Escape from Alcatraz (26 page)

Details, details. Once he scooted, what? Christ, the screw’d find him gone on his first patrol. The siren’d let go before he got off the roof. He’ll need a dummy. Up near the bars, have to be goddam lifelike. Maybe switch sleeping habits? He hated his head next to a toilet, but—no good, the bull might reach in to shake the dummy’s foot. There goes the siren.

For the dummy, what? Head and neck, pillow and peacoat under the covers. Where’d he get stuff for a head and neck in
this
joint? Hair was easy—bristles from the brush shop. Bristles, hell. With Clarence a barber? Maybe he’d better ring the Anglins in—
after
he got things set up. He’d need raincoats for a raft, and John works in the clothing room. That dummy. Hair, okay. The rest …?”

It popped up late one night. Like raw material fed into a mill, worked over, and out comes a bright red convertible. And so simple:
He would order what he needed, through the prison’s purchasing officer!

West got out of solitary early in 1962, and Morris ordered an accordion exactly like his. It came over from the city in a couple of days, and he was set. The dining room now resembled a large cafeteria, the long tables replaced by table sets seating four, the sets in varying bright colors. Morris, West, and the Anglins shared a table. Once he had his accordion, Morris sprang his plan.

“Well,” said Clarence Anglin, “what’re we waitin’ for? Let’s go!”

“This is Alcatraz,” said Morris, “not a road camp. We don’t walk away from here. Starting tomorrow morning, and every morning for a while, we order all the magazines we can from the library.”

“I sure fell behind on my readin’ in the Hole,” said West.

Morris shot him a hard, level look, and West shrugged apologetically. Before bringing him in on the plot, Morris had laid down the law: keep his speech at a minimum, lest an unwary word spill the works.

“Why magazines?” asked John Anglin.

“For cardboard,” Morris said. “Cut out only the pages with ads on both sides, and close in, so they won’t be missed.”

“So what?” said John. “They’ll think it’s the censor.”

“We don’t want them to even
think,
” said Morris. “We take no chances. Clear? No chances. Slip the pages under your mattress. I’ll fill you in on each step as we go along. That way, nobody jumps the gun.”

“That a crack?” asked John.

“Nope. I’m after teamwork. That’s what this needs. Also a brush and paints. Who wants to become an artist?”

“Why not borrow ’em?”

“Less in on it the better,” said West.

“That’s right,” said Morris. “We’ll order our own supplies from the purchasing officer.”

“Man, that’s real brass,” said Clarence. “Four breaks, and I never once thought of askin’ ’em for tools. I’ll take up painting’.”

“Okay, we’ll need white, pink, and black paint, and—”

“Black? A bull reaches in and pats John’s crew cut and it feels bald, Jesus, man. Look, I work in the barber shop.”

(Prisoners were assigned to barbering as to any other household chore: professional experience unnecessary.)

“Don’t worry, you’ll be filling your pockets. Get turpentine and a canvas—and slap a little paint over it, out of each tube. We’ll make our own plaster for the dummies—bits of this and that, thickened up with soap, maybe a little glue.”

“What about the stuff we dig out—flush it down the toilet?”

“And clog it up? We don’t want any plumbers nosing around. West and I’ll carry it out and scatter it on the way to the shops.”

A guard came up. “What’s keeping you men?”

“Sorry, sir,” said Morris, and they filed out.

On Monday, after lockup, Morris gave his light cord a tug, then sat a while to accustom his eyes to the dark. No lights shone in deserted A Block across the way, and that was fine: it meant no prying eyes. The reflection from other cells in his tier bank, along with the house lights, soon turned the darkness into a twilight gloom.

Then, with West standing watch next door, he removed the accordion case and set to work. He turned his peacoat inside out, to avoid telltale dust, and laid it folded along the floor below the vent, to deaden the sound of any large fragments that might break loose. He knelt and began chipping. It was slow, tedious work. He switched to the larger blade, the one that served as lever for the clipping jaws, and found it sturdier, more effective, though there still wasn’t enough of a handle for a real grip. He decided to dig just enough each night to fit in his pockets without a bulge.

After about an hour’s labor he felt the gouged side of the grille, then the tiny pile of rubble on his peacoat, and estimated he had a big enough load to carry outside. He gathered a handful and placed it in a pocket, checking an impulse to pat it with his dusty hand. He was scraping up another fistful when he suddenly let it drop. He picked up a few particles and rubbed them with his fingers.
Bits of this, bits of that … plaster!
Some of what he had dug out, the surfacing on the concrete, was already plaster.

