Dead and Gone Read Online Free Page B

bad, if you read it wrong.
    Inside, they test you right away. But even the wolves walk soft and patient. The ones that don’t, sooner or later they make a mistake. They think some skinny, baby-faced kid will give it up the first time he gets threatened with a beating. Or a shank. But some of those little kids, prison is the nicest place they’ve ever been. And they know just what to do to make it even nicer.
    In prison, the wolf population is stable. They’re always around. But not always the same ones.
    The first thing you do when you hit the yard is— Stop! I shouted inside myself, nothing showing on my face. My mind was … drifting. I needed to focus. I had started with something. Where had I …?
    Yeah, okay, the cops. Playing me. Like they had all the time in the world. I knew what a crock that was. Sure, they knew who I was. Knew somebody had tried to take me out, too. But I wasn’t dead. This was no homicide investigation, just another “assault, perp(s) unknown.” And they had enough of those on the books to build another World Trade Center just from the paperwork.
    Their ace was the hospital, keeping me locked down the way no judge would. It’s not a crime to be a victim in New York. Even if you’re a career criminal on the Permanent Suspect List for a dozen different Unsolveds.
    If they knew who I was, they knew I had people. “KAs”—Known Associates—is what they’d call my family in their records. For cops, family is something you’re born into. Pure biology.
    Didn’t use to be that way with them, but now they don’t even trust their own kind. The Blue Wall had cracked too many times; too many cops had rolled on their “brother” officers. They didn’t think of themselves the way they used to when a cop had to be Irish to get above a certain ceiling in the Department. Didn’t matter what you called it—integration, immigration, affirmative action—it all played the same in the end. Once NYPD stopped being all-white, it stopped being all right with a lot of them.
    And the rest of them all knew it.
    Screenwriters who spend a few nights in the back of a squad car for “background” always make hatred of Internal Affairs part of the “character” of any cop they want you to like. Of course, screenwriters are the same twits who believe omertà is rat-proof.
    So the rules may have changed, but cops still play the same old games. There was a phone right next to my bed. I never got any calls—that wasn’t why it was there. I wondered what part of the City’s budget was paying for my private line. And what tame judge had signed the wiretap order.
    One night, real late, I reached for the phone. Punched seven different buttons at random, making sure I didn’t hit the 1 or the 0 to start. A man answered, his voice blurry with sleep.
    “Hello?”
    “Is Antonia there?”
    “Antonia? What’re you, fucking insane, Mack? There ain’t no Antonia here!”
    He slammed down the phone.
    I did it a few more times: seven buttons, punched blind. Mostly, I got a recording saying the number was not in service; twice I got answering machines; the last time a black woman, middle-aged, her voice tired. Just coming home from work, or just getting ready to leave.
    “There’s no Antonia here, mister. What number you trying to reach?”
    “I … don’t know,” I told her, sadness in my voice. Then I hung up.
    “Play with that , motherfuckers,” I remember saying to myself, just before I fell asleep.
    A few more days passed. Then the cops tried something even A weaker. This time the phone didn’t just sit there—tempting me, they thought—it rang. I answered it on automatic, like a guy who had no specific memories of who he was, but knew he had to be someone :
    “Hello?”
    “Burke? It’s me, Condo.”
    I knew him. A collector for Maurice, a bookie I used to place my action with. People thought he was called Condo because he was the size of a damn condominium. People who didn’t know him, that