Pain Killers (18 page)

There was a line at the visiting room window. I was eleventh, which left ample time to admire the humanity in the orange plastic chairs. Mothers and girlfriends nursed babies, checked makeup, chatted with the other ladies who’d made the trek. Their beauty seemed extreme, maybe because their devotion was so naked.
Here I am, taking a nine-hour bus ride up to see you, baby.
The children colored in coloring books. The men on hand seemed oddly washed out. You didn’t see a lot of gangsters. Mostly sad-eyed little boys and proud old men.

One thirteen-year-old black kid, already inching toward six foot, held court for younger newcomers in front of the inmate-painted mural, pointing out details of trees, mountains, deer and other bucolic wonders. It was all browns and greens, like a geography book illustration, but achingly lush in contrast to the plastic and penitentiary lighting. One elderly African-American woman, in a pillbox hat and white knit shawl over a patchy fur coat, read a large black book I assumed to be the New Testament. It turned out to be
Blackwater,
by Jeremy Scahill. Under different circumstances, I would have loved to ask if it drove her mad knowing that guys who got high and killed people walked if they worked for right-wing, politically connected security firms. And that men who didn’t, most likely including her son or husband or brother or fiancé, were not walking anywhere but to chow.

A starchy, heavily made-up white woman breathed chili fries when I made it to the window. Her nametag read SERGEANT DARNELL. Her plump cheeks, Big Beautiful Woman scarlet lips and painted-on eyebrows registered permanent surprise. “Visiting condemned today? They’re in the adjustment center.”

Did I look like a condemned visitor? “I’m visiting a, uh…a non-condemned. My name is Manuel Rupert.”

“I do not see your name in our files.”

“Try Manuel.”

“Thank you for helping me do my job, sir. Are you sure you submitted your application?” I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or reading from a card taped to her computer screen. I only knew it took under a minute to make her despise me.

“There is a six-to-eight-week processing time for visiting forms, sir. If you have not heard from us, that does not mean you have not been approved—that means we have not yet gotten to your file.”

“Right, right,” I stammered. “It’s kind of an impulsive visit. See, I’m teaching here, a drug prevention class? Then I remembered…I have a cousin here, so I thought—”

What was I thinking? How could I waltz into the visiting room without knowing who I was supposed to visit? You can make dumb mistakes at a Taco Bell takeout window. But not in San Quentin. It was an adjustment I thought I’d made but clearly hadn’t. “As I said, sir, there is a six-to-eight-week processing time for visiting forms. All visits must be approved in advance. No same-day.”

“No same-day! You sound like a Chinese laundry!”

Officer Colfax shouldered his way over and interrupted my losing plea. “How goes it?”

“Well,” I said, “to tell you the truth—”

“Roger that, big man.” He clamped a hand on my arm, squeezing just enough, I suspected, to let me know it might be a good idea to shut the fuck up. Done squeezing, Colfax squatted so that his face was level with Sergeant Darnell’s. “Looky here, Darlene.”

He opened his wallet and showed her something I couldn’t see. It could have been a fifty-dollar bill or a monkey paw. “Don’t go by looks,” I heard him whisper, “Manny’s a friendly.”

“Really?” she said, giving me a once-over that made me check to see if I had pants on. “I thought he was from San Francisco.”

It was clear that this meant something to Colfax and his friend behind the reinforced glass window. And what it meant was something less than flattering. Insanely, I came close to protesting—
Hey, I’m not from San Francisco!
—before I realized there was no percentage trying to persuade prison guards you were cool. As she could see directly into my mind, Sergeant Darnell plucked a few fallen strands off her forehead and tamped them back up into her teased pineapple of red hair. “Mr. Rupert, this is San Quentin,” she said, giving me her most withering Sarah Palin–ish smirk. “It’s not high school with lethal injections.”

“That’s a great line,” I said. “How many times a day do you get to use it?”

For a moment we held each other’s eyes, me trying to exude impassive blandness in the face of her snark, her making sure I knew this was her world, and don’t be fooled by the big boobs and bouffant—she had bigger balls than I did.

“Darlene’s a pistol, isn’t she?” Colfax chuckled.

At first I thought he was helping me out—smoothing out an awkward prison moment—but when I saw the glaze that had formed over the big, acne-scarred guard’s cow-brown eyes, I knew it was something else altogether.

