Hard Time (27 page)

Two large Mexican American new arrivals noticed a small Mexican-American leaning against the back wall. The two whispered to each other as if plotting something. After the cell door locked behind them, they acted as if they were heading to the toilet. But the larger one veered towards the man they’d spotted, dragged him kicking and yelling towards the toilet and started cracking his head against the steel.
Thwack-thwack-thwack . . .

All of the talking, joking, heckling, snoring, laughing and complaining stopped at once. Mesmerised by the violence, the men in the immediate area shuffled out of the way. When the victim’s head cracked open, gushing blood, the two Mexican Americans stomped on him, putting their full weight on his joints as if to snap them.

Watching them attempting to murder someone was registering with my adrenalin. It affected my neighbours, too. The men at the back sprang to their feet, and within seconds everyone rose. I scrambled up but had nowhere to go. I felt panic seize the crowd. Fighting started to spread from the back of the cell. The crowd lurched towards the front, taking me with it. I raised my forearms to shield myself from the flailing arms. Wild Man said, ‘I’ve got this one, la’,’ shoved me against a wall and stood in front of me like a totem pole with prisoners bouncing off him, some of them helped on their way by his big hands.

Guards rushed to the cell. One of them fingered his keys and worked one in. They entered fast, wielding Tasers and fire-extinguisher-sized canisters of pepper spray. The crowd folded out of their way. The fighting stopped. They grabbed the three Mexican Americans – easily identifiable by their blood-soaked bee stripes – and dragged them out. Looking at the victim on the floor, I couldn’t see any signs of life. Everyone was staring at him. The guards cuffed the culprits, medical staff stretchered the victim away, and trusties mopped up the blood. Minutes later, the chatter resumed.

At 7.30 a.m., guards congregated outside of the cell and started calling the surnames of the men with the earliest court times. The extracted men lined up and were chained together. The cells became less crowded. Just when we had enough space to stretch our legs, a guard ordered us into the cell next door, where I spotted some of my co-defendants. Pleased to see them, we exchanged hugs. They asked what was going on with the case.

‘Alan’s trying to get the calls played in court so the judge can hear you guys were only busted doing nickel-and-dime deals.’ I handed them copies of the itemised drug deals, showing the $5,700 total. ‘This list could change everything!’

After months of no legal developments and their public defenders insisting they sign plea bargains, they were pleased with the news.

At 9 a.m., a guard called my name and those of my co-defendants. We were chained, led down a corridor and ordered to wait outside a holding cell for females. Wild Woman appeared with her hair streaked every colour of the rainbow.

‘What happened to your hair, love? It looks like you’ve been to a gay festival,’ Wild Man said.

‘How did you do that in jail?’ I asked, worrying about the impression it would make on the judge.

‘Can’t tell you me secrets, now can I?’ Wild Woman rasped.

We travelled through a tunnel and waited for an elevator. We packed ourselves in. Wild Man positioned himself so he could rub up against Wild Woman. As the guard pressed the elevator button, the Wild Ones stole kisses.

‘I love you,’ Wild Man said.

‘Love you too,’ Wild Woman said.

From the elevator, we were separated into two cells: males and females. When it was close to 10 a.m., the guard escorted us into the courtroom. I panicked when I saw the TV crews, but the guard explained a teacher who’d molested some of his students had been sentenced to more than 100 years. We were ordered to sit on the rows of benches at the side of the courtroom in front of the public gallery. I saw Claudia and my local family members, but I was prohibited from talking to them, so I could only smile and bounce my eyebrows.

My attorney, Alan Simpson, arrived, armed with all kinds of statistics and pie charts on fancy coloured paper and a tape recorder to play some of the calls to the judge. The co-defendants’ attorneys mobbed him for information. He responded by whispering in their ears. The look spreading over their faces suggested they were expecting the great Alan Simpson to finally – after almost a year of locking horns with the young prosecutor – demolish the case. The prosecutor greeted Alan with her usual competitive smile, but she and Detective Reid (who attended nearly all of my court hearings) looked a bit daunted. The attorneys were whispering in the ears of my co-defendants, spreading the buzz around the room.

The judge assigned to my case came out, bespectacled, grim and in a wheelchair due to injuries he’d sustained in the Vietnam War. We all rose. Ignoring the judge, the Wild Ones continued to laugh and talk to each other loudly. Judge Watson ordered our escorting guard to remove the Wild Ones from the courtroom for horseplay. Detective Reid smirked as they were escorted out. I couldn’t believe they’d misbehaved on such an important day. I feared the impact of their behaviour on the judge and the motions Alan was working on.

