Rhozier Brown - DC Noir 2 - The Classics

“Want to stroll, Darnell?” said Lucus. Darnell , not Jackster : not using the dude’s street name. Not dissing the younger man, but underlining who was who.

“Think I’ll hang here for a while,” answered Darnell.

Jackster, thought Lucus, you keeping safe distance?

“I ain’t that hungry,” added the young man.

Justifying, thought Lucus. Making sure I bought what he sold.

“What’s hunger got to do with it?” Sam put on his shoes.

Could have just been H.L.S. running off at the mouth again.

But Lucus knew better.

And the flicker in Darnell’s eyes said that he wondered .

Central Facility’s dining hall could hold all 2,953 residents, but by the time Lucus and Sam made their way through the checkpoints out of their cellblock and the chain-link fence tunnel to the dining hall, half of the bolted-down picnic-style tables were empty.

Lucus recognized several crews of younger inmates clustered at their usual tables, a politicization of geography that mirrored neighborhoods from which those men drew their identity. Here and there sat old timers like Sam and him, neither apart from nor a part of any group. Tattoos from a biker gang filled the corner table; they were laughing. Spanish babbled from three tables. Two Aryan Brotherhood bloods kept themselves close to the main doors — close to the control station where two guards sat. Two more guards punched inmates’ meal passes as they moved into the food line. Three guards strolled the aisles, their faces as flat as the steel tables.

The dining hall smelled of burnt coffee and grease. Breakfast was yellow and brown and sticky, though the cornbread from the prison bakery was fresh.

Sam carried his tray behind Lucus, sat with him at the table that emptied of other convicts as soon as Lucus arrived. The exodus might have been coincidental, Lucus couldn’t be sure. He was grateful for Sam staying where he didn’t have to be.

“You lookin good this morning,” Lucus told him.

“Hard luck is, I look like myself.”

Five tables away, Lucus spotted Twitch — 6’3” of too-tight piano wire, a guy with kinky hair like the man who thought up the atomic bomb. Lucus had seen a picture of that guy in the prison library encyclopedia when he started the program and learned to read good. Twitch bunked four cells down from Lucus. Twitch lifted a spoonful of yellow toward his grim mouth — the spoon jerked, and yellow glopped down to the tray. Nobody laughed or dissed Twitch: He was a straight-arrow postal worker who’d bought his ticket here when he beat a man to death when the guy complained about slow mail service.

Twitch met Lucus’s eyes.

Hope you’re taking your medication, thought Lucus. Twitch’s lawyers lost the insanity plea, so their client bused it to the prison population instead of a loony bin, but the courts let admin make sure Twitch took pills to keep him functional.

In the chessboard of tables, two men sat surrounded by an invisible bubble. One was thin and coughed; the other looked fine. The Word was they had the Ultimate Virus, and once that was the Word, those men were stuck where they were.

Someone snickered to the right.

Easy, casual, Lucus drifted his eyes to the laughter.

Two tables over, sitting by himself, bald head on 300 pounds of barbell muscle and sweet-tooth fat: Cooley, pig-blue eyes, thick lips. In the world, Cooley cruised for hitchhikers and lone walkers, made page one when Five-O tied him to three corpses.

Why ain’t you a D-Designate? Lucus said to himself, knowing the answer, knowing that Cooley played the model prisoner, except for maybe once or twice a year when he found some unconnected sheep where the admin wasn’t watching. Cooley left ’em alive, which kept the heat off, and always washed his hands.

Twitch heard Cooley snicker, jerked his head toward that mountain of flesh.

Don’t do it, Twitch, thought Lucus. He made his mind a magnet for Twitch’s eyes. Don’t be a fool today. Crazy as you are, Cooley’ll eat you alive and love the memories in his lockdown. Ride your pills. Keep it cool.

Magic worked: Twitch’s eyes found Lucus, blinked. Bused his tray and left.

“Hard luck,” muttered Sam. “Twitch losing a cushy government job like that.”

Lucus smiled.

Sam lowered his voice and talked with tight lips: “Ears?”

Lucus shook his head.

Sam told him his back was empty, too, then said: “So what are you going to do?”

“I’m in the flow of events,” said Lucus.

“Just you?”

“Gotta be who it’s gotta be, and it’s gotta be just me.”

Sam said: “Believe I can—”

“You can’t help me enough,” said Lucus. “That’d just be one more body in the beef. That’d force it up to big-time, but it’s not enough to back it down. I won’t let you stand on that line and get slaughtered since it ain’t gonna do no good no how … But bro,” finished Lucus, “I hear you. And thanks.”

“Hard luck.” The older man sighed. Lucus wasn’t sure if it was with sorrow or relief. “So you’re in the flow.”

“There it is.”

“I be on the river banks.” Sam shrugged. “Never know.”

Then, for all the room to see, he held out his hand and slapped five with Lucus.

“What about Jackster?” Sam asked.

“Yeah,” said Lucus. “What about our Darnell?”

Darnell had folded the cot, leaned it next to the toilet. His footlocker was jammed up against the wall. With the small desk, the sink, the rust-stained toilet, and built-in footlockers designed for only two prisoners in this Resident Containment Unit, enough space remained for him to pace eight steps along the front of the cell bars.

“You getting your exercise, Jackster?” asked Lucus when he and Sam got home.

H.L.S. stretched out on his bunk — feet facing the front of the cell. “Why didn’t you take it to the rec? They got three new ping-pong balls and you loves to watch that talk-show lady strut her stuff.”

“Figured I’d just hang here,” said Darnell. “Wait for you.”

“Wait for us to what?” Lucus kept his voice flat, easy. He perched on top of the desk, the open front of the cell and Darnell filling his eyes.

“Shit, man, I don’t know!” said Darnell, pacing, staring out across the walkway, across the yawning fifty-foot canyon between their wall of tiered cells and the identical scene facing it. “We’re partnered here, I figured—”

“Partnered?” said Lucus. “Don’t recall signing on with anybody when they put me in here. You remember anything like that, Sam?”

“I disremember nothing and I don’t remember that.”

“Shit, man,” said Darnell. Not turning around.

“Course, we do have to live together,” said Lucus.

“Yeah,” said Darnell. “That’s what I’m talking ’bout.”

“I mean,” said Lucus, “we all gots the same cell number.”

Darnell humphed.

“Numbers, man,” chimed in Sam from the lower bunk, “they can be hard luck.”

“What you mean?” snapped Darnell.

“Why, nothing, Jackster,” said Sam, flat on his back, hard to see. “Just talking about numbers. Luck. Like when I went to that sporting house outside of Vegas. Man, they trot the women out in a line, I’m gassed, blow and booze and riding a hell of a score, squinting at them long legs, them firm—”

“Stop it, man!” hissed Darnell. “Don’t kill me like that!”

“How do you want us to kill you?” said Lucus, sweet and low.

Jackster didn’t reply.

“Just a story!” came the words from the lower bunk. “It ain’t about women, it’s about numbers. Them ladies all had these number tags on ’em, kind of like our designations, only you couldn’t tell as much from reading theirs, just their number. Some of ’em were dog meat, but I spot number nine and she’s so fine—”