by Brian Parker
Hollow-eyed prisoners were escorted from their cells to their workstations and back again, becoming more reticent as time passed with no let-up in the storm with the odds of becoming the first casualty of the summer. The dark mass of clouds and wind battered at the prison walls as though possessed by a demon from hell.
Feet pounded in the corridor outside Hal’s cell as he pulled himself from the covers. Groaning inwardly at what new disturbance would keep him from sleeping again, he reflected on the irony that the very indulgence that made his nights more comfortable, a custom-designed mattress, was the very cause of his worst moments, being roused from sleep and the embrace of its covers. Fully expecting to see an ill-fated escape attempt, Hal rubbed the sleep from his eyes to see his cell door that had been opened.
Far from the macabre entertainment of a panicked inmate fleeing down the corridor that Hal had expected, he instead saw the tense, wild expressions on three of his most trusted distributors’ faces. While they were not the most intelligent of the denizens of the prison, Bernard, Marc, and Horace were at least reliable, when not on the cheap moonshine, and came from Giuffrida’s sock of available bodies, largely incarcerated here as they had not taken any deals offered to them by the State Prosecutor’s Office, out of loyalty to Giuffrida. Unlike Broker, who required a great number of deliveries, Hal was rather less of a taskmaster and the three men enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle, by prison standards, as a result of their employment in Hal’s service. They had, therefore, come to view Hal as less of a master and more of a compatriot. Hal had very little experience of organised crime, for who in the crime world would have supported his crusade of death against clairvoyants?
“Boss! Boss! Promise you won’t be mad?” Marc implored.
“Out with it. What trouble are you in? I know you didn’t have any product to deliver because I haven’t given you any in days, so you haven’t lost any, or been caught with it. I really hope I’m not going to have to bribe you out of something because that’s going to come out of your cut.” Hal glanced around in the cool, extremely early morning air that gave the gloom qualities of refreshment and shook him out of his early morning stupor. “And how the hell did you manage to get my cell opened?”
“We bribed the guard, Boss,” Bernard, a tall gangly youth of Cajun descent, answered. “We used our own money and everything.”
Hal sighed. “I’m not interested in escaping, boys. I’m quite happy here. I appreciate the thought, but it’s suicide to even try, and I’d rather not have to break in three new distributors all at once.”
“Nah, Boss,” Horace butted in. “It’s not that. We ain’t stupid.”
“That remains to be seen,” grunted Hal, returning to his normal early morning grouchiness.
“We know what you’re in here for, Boss. Just promise that you won’t get mad and do us in,” Marc blurted out in his mixed Creole-American drawl, his white eyes wide, making the contrast to his dark skin even more striking.
“You’ve woken me up to tell me that you’ve developed psychic powers? Yup, I’ve decided you’re stupid. Now fuck off and get your fucking acts together. You don’t want to get caught drunk and wandering around the prison after lights out.”
“Boss, we ain’t drunk. OK, we had a few, but you’ve got to hear this. We’ve got a stash out on the roof, we were out there just now. We’ve got a private arrangement with one of the guards on nights.”
“OK…”
“Well, we was out there. You know, just sinking a few ‘cus the wind died down and we didn’t know when we could next get to it.”
“At least at some point in this story your brains actually partially engaged,” Hal growled, still annoyed about being disturbed.
“Well, we was up there right, and we was having a laugh when it got real cold. I mean real cold.”
“It was in the middle of the night in a fucking storm, what did you expect?” Hal interrupted Horace.
“But, Boss,” continued Marc. “It wasn’t that bad before, sure it was wet and the wind was a bit high, but we was out of the way. And it just dropped, man. Dropped, like we’d gone north, way north, like, to Michigan or some shit like that. Then out of the wind and rain, this weird dude appears. Just appears, man.”
“And where was the guard?” Hal asked, looking for the most likely explanation.
“The guard had just gone, man,” Horace butted in. “It was just us and this freaky dude.”
