Reaper got to his feet, rubbing away at the rivulets of sweat streaming down his body with a towel. ‘That’s what the last two guys who shared a cell with me thought.’
Lock had anticipated that an inmate like Reaper might not take too kindly to his presence.
‘Just so we’re clear, I don’t intimidate that easy,’ he said, standing right in close to him. ‘Plus, you do anything to me, and you can forget whatever deal you’ve cut with the US Attorney’s Office.’
‘Might not be me you have to worry about. Only one thing that cons hate more than a snitch.’
‘And what’s that?’ said Lock.
‘A snitch’s bitch.’
Lock jammed his thumb hard into Reaper’s neck just below the angle of his jaw. He applied just enough pressure to get his attention.
‘Listen to me, you piece of shit, you keep this up and you getting on to that stand won’t be an issue, because I’ll kill you myself. Now, I don’t like you, and you don’t like me, but for the next five days we’re stuck with each other, so you do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it, and we’ll be just fine.’
Reaper’s face was flushed. Lock dug his thumb in a little bit harder.
‘You got me?’
Reaper forced a nod. Lock gradually reduced the pressure, then let go, prepared for some sort of counter- attack. If Reaper had been criminally unstable before his incarceration, who knew the state of his mind now, especially given his near-suicidal demand to return to the mainline?
Reaper stepped back and massaged his neck. ‘You scare easy, Lock. All I’m saying is I’ve had a lot of years down on my own, so it’s not going to be easy to share a cell again. We’re gonna need some rules.’
‘Agreed,’ said Lock. ‘And my first rule is, your books sleep on the floor, not me.’
‘Fine, but no going near my shit unless you ask first.’
‘Well, I’m not big into handicraft,’ Lock countered, nodding towards Reaper’s crocheting. ‘Anything else?’
‘Keep the cell clean. And don’t be running off your mouth about shit that doesn’t interest me.’
As a list of dos and don’ts went, this wasn’t any more extensive than many of the people Lock had protected.
‘I hear you. I was in the military long enough to cope with sharing confined quarters.’
‘Same here,’ Reaper said. ‘But the Bay’s a little different. First, you got the toads. You gotta watch out for them.’
‘Toads?’
‘Toads. Blacks. Negroes. Then you got your Nortenos and Surenos. You getting this? Nortenos are the Hispanics from northern California, Surenos are from the south. The ones from Mexico are the Border Brothers. They associate separately on the yard, but they all fall under the control of the Mexican Mafia.’
‘That’s the gang they call La Eme?’
‘Nice to see you did some homework, Lock. Yeah, La Eme got their shit down cold.’
‘I thought they were tight with the Aryan Brotherhood too.’
‘They’re allied to whoever doesn’t draw any heat on them. Remember, out on that yard and in the unit, all that matters is that you stand with your own. Check all that black and white together bullshit at the door. Don’t matter who you are, who you roll with, or who you’re talking to. In Pelican Bay, you’re in the jungle.’
11
That night Lock was troubled by images of Ken Prager’s family in their final moments. Every time he shut his eyes, their terrified faces crowded in on him. Lock tried to force them out, but it was no use. As soon as he began to drift off, they were back. The look on Ken’s face was the most haunting. It was the look of a man who had sacrificed not only himself but those closest to him. A man who had been walking a tightrope, only to have it cut by some unseen hand.
Finally, he gave up on trying to get to sleep, and lay, eyes open, staring at the barren concrete walls of the cell. He should be back at home in New York, lying next to Carrie, Angel asleep at the foot of the bed. Instead he was spending the night in an eight-foot-by-twelve-foot concrete cell with a stone-cold killer who’d already made plain the fact that Lock was an unwelcome intrusion.
Given that sleep was proving impossible, he used the relative calm and quiet to think through what lay ahead. In some ways the task he’d been handed was simpler than other close protection jobs he’d embarked on. For one, the time frame was finite. Five days. By the time morning arrived, in a few short hours, they’d be at the start of the second day.
The second advantage Lock possessed, if it could be called an advantage, was that he knew the threat was both clear and present. The Aryan Brotherhood would be coming after Reaper. That was a given. The only two questions that remained were when and how.
With Reaper having insisted — idiotically, Lock thought — on being placed back in the general population, the most likely scenario would be a strike in one of the public areas. That said, Lock couldn’t categorically rule out an attack in the cell. In some ways, the confined quarters of the cell would be an ideal venue for assassination. There would be nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
There was also the problem of bathing to consider. In addition to the stainless-steel sink and toilet bowl bolted into the wall of each two-man cell, the unit had a communal shower area. Showering would have to be kept to a minimum. Reaper wouldn’t like it, but tough.
Lock got up and walked to the cell door. Bars ran vertically from floor to ceiling. The building itself was two storys. They were on the upper tier. There were a dozen cells on each tier, all facing out towards a central reinforced-glass-fronted control pod. Lock could see what the prisoners referred to as the bubble cop sitting inside the pod, leafing through a magazine and eating candy, his position giving him a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree view of every single cell door.
Looking down from behind the cell door, Lock estimated that from the top of the five-foot guard rail to the floor of the unit was maybe twenty feet. Not enough to definitely kill a man if he happened to fall over it, but enough to make sure he didn’t make court. Lock made a mental note to ensure that Reaper stayed on the inside of the walkway at all times.
On the floor level were some blue hexagonal tables and chairs, all of which were bolted to the floor. In fact, since he had arrived, Lock hadn’t noticed any furniture or fittings in areas that would be used by the inmates which weren’t similarly secured.
On a wall that lay parallel to the front of the cells were four pay phones, wall-mounted at equal distances from one another.
There was a single blue reinforced door that led out of the two-story cell area and into a waiting area. On one side of the waiting area was the entry point to the block’s control pod. On the other side was another glass- fronted office. Lock had also noticed at least one single-man restraint cage. Next to that was the door that allowed entry directly on to the yard.
Undoubtedly, the yard would be the most challenging environment, but Lock had only seen it in passing. No doubt tomorrow he’d get a better look. For now, he had to try again to get some sleep. He returned to his bunk, closed his eyes, and within minutes he was back in the lonely, blood-soaked clearing with the blazing cross at its centre as it filled with screams of abject terror.
Lock was woken a little after six by the squeaky wheel of the metal food trolley as it rolled along the walkway outside his cell.
‘Chow,’ said Reaper, handing him the first of two trays passed through a slot in the door by a black prison orderly.
‘We eat every meal in our cells?’ Lock asked him.
‘Uh-huh,’ Reaper grunted, spooning some powdered egg into his mouth.
‘Even on the mainline?’
Reaper put down his spoon. ‘Used to eat outside the cells in a chow hall, but so many dudes got killed that now they use the chow halls for storage.’
