CHAPTER 7
Red Russell felt like a million dollars as he walked to the showers that evening. Cosmo was sitting alone in the rec room staring at nothing. It was all over for the old man now, since Red made a public spectacle of him in the chow hall. You could see it in his eyes. And Red was going to make Rudy Snow his number one man. Someone to watch his back, deliver orders to his other men. As Red entered the showers another inmate high-fived him and a couple averted their eyes. Their new respect for him was evident. Predictable. Fear was king. That was why all of them cleared out when he came in — fear and respect. And to give him privacy. Red Russell liked the Big A as well as he could like any prison.
He got under the shower, made it as hot as he could take and backed up under it. This was something of a celebration and since no one else was in the room, he risked closing his eyes for a moment. He didn’t have to see the rusty pipes and crumbling plaster walls. Even the stainless steel sinks were rusty. As the water did its relaxation trick Red imagined the gold shower head in the mansion he built for himself in Chicago, the white marble floor, the inch-thick glass shower partition on which he paid an artist to etch a silhouette of Elyse. He felt Elyse’s gleaming wet skin as she sidled into the shower with him. As the steam rose from his back he wondered if everything would be the same when he got back to the Windy City. No, it’d be better! He would be stronger with a tougher rep! Meanwhile, he would enjoy life as a man to be respected. He wouldn’t allow prison to change his standing among others.
The reverie was replaced by the shock of the metal bucket that slammed against his forehead! Several men — he couldn’t tell how many — were all over him now. They whirled him around like a top and kicked his legs out from under him. The ringing in his ears was almost as loud as the shouts of the attackers. He could see only straight down because of the bucket. He was on his back, and four or five pairs of hands scrambled to bind nylon ropes to his ankles and wrists. Hadn’t he learned anything? Never should have closed his eyes, not for one blink. And if he had signed Rudy on today he would have been there in the room with him and this would never have happened.
Another kick to the bucket. Everyone was shouting, but Red knew the noise would attract no help. There was new pain where his limbs were attached to his body as the goons stretched him into a double Y and tied his ankles and wrists to the old cast iron plumbing pipes that ran along the walls. His torso lay on the cold concrete floor. Everything went black. He was back in the youth prison in southern Illinois. It was warm. The kid that snitched, laughing, looking down at him now, holding his very own quivering bloody arm that Red had ripped from its socket…The Roman candle. July Fourth. And then, that black bastard. The pleading, the screams, the smoke, the threat of death to the man and his family if he ever told what Red did to him with that Roman candle. The laughs at supper that night as he and his brothers told their old man. Both of his victims looking at him now, refusing to help, laughing as he cried out.
The bucket. Someone kicked it again. The towel in his mouth muffled the screams. He couldn’t breathe. His eyes were ready to pop out. Were the droplets streaming down his face tears or were they blood?
He struggled to maintain consciousness and thought of other tight situations he had been in from which he emerged more powerful. A few broken bones but bones always grew back. There were scars, but he liked scars: They had an impact on anyone who might be thinking of challenging him. His eyes opened to the sight of a large cockroach on the wall beyond his feet. It began to climb and then as quick as it had appeared darted into a crack in the concrete. Thousands came back out, all running down the wall to the floor and toward him. Then another kick — to the ribs this time. In the sliver of consciousness that had returned to him, he heard the others laugh. At the same time another voice said, “Don’t do that no more, man. Cosmo wants him ’live.” Another answered, “He gon’ wish he dead in a minute.”
His eyes struggled open again and tried to focus on the inside of the bucket. All the voices were gone now. How long had he been unconscious? Beyond the rim of the bucket was the blurred shape of another man checking the knots in the rope that bound him. As his eyes focused, Red Russell knew he had seen this man before. Today. Chow hall. Sitting with that Cosmo dude! Brows, was it?
Maybe it wasn’t too late to make some kind of deal. Offer him the Main Man job instead of Rudy. Everyone had a price. He couldn’t speak because of the gag in his mouth but he made nasal sounds and flexed every muscle in his body to get the big man’s attention. His wide-open eyes tried to convey the message that he wanted to talk. His focus improved to the point that he could see the knife blade in the man’s thick hand. Brows Brickley walked around to his side, kicked the bucket away from his head and jerked the muffler out of his mouth. “Red Russell?”
Red talked fast. “Look, man, you and me, we can run this joint, man. You won’t be no flunky no more. You’ll be somebody. You can have all the power Terracina’s got. Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you. Anything!”
Brows gave no indication he even heard Russell. “You Red Russell, right?”
Russell couldn’t resist being himself any longer. “Yeah, man, untie me and I’ll show you my name tattooed on my ass. You can kiss it while you’re checkin’ the spelling.”
Brows again seemed not to notice. He positioned himself on his knees between Red’s splayed legs and looked into his eyes. “Cosmo, he ain’t got no hard feelin’s ’bout that little accident at lunch today. Knows it wasn’t nothin’ personal.”
Red’s attitude continued to prevail over his present circumstances. He cleared his throat and with every ounce of wind he could muster, blew the collection into Brows’s face. Brows hesitated for a moment, took a damp towel from the floor and wiped it off, held up the rusty knife blade for Russell to see and exhibited what might pass for a smile. Russell watched the serrated edge until the big man moved it to some place between Russell’s spread legs where Russell couldn’t see. He now understood why Brows had knelt there, but had little time to think about it before his body quickened. A sting at first, then pressure, then pain like nothing he could ever have imagined as the blade jerked and sawed through tender tissue and nerve endings, and pulled on other parts that were connected somewhere deep inside him. He heard himself crying. All the colors in the world flashed before him. He was hotter and more tired than he’d ever been in his life. He felt his bowels release. In less than a minute the screams died out and the bright colors faded away. What seemed like hours since he stood under the shower thinking about Elyse, about the power he held, about how he had replaced Cosmo Terracina as top dog, had been a little more than four minutes.
Next morning, Harvey Joplan walked over to Riley in the exercise yard. “You’re Neanderthals,” he said, his eyes bloodshot. “Not even human.”
Riley didn’t try to hide his amusement. “Problem?”
“You oughta live in the jungle.”
“This is the jungle, Joplan. But smaller than you’re used to. In the spy jungle, you deal in information that affects thousands of innocent lives, millions maybe. Here in my jungle, Cosmo’s jungle, the problems are much simpler. They involve one life at a time. No innocent victims. They always earn it. And there are no newspapers, no political spin, no lawyers, no appeals, no long waits. It’s sudden, decisive justice.”