Psycho Save Us (17 page)

“Warrants
testin’?”

“
Needs
it,” he clarified.  “The head doc up at Leavenworth was a guy named McCulloch,
an’ he agreed with Armand back at CRC that I needed the PCL-R.  It tests a
person in two main categories or
factors
, Personality and Case History,
which are divvied up into twenty subcategories.  The Personality Test has to do
with things like pathological lying, cunning and manipulation, lack of remorse,
lack of empathy, aggressive narcissism, shit like that, ya know?”  Pat nodded,
but he did so slowly.  To Spencer, his old acquaintance had the look of a man
who had just realized he was in quicksand, and didn’t want to move too much or
else he might sink faster. 
Is he wondering how long I’ve been a psycho?  Is
he wondering if it’s somethin’ he can catch?
 Spencer had to fight the
smile.  “The Case History Test looks for things in the past that back up what’s
being seen in the subject in the present—childhood shit like early behavior
problems, juvenile delinquency, a need for stimulation, impulsiveness, and a
proneness to boredom.  The highest score a person can get is a forty, but
that’s incredibly rare.  I scored a thirty-six.”  Pat nodded.  Spencer added,
“That’s pretty high.”

“No, I got it,”
Pat said.  “I feel ya.  What parts didn’t you score high in?”

Spencer took
another sip, belched.  “Apparently, I show no signs of a parasitic lifestyle—I
don’t tend to cling onto others and feed off of ’em—and I don’t necessarily
have a grandiose sense of self-worth as most psychos do.  Dr. McCulloch
actually commented that I’m, quote, ‘Quite humble.’ ”

“
Pshhh
. 
Humble?  You?  My fuckin’ ass.”

Again, Spencer
shrugged.  “I’m just tellin’ you what they told me.  McCulloch said my
superficial charm conceals it.  He said he thinks that I like to
pretend
I have a grandiose sense of self-worth, but only because he suspects that I
have discovered how many people find large egos attractive—men respect those
kind o’ men, even if they don’t like them, and women find them attractive and
controlling.  In short, I apparently pretend to view myself as High an’ Mighty
because it helps me control weak-minded people.  It’s actually what gave me the
highest score in the manipulation section of the test.”  Spencer downed the
last of his Bud, tossed the bottle into the garbage bin, and snorted
derisively.  “Thus spoke the Great and Powerful Oz!”

Pat managed a
smile.  Spencer watched him closely.  Was he just now smiling because he sensed
it was time to smile?  Did he think he needed to smile because the psychopath
required him to?  Spencer thought he detected a glimmer of uncertainty in Pat’s
eyes. 
He’s recollecting all of our past encounters, all the times we worked
together, an’ reevaluating each moment
.  Spencer figured that was fine,
because ever since he’d received Dr. McCulloch’s diagnosis, he’d done the same
thing, too.  How else does one react when their told they don’t have emotions? 
At least, none that are quite like those the rest of the human race experiences.

He learned later
that it was estimated that there was one psychopath for every one hundred or
two hundred people.  People just like him were all over the globe, floating
throughout society, not experiencing any
real
emotion.  Psychopaths
assumed that emotions were all part of a societal game, and that they had to be
better at the game than anybody else if they wished to get the upper hand. 
That’s why psychopaths didn’t
know
they were psychopaths, because they
assumed everyone else felt the same way.

Dr. McCulloch
had put it like this: “Try to convince a blind man that there’s color.  You
can’t.  He has to take it on faith.  Faith, and the testimony of others.  But
he’ll never see.  He can use the same words as others to represent them—white,
black, red, blue—but he’ll never have any
command
over those words, he’d
never share a connection with them the same way you or I do, Spencer.  When it
comes to emotions, you’re color blind.”

