Condemned (29 page)

When Sandro retraced his steps to the M.C.C. after visiting with Li'l Bit and handling her arraignment, there was a queue of visitors in front of the closed entrance door, awaiting the beginning of family visiting time. Many little children, neat, in their Sunday clothes, struggled to run free as they were restrained by mothers who were all gussied and perfumed, waiting to visit husbands, fathers, boyfriends, lovers. There were some female detainees at the M.C.C, but in the main, the inmates were men.

Sandro walked past the waiting line and opened the door to the building. While family and social visits are restricted to certain times and certain days, lawyers are permitted to visit their clients everyday from early in the morning until eight at night.

“Help you, Counselor?” said an Hispanic Officer inside a glass-enclosed cubicle just beyond the entrance. A metal tag on his shirt indicated that his name was Rodriguez. Another Officer within the cubicle, tall, black, was talking into a telephone as he read from some papers.

“Counsel visit,” said Sandro.

“Who you here to see?”

“O.T. Hardie,” said Sandro.

“Red? The Man himself?” asked the Hispanic Officer.

“The very one.”

“Red Hardie receiving visitors yet?” the Officer inquired, affecting a haughty accent.

The black Officer inside the cubicle could be seen laughing.

“Big man on campus, Counselor. Very big. I'd say he's the most illustrious detainee we've had in a long time. What kind of guy is he?”

“Great guy, right down to earth,” said Sandro.

“If I had his dough, I'd be a gentleman, too. Fill out your paperwork and stand by the machine. I'll be right out.”

Sandro filled out a requisition form on which he wrote his name and address, his client's name and registration number, and assured the authorities that he was not carrying explosives, weapons, drugs, cigarettes, or contraband of any kind.

Across from the reception cubicle, at the opening to a corridor that permitted visitors to pass to a waiting area behind the cubicle, stood a conveyor belt x-ray machine and a magnetometer which scanned the people and packages to be brought into the interior of the facility. The Hispanic Officer stepped out of the cubicle.

“Put any metal objects in the tray—keys, coins, pens, belt buckles—anything metal,” said the Officer. Sandro stepped through the magnetometer; the buzzer atop the door frame remained silent. “Left hand, Counselor.” The officer pressed a rubber stamp onto the back of Sandro's hand. It left no visible impression. “You're okay. Step inside and sign in.”

The glassed-in cubicle actually divided a large reception area into two sections. The front section was to initially screen all visitors and packages. The section behind the cubicle served as a waiting area with rows of seats. On a shelf, suspended from the back of the cubicle were two large ledger books. Sandro signed his name into the lawyers's visiting ledger, and wrote the name of the inmate he was visiting, the inmate's Bureau of Prison's Register number, and the time of day he entered.

“That's right, ma'am. You can only visit one day a week,” the black Officer, still inside the cubicle, said into the telephone cradled between his head and shoulder. Sandro slid his lawyer's card through a slot in the glass. By rote, the Officer slid out to Sandro a pink identification tag with a small alligator clip to attach to his lapel. “I can't help that ma'am—you need a locker, Counselor?” the Officer said from the side of his mouth as he half-listened to the phone. Sandro shook his head. “Red Hardie?” he said to Sandro softly from the side of his mouth. Sandro nodded. “Damn!” the black Officer murmured.

“You get your paperwork yet, Counselor?” said the first Officer, now walking into the waiting area.

“Yes.” He handed the completed requisition sheet back to the Officer, who initialed the document and picked up another telephone.

“Hello, Ross. This is Rodriguez, front desk. I got a Counsel visit for Red Hardie. That's right, the main man. Ask Mr. Red if he would mind getting off his pillows to attend a Counsel visit?” He listened. “My man, if I had his dough, I would not get out of bed, ever.” He guffawed. “Ask him to step down to the Lawyers's Visiting Room.” The Officer chuckled again as he hung up the phone and handed the initialed page back to Sandro.

