Linder gave Bolan a long look. That was another matter of interest. “Kal.”
“Yeah, seems like a real interesting guy.”
“You have no idea.” Linder opened a thin file and let the few pages fall out of it. Well over eighty-five percent of the document was redacted. “Who are you?”
“I’m Matthew Cooper.”
“Why are you here?”
Bolan looked confused. “I was under the impression you inducted me.”
“Yes, I was paid a very large sum of money to take you on. Now, who are you and why are you here?”
“Legal counsel and the United States government have informed me not to discuss my case with anyone. If I do, I was informed I go back to Gitmo, and from there I get extraordinarily renditioned to Tajikistan or the Black Hole of Calcutta or someplace that owes Uncle Sam a favor.”
The warden peered at Bolan from the bone shelves he called brows. “Again, who are you and why are you here?”
“It’s not in my best interest to tell you.”
“Someone paid a lot to have you buried here. It’s not the first time. Your problem is whether buried and forgotten about or buried in the boneyard is up to me.”
“I just want to do my time until I get transferred.”
“Good luck with that.”
“I don’t want any trouble, I just—”
“Since you have struck up a friendship with Kal, you’ll share a cell with him while the crime scene is investigated.” Linder nodded at Zavala. “We’re through here. Take Mr. Cooper and put him in Kal’s cell.”
Aryan Acres, the Yard
CLELLAND WILBERFORCE “THE FORCE” Scott sat in state in his fiefdom. His fief consisted of a set of ancient, graying wooden bleachers in one corner of the yard that had looked out on what over half a century ago had been a baseball field. The bleachers abutted one of Duivelstad’s exterior walls, and a section of the deadline had been cut away to accommodate it. No one could sneak up on the Aryans in the yard when they assembled there, and for over a half a century unnameable shenanigans had gone on underneath them. Scott was a large, sleepy-eyed man with a mustache and goatee. Both they and his short number 2 haircut were shot through with gray. Compared to the muscle-heads surrounding him, he was built like a man who had done hard labor all his life.
Scott was surrounded by half a platoon of men. Some with shaved heads, some with mullets and others with Vikinglike long hair and beards. Nearly all of them were covered with Nazi, Nordic and White Supremacy tattoos. Scott didn’t have a single tattoo on his body. He bore only one mark, which was the Circle of Iron. A branding iron, of which only four were currently known to exist, had been heated red-hot. The average human heart was the size of a clenched fist. Scott’s fist had been measured, a branding iron forged, and the circle had been burned into the left side of his chest directly encompassing his heart. The heat had seared through his chest. Two men who had earned the Circle of Iron had died from the application. Another had died of natural causes and the rest of far-from-natural ones. Each time a Circle of Iron man died, a trusted messenger had been given his branding iron, gotten on his bike, driven east and not stopped until he had hurled the iron into the sea.
Scott lowered his well-thumbed copy of Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince. He was reading chapter 3, “New Conquests Added to Older States,” for perhaps the thousandth time. He stared down at his lieutenant. “So let me get this straight, Rollin. The fresh meat, on his first day deflates the Todd like a balloon, walks into Kal’s cell unannounced and walks out alive?”
Rick “Rolling Thunder” Rollin met his leader’s eyes. He was as big as Scott, and his hair had turned an odd shade of green from his affectation of dyeing it prison bottle blond. Tattoos covered every inch of his skin from the chin down, and he had Florida’s swamps and ways stamped all over him. “Yeah, that’s about it, Force.”
Scott considered this strange and wonderful turn of events. The Todd was a force unto himself in D-Town. He wasn’t aligned with anyone. The Todd never messed with anyone in the yard or the block and no one had any desire to mess with him. He hardly left his cell at all except to eat. He was a stone-cold psychopath, and he was happy to eat the treats his mother sent him and wait for his next cellmate. Whoever got assigned to be the man’s bunky ended up his bitch, and his bitches quickly ended up in the psych ward.
