Exercise yard, Unit 5, Huntsville, Texas
Stripped to the waist, his tee shirt hanging from his back pocket, Nick lay on the weight bench. Although the bar wasn't loaded too much by his usual standards, he was already coated in a treacherously slick sheen of sweat. He raised the bar one last time, sliding it carefully home on the rack. Bench press without a spotter was dangerous, but no more dangerous than being a pale white boy exercising half naked in front of Pablo Hinojosa or Malcolm Assam, the leaders of the Latino and Black Muslim prison factions, respectively.
Assam sent one of his minions over, to stand over Nick as he wiped the sweat from his face with the back of one hand.
"Yeah?" Nick asked, glancing up but not standing, which would have put him toe to toe with the large, neatly dressed prisoner.
"Brother Assam notices you," the man said smoothly, with a trace of accent, something almost musical that was unique to prison Muslims, passed from elder to student along with the Koran and the teachings of Elijah Mohammed.
"Is that right?" Nick kept his voice neutral.
"You have the ink, but Brother Assam wonders if you have the attitude." The mad was carefully not staring at or pointing out the swastika tattoo on Nick's scalp.
"You tell Brother Assam I got all the attitude I need. Anything else?"
"That was all." The man's eyes flickered down and took in Nick's posture. The man appeared unimpressed. He turned sharply and returned to the side of Malcolm Assam. Assam continued to coolly regard Nick as the man bent and spoke softly to him.
Nick decided it was about time to get cleaned up. There were guards posted by the showers, but he felt he stood a better chance going now while traffic was light than by waiting till the exercise period was over.
He tried not to look over his shoulder as he entered the shower room, wondering if Assam and his men were still watching him. He knew he was an unknown quantity to the power elite inside the prison, and they would not let that continue for long. Pretty soon he better find a way to approach Otto and the Aryan Brotherhood.
- - -
Unmarked Dallas Police Car, outside City Hall, Dallas, Texas.
The cell phone chirped softly once, twice.
"Yes?" the detective answered tersely.
"It's going down. Have the money ready." The caller spoke calmly, with assurance and with authority, not with bravado.
"You'll be paid when it's over. Not before. Don't call this number again. I'll be in touch."
The detective hung up, and sat, fingers drumming on the wheel. The angular shadow of City Hall slowly leaned across Marilla Street.
- - -
Shower room, Unit 5, Huntsville, Texas
Nick ducked his head under the spray to clear the soap off his forehead and the shampoo off his hair, and that's when they hit him. Something hard and dull and wet smacked him sharply at the base of his skull, driving him face first into the exposed pipe of the shower line.
Eyes filled with reflex tears, sweat and soap, Nick staggered, reaching out for the wall to steady himself. A heavy hand clapped down on his wrist, wrenching his arm behind his back and driving his face again into the pipe. Knees wobbly, ears ringing, Nick held on desperately to consciousness.
The arm pinned behind his back twisted, and a kick to his kneecap drove him to the floor of the doorless shower stall. Through the spots swimming through his vision, he could see the guard by the door turned half away, intently staring at the floor. Next to him was the spare form of Otto, leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, his pale, hairless scalp shining dimly in the fluorescent lighting of the shower block.
"You come to Otto's house, with ink like that, and you don't say hello?" The voice came softly, almost gently into Nick's right ear. The man, standing behind him, still holding him by the arm in a locked grip, must be Hammacker, Otto's chief enforcer.
"I didn't mean any disrespect ahhhh!" Nick's attempt to reason with Hammacker was cut short by a twist of his arm. He could actually feel the tendons stretching in his shoulder and elbow. All feeling was gone already in his hand and forearm. He knew he had a finite amount of time to do something before he blacked out.
"No, pretty boy. You don't talk. You listen. They say you were some cop, before. They say you were some kind of Highland Park fancy boy before. Well, that was before. You ain't shit but a bitch, now." Hammacker rolled his tongue wetly across Nick's cheek and the lobe of his ear.
"Say it. Say you're a bitch, now." Hammacker tightened his grip even more. Nick grasped for his only chance, to make the man angry enough to make a mistake. Or to kill him, either way Nick would be out of his current situation.
"Okay. You're a bitch now," Nick said, trying not to flinch at the blow he knew was coming. He saw something coming out of the corner of his eye and at least he knew what he was being beaten with. A bar of soap, wrapped in a wet sock to make a very effective sap.
The soap impacted on his temple and he slumped to the floor, the room tilting crazily overhead. He saw the guard, still looking away, and Otto, arms folded across his chest, looking oddly disappointed.
He must have blacked out for a moment, because when he regained a sense of his situation, Hammacker was squatting in front of him. The man had one meaty hand around Nick's throat, and the other was jerking down his rough denim pants. Nick could clearly see the downy blonde hairs covering the man's buttock.
"Smart-ass little bitch," Hammacker was muttering over and over. "Smart-ass, Smart-ass little bitch. See how a mouthful of white power ass tastes, you little fucker."
