‘Yessir, Mr Agry.’
‘You got somethin’ nice for me today, Cookie?’
‘Veal cutlet.’
‘I’ll take it in my cell. Fix me some of that Hollandy sauce shit you learned in New Orleans to go with it.’
Agry knew that when he was gone Fenton would curse him blind for the extra effort, maybe even blow his nose in the Hollandy sauce. For now Fenton smiled and bobbed his head. Again the dull stirring of disgust. Agry flicked his head and Fenton melted away amongst the ovens. Agry and Shockner cut through the back door of the kitchen and stopped at the top of a narrow staircase. The staircase was dimly illuminated by light filtering up from the room below. Along with the light came the rumble and hiss of machinery and a thin dribble of steam. Leaning against the wall, smoking, halfway down the stairs were two heavyweights, Atkins and Spriggs. They looked up and dropped their cigarettes and crushed them under their feet as Agry padded down the steps towards them. These were real cons – none too bright but armed robbers with dead cops to their credit – who had thrown in with Larry DuBois on cellblock A. Atkins and Spriggs both got a hard, dry handshake and a greeting by name.
‘You seen Stokely Johnson yet?’ said Agry.
‘You mean the nigger Johnson?’ said Spriggs, aghast. ‘He’s locked down ain’t he?’
‘Yeah. Perkins was meant to bring him.’ Agry caught Shockner looking at him with veiled confusion. ‘I guess he’s already down there.’
‘What’s he here for?’
‘With Wilson in seg it may be time to persuade Johnson to become king of the coons. Wilson’s smart, but Johnson’s just another dumb-ass jig we can get to grin and sing and dance for us, even if he don’t know his self that’s what he’s doin’. Right?’
Spriggs had no choice but to nod in agreement. Agry squeezed Spriggs’s arm. The triceps was rock solid. ‘You come back to D later for some Old Grandad, okay?’
Agry moved on down. At the foot of the stairs he passed through a pair of heavy semi-transparent plastic doors and into the prison laundry.
The laundry was brightly lit and its damp heat was as punishing as the kitchen’s. The rows of toiling machines, mangles and steam presses provided another despised work detail for the beaners and gooks. At the rear of the laundry was another passage which led to the linen store. Agry strolled towards it through the whorls of steam. In the passage were two hulking cons in soiled T-shirts. The more faded of the two T-shirts read: ‘NUKE BAGHDAD’. The other read: ‘EAT CUNT’. As Agry reached them the two men backed away to let him pass. Both men nodded without speaking. Agry walked through them without nodding back. Horace and Bubba Tolson. Enforcers for Hector Grauerholz. Muscles, tattoos, thick beards, three ear rings apiece. The Tolsons were Hell’s Angels who’d raped a twelve-year-old girl whilst strung out on peyote buttons and Old Crow. After slaking themselves on the girl’s body they’d driven their Harleys over her skull. When arrested Horace Tolson had been found picking her brains from the treads of his tyres with a matchstick. They were scum and Agry would not have had such in his crew. His guys were inside for killing men not children. But today he would use the Tolsons as required. In time of war you couldn’t be too choosy about your allies. Agry went through the passage to the linen store. At the door he nodded to Shockner and went into the store alone.
The store was large and hot but well aerated. It was probably the sweetest smelling room in the joint. Banked high on either side of a centre aisle were stacks of fresh laundry piled on pallets and shelves. Five bare bulbs hung from the ceiling in a row. Only the farmost bulb was lit which gave the room the feeling of a sepulchre. Underneath the bulb, their eyes on Agry, were Hector Grauerholz, Dennis Terry and Larry DuBois. Stokely Johnson wasn’t there but then Agry hadn’t been expecting him. That had been to set up Spriggs in case DuBois wouldn’t play ball.
‘I’m late,’ said Agry. ‘Forgive me.’ He walked down the aisle towards them.
Dennis Terry stepped from the group and held out his hand. ‘Nev,’ he said.
Agry shook the hand. ‘Dennis. How’s it goin’?’
