Masters Of Noir Vol Iv Part 4

Macalay was four weeks in the Hole this time. But even in there, he could sense that his position in the prison had changed. The first time he'd gone to the Hole for not squealing, he hadn't known whether a prisoner or a screw brought his food; this time when he was in for not squealing under the toughest circ.u.mstances, he was sure it was a con.

Because in his very first tray there was a salve of burn ointment. And on the second tray there was a candle and a dozen matches.

After that there was a little something on nearly every tray; a few slices of bacon, a b.u.t.tered roll, an orange even. Sometimes there was nothing, and that undoubtedly meant that a guard was looking over the trays. But that didn't happen very often, so probably the P.K. had gone back to sitting in his office, and the Warden was still working on his book and the Deputy Warden was still making speeches, and the screws were still doping off in the shade.

It was funny, now. Even in the Hole Macalay felt in touch with the whole prison, perhaps as a man giving a transfusion to a patient on the operating table feels in touch with the operation; it is pa.s.sing through his veins and arteries. He never heard a word from Jock or anyone else, but he could feel himself in touch with Jock, in some other Hole.

Macalay was really part of the prison now, and the Hole wasn't so bad. And best of all there was Hanning, Russ' sidekick. Hanning who probably knew what Russ knew.

His burns healed, and the broken skin on his wrist healed, though his wrist bones ached for quite a while, and there were permanent scars there and on his knees and on one shoulder that must have gone against the boiler when he didn't know it.

Instead of fighting the Hole this time, he looked on it as a rest from chipping boilers or scrubbing greasy pans in the kitchen. Maybe it would have been better in the infirmary, but it was all right.

And so he got a little better all the time. He began exercising, doing knee-bends and push-ups. He told himself he was doing this to keep his health; then, when that self-lie stopped fooling him, he said he was doing it because you didn't dare go out in the yard weak.

And then he stripped away all self-pretense. He faced himself: Hanning squealed on Jock and me; Jock and me have to get him. And we will. So I got to be strong.

The next meal he kept his spoon out, hoping it wouldn't get the trusty who'd been feeding him into trouble. He hid the spoon by putting it behind some loose mortar in the wall, and waited two full meals. When there was a cold chunk of stew meat-good lamb shank with marrow in it-on his tray, he knew the same trusty was still on duty, and had covered up about the spoon, some way.

So he took the spoon out of hiding and began sharpening it on the rough concrete floor.

You can kill a man with a spoon. The way you do it is, you sharpen the bowl down to an arrowhead; then you bend the handle like a finger ring, only you leave an inch and a half at the back to lie flat along your palm.

Slip that on, and one punch will do the job.

Now his time was pretty full. He had his exercise; he had his sharpening; he had his thoughts. He thought of the hundred thousand. He thought he would get the dope for Strane from Hanning and then kill Hanning.

After awhile he got out. His cellmate this time was a fresh fish, just out of the quarantine block, guy named Leon something or other. Just a punk. Looked like he didn't even have to shave every day. A punk with light fuzz on his chin.

As soon as Macalay was shoved into his cell, this Leon volunteered his name and said: "I'm doing two to ten for grand larceny, automobile. How about you?"

"I'm a chicken thief," Macalay said. "I took three hundred to five hundred for habitual chicken theft."

Leon looked at him. "Aw," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm always doin' something wrong. Isn't it right to ask the guys what they're in for?"

"No, fish. It ain't right. You can acc.u.mulate a mouthful of floating teeth asking questions. It isn't ethical."

"I didn't know," Leon said, gloomily. "I never do anything right. Like the car I took. It was already hot, and on the police radio, was why the guy had left it there with the keys in it ... I thought the law was it wasn't stealing if the keys were in it, but that ain't the law."

"Thanks for the advice," Macalay said. "I knew the P.K. had it in for me, but I didn't know he'd go this far, putting you in my cell."

