Free Greely's Cove by John Gideon Page B

laughing the barking laugh. Mitch staggered crazily against the doorjamb when Cannibal finally set him down, feeling dizzy and nauseous from the stench of bubble gum mixed with Cannibal’s gamy breath.
    “Marvelous Mitch, I want you to meet my lady,” said the big man, reaching for the arm of the woman who waited a few steps behind him. “Marvelous Mitch Nistler, meet Stella DeCurtis. Stella, this is my best bud from the old days in Walla Walla, none other than Sir Marvelous Mitch Nistler.”
    The woman stepped forward. She, like Mitch himself, was painfully thin and as tall. She had white New Wave hair that must have been bleached. Despite her apparently high mileage, she looked not yet thirty. From a knot on the top of her head the hair spewed upward and then down in all directions, like a geyser of brittle ice. Her dark eyes glared from sockets heavily shadowed in electric blue, and though the hollows beneath her jutting cheekbones were powdered in rouge, the rest of her taut face was without color. Her skin-tight pants of black leather and coarsely woven poncho of greens and blues looked expensive.
    “So you’re the little slave boy I’ve heard so much about,” said Stella DeCurtis, not bothering to offer a pale hand but stepping uninvited through the door. “From what I hear, you’re lucky you had a master like Cannibal over in Walla Walla. Otherwise, you might not have lived through it.” She flopped down into Mitch’s Salvation Army armchair and busied herself in preparing a toot of cocaine.
    Cannibal sprawled onto the threadbare sofa and lit a cigarette. “Well, don’t just stand there, Mitchie-Witchie, close the door and be sociable. Least you can do is offer us a drink or something.” He laughed the angry laugh again.
    Mitch did as he was told, fetching his last two Olys from his rusty little fridge in the kitchen and turning them over to his “guests.” He felt just like the little slave boy he had once been.
    An old feeling wormed up from his guts and threatened to choke him, a feeling he had not endured since Walla Walla, a noxious mixture of self-disgust and mortal fear, of having lost himself in a hell of sound and smell. It all came back: the perpetual din of clanking cell doors, hectoring shouts, out-of-tune guitars and blaring radios; the pukish smells of sweat and urine and antiseptic and mushy prison food heaped on wet metal trays.
    “So, did you get off on being Cannibal’s slave?” asked Stella in her dry voice, after taking her hits. “What’s it like being a slave, anyway?”
    Mitch balled his fists to keep his hands from shaking and nearly succeeded. “That was a long time ago,” he managed.
    “Oh hell, Mitch, it only seems like a long time ago,” said Cannibal, chewing his bubble gum violently. “You’ve only been out—what? Five years?”
    “Almost seven.”
    Strecker launched a short review of Mitch’s history for Stella’s benefit. “Mitchie Witchie here only had two choices when he got to D Block: be a slave or be a chick. You see, honey, ol’ Mitch was only about twenty-two or twenty-three back then, and he looked just like a kid, all scrawny and smooth. He’d gotten himself caught sellin’ crank and pot to high-school kids—for about the third time, as I recall—and the judge dropped a tenner on him; made him serve a quarter of that. He’d never been to the joint before, and he’d never heard about the wolves. Ain’t that right, Mitch?”
    Talk of the wolves made Mitch’s skin cold and crawly.
    “The minute he shows up, the wolves start fightin’ over him, right?” continued Cannibal. “Christ, they damn near tore each other to pieces. Young, smooth meat like old Mitch isn’t exactly common in the joint, you see, and every fuckin’ wolf in the place meant to make ol’ Mitch his chick. Well, ol’ Mitch got lucky, ’cause D Block was mine. I was the goddamn block boss, the secretary-general of the place, and I was in the market for a slave. I