Babychain Blues

by Tony Masero

  ‘No, couple of days. If you hear from Carlo just tell him things are moving along and we’ll be set shortly.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  ‘You too, I’m not sure if I trust that college professor of yours.’

  ‘He’ll be okay.’

  ‘He’s a weasel, so you watch your back.’

  ‘Don’t worry, remember I can handle myself.’

  Cole thought back at her naked body holding a pistol on their four invaders.

  ‘Sure can,’ he admitted. ‘I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of you.’

  ‘Better believe it,’ she said, cranking the ignition.

  It took him a day to drive up to the Cascades and hike up into the hills. He carried little, a backpack with water, a thermos of coffee and a few sandwiches, as he was not planning on staying long. As an afterthought he had taken his old .45 automatic, and the Colt lay heavy in the sack. Cole had spent the previous night cleaning and oiling the weapon, remembering it hanging by his side from his webbing in the jungle. He thought he could still smell the rot of that jungle attached to the metal, but it was just his imagination working overtime he realized as he slid back the receiver and checked the action.

  He had not held the weapon in an age and it was strange to feel it’s grip again and how easily it had molded to his hand. Perversely, he had noted the comfort it encouraged in him and that worried him slightly. It had been a long time and he wondered obliquely if he could still use the weapon in anger. He certainly had the last time he used it.

  He forded the riverbed easily; the rippling water was low and barely covered the uppers of his hiking boots. So he moved swiftly across to the remembered sea of stones on the opposite bank.

  As he climbed the slope the day came back to him.

  Those wretched bikes and that baby carriage. Poor Benny all blown to hell. It had been a mess alright. His deal with the hippies and covering everything with stones, the burial mounds only to be swept away by the next rockslide.

  The weight of his backpack reminded him of the baby, Caitlin. Carrying her as he had climbed higher and into the tree line.

  It was evening as he re-entered the same woods and crunched over the bed of pine needles underfoot. The scent of pine came to him and he recalled it had been overcast back then, now it was warmer and the air was filled with the varnish smell of pinewood sap.

  He had not gone far he remembered before burying the packets of diamonds and the place had been marked by a blasted tree, an old pine riven by lightning. The monster scarred and burnt charcoal-black along its upper side. It was lucky the whole forest had not gone up when the lightning had struck but the pine tree had been set apart in a small clearing and that was what had probably saved the rest of the forest.

  He moved on deeper into the wood, the silence enclosing him and only the evening flutter of birds settling in the branches above. Up there the big trees rose and pointed unerringly skywards in a spear-like parade that surrounded his soft tread through the undergrowth. It was a glorious sunset settling over the distant mountains and the sky above was painted a glow of orange covered with lush pink streaks of cloud.

  The beauty and loneliness of the place eased Cole and he felt the tension drop from his shoulders. He was slightly surprised to find he had been so tense and it intimated to him that his old relaxed self was no longer with him. He had entered a different mode he realized, even now as he stole through the forest the memory of military patrol craft entered unbidden and was naturally with him almost as if it had never left.

  His thoughts drifted to Carlo Benucci and he considered the man was worth watching. Cole thought the fellow a sly little rat and despised the idea that they were in his hands. He was not looking forward to watching the man on their trip to Portland, his mind would be otherwise engaged with the fence, whoever he was and that would be tricky enough.

  With bitterness, Cole thought that dealing with Carlo was the first step into a darkness he would rather not tread but he overrode the notion with thoughts of Caitlin and the simple pleasure he had found in her company. It would be worth it, to give the girl some hope and a future. He decided he must keep that as his goal and forget the rest. The idea warmed his heart and he felt better as he marched on.

  Night had fallen by the time he found the clearing.

  It was too dark to see anything clearly but Cole had thought to bring a flashlight and by its light he ferreted amongst the weeds that had grown high in the intervening years. The old pine was more or less rotted away, a shell of its former self. Try as he might, Cole could not discover the site of his original burial.

