On Ice - Softcover

Ramus, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671041851 ISBN 13: 9780671041854

Publisher: Pocket, 2001

Synopsis

It takes a cool head to outwit both sides of the law.

Ben Hemmings, barn-builder for Atlanta's elite, has been sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Facing ten years and the possibility of losing his family forever, he cuts a deal with the FBI to recover a stolen collection of priceless show-horse breeding samples. But to get them, Ben must deceive mob boss and fellow inmate Rollie Shore -- a molten-tempered man with a plan of his own.

From the grim landscape of a federal prison to the rarefied world of southern horse breeding, David Ramus' On Ice is a gritty, thunderous page-turner that follows an innocent man on a terrifying steeplechase of bone-chilling brutality and betrayal.

It takes a cool head to outwit both sides of the law.

Ben Hemmings, barn-builder for Atlanta's elite, has been sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Facing ten years and the possibility of losing his family forever, he cuts a deal with the FBI to recover a stolen collection of priceless show-horse breeding samples. But to get them, Ben must deceive mob boss and fellow inmate Rollie Shore -- a molten-tempered man with a plan of his own.

From the grim landscape of a federal prison to the rarefied world of southern horse breeding, David Ramus' On Ice is a gritty, thunderous page-turner that follows an innocent man on a terrifying steeplechase of bone-chilling brutality and betrayal.

About this title

About the Author

David Ramus is the critically acclaimed author of Thief of Light and The Gravity of Shadows. On Ice is his third novel. Ramus lives with his wife and four daughters in Florida.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Guilty. A tough word to get your tongue around. A bitter mouthful -- hard to chew, harder to swallow. I choked on it the first time I heard it used in the same sentence as my name. And time, the one thing I had plenty of, didn't help. It never does in prison.

I'd been down for eighteen months. Eighteen endless months. Half of a thirty-six-month bit I never bargained for. Innocent? Who's not innocent in prison? You tell the judge it was all a terrible mistake, a mistake you deeply regret. Only she's heard it all before. You appeal to a higher court. Everyone appeals. But it's easier to win the lottery than have your case overturned. So you do the time, try your best not to let it do you. Some days it's easy. Other days it's hell. Either way, you just keep breathing. It passes. Slowly, but it passes.

The Bureau of Prisons had designated me to a minimum-security prison camp located in northern Alabama, an unfenced compound cut into the red clay foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The camp, set hard against the outer fences of a high-security Federal Correctional Institution, was crowded with the FCI's overflow. True, the worst of the violent offenders, the lifers, the serial killers and head cases were behind the guard towers and concertina wire. But any thoughts that I would do my time rubbing elbows with crooked politicians and bent businessmen went out the window the minute I entered the system.

Eight out of ten of my fellow inmates were drug dealers. Most of the rest were a mix of losers and sociopaths who'd done everything from robbing banks to peddling stolen military hardware. There were murderers and pimps. Gang enforcers lucky enough to have been popped carrying vials of rock instead of their Tec-9's and Mac 10's -- the deadly tools of their calling. Tools they handled as skillfully as I handled a finish hammer or a miter saw. Like it or not, these were my neighbors. The men I bunked with. We shared a world of hard surfaces and bright fluorescent lights. A cloistered world where violence was a fact of life -- barter the lubricant that kept the place from actually exploding. Even so, after a year and a half inside, I thought I had it wired -- that all I had to do was lay low, let the days glide by until it was time to go home.

I was wrong. Nearly dead wrong, as it turned out. I didn't know about real trouble. Not yet. No, the real thing came calling the day Black was explaining the evils of pork. Only at first, I didn't recognize it for what it was.

It was mild that day. The long summer had been wetter than normal. Curtains of rain graying the green humps of the mountains surrounding us -- cooling the air and dampening tempers. I didn't complain. When men are crowded into small spaces and there's nowhere to go -- no break from the constant friction of strangers rubbing up against each other, the noise, the taste and stink of male sweat, fear, anger, and desperation -- it doesn't take much more than a heat wave to set things off. Nothing much had happened lately. But you learn to watch for trouble the way the weatherman on channel 5 watches the Doppler radar scope for tornadoes. That screen lights up, you take cover. Not that I didn't know how to handle myself. You don't bounce around the construction trades for the better part of two decades without learning the hard way that there are times when words just won't get the job done. I knew how to use my fists. But by the ripe old age of thirty-eight, I also should have known enough not to throw my cards on the table without a goddamned good reason. Especially in here.

