Dirty White Boys (54 page)

“It’s just that nothing, motherfucker.
If we
talk, and note I don’t say
when
we talk but only
if we
talk, we talk when
I
say so. Do you understand, fuckboy?”

“Yes sir.”

“Now I want half your cigarettes,” instructed Richard. “Every week, I get half. Get it? Or I become interested in you. And you don’t want that.”

“Yes sir.”

“Now get the fuck out of my sight.”

The boy scurried away. Richard watched him go. He had a nice ass.

Now, for the first time in months, he felt something: an actual sensation slid through his bones, a small, tight smile played across his face.

He stepped back into his cell and saw his print.

Captured in a few deft pen strokes, the creature crouched on some featureless plain, swaddled in muscle, its head twisted almost as if in a feeding frenzy, its tiny eyes black
and cunning, a spasm of blood lust throbbing through it.
Lion tourné vers la gauche, la tête levée
, by Delacroix, who, Richard realized, had gotten the neck right.

Ah: lions.

The author would like to thank the following friends and colleagues for their assistance, while at the same time absolving them of all blame for its excesses and inaccuracies. Besides dedicatees Mike Hill, Bob Lopez, Steve Wigler, Lenne Miller and, especially, Weyman Swagger, all of whom gave good counsel when desperately needed, the others are: Steve Woods, Pat McGuire, Floyd Jones, Jean Marbella, John Feamster, Mike Mayo, Jim Horan, and the countless Oklahomans who were indefatigably polite and hospitable as I poked around their state for several weeks.

My agent, Esther Newberg of ICM, is the true heroine of the book, as abetted by my editor, David Rosenthal: special thanks to both of them for “getting it.” My wife Lucy, as usual, did the dishes and the bills so that I could slip off and pretend to be an Oklahoma state trooper and a badass escaped convict, which was much more fun than dishes and bills; my children—teenagers, by now, actually, Jake and Amy—were reasonably behaved throughout it all.

Finally, I should say that though I represent certain Oklahoma State Agencies—notably the Oklahoma Highway Patrol,
the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, and the Oklahoma Bureau of Prisons—the preceding work is entirely fictional and not in any way intended to reflect upon their performance of their duties.