Free Noble Warrior by Alan Lawrence Sitomer Page B

colonel.
    “I’m ready.”
    Whoa, Puwolsky thought. Who is this kid?
    “Yeah, um...sure,” he said.
    Puwolsky flashed his car lights as a signal to someone on the inside, and a few seconds later the back door by the loading dock cracked open.
    A man approached. A skinny guy with bad teeth and yellow hair named Major Daniel Krewls. He was not particularly tall, not particularly muscular, but he stomped his black boots with authority
through the foreboding puddles on his way to meet the car.
    Puwolsky rolled down the window. Krewls stuck his chin in the vehicle and looked around.
    “LeRoyce didn’t make the trip?”
    “LeRoyce is no longer with us.”
    “Too bad.”
    “Shit happens.”
    “So they say. This the guy?” Krewls shined a flashlight on McCutcheon’s face. “Seems a little young to play with the big boys.”
    “I wouldn’t underestimate his abilities.”
    “Where’s my money?”
    “Where are the details?” Puwolsky began. “The story goes that...”
    Krewls interrupted. “The detail that comes first is my motherfuckin’ money,” Krewls interrupted.
    There was a stalemate but it was brief, and Puwolsky relented. He reached into his jacket. “You’re like one of the damn prisoners, making sure you get paid first before anything
happens.” He passed Krewls an envelope.
    “I’m worse than the prisoners,” Krewls said as he fingered through a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills. “’Cause I got a badge.”
    Wardens run state penitentiaries, but Jentles’s warden, John Jeffrey Johannsen, had suffered a mild stroke and didn’t want to lose his retirement package, so he went on temporary
sick leave in order to protect his benefit plan.
    That was three years ago.
    Six months after Johannsen stepped away from his desk, Deputy Warden Steven Elliot found himself indicted for stealing from the prison employee fund. Next in line would have been the associate
warden, but the state of Michigan, in its infinite wisdom, decided to eliminate the position of associate warden from all of the correctional facilities, in order to trim the budget and cut down on
bureaucracy. Major Krewls, a man with nineteen years under his belt at the time, turned up next in line in the chain of command.
    “Eight thousand,” Krewls said. “That’s it? I deserve a bonus.”
    “Go hump a turtle,” Puwolsky answered.
    Krewls soured his face. Clearly, this was not a negotiation.
    “All right,” Krewls said stuffing the cash inside his jacket. “What we got?”
    “This prisoner’s name is”—Puwolsky passed the file over to the major—“Lester Alfred Rawlins. Story is he was sentenced to forty-five to life but escaped from
Longacre Penitentiary upstate, and is now being transferred here.”
    “Forty-five years?
Whew-weee
,” Krewls said. “That’s a long time for a young buck like you to do a bid up in here.”
    “It’s just three days,” Puwolsky said with a glare in Krewls’s direction. “We’re starting there.”
    “Oh yeah, right.” Krewls took the forged paperwork from Puwolsky’s hands. “Three days, gotcha.”
    The seamless way in which everything went down between the two men made M.D. wonder just how many other people had been sneaked in through the back door and railroaded into the prison, without
ever having seen a trial, a judge, or a jury. Certainly, the scheme ran far too smoothly for it to be the first time Krewls and Puwolsky had ever pulled it off. No nerves. No anxiety. No signs of
concern about being caught or discovered.
    Too much assurance M.D. thought. Too much arrogance. All signs of weakness, he knew. The overconfident were always vulnerable. McCutcheon filed this knowledge away in case he needed it
later.
    “Anything else I need to know?” Krewls asked.
    “Yeah, read that.”
    Krewls scanned the materials.
    “Hmmm, I’m thinking Think Tank.”
    “Don’t fuck around with this, Krewls. You know why he’s here.”
    “I’m just saying,” Krewls answered. “You’d