When Sergeant Darnell shifted her gaze from me to Colfax, her plump face softened into discreet affection. Unconsciously or not, she put her thumb over her wedding ring. Just because their office happened to include killers, random violence, incarceration and lock-downs, that didn’t mean an office romance couldn’t bloom. Colfax did everything but float a foot off the floor and bat his eyelashes at his ample amour. I wondered if his ardor was rewarded or more in the realm of chivalric poetry, where the whole point was devotion and unfulfilled desire—as opposed to consummation in a stolen hour of conjugal bunk time. All I knew for certain is that if we kept standing there, little red cartoon hearts would probably start fluttering from the burly guard’s chest. And the line of tired, excited, understandably upset prison visitors behind us might get violent.

“Driver’s license,” said Sergeant Darnell. I slipped it under the bulletproof glass. She slid it back with one plastic-gloved pinkie and told me where to sign.

When I put down the pen she said, “Inmate nine-six-five-seven-six is sitting down right now in front of the microwave.”

“The one with the sign that says ‘Out of Order,’” Colfax added, snapping his fingers and pointing a finger gun at his special girl. I saw him touch her fingers as she slid my visitor pass out her slot. “Darlene,” Colfax declared, looking around to make sure nobody who mattered was listening, “I am going to pick up the phone and call the governor. You are fan-forklift-tastic.”

“Thanks, hon,” said Darlene, already smiling past him at the elderly prisoner mom and dad behind us. “How are you two today?” she asked them sweetly. “How are those precious little granddaughters?”

If his sweetheart’s sudden about-face affected Colfax one way or the other, it didn’t show. He led me from the window without a word and pointed to Jimmy. The white Rasta was waving from the back, arms spread over a couple of chairs, in front of a microwave with the door open and a handmade OUT OF ORDER sign taped to the window.

“I guess Jimbo wants some extra counseling,” said Colfax.

“And some extra room,” I said. “I have a hunch he put that sign there himself.”

“The guys call him WBM. For White Bob Marley. You have to give ’em nicknames.”

“And White Bob can just schedule a visit?”

“Hey, I just work here,” he said.

I expected Colfax to head straight for Rasta Jim. Instead he cut left and I nearly ran into him. We were going for the vending machines.

“Sandwich, fruit, soda, chips, candy, popcorn,” Colfax called over his shoulder. “You wanna load up on snacks before you sit down. That’s the way they do it. Got dollar bills?”

I fished in my pocket, pulled out a soggy twenty with some kind of white rind hanging off it. I shook the bill, and the rind flew off, then tried to wipe my fingers on my pants without being obvious about it. It’s like I was becoming my trailer. For all I knew I smelled like the snailback and had grown so inured to the odor I didn’t notice. On patrol we called it “homeless nose.”

My hand was halfway to my other pocket when Colfax pressed a thin stack of bills into it. “Thirty singles,” he said, keeping an eye over the heads of the other guests. “They don’t make change. Your best bet is nachos, but put the peppers in before you microwave.”

“Microwave looks broken.”

“They’re not bad cold, either.”

Colfax gave my shoulder a manly squeeze and marched off, no doubt for more dalliance with Darlene. For all I knew prison guards led secret double lives as swingers and cheaters. Who could blame them, after eight hours a day trying not to get hit with piss bags, or worse. The big CO’s exit left me to fend for myself at the vending machines. They all worked—one thing that prison life had to recommend it. I had to walk carefully to keep from toppling my junk food mountain of M&M’s, Mallo Cups, caramel corn, jumbo pretzels and barbecued potato chips. I threw in a mushy apple for nutritional purposes, though it looked more unhealthy than any of the snacks.

Rasta Jim was less than appreciative. “You think I eat this crap? And what were you doing with Dudley Do-Right?” He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “I’m FBI, asshole.”

“If I had your hair, I wouldn’t be calling anybody asshole,” I said. “And you’re not FBI, unless they canceled their dental plan.”

“Prosthetics. You think this is my real hair? I have to take this off at night and walk it.”

“I’m still not buying.”

Playing the role, he let his head fall sideways and gazed up at the fluorescent lights like they were telling him to eat brains. I was afraid he was going to drool. “202-44-EAGLE. Tell him Agent Carol said to call. He’s my top.”

