about five seconds into a fight with Lewis. There was some king of knee thing that took him down, and then Lewis’ baton to keep him there. Norris liked whenever he was on shift with Lewis, they could shoot the shit for hours. Each of them had stories of problem inmates who learned a hard lesson. Those were Norris’ favourite stories, both to hear and to tell.

  Williams was a lot less fun to work with.

  Norris had never liked Williams. Where Norris was rigid and followed the rules of conduct, Williams was lax and flexible. Williams would socialize with the animals; get to know the names of their kids and such. Worse, Williams would talk about his own kids. Who wants to tell a murderer that they have a sweet little daughter at home? The man was clearly an idiot. Plus, Williams was practically a hippy in his time off. He was always going on nature hikes and waking up early to go bird watching. That was how the guy spent his weekends. In forests. Even during football season. Go figure.

  “Hear the news this morning?” Norris asked as he nodded a hello to Lewis, stuffing his lunch into the fridge.

  “I listen to books on tape when I drive, remember?” said Lewis.

  “I watched the news today,” said Williams. “Damn crazy, that train in France.”

  Goddamn Williams thought he knew everything. “It was in England.”

  “No, it was France. It was headed for England, but when they stopped in Paris they found all those bodies.”

  The new guy, Metcalf, chimed in. “It was France. Crazy shit. You hear that they found parts of fourteen people? But if you added up all the arms and legs and things, it was only enough for like, ten. So somebody ran off with like four whole people’s worth of body parts? They got some fucked up people in Europe, man. Glad ours are just normal cons.”

  Norris clipped his belt on and double-checked that he had everything. “Whatever.” If the new guy wanted to side with Williams, that was fine. At least Norris knew where the guy stood.

  “I don’t need any Hannibal Lectors in my jail, that’s for sure,” said Lewis. Norris hated it when Lewis was nice to Williams.

  “See you later, I’m actually going to go do my job.” Norris spoke harshly, let them hear his tone, and left before anyone responded.

  In his job, after years of service, Norris was at the point where he didn’t have to stand on guard in a pod like everybody else. He was the one who reported to the warden, did various special requests, passed things along to the other guards through the day. He sometimes had to deal with personnel shit, like if someone called in sick, but mostly that stuff was Lewis’s job. Norris started this day like any other, with a trip up the elevator to the warden’s office.

  The fifth floor of the tower had very little to it, despite having just as much floor space as the other floors. At the top of the elevator, there was a hallway containing doors to the men’s’ and ladies’ rooms, a janitor’s closet, and at the end, a door to the warden’s office. This hallway was spartan, without so much as a houseplant or a photo on the wall. Stepping though the door at the end, you found yourself in a different world. The antechamber to the warden’s office was walled in cedar paneling, with hardwood floors and various pieces of classic art on the walls. The room was ostensibly Sally’s office, with the receptionist’s desk and water cooler on the left, and a few chairs far to the right. The room was surprisingly wide, almost twenty feet despite having a depth of less than eight. This was so that whenever a prisoner was brought upstairs, the guards could always keep them a good distance away from the woman. Sally was an attractive lady, and the men in this facility didn’t see women unless they had a visitor. Just for safety’s sake, Sally’s desk came with pepper spray in the bottom drawer, and a cattle prod fixed under the desktop. She’d never had to use them.

  Norris entered the office at exactly nine a.m., the very moment his shift was starting. He had clocked in downstairs several minutes previously, but he believed that one should always be on time for the real start of work, not five minutes later. He smiled a broad, bright smile at the receptionist.

  Sally got out from behind her desk and came over to John. Slipping her hands around his head, she pulled him down for a slow kiss. Norris slipped one hand around the back of her head as well, feeling her soft black hair between his fingers. His other hand found her perfect young ass. After a few seconds of bliss, without even a twinge of thought for his wife, Norris felt her break the kiss. She pulled away and went back to her seat behind the desk, to be safe in case the warden came out.

  “What was that for?” Norris asked.

  “For you, remembering my birthday.” She held her hand, displaying the silver tennis bracelet that Norris had left in the top drawer of her desk before he left the previous day. He’d forgotten all about it, between his wife and the new guy and the damn English train massacre. Another slip. ‘Christ, I’m only forty,’ he thought.

  “Oh, that? That wasn’t me. That must be from Warden Quinn in there.” He grinned at her, she was so young and cute.

  “Eww, that would be so creepy.”

  “But it’s not creepy from me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then I guess it might be from me.” He leaned over her desk for a quick smooch. They were interrupted by the buzzer.

  “Is Norris out there yet?” Quinn sounded angry, no big surprise there.

  “Yes, sir, Officer Norris is waiting right here.” She sounded very professional, for someone caught off guard.

  “Well send him in, already.”

  Sally tilted her head toward the door and rolled her eyes. Norris didn’t like that. Sally was almost thirty; she ought to have more respect for her boss. It was so childlike, rolling her eyes. He kissed her on the cheek and headed into the warden’s office.

  “Morning, sir.”

