Free Killing Floor by Lee Child Page B

the manpower for hassle. We ain’t got the manpower for hassle on the convict floors, let alone hassle on the holding floor, you understand? Yo, Hubble, you understand?”
    Hubble looked up at him and nodded blankly. Didn’t speak.
    “Reacher?” the clipboard guy said. “You understand?”
    “Sure,” I said. I understood. This guy was understaffed. Having problems because of a budget. While his friends collected unemployment. Tell me about it.
    “Good,” he said. “So the deal is this. The two of us are off duty at seven o’clock. Which is in about one minute’s time. We ain’t staying late for you boys. We don’t want to and the union wouldn’t let us anyway. So you get a meal, then you’re locked down in here until they got manpower to take you upstairs. No manpower until lights out, maybe ten o’clock, OK? But then no guards will move prisoners around after lights out anyway, right? Union won’t let ’em. So Spivey will come get you himself. Assistant warden. Top boy tonight. About ten o’clock, OK? You don’t like it, you don’t tell me, you tell the governor, OK?”
    The donut eater went out into the corridor and came back a long moment later with a tray. On it were covered plates, paper cups and a Thermos. He put the tray on the table and the two of them swung out through the corridor. Locked the door from the outside. It went quiet as a tomb in there.
    We ate. Fish and rice. Friday food. Coffee in the Thermos. Hubble didn’t speak. He left most of the coffee for me. Score one for Hubble. I put the debris on the tray and the tray on the floor. Another three hours to waste. I tipped my chair back and put my feet up on the table. Not comfortable, but as good as I was going to get. A warm evening. September in Georgia.
    I looked over at Hubble without curiosity. He was still silent. I had never heard him speak except on Finlay’s speakerphone. He looked back at me. His face was full of dejection and fear. He looked at me like I was a creature from another world. He stared at me like I worried him. Then he looked away.

    MAYBE I WOULDN’T HEAD BACK TO THE GULF. BUT IT WAS too late in the year to head north. Too cold up there. Maybe skip right down to the islands. Jamaica, maybe. Good music there. A hut on the beach. Live out the winter in a hut on a Jamaica beach. Smoke a pound of grass a week. Do whatever Jamaica people do. Maybe two pounds of grass a week with someone to share the hut. Roscoe kept drifting into the picture. Her uniform shirt was fabulously crisp. A crisp tight blue shirt. I had never seen a shirt look better. On a Jamaica beach in the sun she wouldn’t need a shirt. I didn’t think that would prove to be any kind of a major problem.
    It was her wink that did it to me. She took my coffee cup. She said I had nice eyes. And she winked. Got to mean something, right? The eyes thing, I’ve heard that before. An English girl I’d had good times with for a while, she liked my eyes. Said it all the time. They’re blue. Equally people have said they look like icebergs in an Arctic sea. If I concentrate I can stop them blinking. Gives a stare an intimidating effect. Useful. But Roscoe’s wink had been the best part of the day. The only part of the day, really, except Eno’s scrambled eggs, which weren’t bad. Eggs you can get anywhere. But I’d miss Roscoe. I floated on through the empty evening.

    NOT LONG AFTER TEN THE DOOR FROM THE CORRIDOR WAS unlocked. A uniformed man came in. He carried a clipboard. And a shotgun. I looked him over. A son of the South. A heavy, fleshy man. Reddened skin, a big hard belly and a wide neck. Small eyes. A tight greasy uniform straining to contain him. Probably born right there on the farm they commandeered to build the prison. Assistant Warden Spivey. This shift’s top boy. Understaffed and harassed. Ushering the short-stay guests around by himself. With a shotgun in his big red farmer’s hands.
    He studied his clipboard.
    “Which one of you is