Hard Time (23 page)

Under Little Italy’s rule, many prisoners were acting as if jail wasn’t such a bad place to be after all. I hoped the good times would last but feared the inevitable backlash. In the New Year, the mood shifted.

Shortly before lockdown, the Mexicans were tossing a grapefruit. A poor lob resulted in a missed catch, and the grapefruit flew over the head of its intended recipient and hit Magoo in the leg. In accordance with the jail code of not backing down from any act of aggression, Magoo retaliated by lobbing the grapefruit at the Mexicans. Four of them stretched but failed to catch it. It travelled over them and hit their leader, Carlo, in the head as he played spades. When the shock wore off Carlo’s face, he gave Magoo a stare of death. The Mexicans advanced towards Magoo.

Seeing what had happened, Marco dashed between the Mexicans and Magoo. ‘Look, he never meant to hit you with the grapefruit like that. And I apologise for it being a wood that threw it.’ Turning to face Magoo, he yelled, ‘You need to apologise!’

‘Nobody is telling me what to fucking do!’ Magoo said, and stomped up the stairs to his cell.

The Mexicans looked at Marco, and Marco said, ‘Please don’t get involved. This is white-boy business now.’

The next morning, Burklev and I were under the stairs doing pull-ups when I noticed Marco’s crew gathering at either side of Magoo’s door. Officer Mordhorst was just finishing walking our pod, and as soon as he exited the sliding door Paulie entered Magoo’s cell and the familiar thumping noises commenced. A few minutes later, Paulie emerged, panting like an over-walked pit bull. Everyone in the day room looked up at Magoo’s door. Magoo emerged, dishevelled, battered, minus his glasses, swaying like a drunkard. ‘What the fuck was that all about?’ he yelled. He turned but not in time to see a right hook hit his chin. The fist belonged to Wedo, a muscular Mexican-American covered in Aztec tattoos who had taken a dislike to Magoo prior to the grapefruit incident. Wedo then slammed Magoo’s head against the iron railing running along the top tier with such a clunk that many of us gasped. Wedo kneed Magoo in the groin, and Magoo collapsed on the balcony.

‘You need to roll your shit up!’ Paulie yelled at Magoo.

Magoo grabbed the iron railing, pulled himself up, staggered into his cell, gathered his property and re-emerged with his face starting to swell. From the stairs, he yelled for the guards in the control tower to open the sliding door. The guards let him out but didn’t lock us down, which was the normal procedure when someone had been beaten up, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether the officers had known what was going on.

Magoo was still in the corridor waiting to be rehoused when Slopester strutted up to Wedo and said, ‘That was white-boy business. You Chicanos shouldn’t be getting in the mix. That was for us woods to handle.’

‘So fucking what? Are you gonna fucking do something about it?’ Wedo snarled.

Inmates usually went to the cell under the stairs to fight, but Wedo and Slopester traded blows in the day room. Marco’s Praetorian guards charged over and stopped the fight. Minutes later, Wedo and Slopester were sharing a cigarette in a cell together.

A few days later, Paulie returned from Visitation boasting he had just smashed a chomo. Later the same day, he called a female guard who’d reprimanded him a ‘fucking cunt’. For disrespecting staff, he was transferred to the Madison Street jail to go on the loaf programme – two meals a day of leftover food cooked into burnt bread that smelt like shoe polish.

A brunette beauty started working at Tower 6, stirring up much excitement. When she did security walks, the prisoners stopped what they were doing and stared at her as if under mass hypnosis.

‘You’re not gonna fucking believe this,’ Joey Crack said.

‘What? Marco was outside smoking with the guards again while we were all locked down and asleep?’ I said.

‘No, no, much better than that. Kyle’s having an affair with the new female guard.’

‘No way! I don’t believe it.’

‘It’s true. It’s fucking true, but don’t tell anyone.’

‘She’s gorgeous, too. The lucky bastard. Nah, I still don’t believe it.’

‘Look, if you don’t believe me, then how about I go get him, and he can tell you himself?’

‘All right.’

Joey Crack returned with Kyle, who was beaming.

‘Good job, Kyle. Is it true?’

‘Yup.’

‘How did you manage this? Come on, tell me everything.’

‘Don’t tell anyone else, OK?’

‘OK.’