Upon further
research in the prison library, and on Dr. McCulloch’s recommendation, Spencer
had read up on psychopathy and those that had studied it the most.  According
to what he’d found on the subject, most psychopaths actually never killed
anybody—but if they did they didn’t give a hoot.  Indeed, it was mostly normal,
emotional people who got caught up in their emotions and killed others.  Most
people in prison were
not
psychopaths.  Most psychopaths lived
(ostensibly) normal lives.  They mimicked the most socially acceptable
behavior, sometimes too well, and knew how to predict the outcome of a
conversation.  Thus, they were great liars and manipulators.

The most
shocking discovery Spencer had made had been when he’d read just how many world
leaders were suspected of being psychopaths.  Apparently, many modern
psychologists agreed that psychopaths were everywhere, completely undiagnosed, the
secret leaders of society, and said that one must
be
a psychopath (at
least to some degree) in order to have the mental fortitude run for public
office.  Emotional people couldn’t handle the rigors of campaigning, of being
caught in contradictions and having your family’s name dragged through the
mud.  It took a great and mighty ego to be the leader of the free world, to see
yourself as the Prime Minister of England, or to view yourself as a great civil
rights leader that others must follow.  To Spencer, this suddenly explained a
great deal of life, because this meant even the good guys in history were
mostly psychopaths.

“Can I ask a
question?” Pat said presently.

“Sure.” 
Here
it comes
. 
He’s gonna ask me if I’ve always known what I was
.

But to his
surprise, Pat asked a very simple question.  “What part did ya score highest
on?”

Spencer cocked
his head and
tsk
ed.  “There’s only one way to score on the PCL-R.  You
get a
zero
if the trait doesn’t apply at all, a
one
if it applies
somewhat, and a
two
if it fully applies.  I got a two on everything
besides parasitic lifestyle an’ grandiose self-worth, for which I scored zero. 
However,” he said, having something spring to mind, “my old friend Dr.
McCulloch said that I scored a
two
on something that most psychopaths
show no aptitude for whatsoever, an’ that was in the section of criminal
versatility.”

Pat smirked.  “You
a versatile muthafucka, eh?”  He pronounced it
versa-TYLE
.

“That’s what
they tell me.  An’ that’s why I was put away from the rest o’ the inmates
within the first month that I got to Leavenworth.  Dr. McCulloch was very
honest with me.  He said that he was gonna recommend to the warden that I stay
away from the common rabble ’cause he thought I might, uh, how did he put it?” 
Spencer spoke in the thick Jersey accent McCulloch had tried to cover up, but
never to any avail.  “ ‘Inspire loyalty in convicts less intelligent, and who
might follow you once they figured out you are a superior thinker.’  In other
words, they were worried I might get a bunch o’ guys together and we’d escape.”

“Did ya?”

“Nope.  I did it
all alone.  Well,
mostly
.”

“Alright, alright,
enough o’ this shit, muthafucka.  How
did
ya do it?”

Spencer tried to
paint the picture for him.  He started by describing the flight from Washington
down to Kansas.  He got to ride “Con Air” for the first time, feeling notorious
amongst some crazy serial killer who was missing an eye, a small Italian shrimp
who claimed to be a member of the Gambino family, and a couple of contract
killers from the Latin Kings who were all chained up in their own separate
cages, same as him.

Then, Spencer
described the long, lonesome drive up to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, how
he’d sat there looking neither right nor left.  Most of the men around him had
stared out their windows at the green fields, taking in the last view of the
outside world they would see in a long time.  For some of them, this would be
the last view they ever got of that world.

Spencer
described the front gate opening, and the large sign off to one side of the
gate that read:

LEAVENWORTH

Proud of where we have been

Proud of where we are

Proud of where we are going

Pride in a job well done

He had shuffled
off the bus same as all the others.  The young man chained up behind him, a
red-headed boy no older than nineteen, had already started crying.  “I remember
thinking, this kid’s gonna be fucked in his ass before the week’s out.  An’ ya
know what?  I was wrong.  It cost him two months of doing chores for other
inmates to buy him safety from the blacks on D cellhouse who wanted him so bad
you could smell it.  His name was Tommy Svenson, and eventually he was sold for
two packs o’ cigarettes.  He was lured by one o’ these guys into a certain part
o’ the shower room, which he was supposed to help clean.  It was his cellmate
who did him the first time, pretending he wanted to protect him outta the
kindness of his heart.  But it wasn’t the kindness of his heart, but the piece
lower down on his torso that
really
wanted to help the red-head.  I was
in the shower the day it happened.  He screamed.  The guards had to hear it,
but nobody did anything.