  After a half hour of trying he gave up and decided to wait until daybreak. He settled down with his back to the remains of the pine and drank some coffee and chewed on the sandwiches. With half an ear he heard the night sounds of the forest come to life. He slipped the Colt from his pack and kept it to hand. There were still bear and wolf around, probably further in up on the ranges but it did not do to be careless.

  Cole thought of a fire but could not be bothered; it was a warm enough night.

  He dozed a little and Martha Jane came into his mind. Her warmth and company had become a reassuring pleasure to him and he found he missed her presence. He worried over her involvement though and was sure he wanted no harm to come her way, in thinking this he determined to try and dissuade her from accompanying him when they left for Portland. She was a fine lady he decided and with that thought in his mind, he slept.

  Jerking awake next morning he found a mist had settled through the forest and the morning light was diffuse and pale. It softened sound and wreathed eerily around the tree trunks surrounding the clearing. Stretching, he eased the aches of sleeping propped upright and found his pistol had slipped from his grasp in the night. He wiped the dew dampness from the gunmetal and returned the gun to its holster in his waistband.

  By the pallid light Cole began a serious search amongst the undergrowth surrounding the dead tree. He had left a marker cut into the bark of the downed pine but that had long gone. Systematically, Cole moved along the line of decayed wood wrenching out handfuls of long grass and high weeds.

  Halfway down the length he pulled away a hank of grass attached to a clod of moist soil and found a rabbit-chewed tuft of plastic bag sticking upright from the ground.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘This guy of yours. He’s on the up, is he?’ asked Gil.

  ‘Personal interest,’ Buck promised with a reassuring nod.

  They sat opposite each other on the lower bunks. Everything was in place and it was the countdown to the final moments. On the surface they were relaxed but underneath each held a tensile band of expectation running through their nervous systems.

  ‘Personal? How so, you work for him?’

  Buck shook his head, ‘No, my brother did though.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, the hunter.’

  ‘That’s him. Great guy. I was only a kid but he was always swell with me.’

  ‘How’d he get it? You said something about a black guy, didn’t you?’

  ‘Right, he nailed the sucker though. Went down fighting, that was my big bro. It happened up in the high country, his boss, the guy who’s arranging picking us up. He put out the word; some fellows had ditched him after a heist. They’d taken the money and ran and our man wanted them stopped. Not surprising, huh?’

  Gil frowned, ‘Where’d this happen exactly?’

  ‘Up in the Cascades. They were out in the backwoods somewhere.’

  Gil did some quick thinking. It was rare that inmates talked in detail about their past or personal lives, those that did were considered capable of running off at the mouth to anybody about anything and were generally avoided or allowed only monosyllabic conversations. Gil and Buck had been together some time though and normal rules did not apply. Their confidence in each other was based on long experience.

  Gil had put it together pretty quickly, seeing that the crime Buck spoke of was the one that had put him
and Randy inside. However, if he spoke out, it might be that Buck would not see him as the innocent party he claimed to be and might suspect him of his brother’s death or at least some part in it. He decided to play dumb. Right now he didn’t want complications, he needed Buck as a partner.

  ‘Who is this guy?’

  ‘Fellow called Penevale. He’s a big wheel out on the coast now.’

  ‘So why’s he so kindly helping us out? We’ve got nothing to offer.’

  ‘I guess he still feels bad about my brother. My bro went the whole nine yards for Penevale, turned over a State cop, stole his bike and lit out after those rascals. Went at them man to man all on his lonesome, heck of a guy,’ Buck finished proudly.

  Gil was squirming inside; it was a problem he would rather not have.

  ‘What was it Penevale lost?’

  ‘Heap of it, five hundred thousand in green and some jewelry. Worth a whole parcel back in those days.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. He ever get it back?’

  Buck shook his head, ‘Nah, gone in the wind, the whole packet.’

