Atlas (3 page)

 

A
S IF GETTING ARRESTED FOR A SECOND FELONY IN TWO
days wasn't bad enough, I was also being charged with attempted murder because of that shot I'd fired into the air at the Hess station. It was crazy. I hadn't been shooting at that kid. But that was the charge.

At the station house, the cops took me into a back room and began working on me. “A kid like you from a good family, going off to prison, it's a real shame.”

As far as they were concerned, there was only one hope for me. If I could supply them with some info on a gun ring they were investigating, maybe the judge would go easy on me. In the space of a couple of days they'd twice nailed me with guns, so they thought I must know something. In fact, I did. I knew the names of some of the wiseguys who were involved in the ring, just from hanging around the kinds of people I was hanging around with. I said, “Are the guns you're interested in thirty-eights?” And when I said that, all the detectives perked up and drew their chairs closer.

“What did I tell you?” one of them said to the rest.

“No, the reason I'm asking,” I said, “is because I don't know anyone selling thirty-eights.”

It was a stupid show of smart-ass bravado, and they didn't appreciate it. One of them hit me so hard he knocked me off my chair. “You think you're funny? You're a tough guy?”

Later on, they shoved a piece of paper in front of me. It was a signed statement they'd gotten from John. And another one from Billy, from two days earlier. “Your pals put everything on you. They said it was all your idea, that you got the guns and decided what to rob. Nice friends you got.” At first I refused to look at the statements, but they were smart, they kept moving away, turning their backs, and I would take a peek, and see the signatures. They kept working on me, trying to use it. They let me know they were releasing John, that he'd made bail. (His bail was much lower than mine because he didn't have the prior arrest like I did.) “He's going home, and you're going to Rikers, where you're gonna get fucked up the ass by niggers. That doesn't piss you off? You want to just let him get out this way? This guy who was supposed to be your friend?”

I knew they were trying to manipulate me, but at the same time what they were telling me was true. It made me realize how weak people are, and how you can't assume that someone is your friend. Everyone has to be tested. That didn't mean I was going to give up any information to them. From my perspective, that wasn't an option. It didn't mean that I was stronger than John or Billy. It was just that if you didn't think there was a choice, then there wasn't any temptation.

In a way, I had learned about accountability from my father. The most vivid lesson had come after a fight I'd gotten into where my head was split open with a tire iron. I'd gone to his office, and there were twenty people waiting outside. When the nurse saw me, she took me right in to see him. My father looked at me and said, “He can wait with everyone else.” It was three hours before I got in to see him; I bled all over the waiting room floor. The nurse offered to administer novocaine, but my father said, “No, he doesn't want that. If he's going to live like this, he should know the way this kind of life feels.” He put fifteen stitches in my head without using painkillers.

What I'm trying to say is that in my way of looking at the world, which came in large part from him, it was better to do without the thing that eased your pain, without the novocaine, or signing a statement, or whatever it was. If you were going to do something, you went in understanding the ground rules. I didn't understand something in which there was a buckling rule.

The next morning, John got released and I got sent to Rikers. They set my bail at forty thousand dollars. The news of the arrest was all over the front page of the Staten Island paper. I guess it goes without saying that it was a major embarrassment for my father. I'd finally gotten his attention, but not in a good way. He was furious and refused to pay my bail. My mother wasn't happy either. All the same, she didn't want her son in jail. So she did what a mother does. She said to my father, “Either you put up the house as collateral for his bail or I'm leaving you.”

In the meantime, I got sent off to Rikers Island.

T
HE OLD BLUE
D
EPARTMENT OF
C
ORRECTIONS BUS
rumbled through the streets of Queens, bumping over potholes. I was handcuffed to a kid who had an Afro the size of a beach ball. Every time we stopped for a red light, the other prisoners on the bus would yell out the windows at girls walking by. “Yo, mama! You looking fine, baby. You wanna gimme some of that?” It was amazing to me that some of the girls actually responded. This wasn't a city bus or a sightseeing bus. It was a prison vehicle full of rough-looking thugs and criminals on their way to jail.

At one point we passed in front of a Chinese restaurant on Eighteenth Avenue. A delivery boy was locking his bicycle to a parking meter.

“Fuck, look at this mothafucka,” the kid next to me said. “That's the mothafucka who got me locked up.” Suddenly he was yelling out the window, the veins in his neck popping. “Yo, Wuk Du, you mothafucka! I'm gonna come back and fuck you up! I'm gonna kill you and bury your ass in a bowl of rice!”

Everyone on the bus cracked up. I thought,
These are the people I'm going to have to live with now.

The thing about being on that bus was that you knew it was just a prelude to something worse—that it wasn't going to be just a bus full
of these guys once you got to Rikers; it was going to be a whole world of them.

I began daydreaming that I was a kid again, going out on house calls with my father. I remembered the way, when it was real cold out sometimes, he'd leave me out in the car waiting for him, and say, “If it begins to get too cold in here, you can start the engine up,” even though I knew he didn't really mean it. He was eccentric about some things—like he'd shut the engine off and coast down hills just to save gas—so I was reluctant to take advantage of his offer. I'd be freezing my ass off and afraid to turn the key, thinking,
Is it cold enough? Am I cold enough?

