Page 113 of Into the Fire

Cedric sat with his legs spread to accommodate the dip of his belly. He’d already wolfed down his breakfast and looked to be jonesing for a smoke, rolling his fingertips against one another, sucking on the end of his spork.

Evan ate his eggs first and then the remaining sausages.

He folded the biscuit in his napkin and pocketed it.

When the alarm blared for them to return their trays to the carts, Evan stood up, lost his balance, and plopped back down onto his seat. No one paid any mind. His next attempt was more successful. Firming his equilibrium, he stared over at Teardrop’s table once more. The ring of Armenian Power lieutenants parted, and Evan caught his first glimpse of Bedrosov.

He’d gained weight on the inside, his cheeks shiny, a curtain of fat hanging from his jawline. He looked like a bloated politician, sure-footed and entitled, as if he already knew the deck was stacked and just had to wait for the game to play out.

In the jostle to the cells, he and Evan locked eyes across the bay.

Bedrosov’s core of protectors carried him off, and Evan watched him vanish into the swirl of dark blue prison wear.

Back in his cell, Evan lay flat on his bunk until he was sure he wasn’t going to vomit. Once the pain had receded a notch below all-encompassing, he removed the cone of newspaper from where he’d hidden it beneath his sheet. Though it had hardened as it dried, it was brittle enough to break if he tapped it against the wall.

While Monkey Mouth spoke to the ceiling in one endless unbroken sentence, Evan retrieved another sheet of newspaper from beneath his mattress and repeated the process, first wetting it, and then wrapping it around the fragile initial cone as tightly and meticulously as possible. He was careful to keep his exposed pinkie away from the paper to avoid leaving a print.

If all went well, his little craft project would wind up as evidence.

When he finished, he rested it in the gap between the side of his mattress and the wall. Then he rested, worn out from the level of concentration. Every half hour he would repeat the process until he’d built the cone up painstakingly, one sheet at a time.

He interrupted Monkey Mouth’s monologue. “Can I trade a biscuit for your cigarettes?”

Monkey Mouth rolled his head to take in Evan with large, childlike eyes. He was scratching his arm repetitively, drawing blood. “Do you have any ramen?”

“I’m sorry, pal,” Evan said. “I don’t have any ramen.”

The man’s disappointment held the weight of the world. “Okay, then.” He reached into his sock and pulled out two bent, sweat-stained butts.

From top bunk to top bunk, they exchanged items.

Evan split the cigarettes between his thumbs, exposing the tobacco. Then he pulled down his blue lowers and tore a shred of papery fabric from the leg hem of the jail-issue boxer shorts. Ripping the shred into two rough squares, he divided the tobacco between them, twisted the fabric at the tops to form tea-bag pouches, and tied off each with a thread plucked from the sleeve of his oversize top. He had to squint the entire time to keep everything from blurring.

He headed out, moving unevenly along the catwalk. The floating clock above the bay showed 11:59 A.M.

At the bottom of the stairs, Evan paused and stared directly at the top surveillance camera. He blinked four times. Each blink was a signal to Joey. She couldn’t watch the feed around the clock, but when she reviewed footage, she’d note his blinks and count four hours forward from noon. At 4:00 P.M. they’d meet back here virtually and he’d give her the next set of coded instructions in real time.

He spotted Cedric the inker in the dayroom and wandered over to take the chair next to him. Cedric tilted back in a chair bowing beneath his weight. His fingers were still jumping around, searching for a cigarette, and he was sucking on his bottom lip. He stayed focused on the TV even as he addressed Evan. “What you want?”

“I know you’re an ink slinger,” Evan said.

“Can’t make no tattoos no more,” Cedric said. “Don’t have shit for needles. No spoon, nuthin’.”

“Do you have ink?”

“Maybe I managed to hide me some. But what good’s ink for by itself?”

Evan took the two bound pouches of tobacco from his pocket and held them in his palm.

“What’s that sorry-looking shit?”

“Pouch tobacco. You can stuff it in your lip like a Skoal Bandit.”

Cedric leaned over, the chair creaking, and poked at the pouches. He made a face and shifted away, hugging his chest and pretending to watch the TV. He couldn’t help but work his lower lip between his teeth, an oral fixation hamstering out of control.

Finally he sighed theatrically and withdrew a crappy Bic pen refill from his breast pocket. He slapped it into Evan’s hand and snatched up the pouches. “I don’t know what you’re gonna do with that,” he said. “Then again, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it neither.”

By the time Evan reached the door, Cedric had already tucked one of the pouches into his lower lip.