Hard Time (28 page)

It was the same set-up and judge as last year. The prosecutor wasn’t there. This time I was more prepared. When Judge Powischer asked me if I had anything to say, I responded, ‘Your Honour, last year I asked you to reduce my bond from $750,000, and the prosecutor told you I was the head of a large drug ring. After listening to all of the thousands of wiretapped phone conversations, my attorney and I totalled the value of all of the drug deals among all of the co-defendants, and it came to less than $6,000. I ask you to reduce this bond to a reasonable level.’

‘Less than $6,000!’ the judge barked. ‘I have nothing showing that! The bond stands at $750,000 cash only.’

Something tightened in my stomach. I should have known better than to expect a bond reduction, but hope is what keeps you going in jail. Even if my regular judge reduced my first $750,000 bond, I now had a second one. The prosecutor had blocked my attorney’s attempt to get me out. It was obvious why she hadn’t put up any resistance at the bond hearing. I dwelt on having to tell Claudia and our families.

‘It’s English Shaun!’ someone said in the next cell. ‘What’s Sammy the Bull like?’

‘I never met him.’

‘We know you guys were kicking it together.’

‘I seriously never met the guy.’

The large Mexican American who had noticed me enter the jail introduced himself as my co-defendant Richard. ‘I got sentenced to a year. The prosecutor tried to get me to sign some paperwork, Exhibit A, saying I knew you and was getting drugs off you, but I told the judge I didn’t know you and Exhibit A wasn’t true.’

I thanked him, wondering how many of the co-defendants had been asked to sign Exhibit A.

Time is almost imperceptible in The Horseshoe. I had to check with a guard on the way out to calculate I’d spent almost another day in holding cells. Going on two days of no sleep, the men on the return bus lacked the energy to heckle the women in the glass cubicles. They sat quiet and despondent, their eyelids drooping, dark circles around their eyes. The bus rumbled back to the jail, vibrating me to the core.

At Towers, I wanted to nap, but my cell was full of smokers. They appraised my foul mood and dispersed. I went to Nick’s to retrieve my bags. ‘I’m outnumbered by the smokers now,’ I said.

‘If you don’t want them smoking in your cell, you’re gonna have to settle it the old-fashioned way,’ Big Wood said, implying I needed to resolve the issue with my fists. ‘It’s your cell. You’ve been there the longest.’

‘Why don’t you move in here with us?’ Nick said.

‘How soon can you arrange it?’ I asked.

‘I’ll talk to Noble today.’

I returned to my cell. The Tasered man on the bottom bunk seemed to be in a semi-conscious state of recuperation, so I chanced putting my store bags down next to him. But he reanimated. Rubbing his eyes with the back of his fingers, he leaned up slowly. Sniffing the air, he dropped his legs off the bunk and put his feet on the concrete. He looked like a big dog that wanted to be fed or else. ‘Give me a candy bar!’

Exasperated by his demand, I was about to say something impolite, but Officer Noble announced, ‘Attwood, roll your shit up.’

The announcement lifted some of the weight of my troubles of the past few days. I snatched my bags and rushed to Nick’s cell. ‘Thanks, man. How on earth did you get me moved in with you so fast?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘What do you mean you didn’t?’ I asked, anxiety shooting up from my solar plexus.

‘I haven’t spoken to anyone yet.’

‘Better go ask Noble,’ Big Wood said.

Stood on the stairs, I windmilled my arms at Noble in the control tower. He swindowed back an M sign. I shrugged.

‘You’re being rehoused to the Madison Street jail,’ he said over the loudspeaker.

I formed a Y with my arms.

‘Admin’s reclassed you to max security ’cause your total bonds are showing as one-and-a-half million on the computer.’

‘They’re separating you from your co-defendants and putting you where the killers are housed,’ Slopester said. ‘Watch your back, England.’ He looked sad to lose me.

The weight of my troubles returned. Only much heavier this time.

I spent half a day in holding cells before arriving at a small two-man cell on the second floor of the Madison Street jail. It was about 2 a.m. Light was slanting into the dark cell through oblong gaps in the door, illuminating my new cellmate cocooned in a white sheet, snoring lightly on the top bunk about two-thirds of the way up the back wall. As I’d just come from a jail where men were prone to fight over the bottom bunk, I was grateful he’d taken the top.

Delirious from two days’ sleep deprivation, I was looking forward to a good rest. I thought my standard of living had improved – two-man cell, bottom bunk – until I noticed movement on the cement-block walls. Putting the movement down to hallucinations, I blinked several times. Still movement. Stepping closer, I saw the wall was alive with insects. I flinched. There were so many I wondered if they were a colony of ants on the move just like you see in documentaries. To get a better look, I put my eyes right up to them. The insects were mostly the size of almonds and had antennae. American cockroaches. I’d seen them downstairs in The Horseshoe, but nothing like this. A chill spread over my body. I backed away from the wall. As my night vision picked up, I spotted more insect shapes circulating on the ceiling, going in and out of the base of the fluorescent strip light. Every so often one dropped onto the concrete and resumed crawling.

