Ninety-Eight
“It's not like the Godfather movies, ya know? I mean, your average citizen would be surprised if they knew the truth about these big, bad mobsters .” Scorn dripped off each word of his description. “The real mobsters, the big-time, old school guys like Tony Sorrell and Carmine Gambino, they don't get caught.” The Pentonville guard made a sound of disgust. He had no respect for the mobsters of old, but he appreciated their respect for tradition and order.
“It's the new generation like Corinthos who end up here. And when they do, they spend the first night crapping their pants outta fear. They're so used to having other guys do their dirty work that they don't know how to cope with life in here.” The guard paused in his narrative just long enough to spit a huge gob of slimy tobacco juice into the corner of the passageway.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and continued on down the dimly lit hallway. “The warden had Corinthos on suicide watch. That was,” the guard admitted, “mostly because of his claustrophobia, ya know?”
Apparently a response was not required. The guard continued his narrative as he led the way to the prison morgue. “Anyway, Corinthos was okay at first. Kinda jumpy, but determined not to let the other inmates see him break.” He paused before a metal door. “Here we are.”
The guard stepped aside and allowed the other man to enter the morgue. He nodded toward a bank of metal drawers on the far side of the room. “He's in the fourth from the top,” the guard instructed. “Ya gotta tug a little bit,” he added when the drawer would not open. “Yeah, like that.”
He noticed the other man's quizzical expression as he took his first look at Sonny's body. “We left him as he was. Didn't clean him up or nothing. The warden figured you might want to see for yourself how things were when Corinthos died.”
“You still haven't told me exactly how he died.” Marcus Taggert stared impassively down at the still body of his half-brother. Sonny's face and chest were covered with dried blood that ran into his ears and hair. His chest was mottled with bruises, but otherwise he seemed undamaged.
"You want to know how Corinthos died?" The guard tapped on a nearby monitor. “The security tapes are all cued up. You can come see it for yourself when you're ready.”