I guess I thought about a lot of things on that bus ride to Rikers. I knew my father was a proud man. He wasn't going to show that he was bothered by what I was going through. In his eyes, I had done what I had done and should be accountable. On some level, even though I was only eighteen years old, I understood that. Still, it was nearly impossible not to wish that I had a family that loved me the way I'd seen families love each other in the movies. I had to keep reminding myself that I didn't have that. Not because I was on this bus going to Rikers, but because I didn't have it, period.

The kid in front of me started singing that Lou Rawls song that was on the radio at the time, “I'll See You When I Get There.” It had always been a happy, upbeat song. Suddenly it was something else entirely.

The trip to Rikers seemed to take hours, and yet once we were on the bridge to the island, water on each side of us, it was ending much too quickly. On the other side of the bridge, we went through the gates, and drove past a number of buildings to the youth facility (known as the Youth Educational Facility), where we began the first step of a long processing routine in which we were shuttled from one station to another like cattle. Finally, I got stripped down and had my ass cheeks spread and searched, then was handed a set of plain blue clothes and was taken to
my cell. That's when the cold reality of where I was hit full force, walking past all those other cells, hearing the shit they were yelling at me. I was scared. Nothing makes you feel more alone than prison. At the same time, I realized that as much as I didn't want to be there, I had to be sure I recognized that I
was
there. That it was real. To think or act otherwise was dangerous.

It's funny what the mind can do, though. I mean, once they put me in this five-by-eight-foot cell, with a barred window the size of a postage stamp, I realized that if I stretched up and craned my neck, I could see and hear the planes taking off and landing at LaGuardia Airport. It's almost cruel that they put a prison right next to an airport that way. Watching those planes, I began to imagine that I was on one of them. I actually made a deal with whoever, with God, I guess, that if I could be on one of those planes that I would accept that the plane was going to crash. I would take the chance. At first I thought I was the only one having thoughts like that. I thought it was a form of weakness. But then I thought,
If I'm having these thoughts, other people must be, too.

I couldn't be the only one. It was a revelation. In the mess hall, in the yard, these guys would try not to let on that they had been having these thoughts, the same way that fighters try not to let on that they're having thoughts that scare them. Of course, everyone has them. When I came to realize that, it helped me put my fears into perspective. It's one of the things that I've used ever since, and that's helped me to become a good trainer.

Rikers Island had a reputation for being a rough place, and it was. Any place where kids spit razor blades out of their mouths to cut you is not a real great place. These other prisons, like Attica and Sing Sing, were tough, but the youth facility at Rikers was more dangerous because it was all young kids who were angry and lost, and not—even in criminal ways—directed yet. They were dangerous the way I was dangerous. They didn't know why they were so full of anger, so full of hatred. They were still groping, trying to eliminate certain fractured feelings in themselves in whatever way they could; whereas the older guys in those other places had a better sense of themselves, were more practical, knew how to do their time. Older guys didn't need to stab you to show they weren't afraid. A kid in Rikers might stab you just to avoid facing something else he might be feeling.

Early on, I made it clear that I would stand up for myself. This guy who was six feet and a mean-looking motherfucker came up to me in the rec area and let me know he wanted my sneakers. I can't remember exactly how he phrased it, but I knew what he was asking and what it meant. I knew what it would lead to. I didn't even say no. I just went after him. I knew that if I didn't, it wouldn't stop there. I knew that after the sneakers it was going to be my dignity he would try to take, my soul. Some people might feel that it would be easier to avoid the confrontation, to give up the sneakers. In the ring, I see fighters quit or give up all the time because it feels at that moment like it's the easiest option. I always tell them the easiest thing is actually to make a stand. The act of fighting, of facing what you have to face, in reality lasts only a few minutes. Otherwise, you have to deal with and live with the consequences forever. And that's much harder. So I went after this guy, and it really didn't matter who got the best of who—though I think I got in more shots than he did before the guards broke it up. The point was, I was standing up for myself. That was what was important. After that I was pretty much left alone.

Even though I kept to myself at Rikers, there was one guy there I made a connection with, a chaplain there, Brother Tim McDonald, who was a Franciscan friar they called the Brother of the Rock. He knew my uncle slightly, and he kept an eye on me from the day I got there. I didn't know, but he was watching through a one-way mirror when they brought me in, and he came and saw me the next day.

Now I know that the Catholic religion has taken a big hit in the past few years, but this guy was the real deal, what a guy like that is supposed to be. He was a big, burly Irishman, and when he shook hands with you, he tried to break your hand. That was the way he showed you that he was in charge. I knew right away he was telling me very clearly, “This is my place.” But he was solid, and there weren't many things in there that were solid. Or outside of there, either, for that matter.

He already had all my records. He said, “You belong in here, Teddy. You're a dangerous person.”

