The Monarch

by Jack Soren

  The cafeteria door had slammed shut, leaving Lew and about twenty inmates hungry, pissed, and milling around in the afternoon rain. A man used to regulations, Lew had planned on just heading back to his cell to wait for dinner, but somebody else’s plans got in his way.

  Lenny Dyson, an older inmate who used a cane to support a bum leg, stepped out of line and started shouting and swinging his cane around. Lenny normally wasn’t violent, which was the reason he could have a cane in the first place, but his shouts grew in intensity until finally he flung himself to the ground and writhed around like he was having a seizure. Everyone, including Rory Dupont, the assistant warden, who was trying to calmly herd the hungry men back to their cells, walked over to see what was happening. Lew stayed put. He’d seen freak-­outs before and didn’t need to see another one. He cinched his prison-­gray shirt collar up against the rain and waited.

  Then he saw the real reason Lenny was freaking out. It was an act. He wasn’t freaking out.

  He was a distraction.

  Delroy Thibideau, a lanky black inmate renowned for his temper, marched across the yard with a purpose. At first, Lew thought Delroy was coming for him. He squared off and tried to figure out how he’d pissed this guy off. But Delroy wasn’t looking at him, he was looking behind Lew. As Delroy stalked closer, Lew saw him shake something out of his sleeve and into his hand—­a shiv. This wasn’t a beating. Someone was about to die.

  Behind him, Lew saw a little white dude named Mickey King. He hadn’t met Mickey either, but knew him through the prison grapevine, a better ser­vice than even AT&T offered. Mickey had a big mouth. Probably trying to overcompensate for his size, Lew thought. He also knew Mickey was fond of certain words that no doubt would have made Delroy crazy enough to stick him. In any prison those were unwise nicknames to toss around, but in a federal pen in southern Mississippi, it was masochism.

  Lew looked over at Lenny, who was still writhing like a lunatic. The assistant warden managed to take his cane away, but couldn’t calm him down. Lew thought about just calling the AW and ending this, but he knew how long a rat would last. Though just being in a crowd where a prisoner got whacked could make life get more than a little complicated. His parole would be blown, at least. And that just wasn’t going to happen.

  Delroy eyeballed Lew for a moment, before returning his stare to Mickey, who had no idea what was happening. Lew read the stare as plainly as the evening paper: Get the fuck outta da way, homey. Lew feigned a sidestep, giving the impression he was doing just as Delroy wanted. But when they were abreast of each other, and Lew was sure the AW wasn’t looking, he struck.

  Delroy was already in his backswing, his balance all behind him and to the left. Lew stepped behind him, grabbed the shank with one hand, and pushed on the back of Delroy’s opposite shoulder with the other. Delroy’s momentum did the rest. He let go of the shank in an attempt to get his balance and then slammed to the muddy ground. In one smooth move, Lew heaved the shank up onto the roof of the cafeteria building and then turned to walk across the yard toward his cellblock. He heard steps in the mud behind him, knowing there was a pretty slim chance Delroy would let this go. He wasn’t out of this yet. He spun around while Delroy was still twenty feet away.

  “Heading back, boss!” Lew shouted to the AW. Delroy froze in his tracks, knowing where the AW’s attention was now drawn.

  “What? Fine, go ahead,” the AW said, obviously just wanting the little pimple under his grasp to stop thrashing.

  Delroy’s stare burned into Lew’s face. Lew knew he should have just turned and walked away, but he just couldn’t help himself. He smiled and tapped his forehead with two fingers, as if he were tipping an invisible hat. Delroy’s eyes widened even more—­which was something, considering their already saucer-­sized spin—­but he remained where he was.

  Lew turned and headed back to his cell.

  An hour later, as Lew stepped inside the activity room and heard the door slam behind him, he knew it was time to pay for his interference. Then he heard Delroy’s signature giggle.

  “Ah, crap.”

  Lew made fists and turned around, readying himself. His fists quickly fell away and he realized he’d walked into something a lot more dangerous than an ambush by some pissed-­off cons.

  “I think we need to have a chat, ese.”