Terry, a grey man in his fifties, shrugged anxiously and returned Agry’s smile. Unlike the others Terry wasn’t a crew chief. He had spent twenty-eight years inside for strangling his fiancée – a schoolteacher in Wichita Falls who, Terry had convinced himself, had been fucking a Portuguese short order cook named Al. No concrete evidence of Al’s existence was ever found, let alone of his having dicked the said fiancée, and so Terry was sent down for ninety-nine years by a judge who was a friend of the dead girl’s family. These days, if he’d served any time at all, he would’ve been out on the street in four. It was a sad tale and Terry was a sad man. Thin and affable, he was uncomfortable around violent men. Agry knew that standing in the linen store with three psychopaths was hard on Terry’s nerves. Yet despite his peaceable nature Terry was a key figure in Green River – and a wealthy man to boot – because he controlled Maintenance.
A building as big and old as this one required constant repair, rebuilding, rewiring, replumbing. Through hard work and shrewd politics Terry had kept his position – inherited in more civilised days when his predecessor succumbed to a stroke
– for two decades. Here everything had to be bought and paid for – jobs, legal advice, toothpaste, a decent seat in the cinema, the right to pump iron in the yard – even the cell you bunked in. Maintenance included a lot of good skilled jobs, each of which had to be purchased. It also provided vast opportunities for smuggling contraband, blackmarket barter, luxury improvements to accommodations and rapid repairs. Running Maintenance was beneath the dignity of the Lifer crew chiefs and they were happy to leave the work to Terry, guarantee his safety and collect a healthy portion of his spoil. Terry, in his turn, never had to raise his voice in anger and enjoyed more home comforts than any of them. He lived as good a life as it was possible to live in Green River. He would have no stomach for what Agry had in mind but Agry hadn’t invited him out of etiquette. Terry was there to swallow nervously and say yes to whatever he was told to do.
Now Hector Grauerholz shook Agry’s hand and Agry stared into a pair of bright button eyes that were empty of any emotion he could recognise. Grauerholz was thin, small, cocky and even by Agry’s standards dangerously abnormal. He was twenty-four years old and claimed the current prison record for the highest substantiated number of murders: eighteen on the outside and three on the inside. In solving a drug dispute in Dallas he’d firebombed a jig crack factory and waited outside with an Uzi, gunning down the inhabitants as they tried to escape the flames. The factory was on the ground floor of a tenement in Deep Elem and seven sleeping children and three women were amongst the dead. Despite the fact that the victims were black the trial judge had been so shocked by Grauerholz’s flagrant incapacity to experience anything approaching remorse that he’d racked him up a prison sentence totalling two thousand and twenty-five years, another record that Grauerholz brandished with some pride.
Grauerholz had an open, innocent face and kept his hair shaved down close to his skull. He looked, to Agry, like someone in training for the priesthood. In the River he had gathered together a mixed bag of backwoodsmen, red meat-eaters, Angels, acid freaks and punks from the younger trash element and built himself a small but serious drugs and muscle outfit. Behind Grauerholz’s choirboy looks was a core of virulent and self-destructive nihilism which – if he hadn’t been given room to breathe – would have exploded into wasteful bloodshed. Agry had given him that room, and enough respect and power to make him appreciate the pain it would cost him to lose it. Grauerholz was the child who would destroy the world just to see the sparks it made going up. But his help too was essential. Agry squeezed his hand for a second longer than necessary before letting go.
‘I heah we gonna pitch some Wang Dang Doodle, Nev,’ said Grauerholz.
‘All night long,’ replied Agry.
Grauerholz’s face broke into a beatific grin.
Agry added, ‘Lon
g as your people got the balls for it.’
‘You kiddin’, man?’
Agry smiled. Grauerholz sucked on his cheeks, a tad pissed, and stepped back. But neither Grauerholz nor Terry was Agry’s real concern. Larry Dubois was. Agry shook DuBois’s soft, moist hand.
‘Larry,’ he said.
‘You sure this is the right time to go, Nev?’ asked DuBois.
Agry waited for some eye contact. He didn’t get it. DuBois was seriously obese – like two-ninety-five obese – and had a habit of speaking to a point just above a listener’s head, lowering his eyes to lock gazes only at the last moment.
‘Wilson’s in the hospital,’ said Agry, ‘and the jigs in B been on their knees sucking their own sweat for near on two weeks. We’ll never get a better chance.’ He paused. ‘Why?’
DuBois shrugged his eyebrows. ‘I just wanna be sure this isn’t about’, he finally brought his eyes down to meet Agry’s, ‘personalities.’
