From the Chrysalis (21 page)

“Get the hell outta of here! We told you to go smoke some dope so we could bust you yesterday,” one of them shouted and shoved the placard-carrying kids closest to them. Two or three of the activists happened to be girls, but the Maitland police seemed keen to avoid body contact with them. Liza wondered if they perhaps recognized daughters of their Legion Hall friends.

One officer shook his finger in front of an offending female nose instead. “Don’t you know you’s here in bad taste? We got a hostage situation here. And those hostages got families.” The girl, who was half his size, backed up.

“In bad taste,” Liza repeated, loudly enough for several bystanders to hear. “What do they suppose is happening here, anyway? A prison riot or a breach of etiquette?”

“The cavalry’s happening, girl,” Joe cooed as several cumbersome black television cameras moved in. He looked happy, adrenalin wracking his body almost as fast as if he had taken speed.

Although he was scribbling so fast correct spelling was impossible, he never took his eyes off the scene. Behind the protestors’ pick-up, two canvas-covered army trucks suddenly converged. The protestors took one look at the vehicles and scrambled back so fast into their dwarfed truck it was almost comical.

“Oh my God. They’re not. They’re not,” Liza said quietly.

Joe shook his head. “No, they’re not going to shoot yet. But look what they’re packin’ for Gawd’s sakes! Bayonets! Where’s the cameras? It’s like something in the movies! I can’t believe it. What a scene! It’s straight out of the nineteenth century! It’s a Dickensian dream!”
 

“Bayonets?” Liza repeated. In horror she watched the green soldiers marching two by two under the limestone arch which led into the prison courtyard, each marionette carrying a sharpened pole pointed towards the sky.
 

“They’ll surround the Pen, I bet. You know, make doubly sure none of ‘em bad guys get out. A show of force, like. Whoa, what’s this? The prison guards must be changing shifts. Lookee, lookee, here comes one of the old codgers. I love it!”

A guard in his fifties approached the reporters. He was fat, tired and cranky looking.
It’s Savage
, Liza thought, unaccountably relieved to recognize a familiar face.
 

“You gawkers.” His cheek jowls shook in their faces.
 

Joe responded to his salutation. “You just get off your shift, sir? So what’s it like in there?”

Savage waved his hand with disgust, started to walk away, then changed his mind in mid-stride. “Well,” he said, deciding to open up. “There’s five hundred cons on the loose in there, and maybe a million bucks worth of damage: busted cells, busted furniture blocking the main entrance and I don’t know what all. Nobody can get near the bastards. My friends, six of my buddies, nobody knows what’s happening to them. There’s not a damn thing anybody can do.”

“So the riot broke out spontaneously Wednesday, sir?”

The guard laughed mirthlessly. “Hah! Spontaneously? This was a well-planned operation. What d’you think those guys inside are? Girl Scouts? This is a maximum security institution we got here. Murderers, thieves, rapists, child molesters, those are our customers. Probably about two dozen men are responsible: that Sandy McAllister, and Debo. Devereux is the bastard who’s got my friends hostage. Oh, what the hell. I’m too tired to jaw with you fellas all day.”

Liza staggered when the ground beneath her feet suddenly wobbled.
Dace? Hostages?

Joe pressed on. “Well, do you have any idea why they’re rioting, sir? What do they want? Steaks? Air conditioning? Colour television? More time off for good behaviour?”

“I thought they already had air conditioning at the taxpayer’s expense,” somebody quipped.

“Who the fuck knows? All I know is we saw this one coming, only we couldn’t tell when.”

“But why, sir?”

“I told you I don’t know!” Savage exploded, sticking his face in Joe’s. “But listen. Yous fellas want somebody to blame? Take a look at yerselves, all you do-gooders, you civil rights people, you bleeding hearts. That’s who
I
blame! What the hell do you guys know about rehabilitation? We’re the ones trained to handle them, and we’ll rehabilitate them too, but excuse me if we gotta bust a few heads first.”

A snicker rippled through the crowd, and Liza flushed. She knew she shouldn’t speak her mind, but she couldn’t help herself. This … this bellyacher was blaming everyone but himself for the debacle behind those locked doors. And alleging Dace had taken hostages? He couldn’t. He
wouldn’t
. He was reformed. At least he sure as hell sounded reformed in all his letters. Not to mention he was just weeks away from parole. Did this stupid jackass really think her cousin was a fool?

“So” she spat back at Savage. “If you know so much about rehabilitation, why are they rioting inside? You look after the prisoners everyday, not the do-gooders!”

The guard whirled in her direction, his small coal eyes blasting her already hot face. “Who the hell are you, Missy? I seen you somewheres before. You got a lover boy inside this here Joint and he ain’t never gonna get out! Don’t you come down here telling me how to do
my
job!”

Liza stumbled backward on the grassy knoll, despising herself for retreating, but far too cowed to hold her ground. Shrinking in the guard’s shadow, her arms tightened across her chest. Her eyes appealed to Joe, but he was preoccupied in copying every word of her exchange with Savage to be any assistance. The guard tugged at the tie constricting his throat before turning his head slightly aside. A clump of spittle landed near her feet.

“Go home, all of yous! Get the fuck out of here!” he bellowed over his shoulder, before lumbering off.

Liza rarely spoke in public, but she knew she might feel embarrassed later. Right now all she felt was drained.

