Four o'clock, shadows drawing in through the high windows, twilight softening the walls in promise of night. In a different life at four o'clock John Abruzzi would have been just settling into his favorite back table at Della Pietra's with his guys, reaching for the martini (his martini; Beefeater's, light vermouth, cold glass, two olives) that a quiet, deferential waiter leaves at his elbow. The memory's still good; the scent of a sixty-dollar Havana, the slide of tailored silk over his forearm, the scratching of Philly's fountain pen as his soft voice adds up the day's profits, the taste of gin. It all wipes out the dust in his mouth and the stink of burned insulation in his nose and the crashing of hammers in his ears, if only for a brief sweet moment.
Four o'clock. The fish is a cautious boy and takes no chances. The work on the drain has been stopped, everyone's pockets filled with chips of concrete and the carpet smoothed back to cover it all, long before a badge sticks his head through the breakroom door and says in a bored voice, "Roll it up, cons, and let's get those tools checked back in. Time to hit the showers."
They fall in, single file, to settle their tools into the outlines on the bull's tally board. Five sledgehammers, five cold chisels, five drywall hammers, five crows. Sucre grins at the bull as he lines his up, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth like it's a kindergarten game. Sink settles the tools in slowly as though each motion takes a separate effort of will, his face blank and his eyes a million miles away. Abruzzi puts an elbow in T-Bag's ribs to send him to the back of the line, then he leans over the fish as he's checking in his hardware.
Scofield is fussily tilting each piece of iron as though he's trying to make it match up with the crude-painted wobbling lines. "The drywall's like cardboard," Abruzzi mutters. When it's his turn he thumps his hammer down without looking. "The studs were already dry-rotted before the place went up. I could clear this whole mess down to the brick with my bare hands in half a day, and five of us are supposed to milk this job for another week? This was shit construction to start with, real garbage."
Scofield frowns and his eyes flash with an odd look of hurt, but he says evenly, "We'll make do. It's always easier to tear something down than it is to build it."
During the march to the showers Abruzzi puts a hand in the pocket of his worksuit and feels for the seam he loosened earlier. He works at it with a fingernail to widen the rip, and when it's big enough he pulls and tilts, the fist-sized load of shattered concrete working its way down his trouser leg, scratching and itching its way out over his workboot. Pebbles shift into his sock and grind against his sole. It's a quarter after four and Barbara will be putting the last touches on dinner, fish for the Friday, and calling to the kids to wash their hands and their faces and come eat. Ahead of him Scofield is walking slowly, his steps pulled slightly off-balance with his limp. Abruzzi grins, just a little. His feet hurt too.
The badge takes Burrows' elbow and steers him towards the front of the shower room, waist chain and manacles already out in his hand. Death row boys are red lock, and after the riot there's no favors for anyone any more. As soon as the bull's back is turned T-Bag stops in the doorway. He pulls his hands from his pockets and tosses a double handful of concrete chips into air like confetti, grinning as it falls into the grass. He wipes his forehead with the back of his sleeve, his dark hair spiked with sweat. "Nothing like an honest day's work to make a man feel good about himself. Little by little, right, friend?"
Abruzzi unzips the worksuit, pulls his t-shirt over his head. He growls, "I'm not your friend, chester. If you like living, you'll remember that."
The water is a weak lukewarm spit from the showerhead, brownish and smelling faintly of iron. Abruzzi rubs soap through his hands and then through his hair, tilting his face into the pattering drops. There's a settled ache between his shoulderblades, at the tops of his thighs; he's not as young as he used to be. From the corner of his eye he sees Scofield toweling off as he walks to the locker room, a skinny ghost made of sharp angles and blue lines vanishing into the dimness. Sucre's already gone.
Two showerheads away the freak is leaning against the wall with his eyes shut, singing. There's a grin on his pinched rat face and wet hair hanging over his forehead. The bruises and swollen flesh of the beating Abruzzi's men gave him are startlingly dark against his pale skin, over his prominent ribs and the jut of his hipbones. His voice is a soft, pleasant tenor.
"If you should get there before I do
Coming for to carry me home
Then you tell all my friends that I'm coming too
Coming for to carry me home."
Bagwell's hands drift over his chest, scudding through soapsuds, water sparkling as it drips from his fingers. When his eyes open, his gaze flicks to Abruzzi's and he winks.