“Are you sure this dude wasn’t, I don’t know, the guard?”
“Nah, Boss. Guards are like, real. You know like, really real. You can see them, they’re like, in focus and stuff.”
“And they don’t glow!” Proffered Horace.
“Yeah, he glowed,” agreed Bernard.
“A glowing, real-but-not-real man just appears to you on the roof, while you’re drinking your asses off in the middle of a storm, while the guard of the prison you are incarcerated in, has mysteriously decided not to watch you to make sure you don’t escape?” Hal summarised. “And I’m supposed to take this seriously?”
“You didn’t hear what he said.”
“Oh? He talked? And what amazing piece of information did this glowing man give you?”
“He said he was Mr. Giuffrida, and that he was murdered.”
“Did he happen to say how he was murdered?”
“Yeah. He said that he was poisoned.”
“Yet, we haven’t heard that Mr. Giuffrida is dead, so what makes you think that any of this would interest me?”
“He said he was poisoned by Broker. If he’s taken over, then you work for him and he don’t like you, Boss.”
“He’s not dead, so how can… Just shut up and get out of here.” Hal spun on his heel and slammed his cell door shut. “And tell the guard to lock this door. I don’t want to end up in solitary.”
Curling back up in his bed, Hal tried hard to banish the annoyance from his mind. He wasn’t successful and the hours passed slowly. The mattress he’d spent so much money on brought scant comfort. It didn’t help that the storm had intensified greatly that night, the thunder alone meant that he stood little chance of returning to his previously-peaceful slumber.
The day broke over Louisiana State Prison, what would have been a bright set of sunbeams flashing over the horizon was instead a grey slate of clouds waiting for the bright chalk of lightning to make its bright, yet brief mark. The tempest marked itself a fore curser of what was to come, for as the beams of morning would have hit Hal’s pillow, rousing a grunt of dissatisfaction, if not Hal himself, a rough hand grabbed the back of Hal’s neck and hauled him from his fitful rest.
His toes dragging on the rough surface of the corridor, Hal attempted to gain some purchase, if only to be seen to be walking rather than being unceremoniously dragged. The difference to an observer would be minimal, however, such a differentiation would have made all the difference to his dignity had he been able to achieve it. Instead, his toes skidded and scraped, jumping as though of their own accord whenever a bump was encountered.
Hal groaned when he realised to whose cell he was being taken. He didn’t know why, for he had no reason to be taken to see Broker. Giuffrida had made it clear to Broker that Hal was beyond his reach. He didn’t know what was afoot, but it did not bode well.
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t his royal highness ‘The Cigar Prince’ himself,” Broker gloated. “Was your trip particularly uncomfortable? I do hope so.”
“I got here in the end,” Hal grunted.
“Excellent, now to brass tacks. The king is dead, long live the king,” Broker chuckled. “As is customary, all of Giuffrida’s deals and holdings now belong to me. Therefore, you belong to me. As does your import business.”
Broker was a tall man, not overly muscled, but then he didn’t need to be with the people that he employed to stand by him and look threatening, and occasionally beat compliance into bad debtors, or those who impeded his enterprises. His eyes, in contrast to the rest of him, did conspir
e to cause fear. Hal, while not entirely sane in a conventional manner, did have enough sense to realise that here was a man who was not given to the normalcy of human interaction, not even by Hal’s standards when applied to those of a psychic bent. Hal was quite sedate improbable claims weren’t being made. Broker was not given to such improbability when he said that you would die, you knew that he would either have his attendees see to it, or he would enter into the application of his prediction with both enjoyment and gusto.
“Do you even know how I operate? Mr. Giuffrida never asked such inconvenient questions.”
“Do I care? You realise that this is just an excuse to have you killed, right?”
“You should care. Even if you don’t want the money, your backup does. How do you think your various underlings would react to an immediate and substantial drop in their profits? Then think of all the orders that will go unfulfilled, orders you are bound to complete. How long exactly do you think you’ll last when no one can get hold of the high-end goods that I supply? The guys who can afford my services can afford to buy off your goons if they aren’t spending that money with me.”