  Delroy was there, but he wasn’t the one talking. He sat on a table by the wall, Lenny beside him, smacking his palm with his cane like a 1920s cop rousting a speakeasy. By the door were two gorillas, bigger than Lew and Delroy put together. All of that was bad. But what was worse—­and more confusing—­was the leader of the little troop, who stood in front of them facing Lew. Lew looked down into his eyes, which seemed much darker than he remembered.

  “Mickey King,” Lew said. “Strange way to thank me for saving your life.” Lew eased back and sat on the edge of a table. He had no idea what was going on here, but he was pretty sure taking a nonthreatening stance was mandatory to his breathing. The only thing he knew for sure was the murder he’d stopped earlier was no murder at all.

  “You just keep runnin’ yo’ mouth, boy,” Delroy said. Mickey turned and looked at Delroy, who recoiled like he’d just touched a hot stove.

  “My associates are a little upset. They were expecting a big payday for our little charade, today. Now they’re worried they won’t get it. Worried enough to want to take it out of you,” Mickey said. Lew watched Mickey pace as he spoke. Not the pace of a worried or anxious man, but the pace of a lecturer, explaining what was what in the world. Lew also noticed that Mickey seemed to have grown a Mexican accent.

  Lew had a few comments bubble up into his brain, but he figured if he wanted to stay healthy he’d better keep quiet a while longer. He looked at Delroy until Delroy looked away. That tiny victory aside, Lew thought he was starting to understand what was going on here. And if he was right, things were very bad indeed.

  “The only reason you aren’t losing blood, ese, is because of your intent. You didn’t know who I was, or what was really happening, so you took a genuine risk when you stepped in. I’m touched.”

  “Not like there was any real danger, Mr. Colero,” Lew said, taking his shot. If he showed he was smart, he might have a chance. Miguel Colero—­known mostly as White Mike, thanks to his complexion and his affinity for coke—­had been in charge of a large chunk of the South Florida drug trade until he disappeared last fall. Lew knew this from his penchant of keeping an eye on the law enforcement activity in the Sunshine State—­especially Tallahassee. Everyone figured his underlings or his competition had whacked Colero, but with very few photos of him in existence, verification had apparently become impossible.

  “And apparently you can also put two and two together. Bravo, ese,” Mickey said. “But until I’m outside of these walls, I’m still just Mickey King. Comprende?”

  “Sí,” Lew said. He was far from out of trouble, but he was still standing and that was something, considering who he was standing in front of.

  Lew still had a lot of questions, like how White Mike had ended up in a Mississippi federal pen under an assumed name, or why he was working with nobodies to get himself out, but the only question that mattered was:

  “What’s the gig?”

  “Ah, you see? You see? This is a survivor. A resourceful man adapting to his surroundings. He doesn’t whine when he’s in a bad situation, he finds the angle,” Mickey said, the last of it apparently directed at Delroy.

  “Just keepin’ it real,” Lew said. He sensed there was something spoiled between Mickey and Delroy and he didn’t particularly want to watch it go to hell right in front of him.

  “The gig is act two. Delroy makes another attempt on Mickey King’s life, only this time he succeeds. Your job will be to make sure no more Good Samaritans stick their noses into our production. Simple, yes?”

  “As pie,” Lew said. “So what
happens after? Your coffin rolls on down the road until you pull a jack-­in-­the-­box?” Mickey didn’t respond, apparently disturbed that Lew had figured out the plan so easily. Lew made a mental note to dial the smartness down a notch. Being too smart was just as bad as being too dumb with guys like White Mike.

  “Time is a factor here, so Mickey King needs to be dead by dinner. A truck rolls out tonight and Mickey’s corpse needs to be on it,” Mickey said. Talking about himself in the third person was starting to annoy Lew.

  “Right,” Lew said. “Listen, not to cause trouble or anything. I think it’s great that you think I’m such a stand-­up guy and all, but you just told me a whole lotta shit that could be dangerous for you. Aren’t you banking a lot on your intuition?”

