‘You got company. Move it out.’
Bill Bantling looked up from his book. A black-suited, helmeted, three-man extraction team stood outside his cell.
Sergeant Zeffers banged his baton against the cell bars, like the ring master at the circus, trying to get the tigers up and moving. ‘Let’s go,’ he barked. ‘Don’t make this difficult, now, Billy.’
Such drama. And delivered with a grating Southern twang.
Bill put his book aside and sat up on the edge of his cot. At moments like this, when the anger began to swell inside him, he was comforted knowing that the little men who worked in this damned place did so not for the pittance they were paid or the state benefits, or because they wanted to keep society safe from mass murderers and other villains. Or any other such selfless bullshit. He knew the real reason misfits like Zeffers put on their ugly green uniforms every day was because they fed on power and lived for some drama — any drama — in their sad, empty lives. The excitement that was generated simply by punching a clock at a supermax prison was enough to power more than a few conversations with the whores and barflies congregating down at the local watering hole come quittin’ time. Add a little more drama, like a confrontation, and they would score big. Of course Bill knew, as did every other inmate, that on most workdays, those same, small, self-important men were nothing more than waiters delivering room service to the inmates, escorting killers to the showers and occasionally sticking their fingers way up a prisoner’s asshole to find out if he was hiding something special in his bowels. Not much drama in that. So they had to make some up whenever they could. It was clear from the baton-waving and barked commands that Sergeant Tru Zeffers was trying to impress someone.
Bill just stared at the three blobs in body armor. One started to scratch at his head under his clear face-mask. Another kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The third wiped a thick band of sweat from his lip with the back of his hand. Take away the power hose, body armor, and deflection shields, and Bill knew that none of the drama-seekers standing before him would voluntarily go three minutes in the ring with either him or any one of his neighbors on the block. And that included the not-so-big, not-so-bad, and not-so-brave-when-no-one-is-looking Tru Zeffers. Everybody else knew it, too, save for those desperate women and thirsty drunks waiting on someone in a green jacket to come tell them a good story …
Bill slowly rose to his feet and made his way calmly to the cell bars. There was a horizontal slit in the center of the door, so that inmates could stick their hands out and get cuffed before an officer opened it. He put his hands into the slit. ‘Company?’
‘No questions. Step back,’ Zeffers barked after the cuffs were snapped on. ‘Now get face-down on the cot.’ Bill complied, the officers entered the cell, and a set of leg irons was slapped on his ankles.
As they wrapped him in chains, he let his mind drift. It had been a long time since he’d had a visitor. Even his latest attorney just phoned in when he needed to deliver news. He had no family and he had no friends, so that eliminated social calls. He did have lonely, and unfortunately usually homely, women from all over the world, who sent him love notes and pictures, hoping for a marriage proposal, but they would never get a visit without being on a list of individuals pre-approved by the warden, which meant they would never get a visit.
There was an off, off chance that it could be a media visit, but seeing as the warden didn’t allow those either, at least not for him, Bill doubted that was it. He was already a celebrity, a once-upon-a-time household name. And no one in Prison Administration wanted to see that name resurrected on Internet trending boards or appearing on Dateline investigative specials. Society wanted to bury Bill Bantling in supermax, far away from the cameras and the microphones, hoping that — unlike the infamous, crazy Charles Manson, who continued to make press whenever he came up for parole — Billy would one day fade into the cinderblock and finally be forgotten by the outside world, and the name Cupid would once again only be thought of as belonging to a fat, naked angel with a bow and arrow and incredible aim.
‘Dead man walking!’ Zeffers barked loudly as they paraded him down the row. A dog-and-pony show meant to impress someone. Probably the head of prisons, or some other useless figurehead. More drama. Unless you were taking someone off the row and moving them to the basement on Death Watch status — which was the period after a death warrant was signed but before it was executed, when the machines were tested to make sure they were in working order for the big day — nobody on the block gave a shit if their neighbor was taking a walk or taking a leak.
Zeffers turned a corner that led to Row B. They headed down another corridor, before stopping in front of a solid steel door with a small slit resembling a mail slot halfway down the door. It was the interrogation room. He’d met his attorney there once.
That was when he smelled it.
The unmistakable scent of Chanel No. 5. It hung in the air — just a hint, the memory of a fragrance that had been sprayed hours before, and now only lingered on clothes and hair.
He stared at the door.
There was a woman inside that room.
His heart began to pound. His pulse quickened. He inhaled deeply.
Perhaps not just any woman …
Zeffers motioned at the camera. ‘Open up!’ he shouted. The door buzzed. ‘Don’t get stupid on us, now, boy. Play nice, and so will we,’ Zeffers said, pushing Bantling from behind into the room. ‘Use the foot restraints to lock him,’ he commanded the team.
Bill shuffled into the room, his arms extended before him, attached by a steel bar to the leg irons on his ankles. Standing behind a table, facing away from him, he saw her shapely figure, the curves her black suit could not hide. Long, dark red hair, that spilled down her back. The pale, nude flesh of her sculpted calves. Her slender fingers, resting on the edge of the table, their nails painted a light pink.
‘Hi there, Bill,’ said a familiar voice, complete with a slight Cuban accent. To the woman’s left, her companion rose like a mountain at her side, a notepad and folder in hand that he’d pulled from a briefcase on the floor.
And then the woman in black turned around. He was instantly disappointed.
This was not the ‘she’ he’d hoped to see. Nonetheless, she was pretty. Very pretty. Light blue eyes watched him carefully, like a bird might watch an approaching cat. She was obviously frightened of him, although she was struggling not to show it. Any sudden movement, and she would surely fly away, hide behind the grizzly beside her for protection. Her smooth skin was the color of talcum powder; her full lips, painted a deep, matte red, were drawn. The sight of him had drained the color from her already pale face.
A vile, delicious thought popped into his head. Oh, the things he could do to that luscious red mouth …
Detective Manny Alvarez had come to pay him a visit. And he’d brought along a beautiful woman in a business suit. Not the woman he wished the detective had brought with him, but a woman nonetheless — something Bill hadn’t seen in a long, long time. Too long. But the equipment down south still worked — he was growing hard as a rock.
The incredible anger that had coursed through his veins earlier was gone. It was going to be a great day, after all, he thought, the wheels turning in his head. He sniffed at the air again.
A really great day.