The Wrong Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

now, man?’ asked Falstaff.
    Bishop turned to see him raising himselfup against the wall, still in pain. ‘You say, “Two weeks, maybe less,” and then you
     leave,’ he said.
    ‘Two weeks it is.’ The younger man tried to smile and failed. ‘Hey, maybe less.’
    Bishop nodded. ‘So get going.’ After a few seconds Falstaff still had not moved. ‘I didn’t do it for you,’ he said, ‘so don’t
     bother. Get moving. Keep to the left.’
    Falstaff let out a long breath. ‘Sure. Sure, man. I’m on it.’ He stepped over the body and ran towards the door. When he pushed
     it open he stopped by the second man on the floor outside and looked back at Bishop briefly. Then he was gone.
    Bishop studied the pencil shaft in Alvin’s eye. It was shiny with blood now, obscuring any prints it mighthave held. He jogged
     over to the door and checked outside. Still nobody, but that could change at anytime. Grabbing monkey boy’s wrists, he dragged him back into the room and dropped him next to his partner. Then he wiped the
     mirror piece clean and dropped it in the pool of blood near Alvin’s head.
    He walked back towards the door and stopped by the magazinehe’d used earlier. And people complained
GQ
had too many ads. He tore the covers off and put them in his pocket. He’d flush them in the cell later.
    Glancing across at the closed librarian’s door behind its barred wall of steel, he could still hear the TV through the frosted
     glass pane. The state employee was either asleep or still wrapped up in the football. Eitheroption was fine with Bishop.
     With a final look around the room, he pushed through the door and walked back to his cellblock.
    Fifteen days. He just needed to steer clear of any further trouble for the next fifteen days.

SEVEN
    Facing the exercise yard with his back to the wall of F Block, Bishop shook his head at the scene in front of him. A small
     guy was attempting to drive a long shot from thirty yards, only to crumple under an intercept from a huge point guard. He
     obviously hadn’t yet worked out that pace could only get you so far. To beat them you had tobe crafty.
    Standing there was about as much exercise as Bishop could hope for since the library incident a fortnight before. With the
     contract out on him, it was too dangerous. Even a trip to the shower room had to be carefully planned in advance.
    The official investigation had been a joke, as he knew it would be. As long as the status quo wasn’tdisrupted too much, nobody
     really gave a damn who got hurt. Alvin was currently on a morphine drip in the prison infirmary, but those who mattered knew
     what had gone down once his partner spilled his guts to the current chief of the Aryan Brotherhood. And of course, Bishop
     had immediately been labelled a ‘target of opportunity’. Within days, he had successfully fendedoff two separate attacks.
     Nothing since then, but it was only a matter of time.
    A smart man would have closed the book on the two Aryans when he had the chance, but cold-blooded executions had never really
     been his style. Besides, he figured two unnecessary killings here would have brought down additional security he could do
     without.
    Raising his head to the guard turrets atop the sixty-foot-high concrete walls on this west side, Bishop saw six – no, seven
     – equally spaced armed guards looking down. He knew behind those walls, surrounding the entire prison, lay a concrete no-man’s-land
     filled with cameras, motion detectors and highly trained dogs. And if, by some miracle, you made it that far youhad an impenetrable
     twenty-foot-high barrier of razor wire to look forward to.
    There was always a way, though. Always.
    He took a deep breath. The effect of the sun on his face was calmingand he closed his eyes, relishing the feeling. It would be so easy to let go for a few moments. Just a few. Since being sent
     down, Bishop’s sleep patternshad been erratic at best. And it wasn’t because of the noise.