Driving forward, John lowered his window.
Cooley took a final puff on his cigarette and ground it into the dirt. “Change your mind already? You are so predictable.”
“Shut up,” John snapped. “Just tell me what Weston wants me to do and how much he’s offering.”
21
Eleven guard towers surrounded the maximum-security facility erected on land carved out of the surrounding forest. Shifting, Virgil tried to take in as much as he could while the two officers who’d picked him up at Peyton’s house—Nance and Parquet—turned into the main entrance. Pelican Bay sprawled over two hundred and seventy-five acres, ten miles south of the Oregon border. If it wasn’t for the three fences that established the perimeter, two topped with razor wire, the middle one electrified, the white two-story concrete buildings would’ve looked as innocuous as an industrial park.
Another of the many ironies he’d noted since coming here, Virgil thought. Half the men living at this “industrial park” were lifers, which gave them little to lose. And thanks to the overcrowding in California prisons, as many as three hundred inmates were, at times, supervised by only two guards.
Surviving here wasn’t going to be easy, even if he managed to keep his purpose a secret….
“Big mother, isn’t it?” Dangling one hand over the wheel, Nance paused in the parking lot of the administration building located out front, turning around to gauge Virgil’s reaction.
Virgil didn’t answer, but he arched his eyebrows, awed in spite of himself.
“It’s a freakin’ city,” Parquet chimed in from the passenger seat. “Has its own fire department, water treatment facility, boiler plants and electrical generators. It even has a full medical department with hundreds of medical staff, and an education department with teachers and a school district superintendent.”
Nance gave the car some gas. “No wonder it takes one hundred and eighty million dollars a year just to keep it running.”
“With that kind of cash outlay, conditions here must be pretty good, right?” Virgil said.
Nance and Parquet both chuckled at his sarcasm. From the outside, the institution seemed clean and quiet, but it was a bit too sterile. Pelican Bay’s reputation, one of efficient brutality, was well-known. But there was no time for the police officers to respond to his remark. They’d reached the vehicle sallyport, which was surrounded by carefully groomed gardens.
More irony….
Lowering his window, Nance showed the proper paperwork and signed in.
Twenty-three if he was a day, the chubby, baby-faced sallyport officer squatted to positively identify everyone and get a better look at Virgil. “Heard this guy was comin’ in. You like to cause trouble, huh, buddy?”
Virgil didn’t dignify his question with a response. Obviously this guy was another “HACK”—horse’s ass carrying keys—like so many of the C.O.s he’d met over the years. Since the job didn’t require much more than a high school diploma, C.O.s weren’t always the brightest individuals society had to offer. Pelican Bay C.O.s had often been accused of being racist and cruel. They denied that, of course. And in recent years administration had worked hard to clean up the image. But Virgil had a difficult time believing those rumors were completely unfounded. Where there’s smoke…
Nance answered. “Trouble of the worst kind.”
“He’d better watch himself,” the guy said. “This is the end of the line for guys like him. We don’t put up with any shit.”
Officer Nance had been teasing—Virgil could tell by his tone—but the young man in the green uniform was dead serious. He sounded eager for the opportunity to conquer, to punish, and that tempted Virgil to prove the guy wasn’t half as strong, mentally or physically, as he pretended to be.
But a response like that didn’t make sense. Virgil was on the other side for a change. On the same side as this officer. Not that it sat well with him. There were moments, a lot of them, when he didn’t want to join forces with the law. He’d spent too many years hating those who’d oppressed him. Maybe the cons he’d associated with in prison weren’t pillars of the community, but they had a code and they adhered to it. That was something.
“You don’t have anything to say?” the guard prompted.
Eat shit and die came to mind, but that was his anger talking.
Closing his eyes, Virgil relegated this gatehouse asshole to the list of people not worth hassling. It wasn’t difficult to tell the kid was all talk. He’d run if Virgil ever confronted him one-on-one. Virgil had received similar comments from other C.O.s dozens of times. They acted tough when they had every advantage. But they were merely attempting to cover their own inadequacies.
“It’s probably better not to provoke some people,” Nance told him.
“He doesn’t scare me. We’ve got fourteen hundred of these hard-asses.” Wearing a self-satisfied grin, he searched the inside compartments and undercarriage of the car.
“What an idiot,” Nance grumbled as the kid waved them through the second gate.
Virgil ducked his head to gaze out at the prison ahead of them. Shaped like a giant X, the Security Housing Unit took up one side of the property. The regular maximum-security prison took up the other. It consisted of eight cell blocks radiating, like the spokes of a wheel, from a yard of at least three acres.
They parked next to a bus that had held other prisoners, judging by the crowded intake area and the C.O.s waiting there.
Parquet got out and opened Virgil’s door. “Welcome to twenty-first-century hell.”
The belly chain connecting his handcuffs to the shackles on his ankles rattled as Virgil climbed out of the backseat and stood in the dwindling afternoon sunlight, squinting up at the edifice he’d call home. The chill wind whipping over the treeless grounds reminded him of how cold and sterile it could be in prison.
But he’d been to hell before. It didn’t scare him. At least Laurel and the children were safe. Besides, he was taking something with him this time that they couldn’t strip away—his memories of that night with Peyton, the hope of seeing her inside these concrete walls and the phone number she’d slipped him at breakfast.
Peyton stared out her office window at the empty yard and a section of blacktop where the inmates played basketball. She couldn’t see R & R—Receiving and Release—from the administration building, but she knew Virgil had arrived on the heels of the bus transporting thirty men from other prisons in the state. The C.O.s down there had called her, as requested.
Normally, new arrivals were given a Fish kit—underwear, sheets, a blanket and one change of clothes—and housed in a separate unit called the gym until staff could observe their behavior and determine where they should be placed. But the gym provided a home for those with a “bit” or short prison sentence, too, and was severely overcrowded at the moment. The whole prison was. Originally built for 2,280 inmates, it held a thousand more, and that gave her a good excuse to drop Virgil into gen pop. It was important to get him into regular circulation as soon as possible. She wouldn’t rest easy until he was out of this place and safely away. The 2002 riot, when blacks and Hispanics started stabbing one another in the exercise yard known as Facility B, had taken one hundred and twenty guards and thirty minutes to stop, and that was using everything from pepper spray, to tear gas, to rubber bullets, to wooden bullets, to two dozen .223-caliber rounds from Ruger Mini-14 rifles. The inmates wouldn’t quit fighting until someone was killed.