Agry felt a drench of ice water sluice through his gut. DuBois was oily, sensual and sly and kept two Puerto Rican wives in his cell on A block. It was whispered, but only whispered and never around DuBois, that he occasionally liked to take it in the ass from Cindy, the more lightly hung of his two wives, whilst Paula, the other, rubbed his cock and balls with stale chicken fat. This was treading close to faggotry – normally an unacceptable perversion – but Larry carried enough muscle to get away with it. In his day – before Agry came up – DuBois had been a much feared killer. Before that he’d struggled up from pimping to control millions of dollars’ worth of vice and drug traffic between Juarez and El Paso. His battles with Agry were long past now, their peaceful co-existence being profitable to both parties, but Agry had often wondered if DuBois hadn’t gotten soft under all that blubber. The meaning of the ‘personalities’ jibe was clear. It ignited a blue touchpaper in Agry’s chest and he fought an urge to gut the fat fuck on the spot. He was obliged to confront the jibe and delicacy was required. Maybe at a later date he would have Cindy’s bantamweight dick carved off and served to DuBois on a plate of fried chicken wings, but for now he needed him. With an effort Agry kept the rage inside and his voice amiable.
‘You suggestin’ I need help gettin’ Claudine back?’ said Agry.
DuBois looked away. ‘I’m just thinking of the men, Nev. Some things are their business, some things aren’t.’
Agry felt the pressure surge uncontrollably in his chest. The sulphate increased his sense of outrage. The fat scumbelly was saying – in front of Grauerholz and Terry – that he, Nev Agry, couldn’t hold onto his own fucking wife. Agry glanced at Grauerholz, who was watching the exchange with glee in his eyes. Agry overcame the brain cells yelling for blood and tried again.
‘We been through this before, Larry,’ he said. ‘The niggers are gettin’ too proud. What are they now? Forty per cent the population? Fifty? We don’t show them the iron fist, right now . . .’ he paused dramatically, ‘. . . and in five years’ time we’ll be cleaning toilets and waxing floors with the beaners.’
‘I have more dealings with them than you do,’ said DuBois. ‘They’re good customers. Crystal, weed, crack, brown. You gotta understand their psychology. They never gonna get it together to run things. They never do. Look at D.C. Atlanta. Detroit. Bastards can’t even run their own fucken cities. There was just ten white cons left in this joint, you know who’d be in charge?’ DuBois tapped his chest with his thumb and shook his head. ‘Not the coons, buddy. An’ you know it.’
‘We’re prepared,’ said Agry. ‘We’re ready.’
‘Sorry, Neville.’
Agry’s vision suddenly blurred. The only person ever allowed to use his full christian name was Claudine, and then only when preparing to go down on him. What’s more DuBois had deliberately mispronounced it to rhyme with ‘Lucille’ as if it were some kind of a faggot name, as if he, Nev Agry, were some kind of a homosexualist. The rest of DuBois’s words reached him as if from a great distance.
‘Just can’t see my way to backing you on this one,’ said the fat man. ‘It’s not in my interests.’
Naked power play, then. No doubt planned for some time. The fat pimp was trying to make him look small, calculating that Agry wouldn’t go for it without him. Something in Agry’s face – something he wasn’t aware of – made Grauerholz take one step backwards, and Dennis Terry two. DuBois held his ground, but a flicker appeared in his left eyelid. Agry leant towards him.
‘You know your problem, Larry?’ said Agry. He paused. ‘Too much beaner jissom swillin’ round your guts.’
‘Careful, Nev,’ said DuBois, but his face was suddenly a shade paler. He shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet.
Agry glanced at Grauerholz. ‘Hec?’
The punk’s face grew brighter than ever. He looked at DuBois then back to Agry. ‘I say the niggers should go down. Where they belong.’
‘Then fuck it,’ said Agry, and he rammed his left-hand fingers into Larry DuBois’s eyes.
Larry was quick but not as quick as he once had been in the brothels of Juarez. Agry’s fingernails gouged through his eyelids. The move was meant to pop the eyeballs from their sockets but DuBois waltzed backwards with a dainty gait, knocking Agry’s arm aside with his left hand while his right dipped under his shirt behind his back. Agry’s razor was out and open. DuBois whipped out a snub-nosed revolver, scraped tears from his eyes, still moving away.
‘Now, you fat cocksucker.’
