3.
This time there were five naked men lined up in front of the P.K.’s desk. The P.K. looked very happy; he had the look of a man who’d hit oil digging a sewer. There was old Fitz, there was Hanning, Nosy, Jock and Macalay.
The P.K. said: “Okay. I’m paid by the year; I don’t mind waiting. You were the guys on the chipping gang with Russ. This morning we go to put the boiler back in service, and he’s in there stinking dead. And we’ve had the state cops looking for him for three days. So what happened?” He glared at them.
Nobody said anything. The P.K. leaned back in his desk. A triangular stand of wood on it said his name was J. Odell, and he was Principal Keeper. Macalay wondered vaguely what the J stood for, but he didn’t ask.
“I don’t take it kindly that for three days the papers have been full of I let a con escape,” the P.K. said. “I don’t take it kindly on account of the people don’t remember it wasn’t so. They think they remember I got a leaky jug. It ain’t good.”
None of the cons said anything. It was still hot weather, and their bodies glistened. Macalay wondered if the P.K. was a little queer, the way he liked to question naked cons. It could very well be. A homo and a sadist would be two nice things to say about the P.K.
You’re thinking like a con, Macalay told himself. The P.K.’s just a sour guy who does all the work the Warden and the Deputy Warden should do. You find guys like that in police stations all over the country. Supposing they take it out in socking a prisoner now and then, it’s understandable.
And a voice inside answered: “It depends on which side you stand. What a cop or a guard can understand doesn’t make sense to a con or a suspect.”
The P.K. said: “You guys were on the crew with Russ. One of you killed him.”
Hanning said: “How did he die?”
A guard standing behind the five prisoners reached out with his swagger stick and whacked Hanning across the back. “Shut up.”
“One of you knows how he croaked,” the P.K. said. “It don’t matter to the rest of you. I can throw the five of you into the Hole. But it’s nice an’ cool in the Hole now. So—” He turned to the guards. “I want five pairs of cuffs.” He thought. “An’ a piece of chain.”
He was positively chuckling when the things were brought. “You guys like the boiler room so well, you’re gonna see it. There was jungle juice in that boiler, there was a still. Having a good time, wasn’t you?”
He had them handcuffed one to the other. The man at each end had one open cuff; the guard slipped a chain link over one of them, and then led the line of five, still naked, out of the office, down the stairs, across the exercise yard to the boiler room. The P.K. strolled along with them, his uniform coat open. He was whistling softly under his breath.
There was a guard on duty outside the boiler room this time. The word had gone out; the P.K. is in the yard. It wasn’t a thing that happened very often; the screws were all on duty and at their posts. Some of them had even straightened their uniforms and tried to polish their badges.
The guard saluted, and the procession marched into the boiler room. There were cops, plain clothes and uniformed, from the State Police Force working around No. 4. The P.K. led his little show there and stopped.
He said: “You guys about through?”
A detective turned and grunted. “Nothing to find out here.”
“Then scram.”
The detective probably had a good deal of rank; he didn’t seem to be used to that kind of talk. He said: “Huh?”
“Regulations say if there’s a homicide in the prison, I gotta let you guys look it over. So you looked. Now I’m taking it over my way. I’ll call you tonight, let you know who croaked Russ.”
The detective turned a blue-eyed gaze on the five naked men. “What the hell?”
“They’re gonna talk. Probably only one or two of ’em did the killing. The others’ll be glad to squeal before I get through with them.”
“Stuff you get that way don’t stand up in court.”
“This is my pen. It’ll stand up here.”
The P.K. reached out, grabbed the loose end of the chain, pulled it. The con to whose cuff it went gave a little yelp as the cuff bit into his wrist. The P.K. said: “You guys make a circle around the boiler. No. 5 here. Face the boiler and stand a foot away from it.” He turned to the detective. “You think I’m cruel, cap? A cruel guy wouldn’t give ’em that foot. But me, I got all the time in the world.”
Macalay found it was hard to force himself to step that close to the boiler side. A faint cherry glow came out of it. But the bite on his wrist was more immediate and he stepped in. The P.K. fastened the chain so they were pinned there, in a circle whose radius was just a foot more than that of the boiler rim.
The detective-captain said angrily: “I don’t want to see this.”
“Then don’t look,” the P.K. said. “Get back in your dolly-cart an’ go tour the pretty scenery. You state cops give me a pain. Inside here, we know what these guys are. Rats, all of ’em. Punks. Mebbe they act nice an’ pretty for you, but once that gate closes on ’em, they show up for what they are.”
The captain was not visible to Macalay any more. He said: “All right, boys, the Warden doesn’t seem to need us anymore.”
There was the shuffle of men moving together. There was the snarl of the P.K.’s voice. “I’m not the Warden. I’m just the lousy Principal Keeper.”
But the heat had started now. Sweat streamed down his front, into his eyes, into his mouth when he gasped. He shut his eyes tight, and red flames flickered against the eyelids.
His wrists hurt, and he had to brace himself. The men on the other side of the circle were pulling back, trying to get away from the cherry-glow of the boiler wall, and that meant they were pulling him in. He braced his naked, aching feet, and pulled back, and across the boiler one of the men shrieked. He didn’t know which one.
Old Fitz was next to him. Macalay heard him mutter: “We gotta hold our own.”
The boiler room floor was greasy, the puddle of sweat didn’t help. But he braced himself, and leaned backwards.
Jock’s voice on the other side of the boiler yelped: “Give us a little slack here. Hanning’s touching the metal!” Macalay realized then that the scream he’d heard had never stopped. He let up on the pull a little, and the screaming stopped, broke off into a mumbled wail.
The sweat had stopped, he suddenly realized. Guess there’s just so much in a man, and his was gone.
Now his head began to go around, and his eyeballs began to swell. It was as though all the liquid left in his body had gone to his eyes. He was sure they would burst in a moment, and that seemed worse to him than dying. The picture of his eyes bursting, and their liquid spattering on the boiler wall and drying there became so real that he jerked back, and the scream came from the other side again.
He shook his head and came back to a sort of half-sanity, a limbo-land on the edge of reason. The P.K.’s gravelly voice came through to him: “All right, you lice. Anybody want to confess an’ save four other guys’ lives?”
He got no answer; perhaps he hadn’t expected any. The voice deepened to a snarclass="underline" “All right. If you think I mind seeing the whole bunch of you shrivel up an’ blow away, just keep your mouths shut. It don’t matter to me.”
The snarl went on. But Macalay had a new worry. Old Fitz on his left wrist had fainted. He fell forward, almost breaking Macalay’s arm, and Macalay and Nosy, on either side of him, flipped him back, automatically, and held him there. The cuff bit through the skin and Macalay began to bleed. The blood running down his hand felt cool and nice.