Fear Me

1

Soon as Romero saw the new meat, he knew there was going to be trouble. He felt it down in his guts, something cold and inexplicable that just started chewing through him. You were sitting on ten years hard time and wouldn’t see parole for another three, you got real good at spotting trouble. Knowing how it smelled, how it walked, and how it talked.

The sergeant hack, Jorgensen, brought the new meat in, said, “Here you go, Romero, we got you a new cellmate. He’s young and pure, don’t go dirtying him up.” Jorgensen thought that was funny, took the kid by the arm and pushed him at Romero. “He’s all yours now, don’t break him.”

Then Jorgensen stepped out and the cell door slid closed. He went on his merry way, twirling his stick, laughing with the other hacks, looking for cons to hassle and heads to crack.

Romero just stood there, giving the new meat the look. You did enough time, you got real good at “the look.” This was Romero’s second stretch. He’d already done five years at Brickhaven for grand theft and an illegal weapons charge when he was twenty. Now he was forty, doing a dime for aggravated assault and battery of a police officer, staring down the long tunnel at the light flickering at the end. Romero wanted to feel that light on him real bad, on his face and hands, making things glow inside him where there had only been darkness for too long.

What he didn’t need was this skinny little boy fucking things up for him.

“You got a name, Cherry?” Romero put to him, crossing his muscular forearms over his chest, letting the kid see the jailhouse tats on them. Letting him know right off that he was a ballbuster, a hardtimer that would bite out your eyes and fuck your skull if you got in his way.

“Danny, Danny Palmquist,” the kid said.

Romero shook his head. Candy-ass name like that. Palmquist. Damn, the cons were going to eat that up with their bare hands. “Good, Danny, I’ll call you Cherry. You got a problem with that, Cherry?”

Little shit didn’t have anything to say to that. Just stood there in the corner, that lost puppy hang-dog look on his face. But then, Romero knew, that’s what guys like Danny Palmquist were: hang-dog puppies.

Jesus, look at the kid.

Not more than 5’6, 5’7, maybe 140 pounds, more meat on a taco than this one. The cons were probably already arm-wrestling to see who got to pop his puppy ass first. Sickening. Just a skinny little nothing. Size didn’t always matter—some of the meanest pricks behind those walls were little guys with shivs and acid attitudes—but you could see that Danny Palmquist was a zero. He wouldn’t be able to defend himself, which made him prey. Within 48 hours, he was going to be somebody’s punk old lady.

Romero was hard.

Before he took this fall, he’d worked the streets, pushed coke and junk, stole cars, busted skulls, even had himself a few bodies out there. A life like that made a guy ready for the joint. Made him lean, mean, ready to bust if you looked at him the wrong way. But this kid? No, he didn’t have any streets on him. He was small town, junior glee-club material. Probably pissed himself when the local bully gave him a shove. There was just nowhere for a guy like that in a maximum security joint. Blacks would sniff out his sugar-ass. If they didn’t, spics would take him. Shit, cons his own color—bikers and Aryan Brothers—they’d be all over him, be selling his ass first thing you knew.

He needed somebody to watch over him, protect him.

But he wasn’t tough enough for the ABs, Skinheads, or redneck whiteboy traffickers. No gang would touch a cherry like that. And Romero? He had his own problems.

He sat on his bunk, lit a cigarette. “You’re on top, Cherry.”

But the kid didn’t move. “What you in for?” he asked.

Stupid little peckerwood. What you in for? Kid saw too many prison movies, James Cagney and shit. “Like I said,” Romero told him. “You’re on top.”

“I guess you don’t like to talk much.”

Romero gave him the look. “Shut your pisshole, Cherry. You don’t, I’ll shove something in there, shut it for you. You know what I’m saying to you?”

The kid did.