“Jesus, are you expecting to find a gun up there?”
“You’d be surprised.”
Actually, he wouldn’t.
The door on the far wall buzzed open and a guard walked through. The guy was five foot eight but stocky, his shirt stretched tight over a gym-rat chest. They must’ve been out of the bigger sizes when he’d been handed his uniform. His hand rested on a baton on his hip.
“Rourke.”
Bunny sat there.
“Rourke,” the guard repeated, glaring at him.
“Right, yeah. Sorry, that’s me,” said Bunny, standing up.
“Who the fuck else would it be?”
Bunny glanced at the empty room. “Sorry. ’Tis a very common name where I come from.”
“Do I look like I care?”
He didn’t. As Bunny shuffled past, his hands and feet still shackled, he noticed the name badge on the guy’s shirt read “Truant”. Ironic for a prison guard. Bunny would’ve tried to use this as a jumping-off point for a bit of chat but the shove in the back made it pretty clear that Truant wasn’t feeling chatty.
Bunny had seen enough prison movies to know what was coming next. He’d girded his loins for the inevitable walk along a row of cell blocks, with murderers and rapists hanging out of their cells, howling like animals or making suggestive remarks about how fine his ass was. He had played the moment over in his head several times. You couldn’t help but think about it, especially if you’d spent a lifetime putting bad men in prison only to find yourself there. Admittedly, he’d put the vast majority of his unhappy customers into Mountjoy in Dublin, but it was the principle of the thing.
He’d decided he would walk on, head held high, and give anyone who got in his way the patented Bunny McGarry, wonky-eyed stare. That stare had seen him through thirty years on the meanest streets of Dublin, and it would see him through this. His lazy eye was a gift from God – one of the few he’d been given. If the stare didn’t ward off the jackals completely, well, while he wasn’t as young as he once was, he was pretty confident that he was at the peak of his devious bastard career. Anyone who came for him was going to get a masterclass in fighting dirty. His opponent might win, but Bunny would at least lose in a way that discouraged anyone else from buying a ticket for the ride.
Bunny’s expectations were confounded when he was led through a door and across a yard to what he knew to be the administrative building. One of the things he had done in that long period of time waiting for things to kick into life had been to learn the schematics of the prison. He’d considered tattooing them on himself like the fella from the TV show Prison Break, but it felt easier to just do the studying. Besides, Bunny wasn’t a big fan of needles.
The midday heat was quite something. It hit Bunny like a punch in the solar plexus. Nevada temperatures were the kind you only experienced in Ireland when they were cooking instructions. He’d read somewhere that you could fry an egg on a rock in the desert if you did it at the right time of day. He mentally admonished himself for not trying it when he’d had the chance.
As Truant unnecessarily pushed him through the door, he did wonder if the unusual trip to admin was because somebody had rumbled him for not being who he had said he was. Worse still, they could have decided to transfer him to somewhere else. Part of the reason this part of the plan had taken so long to formulate was because, if Bunny ended up in the wrong prison then the whole thing would end up as a disaster. Nobody would get rescued and instead, Bunny would end up serving fourteen years’ hard time for another man’s sins.
The vibe of the admin building was decidedly different to that of the prison. Truant and the guard on the door exchanged nods, and he and Bunny were buzzed through. Bunny struggled on the stairs. It was weird how the ability to walk – something you did without thinking – could desert you following a change in circumstance. Having his feet manacled together meant he kept losing his balance, and his handcuffs being attached to the manacles by a chain meant he couldn’t use the handrail to steady himself.
The first time Bunny fell, Truant simply tutted and waited for him to get back up. The second time, he heard Truant unclip the billy club from his belt, but then the door at the top of the stairs opened and a woman in her twenties walked out, clutching a folder to her chest. She was blonde and pretty, in a deer-in-the-headlights kind of way.
She looked embarrassed, as if she’d caught them doing something inappropriate. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No problem,” said Truant, putting his hand under Bunny’s arm to help him up. “This gentleman is just a little on the clumsy side.”
Bunny struggled to his feet. “’Tis this new jewellery. You should see me without it – I’m like Fred Astaire reincarnated.”
The woman gave a nervous smile.
He felt Truant’s grip tighten painfully on his bicep. “Don’t talk to the nice lady.”
She stood to the side while Bunny and Truant made their way through the door.
“Much obliged, ma’am,” said Truant, laying it on a little thick in Bunny’s opinion.
From the glance Truant got in return, Bunny reckoned the woman agreed.
Inside, Bunny was hurried along a nicely carpeted hall. You could tell it was the executive floor – the place smelled of lilac and there was a noticeable lack of bodily fluid stains on any of the walls. Instead, there were pictures of fish – which seemed an odd choice in the middle of the desert, but Bunny was nobody’s idea of an interior
