James Patterson - Step On A Crack

“Are you sure all the men from the shift are there?” I said as we arrived at the mesh-windowed door of the muster room.

The warden looked intently through the wired glass at the nervous-looking uniformed corrections officers.

“I think so. Wait. No,” the warden said. “Sergeant Rhodes and Sergeant Williams. The two shift foremen. They’re not here yet. Where the hell are they ?”

The shift foremen, I thought. Sure sounded like ringleaders to me. I thought about the message the warden had just gotten on his radio.

“Let me guess,” I said. “The shift foremen are stationed to A-Block?”

Clark nodded. “Our largest maximum-security building,” he said.

“We have to go in there,” I told him. “Now.”

LIKE THE INVESTIGATION itself, everything seemed to be moving uphill in Sing Sing. Trailing behind Warden Clark and a half dozen of his most trusted corrections officers, I climbed countless concrete stairs and several graded, paint-chipped corridors before we came to a steel door leading to a barred gate.

The gate buzzed open harshly, and there was a metallic snap like the hammer of a gun on an empty chamber. Then the door swung wide.

I could feel the sound of the prison knock against my chest as we passed through the enormous chamber of the multitiered cell block. Radios, inmates yelling, the constant hard and booming echo upon echo of steel on steel. It sounded like some form of torture, coming up from a bottomless metal well.

The prisoners in the closest cells rose immediately, screaming obscenities from behind double-thick bars as we passed. All along the double-football-field length of the building, I could see the glint of mirrors held out between the steel forest of cell bars. I hoped to hell we didn’t get “gassed,” a nasty soup of urine and feces hurled down by an inmate.

“Let’s check the gym before we go upstairs to the different galleries,” the warden yelled above the racket surrounding us.

We were buzzed through another locked door at the block’s opposite end. There was no one at any of the weight-room benches or pull-up stations. No one on the basketball court. No one hiding behind the stands. Where the hell were they? Had Jack and Little John gotten away again? How did they stay a step ahead of us?

I was leading our group back out onto the bottom level of A-Block when I was shoved from behind. I went down ! The weight room’s steel door boomed to a close as I skidded my palms and knees against the concrete floor.

I turned to see two of the warden’s most trusted corrections officers smiling above me as the warden and Steve Reno and the other cops, sealed in the gym behind, began pounding on the steel door.

I noticed that one CO was gargantuan, the other short and stocky. Way to go, Professor Bennett. They fit the physical description of Jack and Little John. That’s because they were Jack and Little John.

The one and only Jack had a black riot baton in his hand. He spun it easily between his fingers. He had close-cropped curly brown hair and a permanent sneer. A tough guy for a tough job, right?

“Hey, Mikey,” he said. “Long time no talk.”

How could I not recognize that voice? No wonder Tremaine Jefferson had.

“So how come you never call anymore?” Jack said. “I thought we were buddies.”

“Hey, Jack,” I said, feigning courage I wasn’t really feeling. “Funny, you didn’t sound like a midget on the phone.”

Jack chuckled at that one. Still a cool customer. If he was worried about whether help was on its way, he was hiding it well.

“You made another mistake, Mike,” he said. “Only this one’s kind of fatal. Coming into a man’s house uninvited. You thought I wouldn’t anticipate you might find us? Shit, even a broken clock is right twice a day. You think that fat bastard Clark is in charge here? This is my prison. My turf, my people.”

“It’s over, Jack,” I said.

“I really don’t think so, Mike,” Jack said. “Think about it. We got out of one fortress. We can get out of another. Especially now that we have hostages . Hell, Mike, maybe I’ll even let you negotiate your own release. How does that sound?”

“Sounds great,” I said, taking a half step back. My heel struck the flat, hard steel of the door. There was nowhere to run.

The heavy radio I’d been given by the warden was the only thing remotely resembling a weapon. I hefted it as Little John pulled his baton out with a sickening smile. The bastard had a face as repellent as a stinkbug’s.

“Why don’t we just talk about this for a second?” I said as I reared back, then hurled the radio. Roger Clemens would have been proud. The radio and Little John’s nose exploded simultaneously. He screamed; then he and Jack lit into me and I was lifted right off the floor.

“Upsy-daisy, Mike!” Jack yelled in my face. Then they both threw me down on my face.

I THOUGHT THE PRISONERS had been loud before, but it turned out they were only warming up. As I attempted to wrestle on the cement with Jack and Little John, the communal screams off the concrete shell of the cell block sounded like a jumbo jet taking off inside a hangar.

Then stuff started to rain down from the top tiers: various liquids, wet sheets, magazines, a wad of burning toilet paper. Had I just been gassed ?

When Jack got in a lick with the riot baton on the back of my head, I went down on one knee. My consciousness was coming in and out like bad radio reception. I was pinned and blacking out as Little John rolled onto my chest.

I screamed and pushed off the floor with all my might.

I thought about my kids. I couldn’t leave them now. I couldn’t allow them to have no one. I wouldn’t let it happen. I was almost on my knees when Little John rolled off me and started booting me in the ribs.

I dropped back down, my breath gone; then his steel toe kissed my solar plexus. I wondered idly if Jack, pulling back the baton above me, might be the last sight I’d ever see on the earth.

That’s when something completely unexpected happened-an arm snaked through the bars behind Jack.

It was so huge, it barely squeezed through, and so covered in tattoos, it looked like its owner wore a paisley sleeve. A massive hand wrapped itself around the back of Jack’s uniform shirt collar. It sounded like a gong when Jack’s head was slammed back into the bars again and again.

“How you like it, CO?” the convict inquired as he slammed and reslammed Jack’s skull into the bars of his cell. “How you like it, you vicious prick? How you like that one?”

When Little John got off me to help out Jack, I managed, wheezing, to gain my feet. The riot baton Jack had dropped was on the concrete. I stooped, lifted it, brought it to my shoulder.

It had been a while since I’d had a nightstick in my hand, walking my first beat in the Hunt’s Point section of the South Bronx. On those cold, long nights I’d kept myself awake practicing with it, swinging it over and over until it whistled in cold air.

The nightstick whistled now, and I guess it was like riding a bike, because Little John’s left knee shattered like balsa wood with my first two-handed swing.

I had to backpedal immediately as the big man howled and hopped around surprisingly fast on one foot and came toward me. There was rage in his wide, bulging eyes, spit spraying out of his twisted, screaming mouth.

I swung from my toes at his jaw. He ducked, but too little, too late. I broke the baton across his temple. He hit the concrete a half second before the splintered wood.

The inmates were cheering something wicked as I stumbled around the big guard’s bleeding, unconscious hulk. Their rage-filled voices met in a violent mantra as I stepped toward the inmate who was choking Jack with both monstrous hands. Jack’s face was turning blue.