A fist slammed into Hal’s face, drawing blood as the skin tore.
“Bastard! I’ll cut your fucking liver out,” Broker spat.
“Boss, he might have a point.”
“I know he has a point, you stupid bastard. Get him out of here and make sure he knows that the cut comes to me now.”
Hal felt rather than saw the elbow coming toward his face before the dark claimed his consciousness.
Marc poked his head around the corner of the recreation yard. The storm had since abated, at least meteorologically speaking. Things had taken a turn for the worse in every other aspect of the prison. Marc was now, in the absence of any other leadership, in charge of Hal’s empire and was not enjoying his role. He had to report daily on profits and, more worryingly, the state of Hal’s mind. Since the death of Giuffrida, Hal had taken to wandering the prison, wild-haired and muttering. It wasn’t even as though the mutterings made sense. A good deal of muttering in humans generally comes from pre-occupation and shows a degree of focus on the task at hand; Hal had taken to such subjects as the revolutionary war and a number of obscure religious texts.
“Can you see him?” hissed Bernard.
“No, he’s disappeared again, the crazy bastard. At least he ain’t trying to kill some magic people. I read about that, he was completely sadistic about that.”
“What did he do?”
“Skinned them and wrote ‘didn’t see that one coming’ in the skin. Stapled it to the fucking wall in the shape of the words. Apart from that he seemed completely sane, up ‘til now that is.”
“Think he’ll do that to us?”
“I ain’t pretending to be psychic, nor are you.” Marc paused and then continued, “But then he’s off his fucking gourd right now, so I have absolutely no idea.”
“We’re keeping a low profile then?”
“Hell yes. Between him and Broker, we’re caught between a rock and a hard place. I don’t know how long I can keep up the play-acting.”
“What play-acting?”
“Where I say Hal is nuttier than squirrel turds, but is still handling the business.”
“Why are you doing that?”
“Because, you stupid motherfucker. If Broker finds out Hal is batshit, then he’ll ask us how the business operates and we go back to being low-level mugs. Do you want to go back to being broke and beating up the losers in B-Wing for cents again?”
“No way! That sucked.”
“Then we keep it going, don’t we?”
Marc popped his head around the corner again. “Shit!”
“What is it, Marc?”
“He’s there, right in front of everyone.” An expression of puzzlement crossed Marc’s features. “He’s with the prison drama club. Why’s he with the drama club?”
“That bunch of faggots?”
“Yeah, he’s handing out flyers for them. For fuck’s sake! Stay here, I’ll try and get him away from them.”
Marc sauntered into the yard, circling the crowd that had gathered to witness the fall of Hal to that of a social pariah. For his part, Hal seemed not to notice the stares and sniggering at his fall from grace. He bounded around the gathered crowd with a newfound energy, grinning from ear to ear. With wild flourishes, he would present each new prisoner that gathered with a poorly designed flyer. While the prison board had decided to allow acting as a ‘rehabilitation’ exercise, little funding had been placed into the program, and as a result the proffered promotional literature was clearly manufactured by way of office photocopier and a primitive computer system, probably in the prison library. Marc surveyed the crowd, looking for his chance to drag Hal away, his previous fear dissipating at the sight of the capering fool that had once been his benefactor.
As Hal reached an edge of the crowd, having run out of new people to offer his folios to, Marc grabbed his arm and forcibly dragged him from the courtyard.
Throwing Hal round a corner, Marc turned on him. “What the fuck do you think you’re playing at? Broker is just looking for a way to finish you off and this just plays right into his hands.”
Hal erupted into uncontrollable giggles and squeals of joy. “Play into his hands! Play!” Hal fell on the floor in mirth. “What ho, kind sir. What a delightful, play on words. Look! You have me at it now! I’m in a play and here you are, good sir, talking about playing. I play, they play, you talk of playing, I talk of playing.” Hal stopped and looked concerned. “Are we playing?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about, you crazy bastard.”
