Criminal That I Am (4 page)

He doesn't care much about the quality of the stitching. “It's just so obvious.” He looks down again and frowns.

Because his face is crestfallen, I find it appropriate to offer him a small white lie. “It really doesn't look that bad,” I say.

He's not particularly convinced, but becomes aware that he is complaining about something as silly as his outfit. “Yeah, it's no big deal,” he says.

He shrugs it off, but I am unsettled by his discomfort. After I leave
him in the attorney room to make my way back to the office, after I leave the office for home, even after I'm lying in bed in anticipation of what the next day will bring, I find myself thinking about those hems.

T
wo days after this exchange is when I believe that the deal between Cameron and me is actually sealed. This is not because I have an epiphany about his case or even because we see something in each other that silently suggests our compatibility as co-conspirators. It's because I fix his jumpsuit.

The idea strikes me as I am leaving my apartment to go to MCC. We are planning to conduct a client history—an accounting of everything he's done leading up to the present moment—and as the low lawyer on the totem pole, it falls to me to take detailed notes. Just before I run out the door, I rummage through my desk to find a pen. My eye happens upon a set of Sharpie markers, and an idea pops into my head. I grab one and throw it in my purse.

When I arrive at the prison, I present my legal pad and Sharpie marker for inspection and sign into the attorney log. The corrections officer on duty looks on in annoyance as the Sharpie's ink bleeds through several sheets of paper when I enter my name and time of visit. With a heavy sigh, he lets me through.

Cameron is already seated in the attorney room when I arrive. I announce that I have brought him something.

His face bears a look of misery. “Thank you very much,” he says with disinterest. He doesn't bother asking what it is.

I present the Sharpie to him, but he is unimpressed. “Thanks, but I can't take that back to my unit,” he says.

“Yes, I know,” I say. I push the marker toward him. “I thought you could use it to color in the stitching on your jumpsuit.”

He considers this for a moment and looks at the marker apprehensively.

“See?” I say as I remove the lid. “It's almost the same shade of brown. If you color in the stitching, it will just blend in with the fabric.”

He thinks about this and then shrugs his shoulders. He takes the marker, and then leans over to apply it to the white thread.

I'm leaned over as well, watching him color as though he is performing a complex surgical procedure. Just as I had hoped, when he makes his way around his ankle, the stitching seems to vanish.

We are both still leaned over when he looks up from his handiwork. He rewards my efforts with a small smile.

“Thank you,” he says. “It looks better.”

I am relieved. “See? We take good care of you.” I smile, too.

“You do,” he says.

Making my difficult client happy is enough of an accomplishment that I don't mind that I now have to take several hours' worth of notes in thick brown marker.

This seemingly innocuous transaction is one that in hindsight provides a road map of what's to come. I've just demonstrated to my client that his extralegal needs are my concern. That I am comfortable going beyond what is expected. That I am willing to push the rules of confinement in order to put things right.

I don't know it yet, but these are the crucial ingredients that will make up my own criminal case. Tending to Cameron's hems is the very first step in my criminal journey. It is only a matter of time for the others to unfold.

I
find it difficult to gauge how Cameron is really faring at MCC. The brief glimpses he provides of life in confinement seem to depict two separate worlds. When he describes prison society as one where each inmate supplies and demands the skills required by the circumstances (cooking/washing/fixing) and describes the establishment of a local currency (canned tuna), he makes life on his prison unit sound like a capitalist enterprise out of
Wealth of Nations.

But then other times he will share stories of inmate behavior that is more consistent with
Lord of the Flies.
“Fighting” in prison appears to often reach the legal definition of attempted murder. In one graphic story, an inmate on his unit used a makeshift shiv hidden under his mattress to slit another inmate's neck from ear to ear. When I ask what happened to the attacker, Cameron thinks I am asking about the victim and explains that he had to get more than a hundred stitches to close up his neck.

“No, what about the guy who cut him?” I ask.

“They sent him to the SHU, I think.” The Special Housing Unit is where inmates are kept in solitary confinement.

“Is he coming back to the unit?”

He shrugs. “I don't know. Maybe.”

I am conscious not to appear worried for Cameron, but I am. He is very possibly MCC's most conspicuous resident. But that's not all: I'm concerned because in order to avoid a lengthy mandatory minimum sentence, Cameron is serving as a government cooperator.

Cameron's agreement to cooperate with the government was made before I arrived on the case. From the outset, it's apparent to me that this was not a decision that Cameron made for himself, but one that was essentially made for him, albeit out of love, by his family. Cameron himself agonizes about the decision at every turn, not comfortable divulging sensitive information and not wanting to be known as a cooperator for the rest of his life.

Being a cooperator is not exactly a badge of honor. But where mandatory minimums create drug sentences that are longer than those for child pornographers and bank robbers, where cooperation can mean the difference between missing your toddler's first day of kindergarten and missing his graduation from high school, the decision seems almost a necessity. I tell him, too, that because most cases plead out before trial, cooperators rarely have to take the stand in open court. For many cooperators, I point out, no one will ever know.

Of course, the secrecy that surrounds cooperation has a downside as well: it breeds fanaticism among inmates intent on uncovering cooperators. In prison society, it seems any cooperator is anathema, and each inmate must be prepared to prove he isn't cooperating or else suffer very real consequences. When a cooperator in the Bernie Madoff case fails to provide satisfactory answers to such questions, he is physically punished to such an extent that he is transferred to a different facility the following day.

I find it surprising that anyone would care about a fifty-something cooperator in a case against a reviled Ponzi schemer. “Really?” I ask Cameron. “These guys are in solidarity with Madoff, even?”

