Black Gangster (2 page)

The line of men soon quieted down enough to satisfy the guards. They started filing out the large doors of Three Block. The other eight blocks inside the prison walls had already eaten.

Prince walked beside Red, shooting the bull until they reached the mess hall. Then, by tacit agreement, the men split up, blacks going in one side of the huge mess hall, whites in the other side. The men segregated themselves in the mess hall by personal choice, blacks eating on one side, whites on the other. Here and there you could see a sprinkling of whites sitting with blacks. In most of these instances it was a white homosexual sitting with his man, or when it occurred on the white side, a black homosexual sitting with his white man. At times, it would just be friends sitting together, but it was more than likely to be lovers together.

At all times during the meal, the men were kept under surveillance by the men in the gun towers. At the first sign of any disturbance, long-barreled rifles would appear in the gun slots. It was a known fact amongst the inmates that the guards would shoot, and shoot quick. It didn't take much to give them cause for target practice. In prison, a man quickly learned that, at the beginning of any fight, you got the hell clear of the fighting area, because when the guards started to fire, it would be right into the crowd of fighters.

Prince ate quickly and left the mess hall. It was yard time now, so he had a few hours until it started to get dark before locking back up. He searched through the gym first, looking for his older friend, Fox. The gym was full of men playing basketball on the two courts, plus men in the weight pits, lifting iron over their heads, trying to build muscles up so they could impress their girlfriends when they got out. On the benches lining the walls men sat huddled over, playing chess and checkers, cigarettes stacked up beside them to bet with.

Prince retraced his steps and walked over to "Las Vegas," a large area with wooden tables and seats. Here the men gambled from the beginning of yard time until it ended, winter or summer. In the winter you could find them huddled up in their coats, betting boxes of cigarettes as if they were real money. To them, they were money; in prison, cigarettes take the place of currency. You could buy everything from a homemade knife to a sex act with one of the many queers who lived like beauty queens inside the prison walls. All it took was cigarettes. To have a quick relationship with one of the younger, prettier queers, it would cost two cartons of smokes, any brand. Older homosexuals would sell themselves for five packs on up. The prices varied with the merchandise; any sissy, no matter how ugly he might be, could find a boyfriend. From eighteen up to eighty, if they had a hot head or whatever else it took, somebody inside the prison walls would gladly become his man.

Fox saw Prince coming and stepped away from the poker game he had been watching. "Hey there, guy, I been lookin' for you."

"Yeah, Fox, the bastards fed us last today," Prince said as he walked up to his associate. Fox was in his late thirties, with the appearance of a man in his early fifties. His eyes had deep circles around them, while there was a thinning out of his hair that came with old age. His face was slightly bloated, and his pale brown skin had a burned look about it, as though it had seen too much scorching sun. He was short, about five-seven, with a growing paunch. His gut hung over his belt buckle.

"Let's walk around awhile." His voice was firm and strong.

Prince fell in step with the older man. He had grown accustomed to Fox's way of speaking long ago. He was not necessarily used to people talking to him in this manner, but he had long ago learned to accept certain things if he thought that they would one day pay off in his favor.

They walked side by side around the yard. As they passed the stands Prince waved to Red, who was sitting with some hillbillies playing guitars.

"Goddamn, it's more fuckin' woods with guitars inside this joint than it's roaches in the city," Fox said and removed his hankie to wipe sweat from his brow. "The goddamn hot weather brings them out with them funky guitars like flies."

Prince laughed and continued to walk without comment. He was used to hearing Fox curse over just about everything inside the prison. Fox had done nine years on a twenty-year sentence for sale of heroin. He would be going up for a special in another month, and with his good record Prince was hoping that he made it. With the release of Fox, his plans would be falling right in order. He needed that good connect that Fox had with the dagos. A good heroin connect with Italians would make a young, fast black man rich.

"Hey, Prince, you got a minute?" an elderly black man called.

Both men stopped and waited for the older man to catch up. "I just wanted to find out if you could let me have a couple of packs, Prince. I got some good spud-juice lined up, but it takes five packs to cop."

"I'm sorry, Dad. I done gave away all my extra stuff," Prince answered politely, smiling and revealing evenly spaced white teeth.

The old man shook his head and walked away. "I should have remembered you're gettin' up in the morning," he answered over his shoulder.

"I just can't understand why you waste your time fuckin' with them deadbeats, Prince," Fox said as he coldly watched the older man walk away.

"He wasn't always down and out, man. He's just gettin' old now, and times done passed him by," Prince answered, then added, "I remember him from the old neighborhood, Fox. He used to always have time for us kids when he was doing good. He'd pull up in that white Caddie he drove, and we'd always be able to hit him up for a few dollars."

"He was a goddamn fool," Fox said harshly. "When he caught his case, that nigger had big money. More than the average nigger ever sees in a lifetime. Now look at him. Anytime a old man's fool enough to leave all his money with a young bitch, he's supposed to get took."