‘I’d never seen Officer Magnuson before until she woke me up one morning at two to go to court. I was dreaming, and as I woke, I looked up and saw her beautiful face – as if she was an angel. I couldn’t stop thinking about her ever since that moment. On the way to court, I wrote down a love poem. I wanted to give it to her the next night. I discussed it with my celly first, and he told me that no harm would come and that I should go for it. The next night when she was doing a walk, I passed her the love poem, and guess what? She wrote one back to me.’

‘She did what?’

‘She wrote back, and that’s when I knew she liked me. I’ll show it you if you want.’

Kyle reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a bundle of letters.

‘I took a chance and it worked,’ he said, as if he could hardly believe his luck.

‘So what have you guys been getting up to?’

‘Not full sex, but we’ve been hugging and kissing, and she’s now started sending me dirty letters.’

‘No way!’

‘Yup! Read these.’ Kyle handed me some letters written in ink on paper clearly not provided by the jail.

‘She’s recently divorced and wants a serious relationship. Problem is, I’m about to get a 12-year sentence, so I guess there’s not much hope. She even called my mom and told her that she’s in love with me.’

‘Bloody hell!’ I said.

The first letter started out stating her family situation but with that out of the way, she got down to describing how good she was at oral sex.

‘Good grief! Are you sure you didn’t pay someone to write this stuff?’ I asked, unable to peel my eyes from the sexual fantasy unfolding.

‘Tonight she’s working. Stay awake and watch the fishbowl. She’ll be winking at me and blowing kisses.’

‘It’s all true,’ Joey Crack said.

‘While my cellies are sleeping,’ Kyle said, ‘I get naked and stand on the toilet and dance for her.’

Glad he’d found some happiness, I worried about him telling too many people. ‘You’re crazy! You best keep this on the DL, or else some jealous inmate will try to sabotage it. Strange things happen in here, but this is great. You’re a lucky man indeed.’

During the night, I watched the fishbowl. I spied Officer Magnuson winking, smiling and blowing kisses in the direction of Kyle’s cell. Imagining him standing on the toilet dancing naked, I chuckled.

Also that night, Officer Magnuson tipped Kyle off that the goon squad was coming to shake us down. Kyle alerted the pod, and everybody keystered their contraband before the goon squad arrived.

A few weeks into the affair, Officer Magnuson was reassigned to another tower, probably a result of Kyle telling too many people.

‘Now Magoo’s gone, I’ve been asked to take some visits,’ Joey Crack said.

I didn’t like the sound of this. ‘You really want to risk getting busted bringing drugs in, getting another five years added to your sentence?’

‘It’s just tobacco.’

‘That’s what they tell you! Think this through, man. It’s not worth the risk.’

‘I already gave them my word.’

‘Who?’

‘I’ve been asked not to tell you about it. I’ve said too much already.’

‘I don’t know, Joey Crack. I’d pull out if I were you.’

Joey Crack went to Visitation and never returned. Rumours of his arrest circulated faster than smokes. Listening to certain men in the day room bemoan the fate of their drugs while expressing zero concern for Joey Crack, I guessed who’d hired him. Angry with those men, I paced the cell expecting the goon squad to raid my home at any moment because Joey Crack was busted. But a few hours later, Joey Crack showed up grinning, lifting my bad mood.

‘Everyone’s saying you got busted,’ I said.

‘Listen to this. I go to the visit and the guards are suspicious from the get-go ’cause I don’t know who my visitor is, and she usually visits someone else. Anyway, I find her. She’s some sketched-out twitchy tweaker. She tells me the package can’t be delivered ’cause it’s too big, and she doesn’t have it with her.’

‘Good.’

‘I was relieved, ’cause after speaking to you, I wasn’t wanting it to happen. It seemed out of sorts, and my gut feeling was not to do it. So we’re at the table for all of three minutes when a guard comes over and says, “I think there’s something going on that shouldn’t be.” They know her face ’cause she usually visits some guy who has non-contact visits. They tell her I’m gonna be searched, and if anything is found on me she’ll be charged with promoting prison contraband and our personal favourite: conspiracy. I’m laughing ’cause we have nothing on us. I’m stripped naked and nothing is found.’

‘Good.’

‘Then a female is brought to search my visitor. I’ll never forget the look on her face! She was truly scared beyond all control. Her jaw was twitching, her lips doing something I can’t put into words, and her hands were everywhere.’

