“That, my friend, was a head fake. A couple badasses on D want to take me down,” Fenton explained. “Gave the jack a little New Year’s bonus. We go inside, unsuspecting, then bam, suddenly a few extra cell doors would have opened.”
“You mean he’d let them out?” Josh asked.
“Accidentally, of course,” Fenton said. “You did good, though. That was a convincing fall.”
“My head hurts like hell,” Josh said.
Fenton laughed. “Sorry about the slap.”
When they entered the hub, Fenton stopped suddenly. “Fuck if I want to go all the way back to the cafeteria. I got people I want to see.”
“You want me to get the bucket and mop?” Josh asked.
“Let that fat pig do it himself.”
One minute obsequious to the CO, next the spittle of disdain.
“So, according to Wobbles, you and Crowley got to know each other good, huh?”
This is it, Josh thought. This is how the hurt comes.
“We had drums beside each other.”
“Crowley used to do a valuable service for me before he went a little free style. He wasn’t all wrong, just a little confused, if you know what I mean.”
Josh didn’t know whether to nod or say nothing, the nervousness gnawing at him.
“All I want to know is how Crowley finished his annual report. Roy says you did it for him. Is that true?”
He had no choice but to admit it.
“Roy says you can draw just about anything, huh?”
“I suppose.”
“You think you can remember what you drew for Crowley?”
Josh shrugged, afraid to death of offending, afraid of answering wrong.
Fenton didn’t wait for any words to come out.
“You want a good home, Josh, a range where you feel safe, you come to B-three. I’m inviting you in as one of the boys. A fellow of your skills and intelligence should feel valued, not afraid. Look at this place”—one hand sweeping the air, taking in the open dome above them, as though transforming the prison into a kingdom with his gesture. “All of these monkeys locked in their cages. You on the outside walking around, looking in, passing them treats, a prince among thieves. I’d say it’s pathetic what you can drag a man down to, except most of these mutts think they have a good thing going. You realize that? They all got their plans. The things they wake up every day thinking are important. But none of them know what they’re sitting on. What they got right in reach.”
Fenton rattled the empty jugs. “Now go get us some fucking refills. I’ll hang out here until you’re back.”
Josh started to push the cart. Fenton called out to him.
“Here. Try these.” Something placed in the palm of his hand. “Fuck the tunnel. Walk across the yard to get to the kitchen. You can look at those stars and feel like a free man.”
At the end of the last day of the year I got pushed into an hour of overtime when an inmate in his cell experienced an epileptic fit. The doctor on call, a hack with smudged glasses who acted superior to everyone around him, was incredulous. Were the medications given on time? Was the right medication given to the right prisoner? More incriminations, a questioning of my basic intelligence. I’d given out 97 treatments in my round of 168 inmates. It was possible I’d made a mistake in the order. But wouldn’t that have led to other inmates experiencing bad symptoms, a chain reaction of mistakes? The doctor grumbled. Fifteen minutes later he discovered a blood track on the inmate’s inner thigh. “Injection,” he announced. There wasn’t the slightest note of apology in his tone, just pure pride at his forensic genius.
“So you’re reporting that the inmate had a negative reaction to contraband drugs,” I said, not even bothering to thin the sarcasm, “and that my conduct had no connection with his condition whatsoever.”
The doctor grunted. “Looks that way.”
Oh, fuck you, I thought. “Write it down that way, Doctor. I’m out of here.”
There were two hours left in the year when I kicked open the front door of the penitentiary and saw the parking lot.
Pitch-black and twinkly in the sky, the ground lit by the lights of the sentry towers like a sports arena at night. As I approached my truck, I saw a figure in a parka standing deeper in the parking lot, waiting. At first I thought it must be Wallace, but then I saw that the man was taller and more broad-shouldered than Wallace. A hand lifted, beckoning. I adjusted my direction to head his way. I didn’t like walking toward him, but I didn’t want to show any sign of nervousness either. Then I felt a twist in my gut, not fear but trouble. It was Ruddik.
“What do you want?” I asked, letting all of my exhaustion show on my face.
“Cold, isn’t it,” he said, as though we were waiting at a bus stop together. Then, “My car won’t start. I’ve got cables. Could you give me a boost?”
It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. “Of course,” I said. One of the COs probably drained his battery for a laugh. “Wait here. I’ll drive over.”
“Can I drive with you? I’m half frozen from waiting in my car.”
It seemed an unlikely request coming from such a dour and self-reliant loner.
We walked to my truck and got into the cab. I didn’t want to spend any time with Ruddik. Then I wondered, what if my own engine didn’t start? There were COs who didn’t appreciate me much either. That’s all I needed.
But my truck started. I let it idle with the vents opened and the heat cranked. Ruddik offered to scrape my windows, but I told him not to bother. I got out and did it myself.
When I was back in the cab, we waited another few minutes, barely speaking, until I announced we might as well move. Ruddik directed me to his car. An old Duster. No wonder it didn’t start. Had to be fifteen years of salt-eaten junk. “No one could accuse you of being on the take,” I said. It was a stupid joke, but I was tired.