Joe came and stood by her. “My God, you’re so pale. Heh, heh.
A whiter shade of pale.
Are you a friend of one of those inmates?” Joe chose that moment to start interrogating her. “What is it? Do you have a relationship with a convicted criminal?”

In response to her silence, he continued. “What do you think is going to happen to him? What will you do if he’s killed?”

“I’ll die,” she said under her breath.

“What’s that, honey?”

Liza opened her mouth then closed it. She had to get control of herself and fast. She’d be useless to Dace if she fell apart now. Lowering her head, she clenched her fists and shut her eyes. She had no intention of crying, and no intention of speaking to this … this insensate clod, either. But she didn’t have the strength to resist when he took her by the arm and led her to a coffee shop across the street.

In her daydream she broke past the angry guard, running fast enough to almost gut herself on the barricade. “Let me talk to them!” she pleaded. “D’Arcy Devereux will listen to me.”

If only they’d let her negotiate with the rebels inside. Or perhaps with the men who wanted to regain control of them. Hardly noticing him there, she accepted a cup of hot coffee from Joe’s cold fingers, although she later picked up the bill. Her mind raced. She’d rescue Dace. All she had to do was get Inside, where she belonged.

Chapter 15

Last Chance

Troops Surround Prison
.

A citizens’ group, which is comprised of several lawyers and newspaper men, continued to hear the grievances of 600 rebellious inmates at Maitland Penitentiary and to barter for the release of six guards taken hostage. The prisoners picked calm and articulate convicts to act as their spokesmen.“Keep the Army out and get us more food. Then we’ll be as good as gold,” promised one. He insisted the prisoners’ decision to riot was prompted by the proposed move to the new Supermax. He also charged that 20 inmates had committed suicide this past year, a figure disputed by prison officials.
 

*[
Maitland Spectator
, Sept. 5, 1971, p.1.]

Maitland Penitentiary, September 5, 1971:

“Fold,” Dace said, tossing down his hand. The other card players shifted in their chairs, watching him. He didn’t give a fuck that he was making them nervous. He hated everybody that morning: the authorities, his cell mates and Sandy McAllister in particular.

Kicking his chair aside, he went out into the corridor. They were on the fourth tier in Cell Block B, right outside his cell. He felt like a zoo animal, waiting for his meat. So far all they’d done was organize some teams. No point in letting Sandy McAllister have all the fun. The deed was done and a man could go crazy just waiting. Dace had gotten stuck heading the inmate security force. Then a negotiating team had been chosen to convey their demands—their
concerns,
Rick said—to the outside world.
 

Dace heard Rick whistling as he came back down the hall. He had been at a meeting with some government officials in an enemy building since ten.

The card players waited until he got a little closer. Then, “So what now?” one of them asked.“Mr. Hot-Off-the-Press?”
 

“
The Star
was there. So was the
Globe and Mail!
” Rick replied, pounding his own chest.

“Give it a rest,” somebody muttered. “You’re starting to sound more like a groupie than a man with revolution on his mind.”

“Yeah,” a couple of other men said. “This is a mother fucking revolution, man!”

Oh, yeah, Dace thought. “Or a bunch of rebels without a cause,” he said.
 

Rick looked at him blankly. “We got a cause,” he said. “Or causes. Where the hell have you been? There were fifteen suicides last year alone in this place. Now they want to move us to a new Supermax.”

“Yeah, so?” Dace said. “I don’t see them changing their minds after this.”
 

“But they might!” Rick practically danced around him. “If we make them. If we get the hostages. We need some leverage, like. Something to trade. I dunno.”

Dace stared at Rick. What the hell was the matter with him? Had he lost his mind? “Go get ‘em, tiger,” he said.

“I can’t do it by myself,” Rick said. “I …”
 

“For Christ’s sake, let me think!” Dace interrupted. He headed over to the guard rail for another look around.

The place looked quiet enough. The deadlocks were off all the entrances to the cell blocks, except the segregated area in D Block where fourteen baby killers and a bunch of rat finks lived. Sandy’s men had found the keys to unlock most of the individual cells and had busted into the rest, but they had left the men in Segregation alone.
 

There hadn’t been a peep out of them so far. Well, naturally. Guys like that had probably learned to play dead in the cradle. Some of the short timers were quiet too, he noted, sleeping off the effects of alcohol and amphetamines or worse.
 

Rick was still waiting, his anxiety rolling off him in waves.
 

“What a fuck-up,” Dace muttered under his breath. Christ. What was Sandy hollering about now? He’d been busy all night. First he’d organized the younger, more energetic inmates into work gangs, barricading exits with metal cots and anything else they could find. Then they’d busted through some of the bricks connecting their cells, creating a dormitory where they could hang out.
 

Their latest project was the penitentiary gong. One of Sandy’s cat burglars was scaling the wall in the Dome right now. Dace didn’t pay much attention until there was a loud crash. Everybody stampeded to the Dome, so he went too. When they arrived, nobody said anything for a moment. It looked like the bell’s cables had been cut with just a couple of swipes, but maybe they had been rotten to begin with. Dace glanced at the perpetrator. He stood by the carnage wearing a huge grin, knife between his teeth. Somebody volunteered that they had hugged the wall like they were on a centrifuge ride when it came down, then everybody cheered.