Page 9 of Three-Inch Teeth

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AFTER SEVERAL QUIET minutes in which neither Cates nor Winner said a word, Egleston pushed through the door with a clear plastic square filled with the clothes Cates had worn when he arrived in Rawlins five years before. There was also a small box with a cowboy hat crammed inside. The CO placed the parcels on the steel table and stepped back.

“You know what to do,” Winner said to Cates.

He did. He unzipped the square and removed his Western shirt with the snap buttons, the size 28 Wranglers, the scuffed round-toe Tony Lama boots, and civilian undershorts and socks. All of the items had a plastic odor.

Only the socks and boots still fit. The shirt wouldn’t button and the jeans wouldn’t zip up. His custom-made pure beaver hat was jammed into the box and completely misshapen. Cates didn’t even try to put it on.

Cates piled the clothes back on the table.

“Damn,” Winner said, feigning concern. “You can’t walk out of here like that.”

Egleston chuckled.

“You don’t mess up a man’s hat,” Cates said. “And where’s my belt and buckle?” He felt his neck get hot. The tooled belt was a gift from his mother. DALLAS was stenciled across the back. The huge gold buckle was from his second win at the NFR.

“What belt and buckle?” Winner asked.

“You sure as hell know what I’m talking about,” Cates said.

Winner and Egleston looked at each other with practiced wide-eyed incomprehension.

Cates suddenly relaxed his shoulders and grinned at them. “Okay, I know what you’re doing. I’m not going to take the bait. Now, where’s my buckle? And that belt, it means something to me.”

“It means something to him because his mother had it made,” Winner said. “I think he has a thing about his mother. You can see her face on his skin right there.”

“Kind of unhealthy, I’d say,” Egleston responded.

Cates wanted to kill them both with his bare hands. When a senior member of La Familia had commented on the tattoo of Brenda’s image, Cates waited for his chance and had pushed the man’s face onto a hot stove and held him down until the victim’s right eyeball liquefied and acrid smoke filled the kitchen. No one had ever gone there again.

Now Cates closed his eyes and breathed in and out. He discovered he was knotting his fingers into fists and he consciously relaxed them.

“I want my buckle back,” he said softly.

“And I’m just sorry about that,” Winner said. “I truly am. Things get lost in the storage room, and that’s a fact. You probably don’t remember signing the property release when you came back here. The release you signed says we have no liability for lost or stolen items while you’re incarcerated. Do you want me to go get the release you signed?”

“I want to talk to the warden.”

Winner shrugged. “Unfortunately, the brass is away at a conference in Montana right now. Do you want to wait a few days to speak to them?”

Although his heart whumped in his chest and there was a red tinge to his vision, Cates stepped back and shook his head. He said, “I’d like to get out of here now. Get me a white jumpsuit and I’ll leave in that.”

White was the color for nonviolent offenders. It wouldn’t scare the locals as much as his orange one.

“We’ve done you one better,” Winner said with a wink. “Egleston?”

*

THE OTHER CO left the room and quickly returned with a large plastic Walmart sack. She placed it on the table next to the clothes Cates could no longer wear.

Cates took out each item. He could hear Egleston laugh as he did so.

Bright white skinny jeans two sizes too large, a plastic belt decorated with dinosaurs, and an XXL pink sweatshirt emblazoned with DON’T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE COWBOYS.

“We took the liberty of dipping into your commissary funds to get you a new outfit to wear into the outside world,” Winner said with a chuckle. “We hope it all fits.”

*

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