Hard Time (29 page)

A giant Bosnian guard deposited me in a visitation cubicle – a bare room, two plastic seats, a small table – assigned for legal visits.

‘How’re you doing?’ Alan Simpson shook my hand, jangling my handcuffs. He wasn’t smiling today.

‘Not very well,’ I said, and sat down.

Shocked to see my eye partially closed due to an infection, he shook his head.

‘Pink eye. Cockroaches from hell. New charges. Doubled bond. I don’t know where to begin. You said the case would take a year. Well, it’s been a year! And it’s deteriorating. What the bloody hell’s going on?’ I’d never raised my voice at him like that before. Mentally, I was at an all-time low and needed to vent.

Taken aback, he said, ‘What’s going on is this.’ He slapped down some papers. ‘Take a look at your new grand jury indictment real quick and tell me who you think the other two co-defendants are. Their names are crossed out.’

I read the few pages. ‘It says I’m charged jointly with one of the co-defendants for possessing some prescription pills on 16 May 2002, so that can only mean Claudia. Holy shit! They’ve indicted Claudia! Does this mean they’ll arrest her?’ I asked, panicking at the prospect of her ending up in Arpaio’s jail. On the day of the raid, the police had found two prescription pills in my medicine cabinet. I’d had them for so long, I was unable to remember what they were for. The find had not resulted in any charges a year ago, and I had never expected it would.

‘I doubt she’ll be arrested. I’ll try to get her indicted by mail. What about the other person?’

‘It says I used her name to deposit checks in a stockbrokerage account at E*TRADE. That can only be my ex-wife in Tucson, Amy.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘That’s my best guess. How can they suddenly indict these people after a year?’

‘These charges were prepared before your bond hearing.’

‘So I could have been rearrested if I’d bonded out?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Isn’t it illegal to punish someone for having a bond hearing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anything we can do about that?’

‘Not really. We can’t prove these charges were brought up as a response to the bond hearing. They’ll just say these things were discovered during the ongoing investigation. Besides, the judge has denied the bond reduction anyway.’

‘Unbelievable!’ I felt the legal system closing in on me from all sides. ‘But those few prescription pills were found on day one. Claudia has nothing to do with them. How can they stick them on her like this?’

‘They haven’t found what they’ve been looking for in the past year, so they’ve resorted to measures like this. If you’re right, and Claudia is indeed your co-defendant, then they’re likely to stop her from visiting you. Co-defendants cannot visit co-defendants.’

My face flushed with anger. Had the prosecutor indicted Claudia to stop her visits, to sever my lifeline? It made sense. It wasn’t about Claudia; it was about breaking me down. How could I tell Claudia?

‘When is my case ever going to be resolved?’ I asked brusquely.

‘I don’t know. Let me call the AG’s office and find out what’s going on. Give me a call towards the end of the week.’ He zipped his briefcase.

Yearning for reassurance, I resented his eagerness to leave. ‘I don’t know how much longer I can take this for.’

‘Just hang in there. Remember to call my office,’ Alan said. Drops of sweat were glistening on his forehead. We shook hands, and he was gone.

May 2003

My cellmate, Joe, stayed cocooned in a white sheet for almost a month. He’d been going through a terrible drug withdrawal that prevented him from talking to anyone. He only got up to allow food and fluids in and out. During his journeys to the toilet, he generally acknowledged me with his eyes – big, hazel and bloodshot – and if I were lucky, I might get a grunt out of him. Other than missing a front tooth, he had the handsome look of Barry Gibb during the heyday of the Bee Gees. I amused myself by imagining him singing ‘Staying Alive’ in a high-pitched voice. He was beyond the ideal quiet cellmate. It was like living with a corpse, and I made the most of the uninterrupted reading. Another advantage of his condition was it prevented the mooches from staying too long in our cell. The inmate code required not disturbing sleeping prisoners. Junkies trying to get commissary to buy a hit of heroin were constantly doing the rounds. Whenever one pushed our door open and popped his head in, I’d simply point at Joe asleep above me. It worked fast. The junkie would act ill at ease, as if afflicted by sorcery, and move on to his next victim.

