CHAPTER 8
Through the misadventures of his preceding years, Warren Springer Stowe had experienced only a few brief stints in jail, but those fleeting forays behind bars had given him a fair grip on the necessary skills. Those skills, combined with his lifelong fascination with peculiar people, served to secure his odd social position within Torino’s rather barbaric lockup.
“Four queens, ace high,” Warren said, spreading his cards across the crude metal table and smiling at his three poker victims.
Bailey muttered a vile curse and threw his cards down with a slap while the other two merely groaned, shaking their heads nearly in unison. “I’m done, man,” one of them said. “You’ve cleaned me out.”
“Ah, investing in your education never comes cheap,” Warren offered as he policed up the cards, ignoring Bailey’s seething presence entirely. “Just think how you’ll be fleecing them when you get sent to labor camp.”
The freshly shorn bleater perked up at the thought. “Hah! That’s a good point.”
Bailey still glowered savagely, but Warren only smiled as he arose from the hard stool. “Dear fellows, I have kept an important meeting waiting, so if you’ll excuse me . . .” He pretended not to hear the grumbled aspersions, gathering his jail-scaled pathetic winnings and striding off to join a fresh-faced young man sitting on the nearby steps to the upper tier.
Warren extended his hand. “Guy, isn’t it?”
The young man stood and took Warren’s hand, fidgeting uncomfortably in the red fabric that loosely resembled pants and shirt, the same horrid attire they all wore. “Yes, uh, Guy Betner, Mister Stowe.”
Warren held up a hand. “No formality here, Guy. Call me Warren. That’s formal enough compared to what Bailey was just calling me under his breath.”
Guy looked past Warren at the still-fuming Bailey. “Man, I can’t believe you aren’t worried about him snapping on you.”
Warren rubbed his chin, gazing across the dim and unimpressive space they called the “dayroom,” missing the fiddly joys of his smoking case to occupy his hands. “This is your first time locked up, right?” Guy looked at Warren uncertainly but nodded. “Yeah, Guy? Well you’ll find growling soreheads like Bailey in every jail and probably every prison too, to be sure.” Warren smiled down at Guy. “You’ve just got to make it clear to all the Baileys of the world that there’s easier meat to be had . . . and then you never, ever accept a threat.”
Warren saw the skepticism on Guy’s face, which normally wouldn’t have mattered, but he needed Guy for a particular purpose, and soon. Guy moistened his lips before saying, “So you just have to be a bigger badass than everyone else then, right?” His tone hovered on the edge of disdain.
Warren chuckled, holding his arms out to his sides displaying his slender build. “Looking at my massive physique I’m sure it’s easy to make that mistake, hah!” He winked at Guy. “But no, no, you don’t understand what—”
At that moment a loud, unrefined voice interjected, “Stowe! I need those hots we was talkin’ about, Stowe.”
Warren turned to consider the unpleasant face of Calder, who shuffled nearer, fidgeting, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Ah, Calder, friend, you see I’m in a meeting just now, so—”
“I need those hots now, Stowe, like we talked about,” Calder growled again.
Warren smiled, feeling Guy’s eyes on him. “When I’m done here, friend.”
Calder knotted his fists and fidgeted even nearer, his face twitching. “Now, Stowe!”
Warren turned to Guy and said, “If you will excuse me just a moment, Guy, I will take care of Calder here.” Guy nodded, his measuring expression seeming to transform into something closer to contempt, but Warren turned back to Calder as he rooted under his loose shirt with his left hand.
Warren’s hand emerged, dropping two hot sticks on the orange-colored enamel floor. “There you are, Calder lad,” he said, and then dropped a crude, jagged shank down beside the hot sticks with a metallic clank. “But pick it all up, you hear?”
Calder froze in his fidgeting as he spotted the makeshift weapon, his beady eyes flashing to find Warren’s right hand tucked beneath the fringe of his shirt. “Pick them up, Calder . . . now,” Warren said again, smiling.
Calder looked down at the hot sticks and the waiting shank, stepping back hesitantly. “I guess I can wait a little.”
Warren stopped smiling. “You interrupted my meeting to get the damned things, so pick them up. Now.”
