Уолтер Мосли - Blue Light

He yelled from pain, but a hand clamped down over his mouth. His arms and legs were freed from the cot but then were tied together. A gag was shoved into his mouth and then taped over. He was put into a large cloth bag and hoisted over a broad back. The rocking motion of being carried like that calmed Winch somewhat. The snake that lived in his brain was lulled. He couldn’t move or speak. It was as if life had not started yet, as if pain was still far off, only a possibility.

Winch Fargo was soothed in the dark trunk he was loaded into. The hum of the motor and the occasional bump in the road felt womblike. He came halfway to consciousness in there. Half sane. He even wondered where it was they were taking him.

He wondered if Eileen might be there sending off those signals like the good songs on the radio when he was a boy in Missouri.

Before they dumped him from the bag, he felt her. He wasn’t surprised to see the big blond guard Robert Halston. He didn’t care about how skinny he was or how infected his arms and legs had become. All he cared about was the mousy brunette reclining on the couch before him. He wanted to reach for her, but his hands were still tied.

He didn’t care. She was his beacon and he’d never be far from her side again in life.

“Winch Fargo,” the dazzling image said. “I am Claudia Heart and you are the grandfather to my brood.”

The convict stood just behind and to the left of the warden’s guest chair. His black skin was ashen, the whites of his eyes were more bloody than bloodshot. Slight jerking tremors went through his body every few seconds or so.

“Where is he, Allitar?” Warden Reed asked.

“I ’ont know... sir.”

“Mackie, you have to know,” said Peter Mainhart, chief of guards. “They say you had him tied to a cot in Detention Cell Forty-eight. They say that you and Halston and some other cons were selling him as some kind of sex slave down there.”

“I ’ont know nuthin’ about that, sir.”

Mackie twitched and the warden stood up from his desk. He wasn’t a tall man, but every con in Folsom Prison was afraid when he stood to full stature.

“Where are Halston and Fargo?” Reed asked.

“I wisht I knew,” Allitar said, then shuddered so violently that he had to pull the chair back and sit in it.

“What’s wrong, Mackie?” Mainhart asked. “You need a fix?”

Mackie raised his ruined face to the warden, ignoring the senior guard’s question. He tried to say something; maybe he felt that his yowling groan was answer enough.

“Get him out of here, Peter,” the warden said.

“Richards, Weiner!” Mainhart shouted.

Two prison guards dressed in blue came into the room. One was tall and lanky; the other was shaped like two eggs, the smaller one being his head and the larger comprising his body.

“Take him to solitary,” Mainhart told his men.

Mackie Allitar fell to the ground, sobbing. He looked up at the four white men and cried some more. When Mainhart demanded that he get up, Mackie did as he was told. He let the guards lead him from the warden’s office even though he was still big enough and powerful enough to have killed every man in the room. He didn’t think about killing, though. All he thought about was that bluity ; all he wanted to do was the blood drug.

“There’s something wrong here, Peter,” Warden Reed said when they were alone again.

The warden was a colorful man. His curly brown hair had red highlights and his blue eyes were almost impossible. His skin drank up the sun in the summer until he seemed to belong on the Caribbean Islands, where he and his family took their vacations.

Mainhart was the warden’s opposite in coloring. His white hair had no shine and there was no red under his pale skin. His flat brown eyes were lusterless and could have belonged to a corpse.

“It’s a weird one, I agree,” Mainhart said. “All this homo drug addict stuff... They should line ’em all up at the gas chamber and forget jail altogether.”

“You say they had the drug down in Fargo’s cell?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you bring it?”

Mainhart left the room for a moment and then returned with a plain brown shoe box. He placed it in front of the warden and lifted off the lid.

Inside were a dozen tiny wax paper packets, a few hypodermic needles, a tarnished spoon, and some matches — all on a bed of cotton balls. Warden Reed unwrapped one of the packages, revealing a hard black lump somewhat resembling tar. When the warden squeezed the lump, it turned instantly to dust.

“What is it?” the warden asked.

“Don’t know,” Mainhart replied. “It’s not opium or hash. I don’t know what it is.”

“What about Halston’s family? Has he gotten in touch with them?”

“He moved out four weeks ago,” Mainhart said. “Just told Millie that he was going to stay at a flophouse down in Los Gatos and never came back.”

“You check the hotel?”

“He never even stayed one night. He just paid the owner to say he wasn’t in if somebody called. A couple of the other guards said that he’d met some hippie chick in the Safeway supermarket. He said that she took him out to her van in the parking lot and fucked him right there. Right there in the parking lot, for Christ’s sake. In the middle of the day. He said that he was in love with her, that he couldn’t even be with Millie after that.”

The warden massaged his face with both hands and made a small chirping sound in the back of his throat. “How long now?” he asked.

“Sixteen hours since we realized it. He’s probably been gone for two days, though. Thursday and Friday were Halston’s weekend. He coulda taken Fargo out anytime. Nobody else went to that cell when he was on duty. It was solitary. It was his detail.”

Warden Reed looked at the dark powder. His fingers tingled slightly. He took a paper towel from his bottom drawer and wiped the drug away, but the tingling remained.

“Report the escape,” Reed told Mainhart. “Tell them that we’re not quite sure when it happened. Tell them we just thought that Fargo had been misplaced and sent someone out to Halston’s house. Tell them it wasn’t until then that we realized that it was a break. Tell them...” Reed’s voice trailed off.

“What?” Mainhart asked. “What did you say, chief?”

“Huh?”

“You were saying something.”

“Oh.” Reed looked at the paleness of his chief guard’s features. “Tell them... tell them that I got sick and had to go home.”

“But, sir, don’t you think with the break and all that, you better...”

Gerin Reed stood up from his desk feeling like a titan. He had always been a short man and he was still the same height, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

“You can take care of it, Peter. You can talk to them. Tell them that I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about being sick.”

The puzzle in the head guard’s face tickled the warden.

“Tell me something, Peter.”

“What’s that, Warden?”

“Did you ever run down a beach as fast as you could, laughing the whole way and then, just when you’re going your fastest, want to take off and fly? But you know you can’t fly, and now running doesn’t seem to be as much fun anymore. I mean, if you can imagine flight, if you can feel it in your arms and down your spine, then... how can you go back to running?”

“I think you should see a doctor, Gerry. Maybe that dust can get in through your pores.”

“Nonsense. Nothing like that. I’m just sick, that’s all. Just sick. Just sick.”

Warden Reed walked out of his office and told his secretary that he’d need his car brought to the front of the prison. He waited patiently as the various locked doors were unlocked. He waited for the guards at the front as they searched his backseat and trunk. They were on special alert. The prison horns were sounding, announcing to the world that someone had escaped.