Chapter 4
Antonio showed Scott around, although there wasn’t much to see. The library still used the old card file method of checking out books rather than a computer, so he would have to write down the name of the prisoner and the day he’d checked it out on a stiff yellow card with the book’s title and author typed on it and put it in the file drawer. Once a week they went through this file drawer to see which books were overdue, and the prisoner was not allowed to take any more out if he didn’t return the overdue book to the library. If the prisoner damaged or destroyed a book, his lending privileges would be revoked, and the price of the book would be taken out of the minimal salary that prisoners earned for doing the jobs they were assigned. There was a fiction section, and a large non-fiction section full of books on how to get your GED, as well as college textbooks for those prisoners working toward a college degree.
The computers had locks on them, preventing prisoners from surfing social media or porn sites. Antonio explained to Scott that the ban on social media sites was fairly recent; that some prisoners had been going on sites like Facebook to harass or taunt their victims or law enforcement officials. Prisoners had a one-hour limit on a computer, and had to log their names onto a register and wait if there were no computers open when they first entered the library. They had to be strict about the time limit, because otherwise men would hog the computers for hours on end playing on-line games or just surfing the web. He had to keep an eye on the register when the traffic became thicker in the library, so that everybody who wanted to could get a turn on the computers.
“Don’t let them harass or threaten you when you tell them they have to get off a computer, Scott,” Antonio told him. “Rules are rules. If they give you too much of a problem, either speak to me or to one of the guards.”
He nodded silently. Antonio touched his arm lightly. “Very good. That’s it for our tour, I’m afraid. Not much to see. Just a basic prison library. There won’t be much for us to do for a few hours, so you could find a book to read. I have some research to catch up on, so I’ll leave you in Tom’s capable hands for now. All right?”
“Okay,” Scott said, and Antonio smiled at him before walking away to sit down at one of the computers and immerse himself in whatever research that he was doing.
Scott wandered around for a bit, thinking that maybe he should get on one of the computers. But seeing scenes of the outside world would just depress him too much right now. So instead he perused the bookshelves in the fiction section and pulled down a mystery novel that looked promising, going over to sit down near Tom Hardy. He opened the book, but found that he couldn’t get into it as much as he would have liked.
Scott glanced over at Antonio, at his gravely handsome face. Here was a bigger mystery than the one in the book. What was the deal with Antonio? Why did the other prisoners seem to be scared of him? Why did the very warden acquiesce to his requests? Why did the guards seem to respect him to a certain extent? He was thoroughly puzzled.
He sighed, then jumped when a voice said acerbically from nearby: “Bet you’re wondering about him, eh?”
Scott stared wide-eyed at Tom hardy, wondering how the man could know what was in his thoughts. The older man’s lips twitched a bit. “Come on, kid. I’m not psychic,” he said dryly, laying a long finger on the page of his book to mark his place, “You’ve GOT to be wondering about him, seeing as you’re his new cellmate and all. Somebody who didn’t know the score would be mighty puzzled by Antonio Mazinar.”
Scott took in a deep breath. “Do you know the score?” he asked. “Can you tell me why everybody’s scared of him? And why the warden let me work here because Antonio asked him to?” the eagerness in his voice made Tom’s eyes twinkle a little.
“Yeah, I can tell you all about him. Well, parts of him, anyway. The man’s an enigma otherwise. As to why everybody’s scared of him around here - that’d be because he has to be the most ruthless bastard who ever walked into this place.”
Scott blinked. This statement didn’t gel with what he’d seen of Antonio so far, not at all. The man had been very kind to him, and well-mannered with everybody else. Scott hadn’t seem him threaten anybody except to just look at them. Still, there was the fact that the other prisoners jumped and practically ran away when Antonio even so much as glanced at them that backed up Tom’s statement…he gulped.
“H-How? How is he ruthless?” he asked, wondering if he really wanted to know.
Tom rubbed at the side of his nose with one finger. “At first he wasn’t. When he first arrived, he was just like any other prisoner. A little more polite than most, but nothing special about him otherwise. It all began with Cameron…” his eyes went a little sad at some memory.
“Who’s Cameron?” Scott asked, totally intrigued.
“Mazinar’s first cellmate. A sweet black boy, really nice. He got transferred into Mazinar’s cell about two months after he arrived, and the two of them hit it off right away. You could tell that they were…well…together. Together, together, not just using each other as a substitute for a woman. You know?”
