Now, Cole’s life consisted of twenty-two and a half hours a day inside a SHU cell, facing a concrete wall and listening to other inmates beating off in the cages around him. No sense in trying to recant on his admission or snitch out Griff.
Unless he was willing to drop out – debrief in prison authority parlance – and spend the rest of his sentence in the SNY – special needs yard, which was a fancy way of saying protective custody for snitchers and child molesters – he was stuck here. With a murder rap and the alleged strong gang affiliation, who knew for how many years?
Maybe the rest of his life.
Dropping out, snitching, however, would be a death ticket. Cole would be forced to write down everything he knew about gang activities, finger other gang members, betray their movements and plans, their orders to the outside.
It wasn't even like he was a real Lords of Death gang member. He grimaced at the wry irony of it. He just shuffled along the perimeter of other white inmates, praying that he wouldn’t get caught up in a gang war with browns or blacks.
He'd ganged up on the inside his second day at Pelican Bay, where the choice was get a crew or get brutalized, but Cole’s heart wasn't in it. He actually liked the blacks and the Mexicans better than the whites, but in prison you weren’t safe without making alliances along race lines.
Without the Lords’ protection, he’d have lasted less than a week inside.
Right now Cole felt like a rat in a maze, trying desperately to find a way out, knowing there was no reward at the end, but hoping anyway. Weighing his options, analyzing the consequences, but trapped in a web he hadn’t spun.
In some ways for a man like him it was easier to do the solitary time in the SHU. He didn’t mind being alone with his own thoughts. Sometimes the hustle and noise of gen pop, the infernal talk like a swarm of bees, made him edgy.
And now that admin had put an offer on the table – not a spectacular offer, but a good one – he didn’t know what to do.
Shame, though, because he only had six months left on his original sentence. Now, with the murder rap hanging on him, he'd probably die of old age in here. Or bang his head against the concrete wall until his brains were a bloody pulp.
If he didn’t debrief.
He sighed in resignation and did the first sensible thing that came to him. He sent a kite to the prison doc, requesting a medical appointment.
Dr. Jones would know what he should do.
Afterward, he unwisely dreamed about life on the outside, no cages, no sweat-filled rooms, no grunts and groans of ugliness. It might be worth a chat with the warden.
It might be worth it to figure out what he’d get in exchange, like finish his six months in protective custody. He wondered how safe they could keep him in Special Needs.
Not that he had anyone or anything waiting for him on the outside. Family had disowned him, but he had a sister who still had a soft spot for him. He’d caused her too much pain, he decided.
The very next day, hope struggled in his chest like a wilting flower desperate for life. By accident he saw the folded note lying in the corridor between his cell and the one next to it – Anson Stark’s cell. The kite was attached loosely to a string as if a stiff wind would lift it up into the cloudy blue sky any second.
Ridiculous thought, because Cole couldn’t even see that sky, couldn’t prove there were clouds or wind on the outside, above his concrete cage. But he knew this for certain:
The kite was meant for Anson Stark.
He didn’t know why he reached for it. A dangerously stupid move. He paused a moment before reeling it in, holding his breath, waiting to see what the man in the neighboring cell would do.
When nothing happened, a thrill mingled with fear, jerked out of his throat in a strangled sob. The soft snore of Anson’s breathing thawed Cole’s frozen body and he reached for the string, stretched his arm as far as it’d go.
His fingers eased it slowly toward him.
He read it quickly, flushed the string down the toilet, and shoved the paper in his mouth, gagging as he tongued it deep in his cheek. The kite was a good thing, he told himself. It gave him a bizarre burst of determination, and he finally resolved not to have a future next door to gang psychos and predators anymore.
He would debrief. Even if he didn’t, if he behaved himself and got transferred from the SHU back into general population in three or four years, he’d still be doing life without parole.
No money on his books in the commissary. Not a single letter from the outside world. No one coming during visitations. A do-nothing life until he wasted away and died for a murder he didn’t commit.
He was surprised how the injustice of it angered him.
When he got word within a few hours that he could see Dr. Jones, a fierce whirl of nausea spun him breathless at the dizzying speed of it all.
Chapter 7