The Four Stages of Cruelty (24 page)

“You get us a room with a little privacy, and I’ll fill you in,” he said.

“Fill me in on what?”

“Now, that would spoil my surprise.”

I had no stomach for such shit. I threw the slot back across and strode away, the chorus of degradation rising again.

“You’re going to love it!” he yelled after me.

At the nest, they had the paperwork for Harrison’s intake ready. Nobody joked or smiled. I’d managed to arouse the suspicions of inmates and COs alike.

In the parking lot, sitting in the Land Rover, I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. The stress pounded in every vulnerable region, the insides of my elbows and the backs of my knees. I flipped the cell phone and dialed Ruddik’s number yet again, my habit for the past three days, like fingering prayer beads. It shocked me hard when I heard his quiet voice.

I asked him where the fuck he’d been. He told me to calm down.

“Why haven’t you answered my calls?”

“I’ve had company.” And he told me where to meet him.

The Mexican restaurant was one of those pink adobe haciendas at the end of a strip mall. I arrived as bidden, despite feeling sick, something heavy pressing me down, a cold, the flu coming on. The temperature had dropped, and I was chilled walking across the parking lot and into the restaurant. Busier inside than I could handle. I barely saw the hostess, just pushed past her. Ruddik occupied a booth opposite the bar. He told me I didn’t look good, as if me looking good was important. He was drinking a lime margarita on the rocks.
Virgin, he assured me. I ordered a tomato juice, craving vitamin C.

When the waitress left, he slid back to the corner of the booth and stretched out to get comfortable.

“Sorry I wasn’t in touch before. They’re monitoring my e-mail and my phone calls.”

“Who’s they?”

He didn’t bother to answer.

“Is it true about the pornography?”

“Of course it’s not true.” There was anger in the abrupt reply. “Two years ago I was investigating an Internet child porn ring based out of a penitentiary in Tennessee.”

The waitress returned with my drink and a basket of nacho chips. She asked what we wanted to eat. I had no stomach for anything and declined. Ruddik put in an order. Something chicken.

“A porn ring inside a penitentiary?” I asked.

“A private enterprise operated a call center inside the penitentiary and used inmates as workers. We suspected credit card theft based on a spike in inmate bank accounts, but it turned out they were using the call center Internet connection to distribute pornographic images and videos. Anyway, I surfed a few sites back then to research what was going on, set up a couple transactions to see where the trail would lead, and, just my luck, got caught up in a sting by a different agency. They cleared the charges right away, but the word got out to my brother COs. Now someone back there must have told someone here. Whoever leaked that information to the newspaper is trying to impede us. This is what happens when
you get close. It’s never clean. It’s always messy. But I’ve been through it before, so I’m not panicking, and neither should you. Things will get worse, and then they’ll get better. Trust me on this.”

“I don’t know if I can handle any worse. I have a bag of drugs in my truck, and Fenton thinks I put him away.”

“They want the shipment. You’ll get a call about the new drop. The drugs will take us somewhere interesting. You don’t have to do any heavy lifting anymore. Just stay in position and handle the light stuff. I’m exposed. I’m in the open now. I’ll do the rest.”

He opened his briefcase and took out a file. Always a goddamn file.

“What you said about the comic book, the idea of money, passing messages. That really gelled for me.”

“How so?”

“What is money but a kind of message? In the old days, before the U.S. had a government-issued currency, any note could serve as money. Sometimes it was just an IOU between two people, but in mining towns, for example, it might be company-issued. They called it scrip. But the problem with scrip and any currency has always been, how do you make it counterfeit-proof? You need a stamp of authenticity, some kind of marking that’s difficult to copy. Otherwise it’s just worthless paper.”

“You think Crowley was drawing scrip?”

“A possibility worth considering. Inside a prison, you would need to disguise the fact that scrip is currency, because of the illegal activity it symbolizes.”

The waitress interrupted with a hot plate, whatever food Ruddik had ordered sizzling and spitting on the metal griddle. Some sides to go with it and a little basket of tortillas. The way he dug in made me wonder how often he took the time to eat.