“Yeah,” Scott husked, feeling a faint streak of jealousy for that other cellmate of Antonio’s.
“Guess I’d never pegged him as a homosexual, but the way he was with that boy…he treated him real good. And Cameron clearly worshipped the ground he walked on. Only problem is - in the pen, everybody is racist. Not like on the outside, where everybody’s a little bit racist, but really, REALLY racist. The whites hate the blacks, and the blacks despise the whites. And everybody hates the Latinos. They all run in gangs, and get into fights regularly. The black boys didn’t take to Cameron being with a white boy - or a Hispanic, or whatever he was - and they taught him a lesson.”
“A lesson?” Scott said, feeling a chill race down his spine.
Tom nodded, his face twisting. “They grabbed him one day when he wasn’t with Mazinar, a whole gang of ‘em. They dragged him off to a dark corner and gangbanged him, then beat the shit out of him. Permanent brain damage. That’s what the docs in the infirmary said. Because he’d been kicked in the head at least a dozen times. He was going to be a drooling vegetable for the rest of his life.” his voice was grim.
Scott felt sick. Tom continued quietly: “Mazinar went nuts when he learned what had happened. I’ve never seen anybody so angry, and I’ve been in prison for over thirty years. The worst thing was, it was a quiet anger. That cold kind that’s way scarier than hot anger. He visited Cameron in the infirmary one time before they shipped him off to a long-term care facility, and after that…he didn’t even bother to threaten the black boys who done him. He went straight to their rivals, the Aryan Nation boys, and offered them a thousand dollars in cash each to ‘even the score’. I heard that from one of them myself, afterward. But he also added a single request that even made the skinheads go a bit cold. But they did it. A thousand dollars in cold, hard cash for doing over a bunch of niggers? Nirvana for those dumb bastards. One-by-one, they waylaid the gang members who had attacked Cameron and they raped the shit out of them, then beat them to a pulp. And as a last something so that they’d never forget, Mazinar had the Aryan boys cut off one of their balls. When they did that, he also had them tell each one of the black boys that they should count themselves lucky that he hadn’t had them whack off their entire manhoods, and if they tried to retaliate against him for this then he’d see that they lost everything that made them a man…if not their lives. There’s some who say that he has a necklace of testicles somewhere in his cell,” Tom said, lowering his voice even more and glancing over at Antonio.
Scott was stunned. Somehow it didn’t seem possible that Antonio would do such a thing, although he could understand being (rightly) upset about what had happened to his lover. He just couldn’t put this rather grotesque story together with the man who’d climbed into bed with him last night and had held him so tenderly, the man who’d calmed his fears and had shielded him from the animals who looked at him with savage lust in their eyes.
“Is that…all?” he asked in a sickly tone of voice. “Is that why everybody’s afraid of him?”
“No,” Tom replied. “Although it was for awhile. The Aryan boys strutted around like they were his personal guard or something, and nobody could touch him. Then one of the trustees made the mistake of swiping something from his cell. A guy named Mikey, a nasty, toadying rat who had sticky fingers. He was always taking stuff from the other prisoners when he mopped the floors in the cell blocks. But nobody could prove that it was him who did it, and the guards weren’t interested in finding out who the thief was. I guess he took something that had a lot of sentimental value to Mazinar, not worth much to anybody but him…but he didn’t appreciate it being taken. Not at all. He asked around and found out who was probably responsible, then he paid a visit to Mikey. Nobody knows what really went on, just that Mikey returned what he’d stolen and that he wore splints on his broken fingers for over two months. He’s never taken anything since, actually. And he’s terrified of Mazinar. Not that anybody can blame him.”
Scott wasn’t sure that he wanted to hear any more, but at the same time it was like watching an impending train wreck. “Is that it?” he asked, wishing desperately that it was.
Tom grimaced. “Not quite. Told you he was a ruthless bastard. See, about eight months after he arrived there was a nasty prison riot. The Aryan boys started it actually, because they were feeling frisky one day and they wanted some more dark meat. They’d grown arrogant because there’d been no retaliation for what they’d done to Cameron’s rapists. Even the rapists, after they’d mended, had seen the wisdom of not trying to get revenge. They didn’t want to lose any more of their manhood than they already had. So the Aryans attacked the black boys, and it got ugly. Couple of guys died. And a guard got beaten up pretty badly. The whole place was on lockdown for over a month after they finally broke it up. And Mazinar was pissed about that. He went to the Latino gangs and made a deal with them just like he had with the Aryans, only in reverse. He paid them to find out who had started the riots, and also the ones specifically who killed the two guys and beat up the guard. Then they attacked those guys when they were least expecting it and gave them a good ol’ fashioned beat down. And when they were done, the Spics left a souvenir on each one of them.”