  “Come in and sit down, John.” Usually, Quinn would entertain some small talk, but not this morning. Norris did as he was told, slipping into the chair on the other side of Quinn’s gigantic desk.

  “What’s up?”

  Quinn looked weary. “It’s that Vega. He thinks he can make the decisions in my fucking house. Telling me where to put Jimenez, going so far to confess that he’s going to kill a man on my watch.”

  “It’s terrible sir.”

  “I know that!” Quinn snapped back. “I want to make sure we get him for this. Another murder charge, even conspiracy, and we’ll have Vega until the day he dies. I want that son of a bitch.”

  “I know sir. If Jimenez gets killed, I will gladly testify that Vega conspired.”

  “I don’t want if. I don’t want testimony. I want Vega. I want you to make damn certain that Vega gets another fucking murder charge.” He looked Norris in the eyes. “I want Vega with blood on his hands, no matter what.”

  “Sir, I understand.” Norris had done a lot of things over the years, and knew that this was coming. He was prepared for it. “And for me, sir?”

  “If Jimenez goes down this week and you pin it on Vega? Five thousand. And if you have to take care of things personally, let’s call it ten thousand to make sure.”

  “Sounds fair to
me, sir. He’s a cop-killer anyway.”

  Quinn stood up, which actually made him lower to ground since his chair was so high, and came around the desk to shake Norris’ hand.

  “Don’t let down on this one, John.”

  “I won’t sir.”

  Not for ten thousand bucks he wouldn’t.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Every last prisoner in the pod got a little sick to their stomach when they saw Leo Jimenez with that grin on his face. Ever since arriving for what was supposed to be hard time, Jimenez was smiling, continually delighted by the fact that he was untouchable. With the scar on his face, his wide smile was made even more grotesque, his gums and right incisor constantly on display. He smiled at everyone, knowing how much they were boiling to get at him. The smile was still unnatural, a pose that his body wasn’t used to holding, but damn did it feel good.

  This morning, Leo decided that his nonverbal taunts just weren’t entertaining enough. So at breakfast he plopped himself down at Santos’s table, in the seat next to Charlie Cortez, the member of Santos’ gang with the shortest fuse.

  “Culo,” muttered Charlie, looking over to his friends for some advice on how to handle the nuisance.

  “We speak English here, Chuck, you forget again?” Leo poked his tongue through his scar while he pushed his oatmeal around the bowl.

  For a while, Charlie kept himself composed. Charlie knew, from experiences like the one that landed him in Pittman, that he had a tendency to go too far. Going too far on Leo would have some dire consequences for the whole group, so he stayed silent and ate his breakfast. But Leo, like a wasp, just kept buzzing in Charlie’s ear.

  Leo had never liked Charlie. Even on the outside, as members of a gang that would supposedly die for each other, they had been enemies. Leo barely spoke Spanish, and pretty much faked all of the cultural shit. Charlie was the opposite; he was immigrant from Mexico, and for some reason, he thought their gang was about their culture, their racial group. Leo was a realist—they did it for the money and the power and the thrill. Leo couldn’t have cared less about a turf or a code or a credo. That was why as soon as Santos was locked up, he moved off of Eighteenth Street. It was shitty ghetto, beneath Leo, and they’d hung around long enough to build up their cred. Charlie was always a nag about stuff like that, as if murdering thieves really lived by rules. And he was constantly talking in Spanish, even though he knew that Leo didn’t speak it very well. Now, Leo could be just as much of an annoying dick to Charlie as Charlie had always been to him.

  Leo leaned over, getting his mouth right up to Charlie’s ear, to whisper “Chupas mis huevos. Is that right? Was that Spanish enough, pendejo?” Charlie leaned back to his seat and enjoyed a spoonful of his oatmeal.

  He was so content, so busy smiling that twisted smile of his, that he never noticed Delman across the table leaning forward, or Charlie, right next to him, leaning in as well. He never noticed both men reach under the table, so that Delman could pass Charlie a homemade knife made out of a toothbrush filed down to a point.

  Charlie clutched the shank so tightly his hand shook, but Leo was too busy looking down at all of the Eighteenths at the table to even notice. He was untouchable, after all, so why would he worry? Leo locked eyes with Santos.

  “Hey, no disrespect here, but if this is prison than which one of these guys is a bitch? Hey Santos? I mean, somebody’s gotta be taking the tubesteak, right? Because I was just thinking to myself that if Charlie here’s so desperate to suck on my nuts, I might be willing—“ He wasn’t able to finish because Charlie, pushed too far, had driven the shank hard into Leo’s thigh and twisted the blade.

  Leo screamed and tried to pull away, but Charlie kept the pressure on, pushing the toothbrush farther into Leo’s leg. Leo’s screams alerted the guards, and within seconds a trio of uniforms were at the table. One of them knocked Charlie on the shoulder with his baton to get him to stop, and then dragged him hard to the floor. The other two grabbed Leo and pulled him from his bench and away from the table. They waved for a nearby door to be opened and dragged the screaming, bleeding former captain of the Eighteenths to the infirmary.

