McCutcheon knew exactly where he was going: to Cell One One Three. He didn’t care what kind of monsters lurked there; justice beckoned to be done.
But not on this guard’s watch.
“Fall in line!”
M.D. remained exactly where he stood, fists clenched.
“I said, fall in line!” The guard reached out and grabbed McCutcheon by his arm with a show of blustery force. Unfortunately for the officer, his grip demonstrated zero technique.
Bad move, M.D. thought. Kimura time.
Over the shoulder, around the elbow, a snare of the wrist, then a motorcycle rev, and snap, bye-bye elbow joint. Six months in a sling, twelve months before this guard could even turn a door handle open without the use of a second hand to help. Another set of fingers suddenly grabbed McCutcheon from behind a moment before he struck. Now two would be headed for the infirmary, M.D. thought. He knew there’d be consequences for his actions—dire ones—but McCutcheon didn’t care. Throw him in solitary for thirty days, sixty days, ninety days, it did not matter. Someone needed to stand up for the people who could not stand up for themselves. To M.D., he’d rather die for a cause than live with no code at all.
“Pardon his misdirection, Officer Clume,” Fixer said, tugging McCutcheon’s right wrist. “He’s just a new fish. Doesn’t know his ear hole from his asshole.”
M.D. looked into his new cell mate’s eyes. The old man stared back with directness and calm.
“It’s the cafeteria you want, kid,” Fixer said, not breaking eye contact. “That hunger in your belly, you can’t fill it down that way.”
Officer Clume, still holding on to McCutcheon with his tough-guy grip, glared at M.D. with no idea as to how close he stood to losing the use of his right arm for the next calendar year.
McCutcheon deliberated what to do. As a boy, he had been exploited a thousand times over in a thousand different ways. By the streets. By society. By his very own father. Now, as he stood on the precipice of being a full grown man, M.D. refused to be victimized anymore.
Nor would he allow others to remain hapless victims. McCutcheon took a personal vow that he would not sit idly by should the strong prey on the weak. If they did he promised himself that they’d be able to count on someone as dependable as tomorrow’s sunrise to make things right.
Justice needed to exist.
The cafeteria stood to the left. Cell One One Three stood to the right. All eyes waited to see the direction in which McCutcheon would walk.
“My bad,” M.D. said, heading left. “Guess I was going the wrong way.”
“Damn right you were,” Officer Clume replied. “Now move.” M.D. began walking in the opposite direction of Cell One One Three. Not out of fear or abandonment, but rather because he remembered what the ancient texts always said about warfare.
He who knows when the time is right to fight—and when the time is not—shall be victorious.
Fixer was correct. McCutcheon would never make it to Cell One One Three before a swarm of guards tackled him, pepper sprayed him, and then smashed a few of his bones. Sure, he might be able to take on one or two or even four of the staff, but eventually they’d overpower him and make him pay.
Any battle would be for naught. No matter what his strategy, he’d lose. Though his heart burned with fury, his cool head needed to prevail.
M.D. fell in line, placed his hands behind his back, one wrist grabbing the other, and began walking in the same direction as all the other broken-spirited horses.
“I don’t need you to save me,” he said to Fixer as they approached the front of their cell.
“Sometimes it’s best to go around walls rather than through them,” Fixer said as he entered their cell. “Come on, let’s eat and make jokes about my penis.”
“Can’t,” M.D. said, continuing down the corridor. “I have a few other things to do.”
“Busy morning, huh?”
“For a guy who can’t get an erection, you certainly seem to have a hard-on for my business.”
“Hey, I’m a nice guy like that,” Fixer said with a toothy smile.
“No, you’re not,” M.D. said. “You’re a survivalist. That means there’s something in this for you. Don’t think I don’t know that, old man.”
The grin melted off of Fixer’s face.
“But don’t worry, I have other fish to fry, so whatever li’l hustle you got goin’ on, I won’t mess it up for you. But know one thing: don’t you dare fuck with me. Got it?”