Hal glanced over his shoulder as though about to share the most deadly of secrets and despite himself, Marc leaned in intrigued. “There is a game afoot,” Hal whispered.
“What game?” Marc whispered back.
“The game of players. Players united to quash the whims of a murderous monster.”
“Are you talking about Broker?”
Hal stepped back, offended and proceeded to let forth a tirade in what could only be only described as broken old English. Marc had absolutely no idea what Hal was going on about and narrowed his eyes in disbelief as he struggled to make sense of what was being said.
At the conclusion of what he clearly thought was his masterpiece of oration Hal stepped back and executed a rather florid bow, with a sweep of his hand and then skipped off to continue his quest to place as many flyers into the hands of disinterested prisoners as possible.
Marc stalked back past Bernard. “Leave him, he’s actually lost it. I’m out, you can run things if you like but I ain’t having nothing to do with this car crash.”
Bernard simply stared after the disappearing back of Marc, his jaw hanging open.
Opening night arrived, still Hal capered around alternately attending rehearsals and tirelessly promoting the play itself. It had gotten to a point that Mr. Forest, the prison’s warden, had to call a meeting with the prison board to discuss the possibility of further funding for the liberal arts programs in the prison should the state of affairs continue. As he’d pointed out, if a prisoner was, in fact, finding redemption in the theatre group, as opposed to using it as an excuse to avoid kitchen or yard duties, they would not be able to continue underfunding it. Eyes were directed at the play to see if a contingency plan would need to be drawn up to release emergency funding, funding that was presently making its way into the back pockets of various board members and shareholders.
Broker sat in the front row, theatre was not his thing, nor was it the preferred nightly escapade of the vast majority of the prisoners, but there was at least the prospect of some poor schmuck falling over or finding some other way of making himself the target of more abuse that he otherwise already attracted. Plus, it was some time out of his cell and not worrying about the running of the prison’s illicit business; and movie night wasn’t for another three days. At least he could turn off his brain for a few hour
s. Broker certainly hadn’t been used to engaging his brain outside the prison, his role within the Giuffrida crime family being that of a shoot first, ask questions later enforcer.
The lights dimmed and the soft music, chosen to announce the start of theatre rules, began to play. Thankfully, there were no portable communications devices allowed in the prison, so there was no need for the customary warning that had become the rage in the early part of the twenty-first century. The chatter began to die down, for no-one wanted to be remanded to their cell for the remainder of the evening.
A solitary spotlight shone through the night and silence reigned supreme, it played for a second on the edge of the stage, and then found its way to the centre of the scarlet curtain. A voice came over the tannoy system. Broker was surprised at that, for it was usually only used for service announcements. It crossed his mind that Hal wasn’t as crazy as he had been led to believe and had somehow leveraged this use personally for the usual drama club members certainly didn’t have that kind of sway with the authorities.
“Ladies and gentlemen… Well, gentlemen. Welcome to the opening night of D.O.A., a dramatic retelling of the 1949 classic film noir. We hope that you enjoy our performance.”
The lights dimmed once more and Broker wondered what exactly Hal had done to get the prison authorities to allow the portrayal of a crime-centric movie on stage in a prison riddled with the remnants of organised crime syndicates. It certainly wasn’t the usual family-friendly fare that was performed on a bi-annual basis. The last performance had been “Puss In Boots”, and even then the more ribald jokes from the pantomime had been heavily edited by the prison authorities.
The curtain rose and the lights flickered into a dim glow that echoed the genre of film being adapted. A solitary figure walked onto stage and moved slowly from left to right. The low lighting moved to make the walk seem longer than it actually was. The player was ruminating on the subject of his own murder, which seemed a little strange to Broker. Broker’s eyes widened as he realised what was going on, this adaptation had been chosen specifically.