Sandro passed his left hand under an ultra-violet light; the word “STAFF” appeared on the back of his hand. As part of the Bureau of Prison's policy, the stamped message, even which hand it was stamped on, were varied daily. Entering through six more glass and steel doors, each unlocked electronically, one at a time, only after the door behind was locked tight, Sandro ascended to the third floor in an elevator controlled by personnel inside a central control room on the main floor of the building. After signing his name into yet another ledger book, passing his hand under another ultra-violet light, Sandro was seated in a small waiting area facing various small, glass-doored visiting rooms. Some of the rooms were already occupied by other lawyers visiting clients.

In the center of the Lawyers's Waiting Room was a desk at which a black female Officer sat. Another Officer, white, beefy, with the regulation long, silver keychain hung from a clip on his belt, disappearing into his back pocket, stood at the side of the desk. All of the male prisoners who came into the room wore either a dark brown (signifying a non-problem inmate) or orange (potential problem) government-issued jumpsuit. When they finished their lawyer visits, the male Officer took each prisoner into the men's toilet to strip search them before they were permitted to return to their housing unit. The few female prisoners were dressed in sky blue jumpsuits and were strip searched by the female Officer at the desk.

“Who you here to see again, Counselor?” the female Officer said to Sandro after he had been waiting for fifteen minutes.

“O.T. Hardie.”

“Mr. Red is probably having his afternoon massage.” The Officer picked up her phone. “Hello, Ross, darling. This is Collette. I have a lawyer waiting patiently for Mr. Red Hardie,” she paused. “I can't tell him that,” she smiled, winking at Sandro. “Have you sent him down yet?” She nodded. “He's waiting for Control to send up the elevator,” she said to Sandro as she hung up the phone. “Must be quite a come-down for a man like Mr. Hardie, a real elegant dude, to wear one of these here baggy jumpsuits and eat jail food,” she remarked to both Sandro and the other Officer.

“Is the glass half-full or half-empty?” said the male Officer.

“What glass?” said the female Officer.

“Depends on how you look at it. Step inside,” the male Officer directed an Hispanic prisoner who exited from a visiting room. “He may be wearing jumpsuits now, but he's been living high on the hog, very high on the hog, for a long time. He had a good run, you know what I mean? Hey, I wouldn't complain if I had a shot at that kind of high life like I been reading about in the papers, for a year or two. The glass is half-full, right, Counselor?” The Officer followed the prisoner into the toilet room.

“A philosopher,” said the female Officer.

Sandro smiled and nodded.

“Red Hardie's done some wonderful things for the people uptown,” said the female Officer. “I have a cousin who takes her kids, every morning, to a breakfast center he set up, pays for out of his own pocket. Every six months, they have—the kids and my cousin—a medical checkup, at no charge. I'm not making any judgments, but not many people in this immediate area, in charge of putting bad people in jail, do those kinds of things for people.”

“You won't hear any argument from me,” said Sandro.

The entrance door was unlocked from the outside, and two more prisoners arrived for their Counsel visits. The female Officer took their identification cards and logged them in. After another fifteen minutes, Red Hardie came into the Lawyers Visiting Room. Red, handsome and elegant, even in a brown jumpsuit somewhat short in the leg, and a pair of white sneakers—the Bureau of Prisons insists on sneakers, not shoes—smiled.

“Hello, Sandro,” Hardie said with a wide smile. He shook Sandro's hand. “Nice tie. I didn't notice it earlier.”

“Thanks. You don't look so bad yourself.”

“Brown's not my favorite color,” Red shrugged.

The two Officers, the other prisoners who were waiting to be interviewed, two other waiting lawyers, even some of the prisoners and lawyers through the glass doors in the visiting rooms, took furtive glances at the celebrity.

“I need your card, Mr. Hardie,” said the female Officer.

“Calling me ‘Red' is fine. How you doing today,” he smiled pleasantly, looking at the Officer's identification tag, “Miss Ferguson?” Red handed her his identification card.

“Just fine, Mr. Hardie,” she replied smiling. “You can have room eight again.” She pointed to a corridor at the side of the waiting room.

“Yes, thank you,” Hardie smiled and nodded.

A fragrance of cologne wafted behind Hardie as he walked ahead of Sandro along the corridor leading to other visiting rooms off a side corridor, wholly out of the view of the Officers, lawyers, and other prisoners.

Interview Room 8 was the last, and, therefore, the least trafficked, room. Although this room had a regulation glass door, a vertical girder jutting out from one of the side walls partially concealed the interior of the room from view of the corridor.