Without another word McCutcheon jumped into the stream of prisoners and followed the train of convicts through a maze of walls and doors to the cafeteria, a large mess hall where all the silver chairs were attached to all the silver tables and all the silver tables were attached to all the yellowed floors. In Jentles, anything not securely attached would become dislodged and fashioned into a weapon. The prisoners knew how to make crossbows from dental floss, nunchucks from chair legs, and papier-mâché shanks from used toilet paper rolls.
In a population where more than eighty-five percent of the people had dropped out of high school, the D.T. housed scores of violent derelicts who functioned like Ivy League engineers.
M.D. grabbed a tray of slop he planned not to eat and scanned the room for the right place to sit. The whole scene reminded him of high school. At Fenkell, the cool kids sat in one area, the band kids in another, nerds on the left, misfits on the right, and so on. In Jentles, the same general rules applied, except people didn’t group themselves by personality; they grouped themselves by gang affiliation.
Spotting the Priests required little effort. Being the largest army in the D.T. they commanded the best real estate: off to the back, in front of the bathroom, where no one who needed to take a shit could pass without gaining their permission.
McCutcheon, tray in hand, approached their province.
Three tatted-up soldiers rose from their chairs as M.D. walked forward. No one who was not a Priest was welcome in this area. M.D. knew this but still he continued straight ahead. The three Priests formed a human wall and the prison guard by the southernmost door, sensing a developing situation, placed his hand on his two-way radio in anticipation of a dispute. Five more soldiers rose as M.D. neared.
Still he walked forward.
It would be eight on one. McCutcheon continued forward, angry and fearless. Cold, hard eyes locked in on M.D. from all angles.
“Let ’im pass,” a voice from the back commanded.
The wall of soldiers, not needing to be told a second time, parted and McCutcheon stepped forward to the breakfast table of the High Priest.
“Well, looky fuckin’ looky. Yo, Demon,” D’Marcus called out. “Check out how the world just turned.”
McCutcheon’s father, sitting at the High Priest’s table eating oatmeal, raised his eyes. The sight of his son in a prison jumpsuit stung him, but like all prisoners quickly learn in lockup, Demon kept his emotions hidden behind an unreadable wall.
“Fuckin’ Bam Bam,” the High Priest said. “Now what brings you to my li’l section of town?”
D’Marcus laughed and six of his lieutenants chuckled. M.D. remained stone-faced, in no mood for games.
“I will fight for you.”
“You will, huh?”
“And I will win.”
“I bet dat’s true.”
“But leave her the fuck alone. That’s nonnegotiable.”
McCutcheon set down his breakfast tray and extended his arm for a deal-sealing shake. Not a fist bump or a high-five but a traditional, classic, man-to-man handshake, as old-school as it gets.
Puwolsky might have wanted D’Marcus Rose assassinated because of all the mayhem he was bringing to the city of Detroit, but McCutcheon entered the D.T. with an entirely different objective. His only aim was to save Kaitlyn. Nothing else mattered.
In the big scheme of things, M.D. knew Kaitlyn’s life didn’t really mean anything to the High Priest. Of course, M.D.’s life didn’t really mean anything to himself
if harm came to Kaitlyn because of his own entanglements with these gang members, either. This is why McCutcheon felt a negotiation could be brokered. M.D. would fly their colors in the Think Tank, take on whoever was thrown at him, win back the reputation of the Priests as the baddest boyz in the big house, and then collect his payment in the form of his girl being forever removed from their hit list.
Once this deal was made, M.D. knew D’Marcus would live up to his word, too. How? Because McCutcheon knew something that Puwolsky clearly did not.
Priests always pay.
McCutcheon had heard this expression hundreds of times during his years in Detroit. Priests always pay. It was the gang’s motto, a creed they passed down from gangster to gangster, generation after generation over the course of their forty-year history. As hoodie-wearing businessmen running a multimillion dollar underground network of drug dealing, prostitution, bookmaking, extortion, and embezzlement, the Priests built their reputation on the simple fact that their word was their bond. If you were owed something from them, you got what you were due. Paid in full, proper, no shortchanging, period. Of course the Priests always got paid, too, and if you owed them a debt, they always collected, whether it be in terms of cash, favors, or blood.
