I looked around, dazed. But watchfuclass="underline" Everything here looked strange, yet familiar. The walls painted a sickly institutional green, the ancient linoleum tiles on the floor, black squares alternating with white, scratched and grooved yet waxed and buffed to a high sheen.
Floor's probably polished by the kids, I thought. The other prisoners.
That sharp, high smell of pine disinfectant everywhere, which would forever summon a cataract of bad memories.
The first guard-I never caught his name-had brought me over from the main administration building, a beautiful redbrick Georgian manor house. With its rolling, manicured two-hundred-acre campus, the place could have been some New England college, or at least as I imagined a college would look.
Except for the discreet sign on the lawn: GLENVIEW RESIDENTIAL CENTER. And the chain-link fence topped by concertina wire. And the guard towers.
I'd been fingerprinted, stripped naked, made to sit on a bench for an hour. Pictures were taken. They sheared off my long hair, gave me a buzz cut. I was issued a set of prison clothes: khaki pants with an elastic waistband, red T-shirt, dark blue sneakers. Everything had my name already stenciled on it. They'd been expecting me.
Glover, the chief guard of D Unit, was a burly blond guy around forty, pale as an albino, white eyelashes. And, I was convinced, bourbon on his breath.
He said only, "Tough guy," and escorted me to the dayroom to meet the other kids.
They stared as I entered. My age, but not my size. Most of them were bigger, tougher-looking: kids sent up from the boroughs of New York City, gangbangers with gang tattoos.
I looked away, scared shitless.
First mistake, I soon learned. Inside juvie, someone stares at you, and you fail to meet his eyes, they assume you're weak, scared, an easy mark.
Glover took me to my room. In the hall on the way a kid about twice my size "accidentally" bumped into me.
I said, "Hey," and stiff-armed him.
The kid smashed a fist into my face. I tasted blood, fell over backwards, cracked my head on the floor. The kid kicked me in the stomach.
Glover stood, watching. Other kids began to gather, laughing excitedly, cheering like spectators at a prizefight.
The kid kicked me in the head. I tried to shield my face with my arms. Desperately looked at Glover, expecting him to stop the assault. He was smiling, his arms folded across his big gut.
I tried getting up to fight back, but the big kid kept kicking and punching until I could barely see: Blood trickled into my eyes.
"Okay, Estevez," Glover finally said. "I think that'll do it."
The other kids complained but began clearing out. Glover watched me struggle to my feet. "That's Estevez," he explained, matter-of-fact. The walls swam around me. "He's the captain of D Unit."
He led me down the hall to my room. "Welcome," he said.
The steel door clanged behind him as he left.
30
The manager, Paul, and his son, Ryan, were the first to enter the great room. Both of them were grim-faced. Paul's face was bruised, and he was limping. The reading glasses around his neck were bent, the lenses shattered. He must have put up a struggle. His lodge: He felt protective. Behind him followed the rest of the hotel's staff-the waiters who'd served us dinner, a pudgy guy with a mustache and glasses I recognized as the handyman, the two Bulgarian girls who did the cleaning, a few others who I assumed were kitchen staff. Then Bo Lampack, a long red welt across his forehead and right cheek.
Behind them came two men with guns. One was like a younger version of Russell, only not as tall and with a weight lifter's build. Prison muscles, I thought. Instead of Russell's long hair, his head was shaved. Had to be his brother. He was in his mid-twenties, with intense greenish eyes. His face was soft, almost feminine, but that delicacy was counteracted by a fierce scowl. The edges of what appeared to be an immense tattoo peeked out of the crew-neck collar of his shirt and ran a few inches up his neck.
The other, probably fifteen years older, was scrawny and mangy-looking, with dirt-colored hair that stuck up everywhere on his head. His face was pitted with pockmarks and cross-hatched with scars that were particularly dense below his left eye, which was glass. Under his good, right eye, three teardrops were tattooed. That was prison code, I knew, meaning that he'd killed three fellow inmates while he was inside. His glass eye told me he'd also lost a fight or two.
Hugo Lummis saw the two scary-looking guys. He slowly removed the watch from his pocket and placed it on the table.
Russell briefed the two of them. The young guy he called Travis; the older jailbird was Verne. Then, taking a compact satellite phone from a black nylon sling, he went out the front door.
Verne, the one-eyed man, took turns with the hunters I now knew as Wayne and Buck cutting lengths of rope, frisking and tying people up, then moving them one by one over to the wall on either side of the immense stone fireplace.
"Palms together like you're praying," Verne ordered Cheryl. He wrapped a six-foot piece of rope several times around her wrists.
She winced. "That's way too tight."
But Verne kept going. He moved with quick, jerky motions, blinked a lot. He seemed to be on speed or something.
Even before Verne got to me, I could smell him. He gave off a nasty funk of alcohol and cigarettes and bad hygiene. I gave him a blank look, neither friendly nor confrontational.
He gave an alligator smile. His teeth were grayish brown, with tiny black flecks. Meth mouth, I realized. The guy was a tweaker, a methamphetamine addict. "Much rather be frisking that babe down the end," he said as he set to work patting me down. He didn't seem to be a professional, but he knew what he was doing.
I said nothing.
"Save the best for last," he said to Buck, and they both leered at Ali.
The steak knife I'd concealed in my shoe had become uncomfortable, even a little painful. I wondered whether there was a visible lump in the shoe leather, but I didn't dare look down and draw his attention to it.
On the one hand, I was relieved that I hadn't left the knife in my pocket, where Verne would have found it right away. But now I wished it were someplace I could get to more easily. As Verne's hands ran down my chest and back, I held my breath so I didn't heave from the smell. My eyes scanned the dining table. The closest steak knife was in front of Cheryl, just a few feet away, but as soon as I made a grab for it, Buck-standing behind me with his revolver at the ready-would kill me. He wouldn't hesitate.
And even if I managed to grab the knife and use it on him, it was still only a knife. A knife at a gunfight, as the old saying goes.
Verne felt each of my pockets and seemed satisfied that they were empty. I didn't have a choice but to let him tie me up.
Now his hands moved down my pant legs, down to my feet.
I held my breath.
All he had to do was to slip his fingers into the tops of my shoes, and he'd discover the knife handle.
And then, if Russell's threat was serious, Buck would shoot. I didn't feel like finding out if Russell meant it.
What had I been thinking?
Once my hands were tied, the knife wouldn't do me any good. It was useless to me. I'd risked my life for nothing.
Verne's hands grasped my ankles. I looked down. His fingernails were dirty.
I tensed. A few drops of sweat trickled down my neck, coursed down my back, under my shirt.
"See that guy over there?" I said.
"Huh?" He looked up at me. "Don't try anything."
"The silver-haired guy with the bloody face. He needs to be taken care of."
He sliced a long piece of rope into smaller sections, using a serious-looking tactical knife. "I look like a doctor to you?"
"You guys don't want to lose him. Then you'll be facing a manslaughter charge on top of everything else."
He shrugged.
"I know first aid," I said. "Let me take a look at him before you tie me up."