Yeah, Lieutenant, I finished the chippie. I kicked her in the temple three times before Heddon got back.
Shoot Them Down
by Bob Bristow
If he couldn’t shake free, Drumright was ready to die... and take me with him.
Warden Walters was smiling when he came into my office. I turned and watched him amble toward my desk. His face sobered as he came closer.
“What’s the matter, Hugh?” he asked in a slightly anxious tone.
“I don’t know, Warden. Something’s in the air. It’s electric.”
His face remained serious. I had been right too many times during the past ten years that I’d been his head guard at the prison. Sometimes he told the other guards I smelled trouble like a bloodhound.
“What do you think it’s all about?” he asked, as he leaned his full weight against my desk.
“I don’t know. I’ve sent for a stoolie.”
“Who?”
“Willie Jessup. You remember him. He’s the one tipped us on the Dutcher-Robbins break last year. I figure he’ll know something.”
“Probably nothing to it,” he said grinning. But when I glanced at him, he wrinkled his brow slightly. “But you go ahead, Hugh. Good idea to keep your finger on the pulse. I can’t see a riot coming up. They seem too satisfied.”
“It’s something, Warden. I know it. I’ll check with you after I’ve talked to Jessup. Will you be around today?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be here all day.” He strolled easily from the office.
I liked him. He was my kind of man. He learned prisons by the book, but I’m not one of those guys that can’t stand to see a man with an education take the top spot. He studied penology, criminology, all of that stuff, and he can tell a lot about a con by watching the way he lights a cigarette. He’s smart and he’s wide awake.
When he got the job, I wasn’t sure. But after about a week, he started asking “why” it was this way, and “why” we did it another way. Pretty soon a few new ideas began to take their place. Not an overnight change, like some would have done, Walters eased his changes in so that, unless you were keeping tab, you wouldn’t notice the differences.
The cons liked him. He brought the reform movement to us. Better conditions, better food, extra privileges, stuff like that. But he was smart. He knew that you can be just so nice to the cons and then you had to draw a line, a sharp, clear line that they’d all see. His prison wasn’t becoming a country club. It was still prison, more tolerable, but a prison, and we didn’t let the cons forget it.
That was my job. As guard captain, I was the hand of authority. I learned my criminology and penology one day when I was fourteen. My dad was a guard and they brought his body home to us, after a con had driven a shiv into his back.
I was the one who kept reminding the cons that this was still a prison. There were no beatings, no solitary for long stretches, and no chain gangs. But they knew, every moment, that they were in prison and that prison wasn’t fun.
The misguided kids who had fallen into trouble were gently, but firmly, led back toward a world of decency. The cons who had made more than one mistake were watched a little closer. The prison psychiatrist worked on them constantly, trying to make them see the difference between right and wrong, so that after they got out they wouldn’t be back in a year or two.
And then there were the big time boys. The cons who never quite got it through their heads that hour for hour, year for year, a career of crime is the lowest paid profession in the world. They were usually in for a long stretch and would try anything to get out. These were my boys, the wild, the desperate, the dyed in the wool bastards.
And when I felt myself going soft, I remembered my father’s body, cold and still in the grave. That took care of it.
As I waited for Jessup, I glanced over a list of known trouble makers. I was half-way down the list when Jessup appeared at the door, nervously fingering the cap in his hand.
Jessup was in for burglary. Forty five years old, whiny voice, sneaky type. He’d sell out his mother for an extra privilege.
“Over here, Jessup,” I barked angrily, setting the pace for what was to come.
Jessup moved nervously to the desk, standing rigid before me. I motioned for him to take the chair beside me. He sat, an apprehensive expression frozen on his face. I lit a cigarette and rolled it across the desk to him. He picked it up and puffed on it greedily.
“What is it, Jessup?”
He looked at me quizzically. “What’s what?” he asked.
“Don’t play dumb, Jessup. What’s brewing out there?”
“I don’t know of nuthin’,” he said in a low voice, glancing about him.
“Come off it,” I snapped. “Something’s in the air. I know it. Spill it, Jessup. I want to know bad.” He sat there, dragging on the cigarette, studying me with cool eyes.
Suddenly I swung hard. My open hand smacked against his cheek, jarring the cigarette to the floor.
“Didn’t bring you up here to play games, Jessup!” I shouted at him. “I want to know what’s in the air out there. Let’s go, boy. I’m in a hurry.”
“I don’t know from nuthin’,” he answered quickly, his hand covering his cheek. “Honest, I ain’t in the know.”
“You’re lying, Jessup.”
He leaned back away from my reach. “Don’t hit me again. Please. I don’t know nuthin’.”
I decided to play it his way. I felt sure he knew. But he was afraid. “Somebody warned you. That’s right, isn’t it?”
He didn’t answer.
“Is it a riot? Is that what it is?” Jessup glanced around, quickly. For a moment his mouth slipped ajar and I thought he was going to spill. But he didn’t. “I don’t know of nuthin’,” he repeated like a parrot.
I pointed a pencil at him menacingly. “If it comes off, Jessup, if it happens and I find out you knew about it, I’ll nail you good.”
Still, he only shook his head from side to side.
“Just nod if I hit it right. Hear me, Jessup? Just nod.”
Jessup swallowed anxiously.
“Riot?”
He didn’t move.
“Somebody after a guard?”
Same.
“A murder?”
Nothing.
“A break?”
He didn’t nod, but something happened inside him. A very faint change in his eyes, an extra effort not to show any signs, and it gave him away.
“So it’s a break?”
“I didn’t say that. I didn’t say it.”
“Have they threatened you?”
“They haven’t done nuthin’. There ain’t nuthin’. Why don’t you lay off me?”
“Are you clean?”
“I’m always clean. You know that. I’ve helped you guys a lot. You know, before. But lay off me now. Please, I got to get back.”
I tossed him my pack of cigarettes. “Thanks, boy,” I said. “Take off.”
Jessup unwound from the chair and beat it real fast. I decided to make a check of the gates. As I left, I passed Warden Walter’s office. It occurred to me that I should tell him that maybe a break was in the making. But it was too vague. I’d find out the details and then tell him.
There are two gates to the prison. One is the shakedown gate that the trusties and prison farm cons use. The other is the front gate. That’s used by prison personnel. I made the con gate first. A guard shack is built on top of the wall, equipped with guns, ammunition, search light, tear gas and stuff. In the shack is the lever that controls the opening and closing of the heavy gate. Eric McCombs was on duty. Good man, Eric. Tight-lipped. Serious. Efficient to the last letter. Also, a damned good shot.