He'd torn strips from his bedsheets and fashioned a noose, lashed it to the old iron radiator, managed to twist his body into the right position to strangle himself. Only Pee Wee could have done something that clever.
Caffrey, stricken, described it to us: We weren't allowed to look.
The bad wolf took me over. I felt myself propelled into a dark tunnel, no way out but forward, no turning back.
During outdoor exercise period, I made the first move. I lunged at Glover, wrested the baton out of his hands, my strength almost superhuman. The high-octane fuel of rage.
As he tried to grab it back, I slammed it against the back of his knees. Just as he'd done to me so many times.
He lurched, sprawled to the ground, roared that I was going straight to the hole. He yelled for Caffrey.
But Caffrey stood and watched.
Glover-cowering, his lip split, his eyes leaking blood-hollered for Estevez.
I slammed my fists into his face, one two one two, until I felt hard bone go soft.
One two one two.
I'd made myself Raymond Farrentino's protector, and I'd failed, and this was the only thing I could do.
He roared, an enraged beast, throwing his fists at me blindly, trying to block my punches. He caught me on the side of my face with a right hook so hard it should have knocked me over. But it didn't. I was in the zone. My rage was both a force field and anesthetic. His head jerked from side to side to dodge the blows. He snarled, his teeth bloody.
Even in my madness, my temporary insanity, I knew that beating Glover to a bloody pulp would solve nothing. It would only get me in the most serious trouble. But it felt too good to stop.
I kneed him in the stomach, and his eyes rolled up into his head for an instant. He sagged, and I slammed a fist into the underside of his jaw, heard something snap. He swayed backwards, tipped over, his head smashing into the ground.
Then something remarkable happened. Estevez, then Alvaro and a few of the bigger kids, began swarming around Glover and me. Some had homemade brass knuckles or sharpened mattress coils: an homage to Pee Wee.
We could all see the fear in his pale dull eyes. A spell had been broken. Only later did I wonder how many of them had also been Glover's victims.
As the others pummeled him with their fists and slashed with their mattress coils, knocking me aside, guards began streaming out of D Unit and the adjoining cottages, batons and Mace at the ready.
They began pulling the kids off Glover, stopping them from crossing the line, going one step too far.
A lockdown was ordered. Anyone who didn't return to his room at once would be placed in the Special Handling Unit. The word got around quickly that the punishment would be severe: transfer to what they called gladiator school-a maximum-security penitentiary for violent offenders, even worse than Glenview.
I was sent to solitary, informed that I would be brought up on charges of assault and battery. I'd be tried as an adult. Instead of getting out when I was seventeen, I wouldn't see the outside world until long after my twenty-first birthday-if, that is, I even survived.
And that was when a second remarkable thing happened: a posthumous gift from Pee Wee, his final clever move.
The lockdown wasn't even an hour old when someone found the note he'd left for me.
A few nights, pinned against the wall of his room, he'd found himself staring at the red pinpoint of light on the surveillance camera. Glover sometimes forgot to turn it off.
For Pee Wee it was simple to break into the D Unit command center, where the tapes were recorded and stored, where there was equipment to make copies. He'd sent tapes to the Division of Youth Services, the local newspapers, the local TV station. Smuggling out had been even easier, for him, than smuggling in.
That evening, I stood on my bed and watched through the tiny square of wire-reinforced glass as two police cruisers and one TV van pulled up the long driveway. Twenty minutes later, a couple of handcuffed figures emerged in the glare of the xenon arc TV spotlights. One was a gray-haired man with rimless glasses and a perfectly pressed shirt. The other was Glover, almost unrecognizable, unable to walk. He was carried by three policemen.
50
Wayne came in with a mop and a bucket full of suds. The two frightened cleaning girls-Bulgarians who'd come here for the summer to work-dutifully mopped up the blood. Russell had ordered them to the front, and Travis had untied their restraints, and at first they'd stood there shaking and weeping, probably thinking that they were next. Russell pointed out a dark red blood splatter on the rug and told them to clean that up, too. As if he didn't want to leave the place a mess when all this was over.
By now the hostages had settled down into a dazed, terror-stricken stupor, almost a trance state. No one spoke. No one even whispered. Ali was crying softly, and Cheryl stared grimly into space.
"What do you want us to do with the bodies?" Wayne asked in an unexpectedly soft voice, as he and Travis lifted Grogan.
"Take 'em out in the woods," Russell said. "Maybe the grizzlies will eat 'em."
Travis glanced furiously at his brother but said nothing.
Russell reached down, took Danziger's arms, and tried to pull the body up-I guess he was going to attempt a sort of fireman's carry-but then suddenly let go. Danziger's body slid to the floor while Russell wiped his hands on his pant legs: There was blood everywhere.
Then he grabbed Danziger's ankles and dragged him across the floor.
It left a long red smear.
At the threshold of the room he stopped. "Was my lesson clear enough?" he said.
No one answered.
Only one of the kidnappers remained in the room now: Buck, the one with the black hair and goatee. He sat slumped in his chair, looking pensive. His.44 Magnum lay on his right thigh, his right hand on top of it.
The manager was crying silently. He was lost in grief and shock, along with so many others in the room.
Cheryl was the first to speak. "Someone told him," she whispered.
Silence.
"Was it you, Kevin?" she asked softly.
"How dare you-" Bross erupted, spittle flying.
"He could have gotten it out of Danziger himself," I said. "That's the point of all these 'interviews'-playing us off against each other."
Lummis was gasping for breath, wincing, his face deep red.
"Hugo, for God's sake, what is it?" said Barlow.
"I'll be-fine," Lummis gasped. "Just-need to-to try to calm down."
Buck looked up, stared for a few seconds, then seemed to lose interest. Muffled, angry voices came from the next room: Russell and his brother, I guessed, arguing in the screened porch.
I cleared my throat, and the manager looked up at me with redrimmed eyes.
"We need to get help," I said.
He blinked away tears but said nothing.
It was obvious, to me at least, that cooperating with Russell and his guys would only get us killed. We had to contact someone, anyone, in the outside world. Even if no one else would do anything, at least I would.
"Where do you keep your sat phone?"
It took him a few seconds to respond. Clumsily, he tried to wipe the tears from each eye with the backs of his bound hands. He looked hollow. "My office," he whispered. "But that crazy guy-Verne?-asked me about it and made me give him my office key."
"That's not the phone that Russell was using, was it?"
He shook his head. "Mine's an older model. He just must have taken mine so no one else could use it."
"Your office-you keep it locked?"
He nodded. "But they took the key, I told you-"
"I understand. What happens if you misplace your key?"
"You mean, do I hide a spare somewhere?" He nodded. "Under the base of the lamp on the legal bookcase outside my office door. An old skeleton key. Opens every damned door in this old place-real high-security, huh? But I told you, he took the sat phone."
"That's all right. There's other ways."
Ali, watching us talk, said: "The Internet."