Calder swallowed, fidgeting about for one tortured second before backing away, moving off across the dayroom, his shoulders slumped. Warren watched Calder’s retreat a moment before stooping to scoop up the shank and hot sticks, tucking them away. He sighed. “Now, where were we, Guy?”
Guy’s expression held no sign of contempt now. “You were saying you’re not a badass . . .”
“Oh yes, precisely,” Warren said with a wink, glancing across the dayroom. “Like dear Calder here, I didn’t need to be more lethal, just very, very clear on my position.”
Guy gnawed his lip, holding Warren’s gaze. “And what if Calder called your bluff?”
Warren looked sharply at Guy, shaking his head. “It was no bluff. It’s never a bluff.” He looked to the far side of the dayroom and nodded his head toward the mountainous figure of Monk. “Monk tried me my second day here and found that I wasn’t bluffing either.”
Guy stared over at Monk for a disbelieving moment before looking back to Warren. “You beat Monk?”
“Beat him?” Warren laughed. “Lord no! As I understand it, he socked me up quite thoroughly. Fortunately, I slept through the worst bits of it, so I only had to contend with a few days of pissing blood, and of course this missing tooth.” Warren opened his mouth and felt for his absent molar with a mournful frown. He closed his mouth and shrugged. “Anyway, getting thrashed by Monk doesn’t prove I’m some kind of badass. It proves that I don’t back down, and anyone wants to push me now knows they’ll have to earn it the hard way, see?”
Guy nodded, his expression becoming thoughtful. “I guess I do.” He looked down, deflated. “What a dirty, barbaric place we’re stuck in now . . .”
Warren’s smile grew. “You think so? I wonder if all this is what’s always just beneath the surface every day, and society simply puts a fat layer of feel-good icing on the top so we can all pretend we’re better than we really are.”
At Guy’s uneasy grimace, Warren chuckled. “Or maybe not. What do I really know? Not a philosopher, right?” He clapped Guy on the shoulder. “But I hear you served in the Scout services not so long ago, and that’s what I’d like to learn about, if you’re willing.”
Guy looked up, surprise replacing the glum set to his lips. “Yeah, I was three years in the Frontier Scouts, and then decided Bethune was my kind of planet . . . What a damned mistake that was.” Guy’s face began to settle back into a morose cast.
“But tell me, Guy,” Warren nudged, “don’t you Scouts learn some rudimentary codes for, um . . . odd communication scenarios?”
Guy nodded. “We had to learn three or four ridiculous, antique codes, like, um, Skagway Semaphore, Cut-Key, and—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Warren interrupted, holding up a hand. “And can you still remember any of those, er, ridiculous codes?”
Guy shrugged. “My speed probably isn’t that great, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget them, the way they drilled them into us.” He seemed lost in the memory of it all for a moment, but slowly sharpened his focus back on Warren. “What would you want with antique codes anyway? No one really uses them, and the only people who know any of these are Scouts . . . and maybe a few odd military units.”
Warren smiled, producing a piece of paper with lines of text scrawled upon its wrinkled surface. “This is a message I want you to encode in your various antique ciphers, Guy.” He pointed at a crusty pipe that ran along one wall of the dayroom, disappearing through the dayroom partition. “See that pipe? I want you to tap out the encoded message on that.”
Guy looked at the pipe, then at the scrap of paper, frowning. “I don’t . . . You know that pipe doesn’t go outside the building, right? It just goes through to the women’s side of the jail.”
Warren raised his eyebrows and looked at the pipe again. “Oh my goodness, really? Is that where it goes? Huh.” He focused back on Guy. “Tap out my message on that pipe a few times for a couple of days, and I’ll pay you, say, six hot sticks.”
Guy didn’t possess the gene for haggling evidently, and agreed instantly. “Deal. When do I begin?” He reached for the note, but Warren held it up, his smile fading.
“But, Guy, understand this: My business is mine alone. You understand me, my friend? Don’t make my affairs the business of anyone else, right? I wouldn’t like it,”
Guy’s face settled into serious lines. “I understand, Mister Stowe.”