“If I was, I’d be smart enough not to spend it on a sixty-thousand-dollar truck, wouldn’t I?”
I popped the hood and let him go out and attach the cables. Both hoods were raised. I was blind to what he was doing but could imagine the handles being clipped on. Then Ruddik appeared and motioned that he was going to start his own car. I heard the starter grind and then turn over. The Duster roared out noise, gunned three times—my own lights dimming with the drain—then catching and settling, the motor grumbling but steady.
The cables got released and folded up. The hoods got slammed shut. I wanted to wave and spin out of the lot, but I waited. Ruddik opened the passenger door and thanked me. “You mind if I sit a few minutes while my car warms up, and hold you here until I’m sure it runs?”
He climbed in, stomped his feet, pulled off his gloves, and warmed his hands. I thought about turning on the radio but didn’t. Instead, we watched the prison wall like a drive-in movie screen, not speaking. I realized I should have some feeling for the place, some deeper or more poetic emotion, but I was numb. You shouldn’t be numb about where you work. Not when it took so much out of you. Maybe I was in shock. Too much had happened lately. It wasn’t all terrible.
But it was thankless. And when the pressure came down, you wondered why you bothered. Just enough money to keep you locked in.
We both heard the sound of tires moving over snow and saw the headlights. A car arriving at the prison parking lot. Neither one of us spoke. I saw that the car was a taxicab. It stopped at the gate. Beeped twice. The door of the prison, closed so tightly, opened as if magic words had been spoken. A CO appeared. The taxicab’s doors opened, and two men got out from the front seats. The man from the passenger side opened the back door and leaned in. When he stood up again, his arms were loaded with buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The driver leaned in and got his own armful. The CO at the gate ushered them in.
“That’s a lot of chicken,” Ruddik said quietly. “Those COs must be hungry.”
I didn’t say anything. My mouth closed.
“Some nights I sit in my car just to amuse myself and I watch that taxicab make two or three trips up here. It’s not always KFC, mind you. Sometimes they’ve stopped at the liquor store. Sometimes I can’t tell what’s in the bags.”
The prison gate opened again. The two men exited. They got back in their cab, which pulled away quickly, the headlights whipping by in the turn; then the cab made for the slope down to the county road.
“That’s twice already tonight, but I bet they’ll be back in an hour,” he said. “What do you think that costs in taxi fares alone? Coming all that way. In the middle of the night. I bet you add up all those fares and the cost of the deliverables, and
those COs are putting a lot of money in that cabdriver’s hands. Boy, those profit margins must be awfully good.”
“It’s New Year’s Eve, for God’s sake,” I said softly, though I knew it happened all the time. I thought of the cafeteria and their goddamn ribs. I hated the smell of food when it came into the COs’ room. I turned a blind eye. I didn’t want to know where it went. The others were in a good mood whenever a shipment arrived. They moved faster than normal, motivated, organized, like men around a barbeque. They made the delivery. I wanted nothing to do with it. I didn’t want the taste in my mouth.
“Sure,” Ruddik said. “And the COs eat it all, just like they say they do, and they don’t deliver it to some murdering gang-banger’s cell, and they don’t get paid off for lots of other things either. I’m never there when it happens, of course. So who really knows? What happens on the other side of those walls stays on the other side of those walls. Funny, isn’t it? A maximum security prison is the safest place in America to commit a crime. Nobody ever gets caught. Doesn’t matter if you’re smuggling in fried chicken or heroin. Doesn’t matter if you’re arranging for an inmate to get a quickie or letting him into someone else’s cell to give them a hot shot. You’ll never ever ever get caught. It’s like it never happened.”
“You waited for me, didn’t you,” I said.
“I knew one of these nights we’d run into each other, have a little talk.”
“Why?”
He ignored my question. “Off the top of my head, here’s a list of things I know go in there. Heroin. Crack. Cocaine.
Marijuana. Alcohol. Pornography. Perfume. Aftershave. Stockings. Sunglasses. Kentucky Fried Chicken. Pizza. Doughnuts. Coffee. Coffee beans. Game Boys. Baby back ribs. Subway sandwiches. Tobacco. Cough syrup. Syringes. Needles. Panties. Lube. Condoms. Batteries. Valium. OxyContin. Crystal meth.”
“Why are you telling me this?” My hands were on the steering wheel. It was warm in the cab, though the frost still lingered on the edges of the windshield, but I’d never felt so cold. I hated Ruddik, despised his morbid puritan morality. “You think this is a good idea sitting here? Inmates watch the cars out in this parking lot. I once drove a friend’s car to work because mine was in the shop. You know that I had three inmates ask me about my new car that very day? They watch every goddamn thing we do. Inside and outside. They watch us more closely than we watch them. I’m going to get labeled a rat just for being with you.”
“Is that what you think of me?” he asked. He turned to me for the first time. I was used to him looking away quickly, like a man uncomfortable with other people, but he seemed confident enough now.
“I think you have a job and you do it. I imagine it’s not very easy. You’re a CO and you watch the COs. I’m not sure how you handle the contradictions.”
“Why? Because you’re afraid of pointing the finger at a bad guy? I thought that’s what you wanted to do. Become a law enforcement officer someday. Right?”