That was true enough, Prince agreed silently. He had the same thoughts. Not only any old man, but any young one, too. Still, it didn't stop him from being kind to the old man. He believed kindness was the sweetest con of all. Ever since he had been here, he had used a pleasant front, picking the men around him so subtly that they never knew he was using them. It had taken him two weeks to pick the little knowledge out of old Dad. Now he knew how old Dad had gotten rich, which people he had gone to to get the connections he needed to get his whiskey stills made. All of this and more was written down in his cell.

He knew just the people to go to for sugar connects, where he could buy twenty thousand pounds of sugar without any static. In fact, when his woman had come up to visit him last month, he had had her check it out, and now it was all set up, ready for him to get it out and put the business into operation. He smiled silently as he remembered her last letter. She had mentioned that she had a hundred thousand pounds of sweetness for him whenever he got out. The guards who censored the mail would have never realized that she was talking about sugar stashed away in an empty slum house.

"I don't know how that old bastard made the kind of money he was supposed to have made off of corn whiskey anyway," Fox said as they started to walk again. "It ain't that kind of money in no whiskey, in this day and age. This is the sixties, not the roaring twenties."

You know-all bastard, you, Prince thought coldly. Just continue thinking that way. "Maybe you're right at that, Fox," he said, agreeing with him as he always did whenever he knew there was no point in starting a useless argument.

There was a crowd in the middle of the yard, so they stopped and watched it for a few moments. Two men stood closely together, while another man stood in front of them with a bible. It was just another marriage going on. Almost weekly in the large prison, some homosexual was getting married to another man behind the bleak walls of the prison. It had become so regular that few people stopped to watch it.

"Goddamn punks!" Fox cursed loudly, his words carrying to the men in the rear of the crowd.

"Hey, Prince," one of the men yelled from the crowd. "They passing out ice cream and pop as soon as the wedding is over."

"That's all right, Bull. I got some script. We might stop at the store on the way around and pick up something," Prince replied with humor. "Unless you want some of their cream," he said to his companion.

"I'd rather be dead first," Fox replied with his usual impoliteness. "You know me better than that, Prince. That shit is for these goddamn parasites like Bull. Whenever you hear of something being given away, you'll find him in the front of the fuckin' line. I wish they would give away some shit sandwiches. He'd probably be right down front for that, too."

Prince glanced down at his companion. Again he wondered how the man had survived nine years behind the walls without getting himself killed. Fox bitched about anything and everything. If he wasn't crying over the food, he was complaining about the lousy movies that came inside the prison once a week.

"About that favor I been asking you about, Fox. You goin' do that for me?"

"I don't know, Prince. I gave it a lot of thought, man, but it just ain't right. I can't send you to them people like that." Before Prince could interrupt, he continued. "You just wait until I get out, baby, and we'll go over to the Big Apple together."

Prince remained silent for a minute. It was no more than he had thought would happen. He had never really believed that Fox would give him the connection in New York, but he had kept on trying until his last day in prison.

"Yeah, man, yeah. I didn't believe you'd act like a true friend, Fox," he said, some of his anger displayed in his voice. "After fuckin' around with me for over three years, Fox, you still don't trust me enough to let me get this thing off the ground for us. By the time you get out, man, I could be done made fifty grand."

"Hold on there, Prince, just hold on. Look here. When I go to the board, if I don't make it, I'll write and let you know. Then all you got to do is send your woman up to see me and I'll give her the information you need."

"Sure, baby, sure," Prince answered and turned his back and walked away. If it happened, cool, but if it didn't, he had other irons in the fire. By this time next year, he planned to have the city of Detroit wrapped up. It wasn't a bad dream for a young man of twenty-two. He had come to prison at the tender age of eighteen; now, four years later, he was educated with a schooling that a man could get nowhere else but in prison. He had learned the hard way that, if you were going to live a life of crime, go for the big buck. Now he was ready.

THE GREYHOUND BUS roared through the outskirts of Detroit. Prince twisted around in his seat and pretended to stare out of the window. He tried to ignore the slim, blond man next to him. They had both been released from the prison at the same time that morning. After reaching the bus station they had been left alone, but for some reason the young white man hadn't wanted it that way. He continued to stay close to Prince. When the bus arrived, he had followed Prince to the back of the coach and sat beside him. Prince stretched out his long legs as a bell went off in the back of his mind. "No, it couldn't be," he told himself and tried to push the thought out of his head. After leaving queers alone for four years while in prison, it couldn't be possible for one to try to pick him up on his first day out. He went back over their conversation slowly, looking for a hint of the truth. For the first few minutes of the ride, they had talked about the prison, then they both had started speaking about their futures. After a few minutes of this, Prince attempted to change the conversation back to prison. He had quickly grown tired of talking about choppers. After twenty minutes of being told how to turn some kind of 1957 motorcycle into a chopper, he turned his back on the boy in disgust.

Here was a sonofabitch twenty-five years old, he thought, who believed all you had to do was get a fuckin' motorcycle and you had it made with all the bitches in the world. This bastard is queer as a threedollar bill, Prince told himself coldly as his eyes turned a frosty gray. All this crap about motorcycles is a fake-out. He listened to the young man's voice go on and on until he finally decided to put an end to it.