Red Highway by Loren D. Estleman Page B

the news that the stock market had taken the biggest plunge in its history. It was the beginning of the crash. Then Virgil saw everything clearly. The ex-vice-president had every reason to believe that when his sentence was over he would have over a million dollars coming from his investments. Now, that hope had been dashed, along with all the others, and it had been too much. The shock had killed him.
    But time passed for Virgil Ballard. The Roaring Twenties died with a whimper, and 1930 sprang upon the prison as it did everywhere else. Unemployment loomed dark in the future. Businesses died. As the stark statistics began to roll from the radio, Virgil began for the first time to feel grateful for his presence in the prison, and to look forward each morning to operating the press. He thought of himself as one of a very few who had nothing to worry about in the way of layoffs and firings.
    â€œBusy, Virge?”
    Virgil knew who it was without turning. There was only one man in the whole prison who called him by that name. He snapped off the radio and leaned back in his seat, regarding Alex Kern from beneath heavy eyelids.
    Alex grinned at Virgil from his place beside him on the bench, showing off his gold tooth. He was a long, lanky lad, like Virgil, but in a city-bred way, and had a shock of dull black hair which he kept cropped close to his head around the back and temples, letting it grow full and thick on top. His sleepy eyelids would have made him look backward had it not been for his quick, cockeyed smile that so disarmed anyone upon whom he chose to train it. The combination added up to a witty and cocksure appearance. He looked more like a con man than a bank robber. From what Virgil had learned of the man’s past, he knew that Kern was a combination of both.
    â€œDoes it look like I’m busy?” Virgil slipped a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it.
    â€œI never can tell, you’re always listening to that damn squawk box.”
    â€œSo what’s up?”
    Kern eyed the sullen barber, who was finishing off the back of a convict’s neck with his razor. “Not here. Let’s go to your cell.”
    Virgil shook his head. “Not now, I got fifteen minutes before I go back there.”
    â€œWell, we got to go somewhere private.”
    â€œAll right.” Virgil got up from the bench and led the way out into the yard. The two convicts pushed through the clusters of gray-clad men who had gathered in the well-trodden area, and came to a stop in a quiet corner of the wall beneath the west tower.
    â€œSpill it,” said Virgil.
    Alex glanced around furtively, looked up at the bell that would soon call them back to their cells, then returned his gaze to Virgil’s freckled face. “They tell me you’re a hotshot when there’s a vault around.”
    Virgil didn’t answer, but regarded him coolly.
    Kern went on. “They say the same thing about me. But we’re both in stir, ain’t we? So we can’t be such hotshots after all.”
    â€œSpeak for yourself.”
    â€œYeah. Well, have you ever thought why guys like us keep getting caught? The reedy con didn’t wait for an answer. “We keep getting caught because the cops ain’t scared enough of us.”
    Virgil smiled for the first time, but his smile was grim. “Yeah, I noticed that. I keep expecting ’em to run away whenever I come out of a bank with a bag of money in my hand. I can’t imagine why they don’t.”
    Alex ignored the sarcasm. “We can make ’em run, you know. Or stand still. Anything we want.” He looked around once again, then reached into his sweat-stained shirt and pulled out a folded sheet of thin paper, which he spread out beneath Virgil’s nose.
    It was a sheet torn from a magazine. It was wrinkled, and there were two notches in one edge of the page where the staples had been. But that wasn’t what caught Virgil’s eye.