‘Uh oh.’

‘I realised then that she might have told me a fib. They search her. I’m told to get against the wall, interlace my fingers on top of my head and slowly move to my knees. Later, I found out she got busted with meth, tobacco and weed.’

‘Your new friends in here were more concerned about the package getting seized than your welfare.’

‘I know. The main guy’s more concerned about losing his dope than his own girlfriend getting busted and going to jail. It would have been ugly if she’d passed the package. Never again. No way.’

Officer Mendoza appeared at the cell door. ‘Roll ye . . . ye . . . yer shit up! You’re g . . . g . . . going back to the hole.’

‘For what?’ Joey Crack asked.

‘Conspiracy and susp . . . sp . . . icion o . . . o . . . on of attempting to smuggle drugs int . . . int . . . into the jail system.’

Every time you receive new cellmates, you have to adjust your routine to accommodate theirs. I preferred cellmates who spent a lot of time in the day room so I could concentrate on reading and writing in the cell. I received two such cellmates after Joey Crack was sent to the hole and Busta Beatz moved out.

Little Honduras had short black hair, friendly brown eyes and spoke little English. He was accused of being a coyote: paid to escort illegal aliens into Arizona from Mexico, part of a Mexican Mafia organisation that used cell phones to communicate with lookouts stationed on mountaintops in order to avoid Border Patrol agents. He was arrested for allegedly holding at gunpoint a freshly smuggled Mexican who’d refused to pay the coyotes their fee. Charged with armed robbery, kidnapping and extortion, Honduras was facing 15 years yet seemed calm about his case. ‘
Tengo suerte
!’ – I am lucky! – he often remarked. His Mafia boss hired him an attorney, who advised him not to sign a plea bargain or to cooperate. He spent most of the day out of the cell with the Mexicans. To improve my Spanish, I often joined them in the mornings watching soap operas called telenovelas. The racists asked me questions like, ‘Why’re you celling with a wetback?’ I ignored them. Some of them griped about me watching the TV with the Mexicans, which I found odd because the most-watched TV show by all of the races was
Caliente
– a dance-music show on every Saturday morning, so esteemed that a group of prisoners would fiddle with the wonky TV set five minutes before the show began to tune it in as best they could. Even the bigots couldn’t resist the lure of señoritas in skimpy bikinis shaking their hips to house music.

My second cellmate, Stalker, was in his mid-30s. He was slightly bigger than Honduras but made of much frailer stuff. After the breakdown of his 12-year marriage, he’d gone on a crystal-meth and alcohol binge. He started following his wife around, leaving messages threatening her life. She played them to the police, who charged him with stalking. Unlike Honduras, Stalker never stopped fretting about his case. Sometimes, he broke down and sobbed. Over and over I reassured him that a prison sentence wasn’t the end of his life. Even Honduras pitched in with, ‘
No problema. Poco tiempo
.’ No problem. You won’t get much time
.

Stalker delighted in plaguing us with his flatulence. He claimed he intentionally withheld his farts all day so he could unleash them on us after lockdown at night. He usually signalled their arrival with fits of giggling. He’d let one round off and there’d be silence until the stink was almost gone and then he’d let loose again. Time-released farts. They were especially bad after he’d eaten red death. The best Honduras and I could do to protect ourselves was to hide our heads under our sheets. But the potency of his farts was such that defensive manoeuvres with sheets only minimised our suffering. And with his average run of farts lasting close to an hour, we had to surface at some point. It was through this torment I learned some less polite Spanish phrases:

‘
Pedoro
.’ (Fart man.)

‘
Culo mugroso
.’ (Filthy ass.)

‘
Culo sucio
.’ (Dirty ass.)

Stalker’s rapid-cycling bipolar disorder was such that one minute he’d be spitting out farts and giggling himself purple, and the next he’d be telling us through trembling lips how it was best he slash his wrists so he didn’t have to go to the big house. I read his paperwork. Sexually abused as a child, he’d used alcohol and drugs to self-medicate multiple mental disorders. I encouraged him to sign up for the few classes available and tried to coach him into thinking positively. ‘I know that everything’s gonna be all right. I’m lucky to have you two buddies as cellmates,’ Stalker would say, raising my hopes for him, only to disintegrate into suicidal madness ten minutes later.

January 2003