The day finally came when Joe didn’t return to his cocoon after breakfast. He finished his sandwiches and said, ‘I gotta catch up on my workouts.’ He gave me a parting nod and did lengthy sets of push-ups, tricep dips and squats in the day room. The prisoners didn’t mess with him, and I was glad to see them show him respect. The more people he got along with, the less chance of violence spilling into our cell.

Resting on his bunk after working out, Joe turned to me. ‘Did you hear about the attempted escape?’

‘Escape!’ I said, sitting on the stool. Escaping from maximum security seemed impossible.

‘Right before you got here, they rolled the whole pod up for trying to escape.’

‘This pod?’

‘Yup. They were digging the window frame out. Trying to pull the window out. But they fucked up. As soon as they got so far, they started bringing in bottles of whiskey, cell phones and drugs.’

‘How?’

‘They made a big rope with sheets and lowered it down to the street level so they could fish-in their contraband. Trust dope fiends to fuck up their own escape attempt. Bringing in all that shit got them busted.’

That the prisoners had chosen drugs over freedom didn’t surprise me. I told Joe about my drug charges and mounting legal problems so he would know I didn’t have the types of crimes that invite trouble.

‘Man, they’re going after you hardcore,’ Joe said. ‘I hope for your sake you have a good paid attorney.’

‘Alan Simpson.’

‘I’ve heard of him,’ Joe said, nodding. ‘When I was 21, I got busted by the Organised Crime Bureau. I took it to trial and beat it.’

‘How much time were you facing?’ I asked, amazed to hear someone had actually gone to trial and won.

‘Ten years. It wasn’t so much time ’cause it was so long ago.’

‘Hope you don’t mind me asking,’ I said politely. ‘What’re you in for?’

‘Manufacturing methamphetamine. Possession of equipment and chemicals for manufacturing dangerous drugs. Possession of dangerous drugs. Possession of a weapon in a drug offence.’

‘How much time you looking at?’

‘Twenty years.’

Shocked, I guessed why. ‘Because of your priors?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How did you get busted?’

‘After we got done cooking up the meth – I did the cook in a partner of mine’s house, Outcast – me, my buddy Jim and his girlfriend Laura were sitting around, and Jim tells me, “You know Outcast got busted in this house three days ago. The SWAT team had to extract him outta this house, and he got busted for prohibited possessor of a firearm and drug paraphernalia.” I said, “I had no idea that happened otherwise I would never have done the cook here. Call up Outcast. He shoulda told me he got busted. I wanna talk to him face to face.” So Jim calls up Outcast, and Outcast says he’s too busy to come over. Jim hangs up, and Jim and I know something’s wrong. I got a bad feeling about getting busted. So we split up the meth lab and the finished product. Jim’s gonna take the finished product in one car, and I’m gonna take the lab, so we don’t get busted with everything. It kind of worked. I got busted, and Jim got away. The police did a felony stop on me. They found a meth lab, a gun in my trunk and a little bit – an eight ball – of finished product.’

‘So you done with drugs now?’

‘Look at the hell I just went through since getting arrested coming down off meth. Getting high’s a sucker’s game. They’re building prisons all over America for people like you and me. We’re the ones keeping these bastards in business. And even if the cops don’t get you, the dope will get you in the long run. One way or another, it’ll catch up with you. Guaranteed. See my foot.’ He dangled his foot off the bunk. It had massive scars. ‘The day I got my foot shot off, I shoulda been killed.’

‘Your foot was shot off?’

‘Yup.’

‘I’ve got to hear this one.’