Chow is at five and the shower room has long since emptied. It's dark enough that the air is grey and soft with the unreality of twilight, but not dark enough for the timer to have flicked on the overhead fluorescents. It takes less than three steps to cover the distance between them and slam Bagwell's head against the tile. The freak doesn't seem perturbed or even surprised by this turn of events; he giggles, loose under Abruzzi's hands even as they tighten around his throat, even as Abruzzi digs his thumbs into the soft flesh just under T-Bag's jawbone and forces him to look up, blinking under the still-running water.
Abruzzi's personal vices have never gone much beyond the Cuban cigars and the dry martinis and the occasional high-ticket blonde, but he's made a good living for a long time by selling to every variety of want there is. Bagwell's arms are spread loose, hanging from from his thin shoulders as though they're too heavy to lift, and his pupils are pinpoints in the steam and shadows. His head lolls in Abruzzi's grip, his mouth slack. He licks his lips.
"Horse," Abruzzi says flatly. He takes a tight fistful of wet hair, feeling the other man's stubble burn against the skin inside his forearm, and gives Bagwell's skull a good hard crack against the wall. It's enough to make awareness spark back on in that glassy gaze, some tension return to the skin under his hands. "I should have expected this from a dumb shit like you. You're dipping into your own merchandise these days, chester? Even for you that's pretty fucking stupid." He lets go. T-Bag sags against the wall, one arm reaching up to the showerhead for support. Abruzzi leans in and says quietly, "People who snort heroin are people who forget about all of those things they're not supposed to talk about, right? People like that are called liabilities."
"Liabilities." The way Bagwell says the word it has twice the ordinary number of syllables. The freak is off his rush now and good and mad instead, crouched against the tile like an animal at bay, his teeth bared. "Maybe you need to do a little more thinking about who is and isn't a liability here, capo. Nobody else on this team is playing for the kind of stakes we are, John. Maybe you could say Burrows is, but he's half made up his mind already to be dead and he's losing more will every day. He didn't even kill that man and he can't stand the guilt he feels." Bagwell leans forward, his raised arm sliding along the showerhead. Water drips from Abruzzi's chin and trickles over the other man's skin. He feels hypnotized, standing in the darkness and watching Bagwell's mouth move. "Scofield shot in the air and Sucre's gun wasn't even loaded. Do you really think you can count on them to do what has to be done? Those boys are serving catnaps, five years, ten years. Not like me, with life and a day, and not like you, with your hundred and nineteen years. You're doing Buck Rogers time and the state will see me dead in my cold, cold grave before I ever taste daylight again. Tell me again, who do you think you have the most in common with on this crew, John?"
His name again, hissed through Bagwell's teeth, is an insult that brings Abruzzi's fist up before he even thinks. T-Bag staggers. His mouth is split and bleeding but the grin stays put. He feels his jaw, spits a clot of gore towards the drain, then loops an arm familiarly around Abruzzi's shoulders. The water has long since turned cold and Bagwell's skin is clammy against his own.
"Scofield didn't kill nobody," he says, meditatively. "Sucre didn't kill nobody. Even Burrows didn't kill nobody. But you and me, John, we are murderers."
Abruzzi closes his eyes for a moment. The iron-stained water pools in the hollow of his stooped shoulders, plasters his hair to his skull, runs into the corners of his lips with a faint taste like blood. It must be nearly five by now. He can hear the laughter and the shrieking of the kids as they jostle each other on the way to the table, the warm smells drifting from the kitchen, the clink of the silverware. Barbara leans over him, her soft dark hair caught in a ponytail, and brushes his forehead with her lips. "Come, John. Your supper's getting cold."
"I'm going to kill you," he says thickly.
Bagwell nods agreeably. "You're going to try. But not right now, because right now, you need me and I need you." He leans closer, the sharp tip of his nose touching Abruzzi's ear. His breath is a soft pressure against Abruzzi's skin. "Because there are always bullets in my gun. Don't forget, John."
T-Bag leaves, humming under his breath, his feet slapping wetly against the floor as he makes his way to the locker room. Outside in the soft evening there's the sound of bells, the chapel carillon striking the hour. There's the faint chlorine stink of the shower room around him, the voices of inmates heading across the yard to chow, the ugly, high gray cinderblock walls. He can't see anything else, smell anything else, hear anything else, no matter how hard he tries. John Abruzzi puts his hands over face, scrubs at his skin, feeling older than he's ever felt before, and more tired.