The Weight (5 page)

When he came to, he reached for the phone.

My Legal Aid said I was being charged with strong-arm robbery. All that means is nobody showed a weapon.

He kept talking about a YO—that’s Youthful Offender—like it was the greatest thing in the world. The way he ran it down, if the judge would give me a YO, my record would be sealed. That way, it couldn’t be used against me if I ever got in trouble again.

He said “again” like it was a sure thing.

I already knew that sixteen was the cutoff. No more Family Court for me. No more rehabilitation bullshit, no more counseling, no more GED classes. Prison.

I knew I’d have to go sooner or later if I wanted the right people to see me, so I was just as glad to get it over with.

Back then, on the Rock, they’d separate the young guys from the older ones. That was supposed to keep us safe from “predators.” I wondered if anyone actually believed that stuff.

But it wasn’t bad at all. Nobody was going to be there long enough to worry about pulling me into their crew. And I had enough juvie time to send out the right signal: I’m not going to gorilla anybody into anything, and I don’t have anything you want, either. But if you come at me, it’s going to cost you something.

I was there a few weeks. It wasn’t until I got Upstate that I found out how that Legal Aid had screwed me over.

“What was the big deal about getting a YO?” the writ-writer asked me. I knew I couldn’t appeal behind my guilty plea, but I really wanted that YO, and I heard I could appeal not getting
that
part.

I was surprised when he said that. Everyone said he was smarter than any lawyer. He was in for double-life, but he’d gotten all kinds of other guys out, ’cause he knew the law so good. Spent every day in the law library they had up there, like it was his office. Had guys bringing him coffee, sandwiches, whatever he wanted.

He read the look on my face. “Don’t you get it, son? Far as the judge was concerned, you were a first offender, right?”

“I … guess so.”

“What I’m saying, you had a long juvenile record, but this was your first adult bust, right?”

“Right.”

“And every time you copped to one of those kiddie crimes, didn’t your lawyer say a juvenile record doesn’t mean anything, because it all gets sealed?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah? Do the math. The judge on your case, he knew all about your priors. As a juvie, I’m saying.”

“But if they—”

“It’s pure bullshit,” the writ-writer told me. “ ‘Sealed,’ all that means is they can’t put it in the newspapers. They even changed that law back in ’78, but that’s only for homicides. And you didn’t have …?”

“No.”

“Yeah. So, like I said, the public can’t see your record. But the cops can. And they can pass that along to the ADA. And the ADA can pass that along to the judge. Just
psst-psst
, see? Nothing on paper. That YO you want me to appeal for? Even if you won, it wouldn’t be worth the paper it was typed on.”

“It’s three crates, right?”

“I just told you—”

“Three crates to talk to you, that’s what they said.”

“Yeah. That’s my consultation fee.”

“I’ll have it for you as soon as—”

“Forget it,” the old con said.

“I don’t take favors,” I told him.

He looked up at me. “You’re just dumb about
some
things, huh?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. But I paid him, just like I said I would.

I didn’t just learn things that first time in; I
earned
some things, too. That’s when people started calling me Sugar.

Inside, color counts, but it’s not like one race against another. I mean, it is, but there’s lots of splitting even
inside
the colors. Like Puerto Ricans and Cubans, they’re both Spanish, right? But they didn’t mix. The PRs were mostly born here, but all the Cubans I ever saw, they got shipped in.
Marielitos
, the PRs called them. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew it wasn’t no compliment.

The yard was divided up into what they called “courts.” You couldn’t step onto any crew’s court without their permission, and the strongest crews claimed the best spots.

I was raised in a city where just being caught in the wrong neighborhood could get you seriously fucked up, so it kind of made sense to me. Besides, there was what they called the DMZ, places where anyone could go.

But even there you had to be on the watch. Like the weights. They’d have them out in the yard for anyone to use, and no crew ever tried to claim them. But they claimed the
time
to use them. So it wasn’t just the yard that was divided up, it was everything
in
the yard, too.

That was the part I didn’t know. And that was how I got my name. I was doing one-handed curls when the Muslims sent some guys over to talk to me. I saw them coming, so I was already slugging by the time they landed.

Lucky for me, they weren’t carrying. I think seeing me with the weights was such a surprise that they didn’t plan anything, just rushed me.

Everybody saw it, but nobody did anything. They just watched. Even the guards.

When they finally broke it up, they could see nobody was cut, so everyone got tickets for fighting. I got thirty days; I don’t know what the Muslims got.

I know they got visits, though. Even in the bing, if you had religion, you could always get to see someone. Like me, I was down as Catholic, so the guards asked me if I wanted to see a priest. The Muslims, they were a religion, so there was this—I don’t know what to call him—he came around every day.

One day, he stopped by my cell. He was wearing one of those
little round hats. I went over to the bars, carrying a towel wrapped around my hand in case he was there to stick me. I
had
to come to the bars, or they’d think I was weak.

