“…”

Gray dingy walls.

Paint peeling.

Dim panel lightning emitted from the hall.

The bars of the cell… Closing in.

Two men. Silently contemplating. Almost frozen.

The third waiting patiently for a response.

“Oh, by the way.”

“All that stuff I just said about me leaving a briefcase full of cocaine and there being a 50/50 chance of him seeing the briefcase full of cocaine versus a briefcase full of bail money.”

“That’s all true. In case you didn’t catch to the vaguely threatening sense of urgency in my speech.”

“I just wanted to present it in the form of a riddle because I am A FUCKING COMEDIAN to you people.”

Flynn smiles wide… Then, pauses a moment.

“Sorry, not YOU people. I hope no one was offended by my brash choice of words.”

“I’d prefer if you were offended by the whole ‘bringing one hundred and ten pounds of Colombian cocaine to a Denver jail and leaving it in front of a deputy so we all go to jail’ situation.”

Theo bites his lip…

His eyes whirring back and forth between empty corners of the cell, trying to reason with all the information he has…

Luca alternatively, has gone about pacing the walls of the cage…

He stops in front of the cot, socketed to the wall….

Winds up to give it a solid kick…

An-

Theo touches his shoulder.

“Not right now”

Luca recoils, seething for a moment.

“I’d rather the guard stay as uninterested as possible as to what’s in those cases. And if the owners of those cases start kicking government property and screaming at each other…”

Luca… exhales heavily…

Then backs away from the cot.

His fingernails drag against the wall quietly as he paces back and forth by the cell wall.

“Thank goodness Generalissimo Theo has stepped in as our authority figure. What would we do without him, eh, Luca?”

Luca’s eyes dart towards Flynn, his teeth gnashing.


Flynn giggles.

“Hee hee. Oh, you are adorable.”

Before Luca can react to that statement, Theo steps between the two of them to limit Luca’s latent ability to beat the shit out of a moron.

Theo hisses quietly and quickly.

“Flynn, if you had an issue with the way this team was being handled, I’d prefer if you brought it up at a more opportune time.”

Flynn opens his mouth, then looks down at the floor.

Then back up, genuinely looking apologtic in his face.

“I’m sawwy, Theodow...”

However, his tone immediately gives away his lack of sincerity.

“I just wish the three of us would hang out more as a team. Team BUILD, you know. Maybe do some trust fall exercises, find a local gymnasium where we can take part in some racquet sports. Maybe even play some pick-up basketball on the weekends and afterwards crack wise on each other’s mothers.”

Theo, exasperated, turns to Luca, who’s been using more of his fingernails against the wall as he paces and has subsequently unintentionally been increasing the volume of his activity.

“Stop pacing, we need t-“

“SHUT THE FUCK UP.”

…

All three stand silently.

As if…

Silence now…

Could go back in time…

And erase the sound of that outburst...

…

Theo looks at Luca.

Back to Flynn.

Flynn looks back at Theo.

Then smiles at Luca.

Luca closes his eyes…

Deep breath…

…

…

…Safe… They think…

Theo swipes at his brow… He loosens his tie so he feels less of a constriction around his throat…

Seems to be getting hotter in the cell…

He tries to stretch his arms… But his hands brush against the walls…

As if they’re closing in…

“Lu-“

“Shut up.”

Luca turns to the cot. Gets on his knees and forces his elbows onto the sorry excuse for a mattress. He rubs his temples, rapidly, with three fingers of each hand.

“Red suitcase… money… Green suitcase… cocaine…”

Luca begins muttering to himself, trying to reason out all the information he’s been fed… Maybe, a clue… So-

Theo hovers to his left side, staying quiet as to not rile another surprising expletive session…

Flynn, taking a different approach, also posts up on the cot, crouching right beside Luca’s right shoulder.

Theo tries to hush him.

“Flynn, please give Luca some space…”

Flynn guffaws.