As Chris Rock famously reported, there is a reason convicts prefer forcing new men to "toss their salad," forced rimming of their anus, to forcing the new men to perform oral sex: When you're sucking a man's dick, you can pretend it's something else; when you're eating ass, you know it's ass.
Hammacker made one mistake, angry as he was. He relaxed his grip around Nick's throat to get his pants down far enough to smother Nick with his unwashed backside. Without a moment's thought, Nick made his move.
Hammacker screamed, and tried to lunge forward, dragging Nick with him. The guard belatedly sprang to action, rushing forward to flail at Nick with his nightstick, swearing shrilly. He pulled at Nick, dragging him out of the stall and into the changing area. He continued to swear and beat at Nick with his stick in his free hand. The blows rained down on Nick's ribs, driving him into a fetal position against the wall of cubicles that served for lockers.
"Enough." Otto spoke for the first time. He was still standing, arms crossed, in the spot he had been in before. His milky blue eyes twinkled with interest.
The guard looked up, and lowered his stick. He released Nick and resumed his position by the door after a curt nod from Otto. The Aryan leader smiled a slow Cheshire smile.
"I like your style, kid. You got style out the ass." Otto turned to look at where Hammacker was still howling in the shower stall. "Tell you what, Stokes, you spit out that testicle and come by my cell. We'll talk business."
Blood framing his mouth, and welling from a cut over his eye, Nick grinned weakly at him. As he grinned, more blood that was not his trickled from one corner of his mouth and down his chin.
- - -
Prison infirmary, Huntsville, Texas
"Tip your head back," said the doctor, looking at the ragged gash over Nick's right eye. Even as she sutured and swabbed him, the young doctor was careful to keep her hands away from his mouth, and to ever let her body block the line of sight between her patient and the armed guard leaning against the wall of the infirmary.
Nick looked up, and closed his eyes against the bright lights of the treatment room. The cool sting of the needle closing up his scalp was lost under the dull ache of his ribs, at least one of which was cracked, and the more percussive pain in his temples that matched his still-elevated heartbeat. Doctor Doyle critically regarded her handiwork, and put away her needle.
"Still not wanting to share how you got your little booboo?" Her voice was tired, crusted with a salty grit of pessimism far too old for her years. She stepped back and admired the job she had done on Stokes.
"Well, if your goal was to stop you being pretty, Mr. Stokes, I'd say we failed. You keep that clean and don't pull at the stitches you might not even scar. You're a lucky man."
Nick said nothing, and stood up slowly and deliberately. He stood, the chain linking his cuffs to his shackles with just a little tension on it, and waited while the doctor signed him back over to the guard.
"Thanks, Maggie," the guard said, "That was quick. I owe you a Starbucks."
"Double soy latté and you're on," she said with a slightly gap-toothed grin. She sighed and picked up another chart. "Time to check Mr. Hammacker. If he's really out of shock we need to start him on morphine."
Nick watched her leave, and he felt the eyes of the guard on him. Nick nodded once and began walking carefully towards the stairwell that would lead them down and, shortly, back to Unit 5.
"Pretty. You look like cold, dry shit to me," muttered the guard after he called in to have the stairwell door opened. Together they walked, the chain between Nick's shackles rattle-sweep, rattle-sweeping across the sealed concrete floor. As the stairwell door closed behind them, the guard leaned close and suddenly whispered in Nick's ear.
"Do you miss the salsa at Ninfa's?" The question caught Nick unawares and he nearly stumbled. The cool green salsa of the famous Houston eatery was in fact something he had missed even in Las Vegas.
"Not, um," Nick stammered, trying to fight of fatigue and stress, "Not as much as I miss Cowboy games."
The guard reached a hand out and steadied Nick, who was swaying alarmingly at the top pf the stairs. He whispered again, urgently.
"Keep walking. We can't be late and we don't have much time. Is everything okay?"
"Fuck no," Nick muttered explosively. He took a few shallow breaths and began descending the stairs.
"It's going," Nick admitted through clenched teeth as he lowered himself down the steel-capped stair treads. "Otto hasn't said anything. No one's talking till they see if I have any juice with Otto."
"Okay, I'll pass it along. Hang in there kid."
"Yeah, about that," Nick said, reaching the bottom stair and turning slightly towards the guard.
The guard pushed Nick against the kickbar of the door, making Nick suck in a pained breath as his ribs pressed against the exit. He lost his balance and spun out the doorway into the hard baked clay of the yard. He sank to his knees, gasping.
"On your feet, convict," snarled the guard, jerking Nick roughly to his feet and propelling him towards the opposite side of the courtyard by planting a hand between Nick's shoulder blades and shoving. "The chains stay on till you're back in the unit."
Unwilling to let his head hang where other might see him, Nick trotted across the yard, eyes up and jaw muscles working, grinding his teeth. He hadn't really even noticed the guard's face, and with the sun dazzling him now in the yard he knew he might not get another look. The smell of the baked clay that crunched under his feet, and feel of the sun on his face reminded Nick, for just a moment, of home.