Fear Me (2 page)

4

The next morning, out in the yard.

Romero was there with a Hispanic strong-arm thief named JoJo Aquintez and a big, tattooed biker named Riggs who looked like something that sharpened its teeth on bones in a Neolithic cave. All three of them, sitting on a picnic table near the wall, looking outrageous in their orange prison-issue jumpsuits.

Riggs was saying how he was walking in four months, his term would be up. He had waved his right to parole, did the extra time so he wouldn’t have no parole officer sniffing around his ass out in the world.

“I walk through them fucking gates, boys, I walk high and free,” he told them. “Start turning some green day one.”

Romero knew what that was about.

Riggs was a member of the Mongols motorcycle club, a major player in their meth distribution network. When he got out, he was just going to pick up where he left off. Most cons were like that. Riggs had pulled a nickel for putting a black cocaine dealer in a wheelchair with his bare hands. That’s the sort of guy he was.

Aquintez was saying how he’d be staring at those walls for some time to come, had five more years to pull on his bit. But when he got out, no more armed robbery. That’s what got him here. He was thinking something less violent, maybe insurance fraud. Guy could make a killing at that, if he knew the angles.

Romero wasn’t listening, though.

He was watching Danny Palmquist hanging around by the baseball diamond with all the other losers—the child molesters and rapists, serial killers and weaklings. The other cons didn’t like those types, guys that hurt kids and women. It didn’t take any balls for that. And in stir, real balls carried respect, carried dignity, assured your place in the food chain as a real man. Even in prison there were undesirables, guys you could look down on. Sometimes, when the real cons were having a hard day, they’d go over there to the diamond and kick the shit out of some faggot serial killer or short-eye. Made them feel better about themselves.

Yeah, that’s where Palmquist was.

Keeping to himself, trying to avoid the attentions of the baby-rapers over there.

But some of the cons in the yard were watching him, wondering about the new bitch, thinking about running his track.

“What you think of your new cellie, Romero?” Aquintez asked, pulling off a home-rolled cigarette, half-tobacco and half-Mary Jane.

Good question, that one. Thing was, Romero just wasn’t sure. Kid was a punk, he was meat, harmless as a kitty in a box…yet,
yet
there was something creepy about the little bastard. Something Romero didn’t care for, but couldn’t honestly put a name to.

“Look where he’s hanging at,” Romero said. “What’s that tell you?”

Riggs shook his head, had half a mind to waltz over there and kick some rapo ass.

“Just a punk,0">“Jupunk,0 Romero said. “Ain’t nothing more than that.”

“I hear he was over at Brickhaven, heard he got into some trouble there,” Aquintez mentioned. “Can’t seem to find out what he did, though.”

“Look at him,” Riggs said in his gravelly voice. “He was probably somebody’s old lady over there. Maybe he fell in love with some punk and his daddy took it personal, went after his new love.”

Romero said, “He’s loony, that one. Thinks if anyone throws down on him, his brother’s gonna come save his white meat ass.”

Aquintez thought that was funny. “Gonna break in or what? Never heard of a guy breaking into Shaddock. Out once or twice, but never in.”

“Brickhaven,” Riggs said, scratching his shaggy beard. “That was some funny shit happened there. I knew one of them guys that got done. His name was Fritz, Donnie Fritz. A real nasty piece of work. Him and his cellie, some nigger named Boles…shit, they got done after lock-down, done real bad.”

And that was the word coming down the prison grapevine. Fritz and Boles got murdered in their cells, looked like somebody had taken a chainsaw after them. Nothing but a lot of meat and blood to mark their passing. And after lock-down, yet. That was hard to explain.

“Maybe you want a new cellie,” Aquintez told Romero. “I’ll talk to Benny, he can square it for you.”

But Romero shook his head. “Not yet. This kid is funny, something odd about him. I wanna see how it plays out.”

At the baseball diamond, a big black guy by the name of Reggie Weems was getting tired of waiting. He went over there and all the other rapos got out of his way. He went right up to Palmquist, took hold of him and brought the little shit up real close like he was going to kiss him. There was a scuffle and Weems started knocking the kid around.

“Looks like your boy got a bite with that bait he’s been trolling,” Aquintez said, unconcerned.

