White Night

Chapter 57

Central Booking was worse than the holding cell. At least there it was only two or three to a cell. Here, Nikolai was crammed in with a dozen others, most with teeth missing, sores on their drug-screwed faces, and stinking of piss or worse.

He hadn't heard from Treganno since the day before. The Romanos had pulled their support, so Galina was phoning another lawyer who would get him out of here. He'd been promised partial immunity, which meant he shouldn't have been sitting in this swamp of body odour with people he wouldn't waste a bullet on, but the bitch cop backed out of the deal when the timer blew early.

His lawyer would straighten her out. He didn't build the damn bomb, and she couldn't prove that he knew it was set for 8:45 pm unless she could read his mind. It was too bad the full blast didn't go off; she wouldn't have been alive to back out of anything. But at least she was moving his family into witness protection. They would be safe until he got out and caught up with Galina.

A guard walked past, handing out more stale sandwiches and boxes of juice. The other prisoners rushed forward, clamouring to sink what was left of their rotting teeth into the foul-tasting bread. He could wait; his new lawyer would get him proper food, and a suitable place to eat it.

A drug addict approached, his bony fingers clutching a box of juice and a sandwich, the grime from his fingernails leaving crescent-shaped marks on the bread.

"Wanna sandwich?" he asked, spraying as he spoke.

"No." Nikolai waved him away and turned his head. He couldn't bear watching the grey chunks of bread rolling around in the mutt's open mouth.

"What about juice?" he asked, rushing forward and spraying the juice on Nikolai's pants.

"What the hell? Go away, you piece of shit," he shouted, wiping at his pants.

The addict dropped the juice box and ran to the far corner of the cell, but Nikolai knew from the addict's face that this wasn't juice on his pants.

Kuklinski...not him but another...

"Guard!" he shouted, fumbling with the button on his pants.

"Guard. I've been poisoned!"

"Yeah. We all have," laughed one of his cellmates, prompting snickers from the rest of the pigs in the sty.

His button undone, he threw his pants down and tried to step out of them. Laughter erupted from his cellmates as he staggered in his underpants, but the liquid on his legs had soaked in already.

"Guard!" he screamed again.

The room started to swirl, the faces around him morphing into ghoulish figures as he gasped for air, his body on fire as the floor slammed into his head. His muscles jerked and wrenched his body in different directions as acid rushed up his throat, as his stomach contents emptied onto the ground and stuck to his face as he convulsed, smashing his head into it and the concrete underneath. Shapes rushed at him while he vomited again and his mind formed its last word.

Romano...