“After that, Tommy
was just a prison punk, passed around like a joint, shacking up in a different
cell every few months because some low-risk prisoners they let do that.  After
that, they used him for his girlfriend on the outside, who became a mule—someone
to sneak H an’ other shit in an’ outta the joint during conjugal visits and
whatnot, you understand.  She would come in with the stuff in her vagina, then
slip off to the women’s bathroom to remove it and put it in her mouth. 
Prisoners were allowed to kiss their visitors once at the beginning of the
visit and once at the end.  She’d kiss her red-headed boyfriend, an’ Tommy
swallowed the H an’ either vomited it up later or shat it out.  He did all this
to stop the rapes from the black guys, see?”

For a moment,
Spencer went silent.  None of this had much to do with his escape, but he found
himself thinking about it the more Pat pushed him about Leavenworth.  He didn’t
know why.  Perhaps it was the thought of predators and their prey, and how it
was the same all over the world.  It was sometimes easy for Spencer to become
lost in these sorts of thoughts.  Dr. McCulloch told him that was normal for many
psychopaths.  It’s how they whiled away their alone time, thinking of how so
many people were easily manipulated.

“You ever been
to the pen, Pat?”

Pat shook his
head.  “Naw, dawg.”  He said it with wonder, like a young boy hearing the story
of the ancient haunted cave that only his grandfather had returned from.

“It’s a
fascinating place.”  Pat laughed at that, but stopped when he realized Spencer
wasn’t being facetious.

He went on
describing the basic processing procedures.  He didn’t go into detail about
having his asshole fingered.  What Spencer
did
mention was that, while
the inspections were going on and the red-headed boy was trying to stifle his
sobs, he noticed that the guards had such dull looks on their faces.  “There was
only one hack who screamed like he meant it.  His name was Brummel, and he
hollered shit like, ‘This is my house!  You understand me?  You disrespect this
house, you disrespect me!  I will
not
tolerate disrespect!’  Besides
him, the rest o’ the hacks at Leavenworth were dull-eyed an’ really just
bored-looking.  At least, that was how it appeared to me.”

Spencer
described the changes the American prison system had been going through at the
time.  Leavenworth was on its way to being downgraded from a level-four
maximum-security prison; almost the highest rating in the nation.  Luckily for
him, the transition was happening around that time.  The BOP, or Bureau of
Prisons, had people in and out of there at all hours, checking this and
inspecting that.  The rotundas were going to be renovated to allow for better
prison management, and there were going to be different areas for different
groups—high-level gangsters would have their own section (the prisoners called
it “turf” or “territory”), and thugs from groups like the AB or the Crips or
the Bloods would have their own allotted section.  Like many prisons at the
time, Leavenworth was transitioning to smaller buildings spread out over a
compound and relying on more electronic surveillance, rather than the large
domed structures it had been known for where a mixing of all prisoners of all
races had been the norm.  This meant that the hacks (the guards) wouldn’t be as
familiar with all the prisoner’s faces as they once had been.

“At CRC, my goal
had been to match the profile of a lifer.  But in Leavenworth, I felt it was best
not
to blend in.  Instead, I went for a different approach.  I
disappeared,” he said, reaching out to the pack of cigarettes.  With his Bud
gone, he’d had second thoughts about Pat’s previous offer.  He plucked a stick
out and put it between his lips.  “There are more than 2,000 inmates at Leavenworth,
and though they weren’t being allowed to mix as much as before, they still mixed
more than at most other joints.”