‘Here’s what went down. I was on a payphone, and my dope-cooking partner, Spike, was in the car. I’m decked out – Italian designer suit, gold chains, the whole nine yards – and some youngster asks me if I wanna buy some dope. The kid won’t go away, so I figure I’ll teach him a lesson. I say, “Yeah, I’ll buy some dope. Get me two pounds of meth.” The kid says, “No problem,” and asks me to meet him at some street corner later on. We pick up a .45 to rob the kid with and go to the spot. The kid shows up with his girlfriend and a car full of Mexicans. I discuss the price with the head Mexican. It’s a good price, so I tell Spike it’s not good robbery potential, but the guys look legit and it may be worth actually purchasing the meth. He agrees, so I go back to the Mexicans to discuss the details. The head Mexican pulls out a duffel bag full of half-pounds of meth cling-wrapped. I unwrap one of them, spilling some on their car. This irritates the head Mexican, so I open the door, so if any more spills, it spills outside. I put both of my feet out of the car onto the asphalt. Meanwhile, Spike – high on meth and paranoid after robbing some Mexican dealers for cash – figured I was being kidnapped by the Mexicans and trying to get out of their car. I’m just calmly doing business with them, and he leaps in front of the car and opens up with the .45, hitting none of them but blasting my foot. I try to run but fall ’cause my foot’s hanging off. The Mexicans start unloading their guns on Spike, who goes down. I’m trying to get away to get to the donut shop to get rid of the ephedrine I’ve got on me. I’m crawling away, and I see the head Mexican walk up to Spike, take aim at his spine and fire point-blank. He then put the half-pound of meth I’d opened into Spike’s top pocket. He walks back to the car, sees the trail of blood I’ve left crawling away and starts to follow it. I’m thinking my number’s up. There’s no way I can get away from him. By now, people are gathering, and the car full of Mexicans motion to the head guy that they’re leaving. The head Mexican’s halfway to me. He stops walking, looks at me, looks at the car, pauses like he’s deciding what to do, then heads back to the car.’

‘Man, you’re bloody lucky! I can’t imagine being in a situation like that. Did the cops bust you with the ephedrine?’

‘No. I booked into a hospital under an alias. They put plates and screws into my calf and foot. I escaped from the hospital and took out the screws with a power drill.’

‘Ouch! What about Spike?’

‘He survived, but he’s a quadriplegic now. Lives in a wheelchair with a colostomy bag. After hospital, I went right back to doing dope. How fucked up is that? And now I’m looking at another 20 years.’

I saw parallels: we’d both devastated our lives by choosing to do drugs and making one bad decision after another. Joe revealed he’d booked into the jail as a Sikh to get a vegetarian diet. ‘In prison, they used to make us go to Sikh classes and chant and meditate in order to get the Sikh diet. When I see you doing your yoga and meditation, you remind me of that.’

‘I’m down as a Hindu.’

‘The things we do to avoid red death.’

‘I am really into yoga, though. But the jail won’t recognise yoga as a religion. I’ve been getting more into meditation lately. I’m doing it every day.’

‘Meditation is powerful stuff. Nelson Mandela told Winnie to do 15 minutes a night when she was in prison. And look at the positive brainwave changes they’ve recorded in Buddhist monks during meditation. I just meditate lying down.’

In the weeks that followed, Joe and I grew close. He schooled me on prison etiquette, and I came to trust him in a brotherly way. We shared and discussed self-help books. Surrounded by maniacs, I felt blessed to have a cellmate focused on improving himself.

Some of the whites resented Joe and me minding our own business. They made a sport of spilling the drama of the day room into our cell. We’d humour them, and when they were gone, we’d laugh and chant
Ommmm . . .
Unable to get a rise out of us, they resorted to intimidation.

Larry, a torpedo for the Aryans, swaggered into our cell. I stopped writing at the table, and Joe put his book down on his bunk.

‘Check this out, me and a couple of the guys just cleaned up the pod for you. It’s your clean-up day.’ Waiting for our reaction, he stood tall, lean, topless, tattooed from the neck down.

I wanted to point out that it wasn’t our clean-up day, but I had a hunch Larry disliked me and would be more inclined to listen to Joe.

