“Listen, Dog,” Romero said, standing his ground. “Palmquist is meat. He’s harmless. There’s no way he did someone like Fritz. Besides, way I hear it, Fritz and his cellie got done after lock-down. Now how the fuck could the fish be involved in that?”
Black Dog thought about that.
Even with the proper schooling, Romero doubted that Palmquist would ever make a good con. He’d never have the nuts to stand up for himself and that made him a victim, plain and simple.
When Romero was a young punk at Brickhaven, after he’d been processed into the general population, an old timer named Skip Hannaway came up to him and asked him what the state had sent him away to college for. Romero told him about the thing he had for stealing cars.
“Let me tell you how things work here, son,” Skip said. “Everything that happens in a hardtime joint revolves around fear and anger. These are the only two emotions you will encounter in this cesspool. The primary motivations behind everything. You got to learn how to control fear and use anger. It’s the only way to survive. Anybody gives you shit, you give it back in spades. You make that fucker wish he’d never been born. A pipe is a good thing. You see somebody coming at you, break ’em with it. Lay it upside their head, crack their kneecaps with it, break their hands. Let ’em all know that you have a wild, insane temper and they’ll keep away. Most cons are cowards. They like to come up behind you, throw you a beating or stick a knife in you when your back’s turned. Not too many that like to do it face to face and that’s because they don’t want to get hurt. You show ’em pain, let ’em see their own blood… you’ll be surprised how meek they become.”
Good advice that Romero put into play his second day there when some old pervert made a play for him.
But Palmquist?
No, he just didn’t have it in him.
He’d never make it.
Life in the joint was indifferent hacks and crowding, dehumanizing conditions and shitty food. You shivered in your bunk in the winter and sweated and stank in the summer. You tried to keep the flies off your face and the lice out of your hair and the rats from biting your feet while you slept. Some perv made a play for your asshole, you beat him. Some con tried to extort you or slide a shank into you when your back was turned, you crippled them.
Politics.
That’s all it came down to: politics.
And Palmquist would never be able to play the game.
“Listen to me, Romero. Hear what I say. Donnie Fritz was hooked up with some big players. They didn’t take kindly to what happened at The Brick and they want payback. They want the fish to suffer,” Black Dog explained. “Now I saw you today. When Weems went after your boy, it looked like you were thinking about intervening. Not good. You laying claim to the fish as your boy?”
“No.”
“That’s good. See, those friends of Fritz’s, they reached out to Papa Joe…”
Shit. Papa Joe was Joseph Scallati, an incarcerated heroin trafficker and a made guy in the mob. When he had your number, there was no hole deep enough to hide in. He had deep pockets and the cons and hacks were eating out of his hands. He had not only the Italians standing behind him, but the biker gangs he used for muscle and the Latin gangs that were lorded over by the Mexican Mafia. And if that wasn’t enough, he also had the Aryan Brotherhood.
The ABs were the most ruthless and savage white prison gang ever formed. They had began during the race riots at San Quentin during the ’60s and had carved themselves an especially bloodthirsty niche ever since. At Quentin, the ABs had a standing “kill on sight” order and they murdered every black they found. In the years since, it had mellowed somewhat, but they were still unbelievably violent and dangerous. Unlike most prison gangs who relied on strength in numbers, the ABs had a blood in, blood out rule: in other words, you had to kill someone to get in and only death could get you out. Even outside prison walls, the gang was involved in organized crime, a narcotics conduit for their imprisoned brothers.
The bikers were bad enough, but these guys were fanatics.
Romero didn’t want to see Palmquist victimized and broken… but he couldn’t stand up against something like this.
“So you see how things stand,” Black Dog said.
“I guess I do.”
Black Dog nodded. “Just wanted you to get this word of advice and look the other way. Papa Joe’s sending Tony Gordo after him and you don’t want to get involved in that shit.”
Romero felt sick to his stomach.
Tony Gordo was a mob enforcer who was doing two consecutive life terms for murder. A big, evil piece of work, the sort of scavenger only the streets could produce. Just a human monster that had been feeding off the bloated body of a diseased society since the very moment his eyes flicked opened in that death mask he called a face. That was Gordo. Tipping the scales at 400 pounds, he was just shy of seven feet tall and a born monster. Nobody liked him, but the Italians used him for muscle. Gordo’s biggest joy in life was sodomizing the new fish. Black, white, didn’t matter, if you had a hole in your backside then it was his duty to fill it. He started with beatings which were like foreplay to him that led up to the violent act of consummation.
“So Papa Joe is going to let that fucking freak have his fun?”
Black Dog shrugged. “Ain’t like any of us like it, but it’s business. Strictly business. You ain’t sweet on the fish, are you?”
Romero didn’t answer that one.
He walked away. He couldn’t trust what his mouth might say and what kind of shit it might get him into. Palmquist’s ticket was already punched. The hacks wouldn’t help him and nobody in the joint would dare intervene in Papa Joe’s business and especially with a meat-eater like Gordo involved.
Bunching his fists, frustrated and pissed-off, Romero began to wonder what he was going to do about it. Was he going to be smart and look the other way or was he going to jump feet-first into the fires of hell?
The thing was, he didn’t really know.
6
Lights out.
Romero was laying on his bunk, thinking and trying not to. There were a lot of things flying around in his head, a real shitstorm is what it was. He was thinking about the kid, about Palmquist, thinking how it was going to be for the little bastard when Reggie Weems and his crew started turning up the heat, started making these beatings a daily thing. How it was going to be when they all started using him, passing him around like a five-dollar hooker in a lumber camp. Because that’s where this trail always led. The kid was in for it. Maybe he already had a taste at Brickhaven, but it was going to be worse here.
Things were always worse at Shaddock.
Romero had seen it before and it always made him sick. Sick to watch some kid putting up with that, his dignity stripped away from him day by miserable day until there wasn’t anything left when those animals were through. Until Palmquist was a pale, trembling thing, a bitch that only spoke when spoken to, that would suck dick or spread his cheeks anytime some lifer snapped his oily fingers.
Romero couldn’t get involved.
He got in Weems’ way and there was going to be trouble. And it could only end one way, with Romero shanking him, stabbing that dumb fucking spade until he bled out. And if Romero did that, he made that choice, one of Weems’ crew would rat on him. See to it that he was sitting here at Shaddock Valley for another ten or twenty years. Jesus. The idea of that made Romero’s throat squeeze tight until he could barely fill his lungs with air. But to watch Palmquist go like that…
Reggie Weems is going to be the least of that kid’s worries and you know it now that Papa Joe is putting Tony Gordo on him. Even if the kid slips away from Weems there’s no way in hell he’ll get away from that fucking monster.