Gregg Hurwitz - Last shot

The mood inside was nice and mellow until Spook taped razor blades to his hands and slashed up two Aryan Brothers and half a correctional officer. So that meant Terminal Island was on edge and the population unshaved-disposable razors being accountable items the screws hadn't kept accountable. Every morning this week, Walker had to stand in line with the other boarders for his shot with a piece-of-shit Norelco, the CO dipping the cutting head in Barbicide between shearings.

The inside heated up in August. Air like fever. Men slept worse, got antsy. Got violent. Some, like Spook, got creative. Walker steered clear, as always, of the ensuing bullshit. He kept out of the yard-too much trouble brewing-to sit on the stacked footlockers in his house upstairs and take in the sights.

Two wind-battered palm trees, row of Dumpsters, anchor resting atop a concrete pillar at the coast guard facility across the way-all strained through two layers of chain link and some nifty coils of razor wire. The view wasn't much. But it was all he had. He loved the two palms-Sally and Jean Ann. Loved how their crowns could hold the evening light, bathed in gold a good half hour after the grounds were puddled in shadow. If he mashed his face to the concrete wall, he could make out the edge of a third tree, but he didn't know that one well enough to name her.

Walker pulled back from the iron bars and regarded his house. He knew this view well, too. All six by eight of it. Bunk beds, metal, one solid piece. Stainless steel toilet and sink. Technically, the walls were supposed to be bare, but by the window Walker had used chewing gum to put up a picture of Tess, mostly because he didn't know what else to do with it. Aside from the photo and a few cigarette burns on his footlocker, he hadn't made much of an imprint on the place in two and a half years.

His cellie, a soft-spoken rapist renamed Imaad, had been more active in his nesting. An Arabic phrase, rendered in gold calligraphy, glittered from a black velvet banner. Below it a postcard of a mosque was stuck to the wall with paste, since he claimed that chewing gum contained-Allah forbid-gelatin. A prayer rug, woven from lovingly twisted cords of toilet paper, stood rolled up in a corner. Atop the frayed end, safely above belly level, rested a worn Koran, the leather binding long gone to pieces. Imaad, who was well behaved and aggressively introverted, tolerated Walker as Walker tolerated him. Yesterday Imaad had drunk ammonia with his Cup o' Noodles, his puking buying him a lay-in at the infirmary so he wouldn't have to mix with the general pop. A good move for a model prisoner, given the smoke on the horizon.

After Spook's Schick escapade, the Gorillas and the Aryans were due to let more blood. And the cholos weren't about to get left out either. The Norteno cell lieutenant's punk had gone renegade and gotten picked up by a jocker from Surrenos, stoking the embers of a dormant vendetta. An unnatural silence had permeated the block the past few nights. Convicts were stockpiling food. Despite the heat, gang members only ventured out in canvas jackets, padding their undershirts with magazines and newspapers as insurance against stickings. It was like gas had been leaking through the grounds all week and everyone was holding their breath, waiting for somebody to strike a match.

Walker's right arm sported a dark comma above the biceps-yin of yin-yang fame. Tommy LaRue from D-Block was the ink slinger, but the tattoo had gone unfinished after his kit was confiscated in the wake of the May riot. Walker had smuggled the needles out of Unicor, where the prisoners toiled for a buck twenty an hour stitching and packing and making useful things like paper targets so cops could practice shooting them. He'd shoved the needles beneath the surface of his heel callus and delivered them to LaRue, who tied them with a shoelace to the point of a pencil. The ink was easy-burn a Bic pen filler heroin style in a spoon, then mix the soot with toothpaste and soap. The lace soaks up the ink, the needles open the skin, and-had no shakedown occurred-Walker would've gotten his yang. But since Kelly O'Connell felt inspired to throw a flaming mattress off the third tier, Walker had to walk around for three months like an asshole with a big tadpole on his arm. To be fair, Kelly's riot had also provided free entertainment. First the bedding and burning trash raining down onto the range floor, showering sparks. Then the boarders got to sit on the bare mesh of their beds and watch the mini-frontloaders at work, scooping up the charred mounds below. That one had made the papers, and they'd paid for it. Petty reprisals for a month. No basketballs. No magazines. No dessert.

Walker glanced at Tess on the wall and felt his thoughts sharpen, pricking him with imagined scenarios. The only treatment, he'd learned, was to tune out. Weights, headphones, or the four-star view.

He was just reconvening with Sally and Jean Ann when Boss sent for him. Walker didn't like being sent for, and if it was anyone else, he would have ignored the summons, but Boss hadn't sent for him in months, and when Boss sent for you, you went.

Sweet Boy repeated the request, leaning against the doorway with a bent wrist propped against a smooth cheek, and Walker said, "I heard you."

"Boss says now."

"Boss can wait."

Sweet Boy's eyelashes flared, as if Walker had wiped his nose on the pope's robe, and he made a snitty little noise at the back of his throat and withdrew.

Walker rose and stretched. The powdered eggs from breakfast had left a foul taste in his mouth, so he brushed his teeth, tapped the rubber Department of Corrections toothbrush on the lip of the sink, and dropped it into a cup from the chow hall. A titanium cross escaped his shirt when he leaned to spit. His first month in, LaRue had gotten the thin black cord-more like a shoestring-for Walker to hang the pendant on. LaRue could get anything, from Albanian hash to the e-mail address for Catherine Zeta-Jones's publicist so you could write and get a signed head shot. LaRue was the closest thing to a friend Walker had in here. Or, for that matter, anywhere. He served everyone and no one, and Walker liked him for his democratic refusal to cultivate alliances.

Walker stepped out onto the catwalk, glancing over the waist-height rail to the concrete plain of the range floor forty feet below. He could hear the clink of weights and shouts from the boccie court out on the North Yard. The echoes bounced off the high ceiling, came back distorted.

LaRue was scurrying toward him, head down, elbow pressed to his side to hold firm whatever contraband he was muling under his shirt. They clasped hands, bumped opposite shoulders.

"Let's see the tat." LaRue shook his head at Walker's forlorn yin. "We'll get it finished up as soon as this shit blows over."

"You got word for me?"

"Expect to have it by lunch." He produced a cigarette from thin air, handed it to Walker, and scurried off to finish his rounds.

Walker stuck the cig in his mouth and continued down the catwalk. Boss Hahn, a shotcaller for the Aryan Brotherhood, occupied the best cell on J-Unit's third tier, right next to the TV room. Kelly's arm greeted Walker at the cell door, but Boss tipped his chin in a faint nod, the limb withdrew, and Walker stepped inside.

A red sheet over the window cut the light to a soft glow. Sweet Boy reclined on the bed reading a romance paperback. Boss's cellie, Marcus, was taking a dump, one foot out and clear of his pants in case a brawl broke out; if nothing else, prison kept you ready for dirty fighting. The smell mixed with that of the ramen noodles on the hot plate. After a while you barely notice stuff like that. An AB strongman, Marcus was missing two front teeth, so he could smile clench-jawed and still stick his tongue out at you.