Nettled by the interruption to his reading, Joe dangled his legs off the bunk and sat bolt upright. ‘Check this out, dude. Number one: it’s not our clean-up day. Number two: you can take that shit down the run to somebody who’s gonna listen to you who cares.’

‘What?’ Larry shrieked. ‘We’ll see about that!’ He shot out of our cell.

I looked at Joe for guidance.

‘Get on your bunk, celly,’ Joe said, implying danger.

My heartbeat accelerated. ‘What do you think’s going to happen?’ I asked.

‘He can’t fight his own battles,’ Joe said in a low voice. ‘So he’s gonna—’

Larry rushed in with two Aryans: Bullet and Ace. Ace was 50-something, an old boxer long past his sell-by date. He had a broad face, pocked and scarred, and a crushed nose. He had unnaturally white skin, as if he’d spent most of his life in cells deprived of sunlight. He had severe diabetes, and decades of drug use had not been kind to his health. He shuffled into our cell with the gait of a cripple and tried to intimidate Joe with a voice so gravelly it made me wince. ‘Hey, Joe, you need to apologise to Larry for disrespecting him.’

Bullet just stood there like Ace’s goon, as if ready to pounce on Joe or me if one of us said the wrong thing.

‘I’m not gonna apologise to anybody ’cause I didn’t disrespect anybody,’ Joe said. ‘In fact, Larry disrespected me.’

‘Between all three of us,’ Ace said, taking stock of his comrades, ‘we’ve got seventy-five years in the prison system. Larry told me that you told him to take that shit down the run to someone who cares – and we’re the ones down the run who care! So you need to fucking apologise to Larry!’

Out of all of my cellmates, I trusted Joe the most. He had an indescribable quality – some kind of inner peace – that I warmed to. I felt safe living with him, and I knew he’d spring to my defence if anyone threatened me. Recent events had elevated my tension. My new indictment. My failure to get bonded out. The move from Towers jail. The meeting with my attorney. Claudia losing her visits. The last thing I needed was three lunatics in my cell venting on Joe, who’d done nothing wrong. The sense of injustice I felt made me snap. So far in the jail, I hadn’t sunk down to the level of violence that was the norm. I was using jail as a learning experience. I didn’t want to go to lockdown for fighting or to affect my case with bad behaviour. But the more I listened to them, the angrier I grew. The situation seemed to be heading for violence anyway, so I began calculating our chances of winning a fight. Joe had been doing 500 push-ups a day and looked stronger than the three of them, except for perhaps Bullet with his powerful build. Ace was all bluster and could easily be shoved to the ground. Larry lacked build but could move fast: a reasonable match for me. If a fight broke out, Ace would be on the floor gasping for an inhaler, leaving Joe fighting Bullet, and me Larry. Two other reasons were pushing me in this direction. I wanted to show Joe I’d stand up for him, and I wanted to show them they couldn’t bulldog us. I had something to say, and I knew as soon as I opened my mouth I was committed to a certain course of action. I would have to back my words up physically if it came down to it.

Taking them by surprise, I spoke up from the bottom bunk. ‘Hold on a minute. Larry came charging in here saying it was our clean-up day when it’s not even our clean-up day. Whoever told Larry it’s our clean-up day has caused this trouble, and I think that person needs to be dealt with.’

Ace’s face puckered as if a cockroach had crawled into his mouth. They recoiled in shock for a few seconds, as if they couldn’t believe I’d dared to speak up.

‘You need to keep the fuck out of it,’ Bullet said, slanting towards me, dangling his fists at the height of my head.

But there was no stopping me now. Intoxicated by my own audacity, I pressed on. ‘Whoever told Larry it’s our clean-up day needs to be dealt with, not Joe. We were just in here minding our own business before all this drama came into our cell.’

‘You’re really starting to piss me off,’ Ace said, his head trembling as if an alarm clock were going off inside it.