Riggs laughed, thought it was funny Weems knocking the shit out of that little weasel.

Romero tossed his cigarette, started over there, not really sure why.

Aquintez said, “Fuck you going? He your punk or what? I don’t know, home, that Weems is a rough one, you better take a blade. Do it proper.”

But Romero didn’t want a blade saiwant a and he didn’t want Riggs’s help either. The biker said he’d come, that he could handle Weems just fine. But Romero told them he just wanted to watch Palmquist get a dose of reality.

By the time he got there, it was over with.

The hacks hadn’t seen a thing. Partly because the other cons ringed Weems and Palmquist in so they could dance in private and partly because the hacks never saw anything. You could gang rape their mothers three feet away and they wouldn’t put down their magazines to stop it. Lazy, stupid, and indifferent were a way of life for hacks, Romero knew.

Weems was already moving off to join the brothers over by the basketball courts, he didn’t pay no mind to Romero and Romero paid no mind to him. Palmquist was sitting on his ass, spitting out blood and teeth. His left eye was beginning to swell shut and his lower lip was almost ripped from his mouth.

“You like that?” Romero put to him, not bothering to offer him a hand or even a squirt of sympathy. “Well, you better get used to it, Cherry. Because you’re gonna be living on a steady diet of ass-beatings twenty-four/seven. Every day from now on. First they’re going to beat you, then…you know what comes next, don’t you?”

Palmquist nodded. “I know. I been here before, in this situation.”

Romero figured some con had busted his ass at Brickhaven. Wouldn’t have surprised him. “Well, then you know what you’re in for.”

But Palmquist just shook his head. “That fucking nigger is dead, only he don’t know it yet and there ain’t shit I can do about it.” He was grinning now, blood all over his teeth. “See, Romero, I got me an ace in the hole.”

“You’re gonna have more than an ace in there, mark my word,” Romero said.

But Palmquist said nothing.

5

Later that afternoon, Riggs passed the word to Romero that Black Dog wanted to see him. It wasn’t good. Anytime Black Dog was involved it just couldn’t be a good thing.

Black Dog was a patched blood member of the Hell’s Angels and one of the Filthy Few, which was the enforcement wing of the Angels who beat, mauled, and murdered any that violated club policies or encroached on their lucrative drug turf. He was absolutely fearless, tough, and merciless. He had a psychotic volatile temper and a reputation for bloodshed and violence that few could match behind those walls. He was sitting n-uoon a seventy-five year stretch for murder conspiracy.

“Hell’s he want?’ Romero asked.

But Riggs just shrugged. “Can’t say, my brother. He reached out through us because he wants a sit-down with you.”

By “us” Riggs meant the Mongols. There had been blood wars between the Angels and Mongols on the outside, but behind the walls at Shaddock, they kept an uneasy truce.

Romero found Black Dog over at the iron pile, bench-pressing the sort of weight that would have driven most men into the ground. He finished, mopping sweat from his face with his T-shirt. “Romero,” he said. “Glad you came. We need to talk.”

Romero sighed, lit a cigarette. “I’m listening.”

“It’s about your cellie,” Blackdog said. “That fish Palmquist. I need to know what your intentions are.”

“Intentions?”

Black Dog nodded. “Some shit happened at Brickhaven. You probably heard. Your fish was involved in that, somehow, some way. Was a dude over there, Donnie Fritz, he got done. Some people think your fish had a hand in it.”

Romero laughed. “Palmquist? We talking about the same guy?”

“We are.”

“This kid ain’t got it in him, Dog.”

“Some people think different.”

“Then some people are full of shit.”

“Go easy, man, go easy here.”

Even to Romero, Blackdog was fearsome. He stood an easy 6’6 and weighed 300 pounds and there was not a scrap of fat on him. His body was covered in prison tattoos and many of them, if you knew how to read them, told the story of who he was and where he’d been, the things he’d done and the bodies he’d left in his wake. On each huge bulging bicep there was an immense blood-red swastika.

He was not a man to cross.

Black Dog was not elaborating on these “people,” at least not yet. And knowing him and his connections it could have been anybody from the Italians to the Mexicans, heig Mexicais biker brothers or the ABs. Take your pick.

“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 sinc" wsocietye 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.