Hard Time (25 page)

Capitalising on a run of undefeated fights, Nick became the new head of the whites. He moved Slopester into his cell as a gofer. When problems with individual whites arose, Nick settled them with his own fists rather than sending torpedoes in. Every few days, he fought and always won. Esteban, a Mexican American who annoyed us all by standing under the stairs singing à la Backstreet Boys, refused to stop singing one afternoon even though Nick was on the phone. Nick hung up and cornered Esteban in a cell. One punch to the face sent Esteban fleeing into the day room. Nick chased him round and round the stairs. When Sergeant Baptist stepped into the pod, Esteban dashed out the door and down the corridor, never to return.

Nick’s next three fights lasted slightly longer. They ended in submissions from his opponents, who emerged battered and dazed. The whites, intimidated by Nick’s prowess, behaved themselves for a few weeks, during which Nick didn’t have to fight.

Three Mexican Americans moved into our pod: two older Chicano gang members who hated Mexican nationals, and Busta Beatz, still stuck in the system pending mental-health reports. Nick and I had our fiancées try to locate Busta Beatz’s foster parents, who we hoped might offer him some support and help with his legal situation.

During one of Stalker’s nightly fart storms, Honduras warned me that the two Chicano gang members planned to stir up a race riot between the Mexicans and the Mexican Americans by using Busta Beatz as a torpedo to smash a Mexican. Racial tension escalated in the day room.

I was returning from a court appearance when Nick diverted me to his cell. ‘Shit’s getting out of control with the Chicanos and paisas,’ he said. ‘I stopped a fight in your cell today. One of the new Chicanos tried to smash Honduras.’

‘Over what?’

‘The TV channels. They took it to your cell, so I went in before all your property got bloodied and destroyed.’

‘I appreciate that, man,’ I said, shocked the violence had entered my home and that someone had picked on my harmless little cellmate.

Later on in the day room, Busta Beatz barged into Bruce Lee – a mellow Jehovah’s Witness who’d been my neighbour since my arrival in Tower 6 – who was eating his red death with the Mexicans. The Mexicans all rose fast as if to set on Busta Beatz.

‘Beatz, you need to apologise to Bruce Lee,’ Nick said, springing to his feet.

‘I ain’t apologising! Are you gonna fucking make me?’ I found it hard to believe Busta Beatz had snarled at Nick like that, as Nick was trying to help him find his foster parents. Even worse, he’d ‘called out’ Nick by posing a question that left only one response in jail when directed at a head of a race: to fight.

Nick told Busta Beatz to see him in A7, the cell on the end of the bottom run he preferred to fight in as it was the furthest away from the control tower. As they entered A7, the day room hushed to tune into the music of violence. When the fighting lasted much longer than usual for Nick, the whites expressed concern, and the hermits emerged from their cells. The fight dragged on, and more prisoners clustered in the day-room’s vantage points. Rooting for Nick, I saw him pin Busta Beatz against the wall, yelling ‘Give up! Give up!’ Busta Beatz surrendered, but as soon as he was released he leapt on Nick, who subdued him again. Ten minutes later, both were still fighting and exhausted. Nick put Busta Beatz in a headlock and urged him to give up again.

‘I give up. You win,’ Busta Beatz said. Nick turned to leave the cell, panting as if he’d just sprinted several hundred yards. But Busta Beatz sprang onto the small table as if he were Spider-Man and jumped on Nick’s back. Nick threw him off fast, his face contorting with fury. He unleashed punch after punch on Busta Beatz’s face. Punches that would have knocked out an average man.

Blood gushed and streamed all over Busta Beatz’s face. Blood splattered on the walls. A volley of punches forced Busta Beatz backwards, cracking his head against the wall. I worried Nick might kill him. As Busta Beatz lost his balance, Nick pounded his head relentlessly until he fell unconscious.

‘Fuck, I think I broke two of my knuckles,’ Nick said, emerging from the cell half-covered in blood. He spat bloody saliva and pieces of teeth onto the floor.

The Mexican Americans filed into A7 and roused Busta Beatz, who was barely able to stand: ‘Go back to your cell and clean yourself up.’

