Free Senile Squad: Adventures of the Old Blues by Chris LeGrow Page B

toward the elevators where Shanese and Melia stood with their backs to him.
    If Shanese had squealed once, she could do it again. Clubba didn’t need the police nosing around his business. He nodded to his lieutenant, now in charge while he was in prison. He gave a curt nod toward Shanese. “Don’t thug her up,” he said in Sudanese, “yet.”
    Message delivered. Clubba would take personal action on this one.
    His proxy gave him a short nod. Message understood.
    “A year max.” Clubba’s attorney pulled his attention back to the issue at hand.
    “Yeah, I can handle that,” he said.
    The deputies each grabbed one of Clubba’s arms to guide him back to the holding cell. He turned and lock-stepped down the aisle. A distinctive whistling sound, the one he’d first heard months ago stopped him in his tracks. That odd whistle…his arrest. Clubba jerked around and spotted a short man leaning on an exit door next to the same taller old black man. Their laughing images were seared into Clubba’s memory.
    Clubba shot them a glare. Renewed rage raced up his spine. In an old brown rumpled suit and yellow tie, the unknown little man met and held Clubba’s gaze. Laughing through his dentures, the irritating trill came with each breath reminding Clubba of his greatest defeat and worst humiliation. Had they been anywhere else, Clubba would have taken him down immediately. Here, he was helpless. “You,” he sneered through gritted teeth, struggling to control his growing fury.
    Scanning around him, seeking his soldiers, Clubba realized he was alone. He glared back at the old men.
    With a tilt of his head, the smaller man grinned at him. He waggled his eyebrows and flourished an empty urine bag back and forth through the air.
    Clubba sucked in a contemptuous breath. Stupid old idiot seemed to relish antagonizing him. That was his first mistake; Clubba would make sure it was his last. He could wait to settle this score in a year. “Dead,” he said flatly.
    The deputies tugged Clubba back to reality and pulled him by the arms down the hall. “Whoever he is,” he muttered through clenched teeth, “dead.”
    As the two old men casually shuffeled from the cause of their entertainment, the taller, Big Brock, leaned down and said, “Tiny, you’ve been tailing this Clubba for months, how’s it feel to nab him?”
    Tiny looked to his partner and said through whistling teeth, “So far, so good. Now I’m gonna tail him all the way through prison. I know he’s up to something big.” Tiny’s words whistled as he spoke, and he and Big Brock shared a laugh as they ambled away from Clubba’s greatest humiliation.

THE ONLY PENITENTIARY CORRECTIONAL FACILITY IN THE state is located on the southwestern edge of Lincoln, Nebraska, about sixty miles southwest of Omaha. Every gang member across the state served their sentences there. Any associate arrested in the state had a ready-made network inside; all the bad eggs were in one basket.
    Walking into the orientation center, Clubba sensed the interest of the other inmates checking him out. The cry of “fresh meat” echoed through the cinder-block walls behind him and the rest of the shuffling crowd headed to intake. Everyone watched for someone they knew, a fellow affiliate to add to their clique. Clubba knew the drill. They patiently waited for the flash of a discreet sign to identify which “G” was his. For security and protection, gangs were segregated—a lesson learned quickly by wardens all over the country to avoid maximum bloodshed and maintain a shaky peace.
    Several bangers from the major gangs immediately straightened when Clubba strode through the buildings en route to his cell. Their slight change in stance said they recognized him. Those he didn’t know quickly flashed a generic Blood or Crip sign. Clubba suppressed a smile. He could provide satisfactory responses so each gang could identify him as a trusted associate. Here he’d be one of the few inmates who could