Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,50

rear of the auditorium, an elevated platform that gave them ample oversight. They spoke in low voices, ignoring Evan and his escort.

“Wait here,” the CO told him, and vanished.

Evan sat at the nearest table. It stank of bleach.

Ten minutes passed and then another ten.

The double doors clanged open, and there was the CO with a man stooped to accommodate the belly-chain cuffs, one shoulder riding higher than the other, head lowered. They were backlit by the thin blue glow of morning, features masked in shadow. The CO halted there and prodded Danny forward, and he came walking that dead man’s prison walk. As the dark outline approached, Evan studied it for anything familiar—gait, posture, bearing—but came up blank.

The man reached the picnic table and wobbled a bit as he threw one leg over the bench and then the other, his hands pinned low at his sides.

The CO called out, “You got twenty minutes,” and withdrew.

The doors hinged shut slowly, taking the glare with them, and Evan got his first clear look at Danny Gallo. Nothing about him was recognizable except for the pockmarks and the blue eyes, now watery and dulled. Evan scanned him for any other signs of the boy he’d once known, but there was nothing to distinguish him from any of the other five thousand inmates stored within these walls. He wore signs of poverty on his face—crooked chipped teeth, papery skin, sunken eyes that spoke to malnutrition or opiate use or both. It wasn’t just damage but overuse, ninety years of hard living forced through a forty-year-old body.

“I don’t know no Frank Kassel,” he said.

“Me neither,” Evan said. “I used a fake name to sneak in to see you.”

“Well, I must be more important than I thought.” Amused, Danny rasped a hand across scraggly patches of facial hair. For an instant his eyes caught a glint of inner life, and Evan could see through all the wreckage to Danny beneath. But just as quickly he was gone. “Who are you, then?”

“Evan,” he said. “From Pride House.”

Danny leaned forward, pronating his hands so he could prop an elbow on the table’s ledge. “Evan?” he said. “You’d better be kidding me, now.”

“No, sir, I am not.”

“Holy shit.”

Danny rose in excitement, chains rattling, as if to greet Evan properly, but then remembered himself and sat back down. His movement sent a faint breeze across the table, carrying the sour tinge of body odor. Over on the platform, the COs had gone guard-dog stiff, suddenly on point. They assessed Danny for a moment, then relaxed and went back to chatting softly.

“What happened to you after that guy took you?” Danny said. “Where’d you go, man? Where’d you go?”

Evan said, “It’s a long story.”

“Ain’t they all.”

“How ’bout you?” It was creeping back into Evan’s voice, that street inflection. What a bizarre and unsettling subconscious shift. He reined in his diction. “Last I heard you were serving time back east.”

“Yeah, that was some bullshit. I was just the lookout.”

“How’d you land here?”

“More bullshit. I couriered some stuff from KC to Visalia. Yeah, I helped rock it up, but it was less than five hundred grams. I got paid three hundred fifty bucks. You believe that shit? Three hundred fifty bucks. The supplier flipped on me, reduced sentence for him giving up low-level guys like me. Never fucking trust the sambos. Me, I had priors, judge’s hands tied ’cuz of mandatory sentencing, you know the drill. Fifteen years. It’s the little fish gets fucked, right?” He shook his head. His hair was stringy, greasy, swaying across those pockmarked cheeks. “Three hundred fifty bucks. Fifteen years.”

“Fifteen years is rough,” Evan said. “But you’ll still have enough life left after to have a third act.”

Danny exhaled, a waft of halitosis and stale cigarettes. Evan blinked against it, held a poker face.

“I got in a tussle in the yard last June,” Danny said. “Guy got his head caved in on a dumbbell. Wudn’t my fault. They tacked on ten more years.”

Evan let it settle, the weight of another lost decade. “Maybe good behavior,” he said.

Danny looked up through the curtain of bangs, his eyes flashing blue. “Nah,” he said. “I ain’t gonna behave good. Not for all them days.” He noted something in Evan’s face, drew himself up as best he could, shoulders pinned back as far as the chains allowed. “Don’t you fucking pity me. I’m fine in here. Better, even. Last I was out, it was all fucked up. People walking around with the