“A souvenir?” Scott gulped, not sure he wanted to know.
“Yeah,” Tom’s lips quirked up on one side. “They carved an ’R’ into their chests just under their necks where everybody could see ’em. An R for rioter. You can be sure that the warden was interested in those Rs. Every one of the Aryan boys who showed up in the infirmary with one got severely punished. And then Mazinar spread the word that if anybody else felt like starting a riot, they could be sure that they’d get the same thing. A deterrent, you see. And it worked. We haven’t had a prison riot here since. That’s why the warden loves Mazinar, and so do the guards. He does their job for them, keeping the prisoners in line. Also, him turning on the Aryan boys like that made everybody understand that he wasn’t on anybody’s ’side’. Only his own. You might think that somebody would get the idea of taking him out because of that fact, but he also spread the word that if anything ever happened to him - even a scratch - either he or the fancy, high-powered shark of a lawyer that comes to visit him once a week would arrange an ’accident’ for them, or would take it out on their families instead. Somebody was stupid enough to test that, once. He punched Mazinar in the face, and he might have done more if the guards hadn’t intervened. Not two days later somebody pushed him down some stairs and he ended up with a shattered right arm. Everybody got the message. In this cage full of animals, Mazinar’s the most savage one of all. He’s king, and nobody’s stupid enough to try to buck his rule by now.”
Dazed, Scott turned his head to stare at Antonio’s grave face. This story just didn’t seem possible! Yet…there was the fact that the other prisoners were either wary of - or downright afraid of - Antonio, and the guards seemed to respect him, and the warden…Jesus, he shuddered faintly. Just what had he gotten himself into? And what would happen to him if his cellmate ever discovered just why Scott had been transferred into his cell? Terror washed through him, as he began to realize the true nature of the deal with the Devil that he seemed to have struck.
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Antonio showed Scott around, although there wasn’t much to see. The library still used the old card file method of checking out books rather than a computer, so he would have to write down the name of the prisoner and the day he’d checked it out on a stiff yellow card with the book’s title and author typed on it and put it in the file drawer. Once a week they went through this file drawer to see which books were overdue, and the prisoner was not allowed to take any more out if he didn’t return the overdue book to the library. If the prisoner damaged or destroyed a book, his lending privileges would be revoked, and the price of the book would be taken out of the minimal salary that prisoners earned for doing the jobs they were assigned. There was a fiction section, and a large non-fiction section full of books on how to get your GED, as well as college textbooks for those prisoners working toward a college degree.
The computers had locks on them, preventing prisoners from surfing social media or porn sites. Antonio explained to Scott that the ban on social media sites was fairly recent; that some prisoners had been going on sites like Facebook to harass or taunt their victims or law enforcement officials. Prisoners had a one-hour limit on a computer, and had to log their names onto a register and wait if there were no computers open when they first entered the library. They had to be strict about the time limit, because otherwise men would hog the computers for hours on end playing on-line games or just surfing the web. He had to keep an eye on the register when the traffic became thicker in the library, so that everybody who wanted to could get a turn on the computers.
“Don’t let them harass or threaten you when you tell them they have to get off a computer, Scott,” Antonio told him. “Rules are rules. If they give you too much of a problem, either speak to me or to one of the guards.”
He nodded silently. Antonio touched his arm lightly. “Very good. That’s it for our tour, I’m afraid. Not much to see. Just a basic prison library. There won’t be much for us to do for a few hours, so you could find a book to read. I have some research to catch up on, so I’ll leave you in Tom’s capable hands for now. All right?”
“Okay,” Scott said, and Antonio smiled at him before walking away to sit down at one of the computers and immerse himself in whatever research that he was doing.
Scott wandered around for a bit, thinking that maybe he should get on one of the computers. But seeing scenes of the outside world would just depress him too much right now. So instead he perused the bookshelves in the fiction section and pulled down a mystery novel that looked promising, going over to sit down near Tom Hardy. He opened the book, but found that he couldn’t get into it as much as he would have liked.
