Free Dark Men by Derek Haas Page A

prison guard standing behind the glass near the exit. ‘See that hack over there what looks like he ate too many dollar specials at the Taco Bell?’”
    Smoke stops and laughs to himself. “You know how Archie do.”
    I can’t help but smile too, but signal with my hands tumbling over each other for him to get on with it. It doesn’t do either of us any good to think of Archie in the past tense.
    “He tells me the guard goes by the name of Nash. Archie says he’s been able to crack the code on most of the hacks but this Nash has been a problem. Says he’s tightlipped and none of the other guards’ll spill on him.
    “Now, as you can imagine, most bulls take a handout here or there for favors, but not this Nash. He’s straight as an arrow and there was no chinks in the armor neither. He’s one of those true blue badges you hear about but never expect to see. And those are the dangerous ones. Because nothing can fuck up a connected con’s plans like a hack who won’t play ball. Suddenly, you find yourself transferred to the wrong cellblock, or your pleasantries are confiscated, or you’re eating at the wrong table in the cafeteria or worse. Balance of power is always a precarious thing in life, but in lock-down, it’s hanging by tooth floss, I’ll tell you that.
    “Archie looks me over, and says, ‘get me something .’ ‘What’d’you mean, ‘something’? I ask back, and Archie gets that look in his eye he gets time to time that says ‘I’m smarter than you think I am.’ He looks down his nose at me and says, ‘What have we been talking about? Information, Smoke.’ He’s the first one to call me that by the way cause I had this pack of Parliaments I pulled out and lit up in mid-conversation. That’s the one good thing I’ll say about L-burg . . . you can smoke inside that damn place. What happened to the world where we kicked all the smokers outdoors? Anyway, Archie keeps on, ‘Anything I can use on Nash to get what needs getting. One week. You find me some A-plus information and all your problems inside this box disappear like bad dreams in the morning light. Consider yourself off-limits for a week . . . nobody but nobody gonna be in your business, I guarantee that. And don’t forget something, Smoke. I believe in you.’”
    Smoke fiddles with his unopened pack, turning the box over and over, occupying his hands. I have a feeling he’d like to pause the tale to step outside and light one up, but telling stories has a way of gaining a foothold on anything else you might want to do, planting its flag until it’s over. He looks up at me.
    “So what the fuck was I gonna do? I’m like three days into this shitbox and I’m going to find out information on a hack no one else has been able to procure? A bull with a clean certificate? How the fuck was I gonna do that? But those words were there, Columbus. He said ’em and I’ll be damned if he didn’t mean ’em. ‘I believe in you.’ Those words were like, I don’t know, they had weight, man. You believe that?”
    I nod and half of Smoke’s mouth turns upward. His eyes start to shine, but he doesn’t wipe at them.
    “First thing I did was spend two days doing nothing but watching Nash. Marking his shift changes, seeing how he conducted himself, who he talked to, who he watched, hell, I even counted how many times he scratched his nuts. But there was nothing there. He just stood behind the glass and watched us with dark eyes.
    “Now, he wasn’t always behind the glass and that gave me a bit of hope. The bulls took various shifts, sometimes behind the glass, sometimes in the corridor outside the rec room, sometimes walking the block, and sometimes out in the yard.
    “I watched him, I watched him, I watched him, and this cat Nash did not give me a goddamn inch. Believe that. I started thinking maybe he’s a robot, like some android out of a space movie. C-3PO or some shit. Cons would try to talk to him and he’d just ignore their shit