Rhozier Brown - DC Noir 2 - The Classics

“We ain’t playing shit.”

“Certainly not, manchild.” Barry smiled. “And right you were. The play’s been called, the sign is on for a hit.”

“When?”

“Well, that nervous Nellie was all denial , you see, as if he hadn’t been cruising around the yard, too scared to make a move, afraid his bros would put him down. Those savages! As if they’ve never grabbed a punk in these very tiled walls and made the poor boy weep! But of course my man wasn’t really doing it, you understand, just accepting my smitten appreciation of him being such a stud.”

“When?”

“Let a girl tell her story or you’ll never get anywhere with her!”

“We’re where we are and where we’re going. You been paid, you come across.”

“Always.” Barry savored the moment. “What did Mouser owe you that he swapped my debt to him for?”

“Enough,” said Lucus. “Now give me what I bought: When?”

“Why, today, dear man.”

Lucus showed nothing.

“Probably in the afternoon exercise.”

Yard time, thought Lucus. Starts at 3:30. About five hours away.

Barry washed his armpits.

“My simple little use-to-be-a-virgin’s crew has traded around and rigged the stage and done the diplomacy and even rehearsed wolf-packing. They have a huge enough chorus to smother any friends of their featured star who try to crimp the show and make it more than a solo death song.”

Water beat down on the two men.

“What else?” said Lucus.

“Nothing you’d want. He cried. I think he actually feels guilty. That’s the only charming thing about him — though he does have nice thighs. Not as nice as yours.”

“Does he suspect that he was set up with you or that he ran his mouth too much?”

“He’s all ego and asshole,” said Barry. “He can’t conceive that he’s been bought and sold and suckered clean.”

“How about his bros? By now, they might know about you two.”

“Not from him. He’s too scared of getting branded to confess, cagey enough to not let it slip out. If they do know, no worry: Like you said, I used to middleman powder for upscale customers from a boy tied to their crew. That makes moi acceptable.”

“We’re square.” Lucus stepped back, his eyes staying on Barry as he moved toward the door.

“How about a little something for the road?” Barry smiled. “It’ll calm your nerves. For free. For you, from me.”

“I got what I need for the road.”

“Oh, if only that were true for all of us! If only we could all believe that!”

Lucus turned, disappeared in the steam. In the locker room, he dressed. Don’t run. Don’t show one bead of sweat .

“You get what you was after?” asked the guard as he signed Lucus out.

“Guess I did.”

“Guess I did — sir .”

“Yeah.” Lucus saw his reflection in the guard’s eyes, saw how it shrank because of what that guard thought happened in there. That’s his problem, thought Lucus. He went back to the cell.

Spent the morning on his cot, like he had nothing to do.

Jackster and H.L.S. puttered about, neither one leaving Lucus.

“Lunchtime,” announced Lucus, swinging off his bunk. “Come on, Jackster. Today you eating with the men.”

“I eat where I want,” snapped Darnell.

“Why wouldn’t you want to eat with us?” asked Lucus.

Darnell mumbled — then obeyed Lucus’s gesture to lead the way.

A table emptied when Lucus and his cellmates sat down.

Lunch was brown and brown and gray, with coffee.

Jackster kept sneaking looks at other tables, locking eyes with bros from his old neighborhood.

H.L.S. ran down “Chumps I have known.”

Like Dozer, a Valium freak who bypassed a pharmacy’s alarm system, then overindulged in bounty and nodded off in the baby-food aisle. The cops woke him.

And Two-Times Shorty, a midget who tried to bully an indy whore into being his bottom lady. She chased him through horn-honking curbside shoppers and lost tourists looking for the White House, pinned him on the hood of a Dodge, and pounded about a hundred dents in him with her red high-heeled shoe. Tossed him buck naked into a dumpster. Climbing out, pizza parts stuck to his naked torso, Shorty grabbed the offered hand of a fine-looking woman. What the hell, he figured, second time’s the charm, and he reeled off his be-mine pimp spiel. She slapped policewoman bracelets on him.

Then there was Paul the Spike, who tested heroin on street dogs. While he was slicing and dicing a batch of Mexican, Paul heard a knock on the door. Because of the ’sclusionary rule, he beat the narco charges but drew ninety days for cruelty to animals.

“Hard luck can bite anybody’s ass,” said Sam, “but it always eats up chumps.”

“I ain’t no chump,” said Jackster.

Sergeant Wendell entered the mess hall, scanned the mostly empty rows of tables.

“Who said you were?” Lucus let his eyes leave the sergeant to study Darnell.

“No fool better!”

Sergeant Wendell started toward them.

“Trouble with young punks today,” said Sam, “they got no finesse . Our day, needed to smoke a guy, you caught him in private, did your business, and everything’s cool. These days, you young punks let fly on street corners and wing some poor girl coming home from kindergarten. No respect for nothing, no style or—”

“Style?” snapped Jackster. “You got no idea, man, no idea what style is!”

“Resident Ellicot!” yelled Sergeant Wendell.

“Yes, sir?” answered Lucus.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I was just—”

“You know your damn schedule as well as I do! Your ass belongs in Administrator Higgins’s office as of ten minutes ago!”

“On my way, sir!” Lucus stood.

H.L.S. pulled Lucus’s tray so Lucus wouldn’t need to bus it.

“Why’d you make me have to come fetch you?” Wendell asked as he marched Lucus along in front of a dozen sets of eyes.

“Just guess I ain’t so smart,” said Lucus.

“Don’t give me that shit,” said Wendell, who was no fool and a good jerk, though no con had ever been able to buy him. “Move!”

Assistant Administrator Higgins kept his office almost regulation. Sunlight streaming through the steel mesh grille over his lone window fell on a government low-bid desk positioned in line with the file cabinets and the official calendar on the wall next to facility authority and shift assignment charts. But Higgins had taken out the regulation steel visitors’ chairs bolted to the floor in front of his desk and had risked replacing them with more inviting, freestanding wooden fold-up chairs that a strong man could use to batter you to death.

Higgins was a bantamweight in chain-store suits and plain ties. He wore metal frame glasses that hooked around his ears. Glasses on or off, his dark eyes locked on who he was talking to. That afternoon, he slowly unhooked his glasses, set them on the typed report in the middle of his otherwise blank desk, and fixed those eyes on Lucus.

“So, do you understand this report?” asked Higgins.

“I can read now, so that ain’t what I gots to talk to you about.”

“That was on your meeting request.” Higgins leaned back in his chair.

“The administration,” started Lucus, “they got to like what I been doing. They been catching hell on the news, in the TV ads from those two citizens running for senator. I heard the warden—”

“Chief administrator,” corrected Higgins.

“Oh yeah, I forgot. Change the name and everything’s okay. Long as there’s no trouble.”