Ken Bruen - The Max

Gonna have yer sweet white ass later.

The greeting Max Fisher got from his towering black cellmate, Rufus.

Max thought, Whoa, hold the phones, theres gotta be some mistake. Was he in the right place? Where was the I.P. treatment? Where was Martha Fucking Stewart? Where were those bastards from Enron? How come there wasnt a goddamn tennis court in sight? Yeah, Max knew Attica wasnt Club Fed, but he didnt expect this. He thought a big-time player like himself would get the, you know, special treatment but, Jesus, not this kind of special treatment. He thought hed work on his backhand, get some stock tips, learn how to crochet, maybe start working out, lose some of the extra forty pounds hed been lugging around. Maybe the guard took him to the wrong part of the prison. Didnt prisons have neighborhoods just like cities? Max was supposed to be on the Upper East Side, but by accident theyd brought him to the goddamn South Bronx.

Max clutched the bars, said to the guard, a young black guy, Hey, come back here, yo. Yeah, Max spoke hip-hop, one of his many talents. The guard didnt stop and Max shouted, Hey, asshole, I think theres been a little fucking screw-up around here! Yeah, let the fuck know who was boss, like the time he was dining at Le Cirque and the maitre d sat him at a table with a dirty tablecloth. Max let that motherfucker have it all right.

The guard, walking away, laughed, said, Naw, I think theres gonna be a big screw up, Fisher. Inside yo ass.

His laughter echoed in the corridor until a gate slammed. Thats when it finally hit Max he was fucked. Up till that point hed been living the high life, in every sense of the word, blitzed from morning till night. Hed once been a highly successful businessman, then hed had his nagging wife murdered by a psycho mick and things had gone south faster than you could shout bust. But rising if not from the ashes exactly, hed re-invented himself as a dope dealer, and not only that, a goddamn Scarface. It didnt last very long, though. He enlisted Kyle, a young hick from way down south, and to say the kid got, um, screwed is to put it very politely.

Throughout his more than colorful career, Max had been haunted, okay plagued, by an Irish-Greek woman named Angela, AKA heat on heels. She twice fucked up his life and twice walked clean away. He blamed her for his current situation as he blamed her for all his fucking misfortunes. And yet, fuckit, he still got a hard-on when he thought about her. But, Jeez, a hard-on was one thing he did not wanna see right now, in this cage with Rufus.

Scared shitless, Max looked up to God, or at least toward the fucking ceiling, and asked, Why me? Yeah, hed been found guilty of dealing and the judge had thrown the book at him, calling him a, what the fuck was the term? Oh, yeah, a scourge of our society. But Max didnt think the judge had really, like, meant it. During the trial, etcetera, Max had been so out of it on dope, hed thought he was some kind of rock star, waving to the crowds, and he expected to be found innocent. Yeah, they were some seriously good drugs. Finally out of the haze of the drugs, the booze gone from his system, Max realized he was actually going to the freaking slammer. He screamed at his lawyer, Get me out of this, I dont care what it costs!

His lawyer had actually smiled, the bollix smiled! Yeah, bollix Maxs speech was littered with Irish-isms from all the mad deranged micks hed encountered the past couple of years.

The lawyer had said, Maxie, youre broke. Youve got like zilch, nada.

Max got the picture, but Maxie? The fuck was with that? Dios Mio. See, he still had his flair for languages, even spoke spic after his time dealing dope to a crew of Columbanos.

His lawyer had said to him, Keep your head down.

Hed be keeping his head down all right, on Rufus, it seemed. Hed heard they ran a train through new fish and this was not a train you wanted to board, as it involved lots of guys and your ass.

The reality of the situation had sunk in when the verdict came down but, as he so often did, hed managed to look at the bright side. Hey, what could you say, he was a positive thinker, an optimistic dude. Maybe this was a reflection of his spiritual training. Yeah, he was a Buddhist, knew how to get into himself, and knew how to not let the negativity of the physical world affect him. Hed asked himself, as he often did during times when his life went to shit, What would Gandhi do in a situation like this? He wouldnt be panicking, that was for damn sure. Hed be getting off on it, acting like, Yeah, a harsh jail sentence, it was a bump in the road, they can beat me up but they cant keep me down.

Like that.

So hed kept on smoking rock yeah, he was hooked, so the fuck what? right up until the day he was due to report to prison, thinking how bad could it be at Attica anyway? Hell, Pacinod wanted to go there, right? The A.X. that was his dealing name was a big-time criminal and every famous crime guy had to take a few falls. Look at Dillinger, look at Sutton, look at Capone. It was just part of what you signed up for when you wanted to be the Kingpin, the Big Boss.

As a successful businessman, Max knew that you always had to stay one step ahead of the competition, so to bone up for jail, Max had stocked up on books and DVDs. Hed been given a surveillance bracelet and couldnt leave his apartment, so what the fuck else was he gonna do? He hadnt read anything other than the Wall Street Journal since he was in goddamn high school and, lets face it, he didnt read the Journal, he just liked to hold it up and stare at it intensely for show, to make people think he was one serious dude who knew his shit. But now hed started reading for real. The first book: Animal Factory. Edward Bunker, now there was one tough mo fo. Then he checked out Genets prison journals till he shouted, Hold the goddamn phones, this guy is, like, a pillow biter? The fuck with that. But Stone City by Mitchell Smith, yeah, he liked the hero in that, felt he might take that road himself. Same deal with Green River Rising, Tim Willocks; an innocent guy, caught in a prison riot and, against all the odds, coming out on top. Max could see himself, with true cojones , and of course, total modesty, saving captured hostages, offing the really serious psychos and leading the saved out of the burning prison with CNN capturing it all on live TV.

There was also G.M. Fords novel where Frank Corso had to go into the joint and go up against the meanest muthahs this side of the Mississippi. And, of course, the one by that Keith Ablow dude. Yeah, all the Grey Goose hed been drinking had put Max at the center of all these novels and somewhere in there hed realized, prison was part of his karma, just one more step in the whole, ok, lets not be shy, messianic road of Max Fisher.

Hed watched Ed Norton in The 25 ^ th Hour and man, hed wept buckets. They were like spiritual brothers. But fuck, he wasnt letting anyone beat the shit out of his face, no way Jose. The A.X. knew his face was his real ace. The Birdman Of Alcatraz? Didnt get it. Never once occurred to him he might be, um, sharing. Max had been El Hombre, had like over thirty people working for him okay, only three, including his chef and live-in ho, but whos counting? and hed tell his employees not brashly, Lets get one thing straight. The boss distributes, but share, uh-uh, that dont happen. Feeling like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross.

When hed finished all this reading, hed been flushed with elation. Whoever played Max in the movie, hed be a shoo-in for an Oscar. Slam dunk. And, fuck, these books didnt look like they were so hard to write. You could probably just hire some schmuck to write them for you. Isnt that what that guy Patterson did? But it wouldnt be James Patterson with Max Fisher no way that asshole was getting top bill it would be Fisher with fucking Patterson.