Hard Time (16 page)

Alejandro was so big, his flab crept up and down the wall as he breathed during his sleep. With scant room for spiders to manoeuvre around him, he was inevitably bitten. His written requests for treatment were ignored. When the pus began and Officer Mordhorst rebuffed his pleas for help, inmates from all of the races began to sympathise.

‘Give him treatment!’ Gravedigger yelled at Mordhorst in the day room.

‘He must go to Medical. Look at his damn back! He must see a Yankee doctor,’ Lev said.

‘It’s getting worse and worse,’ Alejandro said, his face pinched.

‘It’s growing. Look! There’s pus coming out,’ OG said.

‘I already told you guys: the Medical Unit does not treat insect bites. That’s the jail’s policy,’ Officer Mordhorst snarled.

‘That’s fucked up, dawg,’ Troll said, playing spades.

‘You’re shit outta luck,’ Billy said to Alejandro.

‘You’re burnt,’ Gravedigger said.

Later that day, Lev entered my cell. ‘These damn Yankees think I am a doctor.’ He seemed strained yet proud. ‘Now they want me to take care of Alejandro’s spider bite. Will you help me?’

‘How?’ I asked, honoured to be included.

‘Gravedigger and the others are going to hold Alejandro, so the big bastard doesn’t move, while I squeeze the pus out, and I need from you some salt and perhaps you will help me put salt on the wound?’

Revolted by the pus aspect, I didn’t think twice about helping my friend: ‘Count me in.’

Plagued by outbreaks of mouth ulcers due to stress and malnourishment, I’d been collecting the tiny salt packets served with the chow because gargling salt water temporarily relieved the burning sensation the ulcers caused. I retrieved the salt packets from under my mattress and followed Lev into the day room.

The bullet-wound scars on Alejandro’s back paled in comparison to what looked like a baseball of yellow plasma trying to exit his body. I was flabbergasted that a spider had caused that. When Lev fingered the wound, thick yellow pus ran down Alejandro’s back, triggering my gag reflex.

‘That’s fucking gross!’ Billy said.

Gravedigger smiled.

‘It hurts like fuck! Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ Alejandro asked.

‘Trust me. I was in the Russian military. This wound is easy for me.’

‘He ain’t no doctor!’ yelled the big hillbilly George, sitting with the TV-watching crowd. ‘The commie bastard’ll make you worse!’

‘The irritation will be less when I am finished. Someone bring me toilet paper!’ Lev caught a toilet roll launched from the balcony, unspooled some and swabbed up the pus. ‘Men, I need you to hold him steady,’ he said in the tone a commander reserves for troops entering battle.

Gravedigger yanked Alejandro’s right arm and locked it between his forearms and biceps. Two men secured Alejandro’s left side.

Lev pressed his thumbs against the wound.

Alejandro moaned. The wound gushed. ‘It hurts,’ he whined.

‘It hurts! Ah, good! It will hurt less when I am finished.’ Lev pressed harder, freeing more pus. I wondered if he knew what he was doing.

‘It fucking hurts!’ Alejandro said, his face scrunched.

‘More toilet paper!’ Lev’s eyes followed the pus streaking down Alejandro’s back like egg yolk.

Sweat was streaming from Alejandro’s short black hair, converging on his neck, branching into tributaries on his body and coagulating with the baby powder coating his skin.

Passing Lev toilet paper, I hoped that was the last of the pus.

‘We done yet?’ Alejandro asked, swaying, destabilising the men holding him.

‘Keep him steady! We are not done! The poison is still coming out! More toilet paper, please!’ Lev boomed.

I quickly unspooled more toilet paper. ‘Here you go.’

Lev cleaned up the fresh pus, and applied pressure to the rim of the lesion.

Groaning like a dying elephant, Alejandro shifted, dragging along the men holding him.

‘We need more guys to hold him,’ Gravedigger said.

Everyone in the day room stopped their activities to watch more volunteers steady the big man.

‘I think that is it. One moment! Let me see. No! No! We are not done.’ Gazing like a fanatic, Lev discovered a new region of pus to finger.

Alejandro groaned and shifted again. He looked as if he was about to faint.

‘More toilet paper!’ Lev yelled.

‘That must be it,’ Alejandro said, sweat dripping from his ears and chin.

The prisoners eased their hold on Alejandro.

‘Wait, men! Let me see.’ Lev thrust his fingers into the sore. The ejaculation of pus, the largest so far, surprised Lev, delighted Gravedigger and shocked the rest of us.

Alejandro stumbled forward, tugging everyone holding him. They steadied him again. It seemed a pint of pus had come out by now.