“But that’s just speculation. You’re going to love what I found out about Hammond.”

He folded a tortilla, overfilled it with chicken and peppers, and stuffed it into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed.

“I’ve talked to my contacts and learned some very interesting things. About twenty some years ago the FBI began investigating the possibility that conventional gang business operations in several regional centers of the country were being directed by gang leaders already residing within state and federal penitentiaries. Business hadn’t ended when the leaders got put away. Business got better.”

“What do you mean?”

“Once the leaders were locked inside, the organizations got more sophisticated and effective. They developed reporting and financial recording mechanisms and assumed vertical layers of control and supervision. They got better at using prison employees.”

“COs?”

“And secretaries, nurses, maintenance workers. In a few instances, senior people on the warden’s staff. Everyone getting their little taste. When Hammond was in extreme isolation here, for instance, the gang activity in Ditmarsh—and, incidentally, in several other state prisons connected with Ditmarsh—continued unabated. He just ran things the same way he ran them up top, maybe better.”

“But he was completely isolated. MacKay told me his mind was a mess.”

Ruddik shook his head. “Not true. He used COs to do his business for him. The FBI figured this out too late. From the group of COs that looked after Hammond exclusively, about a quarter of them were later charged with corruption. They did his work for him while he was locked up below. The Ditmarsh Social Club was rotten.”

“A few of them committed suicide.”

“The FBI would have arrested more if they hadn’t. But once COs started killing themselves, the prosecutor got cold feet. Some people felt it was not guilt, but the pressure of the investigation that drove them to suicide. So the order came to back off.”

“So what happened to Hammond?”

“The extreme isolation tactic, if faulty in practice, seemed like a good idea. So the FBI tried removing top gang leaders from their natural habitats and dispersing them to various prisons throughout the country. They were handled only by special guards and administrators. Family visitations were cut off and contact with lawyers restricted. Effectively, those inmates were made to disappear.”

“Sounds good to me.” I did not mind the idea of the worst inmates getting treated as such.

“Hammond entered that program voluntarily. He was one of the flagship members. That’s how he got out of Ditmarsh.”

“And Hammond turned,” I said. “He became an informant and started making anti-gang speeches.”

“Some of the agents behind the program predicted that
would happen. Once gang leaders were separated from their gangs, they would be out of danger and free to leave the code of the lifestyle. Maybe they’d start trading information for privileges. In fact, that’s the story we started to tell.”

“What do you mean story?”

“We wanted to discredit or stain the reputations of the leaders who’d been dispersed, so we spread the rumor that they’d become witnesses of the state and been given new lives even outside of prison, that their cooperation had paid off big-time.”

“And that didn’t actually happen?”

Ruddik shook his head. “No one except Hammond.”

He passed me a poor photocopy of a newspaper article. The
Contra Costa Times
. March 8, 1992. In the picture, a man who was obviously an inmate stood at a microphone, answering questions on a crowded stage. His arm was extended outward, cutting through the air. The same bearing and posture as the picture of Hammond I’d seen in the
Time
article, except the face was not blocked by a black line. Still, despite a close look, I did not recognize him from the current inmate population at Ditmarsh.

“Hammond was different. He didn’t want to disappear, and he convinced someone high up he could do more good if he went public and spoke out against the gangs. He gave speeches to new inmates, telling them about the choices they had available to them during their time in detention. He had a very effective message of personal development and avoiding gang activity or drugs, very self-help oriented. A four-step process: Shed your past. Change your thinking. Adopt new
behaviors. Make a better future happen. Administrators and counselors ate it up. And what wasn’t to love? A high-profile murderer and gang leader was expounding personal growth and a rejection of drug use, criminal acts, and self-destructive behavior. He started doing a monthly series on tape cassette, and they distributed it to penitentiaries around the country in the hope that his message would have a major impact.”

“Brother Mike said they were compelling. They made a difference on the prison population.”

