The Tower (1999) Read Free

each side and a sack tied over his head. He didn't flinch as the other inmates taunted him and screamed, banging the bars. It wasn't often that a new visitor came for them to play with. Allander was thirty-three years old.
    He was placed in Unit 10A, and asked to turn around and back up against the door. From the safety of the platform, the larger guard reached through the bars and unlocked his handcuffs and thigh strap, then pulled the sack off his head and untied the gag. Allander wore a mask of calm, apparently not intimidated by the shrieks that carried up and down the Hole.
    The ruckus quieted as the prisoners tired of their new toy. They resigned themselves to bed, their heads settling to rest on the stained yellow pillows. After the shouts stopped echoing, after not an inmate stirred in the jet, black night, Allander drew the thin blanket to his face and shook uncontrollably.
    On rare occasions, high tide was moderate enough that the top three levels stayed above the ocean's brink. The water would remain just under the vents of Level Ten, so the guards would open them to aid the air circulation. In the deathly heat of the summer, the prisoners would lie bare-chested on their cots, fanning themselves with their blankets and dousing their bodies with water from the toilets. But as dusk fell like a funeral veil across the sky, the cool San Francisco air crept through the vents and into the bones of the prisoners. The guards would laugh as the inmates shuddered and clamored in their metal rooms.
    On these nights, Allander would retreat to the safety of his bed and stare through the thin gaps in the vents. As moonlight spread across the water, it engendered figures and shapes, creatures and monsters that crept in the swirls and eddies. He stifled his cries as he saw clowns dancing above the whitecaps, their long, white arms reaching toward him through the waves, their laughing red mouths rippling in the water's surface, mouthing threats and delights eternal.
    Only once did he lose control, and he hurled himself against the metal bars, screaming in despair. "JUST COME IN! Come in now and take me. TAKE ME!"
    He collapsed, cowering in the corner under the vent. His eyes bulged wide in dreadful anticipation as he slowly became aware of the laughter filling the air around him.

    Chapter 3
    I N Unit 2A of the Dungeon was Tommy "Cuckoo T" Giacondia, perhaps the most famous living Mafia hitman. Tommy at one time had weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds, but since his imprisonment five years before, he had lost over a hundred. Now he looked thin and weak, his cheeks and eyes filled with shadow. His weight loss had no effect on his vocal capacity, however; he constantly bellowed complaints up the Hole, most of which dealt with the food. Evidently, Tommy was used to a more varied diet than a loaf for every meal.
    "This shit," he would say. "I wouldn't feed this to my worst enemy. I wouldn't make his dog eat this shithouse brick if it pissed on my mother's grave."
    This was perhaps because he dealt with his worst enemies (or those of the Berlucciano family) in far more colorful ways. His signature disposal method was an original one. He would tie up his victim in a closet of an abandoned warehouse, and then cut off the tips of his fingertips about midway down the nail. He would leave them to bleed to death or to die slowly of dehydration. They were usually found weeks after he left them, their fingers scraped down to the top knuckles from trying to escape.
    Tommy ran into trouble on the Merloni hit. He had finished only the first two fingers of the right hand when the cops arrived at the scene. Tommy came out shooting and took two bullets to the gut, but was rushed to the hospital and lived to stand trial.
    The victim testified with a large bandage wrapped around his hand. When photographs of Tommy's last hits were circulated to the jury, an accountant in the front row fainted. Needless to say, Tommy wound up with life, no parole.