Keep your mouth shut. Wait for the attorney who will be provided for you. Take what you have coming. If you’re confused go back to rule one: keep your mouth firmly closed.
Those were the rules that Pony planned on following. Just like he had all the other times he’d been arrested.
This was hardly his first rodeo. By now he was intimately acquainted with all that the criminal justice system in the State of California had to offer. Arrest, detention, trial, incarceration, release and probation were simple inconveniences. Shotcaller had told him to think of them as operating costs, the price of doing business.
However, this go-round was different in two respects. The law would treat him as an adult. And kidnapping was a much more serious offense. Throw the word “conspiracy” into the mix, and he knew he could be looking at a solid dime. Ten years inside. And not just any old ten years. Ten prime years.
The idea scared him. He wouldn’t let it show in here, in this jail cell that was designed to hold twelve men but currently held sixteen. He wouldn’t let it show to the lawyer the gang would send him. No one could ever know the dread he was feeling. But it was there, right in the pit of his stomach, growing like a tumor.
Pony sat on the edge of the top bunk he had secured for himself, legs dangling over. He rubbed at his wrists, rolled his neck, trying to release the tension from his body.
There was movement out on the walkway. Two county deputies, one of them female, were walking in a new arrival. No matter what the female deputies looked like, their presence always got a reaction. Guys would hoot and holler, and some would wander in back and masturbate, staring at the deputy as she walked past.
This time was different. The initial shiver of excitement was the same. But as the deputies passed each cell, the whooping and cat calls quickly fell away to a whisper.
It told Pony one thing. Whoever they were walking in was heavy. A big deal. A gangster. Someone who commanded the rarest of commodities in a zoo like this: silence.
With what felt like a strange inevitability, they stopped directly in front of Pony’s unit. He didn’t have a view of the new arrival from where he was. Instead he watched the reaction of the other inmates who could see him.
The vibe was what Pony imagined a lion enclosure would feel like when the rear gate was opened and a huge wild male, fresh from the savannah, padded in to take his place among those that had been born in captivity and had never had cause to kill their own food.
There was a palpable and very real shift in body language. Eyes were cast down, either to the floor, a book or a magazine—one of the anomalies of jail Pony had picked up on was that, without access to their screens, people craved old-school paper. Jail was like a time machine where time didn’t just stop, it rolled back a few decades.
One of the deputies made the call, and the door into the unit rolled open. The new arrival walked in, hands still cuffed behind his back. The door rolled closed. With his back to it, he pushed his hands through the slot. A deputy took off the cuffs. They left.
This time, as they walked back down the gangway, the shouts and hollers started up again, full-throated.
“Hey, what’s your name, sweetness?”
“Come on in here, Mamacita. I got something for you.”
The new arrival moved with a deliberate slowness to the back of the unit, and Pony got a look at him. He was early thirties, a huge mountain of a Latino with serious ink, and some Zapata-styled facial hair.
Something about him was familiar to Pony. Had they met? He didn’t think so. Maybe it was that he had met men like this before. Real MS-13 gangsters.
Suddenly, as the man approached Pony, he felt very small. The guy was huge. Block-the-sun big. Only six feet, if that, but three hundred pounds.
The man lying on the bottom bunk opposite stood, swiftly snatching up his belongings, and vacating what was prime real estate. The giant took his place, easing himself down into a horizontal position, hands behind his head,
Without thinking, Pony caught his eye. The giant stared at him. Pony tried to hold eye contact for a second, just long enough to show he wasn’t a punk but hopefully not so long that it would be read as a challenge. He found himself unable to break the man’s gaze. It was like there was a line between their pupils, a tractor beam drawing him into a void.
“What you looking at?” said the giant.
Pony swallowed. He looked away. He flipped his legs back up and lay down on his bunk.
His heart was racing. He could feel it in his chest.
Movement. The giant was getting up. Pony scooched himself so that his back was to the wall. His hand felt under the blanket for the shank he’d taken from a bunk while its owner had gone for a shower.
He’d use it, if he had to. Damn straight he would.
The giant was moving towards him. His head loomed over the edge of the bunk. He stared at Pony.
Pony’s hand tightened around the weapon. It wasn’t much, a piece of melted-down plastic with a razor blade. More for slashing than stabbing and therefore not the tool for taking down a man twice his size. But it was all he had.
The giant’s face relaxed into a smile. He reached out a fist. “Chill, little homie. We good.”
It was a sensation of relief like he had never felt before. He returned the smile. He let the shank fall back into the fold of the blanket.
He withdrew his hand and bumped the giant’s fist. The giant’s smile grew into a grin. His eyes crinkled with warmth.
“You’re Pony, right?”
“Yeah, dude, that’s me.”
“Cool,” said the giant, conjuring a knife into his hand from the sleeve of his loose jail smock.
Before Pony had the chance to so much as scream, the giant’s arm came up and fell, the point of the knife punching into Pony’s chest. It felt like a blow, a heavy punch, no more than that. It was only the metallic flash, and the spray of blood that told the real story.
There was a sucking sound as the giant rested an open palm on Pony’s chest and yanked out the blade. He lifted his arm three more times as Pony flailed helplessly on the bunk, the blanket growing sticky with blood.
His vision began to tunnel. Darkness folded in around him. The last thing he was aware of was the soft feeling of relief edging out the fear and panic. His eyes remained open as the darkness became complete.