Scott glanced over at Antonio, at his gravely handsome face. Here was a bigger mystery than the one in the book. What was the deal with Antonio? Why did the other prisoners seem to be scared of him? Why did the very warden acquiesce to his requests? Why did the guards seem to respect him to a certain extent? He was thoroughly puzzled.
He sighed, then jumped when a voice said acerbically from nearby: “Bet you’re wondering about him, eh?”
Scott stared wide-eyed at Tom hardy, wondering how the man could know what was in his thoughts. The older man’s lips twitched a bit. “Come on, kid. I’m not psychic,” he said dryly, laying a long finger on the page of his book to mark his place, “You’ve GOT to be wondering about him, seeing as you’re his new cellmate and all. Somebody who didn’t know the score would be mighty puzzled by Antonio Mazinar.”
Scott took in a deep breath. “Do you know the score?” he asked. “Can you tell me why everybody’s scared of him? And why the warden let me work here because Antonio asked him to?” the eagerness in his voice made Tom’s eyes twinkle a little.
“Yeah, I can tell you all about him. Well, parts of him, anyway. The man’s an enigma otherwise. As to why everybody’s scared of him around here - that’d be because he has to be the most ruthless bastard who ever walked into this place.”
Scott blinked. This statement didn’t gel with what he’d seen of Antonio so far, not at all. The man had been very kind to him, and well-mannered with everybody else. Scott hadn’t seem him threaten anybody except to just look at them. Still, there was the fact that the other prisoners jumped and practically ran away when Antonio even so much as glanced at them that backed up Tom’s statement…he gulped.
“H-How? How is he ruthless?” he asked, wondering if he really wanted to know.
Tom rubbed at the side of his nose with one finger. “At first he wasn’t. When he first arrived, he was just like any other prisoner. A little more polite than most, but nothing special about him otherwise. It all began with Cameron…” his eyes went a little sad at some memory.
“Who’s Cameron?” Scott asked, totally intrigued.
“Mazinar’s first cellmate. A sweet black boy, really nice. He got transferred into Mazinar’s cell about two months after he arrived, and the two of them hit it off right away. You could tell that they were…well…together. Together, together, not just using each other as a substitute for a woman. You know?”
“Yeah,” Scott husked, feeling a faint streak of jealousy for that other cellmate of Antonio’s.
“Guess I’d never pegged him as a homosexual, but the way he was with that boy…he treated him real good. And Cameron clearly worshipped the ground he walked on. Only problem is - in the pen, everybody is racist. Not like on the outside, where everybody’s a little bit racist, but really, REALLY racist. The whites hate the blacks, and the blacks despise the whites. And everybody hates the Latinos. They all run in gangs, and get into fights regularly. The black boys didn’t take to Cameron being with a white boy - or a Hispanic, or whatever he was - and they taught him a lesson.”
“A lesson?” Scott said, feeling a chill race down his spine.
Tom nodded, his face twisting. “They grabbed him one day when he wasn’t with Mazinar, a whole gang of ‘em. They dragged him off to a dark corner and gangbanged him, then beat the shit out of him. Permanent brain damage. That’s what the docs in the infirmary said. Because he’d been kicked in the head at least a dozen times. He was going to be a drooling vegetable for the rest of his life.” his voice was grim.
Scott felt sick. Tom continued quietly: “Mazinar went nuts when he learned what had happened. I’ve never seen anybody so angry, and I’ve been in prison for over thirty years. The worst thing was, it was a quiet anger. That cold kind that’s way scarier than hot anger. He visited Cameron in the infirmary one time before they shipped him off to a long-term care facility, and after that…he didn’t even bother to threaten the black boys who done him. He went straight to their rivals, the Aryan Nation boys, and offered them a thousand dollars in cash each to ‘even the score’. I heard that from one of them myself, afterward. But he also added a single request that even made the skinheads go a bit cold. But they did it. A thousand dollars in cold, hard cash for doing over a bunch of niggers? Nirvana for those dumb bastards. One-by-one, they waylaid the gang members who had attacked Cameron and they raped the shit out of them, then beat them to a pulp. And as a last something so that they’d never forget, Mazinar had the Aryan boys cut off one of their balls. When they did that, he also had them tell each one of the black boys that they should count themselves lucky that he hadn’t had them whack off their entire manhoods, and if they tried to retaliate against him for this then he’d see that they lost everything that made them a man…if not their lives. There’s some who say that he has a necklace of testicles somewhere in his cell,” Tom said, lowering his voice even more and glancing over at Antonio.
