The Julian Secret (Lang Reilly Thrillers) (21 page)

He was being escorted between his guards. The one in front, the one with the shaved scalp, stopped and examined a ring of keys on his belt. Lang looked at the door to the cell, noting that the locking mechanism consisted of a conventional lock that could be opened with a key, or an electric sensor that probably would allow all doors on this particular block to open or lock simultaneously.

With a muffled click, the bolt slid back and one of Lang’s jailers stooped to unlock the leg irons while the other watched from a position too distant for a surprise attack. Legs free, the handcuffs were removed and he was shoved into the cell to the accompanying clang of slamming steel bars.

The space was about ten by ten feet. Against one wall was a double-decker bunk. Two cotton-tick mattresses lay on the floor against the other. A steel basin and seatless toilette completed the furnishings. At the point the rear wall met the ceiling, a slit window admitted weak sunlight filtered by years of accumulated dirt and grime.

In years past, Lang had read of regular escapes from the jail, more unscheduled departures than your average Holiday Inn. However men had gotten out, it hadn’t been from these cells. One by convincing a guard he was somebody else, another by simply putting down his mop and broom and walking out of an unsecured area. Lax security, complacent guards, and general staff incompetence, not the physical plant, had been at fault.

Lang guessed he wasn’t going to be here long enough to find the seams in the system.

Sitting on the lower bunk, he stared at the far wall, seeing not cracked and chipped plaster but a mountaintop in southwestern France, a fireball that had been a helicopter and then smoldering rubble.

Gurt.

Gone.

Not possible.

His reverie was interrupted by an electronic buzz and the clang of doors opening in unison. Lang looked up to see three men, one white, the other two black, paused outside his cell. Also in orange jumpsuits, they waited until the door was fully opened before, as one, they stepped across the threshold.

Unsure of the appropriate protocol, Lang stood.

The larger of the two black men, like Lang’s guard, had a shaved head. He was well over six feet, his biceps filled the loose sleeves of his jumpsuit, and Lang guessed he was well over two hundred and fifty pounds. Scowling, he regarded Lang with curiosity, the way a buyer might examine a horse. “ ‘Nother whitebread,” he finally said to no one in particular.

Lang held out a hand. “Name’s Lang Reilly.”

The black man glared at the hand as though it held something offensive. “Name’s whatever I say it is, an’ don’ you forgit it.”

Lang had always heard there was a “boss” for every cell, and he guessed he’d just met this one’s.

The other black man, somewhat smaller than the other and clearly older, took Lang’s hand. “Mine’s Johnson, Eddie Johnson. Don’ study Leroy there too much. He jus’ come in an hour or two ago. Me an’ Wilbur,” he indicated the white man, “we shared this here room for a coupla months.”

Wilbur was small, with the face and eyes of a rodent. Juglike ears added to the illusion. He sported a reddish bruise under one eye, and Lang could see dried blood on one lip along with swelling. He guessed someone had given Wilbur a bad morning.

Lang had a candidate.

“Honky,” Leroy growled, pointing. “You were sittin’ on
my
bed.”

“My bed, actually,” Wilbur said before being cowed by a glare from Leroy.

Lang looked the big black straight in the eyes, an act he had heard amounted to a challenge in prison. He spoke gently, a smile flickering around his lips. “You been here just a few hours longer than I have, friend. Doesn’t seem you have much in the way of seniority.”

If there was going to be trouble, Lang wanted it now, not sometime when his back was turned or he was asleep.

“Don’ matter how long I been here, white boy,” Leroy rumbled. “I be the meanest muther here, I make th’ rules.”

As if by unspoken signal, Wilbur and Eddie Johnson bounded to the farthest point in the cell, the upper bunk. If Lang had had doubts about what was going to happen, their anxious faces confirmed it.

Had he not anticipated it, Leroy’s swing could have taken Lang’s head off. Instead, Lang ducked to his right, keeping equal weight on both feet. As he had learned so many years ago, not even a trained prizefighter can deliver a roundhouse blow without shifting his balance dangerously when he puts his weight behind his punch. Before Leroy could recover, Lang pivoted on his left foot so that all his poundage was on his right to give force to a stroke with cupped fingers, swung upward immediately below his opponent’s rib cage, an impact calculated to temporarily collapse the lung in addition to a jolt of paralyzing pain.

