David Alexander: Masters of Noir: Volume 4

Jock said: “We can try. It’s hot out there. Maybe the screw’s gone off to hunt himself some shade... If we can get to the kitchen, and be bumming chow, the boys there’ll give us an alibi.”

Macalay said: “We have a chance. Those damn guards don’t work too hard.”

Jock went up the ladder first. Macalay was so close behind him that he almost got his fingers stepped on. They clambered through the manhole, and out onto the boiler top, and dropped down on the brick floor of the boiler room.

Nobody was around. The heating furnaces were off for the summer; the con in charge of the power boilers was around on the other side, where the gauges were. It was almost as hot on the boiler room floor as it had been inside the boiler, or at least it seemed that way.

They made it to the door, and out, and walked along the side of the powerhouse towards the kitchen, the next building. The yard was deserted in the heat. Jock said: “The P.K. done us a favor, when he thought he was piling it on us, making us chip that boiler. We’re gonna get away with it.”

Macalay said: “We haven’t yet.”

Jock said: “No. We ain’t. I got an ace in the hole. I’ve been saving it. If we can make the kitchen I think I’ll play it.”

“This is the big hand,” Macalay said. “Play your ace. This is murder.” The goose that could lay the hundred-grand egg for him had been murdered.

“Self defense,” Jock said quickly. “Ain’t no fingerprints on that shiv except his.”

Macalay laughed. “By the time the P.K. gets through, there’ll be fingerprints. Yours, mine. That P.K. lives to see us all fixed, but good.”

A hundred feet from the kitchen, ninety feet. Their shoes seemed to have lead soles, like they’d dressed for diving. The sweat poured steadily down Macalay’s back. Abruptly, he wanted to stand in the scorched yard and scream: “I’m not a criminal. I’m not a con! I don’t belong with these men, this isn’t me!”

You’re shook, he told himself. Take it easy. Remember, this is the eight-ball you picked.

Fifty feet, forty feet. The whole traverse wasn’t taking more than two minutes. But hours went by inside Macalay’s brain, years of aging were being piled on his body. He told himself, trying to make a joke of it, that his arteries would be hardened before he got to the kitchen.

He found the joke didn’t amuse him.

Now the loathesome smell of greasy stew bubbling was strong in their noses. There should have been a guard outside the kitchen door; there wasn’t. The P.K. was so bad that the guards doped off half the time, smoking and lounging in a shady area behind the infirmary. The P.K. himself stayed out of the yard as much as possible.

The Warden was writing a book on the reform of criminals. The Deputy Warden toured around the United States making speeches about the Warden’s pet theories.

It was a hell of penitentiary, but it had a kitchen and they were almost there.

And then they were inside. Macalay followed Jock around the edge of the big room, past cons peeling vegetables, washing pots, past baker-cons and cook-cons and salad-maker-cons. There were supposed to be civilian chefs, but the jobs were never filled, and the budget came out nicely at the end of the year, if the food didn’t.

Somewhere Jock snatched two white caps, and they put them on. They bellied in to a sink where a punk named Snifter was scrubbing grills with a red brick. Each of them snatched up a brick and went to work. Macalay noticed that Jock was very careless with the dirty water that came off the grease-caked grill; he splashed it on his clothes, it ran down on his shoes. After a moment Macalay got the idea too; and in a couple of minutes he looked as though he’d been working in the kitchen all morning.

His stomach began to unknot, his arteries to soften.

A trusty-messenger went by; carrying invoices from the kitchen to the front office. Jock stepped back and blocked his way. Jock’s lips hardly moved, and his voice was faint even as close as Macalay was.

“Bud, take a message for me. To a screw named Sinclair. You know him, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” the trusty said. “Big potbellied guy with a brown moustache.”

“The one,” Jock said. “Tell ’im I wanna see him. Here. Now.”

“S’posin’ he don’t want to see you?”

“Tell him I just got a letter from a friend of his in ElkoNevada.”

“Okay,” said the trusty. “You owe me a favor.” You got nothing for nothing in the can.

Jock nodded, and stepped in to the sink again, started scrubbing. A con pushed a load of grills up and dumped them in the sink, and more greasy water splashed over them. Macalay said: “Watch what you’re doin’, stir-bum.”

“Who’s a stir-bum, you stir-bum?”

The grease from the grills was a solid coating on Macalay’s arms now, and its taste, and the taste of the blue air of the kitchen, was all down his throat. He said: “Isn’t this enough grills?”

Jock said: “I’m waiting for Sinclair.”

All this time the punk named Snifter scrubbed grills between them, not saying anything, apparently not hearing anything. Macalay realized that the punk was scared to death at being between Jock and one of his Jockeys, a tough yard gang. Macalay wondered what Snifter would do if he knew why Macalay and Jock were scrubbing grills, and remembering why they were there, made the filthy work a lot easier to take.

And here came Sinclair, a paunchy guy, with a moustache that probably would have been gray if he hadn’t chewed tobacco. There were grease spots on his gray shirt and blue pants, and tarnish on his badge. “You Jock?” he said.

Jock nodded. “One time of Elko Nevada,” he said. “With lots of friends there.”

Sinclair chewed the moustache, and looked at Macalay and Snifter. “Blow.”

Jock said: “Snifter can blow. Macalay’s a friend of mine. From ElkoNevada.”

Snifter sidled away, happily.

“What’s all this about Elko, Nevada?” Sinclair said. Unlike Jock he did not say it as though it was all one word.

“Mac and I have been here all morning. When we reported to the job we were supposed to do, it was all done, and you went through the yard and told us to report to the kitchen.”

Sinclair spat brown juice on the kitchen floor. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jock said. “And you never held up Horse Caner’s gambling joint in ElkoNevada and you never shot his brother and one of the faro-dealers. Never.”

Macalay watched Sinclair. The pig eyes of the guard never showed anything, not fear, not anger. “When did all this happen?”

“Five minutes after the first shift started this morning,” Jock said.

Sinclair said: “Okay. What job was it that was finished?”

“Chipping boilers.”

Sinclair started away. From five feet he turned back. “And stay away from Nevada.”

“Never even heard of the place,” Jock said.

“It’s a no-good state,” Sinclair said, and kept on going.

Macalay let out his breath as far as it would go. Then he hated to breathe in again because of the blue grease-smoke in the kitchen. “That was quite an ace.”

Jock nodded, sadly. He had given up on the grills, was trying to get the grease off his hands. “Yeah,” he said. “A pal got the word to me when he heard I was coming here. I hated to play that hole ace. I really hated to.”

This time there were five naked men lined up in front of the P.K.’s desk. The P.K. looked very happy; he had the look of a man who’d hit oil digging a sewer. There was old Fitz, there was Hanning, Nosy, Jock and Macalay.

The P.K. said: “Okay. I’m paid by the year; I don’t mind waiting. You were the guys on the chipping gang with Russ. This morning we go to put the boiler back in service, and he’s in there stinking dead. And we’ve had the state cops looking for him for three days. So what happened?” He glared at them.