American Criminal (20 page)

    An indeterminate amount of time went by as Ray alternated between resting and eating. He was surprised that the infirmary food was a lot better than the crap he ate at the cafeteria. Maybe they really did want him to recover. Despite his injuries, he felt the most relaxed since arriving at the prison. With the
Skins’
leader out of the way, that was one less thing he had to worry about. But it was even better than that. He wasn’t worried about any of the
Skins
. From what he had seen in the yard, the
Bloods
had taken care of most of them. With the
Skins
out of the way, he might be able to do the rest of his time without the constant threat of imminent death looming over his shoulder.

    Ray felt like he had spent a week at the infirmary before he was finally shipped back to his cell. He was disappointed to be leaving comparative comfort and safety, but he was also becoming restless from inactivity. He smiled when he saw his cellmate, Frank, leaning against the back wall, reading his customary magazine.

    “Frank, you should win an Academy Award,” Ray said as he entered the cell. “You had me completely fooled.”

    “But that’s not that hard to do,” Frank said, grinning.

    “True,” Burnside agreed, pacing the cell.

    “Relax, Cellie, you’re making me nervous,” Frank said.

    “Relax? I’ve had all the relaxing I can handle for the last however-many days.”

    “Three days,” Frank said. “That’s very unusual, by the way. Usually, they bandage you up and ship you back to your cell in a few hours.”

    “Well, I feel a lot better,” Burnside said, stretching his arms above his head until his fingers brushed against the concrete ceiling. “Now I need to get back in shape.”

    Ray dropped to the floor and started doing pushups. The physical exertion felt great after three days of doing nothing. He hardly noticed his old cuts and bruises. As far as he was concerned, they were healed. Ray marveled that in his former life, he would be resting and feeling sorry for himself if he felt the same amount of residual pain he felt now. At this point, he was so used to pain that it was nothing to exercise through it. As long as the pain wasn’t incapacitating, he felt he could do anything. When he reached a hundred push-ups, he stopped and resumed pacing.

    “So, what’s going on with the gangs?” Ray asked Frank. “Are the
Skins
out of the picture?”

    Frank glanced up from his magazine, smiling conspiratorially.

    “The
Skins
are history. They’re done.” He widened his grin like a cat that had just dined on the family hamster. “The ones that are still alive or not in critical condition are scared shitless. They’re trying to blend into the normal prison population, hoping no one will notice them. The
Bloods
are on top now
.
They even took over the weightlifting area.”

    “Are you serious?” Ray asked, stopping his pacing for a moment.

    “Oh yeah. They run the show now. Even the
Goodfellas
kiss their ass.”

    “That’s great,” Burnside said, resuming his pacing and then stopping suddenly. “Isn’t it?”

    “For us it is. The
Bloods
boss, Troy Jones, can be a ruthless bastard, but he doesn’t forget a favor. He’s plenty grateful to us for our role in taking out the competition. You even have the added bonus of saving his life.”

    “That’s what I was hoping,” Ray said.

    “We’re due to go to the yard soon,” Frank said. “You should meet up with Jones ASAP so he can explain the new pecking order. Let me put it this way. We’re not exactly members of the gang because that’s simply not a possibility. But, we have a free pass. They will protect us, as if we are members. Like I said, Jones never forgets a favor.”

    “That’s beautiful. That’s even better than I hoped,” Burnside said, accelerating his pacing.

    “Cellie, you’re stressing me out,” Frank said. “Take one of these and chill.”

    Frank threw a magazine at Ray’s feet. Ray reached down and picked it up. It was a three-month-old
Newsweek
. He couldn’t remember the last time he read anything substantive. He sat down on his bunk and scanned the pages, voraciously, soaking up the words like a man in the desert drinking a tall glass of water after weeks of thirst.

    Ray consumed the words in the magazine like a crazed drug addict snorting a mountain of coke. He was on the last page when the bell rang, signaling the move to the yard. The usual procedure followed and they arrived in the yard without incident. This time, Frank walked into the yard with him, side-by-side.

    “We’ll talk to Jones together,” Frank said.

    “Okay,” Ray replied.

    After a short walk, they spoke briefly to a muscular black inmate guarding the periphery and then entered the
Bloods
new turf. The eyes of many of the
Bloods
were on them as they passed. They found Jones in Price’s old hangout in front of the decaying universal weight machine in the center of the yard.

    “Well, well, well,” Jones said, chuckling. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

    Jones approached them and shook hands with Frank first, then Ray.

    “How can I help you gentlemen?” Jones asked.

    “Ray wanted to see for himself how things had changed,” Frank said, grinning.

    “How do you like the New World Order?” Jones asked.

    “It’s very nice,” Ray said.

    “I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Jones said. “Feel free to avail yourself of the equipment at any time,” he added, gesturing, magnanimously, to some of the various machines in the weightlifting area. “Just check in first with a guard and then use anything you want.”

    “Thank you very much, Mr. Jones,” Burnside said.

    “Mr. Jones? Where did you find this guy, Frank? A country club? You can call me Troy,” Jones said, grasping Ray’s hand in a tight grip for a second time. “It’s the least I can do to return the favor I owe you. Now, if you don’t mind, I have some business to attend to, so you gentlemen can make yourself at home.”

    “We appreciate it,” Ray said. 

    Jones’ grin widened and he winked at Burnside as he turned and walked away. He met with some of his lieutenants on the other side of the universal machine.

    “You feel like working out?” Frank asked.