Yes, the Priests may have been entirely vicious sociopaths, but also they were the most honorable group of criminals in America. Sometimes, M.D. knew, the logic of the streets made for a strange type of math.
D’Marcus stared at McCutcheon’s outstretched arm, noncommittal and filled with thoughts he felt no need to share. Soldiers to his left and right awaited orders. If their shotcaller commanded McCutcheon smashed, eleven of them would have pounced before M.D. even had a chance to raise his arms.
McCutcheon understood the consequences of this gamble. He’d spent hour upon hour going over it in his mind, weighing the risks versus the reward. Ultimately, he knew the odds were not in his favor. Shotcallers didn’t make deals; they dictated terms, and those who didn’t follow orders—especially in prison—would eat a shiv in the shower.
Yet for Kaitlyn, this bet seemed worth it. His money down, the roulette wheel of his life spinning in front of him, M.D. waited to see where the ball of his destiny would land.
The High Priest took a last lick of oatmeal off his spoon, set it neatly down on his tray, and extended his hand.
“You have a deal,” he said, shaking McCutcheon’s hand man-to-man.
“Good,” M.D. replied. “See you tonight. Oh, and one more thing.”
“What’s dat?”
“Keep him”—McCutcheon pointed at his father—“the fuck away from me.”
D’Marcus smiled at the seriousness of the request. “What, we ain’t gonna have no father-son reunion over prison porridge?”
“I hate oatmeal,” M.D. said, with a burn in his eye aimed squarely at his dad. “Like a lot of things around here, makes me want to puke.”
Demon remained motionless and refrained from a reply.
The High Priest plunged his spoon back into a large plop of mushy brown hot cereal, and M.D. turned to leave, but then stopped as he spotted Night Train sitting at the table. Though Night Train’s face looked like he’d been in a car accident, the prison infirmary had already cycled him back into general population, having swapped him out of the infirmary for a different convict riddled with lesions as he slowly died from the H.I.V. virus.
McCutcheon didn’t know Night Train was a member of the Priests back in the intake room when he blasted him. Then again, it didn’t matter to him much, either.
“Just pray I don’t get my chance to run at you, li’l youngin’,” the gangster said. “Night Train got a memory like an elephant.”
“An elephant, huh?” McCutcheon answered. “Then you should be able to recall what happens when you fuck with Bam Bam.”
His business done, M.D. walked away. Demon, having seen the exchange between his son and the muscle-bound gangster, smiled, but did it slyly, so that no else at the table could see his grin.
That’s my boy, he thought.
“Demon, a word,” D’Marcus barked. McCutcheon’s father rose from his chair and sat down right next to the High Priest.
“Yeah, boss.”
D’Marcus rubbed his chin. “What the fuck was that all about?”
Demon watched as M.D. weaved his way back through the crowd of hardened criminals, the word INMATE plastered on his back.
“I ain’t got no idea.”
As McCutcheon lay in his bunk staring at the cracked ceiling of his cell it wasn’t the thought of his upcoming war that ate at his mind; it was his father.
How did he even land in here? And how did Demon square his debts with the Priests? The last he’d heard his father had turned state’s evidence against D’Marcus Rose because the High Priest had issued a green light on Demon’s life, as a result of a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gambling debts.
Yet now the two of them, the snitch and the shotcaller, were eating oatmeal together side by side like good old breakfast buddies? It didn’t make any sense.
Of course, with Demon, little ever did.
McCutcheon worked to put the various pieces of the puzzle together. D’Marcus acting as if he had no idea that M.D. would even be arriving. Demon comfortably protected by a crew that once wanted his spinal column chain-sawed in half like a piece of firewood. To McCutcheon, figuring everything out felt like assembling a model airplane that hadn’t shipped with all the parts.
How in the world could he have—
A high-pitched alarm suddenly pierced the air and blared through the facility. Startled, M.D. spun his head around and saw three guards racing down the hall.