  It was obvious Buck had heard nothing about Gil’s involvement and he guessed that Buck had only been interested in his brother’s demise and looked no further once he knew that his killer had been brought down.

  ‘And Penevale’s helping us out from the goodness of his heart? I don’t believe it, what’s the catch, Buck?’

  Buck sniffed and rubbed his nose, then stroked his ring of white hair self-consciously. ‘Well, I guess we’ll have to return the favor. Nothing big, you understand,’ Buck added quickly. ‘Just help him out some. He has a big organization and we’ll need him to set us up once we’re out there. I reckon a little assistance isn’t too big a price to pay.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. You might have considered mentioning this.’

  ‘Hell, Gil. You were all tied up with Randy and the Brotherhood. It wasn’t the time.’

  ‘Don’t know if I like committing myself to some fellow I don’t hardly know,’ complained Gil.

  ‘What do you want? You want to spend another twenty years inside here?’

  Gil rolled his big shoulders uncomfortably. No, he didn’t want to spend a moment longer in the joint than he had to and maybe he was getting a mite fussy over the expectations when he got out. Gil decided to consider that aspect once they had made it over the wall, right now they had to contend with getting there, the rest would come later.

  ‘Well, we’ll play it by ear. Let’s get the hell out of Dodge first.’

  Buck nodded agreement. ‘It’s set, you just say the word.’

  Something needled at the back of Gil’s mind though. He could not believe that their help was coming from a bigshot villain because of some remembered stiff who’d worked for him and died in the line of duty years ago. No, there had to be something else involved. With those guys there was only one thing that motivated them. It wasn’t any ancient loyalty either. It was money; that was the god they served. Pangs of unrest grumbled in Gil’s stomach. He didn’t like it, he didn’t like it one bit but what the hell else could they do? They were committed now and he had to see it through.

  Shit! What a turnaround.

  ‘Let’s move it along then,’ he said. ‘That punk kid will be getting restless in the hospital and I don’t know how long they’ll keep him in there, so how’re things fixed at your end?’

  ‘It’s brewing, the right word and the fire will be lit.’

  ‘Okay, I need word sent to the Brotherhood. I want to make a mess of their plate before we go.’

  He looked across at Buck and saw the same gleam of anticipation that was in his own eyes.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Gil said grimly and Buck nodded assent with a thin smile.

  ‘Hell or bust, brother.’

  Demus watched the contractors at work.

  He had been faking a hobble for so long it was becoming almost natural now. Trouble was everything had to be done so slowly to maintain the deception.

  Demus liked it in the hospital unit. He had his own separate bed and invariably it was quiet in the ward. The weight of oppression he felt in the main prison population was lifted and Demus felt more like his old self and he could certainly see the attraction of freedom again.

  There were sixty beds in the unit with four close watch sections where they kept the real hard cases and nut jobs. Demus had relative freedom to work his way about the ward as none of the orderlies expected him to be running anywhere with his gimpy leg and he did his meandering under the guise of exercising his knee. Shuffling along like an old man with the aid of a frame he studied the workmen as they brought out old sections of piping and debris and passed by in the corridor outside.

  The men were at work on an abandoned steam tunnel running underneath the hospital, their job was to seal it off and create a new storm drain. The information had cost Gil a small fortune but according to his informant, the old hand Wee Willy Carter, who had been around when the tunnel had hissed steam from the ancient heating system, the original tunnel ran out under North 13th Highway and exited from two chimneys in the prison farmlands across the way. It was to be their route out.

  Demus already had his hiding place mapped out once the ruckus started, after that it was up to him to gain access for Gil and Buck into the unit and lead them to the tunnel works down in the basement.

  During his brief stay the doctors had been unable to find anything seriously wrong with Demus’ knee and his complaint about constant pain and an inability to flex his knee had proved to be something of a mystery for them. So they fed him painkillers and x-rayed his limb. There was talk of an exploratory operation and Demus hoped that things would kick-off before any of that happened. Some kind of intervention on a perfectly healthy leg at this late stage was not in his notion any part of an escape plan.

