Caged to Kill

by Tom Swyers

  David didn’t know what to say to Phillip’s rant. The insanity he described was too much for any man to overcome; it was also too much to digest in one sitting. Moonlight bathed the backyard and illuminated David’s shed. It was a small shed, only 8’ x 10’, yet it was larger than Phillip’s cell. David forced a smile. “You’ve come a long way since I hid you in the shed back there the first day we met up.”

  Phillip nodded. “I really appreciate all you’ve done for me. I feel better now that I’ve talked to you.”

  “So, I take it you’re not going to kill me tonight?” David asked with the stoic face of a con.

  “No, sir. That’s the furthest thing from my mind.”

  “How about my family? Have you ever thought about killing my family?”

  “No, sir. Just you.”

  “Do me a favor, Phillip.”

  “Anything.”

  “Promise you’ll let me know if you feel like killing me again, okay?”

  “Yes, sir. I promise.”

  David looked at his watch. “I think we should both call it a night. Let’s get some rest and pick this topic up another time. I’ll get my keys and take you back to the motel.”

  “Okay,” Phillip said, as they both heard footsteps fast approaching.

  Annie opened the porch screen door. “David, someone called for you while you two men were out here talking.”

  “Did you pick up or did he leave a message?”

  “I was too busy cleaning up to answer; up to my elbows in dishwater. He did leave a message. It was Johnny McFadden.”

  “All right, I’ll call him up after I take Phillip back to the motel.”

  “Okay,” Annie said. “You guys leaving now?”

  “Yep, as soon as I find my keys.”

  “I saw them in the den. I’ll get them for you,” Annie said, closing the screen door behind her.

  David stood up and stretched.

  Phillip sat there, circling his index finger on the top of the empty Genesee can.

  “You okay?” David asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What’s on your mind now?”

  “That name—Johnny McFadden. I recognize it. Would he happen to work at Kranston?”

  “Why, yes. Do you know him?”

  “That’s the name of the new CO that wrote me my last ticket there.”

  Chapter 10

  Gusts of wind and sheets of rain pounded the Mustang as it surfed down Central Avenue on the way to the hearing in Albany. Every time David plowed through a puddle, the car shook. Water sprayed like a fountain from the wheel wells onto the crumbling sidewalks with a sound like a huge wave crashing on a rocky coastline.

  Phillip said, “It sounds like static blasting from my TV.” On some nights when he had trouble sleeping and there was nothing good on the radio, he tried to fall asleep to the static on the TV. The waves of white noise filled up the deafening silence of his motel room. He hadn’t said much since last night when he learned that David was friends with Johnny McFadden. McFadden was the CO riding in the back seat during the pull-over; the same one who’d written him his last bogus ticket at Kranston.

  “Phillip, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Johnny McFadden. I didn’t think you needed to know. If I knew he had written you a ticket, I would have told you about him. But as far as I knew back then, he was roped into riding in the backseat with the other COs for the pull-over.”

  “That’s what you said last night,” Phillip said, looking straight ahead. “Did you ever think that he might be in charge of the ring of COs that pulled us over?” Phillip always thought that the guy furthest behind was the guy in charge. That’s the way it worked at Kranston. The COs would never walk in front of a con. They always stood to the side or to the rear, with the most senior CO or prison official furthest back.

  “He’s a newjack. They’re not in charge of anything.”

  Phillip knew David was right when it came to newjacks. But he wasn’t convinced that McFadden was a newjack. The feeling persisted, even though the first and only time he’d seen Johnny was when he wrote that last ticket at Kranston. For all Phillip knew, McFadden was some bigwig from the central office posing as a CO; a guy sent in to hit him with a ticket just for the hell of it. “You sure he’s a newjack? You sure he’s not some hotshot from the central office sent down to screw me over?”

  “Central office? You mean the central office at Kranston?”

  “No, the central office for the Bureau of Prisons. The prisons in New York don’t run themselves. They’re not like other state agencies that are decentralized and run at the institutional level. Everything flows from the central office in Albany. When they say jump, the prison superintendents compete to see who can jump highest.”

  “Well, McFadden has never worked at the central office. He’s a newjack, pure and simple.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “I’ve known him for years. I knew him when he was selling meat out of the back of his pickup. No way.”

  Phillip didn’t say anything. A wave of paranoia had hit when David dropped him off at the Red Apple the night before. He skipped his bedtime routine—no shower, no brushing his teeth, no vitamin, no radio. He just lay down in his street clothes on top of the bedspread and imagined all sorts of wild scenarios involving Johnny McFadden. The good news was that he didn’t dream about killing David that night. But Phillip dwelled on the possibility that somehow David might have been involved with McFadden in a scheme to drive him insane. Phillip was used to everyone being against him. That had been his life for thirty years.

  David knew Phillip was troubled about McFadden. Ever since he mentioned McFadden’s name, Phillip had put back on his 24/7 prison face. He stared straight ahead and moved like he was marching at Kranston. David knew from experience that he needed to chip away at the block of ice now surrounding Phillip. “You’ve said yourself that the central office is staffed with personnel promoted from within the system.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Well, Johnny’s been in the system for a year. I don’t know if he’s even passed his probationary period.”