He wasn't saying, “You poor thing. I can see you're really a sensitive person deep down.” Not that I wouldn't have wanted to hear a little bullshit. I'm no different from anyone else that way. But I appreciated that I wasn't hearing it, that maybe somewhere down the line I could hear
some other stuff from him that connected to something real, and that I would be able to trust that what he was saying had meaning. It was another lesson that I would incorporate into my career as a trainer. I would tell fighters under pressure the truth, even though they didn't want to hear it, because I knew they needed it and would know the difference. The ones who were going to make it would actually want to hear it, would know that they could trust it—both the criticism and the praise.

That first Sunday, I went to chapel, and afterward Brother Tim stopped me and said, “Why'd you come to church?”

“I wanted to go to mass,” I said.

“No, you didn't. You came because you wanted to show me you were a good guy and get my approval.”

He was right. He had a way of puncturing your pretenses that made you trust him. He was teaching me things about human nature.

“So how are you doing?” he asked. “Are you all right? You need to make a phone call?”

Everything in prison is a kind of currency. He was using the fact that he had a phone in his office that I could use to further build trust and let me know that he cared. With other guys, he might use the currency of the phone for something else. If there was someone he saw who shouldn't have been in Rikers or who couldn't defend himself, Brother Tim would go to the guy who ran the quad, the inmate with the most juice, and he'd make a deal with him. He was smart. He'd say, “Look, I don't want this kid bothered,” because he knew the kid would be raped otherwise. He'd say, “I'm going to let you make five calls a week,” and the guy would make sure that nobody bothered the kid.

Of course, it didn't always work. He said to me on more than one occasion, “Teddy, some people travel through here and it changes their lives. Some, it ruins their lives.” There was one kid who was in for shoplifting. A frail, skinny kid, who'd slipped a couple of albums under his sweater and been caught walking out of a record store. Before Brother Tim could do anything to prevent it, the kid got raped. It was terrible. The kid's bail was only fifty dollars, and when Brother Tim discovered that, it just killed him. I mean, this kid was ruined, he was never going to be the same, and for what? Fifty bucks? Brother Tim did get the kid out after
that, he paid the bail—which is something he did routinely, despite the fact that he was making almost no money—but not too long after the kid got back home, he was found in the vestibule of his building, dead of a drug overdose. “Your mistakes sometimes you never get over,” Brother Tim said. “I see that here.”

I got out of Rikers, but I stayed in touch with Brother Tim. He lived with the Franciscan friars on Waverly Place in Greenwich Village. I'd go visit him, and take him out to eat at these Italian restaurants on Carmine or Bleecker Street. He looked like a dockworker, a guy out of
Hard Times.

He'd wear this blue wool cap, and his clothes were what was made in prison or what someone gave him. He was an orphan himself, this guy who cared about all these godforsaken unfortunates. I remember at one of these restaurants we went to, he pocketed the silverware, and then went, “Oops, guess I lost control of myself, Teddy,” and put the silverware back on the table. “Gotta get out of my old habits.” It was funny, but it was also like he was making a show of having been there himself; he was saying, It's easy to slip back. You have to be disciplined.

 

L
IKE A LOT OF PEOPLE,
B
ROTHER
T
IM WAS WORRIED, WHEN
my father finally paid my bail and I got out, that I would slip back. It was a genuine concern. I was back home, waiting for my trial to start, and I was facing a lot of years—ten years with the two felonies—and yet even with all that going on, it didn't seem impossible that I would do something else to compound things, that I still didn't get it.

Another guy who was concerned was my childhood friend Kevin Rooney, who had won the 147-pound Golden Gloves in New York four months earlier. Like me, Kevin came from a dysfunctional family, and he'd had several run-ins with the law. In those days the cops tried to get problem kids involved in boxing in the Police Athletic League, which is where Kevin and I first got close. We were boxing in an old laundry room in a rough project called Park Hill under the tutelage of this guy Ray Rivera. It was a no-frills setup. We'd pick our rubber mouthpieces out of a glass jar by the door and then put 'em back in the same jar when we were finished. Very sanitary. But it was a good program in lots of
ways. It helped kids. I mean, when you think about the fact that Kevin and I are still involved in boxing, that says a lot.

Anyway, Kevin went on to fight in the New York Golden Gloves, and during the tournament, the Hamill brothers, Pete, Brian, and Dennis, who knew Kevin's brother, introduced him to Cus D'Amato, a well-known fight manager and trainer. Cus thought Kevin could turn pro eventually, and Jim Jacobs, who was Cus's friend and business partner, offered to pay Kevin's expenses so Kevin could live with Cus in Catskill, New York, and train at his gym. It was an offer that Kevin jumped at. Now, four months later, right after I got out of Rikers, Kevin called me up. He knew there was a good chance I'd get into trouble again hanging around Staten Island, and he was trying to help me out.

“Come up here, Teddy. I'll ask Cus, but I'm sure it'll be okay with him. You can live here, train for the Gloves, and stay out of trouble while you're waiting for trial.”

I could see it was a good idea. I knew myself well enough at that point to see that he was right. I brought it up with my father, and my father, to his credit, agreed to foot the bill. Fifty bucks a week for my room and board.