  He was standing idly at the ward door, nodding greeting to the guard who accompanied the passing workmen when the sirens went off. Then came the announcement over the speakers.

  ‘We have lockdown on a Code Red! All prison staff, this not an exercise. Code Red, I repeat, Code Red. All officers to appointed stations.’

  The jolt of surprise at the sound kicked his heart into an excited beat. It was here. Now was the time.

  As he watched the guard ushering the workmen along the corridor, they dropped their tools and fled, rather ignominiously Demus thought. Chickenshit civilians, afraid to get caught up in the prison riot no doubt.

  An orderly ran past him. ‘Back in your bed, Barnes,’ he ordered. ‘This ward is closed down right now.’

  ‘Sure thing, boss,’ Demus answered, watching the man rush past and into his office. Then leaving his frame behind he sprinted in the opposite direction down the deserted hallway. He found the upright utility locker. It was left open with just enough room for the brooms, mops and buckets inside. Quickly, Demus tossed them onto the bags of tools dumped by the fleeing workers and squeezed inside the tall metal cupboard. It stank of strong chemicals inside, bleach and cleaning fluids and Demus pressed his nose up against the ventilation slits to breathe some fresher air.

  The jarring bellow of the sirens continued long and loud and carried with its sound all the fear and anticipation that welled up in Demus’ body. They were going to do it. He was about to become a fugitive, an escapee. The tension was bringing a sweat to his brow and his limbs were so taught he felt like he wanted to pee. That was definitely a no-go, as it smelled bad enough in here already.

  Shouting came down the hallway.

  ‘One away,’ he could hear called. ‘It’s Barnes, he’s missing from his bed.’

  ‘Shut it down, we’ll get to him later. They got a full scale war going on out there.’

  The Hispanics had started it during the recreational break permitted in the open yard outside.

  Moving in a wave across the yard, shanks and steel bars in hand they had set about the Negro population. Buck’s abrasive whisper campaign had paid off and laid on top of the already volatile atmo
sphere within the prison had initiated the wave of violence. It had taken a few key lies full of encouragement; an imaginary slur against the Hispanics blown out of all proportion by Buck and the fuse had been lit.

  The battles in the yard were spread out and had separated into vicious brawls across the rec area. The timing had been exact and Gil and Buck’s proposed meeting with the Brotherhood had left them standing by themselves alongside the Breezeway and close to the hospital unit. They were exposed out there but with all that was going on in the main yard any oversight from the towers was distracted by the amount of fierce warfare in progress.

  Blood was being spilt on the hard soil of the rectangular yard area as men fought it out with hand made weapons or bare hands if they had none. The noise was tremendous, screaming men overlaying loudspeaker commands from the warden and the continuing wail of the sirens.

  Disorientated Weams and his backup man, Fazenda stood frozen for a moment at one end of the Breezeway. Then they both saw Gil and Buck advancing steadily towards them.

  ‘What’s going on?’ called Weams.

  ‘Sounds like a breakout,’ Gil called back disarmingly. He was wearing a loose-sleeved shirt that effectively hid the metal rod he had hired as a part of his deal with Wee Willy. He had duck-taped the blunt end into a grip and the weapon hidden in his sleeve was effectively a foot-long needle.

  ‘What do we do?’ asked Fazenda, his eyes wide in confusion as they closed.

  ‘Take it on the chin,’ said Buck, as he drove a wedge of hard plastic, shaped into a sharp dagger deep into Fazenda’s throat.

  Fazenda spluttered in pain and wormed away but Buck was relentless, his blows were fast and repetitive and they rained into the big man’s midsection. So ferocious was the attack that he could do little more than totter away his hands waving feebly.

  Gil meanwhile had fronted Weams, who was staring at him in confusion. As Fazenda gurgled in agony Weams snarled at Gil.

  ‘We had a deal, motherfucker.’