Into the Fire(85)
He steered Evan down the hall. Tile floors, endless windows. They passed the inmate property room, a vision from a dystopian future, part deep-freeze coat check and part grapevine. Thousands of blue fishnet bags hung from racks, filling the bay from floor to ceiling. All those worldly possessions suspended in time and space. Each blue sack matched a beating heart warehoused behind metal and concrete.
Evan’s bag dangled somewhere among them, a drop in the ocean.
At the end of the wall waited a cart loaded with supplies. Before Willy had to prompt him, Evan grabbed one item from each stack. Sheet, towel, soap, rubber toothbrush. With his thumbnail he tested the end of the toothbrush, but the rubber yielded under the pressure. Too soft to whittle into a shiv.
“We had a stabbing last week, which means no disposable razor,” Willy said. “If you stay longer, we will allow you to shave under supervision.”
Evan’s mouth had gone dry. He nodded, rasped a hand over his two-day growth. He’d purposefully gone without shaving today.
“We’d give you a TB test, but results take three days and you’ll be out by then. So: Try not to cough on anyone.”
Evan nodded. Willy shoved another clipboard at him. “Sign this.”
“What is it?”
“It says if you contract Hep C or AIDs, the county’s not liable.”
Evan forced down a swallow.
“Kidding. It says you haven’t requested that any prescription meds be supplied.”
Careful to keep his pinkie lifted, Evan signed. Gave back the clipboard.
“Nice try,” Willy said, and snapped his fingers.
Reluctantly, Evan handed over the pen.
Willy signaled to a guard in the control room. The electronic doors gave a bone-jarring clank and hissed open. Willy marched Evan into a mantrap, the door behind them sealing before the one ahead could release. They drew parallel to the guard window, Evan’s wristband bar code was scanned, and the door before him rumbled open.
“You’re in Cell 24,” Willy said. “Try’n play nice with the others.”
He prodded Evan forward, and the door slammed shut behind him, sealing him off from the world.
45
Deploying a Mop-Based Weapon
As Evan eased forward into 121 B-Pod, he was enveloped by a dull roar of background noise, a wave about to break. The unit smelled like death, the decay of organic matter deteriorating, uncleaned and unnourished.
The wall at his side held painted instructions with green arrows: COURT, VISITORS CENTER, RELEASE.
He couldn’t help but note that they all pointed opposite the direction he was walking.
Two levels of rooms overlooked a central bay with bolted-down picnic tables sprouting up at intervals like brushed-metal mushrooms. The circular tables sat only four at a time to keep commiserating to a minimum, and they were occupied now. Punks and jockers, hustlers and cell lieutenants with muscle-swollen joint bodies—Evan could read the dominance hierarchy from their postures and positions. A few inmates dotted the stairs and catwalk, watching Evan’s entrance with casual menace. The deputies stayed safely behind the glass, the prisoners left to police themselves. If the deputies did come in, they’d come with full riot gear, pepper spray, and stun grenades.
The walls were stained with water damage from the sprinklers, white paint bubbled out from the concrete. Dousing the two hundred or so prisoners jammed into the fifty cells was a common anti-fire, anti-riot, and anti-agitation technique.
From Joey, Evan knew all the camera positions and sight lines in here, when to lower his head and when to turn his face. She could glitch the cameras now or wipe the footage later, but he didn’t want to make more work for her than necessary.
He kept on across the bay toward the stairs. An ACLU flyer fluttered by his head: Do you not have a bed? Floor sleeping is a violation of your rights! He noted the thickness of the paper, the dab of tape connecting it to the concrete. Passing a table of men playing poker, he next considered the playing cards, how they might be repurposed as something useful. He came up blank. Two prisoner-workers distinguished by yellow jumpsuits slid a bucket around, slapping mops across the floor. Evan did a quick mental breakdown: wooden mop handles, metal band wrapping the head, brackets holding the wheels, shatterable yellow plastic.
Promising.
A wide doorway led to the showers, another to the dayroom, where a television blared a talky news show. The screen was mounted behind armored glass, elevated above a few dozen chairs. Evan noted an assemblage of prisoners whose profiles he’d memorized with Joey’s help, the Armenian Power heavies he’d assumed would be closest to Benjamin Bedrosov. They sat in a cluster around a chair centered beneath the television—the best seat in the house. Evan couldn’t see the face of the man occupying the privileged position—just part of his shoulder and an arm—but he sensed immediately that it was the man himself radiating a nimbus of influence.
One of the men with teardrops inked at the corner of his eye—Argon Sargsyan, aka Teardrop—noted Evan’s gaze across the bay and stood abruptly. A few of his compatriots rose as well, forming a human shield that blocked Bedrosov completely from view.
Evan averted eye contact quickly and mounted the stairs. An old inmate sat on the landing, scratching his neck and reading a newspaper. A zoo-house musk hung over the second floor. Evan moved up the catwalk, counting down the rooms.