The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(28)

He broke and ran, cradling his arm. There were no alarms, no pounding of guards’ booted feet, and the security camera in the corner hung as a mute and witness. Nobody was coming. The guards had been bought off or warned off. It was just me and the second hitter, pressing his palms to his eyes and screeching like a newborn baby as he thrashed on the floor.

A kinder man would have put him out of his misery. I wasn’t that man. Besides, I needed to make a statement to the entire prison. He’d do. I toweled off, pocketed his knife, got dressed, and walked out of the shower room, letting the door shut on his terrorized wails.

*

Out in the yard, they were playing cards at Brisco’s picnic table. Sounded like a raucous good time, at least until they saw me coming.

A metal detector checkpoint stood between the hive and the yard, so I’d stashed the knife in my cell before I came out to play. That was all right. By now, they’d have found the second hitter, and word spread fast on the prison grapevine. I waited just long enough in my cell, before heading outside, to make sure the story got around.

Fear was my best weapon.

Ray-Ray and Slanger found someplace else to be, fast. The others could tell something was up but looked more confused than anxious; they must not have been in on the hit. Brisco, he just turned into a statue, his eyes going marble-hard.

“Hey, Brisco,” I said, “what’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He leaned back a little, shoulders tensing.

“Guys,” he said, “need a minute here.”

His buddies cleared off, orbiting the table at a respectful distance. I sat down across from Brisco. And stared, without saying another word.

He tugged at his collar like a suspect sweating it out under an interrogation-room lamp and looked everywhere but straight ahead.

“It wasn’t…it wasn’t anything personal,” he finally said.

“Funny,” I told him. “When somebody tries to screw somebody else over and fails hard? That’s always the first thing out of their mouth. ‘It was only business.’ ‘It wasn’t personal.’ Thing is, to the guy getting screwed? It’s always personal.”

“You—you don’t understand.” He wrung his hands on the table. “I’m trying to save lives here, man. The browns are itching to go to war, and it’s all because of you and those f*cking Calles. No you, no more problem.”

“Except those hitters weren’t CCs. For one thing, they were Asian. Korean, maybe. Second, they were genuine operators. Where’d they come from, Brisco?”

He looked up at me and shook his head. “Outside. Don’t know. Didn’t ask. They said they’d been hired to take you out, and they came in with fake jackets. I know they had some bent guards covering for ’em. They said…they said if I set the scene and pulled my protection away, they’d move in and seal the deal. They get what they want, my problem goes away, everybody’s happy.”

“Yeah. Everybody’s happy, except for me.” I rested my palms on the picnic table and locked eyes with him. “You can imagine I might have a slight problem with that.”

He froze, a deer in headlights. When he opened his mouth again, his voice came out in a near whisper.

“That guy…that guy they pulled out of the showers. They’re saying he doesn’t have a scratch on him. But he was screaming like he was burning alive. Said it took horse tranquilizers to knock him out. The second he woke up…he just started screaming again.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I heard, too.”

“What did—” Now he did drop to a whisper, eyes flicking left and right before he finished the question. “What did you do to him, Faust?”

I leaned in and gave him the sweetest smile I could muster.

“I did what I do.”

He swallowed hard.

“Seems to me,” I said, “the other day, at this very table, you were explaining the danger of holding grudges in here. So tell me, Brisco…are you going to settle things up with me? Make it right? Or are we going to have a problem?”

“No, no problem.” He shook his head, eyes going wide. “What…what would square us, do you think?”

“That’s simple. Right now, unless a friendly guard already smuggled him out, there’s a hit man with a broken arm hiding somewhere in this prison. I want you, and all your boys, to go on a scavenger hunt. Find him, and bring him to me, alive. He needs to answer some questions. You do that, and as far as I’m concerned, I can let bygones be bygones. Fair enough?”

“Yeah.” He pushed himself up on shaky legs, waving a hand to call his entourage back. “And I mean it, it was nothing personal—”

I held up one hand. He stopped talking.

“Also,” I said, “I want a cell phone.”





15.




After I gave my new best friend his marching orders, I went looking for Jake and Westie. I found them over by the fence, sharing hits off a half-burnt cigarette.

“Hey,” Jake said, “don’t suppose you’ve got any smokes on you? We’re down to the bottom of the pack.”

“Sorry. Never picked up the habit. I figure it’s best if there’s at least one vice I don’t indulge in.”