Blood Cell (5 page)

“But how did you know the lock on the holding cell would open?”

“I jammed it. Give me a little piece of paper and something skinny like a pencil and I can keep pretty much any lock from catching.”

Josh got to know the members of Santos’ inner circle. Santos was the leader. He had a buzzcut and a few days of stubble, and his skin was totally free of tattoos. Carlos had a moustache and bulged with mass generated by years spent with prison dumbbells. Eli was a smaller, wiry guy with slicked-back hair and sleeves of black tattoos. Delman had a cleanly shaved face and a rapidly receding hairline. They kept mentioning someone named Charlie who wasn’t at the table. Josh deduced that Charlie was in the hole. Santos, Carlos, Charlie, and maybe a few other guys in C pod had been a very close unit on the outside, and managed to get locked up together. In Pittman, they had recruited heavily, branching out to include anyone of any ethnicity, as long as they were loyal and could handle themselves in a fight. Josh couldn’t figure out how many people answered to Santos, but it sounded like a lot.

After everyone had gotten comfortable and all the food was eaten, Santos cut off the conversation. “Josh, we need to talk.”

“OK?”

“Some new information has come to light, and we might need to ask you a favour sooner than we expected.”

“Oh. Like what kind of favour?”

“We’re gonna need some help killing your cellmate.”

Josh was floored. Hadn’t they just gone over the fact that Josh was a nonviolent offender, and would be useless in a fight?

“I’m not really-“

Santos laughed. “Settle down. I don’t want you to kill Leo. Truth is, he’d kill you for trying.” The rest of the gang laughed. “What I need,” Santos continued, “is for you to use that very special skill set you just bragged about to help us with a problem.”

“My skill set?”

“Good with locks? Able to get past the guards, go places other guys can’t? You just told us all about it and I’d hate to find out you were exaggerating.”

“No, I have the skills, just—“

“Well we’ve got a problem with Leo where none of us can kill him but we’re all jonesing to watch the fucker die.”

“So where do I fit in?” Josh had completely lost his calm, persuasive persona again, and was back to being a scared inmate out of his depth in a new place.

“That’s easy,” said Santos at his most calm. “We need you to get us a gun.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Late that night, a few hours after Josh lay down to sleep, Leo climbed down from the top bunk. Leo moved quietly, and so carefully his bed didn’t even squeak. Very calmly, he crossed his thumbs at the first knuckle, fanned out his fingers, and slipped both hands around Josh’s throat.

Josh woke in terror as Leo’s surprisingly powerful hands closed his airway. He gagged for breath and thrashed against his cellmate. Leo threw his leg over Josh and pinned him down, then relaxed his grip.

“Settle down,” said Leo, who was little more than a silhouette over Josh. “If I wanted to hurt you I’d have gouged your eyes out.”

Josh said nothing.

“I saw your choice in company today at chow time. Santos Vega? Fucking asshole? Not someone I approve of my new cellie hanging out with.”

“Sorry.”

“And if I should happen to see you hanging out with Santos in the future, you might just wake up without an eyeball or two, you get me?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Leo climbed off of Josh and let him go. Josh climbed to his feet, wheezing.

“Now tell me what they wanted with you. Every detail. When will they make their move?”

Josh coughed. They can’t make a move. Something the warden said.”

Leo smiled, but the air of menace remained. “Good. But they must have wanted something.”

“No, they just wanted to get to know your cellmate. They’re really obsessed with you.”

“Obviously,” Leo approached Josh again, backing him up against the bars of the cell door. “but if you keep holding out on me, I will not be happy. You know what I do when I’m unhappy?”

Josh shook his head.

“I kill you in your sleep.”

Josh felt himself go white, the feeling of dropping down the first hill on a rollercoaster. He was locked in with a madman.

But he still had a play. Josh grabbed the bars behind himself, and with a strong pull the door slid to the side. As it moved, Josh ducked through the opening, and on his way he jammed his pinkie into the lock mechanism on the door jamb. He fished out a small piece of balled-up toilet paper and let it drop to the ground. Before Leo could even react, Josh had the door slammed shut again, with Leo standing dumbstruck on the inside.

A whistle blew, and a C.O. ran to Josh. He raised his hands on got down on his knees.

“Farewell! How the hell did you get out here?”

“Sorry, Officer, I don’t want to make trouble. But my cellmate wants to learn how to escape and I’m afraid of what’ll happen if I don’t show him.”

“Hell with that. Never should have let the two of you house together anyway.”

