A Garden of Vipers by Jack Kerley Read Free Book Online Page A

“You’re looking strange.”
    â€œFlu coming on, maybe. I don’t feel good.”
    â€œWhat didn’t Taneesha understand, Harwood?”
    Harwood wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’m feeling rotten all of a sudden.”
    â€œTell me about Taneesha. Then you can head to the infirmary.”
    Harwood suddenly stopped speaking and looked into his lap. His eyes widened.
    â€œJesus.”
    â€œWhat is it, Leland?”
    â€œI pissed myself, and didn’t even feel it. What the hell’s happening?”
    He dropped the phone to the counter and stood unsteadily. His blue institutional pants were dark to the knees with urine. His face was white, his hair sweat-matted to his forehead. He convulsed from somewhere in his midsection, dropping to his knees, toppling the chair.
    â€œGuard,” I yelled to the uniformed man in the corner of the visitors’ area. “Sick man here.”
    Harwood clung to the counter with his tattooed fingers, weaving. I watched him shudder to restrain vomit, saw his cheeks fill, his mouth open. A flood of yellow foam poured over his tongue. His eyes rolled into white and he slid to the floor.
    Doors on the containment side burst open and two uniformed men rushed to Harwood. He convulsed on the floor, heels and head slamming the gray concrete. His bowels opened.
    I suddenly found myself alone on the visitors’ side, the man beside me having retreated from the horrific spectacle. The monstrous convict visitee was still across the glass, watching as the two guards rolled Harwood onto a stretcher. I saw the convict lean over for a closer look, his eyes a mix of fear and concern.
    Then, for the span of a heartbeat, I saw him smile.
    Â 
    We pulled away from the prison. Harwood had been taken to the infirmary. When we’d gone a couple miles, I climbed in the backseat, lay down with my hands behind my head. Harry and I had traveled this way often, him driving, me reclining in back. When I was a child and my father’s psychotic angers would infest his brain, I slipped from the house and hid in the backseat of our station wagon. A backseat felt secure to this day. It wasn’t the officially sanctioned method of travel, thus we limited it to back roads and anonymous highways.
    â€œHarwood exploded like a volcano?” Harry asked the rearview mirror. “Think it has anything to do with our case?”
    I thought a moment. “He was a smug smart-ass, a gamester,” I said to the back of Harry’s square head. “Probably didn’t make a lot of friends. Could have been payback.”
    â€œOr just some bad prune-o,” Harry said, referring to an alcoholic concoction brewed up in prisons everywhere. “What’d he say about Taneesha?”
    â€œHe was being a funny boy, but when I mentioned her murder it was like throwing ice water in his face. He serioused up a bit, said she was naive and didn’t know how the world worked. And that he was going to be set up when he got out. He wasn’t going to be a day laborer anymore.”
    â€œSet up? Like being taken care of financially?”
    I said, “That’s what I took it to mean.”
    â€œSo Harwood thought Taneesha didn’t know how the world worked?”
    â€œWe’ve met a hundred guys like Harwood, Harry, how do all of them think the world works?”
    Harry thought a moment. Looked in the rearview.
    â€œYou got enough money, you do what you want. When you want. To whoever you want.”
    â€œThat about sums it up,” I said.

CHAPTER 10
    To Lucas it looked like any deserted warehouse near the State Docks: brown brick, busted windows with boards behind, shattered glass on the sidewalk. There was a single door in front, rippled steel painted green, the kind of closure that retracted upward. A loading dock was to the side, strewn with crumbling pallets. He could smell the river in the distance.
    Lucas took a