The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(9)

“Sure. You scratch my back, I scratch yours, right? That’s the American way. You give me, say, ten percent of your commissary goods, and I’ll make sure nobody messes with you.”

He came closer. Glanced down at the plastic bag at the foot of my bunk and nudged it with the toe of his canvas shoe.

“Case in point. This? This is just unsafe. Some big guy could walk in here right now and rip you off, take all your stuff. But if you sign up for my protection plan, I’ll only take half, and we can be buddies.”

“Half?” I asked. “What happened to ten percent?”

“First-day sign-up fee.”

It wasn’t hard to read between the lines. Simms was running a by-the-books extortion scam, and from the tension in his voice he was about ten seconds from escalating to the hard sell. The kind that, out in the civilian world, usually involves smashing up a store and doing some property damage to make a point.

In here, the only thing I had worth smashing up was me.

I weighed my options. Back down? Let him rob me? Not happening. Once word spread that I’d bent over for Simms, I could expect a parade of thugs outside my cell door, lining up to take the rest of my stuff and whatever else they wanted. I strongly doubted Simms’s “protection” would be worth a bent nickel. That left me with one option. And facing down a guy at least a hundred pounds heavier and a foot taller than me while I didn’t have a weapon or any of my magical gear didn’t leave much doubt about the outcome.

The knowledge that I was probably about to get my ass kicked left me oddly tranquil. Pain was inevitable. Death wasn’t. Once I accepted I was about to pick a fight and lose, I could focus on strategy.

What did I need? To get rid of Simms and show everybody else I wasn’t afraid to brawl. That meant a change of venue.

“Well, that sounds reasonable,” I said, leaning forward on my bunk as if to reach for the bag.

Then I shot to my feet with no warning, barreling toward him in a sprinter’s launch and throwing my shoulder into his chest. It felt like hitting a slab of beef. He staggered back a step, grunting, then grabbed me in a clinch and swung me around. The cell bars rattled as I slammed against them, pain rocketing through my skull and shoulders. His fist hit my gut like a pile driver.

“Come on,” he said, clenching my shoulder as he pulled his free hand back for another punch. “Don’t be stupid. Just give it up—”

I turned my head and bit down on his hand as hard as I could, teeth breaking skin and grinding bone. It tasted like chewing into a rotten steak. He yelped, jerking his hand away, and I spat blood onto the cell floor. He was off-balance for a second, but I didn’t press the attack. Instead I slipped to one side and took a running leap backward, throwing myself out of the cell and onto the tier walkway.

My back hit the walkway handrail as if Simms was the one who had thrown me, my arms flinging against the steel railing like a boxer on the ropes. I took a deep breath.

“You’re f*cking dead,” I roared at the top of my lungs. The dramatic cell exit had drawn a few eyes. Now everybody was watching. Heads popped out of cell doors all along the tier like woodchucks on Groundhog Day, and the crowds on the floor above leaned over the railing to get a view.

If Simms were smart, he would have cut his losses and backed down. He wasn’t smart. Balling his bloody hand into a fist, he charged. He hit me like a freight train, his weight pulling me down to the walkway floor, both of us tumbling and throwing wild punches.

His fist cracked across my left eye, cut my eyebrow, and blotted out my vision in a trickle of blood. I kicked at him, couldn’t connect, and he hammered my face again. My ears rang, a klaxon that wavered from one eardrum to the other, warbling across my brain. No, the alarm was real, as real as the boots thundering toward us from the tower walkway.

I looked up as they hit us with the pepper spray.

A torrent of bright orange foam splashed across my face, setting my eyes on fire. It felt like I’d just stuffed a fistful of hot peppers in my mouth and started chewing, the burn choking my nostrils and streaming down my throat, washing out my entire world in white-hot pain. They hauled Simms off me and pulled me back by my armpits, but all I could do was sputter and choke and claw at the foam on my face, smearing it in deeper.

I was worse than blind as the guards dragged me off, but I could hear the other inmates. Cheering, catcalling, hammering on cell bars and hooting. They’d gotten an unexpected show to liven up their afternoon, and they liked what they saw.

I had, I presumed, made my point.





5.




Lancaster read the brass nameplate on the warden’s desk. A miniature Nevada state flag framed it on one side. On the other, Texas.

The warden was a big man with expansive body language and a powder-blue suit. When he spoke, eyeing me across his immaculately clean desk, he had a genteel Southern manner about him. He made me think of smoke and old hickory.

“I’d like to say that you set a record, son, getting into a fight less than two hours after arriving at my facility. I’d dearly like to say that.”

My manacled hands sat idly in my lap, chained to a belt like I’d worn on the prison bus. They’d rinsed my eyes and slapped tiny bandages on the cuts on my eyebrow and cheek. I ached, mostly. My back throbbed, my face felt like a tenderized steak, and my ribs stung if I poked them. So I stopped poking them.