‘More toilet paper!’ Lev massaged the area, exhausting the supply of pus. ‘Now I will apply the salt.’

I tore open the tiny packets, tipped salt into Lev’s palm and cringed at the prospect of what he would do next. Lev sprinkled salt onto the wound and rubbed it in. Alejandro wailed so loud the hermits rushed from their cells.

‘There. Thanks to my Russian military training and the solidarity of my Yankee and Limey assistants, you are all fixed up now.’ Lev smiled.

With their bee stripes stained by a combination of pus, sweat and baby powder, the men released Alejandro to much applause. Alejandro swayed but didn’t collapse.

Alejandro’s back improved. He made bond and was released, but I had a feeling I’d see him again.

In July, Officer Alston stopped by my cell with a smug smile and a copy of the
Phoenix New Times
. ‘Have you seen this?’

‘No,’ I said, bracing for him to drone on about something boring.

‘You’re the cover story! English Shaun’s Evil Empire. Don’t tell anyone I gave you this. Read it. I’ve got some questions for you later on.’ He handed me the newspaper and continued his security walk.

Ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum
went my heart when I saw the cover: a portrait of me resembling Nosferatu with four of my co-defendants, including the Wild Ones and Cody (my head of security), in the foreground, my arms encircling them like an evil puppeteer; in the background, a horde of tiny ravers in a strobe-lit inferno dancing with their arms in the air. I couldn’t believe it. Frantically turning the first page, I tore the newspaper. I scanned the contents page. There was a nine-page article titled ‘The Evil Empire’. Stunned, I climbed onto my bunk and began combing through the article as fast as I could. Curious. Bewildered. Afraid. I needed to know if there was anything that might damage my case.

It was mostly the accounts of ravers, some who knew me, some who didn’t and were making stuff up. When I read that the prosecutor had classified me as a serious drug offender likely to receive a life sentence, I went into shock. I had thought I was getting out – my attorney had filed for a bond hearing – and now I was facing 25 years due to a serious-drug-offender classification. I added a 25-year life sentence to my 33 years of age: 58! I’d be near retirement age when I got out! I considered my life over. I wanted to throw up. When I’d finished the article, I thought I’d read about some arch-villain in the Marvel Comics I’d collected as a child.

Crushed by the threat of a life sentence, I dreaded the impact of the article on my parents. The criminal behaviour I’d hidden from them over the years had burst out into the open. Even worse, the article portrayed me as a cross between Tony Soprano and a vampire, not some hedonistic stockbroker gone wild on drugs. Wanting to prevent my parents from reading it, I dashed down the stairs to call my aunt

Ann. She was aware of it and the Internet version.
Holy shit,
I thought.
An Internet version!
She said there was no way to prevent my parents from seeing it if it was on the Internet. She wanted to forewarn them before they found out from a less friendly source. She tried to calm me down by pointing out that no one would believe such an over-the-top article. She rang my father and emailed him the online version.

The article caused my mother to have a nervous breakdown. Her mental deterioration began after giving a lecture. In the staff room was a group of foreign students waiting to see their tutor. She imagined they’d read and were talking about the article. ‘They all know!’ she screamed, darting at the students. Busy at their computers, her fellow teachers stopped what they were doing to watch my mother shouting abuse and pointing at the students until someone calmed her down. My father rushed to the college to take her home, and she ended up on medical leave from work.

Her initial anger at what she saw as my lack of concern for my family turned inward into a deep depression. She could not understand how I could have done this to my family. Her anger turned to shame and guilt. She was ashamed of what the son she’d been so proud of had done and didn’t want anyone to find out I was in prison. She kept the secret for months, not even telling her only sister. At home, she lived in fear of her house being vandalised by people who’d read the article. She imagined the words ‘DRUG DEALERS’ daubed across the front of their house. Every time she went near a newsagent, she was afraid to look at noticeboards or stacks of papers, thinking I’d made the headlines in the UK. She thought her friends would turn against her and she’d lose her job.

Her sympathetic GP gave her anti-anxiety medication, which helped her sleep and blocked out to some degree the constant unease she felt about my safety. Overriding the guilt and shame was her concern for me. From the moment they found out, my parents gave me unconditional support. There were no recriminations. No blame. They were just there for me. They never complained about any of it. I still live with the guilt of this unforeseen consequence of my lawbreaking.

With numerous counselling sessions and cognitive-behavioural therapy, my mother learned to deal with the situation. When she did finally break down in tears at work, she let the whole sorry story come out to her manager, Jill, who could not believe how she’d kept it all to herself for so long. From that moment she received nothing but support from her co-workers, friends and family, as she gradually told them all.

