Pain Killers by Jerry Stahl Read Free Book Online

another sip of chamomile and smacked his lips. “Unless they’re not. We do random UAs.”
    “Piss tests?”
    “Piss tests. Right.”
    I felt a tingle of panic. A tiny quarter smile rode over the warden’s cowcatcher jaw. “That’s not going to be a problem, is it, Mr. Rupert?”
    “What, the piss test? No. God no. Of course not. No problem at all.”
    I let my voice trail off. Or maybe it just wandered off on its own, wanting to get as far away from me as possible. The warden let me sputter out.
    “Just so we’re both clear,” I started up again, “I’m here because they want me to find out about the old man, the German. Everything else—helping guys get clean, teaching them life skills—that’s great. It’s fantastic. But, at the end of the day, it’s gravy.”
    “Gravy. Uh-huh.” The warden sat back and tented his fingers again. “You, sir, are an interesting fella.”
    The way he said it—like he had footage of me touching myself at bus stops—made me cringe all the way to my toenails.
    The warden stood and extended a dainty hand. For a dizzy second, I didn’t know whether to shake it or kiss it. “Well,” he continued, “I guess you’ll just have to decide your own level of commitment. Colfax?”
    The big CO stepped forward with a cup sealed in a plastic bag. He produced it from behind his back, like a dog treat. The warden smiled again. This was fun.
    “You know the drill, right? Print your name right on the cup and seal ’er up tight.”
    Now it was my chance to smile. “You need this now?”
    The warden clapped me on the back. “Of course not. Bring it tomorrow. Now how about we get to your group? Like I say, I’ve selected some fellas I think can benefit from a week of recovery know-how. Here’s the team,” he said, and slid a stack of folders in my direction.
    I stared at them, certain I should say something—but what? “You know, I’m not really here to—”
    “Oh, come on,” he interrupted, mistaking my reticence as some kind of prissiness in the face of raw crime. “You being ex-police and all, you’re not going to be shocked at what some of these fellows have done.”
    “I’ll read it sitting down,” I said, “just in case.”
    “Read it sitting down. That’s a good’n. Hear that, Colfax?”
    “Long as he pees standing up,” said the corn-fed guard. More prison yuks.
    There was a long, odd silence, then the warden snapped his fingers again.
    “Rupert!”
    The warden crooked his finger, then leaned forward himself, thrusting his Greyhound bus of a jaw over the table in my direction. What would life be like with a cudgel like that under your lower lip?
    “You know, Rupert, there’s one thing you learn in my line of work.”
    The warden clicked his tongue and grinned, plainly on fire to tell me what it was. I didn’t bite. (Life, for a neurotic, so often boiled down to a battle of wills in which only one side realized there was a battle going on.) The warden brushed imaginary dandruff off his lapels and re-tented his hands, steepled forefingers meeting at the tips and pointing my way. The gesture could not have been more menacing if he’d been aiming a Luger.
    “You get pretty good at reading a man.”
    “Really?” This time I decided to go along. Why antagonize? “How do you do that, Warden?”
    “You’re asking me
how
?”
    “Unless it’s a trade secret. Something you take a blood oath to keep under your hat at warden school.”
    The warden recoiled visibly.
    This always happened. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I was cool. But in the presence of those whose favor and approval I most needed, I regressed. Succumbed to some residual antiauthority reflex, as unseemly in a man my age as a Rolling Stones lapping-tongue tattoo on your grandmother’s breast. Substance-abuse professionals said you stopped maturing at the age you started getting loaded. Forever fifteen. The warden leaned toward me. “You want to know how I read guys? It’s simple. I