Billy Rags by Ted Lewis Read Free Book Online Page B

what?”
    I shrugged.
    â€œCracken,” Creasey said, lowering his voice in inverse proportion to his anger, “we have your file. From time to time we even read it. Not a lot in it, really, as far as any remission’s concerned. But at the moment it’s an open file. It would take very little to close it.”
    I smiled at him. He turned away again and marched off.
    â€œSo now what?” said Ray Crompton.
    â€œSo we keep asking Creasey why the new regulations.”
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œSo that eventually he’ll get so sick and tired of the same bleeding question that he’ll pass the buck on to Moffatt and Moffatt will have to answer us himself.”
    â€œWhere will that get us?”
    â€œI dunno,” I said, going back into my cell. “But at least we’ll have the satisfaction of getting Moffatt on the spot.”
    I sat down on my pit. The bastards. They’d do anything to remind you what you were. Well, maybe we could remind them back.
    Suddenly a thought struck me, and for a moment I didn’t feel so bad.
    â€œHere,” I said to Ray. “Does Walter know the news?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said Ray, getting it and beginning to smile. “I don’t think so.”
    I smiled back.
    â€œWalter’ll take it especially hard,” I said. “All that mohair going to the wall.”
    â€œWhy don’t we go and tell him?” said Ray.
    â€œJust what I was thinking,” I said.
    So we kept on at Creasey until the buck was finally passed. Moffatt called a meeting.
    The meeting was set up in one of the visiting rooms on the end of the wing. Moffatt kept us waiting for a good twenty minutes before he showed up. Eventually he swept in flanked by Creasey and Bastin, the chief screw. Bastin whipped up a wooden chair and the Chief sat down, self-composed, almost prim, waiting for the murmuring to stop. Creasey and Bastin stood either side of him, slightly to the back, like advisers to the king.
    Moffatt was in his mid-forties, slim, about five foot ten inches. He was a bit like Walter in the care he took with his clothes. His suits were nothing like as expensive as Walter’s but because of the way he wore them and looked after them you could hardly notice the difference. Outside, he wore snappy, Sinatra-type felt hats that gave him a misleadingly rakish effect; in fact he was an extremely self-controlled, unyielding man, a man who didn’t care very much for other people and cared less about what they thought of him.
    When all the rhubarb subsided, Moffatt flicked at his knee to remove the non-existent fluff and said:
    â€œI have called this meeting to enable you to put to me any questions that might clear up misunderstandings or confusion arising from the new orders which come into effect next Monday.”
    Of course, he knew there wasn’t any confusion. Just objections. So it was apparent how the meeting was going to turn out.
    There was a short silence after Moffatt’s first statement. Then the first con rose. Eddie Brooks, fifty-eight years old, four years to run, preferred it inside to out, a screw pleaser.
    â€œOnly one thing, sir,” he said. “The shoes. My feet aren’t too good and the baseball boots ease them up a bit for me. I mean, is that section absolutely, er, compulsory?”
    Moffatt clicked his fingers and Creasey leant forward and gave him a copy of the regulations. Moffatt’s fingers snapped the paper into some kind of authoritarian stiffness and he made a scene of flicking his eyes up and down the list as if he couldn’t immediately find the relevant section.
    When he finally chose to discover it he read it out, word for word, then looked at Brooks. Brooks said: “Yes, sir, I know what it says , but . . .”
    â€œIf you know what it says you know what it means. So in that case it must be perfectly clear to you that prison shoes will be worn at all