He sat back on the floor to consider the idea. Where would he hide it? In his ditty bag? The bag wasn’t large enough to hold all the stuff he would have to scoop out to enlarge the vent to a body-size hole.
Hole
 … Perfect! He would store it in the hole itself as he went along. He would conceal tonight’s rubble in the bag.

He fell to again. He chipped close to the grille, to speed the job of loosening it and maybe leave enough bite to hold the metal frame temporarily. When his legs cramped under him, he changed position and kept on. His fingers ached gripping the small tool, and he sweat with the pace and the tension. He had no way of gauging the time and that began to worry him. He got stiffly to his feet, rubbed his legs and went up front, working his fingers to ease the ache. “What time do you think it is?”

“Must be getting close to 9:30,” said West. “Better knock off.”

He returned to the rear, scooped the concrete flakes off his peacoat and put them in the ditty bag. Then he ran his fingers probingly over the coat for particles that might scatter over the floor when he picked it up. Satisfied, he gathered it up with care, as if it were a baby. He held its folds funnellike over the wash basin and gently shook the jacket, then ran a hand down to brush off the remaining dust. He turned the peacoat right side out and hung it on a peg. He moistened a piece of paper and wiped the grille softly and the floor beneath it. Then he set the accordion case back against the wall.

He stepped to the center of the cell, pulled the light cord and surveyed the rear wall. It appeared just as it had at lockup. Not a sign—except the basin. He ran the water and swished down the concrete dust, then washed his forearms and face. He reached for the towel, remembered his hair—it might be gray with dust. He doused his head, dried himself, and went up front.

“All’s well,” he said.

“Good,” said West. “Must’ve had a workout.”

“Pooped.”

His hand was blistered but that was a small discomfort compared to the ache in his fingers. With so little dug out in one night, the task ahead—eight inches of concrete—looked formidable. He needed an attachment of some sort for the nailclip, to provide a handle, a better grip. Perhaps he could turn a handle for the clip on the lathe in the brush shop.

“How’d it go?” he asked the Anglins at breakfast.

“Part way down one side,” said Clarence. “Sure tough digging. That clip ain’t like grippin’ a pick handle.”

Morris, eating oatmeal mush, became aware, curiously aware, of the spoon in his hand: an institutional spoon, about the size of a household tablespoon, perhaps a trifle larger. It had a heavy handle, a nice heft. He took a grip on it:
a real nice feel.

When he returned to his cell from the shop for the
pre
-lunch count, the magazine he had requested was there. And when he came back to his cell for the
post
-lunch count, a spoon was in his pocket. He opened his accordion case and tucked the spoon in a fold of the bellows.

That evening after lockup he sat for some time trying to figure out what, if anything, he could do with the spoon. The spoon itself was useless for digging: it took an instrument with a point to chip the concrete. He liked the handle, the feel of it in a firm grip, but there was no way to attach the nailclip to the bowl; he saw it was even ridiculous to try. And even if he could fasten it to the other end, the bowl section would make an awkward handle. He decided it would be useful in mashing the magazine pages into pulp for the cardboard, and let it go at that.

He yanked the light cord and sat down to adjust to the darkness. As he waited for the corridor light to have effect, he toyed with the clip. The lever arm suddenly came off. It startled him at first; he had forgotten this blade was removable. Abruptly, he jerked on the light and held the loose blade against the spoon handle, down near the bowl. He put the piece from the clip aside and began bending the spoon handle back and forth. He held the bowl under his shoe and tried it that way. After a great effort, he managed to break off the handle. He laid the nailclip blade against the spoon handle at the broken end.
Welded, they’d make a damn good tool.

Fine, except for one serious drawback: there was no way to get the tool welded. The welding shop was in an isolated structure near the powerhouse on the north shore. Convicts once did welding, but no longer.
All right, why not weld it in the cell? Take a real hot flame.
Maybe snitch a soldering iron—no, it wouldn’t get hot enough. Plug a pair of elements in the lightsocket, hold them close for an arc? Too risky—might blow a fuse.