Leroy hit the floor like a side of beef dropped from its meat hook, writhing as he tried to suck in air and expel it with a low moan at the same time.

Lang was vaguely aware that the constant racket from
outside the cell had increased, a sound that would soon summon the guards. Lang wanted this finished right now.

Standing above the man on the floor, Lang bent his knees and dropped, aiming to use his weight combined with gravity to crush the trachea with his shinbones. He was surprised when Leroy rolled away with the quickness of a much smaller man and Lang hit unforgiving concrete.

Both antagonists made it to their feet at the same time.

Lang glanced quickly around the cell. There wasn’t room to stay more than a few inches out of his opponent’s grasp, and the disparity in their size would make any clinch fatal to Lang.

Warily, he moved from side to side, awaiting Leroy’s next attack.

Or, better, the arrival of the guards. Time was on his side now. The roar from those cells who had a view into his was getting deafening. How could his keepers not hear?

A trickle of blood bubbled on Leroy’s lips as he still tried to regain full lung capacity, but there was no disability in his eyes nor question as to his intent as he glared across the few feet that separated the two. Then he bobbed his head as though having made a decision. A hand went inside the jumpsuit and returned with a flash of metal. A knife. No crudely made prison shank, the black man held a stiletto, its long blade reflecting evilly from the overhead lights.

If Leroy had just come in that morning, how the hell would someone have had the time to smuggle him a weapon?

There wasn’t time for academic speculation. The large black man held the blade away from his body, cutting edge up. Crouched in a stance that enabled movement in any direction, his eyes searched Lang’s, waiting
for the first flicker that would indicate what his intended victim was going to do. Unlike a gun, success with a knife depends on reaction to an opponent’s move. Aggressive slashing and jabbing is more likely to lead to a struggle for the weapon than the intended result.

In other words, Lang realized, he was facing a professional.

Seconds expanded indefinitely as Lang felt a trickle of icy sweat course down the side of his face. Neither man wanted to make the first move.

Fine with Lang. Sooner or later, a guard would show up and disarm Leroy.

With the Atlanta Department of Corrections, it was likely to be later.

If ever.

Leroy must have realized the same thing. He began a slow shift from side to side, an attempt to force Lang to commit himself. Instead, Lang shot a glance toward the bunk, bending knees as though to move. Leroy shifted his weight, not a lunge but a subtle move that would require perhaps a quarter of a second to return to a direction-neutral stance.

It was enough.

Lang threw himself toward the wall opposite the bunk. Rolling as he hit the floor, his fingers caught the edge of one of the mattresses, wrapping it around his body like a jelly roll.

As Leroy struck, knife aimed at Lang’s midsection, Lang unwound the padding, leaving nothing but cotton and stuffing to take the impact of the steel. Lang jerked the remaining end of the mattress, snatching both blade and attacker’s hand upward, for an instant exposing the entire lower body.

In the fraction of a second before Leroy could recover, Lang put his entire soul, body, and weight into a
kick to the other man’s left knee. He was rewarded with the sound of crunching patella and tearing tendon, followed by a scream of pain that drowned out the noise of the cell block. The knife was a comet of light as it spun through the air.

Lang had it in his hand before Leroy could grasp his shattered joint. The larger man lay on his side, embracing what was left of his knee. Once certain Leroy was no longer a threat, Lang propped the knife up on the floor, leaning against the bunk, before stamping his foot down on it. The steel snapped in half.

Lang was stuffing both pieces into Leroy’s pocketless prison suit when he looked up to see a guard working the lock of the cell’s door. Behind him three others stood, truncheons in hand.

“What’s going on here?” demanded the man with the keys in hand.

“Leroy here was demonstrating the lotus position and seems to have twisted his knee somehow,” Lang said. “I’m afraid he might have hurt himself.”

The guard didn’t even bother expressing skepticism. “Yeah, sure. Fighting gets you time in isolation,” he said, pushing Lang against the wall while one of his companions twisted Lang’s arms behind his back so the first could snap on the cuffs. “You’ll have plenty of time to think things over.”