The C.O. cuffed Josh and then stood him up.

“Time to find you a new cell, Farewell.”

Josh smiled at Leo this time, and was led away.

*****

At the same time, on the third and highest level of the block, Ox Werden was hard at work. Under cover of darkness, he used a freshly made shank to scrape deep cuts into the side of a plastic mug. The shank he was using had been made from the handle of the very same mug.

After he had six lines, evenly space around the sides of the mug, he placed it between his foot and the floor and applied pressure. The mug folded and collapsed, tearing the plastic along a few of the lines. Once that was done, he used the shank to cut away the bottom of the mug, then finished separating the side into six evenly sized pieces of rectangular plastic.

He picked up a piece of metal. It had been tricky getting the metal, but Sonny had managed. It was thinner than a dime, and had been crudely cut into a triangle about two inches long on the long side. He placed the metal so that it overlapped the top of one piece of plastic. He placed another piece of the mug on top of that, sandwiching the metal between two pieces of plastic. Using his pillow and blankets to block the light, Ox lit his cigarette lighter and used the flame to melt the two plastic sections, fusing them into a single piece that held the steel in place. When he was done, he had a rough approximation of a box cutter—plastic handle, metal blade. All that was left was to sharpen the blade against the wall of the cell. But that could be done tomorrow. For now, he had two more shanks to finish.

When he was done, Ox had turned a mug and three pieces of steel into three deadly weapons. He crawled beneath his bed and felt along the wall. The walls were concrete, and he had carved out a narrow crack here. He found the spot. He removed the false section of wall—a long strip about one centimetre wide and six inches tall. This false strip was made out of soap, coloured with grains of concrete from when he had carved the crack. Into the crack went all four shanks—the one he had made previously and the three new ones. Then he plugged the crack back up, and got into bed.

Each of Ox’s trusted men had been given metal. They would have twelve more shanks just like these, for a total of sixteen. Four for the members of the motorcycle club, and twelve for some good guys they knew they could count on. More than enough to take care of Ox’s problems. Getting that guy Leo and letting Vega take the fall would be nice, but watching Vega bleed to death would be even sweeter.

Ox was still a little bitter over that new guy Josh choosing the Latinos over his own kind. With sixteen shanks handed out, Ox was sure that at least one of them could end up in the jugular of Josh Farewell.

*****

Santos Vega had a lot of things on his mind. Foremost was the situation with Leo, and trying to manoeuvre a way to kill the S.O.B without any extra jail time, definitely not time in the hole. But there was also growing tension with the dirtbags in the Motorcycle Club. They were socializing, drawing in a lot of new guys to their cause. The skinheads were getting smarter, too; they had some means of getting metal out of the shop in B pod, and metal meant blades. Santos would have to make a statement soon, re-establish himself as the only superpower in this prison. Every inmate could feel a war coming, and it was in Santos’ interest to decide when and where the war took place.

The guards and the warden were another problem. They clearly saw Santos as being too powerful, yet they left his gang intact. All they would have to do is ship Charlie and Carlos out to different pods and Santos would lose his captains, but instead, the warden was making a point of keeping them together. Santos was starting to think that he would be shot, with the cover story that his gang was threatening the guards. Or maybe they’d just kill Leo and frame Santos for it.

He was going to have to kill Leo soon. There was no time left to plan. Santos wasn’t a man of many skills, but he could always feel danger closing in on him. It was a skill that had kept him on the streets for years after he should have been busted.

There had been a time, back when there were only nine or ten guys in the Eighteenth, that Santos’s instincts bordered on the supernatural. Once, they had just picked up a huge shipment of hash by sticking up some white dipshits who thought they could smuggle it into town without any real security. They took the load, almost fifty pounds of the stuff, without even making a sound. They just rolled up to the dock where the drugs were being offloaded from a speedboat into a van, approached the smugglers, showed their guns and began to load the hash into their own vehicles. They poor yuppies who actually owned the stuff were too scared to even reach for their guns, so they just stood by and watched their fortune drive away.

Santos and his crew took the stash back to a warehouse they knew would be empty and started to weigh it out into one-ounce bundles. After about an hour of work, Santos got a bad feeling. He didn’t know why, but he was sure that there was something wrong. He’d felt like the robbery was too easy, but this was something else. He wasn’t just nervous, he had a definite gut feeling telling him that there was something wrong with this stash. So he told the crew to leave the drugs and get out of the warehouse. Leo had argued, of course. He even suggested that Santos was trying to steal the drugs for himself.