Examining the bottom bunk, it dawned on me why my cellmate had opted to sleep at a higher elevation: cockroaches were pouring out of gaps in the wall at the level of the bunk. The area was thick with them. Placing my mattress on the bottom bunk scattered them. I walked towards the toilet, crunching a few of them under my shower sandals. I urinated and grabbed the toilet roll. A cockroach darted from the centre of the roll onto my hand, tickling my fingers. My arm jerked as if it had a mind of its own, losing the cockroach and the toilet roll.

Using a towel, I wiped the bulk of them off the bottom bunk, stopping only to shake the odd one off my hand. I unrolled my mattress. They began to regroup and harass my mattress. My adrenalin was pumping so much, I lost my general fatigue. Nauseous, I sat on the stool contemplating how best to sleep. I wondered how my cellmate was managing to sleep through the infestation and my arrival. I decided to copy his technique. I cocooned myself in a white sheet and lay down, crushing a few more cockroaches. The only way they could get to me now was through the breathing hole I’d left in the sheet by the lower half of my face.

Inhaling their strange musty odour, I closed my eyes. I couldn’t sleep. I felt them crawling on the sheet around my feet. Or was I imagining things? Frightened of them infiltrating my breathing hole, I kept opening my eyes. Cramps caused me to shift onto my other side. Facing the wall, I was repulsed by so many of them just inches away. I returned to my original side. The sheet trapped the desert heat to my body, drenching me in sweat. Sweat tickled my body, tricking my mind into thinking the cockroaches had infiltrated and were crawling on me. Every now and then I became so uncomfortable I had to open my cocoon to waft the heat out. It took hours to drift to sleep, and I only managed a few hours. I awoke stuck to the soaked sheet, disgusted by the cockroach carcasses compressed to the mattress.

The cockroaches plagued my new home until dawn appeared at the dots in the protective metal grid over a begrimed strip of four-inch-thick glass at the top of the back wall – the cell’s only source of outdoor light. Then they disappeared into the cracks in the walls, like vampire mist retreating from sunlight. But not all of them. There had been so many on the night shift that even their vastly reduced number was still too many to dispose of. And they acted like they knew this. They roamed around my feet with attitude, as if to let me know I was trespassing on their stomping ground.

My next set of challenges, however, I knew would arise not from the insect world but from my neighbours. I was the new arrival again, subject to scrutiny about my charges just like when I’d run into the skinheads on my first day at Towers jail. I hoped my cellmate would wake up, brief me on the mood of the locals and introduce me to the head of the whites. No such luck. Chow was announced, and he didn’t even stir.

Everyone except my cellmate emerged into the day room for breakfast. A group of prisoners did something I’d never seen in jail before: they gathered around the trash bin under the metal-grid stairs and emptied insect carcasses from plastic peanut-butter containers they’d used to trap cockroaches during the night. All eyes were on me in the chow line. Watching who sat where, I held my head up, put on a solid stare and tried to seem as at home in that environment as the cockroaches.

It was all an act. I was lonely, afraid and loathed having to explain myself to the head of the whites, who I assumed would be the toughest murderer in the maximum-security pod. I’d been in jail long enough to learn that skulking off to my cell with my Ladmo bag would imply I had something to hide. I’d observed the techniques well-received inmates had used to integrate and seen the bloody consequences of failed attempts. It was time to apply that knowledge. With a self-assured stride, I took my Ladmo bag to the whites’ table, giving them the opportunity to question me.

‘Mind if I sit with you guys?’ I asked, glad exhaustion had deepened my voice.

‘These seats are taken, wood. But you can stand at the corner of the table.’

Assuming the man who’d answered was likely to be the head, I sized him up. Cropped brown hair. A dangerous glint in his Nordic-blue eyes. Weightlifter-type veins bulging from his sturdy neck. Political ink and serious scars on his arms. About the same age as me, he was the end result for a man embracing the prison gangs.

‘Thanks, dawg. I’m Shaun from England.’ I volunteered my country of origin to reveal I was different from them but not different for any of the reasons that get you smashed.

‘I’m Bullet, the head of the whites.’ He offered me his fist to bump. ‘Where you roll in from, wood?’

‘Towers, dawg.’ The bond story had mollified the skinheads who’d smashed David. It was time to use it again. ‘They increased my bond and reclassed me to max.’

‘What’s your bond at?’ The skinheads at Towers seemed less threatening than Bullet.

‘I’ve got two $750,000 bonds,’ I said in a monotone. This was no place to brag about bonds.

