Sean Black - Deadlock

Seemingly lost in thought, Reaper dabbed a little more purple on to the end of his brush and drew a circle round the President’s head, then painted in a couple of lines to form crosshairs.

‘Nice touch,’ Lock said, grabbing the white plastic handle of the paint tin and holding it up. ‘We’re out. You want to go see if you can get us some more?’

Reaper took the tin and got to his feet. ‘Sure thing. You don’t want to come with me?’ he added sarcastically.

‘Not this time,’ Lock said, watching Reaper swagger across the yard.

As soon as Reaper was out of sight, Lock walked to the end of the fence they’d already worked on and pretended to be checking over each purple slash. At the same time he angled his body so that he had his back to the guard in the gun tower.

He hunkered down on his haunches and with his paintbrush in his left hand set about unhooking and then twisting off a piece of wire connected to the terminal post. After what seemed an eternity it came away in his hand, and he pocketed it. Then he dabbed at where the chain-link had been with his brush and set to work on another piece. By the time Reaper emerged from the unit building with more paint, Lock had managed to prise away three pieces.

He turned and walked back along the fence towards Reaper, who raised the tin of paint in salute before looking from Lock to the far end of the fence.

‘What you doing down there, soldier boy?’

‘Just making sure I hadn’t missed anything,’ Lock said. ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well, right?’

Reaper smirked and tugged at his walrus mustache ‘If you say so.’

They set back to work. Now all Lock could do was pray that one of the guards noticed the missing pieces of the fence before it was too late.

Shouts and curses bounced off every surface in the unit as, one by one, the inmates were taken from their cells, cuffed and ordered to lie face down on the floor. Once secured, a search team of three guards stepped into each cell and systematically tore the place apart, upturning mattresses, tearing pictures from the walls and throwing everything else on to the floor of the cell.

Up on the tier, Lock lay on his bunk, his hands clasped behind his head, and listened to the commotion with a quiet feeling of satisfaction.

Reaper’s head appeared above his. ‘Think you’re real cute, don’t you?’

Lock stared right through him. ‘No idea what you’re talking about.’

Reaper’s legs swung over the edge of the bunk, the soles of his feet directly above Lock’s chest. He pushed off with his arms and landed on the floor of the cell.

‘Where’d you hide ’em?’

‘Where’d I hide what?’

‘Those pieces from the fence you must have snuck when we were painting it.’

‘That what all this is about?’ said Lock, getting to his feet.

Reaper stepped towards him so that inches separated them. Lock stood his ground.

‘The deal was I got back to the mainline or I didn’t testify.’

Lock spread out his arms. ‘You’re on the mainline.’

‘I spent five years in the SHU, cooped up in a cell. No yard time. No phone calls. Nothing to do but go crazy. I ain’t doin’ it any more. So, I want you to tell me where those pieces are.’

Lock’s eyes slid to Reaper’s hands. He tensed, waiting for him to make a move. There were often pinch points with a principal, usually revolving around trivial issues such as them asking the bodyguard to carry their luggage, or to get them coffee at three in the morning. This was slightly different.

‘You think this’ll get you out of stabbing your buddy?’

Still Lock didn’t react.

Reaper blinked first, stepping back and beginning to search the cell. ‘They find them in our house and it’s bad news for you and me both.’

Lock knew Reaper was lying. The warden could have found half a kilo of coke, a keg of Bud and a Playboy Playmate in the cell and Reaper would still be heading for sunny San Francisco in less than two days’ time.

From outside the cell came the slamming of heavy reinforced steel doors and the barked orders of cops as they moved methodically through the unit. Lock was counting on them hitting this cell soon, and finding the three pieces of metal fence he’d secreted well enough to make it look like he’d made an effort to hide them, but not so well that they wouldn’t find them.

The pieces were his ticket to the warden’s office, where he was going to suggest that it was time to move Reaper out, as well as him and Ty.

‘Well, what do we have here?’

Lock stayed where he was as Reaper sucked the blood from a couple of tiny cuts on the end of his fingertips where the metal taped under the bunk had caught his hand. Then Reaper ducked his head under, and less than thirty seconds later came up with the three hasps of metal.

Shouldering past Lock, he crouched down by the cell door. There was a gap at the bottom. Less than half an inch. He waited until all the guards were inside cells and batted the metal under the door. The pieces scooted across the walkway and fell down on to the floor of the unit. If they made a sound when they landed, Lock didn’t hear it over the cacophony of orders and protests.

There was a shout, and below Lock’s cell the guards gathered round the three small pieces of chain-link. The guard who’d spotted them first glanced up, his index finger pointing at three cells on the second floor from where the metal might have been ejected. Then he shouted up to the cons gathered at those doors: ‘Smart move, assholes.’

Reaper stepped back to his bunk, his fingertips still red. He dug out a sharpened toothbrush he’d shown Lock before and handed it to Lock. ‘Take it, because believe me, you’re gonna need it.’

‘I need to speak to the warden,’ Lock said to the young floor cop who was the first to reach his cell, knowing that such a request, made in the open, where other inmates could hear, was a high-risk maneuver

‘What’s the matter? Coffee too cold? Your pillows too hard? Sheets not got a high enough thread count?’ The cop was clearly still pissed at the missing metal, which had disrupted the day’s routine. Like any other large institution, Pelican Bay was, by necessity, all about routine.

‘Just tell him, OK?’

Reaper clapped a meaty paw on to Lock’s shoulder. ‘Yard time, soldier boy. No avoiding it.’

Lock knew that all he could do now was tough it out.

When he found himself standing at the door that opened on to the yard, Lock felt as though he was standing in one of the tunnels leading into the Coliseum, a gladiator waiting to emerge blinking into the sunlight, knowing that there were only two possible outcomes: victory or death.

Out on the yard, the white inmates immediately took one set of benches in the corner furthest from the block. Lock scanned the other groups: to his left, the group of Nortenos eyed the white inmates; on the other bench were the black inmates, Ty at the centre.

‘They know something’s up,’ Lock said, stalling for time.

The eyes of every white inmate swiveled towards him.

A metal shank appeared suddenly in Phileas’s hand. Sharper than the jagged-edged toothbrush, a razor-sharp tip with barbs running all the way up it, so that it would do even more damage coming out than going in. ‘No time like the present,’ Phileas said, the inmates standing around Lock fading away like snow in the Sahara.

Only Reaper remained standing next to him. ‘What the hell you fools doin’? He walks across the yard alone, the toads’ll know something’s up for sure.’

The mist of bodies moved back in.

‘We all stay real close,’ Reaper continued. ‘Do it on the way back in.’