Step On A Crack

Chapter 112

I THOUGHT THE PRISONERS had been loud before, but it turned out they were only warming up. As I attempted to wrestle on the cement with Jack and Little John, the communal screams off the concrete shell of the cell block sounded like a jumbo jet taking off inside a hangar.

Then stuff started to rain down from the top tiers: various liquids, wet sheets, magazines, a wad of burning toilet paper. Had I just been gassed?

When Jack got in a lick with the riot baton on the back of my head, I went down on one knee. My consciousness was coming in and out like bad radio reception. I was pinned and blacking out as Little John rolled onto my chest.

I screamed and pushed off the floor with all my might.

I thought about my kids. I couldn’t leave them now. I couldn’t allow them to have no one. I wouldn’t let it happen. I was almost on my knees when Little John rolled off me and started booting me in the ribs.

I dropped back down, my breath gone; then his steel toe kissed my solar plexus. I wondered idly if Jack, pulling back the baton above me, might be the last sight I’d ever see on the earth.

That’s when something completely unexpected happened-an arm snaked through the bars behind Jack.

It was so huge, it barely squeezed through, and so covered in tattoos, it looked like its owner wore a paisley sleeve. A massive hand wrapped itself around the back of Jack’s uniform shirt collar. It sounded like a gong when Jack’s head was slammed back into the bars again and again.

“How you like it, CO?” the convict inquired as he slammed and reslammed Jack’s skull into the bars of his cell. “How you like it, you vicious prick? How you like that one?”

When Little John got off me to help out Jack, I managed, wheezing, to gain my feet. The riot baton Jack had dropped was on the concrete. I stooped, lifted it, brought it to my shoulder.

It had been a while since I’d had a nightstick in my hand, walking my first beat in the Hunt’s Point section of the South Bronx. On those cold, long nights I’d kept myself awake practicing with it, swinging it over and over until it whistled in cold air.

The nightstick whistled now, and I guess it was like riding a bike, because Little John’s left knee shattered like balsa wood with my first two-handed swing.

I had to backpedal immediately as the big man howled and hopped around surprisingly fast on one foot and came toward me. There was rage in his wide, bulging eyes, spit spraying out of his twisted, screaming mouth.

I swung from my toes at his jaw. He ducked, but too little, too late. I broke the baton across his temple. He hit the concrete a half second before the splintered wood.

The inmates were cheering something wicked as I stumbled around the big guard’s bleeding, unconscious hulk. Their rage-filled voices met in a violent mantra as I stepped toward the inmate who was choking Jack with both monstrous hands. Jack’s face was turning blue.

I picked up the other dropped baton. Got myself ready for this.

“Kill, kill, kill, kill!” the inmates screamed in unison.

I have to admit, the suggestion was tempting. I swung the baton hard.

But I didn’t hit Jack.

I hit the tattooed hand that was very close to throttling the life out of him. The inmate yowled and he let go of Jack, who slumped unconscious to the floor.

“Hey, like, you’re welcome, bro,” said the muscular convict behind the bars in a hurt voice. He was nursing his injured hand.

“Sorry, Charlie,” I said as I started dragging Jack around the barrage of projectiles toward the sealed gym door. “I can’t arrest him if he’s dead.”

But I can give him one good kick in the teeth. For old times’ sake, Jacko. Because we’re such buddies.

And that’s what I did-one kick-and the inmates went wild.