She understood but did not like it. Adapt, blend in with the natives, or you became bait to the strongest animals in the cage.
There was only one good thing about prison: sleep and exercise were plentiful. What else was there to do? Until this visit, anyway, Alex always looked remarkably refreshed and fit. He must've had a bad few nights, though, because this time he looked painfully exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot, with large bags underneath them. He hadn't slept well in days, possibly weeks.
"This is crazy, Alex," she uttered softly.
"It is what it is, Elena. Be patient."
"I've been patient for a year. I want you in my bed, where you belong. I'm tired of sleeping alone."
"I'm not all that crazy about sleeping with Benny, either. Have you ever heard an All-Pro lineman snore?"
"Stop it."
"And the smell. All that bulk. He comes back from his workouts in the yard, the paint falls off the walls."
Like Alex was an Irish rose himself. All the prisoners stank. They were oblivious to their own odors, but Elena was nearly flattened by the stench in the prison visitors' room. She wanted to bring Alex home and scrub a year of prison stink out of his skin. Then take him to bed and heal a year's worth of fear and misery and frustration and loneliness.
"Alex, are you sure you're okay?" she pressed, more emphatically this time. She was his wife. All this jokiness was an attempt to conceal something. He was far from okay.
Alex looked down and played with his fingers a moment-a slight twitch around his left eye, an almost imperceptible shift of tiny muscles, and she knew.
She bent forward until her face was pressed against the glass. "Stop lying. What's happening?"
"All right. Somebody tried to kill me yesterday."
"Yesterday… what happened?"
"In the yard, I was playing basketball when a man made a run at me. He was carrying a crude hatchet constructed in the prison shop. As attempts go it was stupid and clumsy. It had no chance."
Elena was perfectly motionless. This was the nightmare she had long dreaded. She watched him and waited.
"I was lucky," Alex informed her, trying to make it sound trifling, little more than a bad hand of cards. "Two of the cons on my team are investors in the fund. I threw the ball in his face, his nose shattered, he slowed down, they disarmed him. It wasn't all that dramatic." He left off the part about how his friends mauled the killer, stomping his hands and breaking both arms to be sure he wouldn't try again.
"Who was he? Why did he want to kill you?"
"A Russian. A former Mafiya gunman who obviously wasn't as handy with an axe."
"I asked why he wanted to kill you."
A momentary pause. "Apparently, the people in Moscow are offering big money to whoever gets me." Then a more prolonged pause before he made the painful decision to tell Elena everything. "It was the second attempt."
"I see. And when was the first?"
"Two months ago."
"Two months? Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I've been quite careful since then. Benny follows me everywhere he can. I'm surrounded at every meal by a squad of our investors. A few of the guys watch over me when I shower, use the bathroom, use the library. They don't want their golden goose hauled out in a coffin. I'm only in danger when I leave my cell."
Elena reeled backward into her seat and struggled to fight her horror-she couldn't. "I'll call MP and have him insist on moving you to another prison. We'll raise hell. Hold a big obnoxious press conference. We'll-"
Before she could finish, Alex was already shaking his head. "I've already considered that. Don't. Don't even try."
"Why not?"
"I'm alive only because I've established a network here. At each new place, it takes three weeks to a month, at a minimum. I'd be completely naked."
"And if the investment fund for some reason has a bad month? A sudden market correction, for instance. That happens, Alex. How good will your protection be then?"
He forced a smile. "Believe me, I think about that every day. It certainly helps focus the mind."
She crossed her arms and did not acknowledge the smile. "And if you stay here, it's just a matter of time, isn't it? Say one of your new friends becomes distracted, or at the wrong moment bends over to tie a shoe. Maybe somebody slips a little poison in your food, or a little knife in your back."
"A lot could happen," Alex admitted, rubbing his temples. "They've been scared off a few times. A week ago, in the library, before some of my friends made a threatening move. Five days ago, in the shower, three men were approaching me when a guard showed up."
"I see."
"Look, I won't pretend I'm not worried. These are rough people, killers. They're watching me every day, looking for an opening. I know the odds."
"You have to get out of here, Alex."
"Believe me, that thought has crossed my mind. The past few weeks, I've lived in the law section of the library."
"There has to be something. You can't just let these people kill you."
About two cubicles down, a loud argument suddenly exploded between a prisoner and his wife. The woman was barely more than a child, maybe nineteen, dressed in a scant black leather skirt, black net stockings, a halter top that did more to reveal than conceal, false eyelashes that flopped like gigantic butterflies, and enough cosmetics to camouflage a battleship or capsize it. Only a moment before, she and the hubby had their faces pressed tightly against the glass panel, whispering sweet nothings back and forth, like they were ready to disrobe and grope each other through the divider. The husband suddenly recoiled backward, nearly tipping his chair to the floor.
"Oh yeah, you heard right. Your twin brother," the woman roared.
"My own brother. You're sleeping with my own brother," the husband wailed, slamming both fists like noisy gavels against the glass panel.
"Yeah, well… least I kept it in the family, since I know how much that word means to you. This time, anyways."
"You're a bitch. A whore. A backstabbin' whore."
She stood up and jammed her face up against the divider. "Hey, you noticed, finally. Guess what, idiot? I'm givin' it away to any fool who looks twice. They're thinkin' of naming a mattress after me. So what are you gonna do about it, huh?" she taunted.
Until this moment, the three guards in the room had looked on with an air of bemused boredom. Old hat, old story, happy days again in the visitors' room. A wife cheating on a locked-up hubby: what's new? A tired old scene the guards had observed a thousand times with few variations. Many marriages lasted a year, some more than two, very, very few beyond the third year of separation.
There was one inviolate rule, though, and this prisoner bashed it to pieces. He snapped, leaped to his feet, and, howling at the top of his voice, began trying to crawl and claw his way over the divider. Two guards lost their look of boredom and sprang into action. They yanked him off the glass, jerked his arms behind his back, and slapped cuffs on him. They began dragging him out as he hollered a bewildering array of curses at his wife.
His wife stood and loitered, arms crossed, watching it all with a smile that smacked of huge contentment.
Then, at the final moment before they yanked her husband through the door, she whipped down her halter, exposing two rather impressive breasts. With two hands, she cupped and then began juggling them. "Hey," she yelled at her husband, "remember these? Tonight your brother's gonna have a field day with 'em. And once I get bored with him, you know what? I'll bet I can get your father in the sack."