Black And Blue (Quentin Black Mystery #5) (19 page)

He didn’t look dangerous the way swastika-guy had, but something about him drew Black’s eyes back more than a few times. The guy had a presence. Black couldn’t figure out if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Also, he was alone. That was unusual.

Dog turned his head, letting out a snort when he saw where Black’s gaze rested.

“That crazy fuck?” he said. “That’s Cowboy.”

“Cowboy?” Black frowned, pulling himself up for another pull-up, then letting himself down. At the end of the arc, he spoke again. “What’s his story?”

Joseph smiled faintly from the bench, shaking his head. “How you talk when you do that?”

Black shrugged, mid-pull. “Passes the time.”

Easton and Frank snorted, glancing at Joseph with smiles on their faces.

Black did another pull-up, then spoke again. “Anyone going to tell me the joke around the Cowboy guy?”

“No one knows his story,
wasichu
,” Joseph said. Turning slightly on the bench, he glanced at the man sitting on the risers alone. “Cowboy keeps to himself. Reads all the damned time. Works out... like you. Runs. That’s pretty much it.”

“What does he read?” Black said.

The other three, Frank, Devin and Easton were staring at Black more warily now.

“What difference does it make?” Joseph said.

“I’ve looked at his books,” Dog volunteered.
 

The big guy, Frank, snorted, rolling his eyes. “Of course you have.”
 

Dog went on, undaunted. “I thought maybe he had porn in there, or something else good. But it’s weird shit, holmes. He reads a lot of dry, boring, weird shit mostly.”

When Easton and Frank chuckled again, Dog gave them annoyed looks, chewing on the edge of his dark blue prison shirtsleeve.

“What?” he said. “It
is
weird shit.”

“Define weird shit,” Black said, reaching the top of another arc.

Dog flopped his arms down, dancing lightly on his feet. It was amazing how thin the guy was, given that Black saw him literally licking his food tray clean in the mess hall earlier. He wondered if he was a drug addict, or just had one of those metabolisms.

“I dunno. Just weird, you know?” Dog shrugged, thinking. “Like, yesterday, I saw him reading some book about the jungle. Like how to survive if someone drops you out of a plane in the middle of the jungle. Day before that, it was how to plant seeds, make fertilizers out of your own shit, that kind of thing. Like end of the world, apocalyptic stuff...”

“Survivalist type?” Black said.

Frank spoke up, snorting. “Maybe. I saw him reading about gladiators once... Ancient Rome, chariot fighting. Like real old stuff about battles and fighting styles. I’ve also seen him with books about how to make bows and arrows, how to train horses.”

Dog snorted. “Maybe he’s got a bet going with someone on the outside... or the library gives him books no one else wants...?”

Easton grunted, kicking at the cement with the toe of his sneaker. “Dumb redneck wants to know about the apocalypse, he should come live on the rez for a few years.” He smiled wryly up at Black as he pulled himself back up the bar. “I could show him all kinds of apocalypse in New Mexico. Rats. Dirty water. Brown-outs every other day. The whole deal.” He let out a disgusted sound. “We got horses, too... and bows and arrows. Fucker would have a field day.”

Next to him, Devin grinned, shaking his head.

He definitely spoke the least.

Joseph was watching Black, a faint frown touching his lips. “Why you so interested in Cowboy,
wasichu
?”

Black thought about the question. His muscles were shaking now under the strain. He did two more pull ups then let himself drop, gasping a bit as he rested his hands on his thighs. Looking up at Joseph without straightening, he shrugged.

“He’s white. He’s definitely not Mexican, or NDN, unless he’s got a
lot
of white in there.”

“So?”

“So?” Black made a bare motion with his chin towards the group of whites clustered around the other set of exercise bars. “The Aryans leave him alone.”

The others exchanged looks.

Then Dog, Frank and Easton burst out in laughter.

“Just wait, brother,” Dog said, his voice a crow of pleased humor. “Just wait! You’ll get a good show one of these days. Just wait... we’re about due for one anyway...”

“Wait?” Black glanced at Easton and Frank, who only smiled knowingly, shaking their heads. Black looked at Joseph, then back at Dog. “Wait for what?”

Dog grinned, happy to tell him.

“For some new guy with Hitler delusions to come in and try to fuck with Cowboy,” he said.
“Then
you’ll get your answer. He may look all small and weird and shit, but I hear he got in here on some kind of multiple-homicide thing, too. Went crazy and killed a bunch of people in Shreveport or some place like that... with his bare hands. No one’s ever gotten the story out of him, but it was all over the news for weeks. They say he should have gotten the death penalty...”

Black’s jaw clenched.

He wanted to ask, but he knew he couldn’t.

It would raise way too many questions if he admitted he had no idea where he was. The United States, obviously, given the make-up of the inmates. Probably somewhere in the South, given the accents he’d overheard so far. Given the range and nature of the crimes they’d mentioned to him already, including a few on federal lands, he was fairly certain he was in a federal prison, so it could be anywhere.

He walked over to the lower bars and grabbed hold of them in his hands, lengthening his body out to push-up position.

“Cowboy can fight, then?” Black said.

He began doing push-ups, feeling his shoulders warm and then protest as he did, still sore from the pull-ups and from whatever happened to his shoulder while he was out. He glanced up and saw Easton looking at him with an expression flickering between admiration, disbelief and disgust.