Ruddik nodded. “They sure did. A non-gang movement began to grow. And Hammond was heralded as a kind of revolutionary of reform. They put him in
Time
magazine.” Ruddik pulled out a photocopy, and I leaned in to see the close-up with the blacked-out eyes again. “Then they discovered that Hammond’s tapes contained coded statements.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some researcher in a criminology program started noticing key phrases and repeated words. Then a snitch came forward to dish that Hammond’s group had undergone a power struggle or a coup prior to Hammond’s disavowing gang life. From a number of isolated pieces of intelligence it was possible to start stitching together the whole cloth. Hammond had been undermined by his lieutenants. Once he lost that power, he looked to improve his own life first; then he set forward on an audacious objective. Through the taped messages of salvation, reconciliation, and personal responsibility he was undermining his old gang by sending out orders to a newly established criminal organization. He recruited, gave orders, developed new business lines.”

“He started a second gang in California?”

Ruddik smiled. “No. Far better than that. He franchised nationwide. He generated dozens of small gangs all over the country. Wherever three or more men met to discuss his teachings, when we thought they were talking about Hammond’s bullshit self-help message, they were actually focused on illegal entrepreneurial activities. With the small numbers and the lack of gang signs or credos or ethnic affiliation, it was all too micro level for us to pay attention to, and so they mostly operated below the radar screen, as isolated cells. When the FBI figured that out, they stopped fucking around and took Hammond off the grid for good. No one’s seen him since the fall of 1995. You don’t even hear his name anymore. He’s nowhere to be found.”

“But you must know where he is?”

“Are you kidding me? They don’t design those domestic rendition programs with traceable addresses. They’ve got prisons inside prisons inside prisons. Files and cross-files and double-blind files.”

“But you think Crowley was helping to spread Hammond’s message? Is that what the comic book is all about?”

“I don’t know, but there’s someone out there who knows more than he’s admitting.”

“Who?”

Ruddik pushed the newspaper photograph in front of me again.

“All the network modeling I showed you before, all those lines and nodes didn’t lie. Look closely. Recognize anyone?”

I leaned forward, scanning the faces, randomly at first, then one by one. When I saw what Ruddik wanted me to see,
I couldn’t believe it. I felt that hard pit in my chest, the exact spot where betrayal goes when it gets stuck, and a little groan escaped my throat. Younger. No beard. Wearing a dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up, leaning into Hammond’s shoulder. Described in the inscription as his spiritual adviser.

Brother Mike.

He fixed the toilet by thrusting his hand into the bowl, past the turds and floating paper, pulling out a sock wedged deep in the pipe. Nothing. He retched until he saw little bursts of sparkles. Then, miraculously, the bowl cleared itself out with an air-sucking gasp.

At breakfast, they were out of milk, so he put the cereal bowl down and opted for greasy fried eggs and potatoes. He still hadn’t got used to the color of the eggs, a radioactive orange yolk surrounded by a slippery gleaming white. Farmraised, a kitchen worker said. On what fucking farm, Josh thought, taking them just the same.

No milk for coffee either. He took a mug of watery Tang. Then he looked back up and around, wondering with the usual dread where he would sit. The only table available to him was the one for those too afraid to sit anywhere else.

It was near the door, no different to the eye from any other table in the room, but everyone who sat there was disdained. Carriers, diddlers, snitches, and skinners, a former gym teacher everyone called professor, a businessman with sores on his face. The whole rotating crew smelled of fear.

He took a seat next to an old man with an Eastern European accent and no teeth. The sound of the soft eggs slurped and then gummed up. Josh stared down at the plate and set to spooning his own food, avoiding eyes. Two men sat down on either side of him, and he pretended not to notice. Then he saw a large hand reach across his plate and scoop up a finger-ful of potatoes.

“Now, that’s fucking good,” the man said, licking the food off his fingers.

Back straightening, Josh fought the urge to push his plate away.

“Look at me, boy.”

Josh looked. He recognized the face right away. Cooper Lewis from his new range. The one with the cut who’d visited him in the infirmary. Orange goatee hairs streaked with gray, broad and yellow teeth. Lewis was the kind of inmate who enjoyed making a spectacle.

“Fenton gone, and you show up. That doesn’t sit right with me.”