He had a strong, calm voice. Kind of talked all around what he had to say, but what it came down to was that the Muslims had no beef with me. They got it that I didn’t know the rules about what times you could use the weights. And they also knew I’d told the DC—the Disciplinary Committee—that I couldn’t tell them who else was in the fight. It all happened so sudden, I didn’t even remember what color the other guys were.

It’s kind of complicated, but it wasn’t like the Muslims were giving me a pass if I ever did it again, just saying I didn’t need to look over my shoulder when I unlocked.

I didn’t believe him, but it turned out he was telling the truth.

A few months later, I still didn’t have a crew, but there was some guys I was all right with. I hung with them when they lifted. We spotted for each other—and not just on the weights. I was on my way over to them one day, just passing by this little court, when I heard something in Spanish. I figured it was about me, but I didn’t want to challenge anyone without making sure I had to.

One of the guys I worked out with, his girlfriend was Latina. The first time he told me that, I thought that was her name, Latina. But I’m never dumb on the same thing twice.

Eddie was a real short guy, but he had huge arms and a big chest from pumping every day. Sitting down, he looked bigger than me. When I first came in, he could out-bench me, too. Not by the time I left, though.

Everybody liked Eddie, even the guards. He was always joking around, playing cards, goofing off. Had a smile for everyone. And he could tell some
great
stories—he only took vacations from jail to get some new material, is what he said.

One of the things that made his stories so good was how he could make his voice sound like other people’s. He used that trick even when he wasn’t telling stories, just to stop other guys from getting … depressed, or whatever you want to call it.

I remember when Reno came over to talk to us. Well, to me,
really. Reno was deep into that White Power stuff, and Eddie had tipped me they’d be coming around. “You look like a recruiting poster for some Aryan army, kid. Blond/blue, big and buffed. All you need is some ink.”

I’d told Eddie that I didn’t want anything to do with that crew. All that political stuff sounded weird to me. “What does a thief need with politics?” I asked him.

“That’s a good one,” he said, like I just told a great joke.

I didn’t try and find out what I’d said that was so funny; I was just happy that a guy like Eddie thought I could tell a good joke.

Anyway, when Reno kind of strolls over one day, Eddie heads him off: “Sir, you
do
realize you are entering New York’s most exclusive men’s club? Membership is restricted to those bearing a personal invitation from the Governor.”

Reno gave him a look. Then he decided Eddie was joking around, so he laughed along with the rest of us.

Then him and Eddie took a little walk. Not far, but enough so I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The way they said goodbye, Eddie tapped his own chest, right over his heart, and Reno did the same.

“No ink, kid. Understand me? No ink, not
ever
. You don’t go along with that, you could get me killed.”

“I don’t have any—”

“Yeah,” he cut me off. “I know. That’s what I used to pull that fool’s chain.”

“But you’ve got … I mean …” I felt so bad. I knew Eddie was trying to look out for me, but I was too fucking stupid to even figure out how he was doing it. Eddie’s whole body was so covered with tattoos that it looked like he was wearing a shirt even when he wasn’t.

“Look close,” Eddie said. He touched his chest with one finger.

“I don’t see—”

“I said
close
, bro.”

It was like trying to read one of those walls when one gang overtags another, and then the first one comes back. After a while, it just looks like a mess. But I kept trying. And then I saw it. One of
those Nazi crosses, only it was made out of lightning bolts and arrows. You couldn’t see all of it—a lot of it was buried under other tats. But it was there.

“Get it now?” Eddie asked me. “If they need to check, the AB can see they got my heart. You can see it yourself, right where it should be. Only, I had to get it covered up. Like camouflage, see?”

“So nobody could see—”

“So the fucking
cops
can’t see it. That’s what they do now: they read a man’s ink, and it goes in their book. But they look at me, they just see this big mess. I got every kind of ink you could think of, so I get put down as a tattoo-freak.”

“What’s so good—?”

“What’d I just
tell
you, kid? Okay, one more time, real slow. That fool who came over before, what I told him was that the Brotherhood needs men who can slip under the radar. We don’t go to meetings, we don’t be going all ‘Heil Hitler!’ on the yard, nothing like that. The law’s got undercovers; why shouldn’t we?”

“But you told me to never get one.”

“Ain’t
that
undercover, too, bro?”

“
That’s
why you said never get any ink at all.”

“And that still goes. I just told that sucker I was getting you ready for this big mission. Feeding you one spoon at a time. So you can’t be seen hanging with the Double-Eights.”

“He bought that?”

Eddie grinned. “You know what he’s in for? Cooking up some crank. And guess who he sold it to?”

It was like Eddie’s smile made me smarter. I know that’s crazy, but that’s how it felt, me hitting the right answer on the nose. “An undercover cop?”

“Oh yeah!” Eddie said, holding up his palm for me to slap, laughing.