"Who's the P.K.?" The kid had thick black hair and pink cheeks, and his eyes shone. He'd last about two hours in the yard.

"The P.K. is a kind of chewing gum they give us," Macalay said. He stripped off his shirt and went over to the washstand. He knew the kid's eyes must be coming out on his cheekbones when he saw the still-fresh scars, but he didn't hear any questions.

Fresh water played across his face, he rubbed it in well, rubbing the Hole out, getting clean again. He started to shave, and then, not suddenly, but rolling hard at him, as a steam-roller goes at a pile of rubble, some sort of sanity returned.

I was going to kill Hanning, he thought. Kill Hanning, take a chance on the big rap, on throwing away everything that maybe can get me out of here.

He shaved slower, pausing every now and then. To live like a con, and yet not to become one. That, he told himself, was what he had to fight against-that was the big danger. To keep my eye on the outside, on the free world, on a hundred thousand bucks, to remember that stir is only a small part of the world. To think of it as prison, not stir, the men prisoners, not cons, the officers guards and not screws; to live penned up, but think free.

He turned, reached for his shirt, and said: "Leon, the P.K. is the Princ.i.p.al Keeper. He runs this place. He's the man to fear."

A smile broke across Leon's face. His eyes got shiny. He said: "Thanks, mister."

"The name's Macalay. Just Mac." Macalay returned the smile, wondering fleetingly if he could in some way use this young squirt to get to Hanning. "There goes the supper bell. We line up here, I'll show you how, and do a snake dance to the mess hall ... Keep your lip b.u.t.toned up, there are swagger-stick screws all along the way."

It was still hot weather, but there was just the smell of fall coming in the air. It was good to be walking along to the mess hall, out in the sun and the cool air.

Good just to drift along with the other cons, but it was time for Macalay to think. He had accomplished only one thing so far: he had established himself as a real con. Hardly anybody would remember now that he'd once been a cop; two sessions of the Hole had taken care of that.

And now-suddenly, not like the steam-roller, but like a bulldozer hitting something hard, and pushing it, all at once into something new, he understood why there had been no outside trial, no investigation of Russ' murder.

The P.K. That snake brain, sitting in his twin offices, one blood-proof, and one carpeted, planning. It would be easy for the P.K. to see to it that the state cops would find no evidence to take into court, and an officer won't push a case that he's going to lose.

Macalay knew that. Every cop knows that. It's bad for your record.

And why? So the P.K. could keep his own record clear. So he could have a real reason to use the torture that was as necessary to him as gra.s.s to a cow, water to a fish.

Macalay, back from the Hole, back from the depths of his convict-thinking, summed it up. I'm in stir, but good, not a con holds my police background against me. I've got that, and it's one thing I figured right from the start I had to get.

And I've got one other thing: I know how to handle the P.K., and the P.K. is the prison. The whole prison. But my neck is still in a noose. I got to act like I'm expected to act. The cons will expect me to get Hanning for squealing. I've got to make that play, and cross the next bridge when and if.

Macalay laughed inside, thinking of Strane smashing c.o.c.kroaches, Strane, who should be retired, sitting on his old a.s.s telling him he'd have to be tough. But Macalay's face never moved a muscle. The screws didn't like it if you laughed in the march-along.

He marched into the mess hall, eyes in front of him, hands at his sides as per regulations; but he had learned to see a lot without looking. He saw Hanning two files over, and Hanning saw him. Hanning's look said, "Come on, you sonofab.i.t.c.h, I'm ready." He saw Jock one file on the other side of him, and Jock didn't look like he'd ever get his strength back. The P.K. had broken Jock; the P.K. could break anyone in time. Including Macalay.

Leon was on one side of him, and that was no good to him at all. But the man on the other side of him was an old stir-b.u.m, Lefty something-or-other. As they bowed their heads and stood behind the benches, he gathered his breath; and as the chaplain started the grace, he told Lefty: "Hanning's my meat and n.o.body else's. Pa.s.s it."