“You seem pretty familiar with the joint already,” said Sandro.

“The people are okay here. Leppard snuck in to see me just before you arrived,” Red said as he sat in a chair against the wall. “These rooms may be isolated, but I'll bet a good pair of shoes they have a listening device in here somewhere.” He motioned to Sandro for a piece of paper and something with which to write.

“We don't say things that can't be recorded, so it doesn't matter,” said Sandro as he took out his pen and one of the jotting cards he kept in his pocket.

“For sure, for sure.” As he spoke, Red wrote on the card.

“Leppard's okay, then?” said Sandro idly, watching Red write.

“Just a heavy-duty nose-bleed.” Red slid the card to Sandro. He had written: “
Some friends uptown, have friends who work here. They got in touch with them for me.
” Sandro nodded.

“Just for the tape, I had nothing to do with Leppard getting that bloody nose, or anything else. How the hell do you start a nose-bleed, anyway?” He chuckled. “That Judge is really stretching if she believes I had something to do with that. They couldn't even agree on why they remanded me. The Judge said because of Leppard, and then Dineen says for security reasons. None of it is true, Sandro. You know that, don't you?”

“Whatever the real reason, Red, the Judge, Dineen, and the F.B.I, were all obviously in on it.”

“For sure, for sure.” Red shrugged. “More importantly, you're not mad at me for telling the Judge I didn't want you as my Counsel, that stuff in the Courtroom, are you, Sandro? I didn't mean to insult you. We go back too far.”

“Red, I understood exactly what was going on. My job as a lawyer is to protect your best interests, not to look good in front of the Judge or the other lawyers.”

Red smiled. “I just wanted to be sure you understood.”

“No need, Red.”

“And don't mind I had Leppard come see me, Sandro. You're ten times the lawyer he is. Twenty times. It's just that he's good at running errands, doing leg-work I don't want to bother you with.” Red wrote on the card again. He slid the card to Sandro. “
I had my friend (Lady) go to paralegal school. Just in case of something like this. I recommended Leppard hire her when we started the trial.
” Red looked at Sandro and winked. “I didn't want you involved in that.”

Sandro nodded he understood.

“You remember what I said at the very beginning of the case, when the Government sent over the Discovery material to your office, when they gave us all the tapes from the bug in the club? I knew from what they gave us that there was a mole somewhere.” Red pointed to the ceiling again. “And I sure don't give a rat's patootee that they know that we know there's a rat.”

“I remember.”

Red took the card back from Sandro and wrote:
“That's when I decided to put this paralegal thing together. Just in case I ended up here.”
He slid the card back to Sandro. “The way the case was being played out,” he said aloud, “I knew eventually, during, or after, the trial, they'd remand me.”

“Good foresight beats good hindsight every time, Red.”

“When I said I didn't want you as my lawyer, Sandro, nobody wants to take a fall, that's for sure,” said Red. “When Leppard got sick, it just popped into my head, desperation thinking, really, just hoping maybe it would give me a little more rope to play with.” He shrugged. “Listen, Sandro, I mentioned to you in the Courtroom, just before all the fireworks started, that I wanted you to see if you could help Hettie Rouse.”

“I've already seen her.”

“You're kidding?”

“No. While I was waiting for you to be processed, I went over to 100 Centre and saw her. I've already pleaded her ‘Not Guilty'.”

There was a discreet knock on the glass door. Sandro, who was sitting in the chair that could be viewed from the corridor, turned. Officer Ferguson stood outside the door. Sandro stood and went to the door. Red leaned over and peered at the Officer.

“Sorry to bother you,” the Officer said deferentially toward Red as Sandro opened the door. “Your paralegal, Miss Henry is here.”

“Fine, fine,” Red said. “Let her come in.”

The Officer stood aside. A beautiful, dark woman, her hair back in a French twist, with simple diamond earrings in her ears, appeared in the doorway. She wore a black, pinstriped business suit. Miss Henry entered the visiting room. She glanced back through the door and smiled at the Guard. When the Officer left, Miss Henry smiled at Red, touching her lips to his cheek. She carefully wiped away any trace of lipstick with her fingers.