Alan told the judge that the total drug deals on the wiretaps amounted to $5,700. He said he’d brought his tape recorder and would like to play some of the calls. The prosecutor objected to the court hearing the calls. Hearing her object to her own evidence pleased me and the co-defendants. We figured we had her. But the judge said now was not the appropriate time for the court to hear any of the calls. The case was continued. My co-defendants were cleared from the courtroom.

Next was my bond hearing. Alan asked for a bond reduction on the basis of the $5,700 list of drug deals. That total did not warrant a $750,000 bond. Members of my family – including my aunt Ann’s husband, Donny, an ex-policeman – and Claudia’s stood up, vouched for me, offered to take me into their homes and offered their homes for my bond. It was a strong show on my behalf. I enjoyed watching Detective Reid’s face tense up. The prosecutor spoke only briefly, raising some mild objections. Then she sat down. She seemed defeated. My supporters’ eyes were sparkling as if they were sure the judge would reduce my bond. When it came time for him to rule, he said he was unable to make a decision and he was taking the matter under advisement. I felt a pang of disappointment, but the bond hearing had gone so well I was confident of a positive decision soon. I left the courtroom convinced I’d be out in a week or so. I spent the half-day journey back to Towers indulging in fantasies of freedom.

Shepherding a group of us back into Tower 2, Officer Noble said to me, ‘I need to talk to you.’ He looked serious.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Wait down that corridor.’

I walked away, growing alarmed.

After directing the rest of prisoners into their pods, he approached me. ‘You’ve been Page 2d.’

‘New charges! How’s that possible? I just had a bond hearing. New charges!’ I said, frustration rising in my voice.

‘If you just had a bond hearing, that’s how they stop you getting out: new charges. And another thing—’

Still reeling from the first shock, I braced myself for another.

‘—you’ve got two new cellies.’

I paused for a few seconds. Stunned. ‘How did that happen?’

‘They’re always moving you guys around. We wouldn’t want you to get too settled now.’

Walking up the stairs, I felt the full weight of what he’d said. I prayed my new cellmates were the mellower type of criminals.

Big Wood stopped me at the top of the stairs. He told me to step into his cell, so I followed him. ‘They’ve put a black dude in your cell. We’re trying to get him moved to an all-black cell. He has a bottom-bunk slip ’cause he has seizures. He’s a bit of a loudmouth, but he’s all right. We just can’t have a black dude celling with two woods.’

I didn’t mind living with a black man but not a loudmouth of any race. ‘What about my other new celly?’

‘He’s a youngster. Busted with drugs in prison. Here on new charges.’

I returned to A10, intent on making the most of the situation by greeting my cellmates with all of the congeniality I could muster. I pressed the door open a few inches, and the youngster I didn’t see sat on the toilet shoved it back in my face.

‘Wait outside a minute,’ he said with attitude. ‘I’m unpacking my ass. You wanna smoke?’

I’d dodged having to live with a smoker for almost a year. I was in no mood to deal with a smoker on top of everything else. ‘No. I don’t smoke. This is a smoke-free cell.’

‘It
was
a smoke-free cell,’ he said. ‘OK. You can come in now.’

The cell reeked of his business on the toilet and the rollie he’d just lit. He had numerous pockmarks on his face and the mischievous look of the State-raised. He took another drag.

‘Look, I’ve been here for a year, and I don’t appreciate you smoking in my cell,’ I said, growing angry.

‘What ya gonna do about it?’

His tone brought my stress to its boiling point. ‘You wanna handle it like that?’ I asked, wagging my finger at him.

He coolly took another drag as if the prospect of fighting me hardly fazed him. He rested the rollie at the base of the window.

We were inching towards each other, fists first, when the door swung open and banged against the wall. I whirled around.

It wasn’t the black loudmouth I’d expected but a Bluto of a man almost filling the entire doorway. Wincing in pain, he limped into the cell and said in a gruff voice, ‘I guess whoever’s on the bottom bunk’s moving out and I’m moving in.’ He stood there, panting, grimacing at us in a way that said he was in no mood for an argument.

Amusement crept into the youngster’s face. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you, big dawg?’

Unfurling his mattress on the bottom bunk, the man replied, ‘I was Tasered six times. Some kinda high-powered cop Taser.’ He collapsed onto the mattress – the bunk barely contained him – and lay there trembling like a beached whale.