  “If you say so.”

  David parallel parked into a space across the street from the Bureau of Licenses building at the Empire State Plaza downtown. Silently thanking the parking gods for the miracle of a convenient spot, he handed Phillip an umbrella. “You go in and wait in the lobby. Maybe hit the men’s room before we find the courtroom. It won’t look good if you have to leave the hearing to go to the bathroom.”

  “Okay.” He hated when David treated him like a boy. But then realized he was wise to think ahead like that. Phillip had to relearn bathroom planning when he was released from Kranston. He still was prone to lapses. The one good thing about solitary was you just had to turn around to relieve yourself in the cell toilet. That was life 23/7. Outside in the real world, everything was more complicated. “What about you?”

  “Me?” David answered. “I went before I left the house, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve got to come up with some change for the parking meter. So I’ll meet you in the lobby in a few minutes.”

  Phillip popped open his umbrella and bounced across the street like his shoes were spring loaded. It was the stride of a man who had lived an up-and-down life, one filled with more jumping jacks than steps walked. He bounced through the revolving door at the Bureau of Licenses.

  David picked up his cell to call Johnny McFadden while searching the glove compartment for the Ziploc baggie full of change he stored there.

  “What’s up?” Johnny answered.

  “You tell me what’s up,” quipped David. “You told me only the senior-most COs work in the solitary wing, right?”

  “Yeah, so—”

  “So, you couldn’t work in solitary even if you wanted to because you don’t have seniority.”

  “That’s right—”

  “Well Dawkins said you gave him a ticket—his last misbehavior ticket
at Kranston.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. So how did that happen?”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “Come on Johnny—are you playing me for a sap? What do you all have against Dawkins? What did he ever do to you?”

  “Dude, I don’t have it in for him—”

  “How did this happen?”

  “Oh, God, that was him!”

  “What you mean?”

  “It must have been him. There’s no other explanation.”

  “Spill it, Johnny.”

  “I’ve worked in solitary a total of two days—”

  “But you said you can’t work there—”

  “Permanently. I can’t work there permanently. Not that I’d want to work there at all. It’s a nut house.”

  “You didn’t say ‘permanently’ when I talked with you at the diner.”

  “We were talking in generalities back then. It wasn’t an issue in our conversation, not that I can recall. So I didn’t get into specifics—”

  “Come on, Johnny.”

  “Shut up and let me finish. I can be a substitute in solitary when they’re short a guy due to sickness or something. The brass tells me where to go every shift depending on their needs. So one day months ago, I got assigned to solitary. The two senior COs on duty with me told me to write up a ticket for some con and I did. They wanted to see if I’d follow orders—part of my initiation into the brotherhood, or so they said. So I did.”

  “Did Dawkins really do anything to deserve the ticket?”

  “I’ll tell you if you promise that this is strictly between you and me. You know, lawyer-client privilege and all.”

  “You’re not my client, but I promise not to say anything.”

  “You’d better not, because you could get me fired if you did.”

  “I promise, Johnny.”

  “Then, no, he didn’t do anything to deserve that ticket.”

  “Why did you write him up then?”

  “Because they told me to do it. The senior COs said it would be funny and it wouldn’t do any harm because he was already in solitary and he was going to be there forever-and-a-day anyway. They said fighting the ticket would keep him busy and content. They said it would be like therapy to him. Truth be told, I think they did it so he’d be focused on fighting the ticket as opposed to bothering them any. It’s not the same with most cons in solitary. They’ve given up fighting tickets. But not him. They said he’s been fighting for decades.”

  “How come you didn’t recognize his name from the hearing?”

  “Prisoners are numbers to us, not names. Besides, the senior COs filled out all the paperwork. I just signed and showed up to the hearing to testify. Nothing more, nothing less. I don’t think his name was mentioned once when I was in the hearing room. If it was, I don’t remember it.”

  “But you referred to him by his name at the diner.”

  “Yeah, but until now I didn’t know they were one and the same person. I didn’t see Dawkins when we pulled you two over. Perhaps I should have put two and two together, but I guess I put that solitary wing incident out of my mind. I find myself boxing up all the unpleasant experiences I have on the job and trying to forget them.”

  David’s head was spinning. He didn’t know whether to believe Johnny or not. He knew Johnny was a great salesman—he could sell ice to Eskimos. He had seen Johnny spin a web of deceit around the travel baseball profiteers who took advantage of kids and their gullible parents. Johnny was willing to stretch the truth, and even lie if he had to, to get his way and to save baseball for the sandlot kids. But David didn’t know if he was on the receiving end of a Johnny campaign this time around. “Johnny, when we were trying to save the baseball program for the kids, you once said: ‘You are either part of the problem or part of the solution. Pick a side because there’s no middle ground.’ I don’t know whose side you are on this time around.”

  “You know, it’s just like a lawyer to bring up what someone said years ago and stick it in his face.”

  “Ah, come on—"

  “Sit on your law degree for a second and listen to me.”

  “I’m all ears, Johnny.”

