“You don’t say much, do you?”
Romero was laying on his bunk before lights out, trying to read a book about some guy surviving in Antarctica. He liked books like that because he understood survival real well. “Why don’t you shut the fuck up, Cherry?”
The kid sighed, sitting at the little desk against the cement block wall, staring at those bars. “Just saying, shit, we’re locked up together, might as well pass the time.”
“Listen, Cherry. I ain’t trying to get in your asshole or slit your throat…why don’t you be happy with that?”
“I’m just saying we could talk.”
Romero didn’t want that, didn’t want nothing to do with the little bastard. You talked to a guy, then you started feeling like he was your friend. And when that happened, y heou felt like you had to take care of him.
And I don’t need that, he thought, I really don’t.
Thing was, Romero wasn’t sure that this is what was bothering him about the kid. That he’d have to fight his battles for him. There was something else, something about the kid he just didn’t like only he wasn’t sure what it was.
“Okay, Cherry, give it to me then. Tell me your sad fucking story. What did you do? Rape somebody’s poodle? Go after a couple kids? Tell me the kind of pathetic shit that landed you here.”
“Manslaughter.”
Romero almost laughed. Man-slaughter? “You? What’d you do? Run down some old lady in your mommy’s car?”
Palmquist wasn’t biting. “No…there was a girl. We were sort of going out, you know? Nothing major. Just some dates and things. She got killed, murdered, and they blamed me for it because I was the last one with her.” The kid studied his hands, maybe wondering if they were capable of doing what the courts charged him with. “So…I don’t know, I copped a plea. Took five years for manslaughter, otherwise the DA wanted to prosecute me for capital murder.”
Romero did laugh now. “Why the fuck you do that, Cherry? DA was just dancing, you stupid shit, bobbing and weaving. They try you for murder one, they got to prove it.”
“My lawyer said that, too, but I went for it.”
“You should’ve listened to him, Cherry. You’d be out there now.”
But Palmquist just shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. I didn’t kill that girl, my brother did. And, well, I didn’t want any of that coming out.”
Romero chuckled, lit a cigarette. “That’s some kind of brother you got there, letting you do time for him.”
“My brother…Damon…he’s not like us, he’s different. I didn’t want it coming out about the way he was, the things he does.”
Romero just watched Danny Palmquist, Cherry sonofabitch. Way he talked, you would have thought this brother of his swung from trees, had two heads, and a stainless steel dick. It was all pretty funny in a seriously fucked up sort of way. When the kid talked about his brother, he got a real skittish look in his eyes like maybe he was afraid of him. Maybe that’s what this was all about.
Romero saidlan›Romero, “You better screw your head on straight, Cherry. And you better do it soon. Get hold of your lawyer, tell him the truth. It’s what you gotta do.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Then you’re gonna suffer, Cherry. You’re gonna suffer real bad.”
The kid looked at him now, a dusting of menace in his eyes. “I ain’t a cherry, Romero. This is the second joint I’ve been in. I know how things work.”
“Yeah? Where were you before?”
“Brickhaven, upstate.”
“Brickhaven?”
“Sure. You been there?”
Romero told him he had, years before.
Brickhaven. Is that what the kid said? Brickhaven was definitely no kiddie joint. He couldn’t imagine this fish surviving in a place like that. Maybe he got lucky, but he wouldn’t get lucky at Shaddock Valley. Shaddock got all the troublemakers who couldn’t make it in the other state joints. But it all gave Romero pause…something had happened at Brickhaven a few months before, something real ugly, and he was starting to wonder now how the kid might have factored into that business.
“Brickhaven ain’t Shaddock, Cherry. Guys in here’ll do bad things to you.”
“Worse than they did to me at Brickhaven?”
“Yes.”
But Palmquist just shook his head. “They better not. Not if they know what’s good for ‘em…my brother finds out, it’ll be trouble.”
“In here? You stupid little shit! Listen to yourself. Your brother can’t help you in here. Don’t you see that? Maybe he’s some kind of crazy-assed freak out in the world, but in here you’re on your own.”
Palmquist’s eyes went about three shades darker, looked like bubbling sap. “You better watch it, Romero. You don’t want to piss him off.”
Romero tossed his cigarette and got to his feet. “Fuck you say, asshole? Fuck you think you’re talking to, motherfucker?” Romero was standing over him now, ready to bust him, slap that cherry face right off the bone beneath. “Let’s tell it the way it en- the wais, Cherry. How about we do that? Maybe you survived Brickhaven, maybe you got lucky, but you won’t get lucky in here. You’re nothing but meat and everyone wants a bite, tasty thing like you. These animals will stab you, beat you, burn you, rape you. And who’s gonna stop ‘em? This fuck-up dog-humping brother of yours? Don’t make me fucking laugh. This is the end of the world, you dumb cocksucker.”
Palmquist looked like he was ready to cry.
And Romero wanted him to. It was the best thing that could happen to him, drain all that human weakness right out of him, squeeze the little prick dry and the sooner the better. “I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, Cherry. You don’t stand a chance. You might as well pick your daddy now before he picks you.”
“Hell, I will.”
Romero wanted to put his hands on him, give him some pain to think about…but it was there again, that feeling in his guts, that sense that this kid was trouble, three kinds of hell. It stayed Romero’s hands…the idea of touching the kid somehow loathsome, like handling a big spider or a rat full of worms. A deep-set almost physical revulsion.
And feeling that the kid had that kind of power over him when he had no damn right to, it just pissed Romero off. “You goddamn punk! Right now, I decide to beat you or rape your ass, you can’t stop me. I’ll take what I want and ain’t nothing you can do about it, is there? I’ll beat you and fuck you and tomorrow or next week, I’ll be selling your sweet ass for cigarettes and soap. You like that? You like that idea? Why don’t you gimme a fucking reason, Cherry, gimme a reason to pull my razor and cut you to shreds and fuck what’s left. Go ahead, you fucking little snot, gimme a reason…”
But Palmquist didn’t.
He just stared at those bars like he was wondering what was beyond them.
4
The next morning, out in the yard.
Romero was there with a Hispanic strong-arm thief named JoJo Aquintez and a big, tattooed biker named Riggs who looked like something that sharpened its teeth on bones in a Neolithic cave. All three of them, sitting on a picnic table near the wall, looking outrageous in their orange prison-issue jumpsuits.
Riggs was saying how he was walking in four months, his term would be up. He had waved his right to