Brazing
 …? Brass required less heat than steel.
No, silver brazing!
Silver, softer, required even less heat; just a quick, intense fire. Fire, fire—those fires set off in the shops by the little drum with rubber bands that snapped match heads ablaze. A bunch of matches, properly shaped … But the silver—where, on Alcatraz, would he come by silver? He needed only a very small amount. Sometimes a shop guard shed his coat on a hot day—and before long a convict had a few extra cigarettes, perhaps a penlike flashlight that clipped to a breast pocket, maybe a coin or two.

Morris went up front, whispered to West, “Got a dime?”

West, startled, took a moment to reply: “What for, a cup of coffee?”

“I’m serious—an experiment.”

“Wait a second.” He left the front, soon returned, handed around a dime. “A panhandler in
this
place!”

“Now let me have all your matches.”

“Huh? What’ll I do for a light?”

“Keep a few.”

West came up with three full books. “What’s cookin’?”

“Something, just keep an eye peeled.”

Morris laid a sheet of paper on the table and scraped the dime with the sharp points of the nailclip’s curved jaws. He gleaned a tiny pile of minute specks and shavings of silver. He clipped at the edges and chewed off slightly larger particles.

He now searched his own pockets—pants, jacket, bathrobe—and collected another five matchbooks, some complete. He pulled out fifty matches, bunched them tight with a rubber band, gently tapped the top level. He then poked in the heads with infinite care to form a cone—a very precise cone, so that no heat would be dispersed by any unevenness. This was the principle of the “shaped” charge: the exploding force concentrated at a point.

Next he poured the dime scrapings onto the spoon handle, toward the broken edge, and spread the little pile with his forefinger. Glittering bits stuck to the finger, and he scraped them off onto the silver nest with the nailclip blade. He then pressed the wide end of the blade down hard on the silver. He drew four matches part way out of the bundle, to serve as legs, then centered it over the brazing materials. It seemed too low. The focus of flame had to hit the critical spot exactly right to make the silver flow and bind blade to spoon.

Try a test?
He checked the matchbooks—plenty left. He set the cone by itself, struck a match but blew it out—the downflare might leave a telltale scar on the table. He removed a shoe and braced it, upside down, with books. Much better. He stood the cone on the sole and, gauging how much space the other items would occupy, touched it off. The fire came down in the right shape but flattened out. Too low. He grabbed the shoe and doused it under the cold-water tap.

West called, and he hurried up front. “What the hell you doin’? I smell burnin’ leather.”

“Hot foot. Just keep a sharp lookout.”

Morris waved his peacoat about to clear the air. Then he fashioned another match cone with precision and extended the legs almost full length. He book-braced the shoe again, fixed the brazing pieces with extreme care, and positioned the straddling cone exactly. He lit it. The hot, massed flame, perfectly shaped, bathed the metals. He let it cool for about five minutes, then tried it gingerly. A firm brazing job.

“Just made me a damn good pick,” he reported to West. “Tell you about it later. Keep a watch.”

He doused the light, adjusted to the dimness, then resumed chipping at the rim of the grille. The new tool made the digging easier and faster—relatively. In time, all of them had an improvised digger.

Thursday evening, four nights after he had begun on the grille, Morris was jabbing away in the dusk at the back of his cell when he felt the pick penetrate just a little before it struck concrete. He ran his fingers around the rim of the metal frame, then sat back and inhaled deeply, letting his breath out in a soft whistle. He had finished Phase One. He rested only a moment, got back on his knees, clasped the sides of the grille and pulled gently. It failed to give. He exerted more force, with great care: he wanted as little sound as possible, as little crumbling of the edges as possible. He gradually increased the force. The grille wouldn’t budge. He stood up and shook his trousers, to avoid trailing dust or cement flakes, then went up front.

“I’m going to turn on my light a minute,” he said.

“Okay,” said West.

He pulled the light cord, then knelt and studied the grille. It seemed clear all around. He got the nailclip and poked the small, thin nail-cleaner blade between the grille and concrete. It went through. He pulled it along, down the side. It struck something. He took the spoon-handle pick and jabbed there. It was solid, gave a metallic sound. He probed with the smaller instrument. The obstruction was about an inch long. The blade ran free another inch or so, then met a second metal block. He began to suspect what they were: hook anchors. He slid the little blade on down, along the bottom, up the other side. There it struck two similar obstructions. The grille was welded onto four pieces of strap iron, embedded into the concrete at an angle, with hooks on the ends to keep them from pulling out: hook anchors.