“Rumor is this newb came all the way from Gitmo,” Rollin added. “High-priority prisoner.”
Scott had heard that rumor as well, and had stretched forth his hand outside Duivelstad’s walls to find out more.
Kal was the flip side of a positively anomalous coin. “So he just walked into Kal’s cell and said hi?”
“That seems to be the gist of it. For whatever reason, the new fish got a one-time pass. Maybe taking out the Todd had something to do with it. Can’t imagine Kal and the Todd ever approved of each other.”
“There is that.”
Rollin’s hand went to the shiv he carried at the small of his back in a sheath of flattened newspaper. “Brother, give me the green light and we dance the newb on the blacktop.”
“Not just yet. We got big things on the horizon. I don’t want any ripples until it’s time for the tsunami.”
Rollin loved Scott’s way with words. “No ripples.”
“What else can you tell me?”
“Chatted up Fatty.”
Scott smiled. One of these days he was going to have to kill Barnes, but he admired the fact that the fat man kept on trying. Fatty was determined to save at least one con before retirement. “What did Officer Barnes have to say?”
“Said this Cooper is one bad medicine motherfucker. Said he saw the Todd in the infirmary. He’s, like, damaged beyond repair. Never gonna leave a bed.”
“They’re putting Cooper in solitary?”
“No. Word is the warden is putting him in Kal’s cell. Said Kal’s had his private shit for too long and it’s time he got himself adjusted to reality.”
“Situation solved. Kal hasn’t kept a white celly alive in ten years.” Scott smiled. “Cooper’s dead by dawn.”
* * *
“HEY, BUNKY,” BOLAN walked into Kal’s cell and tossed his meager belongings on the top bunk. Kal was so appalled he stopped in midstrike. The con stood shirtless in a deep horse stance with one fist extended. Every muscle of his body stood forth across his bones in isometric tension. Kal shot Zavala a withering look and then returned to staring into the middle distance and dismembering nonexistent people in slow motion.
Bolan rolled out his blanket and tucked his paper bag of belongings into the empty cubby. The two dominating features in the cell were a black velvet poster of Jim Kelly in a fighting stance from the movie Enter The Dragon, and a fairly extensive collection of books on homemade shelves. Bolan nodded at the top shelf. “Zen in the Martial Arts. A buddy of mine told me I always needed to read that. Do you mind?”
“No.”
“No, you don’t mind? Or—”
“No you may not,” Kal growled.
“But I’m bored.”
Kal scowled ferociously as he slowly shoved out both hands in dragon formations. “Try the Holy Koran.”
“Ah.” Bolan got one step forward before Kal’s voice hissed as he extended a tiger claw at an opponent only he could see.
“There’s a copy of it in the library.”
“Oh, well, I already read it, anyway.”
“You could try the Bible.” Kal’s hands twisted into something positively mystical. “A trustee brought a copy of the Gideons’ and put it on your bunk for you.”
Bolan looked at the Bible on his bunk. “I already read that, too.”
Kal’s spoke through clenched teeth. “They bear rereading.”
“Man, don’t you got nothing for a white guy abou
t to die?”
Kal rose out of his stance. Bolan smiled at him like an idiot and mentally prepared himself to at least try to keep Kal from ripping a vein out of his neck and showing it to him. Instead, Kal marched to his book collection, ripped forth Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and flung it at Bolan, who caught it. Kal resumed his stance. “Try that. Try to read it without moving your lips or reading aloud.”
“Cool, thanks.” Bolan hopped onto his bunk, stretched out and cracked the book. “Poetry, huh?”
Kal vibrated with the incredible effort it took him not to kill Bolan until lights out, and moved from his horse stance. He stayed low and kept his dynamic tension, but now moved as if he was fighting within the confines of an invisible phone booth. Bolan peered at him over the preface page. “What style is that, anyway?”
Kal’s brow furrowed mightily as he sweated.
“It looks like some kind of karate had bad sex with Shaolin Kung Fu.”