  “Hey. I’ll admit it. I’m standing on middle ground here. I’m straddling the fence. On the one hand, I don’t like what I see here as a CO and I’m on the side of change—I’m part of the solution. On the other hand, I can’t afford to get fired—so I guess I’m part of the problem.”

  “Finally, an admission of sorts.”

  “Knock it off, counselor, and listen. The reason I called is to help you out. You see, as a newjack I have to do the cruddy work. So the other day, they tell me I have to clean out a secretary’s office and throw all of her papers into the trash. After decades with the state, Edith Nowak, secretary to the superintendent, didn’t show up one day. They learned that she filed her paperwork with the New York State Retirement System and that she retired, effective immediately. No notice, no retirement party, no nothing. Poof, she’s gone and she’s not coming back. They told me to clean out her desk and the file cabinets. What a mess. So I found a bunch of papers stuck way in the back of the bottom drawer of a file cabinet in a huge accordion folder with Phillip Dawkins’ name on it. There’re copies of correspondence going back to the 1960s between someone with the initials EC and a Boris Dietrich. There’s also correspondence between Edith and this guy Boris. Plus there’s a bunch of other papers and some photographs. I didn’t have time to look through it all.”

  “What do these papers have to do with Phillip Dawkins?”

  “I don’t know. That’s for you to figure out.”

  “You mean you didn’t trash them?”

  “Nope. On the way to the dumpster outside, I made a pit stop at my car and loaded the accordion file into the trunk. I’ll drop them off at your house today.”

  David didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know if the papers were just a red herring Johnny had packaged for some unknown reason or if they were connected somehow to Dawkins. All he knew was that he had to make a hearing that started in ten minutes and he didn’t see any harm in looking at Johnny’s stash. ”Sure, Johnny, drop them off and I’ll have a look at them. Thank you for the intelligence work. I’ve gotta run now. Call you later.” David snapped the cell shut, plunked some change into the meter as he popped open his umbrella, and sprinted through traffic. Then he squished through the revolving door, where David found Phillip investigating an aquarium full of fish on display in the lobby.

  “Come on, Phillip, the hearing is on the tenth floor. We need to catch an elevator.”

  David hit the button to call an up elevator. “You just let me do the talking, Phillip.”

  “Okay.”

  “Try not to get upset with the judge or threaten the people from the state. All right?”

  “Okay.” Phillip had left the carving knife at home that day. He didn’t want to set off the metal detectors at the Bureau of Licenses. But there were no metal detectors and security was an unarmed rent-a-cop reading a magazine at the reception station. No metal detector? In a state facility? How could that be? He felt the system was toying with him, lulling him into complacency, readying itself to crack down on him from behind. I should have brought the knife.

  The elevator door opened. Phillip, David and a few state office workers hopped on. David pushed the button for the tenth floor then moved his way to the rear with Phillip.

  When the doors shut, Phillip realized he was in a box smaller than his cell and it was packed full of people that he didn’t know. By moving himself to the very back of the elevator he made sure that nobody stood behind him. He closed his eyes and thought about the butterfly fields. Then he stage-whispered to David, “Do you think those fish have enough room in the aquarium? Did you see that blue one with the big, fan-like fins?” It was a Blue Male Crowntail Betta. “It looked like a Karner Blue.”

  Some woman sporting blue and red dyed hair, with tattoos on the pronounced cleavage escaping
her tank top, stared over her shoulder at Phillip. Phillip saw her and wondered if she had come from a Grateful Dead concert. He thought it might be better not to look back at her, so he closed his eyes in self-defense.

  David said, “We’ll talk about the predicament of the fish after we address yours.”

  When the elevator chime rang for the fourth time, David announced this was their floor. Phillip opened his eyes to a fairly empty cab. They both exited and followed the signs. At the end of the deserted hallway was the designated courtroom. David straightened Phillip’s blue tie before they entered. He made Phillip dress for the occasion in a loose cement gray suit from SALs, paired with a white dress shirt that only had a slightly irregular collar. The last time Phillip wore a suit was in the 1980s at his father’s funeral. He hoped that wasn’t a bad luck omen.

  The courtroom looked more like a conference room. There were four rows of antique pine pews on either side. They looked more like they belonged in a church than a courtroom. The pews didn’t match the mahogany-colored judge’s bench. This was the only wooden furniture in the room, which featured institutional gray drywall and a matching acoustic tile suspended ceiling. Humming fluorescent cool-white tubes provided the lighting over worn ocean blue carpet tiles that curled at the edges.

  Phillip and David took a seat in the front row behind a plastic 4’ x 8’ folding table. There was nobody else in the room. On top of the judge’s bench were two fifty-five-inch televisions displaying only static. Each one was equipped with a miniature camera on the top. There were two microphones stationed on the judge’s bench, too. The sound on the TVs was muted.

  When David saw the Cisco-labeled hardware and the absence of a high-back chair for the judge, he figured the judge was going to be patched in remotely. He’d never seen anything like it—the judge would be on television presiding over some courtroom miles away. He had no clue this was coming and had no idea how it would work. How do I present my evidence to a judge on television? Do I hold it up to the camera?