Shattered by Jay Bonansinga Page B

smiled.
    â€œOfficer Tomkins will escort you to the cafeteria where y’all will have ten minutes, no more, no less.”
    Splet gave her a polite nod. “I understand, thank you.”
    â€œYou may not pass anything other than documents or cigarettes to the inmate. You may not take anything.”
    â€œI understand.”
    â€œYou may not touch or come into contact with the prisoner at any time.”
    â€œNo problem.”
    â€œOfficer Tomkins,” the big gal nodded at her associate, and the beefy guard in the buzz cut grunted something that Splet didn’t understand, then started toward the E-Wing corridor to the left.
    Splet followed.
    They passed through a series of steel-riveted doors, the monkey-house noises of the cafeteria rising and bouncing off the iron walls like sonar blips in a submarine. The air was close and smelled of BO and bleach and fear. The two men did not speak. Splet’s heart was beating faster now. The noise rose and rose, until they finally entered the main cafeteria—Visitation Block E.
    It was like a scene out of Dante’s Inferno performed by a trailer park full of crystal meth addicts. Hundreds of families and couples of all shapes and sizes, including errant children, milled around long tables arrayed across the football-field-size cement floor. The cavernous room, with its low ceiling of exposed plumbing and fluorescent lights, stank of fermented grease and urine, and positively vibrated with squeals, shouts, howls, laughter, and sobbing. A sense of fatigue pervaded the room, from the faded inmate togs to the angst-ridden faces.
    Splet took a seat at the end of a nearby table, and the guard told him they would bring Milambri down.
    The guard left, and Splet waited patiently with his heart pounding and his briefcase latched securely in front of him. The only other occupants of the table were an elderly couple at the opposite end, holding hands and scowling at each other and saying nothing. The old man, dressed in wrinkled orange garb, looked wizened and gray and tubercular, as though he had only weeks to live and was just waiting for the time to elapse.
    â€œThe hell you want?”
    Splet whirled at the sound of Big Ben Milambri’s bourbon-cured voice.
    The gray-haired man stood behind Splet, towering over the table, a potbellied golem in flame-colored fatigues. The man’s craggy face was a relief map of wrinkles, his dark Sicilian eyes like two salt-cured olives set deep in their sockets. His massive forearms were profusely tattooed and crawling with wiry black hair.
    â€œMr. Milambri, hello, good to see you,” Henry Splet offered, rising to shake hands.
    The big man made no effort to shake the cameraman’s hand. “I was in the middle of a game of Texas hold ’em and I was winnin’ so I will ask you one more time: What. The. Hell. Do. You. Want?”
    â€œPlease, sir, have a seat.” Henry motioned at the folding chair next to him. “I promise this won’t take more than a minute or two.”
    Milambri glanced around the noisy hall. Fifteen feet away, against an adjacent wall, a morose guard was chewing on his fingernails, pretending that he cared about what was going on around him. At a neighboring table, a woman in hair curlers busily masturbated an inmate through his pants.
    â€œAw, what the hell,” Milambri grunted, and sat down in the folding chair, making the legs creak with his weight. “What difference does it make?”
    Henry Splet measured his words. “Do you remember me?”
    â€œSure, you’re the little hemorrhoid with the camera.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    Milambri grinned. His front tooth was rotten, capped in dull gold. “Came with that Oriental broad, what’s her name.”
    Splet told him.
    â€œThat’s the one…Anna Fong…nice little piece of Chinese chicken.”
    â€œShe’s Thai, actually.”
    Milambri fixed his dead stare on