Slocum's Breakout - Jake Logan [8]
“We have to take Valenzuela with us.”
“That gent you was talkin’ with when Mick picked the fight?”
“Mick?”
“Leon Mickleson. Ugly son of a bitch. Most folks inside the walls got more brains in their pinky than he does in his whole danged body, and that’s bein’ real unkind since most prisoners are dumb as rocks.” Doc looked hard at Slocum. “That’s something else I seen in you. You’re smart. Might not be book smart, but you’re always thinkin’ and ’less I miss my guess, you come out on top more often than not.”
“I’m in here,” Slocum said with some disdain.
“There’s a real big story ’bout that,” Doc said. “I’d bet on it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Jarvis ain’t yer name. When the guards call you that, it takes a second for you to remember that’s what you’re bein’ called now.” Doc snorted. “Fact is, like Mick, I knew Jarvis. Dumber even than Mick, he was. Now there might be two Jasper Jarvises in the world, but I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“How do I get in touch with José Valenzuela?”
Doc laughed so hard Slocum wondered what was wrong. Doc wiped tears from his eyes and pointed at him. When he finally caught his breath from the laughter, he pointed at the wall behind Slocum.
“Look for a loose stone. He’s in the next cell.”
Slocum took a few minutes to find this stone, then pulled it out so he could peer into the next cell.
“Go on, give him a holler,” Doc said. “He ain’t got company in there. It takes time fer the warden to get in new inmates ’cuz a passel of residents been paroled.”
Slocum called out to José.
“Ah, the novio,” Valenzuela said, laughing. “You have come for me? Am I supposed to claw my way out or will you do the work for me?”
His attitude irritated Slocum, especially after spending five miserable days in a dark hole nestled up against the cell block’s foundations.
“If we can get out, there’s a way through the wall. It’ll take four of us.”
“Four?”
“We’ll need a pick or pry bar,” Slocum said.
“That is easy. I know where the tools are kept. When I go on work detail, I will hide a pick. The guards never check,” Valenzuela said. “When will we make this escape?”
Slocum mumbled. He hadn’t gotten that far yet in his planning. He didn’t even know how they were going to get free of their individual cells.
“Doc, the one with you, he knows where this hole is?”
“Murrieta does. He’ll be the fourth one.”
“Procipio Murrieta? You have fallen in with desperate company, hombre.”
“We can get with him tomorrow in the exercise yard,” Slocum said. He motioned Doc to silence when the man started hissing.
Then he looked over his shoulder and saw a guard staring at him, tapping his truncheon against his left palm in a slow, thoughtful way.
3
“What’s goin’ on?” the guard asked. He rattled the bars in the cell door with his truncheon.
“I’ll tell you what’s goin’ on,” Doc said, jumping to his feet and going to the cell door. He interposed himself between the guard and Slocum, who quickly replaced the stone from the wall. “He went buggy down in the hole. He’s talkin’ to the damned wall! I won’t put up with it. Gimme another roommate! I demand to talk to Warden Harriman. Get him the hell out of here. He might be dangerous!”
The guard laughed, shook his head, and moved on, never once looking back at Slocum or asking about the hole in the wall.
“He didn’t see the hole,” Slocum said, sitting back and heaving a deep sigh.
“He prob’ly did. But I gave him somethin’ else to think on. Always gets a laugh when I say it might be dangerous locked up with whoever’s in the cell.” Doc hung out the cell door and looked around the cell block, then he laughed. “This place is chock-full of dangerous gents, and most of’em are in guard’s uniforms.”
Slocum thanked his lucky stars that Doc understood the system