You got a feeling when danger was coming. It went right up your backbone…but for Romero, today of all days, it just wasn’t there.
“Now ain’t that something?” he said out loud, not even aware of the fact.
“What you saying, home?”
So Romero told him what he was thinking, how he should have had lots of bad boys putting him in their sights but he wasn’t feeling anything and seeing even less.
“They got other things to worry about, home. First Weems and now Gordo…these boys ain’t real smart, but even they’re making the connection between Palmquist and a real ugly death. He’s giving all these lifers and hardtimers bad dreams.”
Romero knew that what was in the kid-and he was no longer believing he had imagined any of that- had been active again last night. But he hadn’t witnessed it because he’d spent the night racked out in the infirmary on sedatives after the doc stitched his face closed from the beating Gordo gave him. So no bad dreams or worse reality for him. But it had happened. He knew that. The kid had fallen asleep and then…
Aquintez told him that he had his ears open and he wasn’t hearing anything about Papa Joe putting money out on a certain con named Romero that wasn’t playing by the rules.
“Not yet.”
“Like I said, people got other things to worry about right now. Besides, home, you’re a living legend in this joint. Going after Tony fucking Gordo open-handed without so much as a shank. Now that takes balls, primo balls.”
“Or maybe just a lack of common sense, JoJo,” Romero said, fingering the bruises and bandages on his face.
Tony Gordo was a walking piece of shit and he got flushed, that’s all there’s to it.
He felt no pity for the man. He was a crawling worm somebody should have stepped on long ago and who does it? Palmquist. Or someth kn›. lt ning inside him. Christ, it was all so buggy, headcase stuff.
He looked around the yard again at all the disinterested cons, but the truth was, though, he wasn’t worrying so much about himself but about the fish, about goddamn Palmquist. Worried that the fear would build and some of the boys would act like the animals they were and kill the kid. That’s what worried him.
“I don’t know what this is about, man, but I think if they just leave the kid alone, they’re gonna be okay.”
“Right now, my friend,” Aquintez said, “it’s gonna take some real dumb motherfuckers to make a play for your boy.”
15
But prison life was prison life and it didn’t take long before the shit started stirring up again, smelling just as bad as any other day. Three days after Gordo died, Palmquist was put to work in the kitchen with Romero and some of the others. He did his bit all right, doing what the cook told him, stirring a cauldron of brown, greasy meat gravy with a wooden spoon that looked like a broomhandle. Cook said to stir and keep stirring it or it would lump up and the cons wouldn’t be able to keep it down.
So Palmquist was stirring and two black guys, cellies named Heslip and Burgon, were whipping instant potatoes in a big mixer, laughing about something and Romero could tell by the way they were laughing and the way they were casting sidelong glances at Palmquist, that it wasn’t good.
Palmquist was hearing them, just ignoring what they were saying.
Romero dumped an industrial-size can of green beans into a boiler, tuned in on the conversation.
“Shit, bro, ya’ll got me wrong here,” Heslip was saying, looking foolish in his white smock and hairnet. “All I say, all I say here is how I see this bitch first, ought to be me gets to grease his backside.”
Burgon just shook his head. “You pull that sweet shit on me last time, fool, I never got a taste. No sir, that boy is mine. I’m taking my crack and you gonna step aside. You can watch you want to, but he be mine.”
Christ, they were talking about Palmquist.
Romero felt himself steel at the idea of it. Wasn’t none of his business, he supposed, but yet after the Gordo thing, he was making it his business. His old man always said he wasn’t the smartest one of the lot, but he was smart enough to know two things: Weems had fooled with the kid and Weems was dead. Same for nface=lang='enGordo. Aquintez had said it was going to take some real dumb motherfuckers to make a play for the fish now and here they were in the flesh. Two more stupid cons looking for an open grave. Maybe it was a wild leap of logic to think that something would happen to them if they persisted, but from where Romero was sitting, he didn’t think so.
“All right, shit, you run a hard bargain,” Heslip said, pouring more powdered potatoes into the vat. “I give you two cartons Marlboro reds you gimme first dibs on that fine white shit.”
“Fuck you say, fool? Two, motherfucker? I don’t bite on that. I get you an ounce of good smoke, you forget his ass.”
“Shit, know a whiteboy got serious connections, get you a bottle of Jack Daniels and a couple rocks primo shit. Now what your black ass got to say on that?”
“Shit. You throw in them two cartons, you pop that motherfucker three ways to Sunday.”
“Ain’t gonna pop him, smoke,” Heslip said, like the idea was unthinkable to an upstanding guy like him. “Gonna sell his ass.”
Jesus, Romero was thinking, they were bidding on the kid like this was Ebay or some shit. And wasn’t that the final, dehumanizing statement of life at Shaddock? Right in front of the kid yet. He wasn’t nothing but merchandise to them. But that’s the way Heslip and Burgon were. They were both doing life and both had absolutely nothing to lose. They made a habit of jumping on fresh meat when it waltzed its sweet ass through the gates. They would jump it and pump it, school it, then sell it to the highest bidder out in the yard. Romero had seen it done before. Had seen them do it to a young black guy named Lester Heroon, degrading him until he slit his wrists in the showers not two months back.
Romero had to wonder, though, whether this was their idea or maybe Papa Joe had sweetened the pot for them.
They kept at it, now abandoning the potatoes and standing on either side of Palmquist.
“Look at this shit,” Burgon was saying. “He young and firm, got that blond hair, looking sweet and solid to me. You saying my boy here, he ain’t worth those two cartons, fool?”
“Fuck, I say that? Just, shit, I’m squeezed. How about we run my ass some credit, then we both get what we want.”
“What kind of credit line you talking, nigger?”
“Same old, same old, tit for the tat and suck shit, you up on that?”
Palmquist s s'›P/p›
That shut them up, they came on together, were thinking how sometimes you had to break a horse before you could ride it proper.
“Fuck you say, whitebread?” Heslip wanted to know.
Romero went over there, not sure if he was trying to save the kid’s bacon or that of the two black degenerates. He got in-between them and Palmquist. “Fuck you boys doing, man?” he said, letting that acid fill his voice. “Who say you got a claim on his ass? He’s my cellie, bitch, you want to talk business, maybe you better come through me.”
“Maybe we ain’t going to,” Burgon said, big and black and bristling.
Romero pulled a razor out of his belt. “Maybe I’ll cut your balls off, make your punk here gargle with ‘em. What you got to say to that, home?”
They were watching that razor and not saying a thing. They both knew Romero. Both knew he’d cut lots of guys, did it quick and without warning if you got on his wrong side.
Heslip just smiled, showed lots of bad teeth. “It’s cool, Romero, it’s cool. What’s this shit? This meat belong to you? You got dibs on this shit here?”
Romero shrugged. “Maybe I do. And maybe you ought to think about something real hard and real careful