We were on the rec yard, watching 1-dorm play 3-dorm a half-assed game of softball. Black, my celly, one of the most graceful athletes I'd ever seen, was sitting this one out. Something about the lack of decent pitching -- that hitting the crank chemist 3-dorm had put on the mound was too easy to be any fun. A group of us were lounging on the aluminum bleachers between third base and home plate, shirts off, enjoying the gentle Alabama breeze. "It'll kill you," Black was saying. "Pork ain't nothin' but fat and cholesterol. Don't believe me; look at Truck. The man's a walkin', talkin' disaster."

"You hear that, Truck?" Reggie Everett asked. Reggie was like that. An old ponytailed hippie, always seeking the alternative point of view. "The man says you eat too much pork. That true?"

Tony "Tow Truck" Tucker shook his big head and watched the catcher from 1-dorm hit a looping pop-up to short right. "Ain't but one problem with pork," Truck said after the second baseman made the easy out.

"What's that?" Reggie asked.

"Only thing wrong with a pig is it don't get as big as a cow," Truck declared, to Reggie's delight.

Black snorted. "You big as a cow, Truck."

Truck nodded thoughtfully and slapped his ample belly. "More like a bull. Grade A prime black stud. Make them country girls cry for joy."

"What do you think, Ben?" Reggie asked me.

Truck interrupted. "Hemmings's married -- he don't know shit about country girls. He the strong, silent type -- might be he used to know how to live rough, but he a family man now. Wouldn't know what to do with a big ol' wild country booty it smacked him right in the face."

I looked at Truck -- all three hundred fifty­plus pounds of him. "Take a damned big booty to smack you in the face."

"Shit! You talkin' like every other skinny white man I know." Truck slapped his belly again. "This right here is a sign of intelligence."

"Intelligence, my ass," Black shot back. "It's the pork, man. You eat the pig, you become the pig."

It went on like this for a while. Easy banter. No one taking anyone else seriously. The afternoon sliding by -- soft time. Until an angry buzz started over by the handball courts. Then, the muttering ceased as quickly as it had started. The softball game stopped. So did the rhythmic clank of steel plates coming from the weight pile.

Suddenly the yard was quiet. Dangerously quiet.

"Trouble," Black said, turning his head as though he were sniffing the air to find the source. "Hinchee's on duty, isn't he?"

I nodded. "Saw him earlier. By the weight pile."

"Well, he on the handball court now," Truck said. "Gonna go see what's up." He hopped off the bleachers, surprisingly agile for a man his size.

I stood, too.

Black, having done hard time in three different FCIs, knew better. He shot me a warning look, but I was curious. So I left him sitting on the bleachers and followed Truck.

A silent crowd had gathered on the cracked cement court. In the center of a knot of grim-faced inmates, Corrections Officer Billy Hinchee, a soft-looking hack with a crew cut and a nasty sadistic streak, brandished an aluminum softball bat at Sally. "Fucking mutt bares its teeth at me again, I'm gonna kill it." He waggled the bat. "I'll fucking launch brain matter."

Hinchee's partner, a mellow, older hack named Peterson, stood outside the circle of men, radio in hand, a disgusted look on his face. He might not have liked what Hinchee was doing, but he was trained to back his partner no matter what. If this turned any uglier, it was a good bet he'd call in the SORT goons, a bunch of riot-geared, ready-response hacks who wade into any situation swinging lead-weighted batons. Covered from head to toe in body armor, they hit hard and ask questions later. In prison, there's no such thing as an innocent bystander.

But Sally, a brown-and-white puppy that had somehow found her way onto the compound, didn't know any of this. She shook herself and pranced around on her toes, growling. Maybe she thought it was all a game.

Hinchee didn't look amused. He cocked the bat and swung with all his might.

Sally dodged the blow and barked excitedly. Now the game was getting good. Someone shouted, "I'll take the dog. Ten to one on the mutt."

Someone else laughed.

The taunt

Edition details

• Publisher: Pocket
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671041851
• ISBN 13: 9780671041854
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 432