The Chaplain finished and they sat down and the bowls were placed on their tables: hot dogs, vinegary sauerkraut, boiled potatoes and watery spinach. Macalay speared hot dogs and potatoes and took his bread and Leon's to make sandwiches; it takes twenty years to learn to eat prison sauerkraut. As the new head of Jock's Jockies, he probably should have taken Leon's sausages, too, but he couldn't do it.

He knew the word was pa.s.sing down the long tables. It was a thing that the rifle-screws on the balcony, and the swagger-stick screws walking up and down between the benches couldn't stop; it happened at every meal that somebody pa.s.sed the word. But never a lip moved, and not a wave of sound went anywhere but where it was aimed.

We've suspended the laws of physics, Macalay thought. We can make a tunnel out of air, and shoot sound through it! We ought to be studied by some of the eggheads at the colleges.

He reached out and scooped up Leon's margarine, b.u.t.tered a sandwich with it.

Leon looked at him sadly.

There was a commotion behind them, aways. The rifle-guards on the balcony stiffened at the rail, raking the place with their guns. Leon said: "What happened?"

A screw yelled: "Shut up, you! No talking in the mess hall," and poked Leon in his back with his swagger-stick.

Macalay said: "Somebody pa.s.sed out. The stinkin' food they give you, you never know if it's to be eaten or if it's already been eaten. It's a mystery somebody doesn't pa.s.s out every meal."

n.o.body but Leon heard him say it.

The doors to the yard opened and two white-shirted trusties with a stretcher came in, trotting. The chug-chug of the infirmary's old ambulance could be heard outside the door.

A gentle wind ran across the mess hall. Lefty let a breath of it go at Macalay. "Jock lost his lunch. He pa.s.sed out."

Macalay said: "A lunch like this ain't much loss." And he thought that with Jock laid up, Hanning became unquestionably his meat. It was up to him now.

The mess hall trusties served rice pudding.

The P.K. a.s.signed Macalay to the concrete block plant. It was rough work; pick up a shovel of cement, heave it in the hopper, follow it with a few shovels of sand, a few of gravel, one of stones and turn and do the same thing to the mixer on the other side.

It was work that left your arms trembling long after you were on your cot in the cell with the lights out and the radio earphones turned off. Macalay was the only man in the yard who had to tend two mixers at one time. His bad shoulder nearly killed him at night.

He heard Jock was in the clay-brick yard, unloading kilns. That wasn't bad work, if the screws let the kilns cool before you had to unload them. He heard they didn't with Jock. The P.K. was still riding both him and Jock.

Then he heard that Hanning had been given a job in the office, filing papers for the P.K.

That night he wrote a letter to Miss Billie Martin, Box 1151. He had to make an effort to remember the number.

Two days later he was hauled out of his cell right after lunch and told the P.K. wanted him.

Even though he knew what it was about, he felt the old thrill of fear go through his stomach and the small of his back. He didn't even like to hear about the P.K. anymore; the P.K. was the cons' favorite conversation piece.

But this time there weren't screws in the office; it wasn't even the same office. It was the one where the P.K. did his front work, a pleasant place with a trusty typing away at a desk, and the P.K. behind a bigger one, with a bookcase behind him, full of books on criminology and penology and inst.i.tute management which he had never read.

Opposite him was Inspector Strane. He looked around as Macalay came to attention, his heels clicking.

The P.K. said: "All right, Macalay. At ease. The Inspector here has some questions to ask you."

Inspector Strane said: "No use taking up your time, Mr. Odell."

Odell, that was the P.K.'s name. He had another of those triangle things on this desk, like he had in the other room, the room that was plain and slick, so blood wouldn't stain anything.

The P.K. said: "I like to cooperate."

"And I appreciate it. But I would like to talk to Macalay alone now. If we could just have a little room to talk in, a cell, anything."