“Do you ever stop, man?” he said. “Dog’s right. You’re a fucking machine.”

“Can he fight? Or not?” Black said.

Joseph nodded, exchanging knowing smiles with the other four. “Ayah. He can fight. The Aryans went after him the first day he got here... must be six? eight? months ago now? Four of them. They tried to shake him down, like Roscoe did with you, only in one of the common rooms.”

“Roscoe?”

“The big guy, from lunch.”

“Ah.”

Smiling wider, Joseph shook his head, hooking his fingers into claws and using his drinking glass to indicate the group converging around the man they called Cowboy.

“...So he just sat there, right? Reading his book while they surrounded him, acting like he didn’t have a care in the world. Then the first one touches him. Well, that wiry fucker went full-moon crazy on their asses in one second flat. Before the first guy even closed his hand, Cowboy twisted free and leapt across the table. He grabbed the biggest guy in the group and before any of us knew what the hell was going on, did some crazy jujitsu hold and broke the guy’s arm... right before he flung him into another table filled with blacks. So then the blacks are in the fray, fighting the Aryan guy, and Cowboy is beating the crap out of the three Nazis still on him. The guards rushed around to get at them and the sirens went off... it was over pretty fast.”
 

Joseph grinned at Black, tapping his temple with one finger.

“Cowboy was smart, though. See, he took out their best fighter first, throwing him at that table full of black guys... then he just picked off the others one by one. Knocked one guy out stone cold on the edge of the table. Broke the nose of the big guy, Roscoe, who just came to hook you...”

Joseph nodded towards the blond crew-cut with the iron crosses on his hands.

“It was fast. Really fast. The guards could only pick up the pieces after... and they threw Cowboy in the hole, but only for a few days.”

“And the Aryans?” Black said. “They didn’t go looking for revenge?”

Joseph shrugged. “They tried. He knows someone in the Mexican gang, so maybe that’s part of it. They mostly leave him alone now. They tried to corner him in the bathroom once and he sent another of their guys to the hospital by breaking the sink with his face.”

Easton laughed, doing a high-five with Devin, who grinned.

“...Too expensive to screw with Cowboy,” Joseph finished. “Every now and then a new Aryan comes in and tries to fuck with him. No one tells the new fish to stay away... it’s a pretty good show. Usually doesn’t last long, though.”

Black quirked an eyebrow.

Joseph shrugged, unapologetic. “Gets slow in here, brother.”

Black grunted, shaking his head. “Yeah.”

Not much he could say to that.

Still, his eyes shifted back towards the only man sitting alone in the whole yard, noting the door-stopper book lying open on the bench next to him. Black hadn’t noticed it until the others mentioned his reading fetish. Cowboy continued to face the sun, leaning back on his elbows like he didn’t have a care in the world.

Apart from the book, “Cowboy” looked more like some kind of buffed-out swamp rat than anyone who needed survivalist training.

Guy looked like he’d been surviving all his life.

Black noted the corded muscles of his arms, despite the other’s attempts to hide his body inside the too-large shirt. He studied the long jaw, those predatory eyes, which took in a lot more of the yard and his immediate surroundings than he pretended.

It struck Black suddenly that the guy was watching him too, although he’d never once looked directly his way. He wondered if he’d picked up the nickname Cowboy in the service, then looked him over again and decided he hadn’t served.

Interesting, though.

He might need to have a little chat with Cowboy.

Guy might actually be useful.

“You keep staring at him like that, people are going to think you want to mount that horse,” Dog joked, smacking him on the back with a palm. “Watch yourself, brother. There are lots of guys who’ll want in on that action if you put it out there...”

Hearing the real warning behind the humor, Black shook his head, focusing back on his arms and chest as he went back to doing pushups.

He averted his gaze from the bleachers, though.

He had to get the fuck out of here. Blending was fine in the short term. So was making alliances where he needed them... but he needed to find a way out, and soon.

Someone went to a lot of trouble to stick him in here, with a sight-restraint collar no less, so he had to assume they would be making contact soon, and telling him what the fuck they wanted.

They’d probably stuck him in here to scare the shit out of him first, maybe in the hopes it might make him more pliable. Nothing like a few days in prison, getting your ass kicked by psychopaths, to make a man reassess his ethical stance on a few things.

Either way, he knew they’d come at him soon.

His mind churned over the possible people or groups who might want him in here, but he kept circling back to the one, poignant detail: the collar. He knew of only one person on this version of Earth who had sight restraint collars: Miriam’s Uncle Charles.

A.k.a., “Lucky Lucifer.”

Lucky’s people had recreated sight restraint collars on this version of Earth. Black had seen one at least, in the courtyard of the Louvre, around the neck of Miri’s ex-fiancé, Ian Stone.

But why the fuck would Charles lock him up in here?

Charles already had him by the balls because of Miriam. Black had more or less agreed to defer to him due to the family connection, at least within reason.

Charles didn’t need to do this to him.

Anyway, Charles had done it to Black once already. He’d taken him captive, tried to scare him off of completing the bond with Miriam. But Miri and he were mates now, so the situation was different. Unless something happened, something Black didn’t know about, he couldn’t fathom why Charles would do something like this to him again. Miriam would never forgive him, for one thing, and Black was reasonably sure that mattered to Charles.