Kal almost smiled against his will. His forearms twisted around each other like pythons and performed first a high and then a low X-block. Bolan thought he detected a neck breaker within the movement. Kal deigned to answer as he moved. “The karate was Shorin-ryu.”
Bolan nodded at the poster. “Jim Kelly.”
“Correct, and it had bad sex with Wing Chun.”
“Bruce Lee.”
“I was a seeker, back in the day. However, may Allah forgive me...”
“All praises unto him,” Bolan agreed.
“But circumstances, both internal and external, over the years—” Kal shuddered with the effort of lifting his straight leg to vertical so that his knee was in line with his ear “—have forced me to adapt and change the teachings of my masters so much, that in my hubris I now think of it as my style.”
“Which is what Bruce would have wanted in the first place. Nice.”
Kal shot Bolan a bemused look. “So one hopes.” He made some sort of kung fu by way of the Black Panther movement salute to the empty air or the gods, and straightened. He slowly dropped his hands open to his sides and lowered his chin to his chest. Kal’s breathing slowed and he went deep into his meditations. Bolan went back to his book. He’d read the first fifty pages of a poem when Kal spoke again. “Is it to your liking?”
“Read it before.” Bolan closed the book and smiled. “But it bears rereading.”
“It does.” Kal took a hand towel and began washing at the sink. “You may be the most fascinating cellmate I have ever had.”
“Thank you.”
“It is a shame you’ll be dead soon.”
“That is a shame,” Bolan agreed.
“First they threw you to the Todd. Then they threw you in with me.”
“Like a Christian to the lions.”
Kal gave Bolan a frank look. “I’ve decided not to kill you unless you give me further reason.”
“Thanks.” Bolan nodded respectfully. “I won’t.”
Kal shook his head. “I won’t protect you.”
Bolan cracked his book open again. “I won’t ask you to.”
The Warden’s Office
“THIS LITTLE SHIT, Cooper,” Warden Linder said. “What do you make of him?”
“First off, he ain’t so little.” Captain of the Guards Roger Schoenaur flipped through the redacted file. He had just come back from vacation with his wife and family from Florida, and had missed the new fish induction fun. Schoenaur was running six foot one and looked like a man who could crank out a hundred push-ups, a hundred pull-ups or a hundred sit-ups on a bet, which he could. He had repeatedly won the Pennsylvania state arm wrestling championship in the 1990s, and had reached finals in the nationals several times. His lower body workouts consisted of stomping mud holes into cons that gave him offense. That was everyone in the joint. If an inmate gave Schoenaur genuine offense, he usually reached out, grabbed some part of the con’s anatomy and squeezed. The three who had actually attacked him in the past ten years had enjoyed the unique privilege of having parts torn from their bodies.
Schoenaur had never worked any facility but Duivelstad, and didn’t care to. But through the stories of transfers, he had become one of the most hated and feared individuals in United States corrections. He was the boogeyman, and he knew it, liked it and cultivated it. Throughout the U.S. prison system the phrase, “Well, at least you’re not in D-Town shaking hands with Schoenaur,” let inmates feel better about their stretch. His blow-dried, longer than regulation hair and golden-age-of-porn mustache showed a man who had never left the 1970s.
“He stinks,” Schoenaur decided. “I don’t like him.”
“Neither does Zavala.”
“For a spic, the Z has some instincts,” Schoenaur conceded.
“I don’t like him, either.”
Schoenaur frowned. “Have we been paid to like him?”
“Been paid to take him, but like I told him to his face, I’m not sure if it was to keep him buried or to bury him.”
“Prison is an uncertain place,” Schoenaur opined. “You got a preference, Chief?”
“Haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“You say you got him shacked up with Kal?”
“Yup.”
“How’s that love affair going?”
“According to rumor, Kal loaned him a book.”
