Free The Dead Run by Adam Mansbach Page A

that counts.
    It didn’t take long for every eyeball not his own to fix on Galvan. He appraised each man in turn: Payaso, shifting his weight from leg to leg, brain no doubt just as unable to settle. He looked even scrawnier, out here with so much open space around him, than he had in the close confines of the yard. Younger, too—dude couldn’t be a day over twenty, so baby-faced he’d probably never touched a razor in his life. Galvan found himself wondering how a mouthy, twitchy twerp like Payaso had fallen in with the gang to begin with, then realized the question was its own answer. Kid never could’ve hacked it on his own.
    Next to him stood Gutierrez, stock-still, glaring down over his own broken nose, shirt soaked through and stuck against his massive, heaving chest. He was the opposite of Payaso, in more than size. The guy was completely self-contained. There was no bend in him, no compromise or subterfuge, no such thing as a half measure. When Gutierrez was in motion, he moved toward his goal in a straight line, whether it was food or murder or sexual release.
    Woe be to anybody who stood in the way.
    Beside the enforcer was a middle-aged man, bald and bespectacled, squat and nebbishy. He was known in the yard as Britannica, Galvan remembered. The prison egghead; Federación Sinaloa owned the guy and hired him out to prisoners who needed legal help—appeals, transfer requests, you name it. He was said to be doing time for some kind of long con: he’d fleeced a church or Ponzied a priest. Or he hadn’t. Who could separate the lies from the exaggerations? In any case, he was that rarest breed of convict: a man who’d made a path for himself by means of his brains.
    What use that intellect would be out here was another story entirely.
    Finally, standing farthest away was a guy Galvan could’ve sworn he’d never seen in his life. Never noticed, anyway. He looked like everybody else doing two-to-four on drug shit, gang shit, poor-dumb-and-desperate shit. A six-month swell to his biceps, some scattered ink-pen prison tats intended to call attention to his brand-new physique—the kind of thing that seemed like a good idea now but that he’d regret wholeheartedly if he ever decided to go straight, get a real job.
    Not that a guy like this ever would. He’d pick up a package or a gun and do the same dirt the same way, be back inside before his bunk got reassigned or his lockdown muscles softened into flab.
    All of them were waiting. Galvan cleared his throat. “I ain’t much for speeches. You all know what we’ve gotta do. You saw that thing, Cucuy or whatever it calls itself. We stick together, we might make it.” He glanced down at the compass. “North is that way.”
    A nod from Britannica. Payaso scowled and poked his toe at the ground, like a teenager being ordered to clean his room. Gutierrez showed nothing. It was the fourth man who spoke.
    â€œFuck him, and fuck you. I’m going home.”
    Galvan sighed, and the baling wire screamed against his skin. “What’s your name, friend?”
    â€œI’m not your friend. And I sure as shit ain’t the one with a box strapped to my back.” He spread his arms. “You can start by telling us what’s in it.”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    Which was true, in a way.
    Nobody had told Galvan to keep it a secret, but nobody had told him to confide life’s mysteries to a grab bag of scumbags, either.
    Keep it simple, and keep it moving. That was gonna be his philosophy until something better came along.
    â€œBullshit. This pendejo is lying.” Galvan’s not-friend tapped his chest, then swept a finger across them all. “I’m a free man, homes. All you vatos are free men.”
    Galvan hesitated. On one hand, it would be easier to do this alone. Five motley cons weren’t making it over the goddamn border together without a miracle—to say