The Wicked Go to Hell Read Free Page A

face leaning over him. Frank had light-brown hair. He was fine-featured and his eyes were blue, quick and intense. Hal reckoned that with both eyes in good shape, Frank would be a good-looking man.
    “You heard what the screw said,” he muttered. “No fights in here. You’ve got the creeps, that’s normal. But it’s not a reason for taking it out on me!”
    The arrival of the Bull temporarily suspended their spat.
    “Listen up, you two!” he said. “I forgot to say one thing: you mustn’t use the bedding to hang yourselves with!… House rules don’t allow it!”
    He gave a laugh, mightily pleased with the witticism.
    “Seeing you two, no one could say you look as fresh as daisies. My, it must have been some roughing-up they dished out! I tell you, that’s one party I’m real sorry I missed! Just look at you, so beat up you look like brothers!”
    He had replaced the first little flower with another one, freshly picked. The one he was chewing on now was a nasturtium. A yellow nasturtium, delicate and shaped like the very small horn of an ancient gramophone.
    “I’ll make you piss blood,” he promised as he walked away.
    Frank sighed:
    “Brothers…”
    The word had shocked him. He sat on the end of Hal’s cot.
    “Lemme see!” he barked.
    “See what?”
    “Your cuts and grazes.”
    “You want to know what yours look like?”
    “That’s part of it.”
    “You want to use me as a mirror, is that it?”
    “Basically, yes!”
    Hal gave a derisive laugh:
    “Why not show me yours?… May I?”
    Without waiting for a reply, he reached out one hand towards Frank’s face. He touched the cuts and abrasions. He felt stickiness. Frank yowled with pain and pushed Hal savagely away. Hal fell backwards onto his cot.
    “What are you, crazy?” he shouted. “Touching me like that with your filthy hands! It feels like somebody’s thrown acid in my face!”
    Hal was disconcerted.
    “I just wanted to check,” he explained.
    “Why don’t you feel your own?”
    “I know that mine are real!”
    Frank sat up suddenly. He lowered the hand he’d used to protect his smarting face. His half-closed eye glinted.
    “What do you mean, real?”
    “I had this idea that your cuts and gashes were phoney.”
    Frank shook his head.
    “I don’t get it.”
    “Like a disguise,” said Hal, straightening up.
    Frank leant over him.
    “Come on, spit it out.”
    “It’s hard to explain.”
    “Lost for words?”
    Hal rose to the challenge implicit in the other man’s question. Slowly he smoothed down his tousled hair.
    “Well, thing is, the way I see it, it’s a bit off, the two of us being put in the same cell.”
    “Ah!” said Frank. “Great minds think alike. I had the same idea.”
    Then they did what in the circumstances was the most unlikely thing: they smiled at each other.
    In a level, almost friendly voice, Hal asked:
    “Tell me… has somebody planted you here as a stool pigeon?”
    “Nope,” said Frank, without getting angry. “How about you?”
    “I’m asking the question,” said Hal. “That says it all…”
    Frank thought about this. Then he gave a shrug.
    “It doesn’t say a damn thing! Or put it this way: it just means that you’re trying to quiet my suspicions.”
    “All right, all right,” sighed Hal as he stretched out on his bed again, “I can see your injuries are real… Cosh, was it?”
    “Yeah… and fists… Cosh for the face and fists for the ribs… They know what they’re doing.”
    “But what if they’d really done you over?” Hal went on after a moment’s thought. “To make your cover look authentic.”
    Frank in turn lay face down on his cot.
    “You must have some very important information to spill for me to be handed over to such high-class make-up artists.”
    “I’ve got nothing to spill,” said Hal savagely.
    “Me neither,” said Frank. “So you see… we’re quits!”

3
    The night was long and filled with strange groans. The two men did not sleep. All