Between The Lines

Crime Fiction By Michael Downing

The guy didn’t shut up.

One of the first things you learn inside is to keep quiet, especially when you don’t know any other cons, but apparently nobody taught him that lesson.

Stark had been like that the first time he got sent up too – a tough punk who didn’t back down. It didn’t matter who got in his face or wanted to beef with him. One of the older inmates from his MC pulled him aside a week into his stretch, telling him “Just do your time and don’t say nothing to nobody.”

Stark shook his head. “I don’t take shit from nobody.”

“It don’t work that way in here.”

“I ain’t built no other way.”

“You won’t last a month with that attitude,” the con warned him.

“Don’t matter how long they give you or what kind of friends you got outside,” he added. “None of that matters. There’s nobody in here you can trust. Nobody’s your friend. Nobody’s got your back.”

Stark remembered that old con’s warning as he leaned into the table, poking at the food on the tray, his appetite gone while this guy named Randy rambled on. Monmouth Detention Center was a county lock-up, a sixty-eight man tank filled with dopers, petty criminals, low-life thieves, and DUI’s. Randy was like most of them – a hard luck story with attitude and cockiness that hadn’t been hardened by experience.

At least he hadn’t tried convincing anyone he was innocent.

Not yet anyway.

Stark was four months into a one year sentence for assaulting a drunk who got in his face outside an Asbury Park bar. The cops showed up just as Stark was slamming the guy’s face into the concrete for a fourth or fifth time. It was his bad luck to wind up in a jail where he didn’t know anybody, so he did his time quietly. Sometimes he got into scraps with the short-stint speed freaks coming off their weekend highs or exchanged words with older cons looking to flex, but mostly he kept to himself.

The last thing you wanted to do was call attention to yourself.

Something Randy had never been taught.

Randy was a greasy, long-haired punk who looked like he had never done more than a week in lock-up. Just a cherry trying to make up for inexperience with attitude and bullshit.

“Broke into different places. Cleaned ‘em out when nobody was home. Carried a fake ID and went through apartment complexes acting like somebody from the cable company with a clipboard and a toolbox,” Randy bragged with an ear to ear grin. “Go knocking on doors in the afternoon. If a chick answered, I’d tell her there were problems with the lines and I needed to look at her convertor box to make sure everything was okay.

If she said no, I’d say, ‘You want to miss your shows, it don’t matter to me. But I ain’t coming back for another two weeks, so the choice is yours.”

“They bought it?”

“Be surprised how many let me in when I told them they wouldn’t get to see Dancing With The Stars,” Randy said, laughing. “And some even let me do what I wanted to them. Didn’t put up much of a fight once I shoved a blade in their faces.”

“You so smart, how is it you got caught?” Stark asked from across the table.

“Somebody rat?” another guy asked.

“Nah, nothing like that,” Randy said, still smiling. “Got into this place up in Union County and the chick’s boyfriend shows up in the middle of the afternoon. He was this crazy pyscho biker who started tearing up the place. I had to jump half-naked out a second floor window to get away. Landed wrong and twisted my ankle.

She didn’t press charges but the cops got me on a breaking and entering.”

Stark stared a hole into his coffee cup. Kept quiet as Randy laughed.

“Something funny about getting sent up?” Stark asked, finally looking up.

“Nah, it ain’t that,” Randy said. “Heard the biker didn’t believe his old lady and busted her up pretty badly, and she didn’t do nothing except let me in.”

Stark shook his head, forcing his own smile, surprised that the guy was so matter of fact about sharing that story to a bunch of strangers.

***

That night Stark stood outside the showers with a towel wrapped around his waist, waiting for the guards to finish their rounds. Blood washed off easily in the showers, clothes didn’t get stained, and it was impossible to see through the thick, opaque shower curtains. Stark dropped three new bars of Ivory soap in a sock and knotted the end, keeping it coiled close to his body.

When Randy stepped into the shower Stark moved quickly behind him. He smashed the sock across the side of Randy’s head, shattering the bones in his face, dropping him to his knees. With blood streaming from his ear and nose, Randy curled into a fetal position on the tiles as Stark pummeled him relentlessly. He beat him unconscious, stomped a foot into his gut and another in his ribs for good measure, then furiously lathered his hands with the bars of soap before dropping them into the hot water puddling at the drain.

Tossed the sock and walked away.

No one saw anything and no one knew anything. Within days Randy was old news. Nobody heard from him again.

***

That Saturday Stark got his ten minute phone call, waiting patiently for two hours at the pay phone to call his brother.

“Remember that guy you told me about,” he said when his brother got on the line. “You know, the one you caught jumping out Donna’s window?”

There was a moment of silence before his brother grunted a hesitant “Yeah.”

“Got a funny thing to tell you about that,” Stark said.

---

Bio: Michael Downing is a writer originally from New Jersey, now living in a small college town in Georgia. Over the past fifteen years he has written some plays, published a few books and his short stories have been featured in various publications and anthologies (some that have even been nominated for Pushcart Prizes). He is still everything New Jersey: attitude, edginess, and Bruce Springsteen…. but not Bon Jovi. You can find him at his blog. HERE

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