    “Hell, yeah, I haven’t touched a weight since I was brought to trial a half-year ago. The jail didn’t have anything remotely resembling exercise equipment,” Ray said, smiling genuinely.

    “As of three days ago, we didn’t have them either,” Frank said, walking toward a nearby bench press. “How about some benching?”

    “Sounds great. But first, let’s put some more weight on,” Ray said, counting ninety pounds already on the 45-pound bar.

    “You got it,” Frank said, reaching down to pick up a forty-five-pounder.

    They threw two more forty-fives on the bar and Ray went to work. He felt ecstatic to be working out again. They lifted weights until the bell rang, signaling for everyone to leave the yard. The return trip to the cell was uneventful. Ray borrowed another magazine, this time
U.S. News and World Report
,
from his cellmate and read until he felt tired. Then, he lay back on his bunk, closed his eyes, and thought about all the incredible events that had transpired since he arrived at the prison.

    They went to dinner a short time later and Burnside was surprised to see everyone giving himself and his cellmate, Frank, a wide berth.

    “It’s a whole new ballgame now, Burnside,” Frank said, as inmates moved out of their way as they approached the food line.

    “I can see that,” Ray said.

   
My God,
Burnside thought.
The situation really has turned around 180-degrees.

   
After dinner, they returned to their cell and Burnside finished reading the
U.S. News
and World Report
. He couldn’t believe what was going on in the world. He felt like he had been out of the loop for years, although it was really only about seven months since he was brought to trial.

     Eventually, Ray started reading one of Frank’s
Field and Stream
magazines in a desperate attempt to avoid boredom. A short time later, an unknown pair of guards showed up, unexpectedly, in front of the cell.

    “The Warden wants to see you, Burnside,” one of them said.

    “No problem,” Ray said, caught off guard.

    He stood up from the bunk and approached the bars. One of the guards opened the cell door. Ray nodded at Frank before leaving. As he exited, he placed his hands behind his back. The guards snapped cuffs on him and led him down the walkway. They took a service elevator to the third floor and went to the Warden’s office. Burnside was admitted while the guards waited outside. The Warden leaned back in a reclining office chair with his polished black shoes resting atop his wide desk. A younger man in a suit, the IA Chief, stood to the right of the desk with his arms folded.

    “If it isn’t my very own terminator returning to the fold,” the Warden said, removing his feet from the desk and smiling like a Cheshire Cat. “I must admit, you’ve been a busy man, Ray. Have a seat.”

    Burnside sat in the small folding chair placed in front of the Warden’s desk. The Warden leaned forward intently.

    “Ray, when you make a deal with someone, you don’t fuck around,” the Warden said, turning serious. “The
Skins
are history. They are all either dead, injured, or hiding out with their tails between their legs.”     

    “I just gave you what you wanted,” Burnside said, smirking.

   “Yeah, right,” the Warden said. “You even gave us a bonus by taking out Price.”

   “That’s no loss to the world.”

    “There was only one problem with your work, Ray,” the IA Chief said, uncrossing his arms and putting his hands on his hips. “The body count.”

    “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” Burnside said, stone-faced.

    “You broke more than a few,” the IA Chief said. “The state commissioner is going to be up our ass now.”

    Ray turned to the Warden.

    “What’s with this guy? Did he expect that I would resolve the situation peacefully like the U.N.?”

    “Not at all,” Warden Mackey said. “He’s just making you aware of the down side. The body count was high, but we can justify it. The video surveillance cameras in the yard picked up the whole thing.”

   “Oh fuck,” Ray said, scowling.

   “No, it’s not like you think,” Mackey said. “The footage makes it look like everything you did was in self-defense. Even taking out Price. Remember, you started your meeting by letting the
Skins
beat the shit out of you. The footage is harsh. It’s hard to believe you got off the ground afterward.”

    “It wasn’t easy,” Burnside said.

    “The video surveillance camera caught all the details of the beating, but it was less clear with the details of your killings,” the Warden said. “Price’s back was to the main camera when he went down, so it’s hard to tell exactly what happened. After that, the camera records
Skins
coming at you from all angles, which provides more evidence of self-defense. The camera caught you shanking a
Skin
in the gut, but it seemed necessary, given that two of them were rushing you. After that, you got tackled and it looked like you were all done until our guy in the tower shot the inmate on your back.”

    “Which I appreciate, by the way,” Burnside said. “But what about that trigger-happy yahoo in the second tower? He almost took me out permanently.”

    “He wasn’t with us or the
Skins
,” the IA Chief said. “He was just some officer doing his job. We interviewed him later and he said he went after you because you seemed to be in the middle of the action: a fact we couldn’t argue with. However, he shot you three times, which was obviously overkill. He was reprimanded and that helped your case considerably. The commissioner doesn’t want any Excessive Force lawsuits filed against the prison in the aftermath of the riot. The footage of you getting shot and the infirmary records don’t paint a pretty picture.”

    “Sounds like I got lucky,” Burnside said, sarcastically.

    “Very lucky,” the Warden said. “We replaced the
Skin’s
guard in the tower with our own guy at the last minute. If not for that small detail, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

    “That’s a good point,” Burnside said. “You will have to thank him for me.”

    “The good news is that the positioning of the surveillance cameras made all your actions look like self-defense, even the assassination of Price,” the IA Chief said. “From that angle, it was difficult to tell if he was coming after you or you were going after him. That means this incident won’t effect your behavioral evaluation and we can implement the plan we talked about earlier.”