The morning had started like any other: Eberly was roused from sleep by the blast of the dawn whistle. He swung down from his top bunk and waited quietly while his three cell mates used the sink and toilet. He had become accustomed to the stench of the cell and quite early in his incarceration had learned that complaints led only to beatings, either by the guards or by his cell mates.

There was a hierarchy among the convicts. Those connected with organized crime were at the top of the prestige chain. Murderers, even those poor wretches who killed in passion, were accorded more respect than thieves or kidnappers. Mere swindlers, which was Eberly’s rap, were far down the chain, doomed to perform services for their superiors whether they wanted to or not.

Fortunately, Eberly maneuvered himself into a cell where the top con was a former garage mechanic from the Italian province of Calabria who had been declared guilty of banditry, terrorism, bank robbings, and murders. Although barely literate, the Calabrian was a born organizer: he ran his section of the prison like a medieval fiefdom, settling disputes and enforcing a rough kind of justice so thoroughly that the guards allowed him to keep the peace among the prisoners in his own rough manner. When Eberly discovered that he needed a man who could operate a computer to keep him in touch with his family in their mountaintop village and the remnants of his band, still hiding in the hills, Eberly became his secretary. After that, no one was allowed to molest him.

It was the mind-numbing routine of each long, dull day that made Eberly sick to his soul.