Joseph Finder - Power Play

Russell swiveled, slammed his pistol against Bo's face. Bo screamed and fell over backwards, his face bloodied.

Then Russell placed the Glock back behind Danziger's right ear. "Do you want to tell me what happens after you type in that duress code?" Russell said very softly.

Danziger closed his eyes. "It triggers a silent alarm," he said, his voice trembling. "It tells the bank that the transfer request is being made under compulsion."

"Okay, good," said Russell. "Now, John, tell me something. Is there any other duress code? Besides the nine, I mean."

Danziger mouthed the word No but no sound came out.

"I can't hear you," said Russell.

"No," Danziger gasped.

"No other way for someone to sneak in a duress code?"

"No. Nothing else."

"That's it? No other tricks that you know of? Nothing else your buddies might try to screw this up?" Russell twisted the Glock, swiveling the muzzle on that same spot behind Danziger's right ear.

Danziger's face was contorted and dark red. "I-can't think of anything else," he whispered.

"You'd be the guy who'd know, isn't that right?"

"Yes," Danziger said. "There's no one else who…" His voice was choked by sobs.

"Who what?"

"Who knows the-the systems-"

"So that's it, then?" Russell said. "No other tricks?"

"Nothing. I swear to you."

"Thank you, John," Russell said. "You've been very cooperative."

Danziger gasped for air, nodded. He closed his eyes, looked drained.

"Thank you," he whispered.

You could almost feel everyone breathe a collective sigh of relief. Russell was a sadist, but not a murderer. He had tortured the information he wanted out of Danziger, so there was no need to kill him.

"Oh, thank God," breathed Grogan. Tears were streaming down his face as well.

"No," Russell said softly, "thank you. Good-bye, John."

He squeezed the trigger and the gun jumped in his hand and filled the room with a deafening explosion.

Danziger slumped to one side.

The gunshot seemed to echo for an instant, though it was merely an auditory illusion: My ears rang with a high-pitched, wavering tone. I stared, unable to fully comprehend what I'd just seen.

Then the silence was broken as someone let out a gasp.

People began to scream, others to cry.

Someone vomited.

A large chunk of the right side of Danziger's head was missing.

Russell wiped his left hand over his face to smear off the red spatter. Verne let out a loud whoop and pumped his fist.

"Yeah!" he shouted. "You see that?"

A number of people dove to the floor. Some tried to cover their eyes with their forearms, ducked their heads. Ali buried her head between her legs.

I wanted to shout, but I couldn't. My throat seemed to have closed.

Russell stood up, lowered the Glock to his side, backed up a few steps. Travis stared furiously at his brother.

Over the cacophony, the shouts and the keening, I heard Russell tell his brother, "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do."

Hank Bodine bellowed, "Goddamn you!"

In all the chaos, my eyes were drawn to Grogan. He was on his feet, stumbling forward to Danziger's body. His face was red and crumpled, and he was crying, his head shaking. He knelt next to Danziger's body, reached with his unsteady fettered hands to lift his friend's ruined head, trying to cradle it.

His mouth was moving as if to speak, but no words came out, just deep gasps, like hiccups. Blood oozed between his fingers.

A slick of blood and something viscous had pooled on the floor next to Danziger.

Then Grogan leaned over and kissed the dead man's lips, and suddenly everybody understood.

I couldn't see Grogan's face. I could only see his shoulders heaving.

He lowered Danziger's head gently to the floor and knelt there for several seconds as if praying. Slowly he rose to his feet as a terrible anguished scream welled up from his throat, and he staggered toward Russell, his face contorted with rage and grief.

"You goddamned son of a bitch!" he shouted, spittle flying.

He lunged at Russell, jabbing his tethered hands at Russell's face as if to throttle him. "God damn you to hell, you goddamned son of a bitch!"

"Alan?" Russell said in a matter-of-fact voice as he stepped to one side, out of the way.

"Why?" Grogan gasped. "Why in God's name-?"

"You, too," Russell said, and he fired one more time.

Pee Wee Farrentino's delicate, feminine face had become monstrous: a welter of angry red cross-hatched scars. Ugly, just the way he wanted.

But it hadn't stopped Glover's midnight visits. Neither had my meeting with Dr. Jerome Marcus, the Assistant Clinical Director of Glenview, who'd followed the bureaucratic imperative not to rock the boat. He buried his report. He wanted a larger office.

Pee Wee's eyes had gone dead. He'd given up.

One morning, he wasn't at inspection. The morning guard, Caffrey, went to his room and found him.

He'd torn strips from his bedsheets and fashioned a noose, lashed it to the old iron radiator, managed to twist his body into the right position to strangle himself. Only Pee Wee could have done something that clever.

Caffrey, stricken, described it to us: We weren't allowed to look.

The bad wolf took me over. I felt myself propelled into a dark tunnel, no way out but forward, no turning back.

During outdoor exercise period, I made the first move. I lunged at Glover, wrested the baton out of his hands, my strength almost superhuman. The high-octane fuel of rage.

As he tried to grab it back, I slammed it against the back of his knees. Just as he'd done to me so many times.

He lurched, sprawled to the ground, roared that I was going straight to the hole. He yelled for Caffrey.

But Caffrey stood and watched.

Glover-cowering, his lip split, his eyes leaking blood-hollered for Estevez.

I slammed my fists into his face, one two one two, until I felt hard bone go soft.

One two one two.

I'd made myself Raymond Farrentino's protector, and I'd failed, and this was the only thing I could do.

He roared, an enraged beast, throwing his fists at me blindly, trying to block my punches. He caught me on the side of my face with a right hook so hard it should have knocked me over. But it didn't. I was in the zone. My rage was both a force field and anesthetic. His head jerked from side to side to dodge the blows. He snarled, his teeth bloody.

Even in my madness, my temporary insanity, I knew that beating Glover to a bloody pulp would solve nothing. It would only get me in the most serious trouble. But it felt too good to stop.

I kneed him in the stomach, and his eyes rolled up into his head for an instant. He sagged, and I slammed a fist into the underside of his jaw, heard something snap. He swayed backwards, tipped over, his head smashing into the ground.

Then something remarkable happened. Estevez, then Alvaro and a few of the bigger kids, began swarming around Glover and me. Some had homemade brass knuckles or sharpened mattress coils: an homage to Pee Wee.

We could all see the fear in his pale dull eyes. A spell had been broken. Only later did I wonder how many of them had also been Glover's victims.

As the others pummeled him with their fists and slashed with their mattress coils, knocking me aside, guards began streaming out of D Unit and the adjoining cottages, batons and Mace at the ready.

They began pulling the kids off Glover, stopping them from crossing the line, going one step too far.

A lockdown was ordered. Anyone who didn't return to his room at once would be placed in the Special Handling Unit. The word got around quickly that the punishment would be severe: transfer to what they called gladiator school-a maximum-security penitentiary for violent offenders, even worse than Glenview.