Page 59 of Ransom
"You do this a lot?" I asked.
"Do what?"
"Bribe corrections officers."
He smiled at me. "Darlin', I do whatever gets the job done."
Darlin'. Nobody had ever called me that in my life, and Winston threw it around like chicken feed. My cock paid attention every time he said it though. The rest of me told it to stand down, on account of us being in a prison storage closet with a job to do.
"Sit," he said.
I stayed where I was.
"You gonna make me say please?"
I took the chair across the table from him.
He looked at the empty chair next to his and then at me, but didn't say anything about it.
"How you want to run this?" he said.
"You're the one with the badge."
"Badge ain't going to do much in here. We're off-paper. Whatever I get out of Joe, I get because you and I work this together."
"Then we make it happen."
"Yeah." He held my eyes. "We."
He left the word sitting there. I let it sit. The bulb buzzed.
Then his face went clean, and he tipped his head at the door. The boots came up the hall a second later.
The door opened.
Joe Dancing came in cuffed and looking like he'd been pulled away from something better, which for a man doing time at Los Lunas probably meant lunch. He was shorter than I remembered. Wiry, buzzed head, a neck tattoo that had gone soft and blue with age. He sat down, put his cuffed hands on the table, and looked at Winston first.
Then he looked at me.
Suddenly, I was seventeen again. I was in the back of a truck on a dirt road south of Las Cruces, Dolano's blood drying on my shirt, Joe Dancing was telling me to stop crying because men didn't cry and if I was going to act like a bitch, I could walk home.
"Ransom fucking Lanza," Joe said.
"Joe," I said.
"Look at you." He grinned, all teeth. "All grown up and still can't hold a stare. Who's the gringo?"
Winston leaned forward. "Bonney Ranch."
Joe's smile faded.
"You worked for him. Now you're in here." Winston kept his voice easy. "I'm guessing those two things are connected."
Joe worked his jaw. Whatever had been holding his face together went out of it all at once.
"I'm out tomorrow," he said.
"Congratulations," Winston said, and sat back.