Two of the guards marched Lang toward the elevator while a third used the radio on his belt to call for a stretcher for Leroy.

Lang had no idea how long he had been in the eight-by-eight cell. Here the door was solid steel and there was no window, so night and day were the same. His stomach’s complaints told him he had not eaten in a long time.

When he heard footsteps stop outside his cell, he ex
pected to see a food tray slide through the door’s slot. Instead, there was the snick of a bolt being drawn and the door swung back. Standing in front of it was Detective Rouse.

Lang rolled off the single cot and stood. “What a pleasure, Detective, to see you again today. I would invite you in, but as you can see, I’m a little short of places for company to sit.”

Rouse glared back before snapping at the guard at his side, “G’wan, unlock that door.”

To Lang he said, “N’mine the smart-assin’, jus’ come on out. You’re bein’ turned loose.”

Lang could not suppress a sudden intake of breath. “And to whom do I owe my most sincere thanks?”

“The Frankfurt, Germany, Police, Mr. Reilly. You gotta be the luckiest man alive. We e-mailed ‘em we had you, and they e-mailed us back th’ man you assaulted—”

“Allegedly assaulted,” Lang corrected as he stepped out of the cell.

“Yeah, yeah.” To describe Rouse as annoyed would be like describing Death Valley in July as warm. “The Germans couldn’t find the guy. Seems he gave them a false address.”

Why wasn’t Lang surprised? “And the cop who supposedly was a witness?”

Rouse took Lang by the elbow, steering him toward the elevators. “Germans got their problems jus’ like we got ours. Citizen doesn’t have a beef, why go to the trouble? Not like either us or them got a shortage of work to do.”

At the elevator bank, Rouse pushed the Down button. “Oh yeah, Frankfurt police asked what I could do to see ‘bout the cost of repairs to two cars, replacin’ two others.”

The door hissed open and Lang, Rouse, and the guard stepped inside.

“So,” Lang asked, “what did you tell ‘em you could do?”

“Not more than ask politely, Mr. Reilly. I figger that’s a civil matter, an’ I don’ even want to hear how you tore up four police cars.”

The elevator came to a stop on the floor Lang recognized as the location of booking.

“Tell ‘em to send me a bill, Detective. I’ll see that it gets paid.”

He left Rouse staring in disbelief as he went to get the return of his personal property.

He was leaning on the counter that divided the room, counting his cash and inspecting the items that had been returned to him, when he caught the eye of the woman on the other side. Blond hair from a cheap bottle, she was exhibiting middle-age spread rampant. Her rump was fighting what might be a winning battle against the seams of her uniform pants. Buttons on her blouse strained against breasts of Wagnerian proportions.

“One of my cellmates, guy name of Leroy, got hurt a few hours ago. Can you tell me if he’s okay?”

She eyed him with the suspicion of one in a business where the customer is always wrong.

Lang gave her his most engaging smile. “He was just booked in this morning.”

She moved to a point across the counter, running a hand around the edge of frizzy hair. “Y’remember the cell number?”

Lang gave it to her and she moved to a computer, where she began to slowly click the keyboard.

“What’d you say his name was?”

“I only got his first—Leroy.”

She shook her head, an effect of a lion shaking a scruffy mane. “Ain’ no Leroy nobody in that cell. Fact is, ain’ no Leroy been booked in today.” She gave him a
smile, a glimpse of tobacco-yellowed teeth. “But then, the day ain’ over.”

Lang felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature. “You sure?”

She nodded, again with leonine effect. “I make mistakes, but this ain’ one of ‘em.”

Lang knew the answer, but he had to ask. “If no such person was booked in here today, how’d he get in the same cell I was?”

She shook her head. “Ast the head jailer. I jus’ work here.”

Atlanta, Georgia
Manuel’s Tavern
The next evening

Lang and Francis found a booth, scarred with fraternity symbols, names, and dates clumsily carved into wood long yellowed by a half-century of human touch. Lang had not expected the food to improve in his absence. He was not disappointed. He also was not disappointed that the place was noisy, cluttered with five decades of political memorabilia, and filled with Emory grad students.

He felt he had come home.

“What’s good?” he had asked a waiter in a T-shirt, soiled apron, jeans, and sneakers.