“Be careful today,” I said to Jack, still uneasy.
“I always am.”
Grainger tucked his thumbs in his belt and swaggered across the yard, squinting his eyes at me as we passed each other. I resisted the urge to blow him a kiss. The warden appeared in the doorway of his office as I approached.
“Macready,” I said.
He turned and disappeared into his office without acknowledging me. We were supposed to call him Mister Macready as a sign of respect – maybe he noticed my omission. I followed him into the office, not closing the door behind me. I wanted to be able to see what was happening in the yard.
Macready was sitting on the corner of the desk. There was a chair off to the left and I wanted to slump into it, but that would be a display of weakness. I didn’t want to show my hand too soon. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The office had a dry dusty smell. The role of prison warden apparently didn’t merit air-conditioning. Keeping my eyes down I shuffled sideways so that I could see out through the open door.
Warden Macready had skinny arms and legs and a potbelly. He looked like a thin kid trying to shoplift a bowling ball. His bushy eyebrows were a natural sandy brown but his thinning hair was a flat orange colour out of a bottle. The white shirt and tan slacks he wore were clean and freshly pressed every day but by mid-morning they had that wilted and dusty look.
“Judge will be here day next Thursday,” he said.
I nodded. I knew this already. It wasn’t why he had asked me into his office. He waited for me to say something but I chose to disappoint him. I wasn’t worried about going up before the judge. Either I’d talk my way out of it or I’d escape after he’d sentenced me. This wasn’t my first small-town rodeo.
“Got a message for you over the interstat,” Macready said. He was pretending disinterest but he was obviously curious. Who was I to be getting messages from off-world?
“Yeah?” I said. I was pretending disinterest too, but in reality he had me worried. No one was supposed to know I was on this squit-hole planet.
“Old friend of yours asking to be remembered to you. Says he’s planning to visit. O’Keefe. You know who that is?”
It must have been obvious from my reaction that this was bad news. I saw a flicker of a smile on his lips. But the warden evidently had no idea who O’Keefe was and I wasn’t about to tell him.
“Like the message says, just an old friend,” I said.
The warden watched me, wanting to know the truth. But what could he do? He couldn’t have the guards beat it out of me. Not until I’d been up before the judge.
A movement in the yard drew my attention towards the open door. The warden couldn’t see it from where he was. I made it look as though I was eager to make my exit. I saw Paulie Pickles approach Officer Grainger. They carried out a brief muttered conversation and the little man surreptitiously pressed something into Grainger’s hand. Either a message or a bribe, I couldn’t see which.
“That’ll be all, Randall,” the warden said, still dissatisfied.
I walked back across the yard and Grainger came from the opposite direction. As we passed, I stumbled and bumped into him. “Sorry, boss,” I said.
“Shouldn’t drink if you can’t handle it,” Grainger said, his lips twisted in a sneer.
Moving away, I looked down at the folded paper I had lifted from Grainger. A hundred dollar bill. That was quite a bribe. I wondered what it had paid for. I could have taken Grainger’s pistol when I’d ‘accidentally’ collided with him, but that would have been spotted quickly and we’d all have been lined up and strip-searched while the guard in the tower pointed his big gun at us. Sometimes you have to take a subtler approach.
I turned and watched Grainger disappear into the warden’s office and close the door behind him. Perhaps he had been paid for his absence. That meant something unpleasant was about to happen. Paulie Pickles was up to something. I’d have to keep a close watch on him until he made his move.
I didn’t have to wait long.
There was a flash of sunlight on metal and Paulie was standing behind Jack and had a shiv pressed against his throat. The little prickly man was standing on tiptoe.
“You and me is going to have a little chat, Jackie boy,” Paulie said.
I hadn’t seen how he managed to get the jump on Old Jack, I was over at the water barrel near the warden’s office. Augie was standing behind Paulie, making sure no one thought about coming to Old Jack’s rescue. I sat down with my back against the barrel trying to come up with a plan that didn’t involve me facing off against a thug with biceps bigger than my head. I came up with nothing. I should have taken Grainger’s gun. I pulled off a boot and tugged at my slightly damp sock, making sure there wasn’t a hole in the toe. Then I reached for one of the white-painted pebbles from the cactus garden. I looked down at it and then swapped it for a bigger one. There was no way this was going to work.
“Augie and me heard you and your bed-mate last night,” Paulie rasped. “That was some mighty interesting pillow talk.”
Paulie Pickles and Augie were in the cell next to ours. With the drink taken, it was possible that Old Jack and I had spoken more loudly than we
