Don winslow Don winslow - The Border

He admires the lawyer’s style—a khaki linen sports jacket, blue shirt and a plaid bow tie, which is a nice touch. Thick snow-white hair, a handlebar mustache and a goatee.

Tompkins would be Colonel Sanders if it were chicken, not dope.

“BOP is moving you,” Tompkins says. “It’s standard operating procedure. You have a good record here so you’re due for a ‘step-down.’”

The American federal prison system has a hierarchy. The most severe is the supermax like Florence. Next comes the penitentiary, still behind walls but on a cell block, not solitary. Then it’s a correctional facility, dormitory buildings behind wire fences, and finally, a minimum-security camp.

“To a penitentiary,” Tompkins says. “Given your charges, you’re not going lower than that until your release date is close. Then they might even move you to a halfway house. Jesus, Eddie, I thought you’d be happy about this.”

“Yeah, I am, but …”

“But what?” Tompkins asks. “You’re in solitary confinement, Eddie, locked down twenty-three hours a day. You don’t see anybody—”

“Maybe that’s the point. Do I have to explain it to you?” Sure, here he’s in solitary and solitary is a bitch, but he’s handling it, he’s gotten used to it. And he’s safe in his own cell, where no one can get to him. You put him on some cell block somewhere, the snitch cloud might rain all over him. Eddie doesn’t want to say this out loud, because you never know what guard is on whose payroll. “I was promised protection.”

Tompkins lowers his voice. “And you’ll get it. Do your time and then you go into the program.”

I have to live through my time to serve it, Eddie thinks. If I get moved, my paperwork goes with me. They can keep my PSI under wraps here, but in a penitentiary? Those guards would sell their mothers for a chocolate glazed. “Where are they sending me?”

“They’re talking Victorville.”

Eddie wants to swallow his teeth. “You know who runs Victimville? La Eme. The Mexican Mafia. They might as well transfer me to Culiacán.”

La Eme does business with all the cartels except the Zetas, he thinks, but they’re thickest with Sinaloa. They get a look at my pre-sentence interview, they’ll shank me in the eyes.

“We’ll get you housed in a protective unit,” Tompkins says.

Eddie leans across the table. “Listen to me—if they put me in AdSeg, they might as well announce I’m a rat over the PA. You think they can’t get to me in segregation? You know how hard that is? A guard leaves a door unlocked. I’ll slash my wrists here before I let them put me in protection.”

“What do you want, Eddie?”

“Keep me where I am.”

“No can do,” Tompkins says.

“What, they need the cell?”

“Something like that,” Tompkins says. “You know the Bureau of Prisons. Once they start the paperwork …”

“They don’t care if I die.” It was a stupid thing to say and he knows it. Of course they don’t care if you die. Guys die in prison all the time and most of the admin write it off as a no loss, addition by subtraction. So does the public. You’re already fucking garbage, so if someone takes you out, all the better.

“I’ll do what I can,” Tompkins says.

Eddie’s pretty sure that what Tompkins can do is exactly nothing. If his papers follow him to V-Ville, he’s a dead man.

“You gotta call someone for me,” Eddie says.

Keller answers his phone and it’s Ben Tompkins.

“What do you want?” Keller asks, not happy.

“I represent Eddie Ruiz now.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Eddie wants to speak with you,” Tompkins says. “He says he has valuable information.”

“I’m out of the game,” Keller says. “I don’t care about any kind of information.”

“He doesn’t have valuable information for you,” Tompkins says. “He has valuable information on you.”

Keller flies to Denver and then drives down to Florence.

Eddie picks up the phone to talk through the glass. “You gotta help me.”

He tells Keller about his imminent transfer to Victorville.

“What’s that have to do with me?” Keller asks.

“That’s it? YOYO?” You’re on your own .

“We pretty much all are, aren’t we?” Keller says. “Anyway, I don’t have any swag anymore.”

“Bullshit.”

“Truth.”

“You’re pushing me into a corner,” Eddie says. “You’re pushing me someplace neither of us want me to go.”

“Are you threatening me, Eddie?”

“I’m asking for your help,” Eddie says. “But if I don’t get it, I have to help myself. You know what I’m saying here.”

Guatemala.

The raid that never happened.

When Keller stood there and did nothing while Eddie turned Heriberto Ochoa into a road flare.

Then Keller walked into the jungle to find Barrera.

And only Keller walked out.

“You talk about certain things,” Keller says, “maybe I have enough swag left to get you moved to Z-Wing, Eddie.”

Z-Wing.

Basically, under ADX Florence.

Z-Wing is where they toss you if you fuck up. They strip you, shackle you by the hands and feet, throw you in and leave you there.

A black hole.

“You think you can do three years in Z-Wing?” Keller asks. “You’ll come out a babbling idiot, yapping about all kinds of shit that never happened. No one will believe a word you say.”

“Then keep me where I’m at.”

“You’re not thinking this through,” Keller says. “If you stay in Florence, the same people you’re worried about are going to wonder why.”

“Then you think of something better,” Eddie says. “If I get fucked, it’s not going to be by myself. Just so you understand—my next call’s not to you, it’s about you.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Keller says.

“And you gotta do something else for me,” Eddie says.

“What?”

“I want a Big Mac,” Eddie says. “Large fries and a Coke.”

“That’s it?” Keller asks. “I thought you’d want to get laid.”

Eddie thinks for a second, then says, “No, I’ll go with the burger.”

Eddie hears the toilet bang and knows that Caro wants to speak to him. He goes through the whole rigmarole of flushing water out of the toilet and then puts his ear to the toilet paper roll.

“I hear they’re moving you,” Caro says.

That didn’t take long, Eddie thinks. And Caro’s more hooked up than I thought he was. “That’s right.”

“To Victorville.”

“Yeah.”

He’s not as scared about going there anymore since he got a call from Keller telling him that his paperwork was squeaky clean. Anyone looking at it could read through the lines and decide that Eddie got four years because his lawyer was a lot stronger than the government’s case.

“Don’t worry,” Caro says. “We have friends there. They’ll look after you.”

“Thank you.”

“La Mariposa,” Caro says.

Another name for La Eme.

Caro says, “I’ll miss our talks.”

“Me too.”

“You’re a good young man, Eddie. You show respect.” Caro is quiet for a few seconds, then he says, “ M’ijo, I want you to do something for me in V-Ville.”

“Anything, Señor.”

Eddie doesn’t want to do whatever it is.

Just wants to do his time and get out.

Out of the joint, out of the trade.

He’s still toying with producing a movie about his life, what do they call it, a “biopic,” which would have to be, like, a huge hit if they got someone like DiCaprio to play him.

But he can’t say no to Rafael Caro. If he does, La Eme will give him another kind of welcome to V-Ville. Maybe shank him on the spot, or maybe just shun him. Either way, he won’t survive without being cliqued up with a gang.