The fact that Lewis needed to explain his bad treatment gave Josh the feeling of small victory. He kept his gaze steady. “Fenton told me to transfer in, and I did. He said I was the kind of guy he’d like to have around.”

“Oh, he’s fucking modest, isn’t he,” the other man said.

“God as my witness,” Lewis said. He stuck his finger into Josh’s egg yolk and brought it up to Josh’s mouth. Josh’s jaw clenched hard as the finger felt around his lips and gums. He jerked his head to the side, and the finger traced across his cheek. The jack could see it all, but looked away.

“You got very smooth skin,” Lewis said. Then the two men rose up and left.

Josh wiped his face and drank a mouthful of Tang to get the awful feeling away from his lips.

In the infirmary he could move around almost at will, and even leave the ward whenever he asked. Here he was confined to the drum or the narrow range for much of each day. They all were, but when the drum doors opened, the other men could hang out at the rail and talk, or take showers, or gather in the rec area with its three bolted tables and small plastic chairs, card games, puzzles, and a few paperback books. You hung a sign outside your drum if you wanted a special trip to the library or the gym or yard, but Josh’s sign never got answered. There was an area the size of a double cell with six showers inside, but Josh was not allowed into the room with his towel. The first time he tried, an inmate told him they were all reserved, though only two showerheads were in use. The next morning, he saw a chance before chow lineup but got pulled back by a jack and told the showers were off-limits until midday. He didn’t bother to try again. He couldn’t even get his laundry washed. You put your laundry in a little bag outside your door in the morning and the range cleaner got it
back to you folded the next day, but Josh’s laundry got kicked across the hall, and when he tried to bring it to the laundry himself, the range cleaner told him to leave his fucking machines alone.

The only inmate who spoke to him was Screen Door. They knew each other from Brother Mike’s art class. She pouted with sympathy, whispered to ask whether he was getting along all right, even appeared at his drum door one time and told him what happened to Fenton.

“They were all in shields and helmets, come busting into the range and drug Fenton out of his cell like he was an animal. He took it chill as can be, reminded them to put everything back the way they found it, but those COs found enough here and there to bust him down to dis. It was a shock, you know, and everyone wondering why he got knocked, figuring someone must have had something against him or known something they shouldn’t, and the next thing, you show up. And someone said you were special treatment in the infirmary, with not even a cough or a sniffle, and that’s why they fingered you.”

He asked Screen Door to leave him alone. He wanted isolation. He would have stayed in his drum twenty-four hours a day if it wasn’t for hunger. It forced him into bravery, made him drop into line with the others and put up with the shoves and words and even the time someone stomped on his foot so hard he thought it was broken. The smell of food emanated from the other men’s drums. You weren’t supposed to cook, but everyone had hot plates, rigged up with live wires stuck into sockets. Breakfast and coffee in the morning, late-night
snacks, strange ethnic food. He swore he smelled pancakes and bacon one day, steak and onions one night. It almost killed him. In the evening, before lights-out, he could only lie in his cell and listen to the noise, the tremendous noise, of music and shouts and conversation and televisions, as though a traffic jam and an orchestra and a political rally and a football game were happening at once, every sound picking up speed as it bounced off concrete and steel, whirling around like particles in an accelerator, becoming some other form of matter. And then silence, utter silence in the middle of the night, and nothing to do but think.

On the walk back from the cafeteria the next day, his third on the range, Screen Door told him to be prepared.

He asked why. He wondered what could be worse than now.

“They’re hoarding,” Screen Door said. “I seen guys bringing back extra food in their pockets. Making heavy brew. Not getting high so much, saving their stash. All their laundry done. Push-ups and sit-ups like they in training. Writing long letters home. Some guys even praying. That means there’s a shit tornado spinning this way. I got my eyes open.”

They mounted the stairs.

“If you want, I’ll sneak you food back from the cafeteria. You can lay low. Avoid the surprises.”

They entered the range and stopped at Josh’s drum. It was free time. The drum gates were open.