My father, who always appeared strong, suffered panic attacks, and my sister ended up having counselling. During one of the sessions, her counsellor suggested she write me a letter expressing the deep anger she felt about what I’d done to my family. The letter was ten pages long, and Karen waited a week to pluck up the courage to mail it.

In the letter, Karen told me she was furious about my uncaring and selfish behaviour towards our parents before my arrest. She reminded me how I hardly ever called them, how I constantly lied to them and how they never knew what I was doing. She accused me of behaving as though I didn’t care about them at all.

She asked why I’d married Amy without telling our parents and why I thought it was acceptable to be so secretive even though I always expected them to bail me out whenever something went wrong.

She lambasted me for not paying off Mum and Dad’s mortgage when I was rich, for not trying to make their lives easier and for blowing an absolute fortune on my raver friends. She reminded me that this was a time when our parents should have been slowing down, taking it easy, enjoying a holiday home with grandchildren, and instead they were spending a large part of their lives frantic with worry about me, their entire life savings sucked up by lawyer’s fees.

She wrote that I’d been a constant disappointment to her, that she felt rejected during our childhood and years later, whenever she came to the States for a visit, and that she was hurt by my lack of interest in her life. She admitted she’d only come to visit me and Amy in Tucson because she’d thought it would be good for Mum and Dad for the whole family to be reunited. Yet I had still managed to almost ruin that trip with my ‘fucked-up life’.

She wrote that the person I was before my arrest didn’t deserve the deep love and devotion of someone like Claudia. I had wrecked Claudia’s life with my selfish behaviour, so how could I talk about loving her?

She also questioned my present behaviour, my pronouncements about living a good life, and asked whether I had really learnt what a massive impact my behaviour had had on everyone. She reminded me that Mum and Dad had been ill with stress, all their plans for the future had been shelved, and that she too had become ill from the stress of seeing how badly Mum and Dad were doing.

She told me they were all furious for being dragged into my mess and angry that after everything Mum had said about Wild Man, I had ignored her, flown him to the States and supported his behaviour.

Finally, she wrote that she’d never bothered telling me how much I’d upset her in the past, as she didn’t think it was worth it or I was capable of understanding. She told me she hoped I’d changed and not just somehow intellectualised a change by reading about how a good person should behave. She would only be able to tell when I got out.

Reading her letter threw my mind into turmoil. I knew I deserved it, and many of the things she said were true.

The guards circulated the
New Times
article in the jail. They cut out pictures and posted them to the Medical Unit’s noticeboard for all to see. When Claudia came to visit, some guards harassed her about the article. Officer Alston pulled me out of the pod, asked what I’d really done and said he didn’t believe I fitted the newspaper’s portrayal of me as the Antichrist. He said I should have committed my crimes in his hometown of Chicago, where they only arrested black people. I appreciated his sympathy but not his racism. My infamy spread throughout the jail. Inmates asked for my autograph and put me on the phone to say hello to their wives and girlfriends. At breakfast time, I received extra milk and cheese from trusties eager to serve ‘English Shaun’ – a persona I was regretting ever having created. Even Gravedigger stopped by – drunk on hooch and in an expansive mood after knocking out a Mexican who’d been defecating in the shower – and offered to have smashed any of my co-defendants I thought might cooperate with the prosecutor.

Alan Simpson said the article had damaged my right to a fair trial in Phoenix, and he filed some motions. The judge issued a gag order on all the agents of the state involved in my prosecution, including the prosecutor and Detective Reid. But the damage was done, and I felt dissatisfied with the outcome of the motions.

Making matters worse, a second group was arrested – 39 more co-defendants – increasing the size and complexity of my case. The prosecutor told my attorney that there was too much legal discovery on the case to be printed out. The tens of thousands of pages of police reports on the ‘Attwood Organisation’ would have to be downloaded onto computer discs. The motion Simpson had filed to reduce my bond, which had raised my hopes of getting out of the jail, was denied. The growing complexity of the case, he said, meant that I would probably be in jail for at least a year.

As the legal situation deteriorated, my attorney’s initial optimism faded and so did mine. Even though the prosecutor didn’t have much of a case in the beginning, Simpson said, so many people were being arrested some would inevitably agree to testify against me. With a life sentence over my head, I now expected to serve prison time for my sins. And deservedly so. But I at least wanted a speedy resolution so I could be transferred to the prison system, where conditions were better than in Arpaio’s jail (according to the prisoners who’d been there). Coming to terms with having to do up to a year in Arpaio’s jail wasn’t easy. I feared for my health, safety and sanity.

July 2002