"I ain't likely to put a city police inspector in a cell. You g'wan an' use my other office. You want somebody to take notes?"

"No." Inspector Strane had not looked at Macalay. "You can't get anything out of a convict if notes are being taken, Mr. Odell."

"You can't get anything out of Macalay anyway," the P.K. said. "He's one of the worst troublemakers in this can. I wisht you'da framed a more docile guy to send here."

The Inspector was as stiff-backed as ever. "I don't frame people, Mr. Odell."

"That was a joke," the P.K. said. "Just a joke. Okay, Strauss, take Inspector Strane over to my other office, take Macalay with him. You don't have to stay with them, jus' make sure Macalay don't have a shiv on him. I don't want any cops getting killed in my stir."

The screw, Strauss, saluted. He snapped his fingers at Macalay to rightabout-face; Macalay did. The Inspector followed them out. The P.K. said: "You guys on the cops don't have any idea what we gotta put up with. You see the best side of them, when they still think they maybe are gonna beat the rap."

When they were alone, Macalay stood at attention in front of the P.K.'s desk.

The Inspector, behind the desk, said: "All right, Mac, all right. Break it off."

Macalay said: "Yes, sir."

Strane's eyes widened. Then he nodded, slowly, and began sliding the desk drawers open, slowly, smoothly, as though he'd once been trained as a second-story man. He found the mike in the middle drawer, left-hand side. He sat staring down at it for a moment, and then slowly grinned. He took his hat-his good felt hat-and jammed it down over the mike. Then he shut the drawer again. "There," he said. "Sit down, Mac."

Macalay sat down. Inspector Strane pulled two thin cigars out of his pocket, handed one of them to Macalay, took a flask off his hip and a box of breath-killers, and put those on Macalay's side of the desk. "Okay," he said, "let's have it. You getting anywhere?"

"Sure. I'm making concrete bricks now. It's better than chipping boilers or washing pots. It's not as good as being in the shoeshop, where I was."

Strane's lips thinned. "Knock it off, Macalay. Quit clowning."

Macalay reached out and took a drink from the flask. The taste of free-world liquor brought him all kinds of memories; and for a minute he was afraid he was going to cry. He bit his lip and said: "I've been in The Hole, in solitary, twice. It pretty near got me."

"So now you want out. You know I can't-"

"No. No. I don't want to get out."

The Inspector sat up a little straighter. He looked almost angry. "What did you want to see me about?"

"I want to be transferred to the laundry."

"You got me down here for that? Why, I can't-"

"There's somebody I got to get next to."

"Why?" The old voice cracked like a whip.

"This guy was Russ' buddy. He's on the office force and he got there by squealing on me. He goes through the laundry every day for a check."

"You've gone stir-crazy! You think I'd help you kill a man, even a con? You think Princ.i.p.al Keeper Odell wouldn't know he had to keep you apart?"

"He's a s.a.d.i.s.t," Macalay said. He finished his liquor and reached for the breath-killers. "He'd like to see this Hanning hurt. He'd like to see me hurt, too. He'd like to see every con hurt. This Hanning was Russ' buddy. You know Russ is dead? I take it, you know that."

Strane nodded, watched Macalay chew the breath-killers.

"I was getting somewhere before I got into The Hole," Macalay said, "and to go on, I'll have to work in the laundry. I tell you I'm onto something good."

"You got guts," Inspector Strane said. "I'll be d.a.m.ned if I don't want to see this work out for you."

"Thanks," Macalay said bitterly.

"Stop and think, will you? What am I going to tell Odell? I got no reason to ask him to transfer you."

"You're not much help."

Strane swore. "And you keep your hands off that Hanning."

"I'll get to him," Macalay said. "I have to."

The P.K. laughed. "He's a real dyed-in-the-wool lowdown con," he said. "They never talk. Supposed to be a first offender, but I've sent out tracers. I'll bet you he's served time in a half a dozen other places."