“Riot?”
“Nope,” Fixer said, lying back on his bunk casually and reading a magazine on international cuisine. “Someone did the Dutch.”
“Did the Dutch?” M.D. asked.
“It’s slang,” Fixer replied as another trio of black booted guards flew past their cell. “For committing suicide.”
Suicide? M.D. thought. Who?
But before the question even fully formed in his mind, McCutcheon already knew the answer.
“Shoelaces?”
“Probably,” Fixer said. “They work a lot better than bedsheets, which have a tendency to unravel.”
Two more guards made their way toward the scene, but instead of racing they trotted with a lessened sense of urgency. Dead was dead, they figured. No need to hurry.
McCutcheon hopped down from his bed and tried to gaze down the corridor, but the iron bars prevented him from gaining a decent line of sight. Once again, he began pacing his domain back and forth, step after step, a trapped animal at the mercy of his captors.
Forty-five minutes passed, one torturous tick at a time, and then a small squeak became more and more audible. Soon a gurney appeared, its right front wheel wobbly, and it rolled past the front of McCutcheon’s cell. Twenty minutes later the gurney squeaked past the cell again, but this time from the opposite direction, with a motionless body lying lifeless under a wrinkled sheet. The only thing M.D. could make out on the corpse were its shoes.
Orange, rubber-soled, and laceless.
Fury swelled in McCutcheon’s heart. He wanted to rampage. To fight. To tear somebody’s head off and make them bleed. Shark-versus-shark battles were one thing, but what had just happened to the guy not named Timmy was something else entirely.
A nerve had been touched deep inside him. Injustice was his button, his inner trigger, and a flood of rage, liquid cancer, toxic and lethal, began racing through his veins.
“Jail eats everyone’s souls.” M.D. didn’t believe it at the time Fixer said it and he didn’t believe it could ever happen to him. Now it was. The anger, the hatred, the fury, it made him feel...
Dare I even say it? he thought.
Murderous.
McCutcheon’s inner beast awakened from its slumber, a giant rising from the depths of hibernation. M.D. felt its power, its strength, its energy. Most fri
ghtening of all, he felt its capacity to turn homicidal.
McCutcheon closed his eyes as waves of red and violence crashed through his chaotic mind. Breathe, M.D. Breathe.
He needed an antidote. Something cooling to douse the flames that threatened to engulf him. But what? What could bring him back from the edge of this dark and perilous abyss?
The squeak from the gurney’s wobbly wheel faded from earshot, and McCutcheon searched for something to slow the stream of inner venom before it consumed him entirely.
Stay focused, M.D. Keep searching. Do not give in to the forces of hate.
An answer appeared. Love. Kaitlyn.
Focus on her. Focus on her now.
For convict after convict the thought of a special someone on the outside—an image, a dream, a memory, optimism for the future—represented the last rope to sanity an inmate could clutch. Whether real or imagined, to a con doing hard time, a person on the outside must be brought to the inside in order for the inside to remain a viable, livable place.
Hope would be the remedy. He must mentally go to a place beyond the perimeter, a world beyond the walls, a destination at which he would one day arrive with his soul still intact.
McCutcheon closed his eyes and saw Kaitlyn’s shining face. Her green eyes flecked with sunshine. Her warm smile. The little wrinkle at the corner of her lip.
Perhaps it was a way of coping. He knew this. Perhaps it was a way of simply making it from one moment to the next. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. M.D. needed Kaitlyn now more than ever.
Just like she needed him.
Ever since M.D. arrived at Jentles, he’d told himself not to think of her. Thought it would be too unhealthy to dwell. He needed to be disciplined, he thought. To stay focused on the world inside the walls so that he could stay alert, achieve his aim, and find the seam in the structure to escape. Puwolsky getting him out served as Plan A. Stanzer coming through for him somehow (even though they’d never discussed anything of the sort) served as Plan B, because he knew the colonel would never leave him hanging out to dry. Yet tucked away in the back of McCutcheon’s mind was the knowledge he might also need a Plan C as well as a Plan D.
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