He staggered out of the cell, painting the concrete red with a trail of blood.

The Mexicans, including Bruce Lee, thanked Nick for standing up for their race.

Over the following days, Nick’s hand swelled up to the size of a grapefruit, and Busta Beatz’s face ran the hues of purple and blue. Nick declared he would never fight another Rule 11 inmate again.

A week later, the Mexicans saw Bruce Lee on the news. The report claimed that he and his wife had molested their own daughter. While Bruce Lee was at court, Carlo, the head of the Mexicans who’d shared a cell with Bruce Lee for a year, ordained the usual justice for a sex offender. Usually, such beatings were over in minutes. But the Mexicans – who’d been the least violent from what I’d seen – worked on Bruce Lee for half an hour. They timed it to start right after a guard had done a security walk through our pod. When the thudding and stomping sounds began, it sounded like a normal smashing, but then there were questions yelled harshly in Spanish, followed by Bruce Lee pleading for mercy, and eerie wails of pain as they tortured him. When they let him go, he stumbled to the sliding door soaked in blood from his hair to his feet. He was unrecognisable. When the door opened, he took a few steps and collapsed. The pod wasn’t even locked down, probably because the guards approved of sex offenders getting smashed. Sometimes I heard they even tipped the prisoners off.

Gigolo Harry, a tall, handsome Englishman in his early 40s, transferred from Durango jail to Tower 2, into an adjacent pod. Signing at him through the Plexiglas, I arranged to meet him at rec. Early next morning in the cool outdoor air, we walked laps in an area enclosed by tall buildings. Above us, the rising sun we couldn’t see was illuminating a square section of sky and making the razor wire atop the buildings glisten like tinsel.

‘How long you been in jail?’ I asked.

‘Three years,’ Gigolo Harry said in a posh voice.

‘You’re kidding?’ I said, shocked anyone could be held for that long without a trial, fearing it could happen to me.

‘Three years. I’m dead serious.’

‘Bloody hell! How come?’

‘I said something the judge didn’t like.’

‘You did what?’

‘Get a load of this. It was my sentencing hearing about two years ago, and the judge was lecturing me about how lucky I was to be in this bloody free and wonderful land. He said that instead of realising how privileged I was to be here and behaving myself, I’d taken advantage of wealthy American ladies. He put the US on such a pedestal I was thinking his spiel was the standard crap he pitched to the Mexicans. I politely reminded His Honour that I was not from a Third World country but rather from one of the most advanced countries in the world. He got angry when I alluded to the British Empire, and he rudely told me to shut up. I became rather emotional, and I couldn’t control myself any longer, so I said to him, “Excuse me, Your Honour, but if my studies of history are accurate, and correct me if I am mistaken, then if it wasn’t for us – the English – then you Americans would be speaking bloody French right now.” That didn’t go down very well with the judge. He cancelled my sentencing hearing, and I’ve been here ever since. I was in Durango for three bloody years. Everybody knows me. I’ve become a bit of a legend!’

‘You’ve got more balls than I have to speak to the judge like that. I couldn’t do it. You give new meaning to the phrase, “Lock ’em up and throw away the key.” What were you arrested for?’

‘I was a bloody gigolo!’

‘What?’

‘A real-life gigolo.’

‘How’d you get into that?’

‘I met some 40-year-old American bird who owned car dealerships, and she started to solicit me to go on trips with her. I was running my own business, and I told her I’d lose thousands of dollars if I were to go away for a few days. So she offered me $10,000 to go on a dirty weekend with her, and I never looked back. She started buying me all kinds of expensive things and telling me she loved me and I was the best thing she’d ever had.’

‘Bloody hell! That’s a lot of money!’ I said, amused and intrigued by his story.

‘Well, get this then. She obviously ranted and raved about my performance to her friends, and then she started introducing me to them. They were all rich middle-aged women who were married to wealthy business-owners. Anyway, I saw to it they acquired my number, and I started getting all kinds of calls offering large amounts of money to go on secret liaisons. Things just snowballed, and women started having me over to their houses. A few times, the husbands nearly caught us at it. I was making a bloody fortune from these women, much more than from my business.’