“Really.” Schoenaur scowled. He didn’t care for African-Americans and he didn’t care for Kal at all. Kal was the one con who when he took him down he took him down in force, usually leading with pepper spray and crowding with ballistic shields followed by a bludgeoning. Kal was the one man in Duivelstad Schoenaur wasn’t sure he could take in hand-to-hand combat, and that galled him. Warden Linder considered guards murdering prisoners an absolute last resort, and although decades old, Kal’s quadruple murder conviction had a minor but devoted “truther” following in the media and on the internet. On top of that Duivelstad’s black population respected Kal, and when consulted, Kal almost always advocated peace and personal improvement. Schoenaur had been plotting Kal’s accidental and not so accidental death by proxy for years. All attempts so far had failed.
“So Kal’s finally gone queer for this blue-eyed Cooper son of a bitch?”
Warden Linder guffawed. “Unless Kal and Cooper make sweet love in tender silence, I’m guessing no.”
Facilitywise, Duivelstad was an architectural abortion of nature. But the main tiers were now bugged. “They talked?”
“They have. But this Cooper is one cryptic asshole. He’s all smart remarks and Zen koans, and Kal’s been a deep file from the moment he walked through the gate.”
“So I’m thinking Cooper pulled an ‘all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put the Todd back together again,’ and Kal gave him a pass for his public service.”
“That seems to be the way of it. They’ve had a meeting of the minds, for the moment. I’m thinking Kal is in nice-meeting-you and vaya con Dios motherfucker mode.”
“He knows you put Cooper in with him to jack him up, and is being noncooperative.”
“The man survived the Todd and Kal, and came out of Gitmo. He’s a problem that needs to be solved.”
Captain Schoenaur cracked his knuckles. “I’ll solve all his problems. Or give him new ones. You just say the word, Warden.”
Linder leaned back in his chair. “I knew I could count on you, Rog. Let’s start fucking with him. Start with the playground stuff and work up to graduating class.”
Chapter 4
Mess Hall
“HEY, CELLY.” ALL eyes in the hall watched as the man who had dismantled the Todd sat down at the otherwise empty mess table across from Kal. The con gazed heavenward for strength.
“Don’t ever call me that again.”
“Sorry. Mind if I sit here?” Bol
an asked.
“You’re pushing your luck.”
Bolan craned his head around and looked at the Aryan Circle table. “Well, there’s a seat over there, I suppose.”
“I may come to regret not killing you.”
“You wouldn’t be the first.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Kal ate a forkful of beans and rice and gazed sympathetically at Bolan’s tray. “I haven’t seen nutraloaf in a long time.”
Bolan sighed at his breakfast. What sat in his tray couldn’t be described as a loaf, a wad or even a brick. It was a vague fist shape of food. Some prisons had nutraloaf specially made for them. Others simply took all the ingredients of one of the daily meals, ground it up and baked it without benefit of seasoning. The only thing that could be said about nutraloaf was that two servings contained the minimum amount of calories to keep a grown man alive and functioning, and violent prisoners could eat it without utensils. U.S. prison authorities optimistically called it a “special management meal.” In reality it was dietary discipline. It had been banned in several states as cruel and unusual punishment. Bolan shrugged. “Nutraloaf’s not so bad.”
Kal regarded him through the jaded eyes of long, hard time. “Oh?”
“Yeah, take two slices, bread them in seasoned flour, salt, pepper, paprika from the kitchen if you can get it.”
Kal raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“Then you fry them golden-brown, pull them, butter them and put them on a warmed plate.”
As an all-day, unwilling aficionado of prison food, Kal found himself interested against his will. “Really?”
“Yeah, then you fry a slice of Spam. Deglaze the pan with some water, or better yet juice from the canned pineapples if you can get it.”
Kal leaned forward. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, then you scrape the brown bits from the pan onto the Spam before you put it all together. Oh, and man—” Bolan nodded knowingly “—if you can get your hands on some mustard?”
Kal was clearly painting the picture in his mind. “So it’s good?”
Prison Code Page 4