James Grippando - Last Call

Charger spoke softly, his voice barely above a whisper. "Is it true you're in here for helping Isaac escape?"

Theo shook his head, as if losing patience. "You think I'm gonna tell you anything? What are you, an informant?"

"I'm pretty sure you know what I am," he said, his voice still low.

Theo tried to ignore it, but one question had been burning in his mind ever since he'd found the cream under the mattress. "How well did Isaac know what you are?"

Charger scoffed. "That homophobic jerk. He'd beat the living hell out of me just for thinking about him."

Deep down, Theo had figured as much: The bottom bunk and the cream had belonged to Charger, and his boyfriend was from another cell – not Isaac.

"But you seem nice," said Charger.

"Shut it, fool."

"Arms out," the guard told Theo.

Officer MacDonald was suddenly standing on the other side of the bars, and he treated Theo the same as any other inmate. At the same time, a second guard did a visual search of Charger. The beam of a high-powered flashlight swept the prisoners' front side first. The guards ordered them to turn left, right, and then all the way around, inspecting the entire body. Apparently the prison officials did not want the inmates to know that the search pertained only to the back. Or maybe they'd opted for a whole-body scan to account for the possibility that Theo was mistaken, and that he'd actually seen the tattoo on someone's arm or chest.

"Towels on," the guard said. "Showers in ten minutes."

The search team moved to the next cell. Theo wrapped himself in a white bath towel and waited at the locked cell door. Again, he looked across the cell block at the other inmates – scores of caged sex offenders who had spent the last hour staring straight at his fully exposed equipment.

Shower time , he thought. Oh joy of joys.

FLORIDA STATE TROOPER Mel Stratton was twenty minutes from the end of his shift, and he was way below his normal pace for writing speeding tickets. He couldn't figure it out. This was his favorite spot, just east of orange grove country hiding beneath the Minute Maid Road overpass on Interstate 95. It was a clear night, no rain or fog to slow down traffic. Still, he'd issued far too few citations for a decent day's work.

It was downright embarrassing.

Suddenly a car was racing toward him in the northbound passing lane. His radar gun chirped like a parakeet in orgasm. Ninety-five – no, ninety-seven – miles per hour. Didn't slow down one bit as it whizzed past him. Either the Jeff Gordon wannabe hadn't noticed the patrol car in the darkness, or he didn't care. Either way, he'd just made Trooper Stratton's night.

Hot damn!

He tripped the siren and lights. Gravel flew and the engine roared as his car gripped the shoulder and tore onto the interstate. In seconds, he was in hot pursuit, but the target only accelerated. Trooper Stratton radioed in the information, but he didn't have much to say. He had no license plate number, no make or model of the vehicle. It had been a blur in the night flying past him.

In two minutes he was closing in. The speeding car hit the exit at over ninety miles per hour, ran a red light at the bottom of the ramp, and continued down the highway. Trooper Stratton gave chase, lights and siren blaring. It was a lonely road, just a gas station on one side and a fast-food joint on the other. The car was three miles beyond any sign of civilization when it made a quick right turn down a dirt road.

The car had disappeared from sight, but barbed-wire fences lined the road and prevented escape. Trooper Stratton continued in pursuit, his car jumping down the bumpy dirt road like a dune buggy. Then he stopped short, skidding to a stop.

The car was dead ahead, parked – stuck in a rut or ravine, he presumed.

The trooper switched on his spotlight and keyed his public address system.

"Remain in your vehicle," he said.

He reached for his radio transmitter to call in the information, but the license plate was too dirty to read. All he could say for sure was that it was a Florida tag. And that it was a red car. With some kind of gang symbol etched onto the rear window.

It looked like an upright knife.

His pulse quickened; he'd seen the statewide BOLO for a red car with the O-Town Posse gang symbol.

The last sound he heard was a deafening pop and the shattering of glass, as the windshield exploded into a thousand pellets that showered his face and landed in his lap.

Some were clear as diamonds; others, red as rubies.

THE BUZZER SOUNDED. The announcement over the PA system informed the entire prison population that the lockdown was over. The cell doors opened, and a stream of towel-wrapped inmates moved from their cells to the showers.

Theo exited his cell ahead of his cell mate and walked briskly across the cell block, trying to put some distance between himself and Charger. One man after another hung his towel on a hook and went straight into the community showers. Theo stayed by the sinks, still wrapped in his towel. The only mirror was the dome-shaped security mirror mounted on the ceiling. It was for the guards' benefit, not the inmates'. Theo used it as best he could to check his stitches. The doctor was supposed to remove all of them in a few days. There would definitely be a scar, especially if it was a prison doctor.

The shower area was directly behind him, and the security mirror offered Theo a panoramic view. Lots of naked bodies, lots of tattoos. Surely the inmate-by-inmate search during lockdown had turned up the O-Town Posse tattoo, but Theo was a skeptic when it came to authority, particularly in prisons. Maybe the guards had missed it. Maybe they'd found one, quit the search, and missed a second or a third inmate with the same tattoo. Or maybe a cool bribe had persuaded some guard to overlook it altogether. Theo couldn't trust corrections officers – not when it appeared that at least one of them had helped Isaac Reems escape. He had to check for himself.

Theo remained under the dome mirror, pretending to examine his stitches. He used the mirror to search for the tattoo. It was more difficult that way, but less risky than prowling through crowded showers and eyeing the backs of naked inmates. He shifted strategically from left to right, working the reflection to his full advantage. No matter how he maneuvered, however, he couldn't quite get a direct view into the deepest recesses of the shower area, where he seemed to recall seeing that O-Town Posse tattoo the other night. He tried standing on the balls of his feet, closer to the ceiling mirror and farther to his right – so far that he almost lost his balance.

"You're doing a lot of looking around tonight," said Charger, as he stopped at the sink beside Theo.

Theo caught himself and quickly resumed the pretense of examining the stitches in his head.

Charger leaned over the basin and splashed water on his face – delicately, the way a personal trainer might spritz a client's face with Evian. Then he removed his towel and said, "You know what they say: The ass is always greener…"

Theo ignored him as he sauntered away.

Steam from the hot showers was soon fogging the mirror. Theo's search was turning up nothing anyway, so he abandoned it and took a quick shower, looking at no one. He was on his way back to his cell before 9:00 p.m., but he didn't feel like dealing with Charger. Lights-out was still more than an hour away, so he decided to pay Moses a visit. The cell door was open, and Moses' cell mate was reclining in the lower bunk, alone in the cell when Theo arrived.

"Where's Moses?"

"Gone/' he said, never looking up from his magazine.

"TV room?" said Theo.

"Uh-uh. He's outta here."

Theo glanced at the top bunk, and only then did he notice that the bedding had been removed. An image flashed through his mind – the O-Town Posse tattoo on the muscular back of a black man, his identity obscured in the crowded, steamy shower.