Scott was stunned. Somehow it didn’t seem possible that Antonio would do such a thing, although he could understand being (rightly) upset about what had happened to his lover. He just couldn’t put this rather grotesque story together with the man who’d climbed into bed with him last night and had held him so tenderly, the man who’d calmed his fears and had shielded him from the animals who looked at him with savage lust in their eyes.
“Is that…all?” he asked in a sickly tone of voice. “Is that why everybody’s afraid of him?”
“No,” Tom replied. “Although it was for awhile. The Aryan boys strutted around like they were his personal guard or something, and nobody could touch him. Then one of the trustees made the mistake of swiping something from his cell. A guy named Mikey, a nasty, toadying rat who had sticky fingers. He was always taking stuff from the other prisoners when he mopped the floors in the cell blocks. But nobody could prove that it was him who did it, and the guards weren’t interested in finding out who the thief was. I guess he took something that had a lot of sentimental value to Mazinar, not worth much to anybody but him…but he didn’t appreciate it being taken. Not at all. He asked around and found out who was probably responsible, then he paid a visit to Mikey. Nobody knows what really went on, just that Mikey returned what he’d stolen and that he wore splints on his broken fingers for over two months. He’s never taken anything since, actually. And he’s terrified of Mazinar. Not that anybody can blame him.”
Scott wasn’t sure that he wanted to hear any more, but at the same time it was like watching an impending train wreck. “Is that it?” he asked, wishing desperately that it was.
Tom grimaced. “Not quite. Told you he was a ruthless bastard. See, about eight months after he arrived there was a nasty prison riot. The Aryan boys started it actually, because they were feeling frisky one day and they wanted some more dark meat. They’d grown arrogant because there’d been no retaliation for what they’d done to Cameron’s rapists. Even the rapists, after they’d mended, had seen the wisdom of not trying to get revenge. They didn’t want to lose any more of their manhood than they already had. So the Aryans attacked the black boys, and it got ugly. Couple of guys died. And a guard got beaten up pretty badly. The whole place was on lockdown for over a month after they finally broke it up. And Mazinar was pissed about that. He went to the Latino gangs and made a deal with them just like he had with the Aryans, only in reverse. He paid them to find out who had started the riots, and also the ones specifically who killed the two guys and beat up the guard. Then they attacked those guys when they were least expecting it and gave them a good ol’ fashioned beat down. And when they were done, the Spics left a souvenir on each one of them.”
“A souvenir?” Scott gulped, not sure he wanted to know.
“Yeah,” Tom’s lips quirked up on one side. “They carved an ’R’ into their chests just under their necks where everybody could see ’em. An R for rioter. You can be sure that the warden was interested in those Rs. Every one of the Aryan boys who showed up in the infirmary with one got severely punished. And then Mazinar spread the word that if anybody else felt like starting a riot, they could be sure that they’d get the same thing. A deterrent, you see. And it worked. We haven’t had a prison riot here since. That’s why the warden loves Mazinar, and so do the guards. He does their job for them, keeping the prisoners in line. Also, him turning on the Aryan boys like that made everybody understand that he wasn’t on anybody’s ’side’. Only his own. You might think that somebody would get the idea of taking him out because of that fact, but he also spread the word that if anything ever happened to him - even a scratch - either he or the fancy, high-powered shark of a lawyer that comes to visit him once a week would arrange an ’accident’ for them, or would take it out on their families instead. Somebody was stupid enough to test that, once. He punched Mazinar in the face, and he might have done more if the guards hadn’t intervened. Not two days later somebody pushed him down some stairs and he ended up with a shattered right arm. Everybody got the message. In this cage full of animals, Mazinar’s the most savage one of all. He’s king, and nobody’s stupid enough to try to buck his rule by now.”
Dazed, Scott turned his head to stare at Antonio’s grave face. This story just didn’t seem possible! Yet…there was the fact that the other prisoners were either wary of - or downright afraid of - Antonio, and the guards seemed to respect him, and the warden…Jesus, he shuddered faintly. Just what had he gotten himself into? And what would happen to him if his cellmate ever discovered just why Scott had been transferred into his cell? Terror washed through him, as he began to realize the true nature of the deal with the Devil that he seemed to have struck.
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