It was kind advice. A month ago he would have slunk away
gratefully and hidden in his drum in embarrassment and fear. “I can’t do it anymore, Screen Door. It’s now or never.”

And he walked to the back of the range.

He saw eyes looking up at him as he passed each drum. He felt a few men dislodge themselves from the rail or their bunks and stare after. In the rec space, he saw Jacko, Lewis, and two other men sitting at the center table playing cards. He hoped Jacko would put in a good word for him, some connection from their time together on New Year’s Eve. The men looked up, amused and astonished to see him standing before them. Lewis’s smile was pure joy, and Josh noticed he was missing the teeth on the left side of his mouth. He’d never seen such men before Ditmarsh, and now he could smell their onion breath and body odor, see their bare feet in sandals, their hairy backs and knuckled hands, their gold caps and earrings.

“I just came here to tell you I had nothing to do with Fenton getting shelved.” He spoke loud, as if to the room. “There seems to be a general misunderstanding about that, and it’s fucking wrong.” He could hear music still, and a few televisions, but no one said a word, bemused grins all around, the best soap opera they’d seen in weeks. “I’m doing my stretch here like anyone else, and I sure as fuck don’t need any trouble.”

He had nothing left to say. His hands were empty, his chest rose up and down with the difficulty of breathing.

The four men at the table stared at him as if they’d never been so flabbergasted in their lives. Then Josh got a subtle, respectful nod from Jacko, and the thread of a smile. There was generosity in his eyes, an appreciation for balls and character.

Getting no other signal, Josh took Jacko’s nod as acceptance, turned around, and walked away. He’d let them know he was a stand-up guy.

The great force blew him forward and to the ground. His ears popped, and all sound came to him through a depth of ocean. Pain stamped him everywhere, a hundred blows to his head and back. Wild eyes above him, fists flailing down. The bridge of his nose became an ax splitting his brain in half. Then he was jerked upright and dragged down the hall. His legs scrambling to keep up but getting no purchase, his eyes squinting away blood. He wondered why the walls around him were leaning in and heaving out.

He didn’t remember who got him to the hospital or how. He rested on a gurney, staring at the high brick ceiling. He thought of Stephanie and started to cry.

“Stop it,” someone said.

He tried to sit up and pull a piece of tape or cloth away from his face. It was impossible to breathe. A hand on his chest pressed him back, and he realized they were trying to kill him. Would it be a release? Only after his strength was gone and the silence became a frozen landscape in his head could he hear the voice telling him to calm himself, that everything would be okay. The gently pressing lie.

He found his steady shallow breath, as though rising up through deep water. Officer Williams’s face. Her presence confused him, and then he felt the compassion in her hand, the gently pressing palm, and began to discern the words.

“Your jaw is fine, but they had to stitch your mouth and tongue. You’ve lost four teeth. Your nose is broken. They packed
your nasal cavity with a half mile of cotton. You have to calm down and breathe through your mouth. Take slow, even breaths.”

He did as he was told. He wanted the reassurance of that voice above him forever, but then it disappeared into the darkness. When he opened his eyes, he saw her above him again, standing with two other jacks. He watched them until they realized he could hear, and they moved away.

In the morning he was able to sit up and allow soup to dribble into the corners of his mouth around his huge tongue. After lunch he was able to stand. By afternoon he could walk. He made it out of the sickroom and walked around the infirmary down the hallway. He passed the man with no face, and then his old drum, and Crowley’s. He walked on, hearing rebukes and warnings, like a ghost’s voice in his head.

Later, he stood in front of his mirror. His eyes were a raccoon’s. His skin looked as though he’d fallen out of a car and skipped along the pavement. Three of his top teeth and one on the bottom were missing, an old man’s bloody gums. His tongue was too thick to feel the space.

That evening Roy showed up at his bedside.

“I just got out of dis.”

Josh stared, ready for the accusations, knowing he had no explanation to give.

But something in Roy’s sober expression reassured Josh that it was all good.

“I’m sick of this in-between shit,” Roy said. “I’m ready to get back to the block, are you?”

Afterward, he wasn’t sure Roy had been there at all.