“For real? Guess it’s cheap for La Playa. We are getting them at a heavily discounted rate. As far as being involved goes, sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.” I sneered.
“You got that right.”
“Okay, I’m going to go ahead and ride out. The truck here yet?”
Diego wiped down one of the bikes he was working on, stepping back to assess it.
“Yup. It’s out back. Here are the keys. Be careful. The only reason I’m giving them to you is that Vlad isn’t here.” He reached in his pocket and threw the keys at me.
With one hand, I caught them.
“See you when you get back.”
I strolled to the small truck and cranked the engine. On the way over, my stomach turned. A pressure sat in the cavern of my lungs as the green and gold California hills rolled by. As I approached the gate, my breathing became labored. I pulled into the warehouse and reversed in for easy access. I had the key to the roller door, but for some reason, it was already open. That sinking feeling came back. Maybe they’d left it open, ready for me. I sat in the truck for a minute, shaking off the paranoia.
Languidly, I let my cowboy boots hang out the side and stepped out of the truck. I came around the back and opened the latches. The warehouse was cold and dark. Again, nothing to worry about. A standard at this stage. Only two Russians met me, and they stood in the dark with long leather jackets and gloves on. Only the long strip of light from the outside door made them visible.
“Good. You’re on time,” I quipped.
“We got those parts you need.”
“Perfect, I’ll get them right now.” I started toward the back of the truck. In the shadows, I witnessed their horror-stricken faces along with mass confusion.
“What’s the problem?” I asked them.
I missed the light footsteps behind me, but I didn’t miss the barrel of the pistol to the side of my temple. I balled my hands into fists, ready to knock this motherfucker out.
Then the words of the law rang through my ears. “Freeze! You’re under arrest. Put your hands in the fucking air, now!”
Several navy blues raided the place like worker ants, snatching the duffel bag from my fingers. The two Russians looked at me closely. One of them mouthed, “Don’t snitch,” and ran a line across the bottom of his chin.
I put my hands behind my head, and all I saw was Bella and her cute toothy smile flashing through my brain. Anna and her raven hair. I didn’t know if she would cope if I went in. I couldn’t hear their muffled voices as they read me my rights. They faded away at that point. The sirens and the lights surrounded me as I said nothing. On that day, my luck ran out, and so did my time.
One
Colt
“Let’s go, cell block six! You got half an hour in the yard! Let’s go. Let’s go!” a burly prison guard’s voice perforated D-block.
The warning came just before the cell doors clicked open. I licked my chapped lips and stepped out of my cell cautiously. I bent my head down and stepped straight into line. That was the drill. I did a headcount and saw that about thirty other guys were being let out to the yard or the common area. One small window of freedom is all we got every day at USP Atwater. I welcomed the time out. My spot in the jail was cemented, so nobody would touch me. When I first came in four and a half years ago, I’d had to prove my spot really quickly.
The sneers had come through the cell bars when I’d arrived.
“Look at this, Roger. We got ourselves a new little bitch to play with.”
A jail roughneck who was known for making new inmates his playtoys got the word of my arrival. I looked that motherfucker in the eyes as I passed his cell.
“Listen up, you piece of shit. I’ll kill your mother, your father, your brothers, your cousin, and anyone else that tries it in here. You hear me?” I let him feel the cold chill of my eyes on his face while I held the fury of twenty men in my balled-up fists. He took a beat to size me up.
“Tough guy, huh? You talk like that, you must know something,” he replied, lifting his chin at me.
He was a huge guy with shoulders like small boulders merged into his neck. He gave me a gruesome smile with his big dirty eyes. From the looks, he wasn’t in the pen for armed robbery. He had a quote tattooed across his neck and multiple face tattoos. I knew his type. Plus, he was too big to take me down. Prison law versus street law was different, I found out.
“You got that right. I’m an Outlaw ‘till the day I die,” I yelled loudly as I passed the guy’s cell.
The weedy guard who brought me in was silent the whole time. He opened my rusty cell door, where one other guy lay on a bolted bunk bed. In the corner was a single basin. The tap dripped continuously, and the toilet smelled, well, like shit. One single TV on a swivel was up high in the corner. The faint lime green paint was peeling off the walls, and a few books were stacked on two simple shelves.
“Welcome to your new home for the next five years,” the prison guard snarked as he pushed me in the back and into the hellhole.
So any time I could get out of the cell was my version of heaven.
I moved around a small grassed area with four walls. It was big enough to fit about fifty men comfortably. The first thing I did was stretch out my neck and look up at the open blue sky. Not far from me was a weight bench that had two guys getting in their reps. I knew them. I’d seen them in the yard a time or two. Both of them were in for petty-theft type charges, nothing life-altering.
“C’mon, Marty. We got three to go. Max rep sets.”
Grunts came from the guy underneath the barbell as he strained to lift. I watched as the veins pulsed against the side of his neck, threatening to burst. Eventually, he heaved the barbell off his chest.
One other guy toward the back of the jail was skipping in a nice rhythm, dripping sweat on the grimy pavement. A stiff-looking correctional officer stood in the corner, watching us all like a hawk. He had a baton firmly slotted in his holster and a taser on the other side. His mouth was opening and closing with the gum he was popping.
The guard’s name was Chester, and he was a complete sucker. If I got my farm hands on him on the outside, I would have snapped his neck in half like we snapped our chickens’ necks back in the day. Chester put me in the hole for three days for this one time when I got in a scrap. That shit wasn’t my fault. The guy tried to pull a fucking razor out on me. That’s before I knew the prison hierarchy game. I flashed back to the memory, not a time I would forget easily.
“You talking back, boy?” Chester had hissed in my ear.
He had me in a strong chokehold. My air supply was tied up as I grabbed his forearm to release it for breath. Lopez, being the bitch he was, tried to blame me for his drug shipment being smuggled into the wrong cell. Yes, you could still run drugs in the jail, provided you were in good with the correctional officers.
I was well-matched, physically, to take Lopez. He was about six foot tall like me, heavily muscled, and quick with his speech and movements. He ran with a drug crew on the streets called the Merced Mercenaries. A lone teardrop sat right under his left eye. His caramel complexion and honey-colored eyes made him a target for those who wished he would drop the soap in the showers. He didn’t worry about that, as he was the drug insider and supplied over half the jail, including the correctional officers.