Foley had never seen a prison where you could walk right up to the fence without getting shot. He mentioned it to the guard they called Pup, making conversation: convict and guard standing between the chapel and a gun tower, both men looking toward the athletic field[1]. Several hundred inmates along the fence out there were watching the game of football.
“You know what they’re doing,” Foley said, “don’t you? I mean besides working off their aggressions.”
Pup said, “The hell you talking about[2]?”
This was about the dumbest hack[3] Foley had ever met in his three falls[4], two state time, one federal[5], plus a half-dozen stays in county lockups.
“They’re playing in the Super Bowl[6],” Foley said, “pretending they’re out at Sun Devil Stadium next Sunday. Both sides thinking they’re the Dallas Cowboys[7].”
Pup said, “They ain’t worth shit, none of ’em.”
Foley turned enough to look at the guard’s profile, the peak of his cap curved around his sunglasses. Tan shirt[8] with dark-brown epaulets that matched his pants, radio and flashlight hooked to his belt; no weapon.
Foley looked at his size, head-to-head with the Pup at six-one[9], but the Pup had about forty pounds more on him, most of it around the guard’s middle, his tan shirt fitting him like skin on a sausage.
Foley turned back to the game.
He watched shifty colored guys going for the ball. The few white guys, who had the nerve and the size, played in the line and used their fists on each other. No Latins[10] in the game. They stood along the fence watching, except for two guys doing laps side by side around the field. The same two ran ten miles a day every day of the week. Coming to this end of the field now, getting closer, walking: Jose Chirino and Luis Linares, Chino and Lulu, husband and wife, both little guys, both doing a mandatory five for murder. Walking.
They hadn’t done anywhere near their usual ten miles and had Foley’s full attention.
A minute or so passed before he said, “Some people are going out of here. What if I told you where and when?”
The Pup was staring at him now, judging if a con was telling the truth or giving him a bunch of shit.
“Who we talking about?”
Foley said, “Nothing’s free, Pup,” still not looking at him.
“I get your liquor for you.”
“And you make a good buck.[11] No, what I need,” Foley said, turning to look at him now, “is some peace of mind. This is the most fucked-up joint[12] I’ve ever been in, take my word. Medium security and most of the cons here are violent offenders.”
The Pup kept squinting at him.
“So you turn fink?”[13]
“I give you”, Foley said, “the chance to stop a prison break, you make points, advance your career as a hack. I get peace of mind. I’d expect you to look out for me as long as you’re here. Let me run my business, keep me off work details…”
The Pup was still squinting.
“How many going out?”
“I hear six.”
“When?”
“Looks like tonight.”
“You know who they are?”
“I do, but I won’t tell you just yet. Meet me in the chapel going on five-thirty, right before evening count.”[14]
Foley waited, staring back at those slitty eyes[15] trying to read him.
“Come on, Pup, you want to be a hero or not?”
Noon dinner, Foley took his pork butts and yams[16] looking for Chino among all the white T-shirts and dark hair.
There he was, at a table of his countrymen eating macaroni and cheese. Jesus, eating a pile of it. The guy across from Chino giving him more, scraping macaroni from his tray on to Chino’s.
The man’s gaze raised to Foley, dark eyes beneath lumps of scar tissue[17], all he had to show, for his career as a welterweight[18] and killing a man put him out of business. Chino was close to fifty but in shape; Foley had watched him do thirty pull-ups on a bar.
Chino gave him a nod but didn’t make room[19], tell any of his people at the table to get up. Lulu sat next to him with a neat tray of macaroni and Jell-O[20] and a cup of milk they gave inmates under twenty one years of age to build strong, healthy bodies.
Foley ate his noon dinner at a table of outlaw bikers[21], cons who bought half-pint bottles of rum Foley sold for three times what he paid Pup to sneak the stuff in. He sat there listening to the outlaws having fun, comparing his rum to piss, enjoying their use of the word, speculating on what kind it was, dog piss, cat piss, how about alligator piss? They liked that one. Foley saw it had to be an uncommon kind of piss, said, “How about chicken piss?” and the table showed him bad teeth and the food they were chewing with grins and grunts of appreciation. Foley worked through his dinner and went outside to smoke a cigarette and wait for Chino.
Lulu tagging along when he came, Lulu with his girlish eyelashes and pouty way of looking at you. Chino had had to punch out many a suitor to keep Lulu for his own. He had told Foley Lulu wasn’t a homosexual before entering this life, but had become one and was good at it. Confiding things like that after Foley told Chino he was the most aggressive welterweight he had ever seen fight. Saw him lose to Mauricio Bravo in L. A