Jay, the head of the blacks, rushed in next with two massive torpedoes in tow. ‘This guy’s gotta go,’ he shouted, pointing down at the Tasered man. ‘The guy who just moved out is moving back in,’ he said, referring to the black loudmouth.

The number of hostile people in my overcrowded cell was tipping my mind.

‘Why do you think so?’ the youngster asked snidely.

‘’Cause they just put him in with me, and we both got bottom-bunk slips.’ Jay was angry because the black loudmouth had been reassigned to his coveted bottom bunk.

The Tasered man propped himself up. ‘
I
just got Tasered six times.
I
need a bottom bunk.’

‘Do you have a bottom-bunk slip?’ Jay yelled, curling his bottom lip at the Tasered man.

‘Not yet.’

‘Then you gotta move back out! The guy they moved out has epilepsy. He needs this bottom bunk.’

‘You ain’t no guard! You ain’t telling me what to do!’

‘You calling me out?’ Jay rested his fists on his hips, shaping his arms to his body like the handles of teacups.

‘You need to get the fuck out of our cell,’ the youngster said, pointing at Jay.

Bouncing his eyes from the blacks to the whites, the Tasered man appeared to be on the verge of springing up to attack the blacks.

Not standing up for your own race in a situation like this was punishable by your own race smashing you. I’d been in jail long enough to be held accountable. Hoping to prevail with reason, I said, ‘Obviously he needs a bottom bunk. Look at the state of him.’

‘Who the fuck asked you?’ Jay yelled. ‘This is between me and him.’

I was about to say, ‘Hey, I live here too, dawg,’ at the risk of irritating Jay more, but my name was called over the speakers. ‘Hold up. I think they’re calling me.’

‘Attwood. Page 2. Turn out for the Madison Street jail. You’re going to court.’

Hurrying to abandon my home, I scooped up my property and dashed along the balcony to Nick’s. ‘All hell’s breaking loose in my house. Will you mind my store and stuff while I go to The Horseshoe? Hopefully, I wont be gone for too many days.’

‘Sure, bro. What’s going on?’

‘My new cellies are arguing with the blacks over the bottom bunk. You or Big Wood might want to go over there to try calm things down.’

I descended the stairs, glad to be distancing myself from the quarrel I could hear intensifying. Youngsters were snooping around my cell too, desperate to mooch tobacco from my new cellmate. I hoped things would be less chaotic upon my return.

Officer Noble escorted me to an empty holding cell in the reception building. The focus of my worrying shifted from the situation I’d left behind to the one I was entering. I feared the new charges would affect my case and the judge’s pending decision on my bond hearing. It was Thursday evening, and I was concerned about getting stuck in The Horseshoe’s filthy cells with the influx of people who get arrested on the weekend.

Transportation arrived hours later. Shackled by a hick transportation officer, I boarded an old school bus and joined the minimum-security prisoners sitting two to a seat, chained to each other. Being the only medium-custody inmate on the bus, I received some respectful nods. When I sat down, the driver gunned the engine and the bus trundled off. The male prisoners heckled the six females locked in separate Plexiglas cubicles behind the cabin. Voicing what they’d like to do to them, the men worked themselves into a frenzy. The women humoured the men with sly smiles that said the men were brazen idiots. I was glad when the guard blasted the radio, drowning out the commotion. The men gave up on the women and sang along with rock oldies. The heat, noise, fuel smell, cuffs and new charges were annoying me. I took some deep breaths and tried to steel my mind for the challenges ahead. The van parked, and we joined the queue for the jail. The arrestees in street clothes looked warily at us bad men in bee stripes.

Police cars kept pulling up to deliver their fresh captures. Mostly men. Sullen-faced. Wide-eyed. Some beaten-up looking. A minority had to be dragged from the cars to the jail. I was reminded of my arrest and arrival on 16 May 2002. Wait a minute, I thought
.
‘What’s the date?’ I asked our group.

‘May 16th, dawg.’

May 16th. One-year anniversary of my arrest. Can’t be coincidence. Prosecutor’s playing mind games! Has it in for me. I’m doomed. Maybe not. This shows a mean but immature streak. Maybe my attorney can exploit that.

A police van parked. Three prostitutes got out. The one in a miniskirt with a dragon tattooed on her thigh set the male prisoners off. They taunted her with obscene remarks, but she lashed back with the panache of a drag queen. Remaining quiet, the other two prostitutes hung their heads.

I relinquished my cuffs inside, and an inmate yelled ‘Ain’t you that guy—’

I put my finger to my lips too late.

‘—that English guy on the cover of the
New Times
?’

I attracted many looks of approval but said nothing, just entered the walk-through metal detector.

