Inmate 1577

30

MacNally walked into his cell. The two men watched him but did not speak. The one on the top bunk was fat-large and bald, ink-blurred tattoos that appeared to be homemade adorning his neck and shoulders. A red and black bandana was wrapped around his thick head.

The man on the bottom bed was just as massive, but his bulk was the result of weight lifting in the rec yard. Body art also covered his upper torso, which was bare and sweat-moist.

MacNally cleared his throat. “How are you guys doing?”

“What’re you in for?” the obese man asked.

MacNally tossed his materials on the bed. “Armed robbery. You?”

“Armed robbery, double murder. Rape. You got a name?”

Double murder and rape. Shit. But what did he expect? This was one of the toughest maximum security penitentiaries. Did he think these inmates were going to be upstanding citizens? “MacNally. Guys call me Mac.”

“MacNally. Like the road maps?” The two men laughed.

MacNally laughed along with them. “Rand McNally’s Irish, like me. But he spells it differently.”

“I’m Carl Wharton,” the obese man said. “He’s Kurt Gormack.”

MacNally sat down on his bunk. “What about you, Kurt? What are you in for?”

“Lots a things, I guess. Take your pick.”

“Kurt beat a man to death with his fists. Caved in his skull. But it was justified.”

Justified? MacNally swallowed hard. What the hell had he gotten himself into?

Kurt shrugged. “He owed me some money, and it didn’t look like he was gonna pay. I told him that wasn’t the way it worked.”

“How much did he owe you?” MacNally asked, at a loss as to how he should respond-but needing to say something to disguise his revulsion.

“Fifteen bucks. But the amount wasn’t the point. You let some dipshit like that get away with stiffing you, it gets around and your rep’s fucking shot.”

“Yeah. Of course,” MacNally said, hoping they would buy his weak attempt at giving the impression that he understood something he could not possibly comprehend.

Kurt sat expressionless, his thick chest rising and falling at regular intervals. He glanced up at Carl, who appeared to be studying MacNally’s face.

“So what’s there to do around here?” He wanted to get the hell out of there but didn’t want it to be obvious that he found his new cellies appalling.

Carl answered. “It’s fucking prison, Map Man. Take a hike around the cellhouse, get to know your new home. My guess, you’re gonna be here a while.”

“Forty-five.”

A crooked, salacious grin broadened Kurt’s face. “Then it looks like we’re gonna have some fun.”

MacNally didn’t know what his new bunkmate meant by that-but based on what Voorhees had told him, it left him with a sense of foreboding.

And he suddenly realized that “fun” was a relative term.

THE NIGHT WAS NOT MUCH cooler than the day. But the temperature was not the reason MacNally had a hard time falling asleep. He had taken a walk around the rotunda, strolled along the different cellhouses, and got his bearings. He ate dinner in the large mess hall and kept to himself. For a first day in a violent place, amongst men who were some of the worst society had produced, he felt proud that he had made it through unscathed.

But as he was soon to discover, it was premature to have congratulated himself.