“It doesn't matter who it is, Jen. In here, a snitch is a snitch.” His face displays shame.

I'm concerned for Cameron's safety, but do not say so. Instead, I want to make him feel better. “Well, it sounds like that Madoff guy didn't know the right things to say,” I tell him. “If you ever have to leave the unit and need an excuse for why you are gone, just tell me and I will give you an alibi.”

This plan seems to provide some comfort, but not much. Cameron is far more interested in avoiding the issue altogether by securing bail. Still, in the coming weeks, I quietly observe in our conversations that he has seemingly implemented his own plan to protect against being discovered. First, he aligns himself with a close circle of friends on his unit, I suspect to subtly create a line of defense on the inside. Second, in having my word that I'll throw off the scent about his cooperation, he accords me a specialized status through which I am entrusted with preventing any leaks from happening on the outside.

I say nothing about either course of action. Both will be integral to my undoing.

A
s the case proceeds from the fall of 2009 into early winter, I stop by to see Cameron once or twice a week. These meetings are ostensibly to deliver case updates. But in reality they provide Cameron with a welcome change from his obvious presence on the unit. Early into the case, he tells me that the attorney room presents his only real opportunity to enter a space and close the door behind him. And while that door is made of glass, and while everyone who passes gawks at him through it, the attorney room still provides him with a respite that he can't otherwise find.

One evening, our meeting runs long enough that the corrections officer on duty comes to our door to announce that the facility is about to conduct a count of inmates. During the count, no movement is allowed in the facility. If Cameron does not return to his unit now, we have to remain in the attorney room until the count is cleared. The corrections officer wants to know if I intend to stay.

I look at my watch and shake my head. We've gone through every
thing of interest. But when I look at Cameron, he has a look of concern on his face.

“Did you want me to stay?” I ask.

He hesitates, and then provides an odd response. “It's up to you,” he says.

It's perhaps the uncertain inflection in his voice or the faint color of crimson that flushes his cheeks, but the sentiment feels strangely personal. I notice that the corrections officer is standing over my shoulder, watching me as though he is waiting to see if I will say yes to going to the school dance.

I feel my own cheeks warm when I see both men waiting for my response. “You're the client, so it's really up to you,” I say. “I can stay if you need me to.”

“Okay, then stay.”

“What's up?” I ask Cameron once the door is closed.

But nothing, in fact, seems to be up. He spends a few minutes asking questions we've already gone over, the answers to which he appeared to understand the first time around. He just wants to talk. We engage in some chitchat and then, with no real prodding, he begins to tell me stories about his life before he got arrested.

I feel like the one-woman audience to his one-man play, listening with rapt attention because I've never heard Cameron say so much at once. I am captivated by the version of Cameron that emerges from these stories. He is very different from the tough, tattooed client I encountered on my first day. Here is someone more inquisitive and kind, almost vulnerable. Maybe someone who has not yet given himself the chance to be the person he is meant to be.

I am possibly drawn to Cameron's stories for the additional reason that they transpire in a reality that is not plagued by the drudgery of my own. Cameron's way of life presents a radically different framework, that is to say, no framework at all. He exists entirely outside the lines, unhindered by obligation, free of expectation, motivated only by his own desires. As he describes his utterly irresponsible but absolutely alluring world, I can feel myself lean forward in my chair, as though he is literally pulling me in.

When the corrections officer arrives to announce that the count is
over, I find that I am reluctant to gather my things. Once I do, I extend my hand to say good-bye.

He takes it and asks me in the voice not unlike that of a small child, “Can't you come here every day?”

I usually bristle at clients who demand a lot of personal attention. “I can't come every day,” I tell him. But to my own surprise, I add, “But I promise I'll come as much as I can.”

In the cab ride home, I ask myself why I am willing to make such a heavy promise. I tell myself that this client has special needs, that he is forced to harbor a potentially dangerous secret in a fishbowl. His wanting to remain in the relative privacy of the attorney room is understandable. As his attorney, I can provide him with a safe harbor, with refuge from reality.

But looking out the car window at the East River, I know that this is only partially true. There is something about being around Cameron that shakes me from what has become a bland, purposeless existence. Because he needs me, I feel needed. Perhaps my time with him is my own safe harbor. Maybe he is my refuge from reality, too.

I
do deliver on my promise to visit Cameron as much as I can. As the case proceeds, the nonlegal portions of our conversations compose more and more of our time together.

These conversations often begin as jumping-off points from the case. Newly sober in every way, Cameron is eager to talk about the clean life he plans to lead once his case is over.

During these discussions, it occurs to me how rarely a conversation like this is uplifting. Due to his privileged circumstances, Cameron will likely avoid the usually impossible task of trying to secure a living in a postconviction reality, where drug offenders are presumed to be bad even when they are trying so hard to be good.

When I watch other inmates file into the attorney room lobby, I take the mostly dismal looks on their faces to mean they already know there is nothing good ahead. I am struck by one inmate in particular in his late teens, who is so slouched in his chair that he is almost supine. He does not make eye contact with his lawyer, but looks down at the
ground as though it might hold better answers. The quiet resignation in his body language seems to concede that his young life is mostly over.

Remembering this sight, I can't help but point out to Cameron the preciousness of the second chance he will be allowed because of his family. “Don't blow it,” I tell him. “Most of your friends on the unit will never get that chance.”

Cameron's face indicates surprise, as though this is something he's never considered. He is quiet for a moment. “Well, I'm going to take care of them so that they have a fresh start, too,” he says.

I don't bother pointing out the improbability that Cameron can personally solve the problems of the prison industrial complex. It's not his fault that the system is unfair, and though his offer is somewhat naïve, he obviously means to be kind.