“And miss this? Luca Arzegotti trying to solve the age-old question that state-appointed psychologists spent 13 years trying to piece together…?”

Flynn crawls up to Luca’s face and plants an elbow under his chin.

“What was Mark Flynn thinking when he racked up this body count of traumatized individuals?”

“Flynn, if you don’t back off…”

“Now, the green suitcase would make logical sense to store the money in. Green. Money. Clearly.”

Luca’s circling around his own temples speeds up slowly… Accelerating in rotation… Growing in radius…

“However, I do love myself a good metaphor. And what better way to illustrate how money and drugs and the death that results from bringing the two together create the concept of blood money, then putting the GREEN money in the RED suitcase? I think that’s clever now. Did I think it was clever then when I packed up the suitcase?”

Luca begins grinding his teeth, still muttering to himself, increasing his volume to drown out Flynn.

“110 pounds. Colombian. Denver County. Deputy. Red.”

“Now, here’s an interesting little fun fact: My father was murdered in Mexico after stealing a similar amount of cocaine to the amount currently resting in one those suitcases from the drug cartel in Guadalajara. So I associate red with cocaine. Because of the whole, my father’s blood, blah, blah, vengeance, blah.”

Theo crossing over to Luca’s left shoulder.

“Both of you need to quiet down. Now.”

“GREEN. SUITCASE. MEXICO! VENGEANCE!”

“Now, on the other hand, my father left me that green suitcase before he left my mother for Mexico and in it, accidentally left the 110 pounds of cocaine that he was planning on selling in Mexico. Which led to him being murdered. So, I do connect cocaine with green as w-“

Theo, forces his right hand around Flynn’s collar and hoists him into the air, far away from the walls as to keep this instruction as quiet as possible.

He presses his thumb into Flynn’s throat, to make sure his message is coming across, even though he’s whispering.

“Flynn.”

Flynn wheezes. The oxygen can no longer escape his throat. Words are having a hard time getting out as well…

“You’re going to shut up now.”

“Understand?”

Flynn… grins… and nods.

Theo drops Flynn. Who lands on the concrete flat on his ass, lying back on the peeling paint of the wall.

“…”

Flynn then puts his hand on his jaw…

“Wait…”

Theo and Luca’s eyes both dart over at Flynn.

“…”

“Dad might have left me the red suitcase actually… God, today, I’m just not all there, y’know?…”

Flynn tries a cackle, but the fact that his throat was just compressed means it quickly ends in a coughing fit.

Theo darts back over to Luca’s left shoulder, where Flynn was previously residing. Luca is still trying to piece together the riddle’s solution…

“Riddle. Suitcase. Cocaine…”

“Luca, stop thinking about the riddle.”

Flynn chokes on his words but wheezes out…

“…Yeah…Let’s think about that deputy sitting out there with 110 pounds of cocaine. The temptation to click one open and check its contents growing, festering… With each passing second…”

"We can get out of this. I'll write a check or something for bail and we’ll take both suitcases out of here before he can check them."

“Like…” Flynn hacks a lung to get this thought out… “Has he ever seen in that much in one place before? He…He might not even want to charge us. He might just be impressed.”

"After those briefcases have been sitting out there this whole time? Waiting here five hours? We just post bail via check? That doesn't sound like probable cause for a search at all, Theo."

Flynn nods, cackling and wheezing, lying on his side by the concrete cell floor.

"We'll say he's not our attorney. He's just some guy."

Flynn points a finger, wagging it back and forth at Theo, still choking on his words as his airway re-opens.

"You... sided against Flynn... Flynn will remember this..."

"Theo, we're here for possession and attempt to purchase cocaine. There is no fucking way to slice this in a good looking way."

Flynn's finger shoots in the air. The air back in his lungs, he shoots off the floor standing.

"I just remembered!"

Theo and Luca both turn to Flynn, expectantly, an inadvertent smile crossing Theo's face...