‘So how did you end up in here?’

‘Well, I am charged with stealing some paintings from one of the women, including a Monet.’

‘How much was the Monet worth?’

‘A lot of money. I’ve been stuck in jail since then, and nothing ever happens.’

‘You should contact the British Embassy in LA and see if they can help you.’

‘The state of Arizona doesn’t care. This is the state that executed those German lads and didn’t even inform the German Government.’

‘I read about that.’ The state of Arizona had flouted international law by failing to notify Germany that two of its citizens, the LaGrand Brothers, had been jailed for armed robbery and the murder of a bank manager. The German authorities found out too late. By the time the World Court in The Hague issued a stay of execution, one brother had been executed, and the other brother was gassed to death the day after the stay was issued.

‘They were trying to give me twenty-five years at first, and I got it down to five, so I’m hoping that five will come back again. If I get five, I’ll be out in a matter of months with my back-time taken off.’

Attempting to reduce the misbehaviour in Tower 2, the guards rounded up suspected troublemakers and moved them to Tower 5. Wild Man, Alejandro and Joey Crack ended up as cellmates in Tower 5, where a guard with a reputation for being tougher than Mordhorst woke them up every day at 6.30 a.m. by blasting the national anthem over the speakers.

At church, I asked Joey Crack for an update on Wild Man and Alejandro.

‘Wild Man’s back in the hole,’ Joey Crack whispered to me on the back row.

‘What for this time?’

‘Me, Alejandro and Wild Man were all in the cell together, and the guards decided to do a cell search. Wild Man was told a number of times to shut up, but he continued to be his insane obnoxious self. He kept running his mouth till the cop had had enough. The cop asked him to face the wall, place his arms behind his back, and he refused.’

‘Oh no.’

‘So the cop pressed his panic button and within seconds 20 COs came running in ready for the worst. They surrounded Wild Man with their pepper sprays out, but he just stood there laughing at them. A cop said, “Do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?” Wild Man looked them up and down, and waited till they were just about to spray him, and said, “Let’s try the easy way.”’

‘What a nutter!’

‘He loves the attention. He just laughed in their faces.’

‘How’s Alejandro?’ I asked.

‘He got 46 years.’

‘Holy shit! How’s he handling it?’

‘They’ve moved him to a suicide-watch cell at the Madison Street jail. He didn’t handle it well at all, and Wild Man made it worse by tormenting him the whole time.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘During the trial, Wild Man woke Alejandro up at all hours of the night for absolutely no reason and pelted him with rotten grapefruits. Alejandro was too preoccupied to react much.’

‘That’s way out of order.’

‘Alejandro had to get up after midnight and go to court all day long, so he was only getting a couple of hours’ sleep. He ignored Wild Man, which sent Wild Man crazy ’cause he wasn’t getting a reaction.’

‘Good for Alejandro.’

‘Wild Man ended up smashing grapefruits all over the cell floor, so Alejandro would slip around as he got ready for court.’

‘I’m sure he works for the Devil.’

‘The insanity never stopped. The citric acid stained the floor, and Wild Man started hallucinating, saying he was seeing faces of every sort on the floor.’

‘I told you he’s a Rule 11.’

‘Another thing I noticed about Wild Man is a strange 6-6-6 system that he keeps. He had a picture of Wild Woman taped above his rack, and all day long he tapped it in sets of 6-6-6. What he was trying to achieve, I haven’t the slightest, but it’s what he does.’

I was in the visitation room sitting at a table alone, listening to wiretaps playing on my attorney’s laptop, when Wild Man showed up to meet his attorney. He had no eyebrows, a goatee and a shaved head. His attorney was sitting at one of the little visitation tables close to me. I didn’t let on to Wild Man so she wouldn’t know I was there. Her face puckered when she saw him. I turned down my headset volume so I could eavesdrop.

‘Hello!’ Wild Man said in a deep giddy voice. He sat down opposite her and shook her hand.