‘How many people you kill, br-r-rother?’ He pronounced the R as if he were Tony the Tiger saying, ‘They’re gr-r-reat!’ His eyes drilled into mine, trying to determine whether my body language lent credence to my story. I knew my body language so far was spot on.

‘None. I threw raves. They got us talking about drugs on wiretaps.’ Discussing drugs on the phone did not warrant a $1.5 million bond, I knew, and beat him to his next question. ‘Here’s my charges.’ I pulled out the sheet I’d kept handy in my shirt pocket.

Bullet took the paper. Scrutinised it. Attempting to pre-empt his verdict, the other whites studied his face. On edge, I waited for him to respond. Whatever he said next would determine whether I would be accepted or victimised by them.

‘Are you some kind of jailhouse attorney?’ Bullet asked. ‘I want someone to read through my case paperwork.’ During our few minutes of conversation, Bullet had seen through my act and concluded I was an educated man – a possible resource to him.

I appreciated his quid pro quo. He would accept me if I took the time to read his case. ‘I’m no jailhouse attorney, but I’ll look through it and help you however I can.’

‘Good. I’ll stop by your cell later on, dawg.’

After breakfast, I sealed as many of the cracks in the walls as I could with toothpaste. The cell smelled minty. But the cockroaches still found their way in. Their day shift was gathering information on the brown paper bags storing my commissary. Bags I’d tied off with old rubber bands I’d squirrelled away. Relentlessly, the cockroaches explored the bags for entry points, pausing over and probing the most worn and vulnerable regions. I read all morning, wondering if my cellmate were dead in his cocoon, his occasional breathing sounds reassuring me.

Bullet stopped by late afternoon and dropped his case paperwork off. He’d been charged with Class 3 felonies and less – not serious crimes, but he was facing a double-digit sentence because of his prior convictions and Security Threat Group status in the prison system. The proposed sentencing range seemed disproportionate, so I decided to advise him to reject the plea bargain – on the assumption he already knew to do so but was just seeking the comfort of a second opinion, as so many unsentenced inmates did. When he returned for his paperwork, our conversation disturbed my sleeping cellmate – the white cocoon was shuffling – so we went upstairs to his cell. I told him what I thought. He was excitable, a different man from earlier. His pupils were almost pinheads, as if he were lit up on heroin.

‘This case ain’t shit, dawg. But my prosecutor knows I done other shit, heavy shit, all kinds of heavy shit, but can’t prove it. I’d do anything to get that sorry bitch off my fucking ass. She’s asking for something bad to happen to her. Man, if I was ever bonded out, I’d chop the bitch into pieces. Kill her slowly, though, first. Like to work her over with a blowtorch.’

Such talk could get us both charged with conspiring to murder a prosecutor, so I tried to steer him elsewhere. ‘It’s crazy how they can catch you doing one thing yet try to sentence you for all of the things they think you’ve ever done. They didn’t catch me doing much—’

‘Done plenty. Shot some dude in the stomach once. Rolled his body up in a blanket and threw him in a dumpster.’

I found the subject of his past murders as unsettling as his future ones. ‘So what’s all your tats mean anyway, Bullet? Like that eagle on your chest?’

‘Why you wanna know?’ Bullet’s eyes probed mine.

My eyes held their ground. ‘Just curious. I’ve never been to prison.’

‘It’s a war bird. The AB patch.’

‘AB patch?’ I asked.

‘What the Aryan Brotherhood gives you when you’ve put enough work in.’

‘How long does it take to earn a patch?’

‘Depends how quickly you put your work in. You have to earn your lightning bolts first.’

‘Why you got red and black lightning bolts?’

‘You get SS bolts for beating someone down or being an enforcer for the family. Red lightning bolts for killing someone. I was sent down as a youngster. They gave me steel and told me who to handle, and I handled it. You don’t ask questions. You just get blood on your steel. Dudes who get these tats without putting work in are told to cover it up or leave the yard.’

‘What if they refuse?’

‘They’re held down, and we carve the ink off them.’

Imagining them carving a chunk of flesh to remove the tattoo, I cringed. He was really enjoying telling me this now, and I was thinking he’d accepted me too much. That he was trying to impress me before making demands. His presence made me uneasy. I was beginning to understand his volatile nature and that frightened me.

I was unable to sleep properly that night. Cocooned in heat, surrounded by cockroaches, I listened to the swamp cooler hissing out tepid air. I gave up on sleep and put my earphones on. I tuned into classical music on National Public Radio. Relaxing into a Vivaldi violin concerto, I closed my eyes and pressed my tailbone down to straighten my back as if I were doing a yogic meditation. The playful allegro thrilled me, lifting my battered spirits, but the wistful adagio brought sad emotions to the surface, and I finally cried.