  “It’s never wrong, ese,” Mickey said. “But it never hurts to have a safety.” Mickey snapped his fingers and Delroy let a plastic baggie unroll in his hand. Hanging down was a shiv in the bag. Lew didn’t need to ask where it had come from. Or whose fingerprints were on it.

  “How’d you get it off the roof?” Lew asked. But Mickey was done answering questions.

  Lew wondered how he could avoid the same fate in store for Delroy and Lenny. He knew they’d be dead before Mickey popped up out of his coffin tonight.

  And now the plan included him.

  A few hours later, as inmates lined up for dinner, all the players were on their marks—­including Lew. He stood in the rain, which had refused to abate, once again.

  Delroy was across the yard, looking like a base runner waiting for the third base coach to wave him in. Lenny was there, but he couldn’t pull another seizure or this act would never work. Delroy was just going to go for it when he got the signal, right in front of everyone. Lew thought the mob panic that would ensue could only help make the whole thing seem more real. His job was to intercept the assistant warden if he came around.

  Mickey, standing in line outside the cafeteria, raised his hands while he was talking. It was Delroy’s signal to make his run. Lew looked up and watched Delroy burst out of the blocks. He thought he was going to run full-­tilt all the way across the yard, but he seemed to get ahold of himself about halfway and slip into character again.

  Lew moved over to the edge of the building and looked around the corner, where the line of hungry men bent. At the end, talking to a ­couple of inmates, was the assistant warden. The inmates he was talking to had nothing to do with this, so the conversation could break up at any time. And sure enough, Lew saw the AW pat one of the inmates on his shoulder and turn to head toward the main event.

  “Damn it,” Lew said under his breath as he headed to intercept the AW. He caught him a few feet before the corner, where the AW would have a view of the charade. Lew had no doubt the act would fool the cons, who wouldn’t really care if it was real or not, but if the AW witnessed it firsthand, the jig would be up. The doctor was well lubricated with cash, so pronouncing Mickey dead wasn’t a problem . . . unless the AW got to the body before the doc did. Lew saw the doc walking toward the cafeteria; his role must’ve been to just happen to be in the area. He hadn’t even seen the doc earlier, but Lew had been concerned about other things.

  “Yes, what is it, Lewis?” the assistant warden said.

  “I, uh . . . that is, I was wondering,” Lew stammered. He knew he should have worked something out before he approached the AW. He could adapt like a banshee with the threat of death over his head, but improv had just never been his thing. He needed the right motivation, and helping someone else escape just wasn’t cutting it.

  “Take your time, Lewis,” the AW said. Lew knew the only reason the AW was being patient was that up until now, Lew had been the invisible man, flying beneath the prison administration’s radar. They loved cons who did that. But Lew was about to launch himself smack-­dab into their crosshairs.

  “I know it’s probably against the rules, sir, but I was wondering if I could get a . . .” A what? A parole? A V8? An amen? Lew’s mind riffled, wondering how long it took to stab someone anyway. Especially when they wanted to be stabbed.

  “A what, Lewis?” the AW asked, losing patience. Lew looked past him to the fence in the distance and the line of elms planted beyond it.

  “A . . . uh . . . tree. For my cell,” Lew said, not even believing it himself. Really? A fucking tree? Why didn’t you just ask for a Jacuzzi and a blowjob!

  “A what?” the AW asked. But the commotion around the corner finally started and Lew didn’t have to answer him.

  Men were shouting and howling around the corner. It was the prison song of blood, and all the inmates knew the tune. The men in line tried to drift out and around the corner, but the AW knew the song too.

  “Back in line! Now!” the AW shouted, the nice guy all but gone. Lew just wanted the AW to get around the corner so he could get the hell out of there, partly thinking in the back of his mind that this little show meant he was going to miss another meal. He hadn’t thought of that before this.

  The AW went around the corner and immediately raised his arm to the tower. Whistles blew and sirens blared. They were going into lockdown. Lew thought better of running out from the crowd on his own with the snipers in the tower alerted. He did what he thought everyone else who wasn’t involved would do. He went around the corner to watch a man “die.”