Santos had gone easy on him, just punching Leo in the mouth and tossing him into the van. And less than a half hour after they left the warehouse, the place was raided. Santos couldn’t tell you then how he had made that call to clear out, and he couldn’t tell you now. But he trusted his gut, and right now his gut told him that the best possible course of action was to kill Leo Jimenez. He couldn’t explain it to anyone but himself, but Santos knew that if Leo stayed alive, something very bad was going to happen.

Looking back on that night at the warehouse, Santos knew that he should have let Leo get caught. Just knocked him out and left him with the hash, waiting for the cops. Or better yet, killed him then. It would have saved him so much trouble. And thinking about how Leo had accused him, how Leo was so quick to turn, thinking only of himself, Santos saw now what he should have seen then. Leo was a live wire, and Santos had allowed him to short out the entire gang. He would soon correct the mistake.

After talking with the new guy, Josh something, Santos found a plan developing his mind. It was quite beautiful in its simplicity: a variation on ‘suicide by cop’ that would allow for Leo to die without anyone blaming Santos. To begin with, Josh would be sent to steal one of the guards’ swipe cards. Then Josh, or one of Santos’ soldiers, would need to get into one of the guard posts and use the swipe card to get access to the gun locker. All they would need is a sidearm; it didn’t even necessarily need bullets. Getting into the guards’ office above the mess hall would be impossible, but there were small booths at the end of each walkway in the cellblock where guards controlled the cell doors. Each walkway only had one guard for most of the day, and it would be easy enough to drive them away.

For example, they could beat the piss out Leo. That would be a good diversion to send the guard running. While he was gone, Josh could slip into the booth, open the locker and grab a gun as quick as he could. By the time the guard called for backup to pull the Eighteenth off of Leo, Josh and the gun would be long gone.

The next step would be at the nightly lockdown. Leo only left his cell for a shower in the morning and meal times, and that was only because the guards made you go. Santos couldn’t hide a gun in the shower, and there were too many eyes on him in the mess hall, so they’d have to take the action to Leo and Josh’s cell. The plan was really quite simple.

The guards have standing orders to shoot anyone escaping, or anyone who steals a gun. Santos would send one of his men to shove the gun into Leo’s hands, and then Santos himself would yell “Gun!” while his entire gang pointed at Leo. Leo, dumbass that he is, would be standing there holding a gun for all to see. And the guards on duty would bring him down with their sidearms within seconds. Leo would be dead, with over a hundred witnesses and security camera footage showing that Leo had pulled a gun, and that the guards had taken him down. The best time for the plan to work was either first thing in the morning or last thing at night, when more guards were in the stacks marshalling prisoners. Morning was out because it would mean that someone would have to hide a gun all night, and hope nobody noticed it missing. So that meant the plan would have to be carried out at night, when the guards came by before lights out.

It wasn’t a perfect plan. Leo could always drop the gun and surrender before he was shot, and the person trying to plant the gun could get caught before they plant it. Josh had told them that he would get them the card to steal a gun, but wouldn’t plant the weapon himself. They agreed to that, because even though it would be easier if Josh did everything, the eighteenth wanted to kill Leo on their own.

One thing the plan had going for it was the guards. Leo was already being watched by everyone in the place, and if they beat him up to make a distraction it would mean even more guards would be there to watch Leo when the gun was planted. More guards meant more trigger fingers.

*****

Josh woke up in his new cell. It was a few minutes before morning count, but Josh had been awakened by his new cellie. He was an Asian guy named Harold Kim, and on the bunk below Josh he was loudly snorting cocaine out of a small baggie. Josh smiled and lay back with his hands behind his head. This was much better than being awakened by a choke hold.

In the late afternoon, Josh surveyed the guards on duty in the block and decided that the one with sandy brown hair looked the least intimidating.

“Officer Williams?” asked Josh when the guard walked by his cell.

“What is it, new guy?”

“I got moved from my old cell in the night. I need to go get my change of clothes out of the old cell.” As he talked, Josh leaned in—it was partly to give the image of friendly conversation, and partly to test the C.O.’s boundaries. He needed a guard with a small personal bubble.

“What cell were you in?”

“How would I know? I was only in there for half a day.”

Williams sighed and looked up Josh on his clipboard. “Your old cellie will be going for a shower in fifteen minutes. Wait until then.”

Josh did as he was told, and a few minutes later he was relatively alone with Williams inside Leo’s cell, and happy in the knowledge that he could get within an arm’s reach of the C.O. without any trouble.