He saw that I didn’t believe him. So, when no one was looking, he slid the dreads on his forehead back, showing cheesecloth underneath.

“Nice work,” I said, “but unless the toupee says ‘Property of U.S. Government,’ that doesn’t tell me much. And you know I can’t call now. No cell phones.”

“Rupert, goddamn it, do you know how many ways the federal government can fuck you?” He held his head askew, still pretending to be tripping on fluorescent mysteries. “We can audit. We can tap your phone, we can read your e-mail, we can send you kiddie porn and then arrest you for owning it.”

I unwrapped a Mallo Cup and took a bite. “You had me at ‘audit.’”

“Asshole.” He spat on my candy. “Now tell me about Zell.”

“You know why he hired me,” I said, fishing to see what my tax dollars were paying for. “What’s that tell you?”

“Don’t play games, okay?”

“I’m not the one playing games.” I plunked a napkin in his hand. “And wipe your mouth. You’ve got white cream on your lip. This is
prison,
dude. Who you really after?”

“A war criminal. You know who?”

“That was easy. You think he’s the real deal?”

Jimmy slipped out of his Rasta bonghead mode long enough to glare at me before going back to character.

Half of me wanted to tell him Tina was missing and get him to find her; the other half did not want to give him anything he could leverage later. I didn’t know how exactly he could fuck me, but he was federal law enforcement. He could do a lot more to me than I could to him. Even for a chronic catastrophizer, the sudden plethora of awful possibilities was alarming. I switched tracks from emotional to moral consequence—what if, due to some fuck-up of mine, Josef Mengele escaped?
Again.
I started to reach for his collar.

“If you think it’s him…”

Agent Carol–slash–White Bob Marley sat up fast. I willed my hands back to the table. Recalibrated my voice from hiss to whisper.

“If there’s even a fucking
chance,
how can you not take him?
Now.
”

In Rasta wack mode, he tilted his head sideways and gave me a fed’s rendition of a ganja giggle before bringing in the heavy artillery. “Ever heard of a threat assessment? Like what are the odds I could give a signal right now and an inmate bites off your finger? The Mossad had him in Buenos Aires in 1960 and let him go so they wouldn’t blow the Eichmann snatch. Israelis made an assessment, decided a bird in hand is worth two in the bush.”

Before I could ask why they didn’t napalm the bushes, he went back to business. “We’ve pinned flags on fifty serious Jews who would pay for the privilege of killing Mengele. Word gets out, they’re gonna descend. Ever think of that? The security involved? These are professional Nazi hunters. Plus all the weekend Wiesenthals. Before I could take him, I’d have to do a full alert. IFS-DOUBLE-C. International, federal, state, city, county. We’re talking about Lee Harvey Genocide here. If it means a little wait to stave off some wannabe Jack Ruby—real name Rubenstein—so be it. What kind of hardware you bringing to the party?”

“What are you talking about?”

Nearby, a Sureño—one weeping eyeball and a blood-red “13” turning the back of his shaved head into a criminal billboard—happily scooped up Cheez Doodles for his family. I started to offer him my bounty and Rasta clamped a hand on my wrist. “Don’t.”

“Why?”

“Not done. So tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Isn’t that why you came up here? Zell doesn’t seem to know who you are. So if you’re using him as an excuse, then you’re freelancing, and the only money in that is if you bag the target.”

“That’s right. I’m here to shoot him. Dead. But I have to do it one handed, on account of I need to hold my camera steady with the other. I use an Elph. Put it right on the iMac.”

“All right, all right,” he said, rasping back to his weed-creepy blond Bob Marley routine. “Riddle me this: Who’s better off with Mengele alive in prison? Who’s better with him dead? And why hasn’t he already been caught, exposed and shoved on camera as the last living Holocaust perp walk? Unless he knows something. Or has something.”

“Something—I’m just spitballing here—like a photograph of the doctor and some notables taking the air at Auschwitz? Wait—is it Prescott Bush eating a Jewish baby?”

“People know that some of our finest families believed they had a friend in Hitler. There are others things—other individuals—no historian knows about. We don’t know the extent. But corroborating material exists.”

“What
do
you know?”

He fixed me in his G-Man stare, burning right out from under the Rasta wig. But when he spoke, he sounded like a pilot on Southwest announcing delays over Phoenix. “Let’s just say it wouldn’t be good for America.”