It cut, his mocking me. “I do my job. It’s not easy for me either, you know. I rely on my colleagues. They look out for me.”
“Do they?” Ruddik asked. “I’m here to save your neck, Kali. They’re going to get you. You’re on the enemies list. You think the pressure’s bad now that Hadley has filed a notice of abuse, but you wait and see what they start disclosing about you. Complaints from all quarters. The inmate you beat. The inmate you screwed. The CO you blackmailed. I’ve seen it happen. You think you made anyone happy finding Crowley? You think they like whistle-blowers? They’ll turn you into a joke. They’ll let the press have bits and pieces. You’ll be a sadistic inmate rapist by the time they’ve finished with you. And in the end, you’ll move so far away from here you might need a passport.”
“Thanks for the advice. Now could you get out of my truck so I can go home?”
He didn’t move, of course. “Elgin getting hurt was the best thing to happen in a while. You wouldn’t think a tough guy like that could get so scared. He’s going to roll for us in exchange for a transfer. But I need help lining up some other informants. I know you’ve been poking around. I know you asked questions about Crowley and that you’ve got your suspicions. I think you have a knack for it. I want you to come on board.”
“How do you know what I’ve been doing?” I asked.
“Most of the time I get my information from inmates,” Ruddik answered.
“Figures,” I said. “An inmate will say anything. An inmate lies like he breathes.”
“Of course,” Ruddik said. “I’m not stupid. But I’m also open to the possibility that a liar can have his motivations for telling the truth.”
“An inmate’s only motivation for snitching on a CO is revenge.”
“Yes. But what inspires the need for revenge?”
I didn’t answer. We might have been in an empty world. No sound but the truck engine and the vents and our breath.
“Justice,” he said. “Some inmates, a surprising number of them, get pissed off when they see a CO getting away with something illegal. It offends their sense of justice.”
“They play you.”
“They play,” he agreed. “Some of them love it. They play one side against the other like they’re playing chess. Some of them think they’re geniuses. I’ve met a couple who really were. Most of them are stupider than they realize. We have to get them out in a hurry when they make a mistake and go too far. Crowley did. Of course they say it’s suicide. But I know it wasn’t. You know it, too.”
“Who’s we?”
He didn’t answer. “We’ve got warrants. We’ve got wiretaps. We’re monitoring bank accounts. We’re setting up relationships. We’re starting to figure things out.”
The words sank in. It made me queasy to think about an investigation of that scale going on. Who would go down? Then he turned on me.
“If any of this information gets out, I’ll know you are the one who told it. If you tip anyone off, if you tell your best friend or your hairdresser, I’ll know it was you. If a CO gets out of the country in a hurry, I’ll know it was your fault.”
I thought about Tony Pinckney and the three-week honeymoon he’d just taken to Australia. It was ridiculous. It was insane.
I said, “If there was something serious going on, Keeper Wallace would do something about it.” It was a leading statement.
“Keeper Wallace is dirty,” he answered. “A few months ago I got one of my guys to circulate five one-hundred-dollar bills inside to buy some particular services. I had my suspicions. When the money was in, we began to follow Wallace. We followed him for a weekend and saw nothing out of the ordinary. But then, a half hour before we were going to close it down on a Sunday afternoon, he walked into a jewelry store in the mall and came out with a small plastic bag. We went into the jewelry store and asked the clerk what he had bought and how he had paid for it. A necklace. In cash. We confiscated the cash. Two of the hundred-dollar bills turned up.”
“It could have gotten to him a hundred different ways. It could have been money owed to him by another CO, someone who really is dirty.” Who would have expected me to defend Wallace? But I felt threatened by the information, the applecart of my little world overturned by it. I’d admired Wallace once. Part of the reason why his actions had hurt me was because I admired him still.
“It wasn’t proof,” Ruddik said. “It just lined up some more arrows. They’re pointing to places you wouldn’t believe.”
I could barely breathe. I cracked my window to let the air in. I wanted the cold to bring me back to life.
“I’m angry,” he said. “I’m doing something here that I would never normally do. I’ve been watching you. I think I know where you stand, what kind of person you are. I’ve
thought about this for a while. We’ve been inching along. It’s not going fast enough. We need reinforcements.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” I said. “I’m not like that.”
A rat was a rat.
“My best informant was very close to Jon Crowley. Through his information I came to believe that Crowley knew something important. I started working Crowley, bringing him along. I wanted him to know that we could stop the beatings, give him some protection if he helped us out. Imagine my surprise when he disappears and then hangs himself in the City. It’s almost laughable.”
I tried to swallow it down, sick to my stomach. I saw Crowley dangling forward, frozen in flight, the noose eating into his neck.
“You saw his body. What do you think? Ever been pepper sprayed in the eyes? In the old days, the boys would put you in a room, douse you with it, and block the vents and door cracks so the air couldn’t clear and you couldn’t get away. Ever been tasered so bad your skin burned? Ever gone days locked in darkness, thinking you might never see another person again? I don’t think it matters if they made that noose and hung him with it or left him down there and told him they were coming back for more. Do you want to find out why?”