  The cafeteria in C Pod is a single large room with twenty-five foot ceilings. All around the perimeter, fifteen feet above the floor, is a wide balcony where guards with shotguns and rifles constantly monitor the prisoners. At any given time, the guards are monumentally outnumbered, and if the prisoners decided to riot, there was very little that could stop them from taking down all of the guards on the floor. For this reason, the guards on the floor only kept batons and handcuffs on their belts, in addition to their radios. To put guns in that situation would be foolish. Even pepper spray was only worn by certain officers, or in certain situations. It was the men with guns who maintained order. Like the guard towers outside, the balcony provided a secure, elevated position from which the guards could use lethal force at any time, if they needed to.

  The balcony also connected to the primary guards’ office for the pod. This was where the guards watched security camera feeds, although there were other stations for that as well, both in the pod and in the admin tower. It was also the room that held the gun case and the riot gear. If the prisoners got out of hand, the guards had immediate access to both lethal and nonlethal measures to subdue them. They had rifles, handguns, shotguns, rubber bullets, bean bag guns, tear gas, body armour, crowd control shields and more, all in a secure room on the other side of the office.

  When Leo Jimenez started screaming, John Norris, who was doing inventory in the secure room at the time, unlocked the door and signalled for Metcalf, who was watching the security feeds, to come and watch the door. That way, Norris could run out to the balcony to watch the scene unfold. It was Cortez, as if there had been any doubt, who had taken the first shot at Jimenez. From the look of it, though, he was just sending a message, not trying to kill the man. That could be changed, however, depending on the severity of Jimenez’ injuries. If he hit an artery, maybe Norris could spin this into criminal charges for the whole damn gang. It would make that bonus easy enough. But then again, there was an extra five thousand to make damn sure that Jimenez was dead...

  *****

  Across the cafeteria from the stabbing, sitting as far away as possible, eating at their own table, were the Sinners’ Motorcycle Club, or as their old rivals in the Eighteenth called them, the Dirtbags. There were only four members of this particular gang in C Pod, but they were all men who had, one time or another, seen their friends beaten or killed by members of Santos’s and Leo’s gang.

  The leader, if they really had one, was Ox Werden (murder one), and next to him was Sonny Ramsden (murder one, and murder two, twice over). Across from Ox was Frankie Frisby (assault, arson, theft over $25,000), and across from Ramsden sat Paul Albendroth (three for assault, break and enter, and tax evasion). All four men can be summed up by saying that they were skinheads, spent most of their days lifting weights, and were covered in tattoos. All four men watched with no small amount of glee when they saw Cortez stab Leo.

  “See, you just don’t get that sort of thing in whites,” shrugged Ox. “It’s not like I’m stabbin’ Sonny!” He snorted when he laughed. None of them even gave a thought to the fact that most of their crimes were against other white people, or that each one of them was convicted and in prison for crimes committed against other Caucasians.

  “Well I guess them Eye-talian mobsters do, like they kill each other all the time,” added Frankie.

  “Yeah but they’re good about it, call you to a meeting, let you get dressed up. They all know when it’s comin’. Spicks just stab each other over fucking breakfast, man.” Ox felt that he’d made his point.

  “Yeah, if we kill a guy we kill him, not stab him in the knee,” Sonny said in between bites of toast.

  “They can’t kill him. Warden Quinn got Vega on tape or something, saying that he was going to kill Leo. If they kill him, they all go down for it, the whole gang.” Apparently Paul was the only one r
eading the prison grapevine newsletter that week.

  “No shit? Leo dies and they all go down for it?” Ox had heard of the strike against his gang that Leo had organized. His best friend, and Sonny’s brother, had died in the attack. The Motorcycle Club had more reason than anybody to take Leo Jimenez down, but so far they had been sitting out. Still, they had a plan in place to generate enough weapons for every white man who would side with them. It was starting to look like Leo Jimenez would be a good reason to put that plan to work.

  Ox crossed his arms and watched the Latinos huddle together, obviously worried. “I’d say that’s all I need to know.”

  *****

  In the prison hospital, cuffed to the bed, Leo Jimenez clenched his teeth. It was more out of rage than from pain. He was supposed to be untouchable. Who did Charlie think he was?

  “Get me a fucking guard!” he screamed at the nurse. His yell prompted John Norris to come into the room.

  “Good, you’re the one I want, right? You’re the warden’s boy? I want Charlie and the fuckin’ table of them charged for this. Look at my leg!”

  “Yeah, it’s real bad gettin’ stabbed with a toothbrush.”

  “I want to press charges and you’ll do what I fucking tell you.”

  Norris studied Leo’s scarred face. “That’s an awful shiner you got.”

  “What shiner?”

  Norris pounded Leo’s left eye with his elbow. “That one. They got ya bad.”

  Leo spat at him. “Listen up you little C.O. bitch—“

  Norris grabbed Leo by the throat. “You need to learn who to respect around here. Understand me, boy?”

  Leo fought his restraints at first, then forced himself to stop fighting. Norris let him breathe.

  “I want my lawyer and police. I want to file charges.”

  Norris hummed a little, like he was thinking hard, then shook his head. “Don’t think so.”