A large Mexican American rapped on the window of a cell, and waved me over. ‘English Shaun! I’m one of your co-defendants.’ Yet another co-defendant I’d never met. I couldn’t believe they were still expanding the size of my case.

A guard deposited me in a cell I remembered well. Plexiglas front windows. Walls caked in brown filth. A seatless steel toilet in the corner. About 40 men. Many high and drunk. Some bleeding or with Taser wounds. Everyone keeping a wary eye on everyone else. They were huddled so close on the concrete I tripped over them as I worked my way in. The few men in stripes nodded at me to join them, but I was in no mood for jail chat. Instead, I returned to the spot against the back wall where no one wanted to sit due to the toilet smell. I assumed a half-lotus position and read a yoga meditation book I’d smuggled in with my legal paperwork. It was a futile attempt to settle my mind. Every so often a prisoner was extracted or deposited. It wasn’t long before the hot, stale atmosphere began to wear me down.

‘I need to take a fucking dump!’ a fat man announced. ‘Who’s got the fucking shit roll?’ He spotted a hobo using a toilet roll as a pillow, walked over and snatched it, interrupting the rhythm of the hobo’s snores. He shoved past me, dropped his pants and let the toilet have it. His stench permeated the cell. I held my breath. My neighbours gagged and moaned.

When a guard finally extracted me, I plodded to the next cell to savour the air in the corridor.

The next cell was the same. I wasn’t there for long before two young Mexican Americans starting quarrelling over who shot who and then one struck the other. We all scrambled to our feet at once. The lightning punches of the taller youngster pummelled his opponent’s face, showering those nearest with blood. I’d seen so much violence, I’d become desensitised. A year ago, I would have felt the fear visible in the eyes of the audience. But in comparison to a pack of torpedoes smashing someone, a one-on-one fight seemed trivial. A flurry of blows collapsed the smaller Mexican American. The taller switched to kicks. I visualised the taller one a few days from now: recruited as a torpedo for the Chicanos, proudly employing his fighting skills to do the dirty work of the head of his race.

‘Loco got shot. I heard you had somethin’ to do with it,’ the victor said.

‘Nah, I had nuthin’ to do with that.’

‘Not what I heard. I got the word two weeks ago. I know who smoked Loco. I’ll die for my barrio. My primo tells me you had somethin’ to do with it, and you threatened my primo, too.’

‘I was locked up then. I’m with Mini Park, ese. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m an original Mini Park gangsta. It’s not like that, ese.’

‘I represent my barrio. I’ll die for my barrio. I’m stickin’ by what I heard.’

‘It’s like that?’

‘Yeah, it’s like that.’

‘We’ll handle this, ese.’

The loser crawled to the toilet, pulled himself up and washed the blood from his face in the sink. The door swung open. Everyone looked at the guard as if expecting him to notice there’d been a fight, but he just yelled a name and extracted a man. The guard shut the door, and we all sat down.

The loser ripped his top off. Expanding the canvas of gang tattoos on his chest, he swaggered up to the victor. ‘So what the fuck you sayin’?’ Blood was leaking from the cuts on his face.

‘Loco got smoked, ese. Why you squaring off on me?’

There was a crescendo of gang slang. Two men exchanging saliva motes but not blows. I concluded neither really wanted a rematch. The victor had nothing to gain. The loser had saved face by scraping himself off the floor and showing he was ready for round two. The situation followed the path of least resistance. It reversed. Proclaiming how gladly they’d die for their hoods, they bonded.

‘Can I have some love?’ the smaller one said. His olive branch led to much hugging and gang-handshaking. It morphed into the surreal. They were now a married couple making up after a spat, sucking up to each other. With toilet paper, the taller cleaned the blood from the other and then massaged the injuries he’d inflicted. Knowing they would smash me to a pulp was the only thing that stopped me from laughing out loud. We all listened, riveted by their drama.

The smaller gangbanger was adept at dealing with eavesdroppers. He jumped up and yelled ‘Does anyone in here look at this man any fuckin’ differently ’cause of what just happened?’

Silence.

‘All right, all right, y’all go back to your business then.’

Everyone resumed talking.

I was extracted for fingerprints and photographs. My charge sheet showed some ambiguous drug charges and a conspiracy charge with another $750,000 bond. How could I bond out now? I would have to wait to see my attorney to interpret the charges. I was ordered into another cell. I figured it was early morning. I wanted to sleep but fought the urge, as it was too dangerous in The Horseshoe. Eventually, a guard called us out for court.