He pulled back, lifted both hands above his head, and swayed to the music. More whistles and catcalls. I could barely hear the music over the surge of encouragement. But I now knew I’d found the right man, and I played my part, offering a forced smile for the benefit of the onlookers.
The song began to wind down and Bear took my hand. “Come with me, darling.” He led me toward the hall and the bar began to settle behind us, punctuated with a holler from Steve: “Bill’s gonna get himself some.”
I assumed Bear was simply leading me into the hall so that he could give me whatever he’d been paid to give me. But I was wrong.
He waddled down the hall and entered the women’s bathroom. Left with no clear option, I followed him in. The woman who’d occupied the stall earlier was gone. I was alone with the hairy and now sweaty bear, and with the smells of a badly cleaned bathroom.
“I got what you want, sugar,” Bear said, eyeing me as if I were a piece of candy. “But it’s not going to be that easy.”
He was making no attempt to hide his interest and my thoughts flashed to the knife in my pocket. Then to the wire around my waist. But if I pulled either out now, he would only pull out whatever hidden weapon he had, and I would either leave empty-handed or not at all.
He drew one hand through his beard. “How about a little kiss. Hmm?”
“How about you give me what you were paid to give me. I danced with you, didn’t I?”
“Oh, yeah you sure did. But that wasn’t the deal.”
“Well that was
Bear chuckled. “Is that what you think you’re going to do to me? Hmm? You gonna hurt me?”
He shouldn’t have said that. He couldn’t have known it, but he’d put me in a whole new frame of mind, no longer as concerned with what weapon he might have hidden in his pocket.
But he’d also opened a door for me, hadn’t he? Bear was a pervert, and there’s more than one way to deal with a pervert. Summoning my full reserve of control, I forced my mind off the knife in my pocket and offered him a thin yet seductive smile.
“Is that what you want?” My stomach turned. I placed a hand on his chest, then gave him a gentle shove.
“And how do I know you have what I’m looking for?” I asked in the same tone. I closed the space, leaving only six inches between us. “How do I know you’re not just an imposter trying to step in on another man’s fun?”
“Because I have it,” he said.
“Have what?”
“The note.”
“Show me.”
He hesitated. Then reached for his jeans without removing his eyes from mine. Wearing a coy smile, he slowly pulled the leading edge of a folded note out of his pocket. “See? It’s right here.”
I smiled and slowly slipped my hand up his thigh toward the note while I leaned in and gazed into his eyes. Every nerve in my body was on fire, but not in the way he hoped.
“Good,” I purred. And then I closed my fingers around the note and brought my knee up into his groin with enough force to break a watermelon in half.
He gasped and I let my rage get the better of me. I slapped him across his face. Hard.
“Shame on you!”
Bear roared in pain, more from my knee than from my slap, I guessed, but I didn’t hang around for clarity. With the note firmly in my left hand, I flew to the door, ducked out, took one deep breath, and headed back out to the bar.
I have no idea what the patrons thought I’d accomplished in such a short time alone with Bear, but a few of them whistled and called out their congratulations. I simply smiled courteously and walked past them all without a backward glance.
The moment the door swung closed behind me, I was running for my car. I can’t lie, I felt a strange euphoria—the kind you might feel after narrowly escaping a rushing rhino. What was more, I’d maybe helped Bear gain a new appreciation for women, especially those who were a third his size. For a moment there, I came close to whooping and pumping a fist above my head. I had the note. I was alive. Danny was safe.
Victory.
But a few other words quickly pushed the thought of victory from my mind.
I turned into the parking lot and pulled up, breathing hard. This was just the beginning, wasn’t it? And Danny…My heart broke thinking about him. Danny had no clue. If he knew, he would carve Sicko up into small chunks and throw his body parts into the ocean.
In that moment, standing alone ten yards from my Toyota, I wanted Danny to do just that. I wanted it with all of my heart.
13
Prisons were not simply constructed at the whim of one man, but subject to committees’ reviews for approval, always under the scrutiny and guidelines established by the Corrections Standards Authority.
In the Basal case, Warden Marshall Pape had been involved prior to the prison’s construction, but he answered to a director in the Division of Adult Institutions. Who in turn answered to the chief deputy secretary of Adult Operations, who answered to the man at the top: the secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, appointed by the governor of California to his cabinet.
The entire system was closely watched by the Office of the Inspector General, the equivalent of an internal-affairs watchdog. Scrutiny, more scrutiny, and even more scrutiny.
The question that first presented itself to Danny when he was led into the bowels of the prison was how the section Bostich called deep meditation could have possibly been constructed under so much scrutiny.
The answer was plain: it couldn’t have. The room had initially served some other purpose, only to be modified after the prison was opened. And it was likely done so with the knowledge of the director in the Division of Adult Institutions, perhaps also with the agreement of someone in the inspector general’s office. Surely nothing short of such cooperation would have allowed the warden to create, much less operate, deep meditation with impunity.
The man might be a tyrant, but he wasn’t stupid. Rigorous control of the staff, the inmates, and the flow of information in and out of the prison was critical.
The captain and a CO named Mitchell Young had placed a spit hood over Danny’s head—typically used to keep prisoners from spitting on corrections officers, as the name implied—then cuffed his wrists, chained his ankles, tied both into a strap around his waist, and led him from the administrative holding room to a flight of stairs. Where the flight of stairs was, he didn’t know, because they walked some distance before descending.
It was steep, like the stairwell that led to the meditation wing where he’d spent his first few days. It led to a second door, which creaked on its hinges and opened to a much cooler room.
They took two right-angle turns, then stopped. Bostich demanded he stand still, then proceeded to open an entrance that required a full minute and included scraping and pounding not associated with the simple opening and closing of locked gates or doors.
“Hold still.”
It took only a moment for them to cut through his clothing, strip him bare, and remove his shoes.
They led Danny through the entrance into an even colder space before suggesting he watch his step because they were going down. The leg irons allowed him just enough movement to negotiate the concrete steps. Only when they passed through yet one more door, which they closed behind them, did Bostich remove Danny’s hood.
A single caged bulb shed very dim light on the room. The bare concrete space was perhaps fifteen feet to a