With a lunge and slash of Shockner’s razor Agry unzipped DuBois’s belly from left hip to right.
Great sponges of yellow fat, bloody and obscene, bulged over DuBois’s belt buckle. Buried deep beneath the fat the muscle layer held firm. DuBois roared and blundered sideways, trying to draw a bead with his gun while his left hand clutched the gaping blubber at his waist.
Agry stepped in to the fat man’s left and kicked his legs from under him.
With a loud bleat of panic DuBois crashed onto his face, trapping his left arm beneath him. In the same split second Agry pinned Larry’s gun arm to the floor with his left hand and dropped his knee full weight onto Larry’s greasy skull. He reached over and sliced through the crook of DuBois’s right elbow, severing the tendons that controlled the gun arm and piercing the brachial artery. DuBois bellowed and writhed, bucking his shoulder against the ground to free his head. Agry piled more weight through his knee. With a rooting, trowelling motion he shoved the razor into the shiny jowls under the angle of DuBois’s jaw. Blood started to spray from DuBois’s lips and nostrils with each shout and the bucking of his body became more frantic. His head started to skid on the blood. Agry dug the razor in deeper, almost up to the handle, searching for the carotid buried in that bloated neck. As DuBois’s head slipped free and he started to roll away, Agry’s blade finally found what it was looking for.
Agry stepped back out of the way.
Grauerholz gasped. ‘Awesome.’
Dennis Terry vomited into a laundry trolley.
Agry grabbed an armload of towels and dumped them over the red cascade spilling out of DuBois’s upper body. The fat fuck had had it coming a long time. Agry felt superbly calm, the internal pressure released. He wiped his hands and the razor on one of the towels. His shirt was drenched with blood. He started to unbutton it and walked to the shelves for a clean one. He stopped, bent down and picked up DuBois’s gun. A Smith and Wesson .38 Special. Agry hefted the gun thoughtfully. They had to keep DuBois’s death from the hacks until at least the next lock and count. He glanced at the diving watch on his wrist: two hours. He turned.
‘Hec,’ said Agry.
Grauerholz was buzzing, staring down at DuBois’s monstrous, towel-covered corpse as if it were a piece of art. He looked up at Agry. Agry tossed him the revolver.
‘Let’s pitch some Wang Dang Doodle.’
Grauerholz caught the piece and stared down at the blue metal with astonishment. Santa Claus had never brought him anything so sweet. He clasped the gun to his chest an
d stared at Agry with such grateful adulation that Agry knew he was home. At that moment he could’ve asked Grauerholz to shoot off one of his own testicles and Grauerholz would’ve have asked him, Left or right?
‘Whadda we do now, Mr Agry?’ said Grauerholz.
Agry took a deep breath. The sense of power was intense, intoxicating. It was a moment to take his time with. He looked from Grauerholz to Terry. Terry was grey at the gills and his eyes were haunted with dread. Agry turned back to Grauerholz.
‘We gotta lot of work to do before the third count. Your guys’re gonna take the mess hall from the builder’s yard while Johnson and his half of B block are chowing down. We’ll need a diversion.’
Grauerholz’s eyes wobbled with excitement. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘A diversion. You got it.’
‘We got gasoline in the machine shop and the garage. My people will take care of that end.’ Agry turned to Terry. ‘Dennis, you and Tony Shockner are going to fix the watch command centre. I want it cut off from the main gate. You helped put that shit in. You can take it out again.’
Terry’s complexion turned even paler. He tried to speak, failed, swallowed and tried again.
‘So you’re gonna . . . I mean this isn’t just a . . .’
‘That’s right, Dennis,’ said Agry. ‘This is war. Rolling Thunder. Desert Storm. The Blitzkrieg. Call it what the fuck you want. The niggers are going down and so is anyone stands in our way.’
Terry couldn’t hold his eyes for more than a second. Agry nodded towards DuBois’s fat carcass and looked at Grauerholz.
‘Get your boys to clean this up.’
‘Sure thing, Mr Agry,’ said Grauerholz.
Grauerholz started off down the aisle with a bouncing, skipping gait. Agry called after him.
‘Then go get Ted Spriggs,’ he said. ‘Tell him the niggers’ve just killed Larry DuBois . . .’
Agry’s lip curled with righteous outrage. He raised a clenched fist.
‘. . . And that we are going to make those fuckers pay!’