Pike returned to his Jeep, and turned toward the ocean. He followed Sunset Boulevard west, through Brentwood and the Palisades to the Pacific Coast Highway, then up the coast toward Malibu. The ocean was gray, and crowded with sailboats and surfers, come out on the weekend to play.

Pike turned up into Malibu Canyon, and drove for a while, leaving the people and houses behind. He found a gravel fire road, and drove until he came to a bluff deep in the hills with no one else around. Pike shut off his Jeep, then got out and stood on the earth.

One night four men Frank Meyer did not know and to whom he had no connection entered his home. They killed Frank, his family, and everything he held dear. Frank was left with nothing except how he lived, and how he died.

Frank Meyer’s fingerprints were found on Earvin “Moon” Williams’s pistol. A postmortem examination of Williams’s elbow revealed that the ulnar collateral ligament was ruptured, along with cracks in both the ulna and radius in the forearm. The break in the radius bone was of the “green wood” variety, and damaged the surrounding tissue so severely that blood pooled in the joint until the time of Williams’s death. This was how Pike wanted to remember his friend. Chubby, out of shape, and a dozen years out of the game, Frank had moved to defend his family, engaged a superior force, and lost his life in the effort. Frank the Tank to the end.

Pike returned to the Jeep and opened a gun case on the backseat. He took out his pistol and three speed-loaders, two of which were already charged with six bullets, and one which was only half loaded.

Pike raised the Python, fired six times, then reloaded. He fired six more shots, reloaded, then did it again, and finally a last time, firing only three shots. Twenty-one shots, in all.

“Good-bye, Frank.”

Pike put his gun away, and drove the long road home.

46

THREE WEEKS LATER, one day after they removed the cast from his arm, Michael Darko scowled at the flat, dry fields as they approached Corcoran, California, and thought, This must be the far side of the moon. Darko was surprised that morning when he was herded onto a bus and told he was being relocated to Corcoran State Prison. Darko had spent the past two weeks at Terminal Island, a federal facility he thought would be his home for the next many years. He asked why he was being transferred, but no one offered an answer.

Another inmate on the ride up told him Corcoran was a very bad place with many dangerous people, but now, after four hours in the bus and seeing the prison in the distance, Darko was not so much scared that this place would be dangerous, but disappointed because it was ugly.

After what he had known in Bosnia, American prisons and American prisoners did not frighten him, just as American policemen did not frighten him. Michael Darko had come from a dangerous place, and was, himself, a dangerous man.

Even as the prison grew in the van’s dusty windows, Darko was planning to establish contact with other East European inmates, and forge relationships with the Aryan Brotherhood. Many of these associations were already in place, and would be useful in building an empire.

Ten minutes later, the van entered the facility through a rolling gate, then drove into a small parking area where several guards waited. Darko and the two inmates sharing the ride had to wait for the guards to enter the van and unlock them. Each of the three were wearing hand and ankle restraints, and had been locked to separate seats well out of reach of each other. This was done because violent inmates often tried to kill, maim, fornicate with, and sometimes eat each other on the long drive up to nowhere.

The guards entered the van one by one, unhooked an inmate, and walked him off-one guard per inmate. Darko was taken off last. He gave his guard a merciless leer.

“Home, sweet home! It is a beautiful place, is it not?”

The guard had seen tough-guy swagger before, and paid no attention.

The three new inmates were herded through the admitting process. They were stripped, searched, probed, and X-rayed, then were fingerprinted, photographed, and had a DNA sample removed and recorded. They were sprayed with de-louser, made to shower, and given new clothes and shoes. The clothes and shoes they were wearing when they arrived were discarded. The allowable possessions transferred with them were inspected, logged into their records, and returned.

The admission process took forty minutes, during which the chief guard-of-the-watch lectured them on the dos and don’ts of Corcoran, read them a set of written rules, and issued their housing assignments.

Michael Darko was assigned a cell in Level Three Housing, a facility for homicidal offenders capable of self-restraint. Two guards walked him to his new home, turned him over to yet more guards, who processed him into their facility. He was then given fresh bedding, and led to his cell.

He arrived during the afternoon break, a time at which the cells on the main block were open, and main block prisoners were allowed to mingle in the common areas.

The two guards brought Darko to his cell and pointed out a sheet-less bunk.

“This side. Your bunkie’s a brother named Nathaniel Adama-bey. Calls himself a Moor. He’s in for two homicides, but he ain’t so bad.”

“I am sure we will become great friends.”

“I’m sure you will.”

The guards left, and Darko turned to his bunk. He unrolled the mattress, straightened it, then picked up his sheet. It was coarse, and stiff with plenty of starch. Darko hated making a bed, and wished he had one of his whores to take care of it. Then he chuckled. Maybe he would make this Nathaniel Adama-bey his whore, and then Nathaniel could do it.

Darko unfolded the sheet, and shook it into the air to open it. The sheet billowed out, and floated for a moment like a great white bubble. The bubble was still in the air when Michael Darko slammed face-first into the wall, breaking his nose. Then an arm as hard as steel locked around his throat, and something stung his back like an angry wasp, low on his side over his kidney-stickstickstick, stickstickstick, stickstickstick-a sharp pricking that happened too fast to hurt, and moved from his side to his ribs-stickstickstick, stickstickstick.

Michael Darko tried to rise, but the man kept him off balance-stickstickstick-until a hissing, hot breath scalded his ear.

“Don’t die yet, not yet.”

Darko was flipped over. He saw a short Asian man with tremendous shoulders and arms, whose face was dimpled with scars as if from horrible wounds. Michael Darko tried to raise his hands, but couldn’t. He tried to defend himself, but was beyond all that. The man’s arm moved as furiously as a needle on a sewing machine-stickstickstick, stickstickstick-punching Darko in the chest with an ice pick.

Michael Darko watched himself being killed.

The man suddenly grabbed Darko’s face, and leaned close with his rage, close enough for a kiss.

“You’re gonna meet Frank Meyer, you piece of shit. Tell’m Lonny sends his love.”

The man shoved the ice pick hard into Darko’s chest, all the way to the hilt, and abruptly walked away.

Michael Darko looked down at the handle, protruding from his chest. He wanted to pull it out, but his hands wouldn’t move. Darko slid off his bunk into his sheet, and the folds draped over him like a shawl. His back and chest felt as if ants were migrating under his skin, and seemed to be swelling. Darko tried to call for help, but could not find the breath. He could not breathe. He felt light-headed, and cold, and afraid.

The white sheet grew red.