  Mickey was on the ground, the shiv sticking out of the padding under his shirt, the blood bag he had taped to it turning the mud crimson. The doc was already at his side. He quickly told two trusties to get him to the prison hospital. The doc would pronounce him dead before they locked the last cell.

  “You men! Back to your cells!” the AW yelled, obviously worried about how he was going to tell the warden that a guy got stuck on his watch. Guards and trusties seemed to ooze out of the ground to shepherd everyone back to their cells.

  “Nice and calm, ladies! Excitement gets you dead,” one of the guards shouted to the men, pulling the bolt on his rifle to send his point home. They grumbled and milled around for a bit, but mostly they obeyed, the crowd slowly heading back to their respective cells. Lew joined the crowd, just wanting out of the rain.

  “Katchbrow!” someone yelled, and Lew stopped dead in his tracks.

  Crap.

  Lew turned and saw the AW walking toward him.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “We’ve got some talking to do, don’t we, Mr. Tree?”

  “HEY! SLEEPY!” THE warden’s secretary barked at Lew. Lew opened his eyes and looked at him. “You can go in now.”

  Lew grinned and nodded before prying his frame out of its plastic chair wrapper. He shuffled over to the door marked “Norman Quinn—­Warden” and knocked as best he could. When a voice inside said come in, he opened the door.

  “You wanted to see me, Warden?” Lew said.

  “Come in, come in,” Quinn said without turning away from the flat-­screen television he crouched in front of. “Sit down, Lewis.”

  Lew shuffled over and sat down with a jingle, trying to figure out how everyone seemed to be on a first-­name basis with him. He watched the warden fiddle with the television’s color settings. It was a nice television. A big fifty-­five-­inch high-­def model. His electronic gadget addiction was no secret, but Lew had had no idea being a warden paid so well.

  “Looks like we’ve got a problem, Lewis,” Quinn said. Lew looked out the window behind the warden’s desk and saw that he had a perfect view of the cafeteria where their murder-­in-­one-­act had taken place. I’m screwed. At the same time, Lew looked at the roof of the cafeteria and saw the shiv he’d thrown up there. Man, you can’t trust anyone.

  “We do?” Lew said, feigning ignorance.

  “Ah, that’s not right,” Quinn said, backing up and sitting in his chair without taking his eyes off the set. “Do their faces look yellow to you?”

  “Hard to tell from this angle,” Lew said, straini
ng against his bindings. Quinn seemed to notice his cuffs and chains for the first time.

  “Gordon!” Quinn called out into the hallway to his secretary. Gordon showed up in his door a moment later. “Gordon, whose idea was this?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Mr. Dupont, I think,” Gordon said.

  “No, no, no,” Quinn said, shaking his hand in the air. “We don’t need these. Get the key.”

  A few minutes later Lew was unlocked and Gordon was jingling out of the office.

  “Close the door behind you, Gordon. And tell Rory I’ll want to see him next,” Quinn said, coming around and sitting on the edge of the desk holding a remote control that looked as big as a loaf of bread.

  “You’re not going to hit me with that thing, are you?” Lew said. He was going for lighthearted, but the warden’s tight-­lipped smile gave him a creepy feeling.

  “Not the way you think.” He hit a button on the remote and the picture changed from a game show to a grainy black and white image. Lew thought he was watching an old black and white movie until he recognized himself at the top of the screen. He watched himself walk around the corner of the cafeteria and out of frame, where he’d gone a few hours ago to stall the assistant warden.

  “This is the good part,” Quinn said. “Very realistic.”

  Lew watched Mickey King’s “death” take place in front of his eyes. Almost as soon as Mickey hit the dirt, the prison doctor ran over and waved the assistant warden off, obviously saying King was dead. Even with the circumstances, Lew felt slightly sickened by having to watch it go down.

  “But this is by far my favorite scene,” Quinn said. He hit some more buttons on his remote and the picture zoomed in on King’s dead body. “And now . . .” Lew rolled his eyes.

  The supposedly dead King sneezed before going still again.

  What the hell’s going on here?

  At the least, Mickey and Delroy should be in solitary, the doc should be up on charges, and Lew knew he should be back in those chains.