"..."

"Yes, it's come back to me. I remember the suitcase…”

"Oh thank Go-"

"My father didn't leave me either of those suitcases."

...

"My father didn’t leave me anything in his will. So just throw the whole ‘dad’ element out of the riddle.”

…

“Entirely irrelevant in the larger scope of things…”

…

“I actually got the green suitcase from a Savers Thrift Store a couple of weeks ago. It was a Thursday. There’s actually a funny story to the red one, you se-“

Luca charges Flynn, hammering his elbow into Flynn’s throat, driving him toward the bars of the jail cell…

"Oh f-“

Theo dives…

And forces himself in between the bars and Flynn…

Muffling the sound of the slam.

Luca doesn’t seem to notice Theo pinned to the bars after diving with his solarplexus into a hurtling combined 450 pound mass.

He just keeps his elbow in Flynn’s throat. Flynn finds a way to grin while he can’t breathe.

“After this, Flynn. I’m going to remove all your teeth, so I never have to look at that stupid fucking grin of yours again.”

Flynn coughs, struggling for air, while maintaining his glee.

“Luca, if you’re going to prison, which you are, you really should learn how to behave. With good behavior, you could get off possession of and intent to distribute 110 pounds of cocaine in 8 years.”

“How the fuck do you figure ‘Intent to distribute’?”

Flynn squeaks this next part through an ever shrinking hole in his throat.

“Well… if you’re less than a 1000 feet from any school... which more often than not, one is in Denver… the state usually pursues an intent to distribute charge, which almost impossible to dispute in court…”

Theo, compressed uncomfortably, spine first against the bars of the cell, taps quickly on Luca’s arm. He tries to whisper, as he nervously looks over both of his compatriots and sees the deputy eyeing two suitcases.

One red.

One green.

“Luca… Please get off Flynn and I.”

Luca stares in Flynn’s eyes.

“If we end up in the same prison. You’re a dead man. Fuck 'good behavior'.”

Flynn chortles, a little saliva trailing down his lip from his body trying to deal with the lesser supply of oxygen…

“Didn’t you hear old Azzy? The second things get tough, Flynn splits.”

“I think a decade long sentence in federal prison qualifies as ‘tough’.”

The deputy then starts to peer over…

“LUCA OFF!!!”

Theo, then bashes both Flynn and Arzegotti off of him.

As the trio tumbles to the floor, Luca rolls, maintaining his grip on Flynn, pinning him to the ground by his throat. His right hand tightening… closing…

Flynn’s airway is now entirely blocked.

“Say something now, Flynn.”

Theo stands up, grabbing Luca’s left shoulder.

“LUCA STOP.”

Flynn beats on Luca’s arm… Tapping out… His face turning white…

“SAY SOMETHING, FLYNN.”

His eyes rolling back in his head…

“LUCA STOP!!!”

Theo tightens on Luca’s shoulder.

Luca’s eyes open wide.

As he releases Flynn’s throat…

Flynn sputters and hacks on the floor. As oxygen rushes back into his respiratory system, he unleashes a load of air and saliva, dry heaving…

Luca sighs and tries to back to the cot…

But, Theo’s grip on his shoulder stays tight.

Luca looks back…

“If you can’t calm down, you’re just as much of a liability as he is.”

Luca’s eyes spin to Theo. Back to Flynn, almost vomiting, then his eyes turn to disgust, his mouth contorts to a sneer.

“I’m out of here.”

Luca shakes his head.

“Fuck the both of you. Fuck the both of you”

Luca heads out the open jail cell and for the door.

“Wait. God dammit, Luca.”

Luca heads down the hallway, heels clicking as he walks… Theo in hot pursuit, Flynn left on the floor of the jail cell.

“Luca, come back....the blow!”

“Hey…”

Both men turn.

To the deputy…

Whose left hand is resting on the latch of the red suitcase…

“You two are out of your cells…”