The Cost of Being Liked
“A disarmed man is easier to rob.”
The Excerpt Begins BelowLieutenant Kessler ran the kitchen.
He was smart — smart enough to make lieutenant inside a men's prison, smart enough to know exactly how to keep sixty men moving through a shift without a fight breaking out.
He was also funny. He worked the jokes hard, every shift, like it was part of the job description. He wanted us to know he was down. He thought the laughing bought him something.
We laughed. We also stole from him every single day.
Onions, a dollar a piece if you were buying. Chicken patties, a dollar fifty. Peppers. Homebrew going out under our shirts. Men on the outside of that kitchen wanted to eat like they were home again — wanted their steak-ums, wanted something that tasted like a life they used to have — and we were the ones who could get it to them, because Kessler was standing right there, laughing, while we walked it out.
He wasn't stupid. He knew what he was doing when he told a joke — he was trying to disarm us.
We knew it too. We let him do it anyway, because a disarmed man is easier to rob.
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