The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(10)

“What’s the record?” I asked.

“Thirty-seven seconds. I watched the security camera footage and timed it with a stopwatch, for posterity’s sake.”

His office was plush, with a carpet that matched his suit and neo-Victorian furniture. A shrink’s office, or a lawyer’s maybe. We might have been standing in the heart of a prison, but the warden didn’t skimp on comfort.

“That’s the problem with criminals,” I told him. “They tend to commit crimes.”

I glanced back. A pair of stone-faced guards flanked the doorway, eyeing me like a roach that just scurried out from under their refrigerator.

“And yet, it is my sworn duty—as bequeathed upon me by God, the great state of Nevada, and the shareholders of Rehabilitation Dynamics of America—to impose some measure of order and safety upon this forlorn place. You are not making my job any easier, son.”

“I’m not in the habit of looking for trouble,” I lied.

The door opened. A prisoner came in—no shackles, toting a plastic bucket full of cleaning supplies. One of the trustees, I thought, maybe the one Brisco had check me out. He paused in the doorway, looking to Lancaster.

“Window cleaning, boss?”

“Go on.” Lancaster gave him a nod. As the trustee shuffled across the office and sprayed the window down with blue cleaning fluid from a squirt bottle, the warden turned back to me. “I understand that sometimes fights are one-sided things. For example, in your case. This other man, Simms?”

My cheek ached. “It wasn’t all that one-sided. I got a few good punches in.”

Lancaster let out a polite chuckle. “What I mean is you may not have had a choice. I’ve gotten several reports that Simms is shaking down the weaker inmates. Extorting food and money. Is that what happened? Did he try to rob you?”

Over by the window, the trustee took his time wiping the glass clean. He wasn’t being thorough; he was being slow. Making sure he didn’t leave the office before he heard what I had to say.

If I told Lancaster what he wanted to hear, I might have a shot at winning him over. Maybe I could get him to dig up my case files and prove I didn’t belong in here. Then again, every word that came out of my mouth would go straight to Brisco’s ear. If there was one absolute, unbreakable rule of the underworld, written in blood and stone, it was this: don’t snitch. Acting like I wanted Lancaster to solve my problem with Simms would make me look weak, and I couldn’t afford that reputation if I wanted to survive long enough to escape.

“No,” I told him, hating the words but saying them anyway. “It was me. I started the fight. Simms was just minding his own business.”

Lancaster knitted his brows. “Minding his own business. In your cell.”

“What can I say?” I shrugged. “He made a wrong turn and got lost. In his defense, all the cells look the same. Easy mistake to make.”

“And you got the sudden notion to attack a man twice your size…why, exactly?”

“That’s what the movies all say to do.”

He tilted his forehead my way. “Pardon?”

“Prison movies. They all say that you’re supposed to find the biggest, baddest guy in the yard and pick a fight on your first day.” I paused as if reflecting. “Did…did the movies lie to me? That’s the problem, warden. My brain’s been corrupted by violent media and rock music.”

Lancaster sighed. “While I’m certain it has, I find your explanation a bit far-fetched. Are you afraid of reprisal? Just tell us what really happened. We can protect you from Simms.”

“I started the fight,” I repeated.

The trustee finished. The window gleamed.

“All done here, boss,” he said as he slunk out the door.

Lancaster folded his hands on the desk. “Normally, we have several means of addressing inmate-on-inmate violence. Loss of privileges. Time in administrative segregation. Criminal charges and additional years on your sentence. And if I truly believed you started that fight, we’d be pursuing one or several of those corrective measures. As it happens, I don’t. But if you insist on refusing our protection, I just hope that the next time we speak, it isn’t in the infirmary.”

*

The prison yard made me think of a carton of Neapolitan ice cream. Instead of strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla, the yard split along racial lines, but the invisible border between each color was just as real.

I didn’t like it, but then again, I didn’t like Neapolitan ice cream either.

The setup wasn’t too shabby. A couple of weight sets alongside a jogging track, picnic benches here and there, a few two-seater tables with chessboards set into the plastic tabletops. I could imagine I was on a college campus, if it weren’t for the fences, the gun towers, and the razor wire.

Paul walked the track, smoking a cigarette, keeping to himself. He gave me a wave and I wandered over. He shook his head at me.

“Wow. You just jump right in with both fists, don’t you? Gonna have a beauty of a shiner there, too.”

I touched the skin under my eye and winced. Puffy and raw.

“Well, shit,” I told him, falling into step as we walked along the oval track, “there goes my modeling career. Hey, read something for me?”

I tugged the last sheet of my paperwork from my pocket, folded into a neat square, and unfurled it.