Help I Am Being Held Prisoner

by Donald E. Westlake

  It is bad companions, by God; our mothers were right.

  The deposit slip told me how much I’d collected in cash. One hundred thirty-two dollars in bills, eighteen dollars and forty cents in change. One hundred fifty dollars and forty cents.

  Yes, sir.

  The cash all went into my pockets, except for a dime that Max Nolan found in the carpet two weeks later. The checks and deposit slip went back into the canvas bag, and I went back into the cold to unload them.

  I walked a block, found a garbage can next to somebody’s house, and stuffed the bag in amid the corn flakes boxes. Then, jingling pleasantly, warm despite the cold, I marched back to prison.

  12

  I had been out getting a Post Office box, and when I got back Joe Maslocki told me, “You better get over to the warden’s office. Stoon was around looking for you.”

  “Stoon?” He was the guard who had accompanied me to the warden’s office my first day here. I said, “What’s the problem?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? I told him you were out looking for a box of stolen jockstraps.”

  “Okay,” I said, and left the gym, and hurried across the yard toward the building housing the warden’s office.

  This was two days after my successful milk box routine. That hundred and fifty dollars had finished the job of cementing my membership in the tunnel club, particularly when I’d related how I’d hidden near the bank and had leaped out to assault a businessman with a brick, relieving him of his night deposit cash. But I had no intention of stealing any more money, with either brick or milk box, so that’s why I’d been out getting a Post Office box. I’d phoned my mother and asked her to send me a thousand dollars in a check made out to Harry Kent, and she had promised she would. With that money I would open a checking account, and from now on whenever the boys believed I was out making a sting I would simply return with money I’d withdrawn from the account.

  I could see that life was going to get a bit complex in the months ahead. Talk about wheels within wheels. To the prison authorities I was an inmate. To seven of the inmates I was a tunnel insider, involved in robberies and assaults. To postal clerks and bank tellers and possibly other people on the outside, I would soon become an ordinary local citizen named Harry Kent. And only I—if things went well—would know the whole truth.

  I hadn’t asked for this, I really hadn’t. I’d been reasonably content in the license plate shop. But the ball had started rolling, and so far I hadn’t found any way to make it stop.

  Now, approaching the warden’s office, I suddenly remembered the last thing he’d said to me on our first meeting: “If you behave yourself, I won’t see you in this office again until you’re discharged.”

  I wasn’t about to be discharged, not six weeks into my sentence. I had obviously not been behaving myself, but if the warden knew about the tunnel wouldn’t he want to see all eight of us, not just me?

  Something’s gone wrong, I thought. I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t know yet how bad it was going to be, but one thing I knew for sure: something had gone wrong.

  Guard Stoon was coming out of the building as I was going in. He looked at me and said, “Oh, there you are. Warden Gadmore wants to see you.”

  “They just told me,” I said.

  “Come on, then.”

  I followed him inside, and down the squeaky-floored hall. Glancing back at me, he said, “You find the jocks?”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. “What?”

  “The jocks,” he repeated.

  Oh, of course: Joe Maslocki and his stolen jockstraps. Why had he given an insane excuse like that? “Yeah,” I said. “I found them.”

  “Where were they?”

  “One of the Joy Boys had them,” I said.

  “Figures,” he said.

  We went into the warden’s anteroom, and I waited fifteen minutes before Stoon came back out and said, “Okay, Kunt.”

  “Künt,” I said. “With an umlaut.”

  Stoon’s reaction to everything was to express weariness. Expressing weariness, he said, “Warden Gadmore wants to see you now.”

  I went into the office and stood in front of the desk. Warden Gadmore was looking at documents on his desktop, showing me his bald spot. He lifted his head finally, gave me a critical look, and extended a smallish piece of paper toward me. I went on looking at him, and he jiggled the paper slightly, saying, “Go on, take it.”

  I took it. I was now holding a torn-off piece of ordinary white typing paper, about four inches square. Written on it in large, uneven printing, using a black felt-tip pen, were the words HELP I AM BEING HELD PRISONER.

  The warden said, “Well, Kunt, what do you have to say for yourself ?”

  “Künt,” I said. “With an umlaut.”

  He gestured impatiently at the piece of paper in my hand. “That looks like perfectly good English to me,” he said. Behind me, over by the door, Stoon shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I had no idea what was going on. The warden said, “You think that’s funny, Kunt?” He left out the umlaut.

  I didn’t correct him; I’d suddenly understood what this was all about. I said, “Warden, I didn’t write this.”

  “Oh, no? Let me tell you something, Kunt. When that package of license plates was opened down there in Albany, and that girl Motor Vehicle clerk saw that message in with the license plates, she didn’t think it was funny at all. Do you know what she did, Kunt?”

  “Künt, sir,” I pleaded. “With an umlaut.”

  “She fainted!”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, sir, but I—”

  “Kunt,” he said, more in sorrow than in anger, and more in mispronunciation than in either, “I thought we understood one another the last time you were in here.”

  “Oh, yes, sir. I wouldn’t—”

  “We don’t have much of a sense of humor around here, Kunt,” he said.

  Oh, to be outside. Oh, to have somebody call me Mr. Kent. “Sir,” I said, “I just didn’t do it.”

  “You were assigned to license plates,” he said. “Were you not?”

  “Yes, sir, but—”

  “You have a record of this sort of thing,” he said. “Have you not?”

  “Well, I suppose I—not exactly this sort of—”

  “You have the only mind that I know of in this institution,” he said, “that gets a twisted pleasure from this sort of prank.”

  “I’ll take a lie detector test. I’ll swear on a stack of—”

  “That’s enough,” he said, and made a sweeping palm-down gesture to cut off my protestations.

  I stopped. A million words quivered in my throat, but I said none of them.

  He frowned up at me. I was still holding the message in my hands, and I didn’t want to, I hated the association with it. On the other hand, it might not be psychologically sound to put it down on the desk with him staring at me like that.

  Behind me, Stoon shifted his weight.

  The warden took a deep breath. He lowered his head, opened a folder that presumably contained my records, and scanned various pieces of paper.

  Movement attracted my eye. I looked over the warden’s bald spot, out through his window at the small enclosed garden out there, and saw the stout old gardener, Andy Butler, pottering around again, just as he’d been doing the last time I was in this room. I didn’t see him pee on any bushes this time, but as I watched him packing mulch or something around the base of some plants, he lifted his head and our eyes met. I knew him slightly now, having been introduced to him by my toothless friend Peter Corse, and it pleased and heartened me when he smiled in recognition, giving a brief nod of the head. More than ever he looked like Santa Claus out of uniform.

  I didn’t dare nod my own head, not with Stoon behind me and Warden Gadmore in front of me, but I did risk a quick smile and a friendly lifting of the eyebrows. Then I lowered my gaze to the warden’s bald spot again, just as his finger bega
n bunk-bunking on my dossier.

  Should I argue with him, plead with him? Should I repeat my denials? In plain fact I hadn’t sent that message; wasn’t there some way to convince him of that?

  I wasn’t used to being innocent. I knew perfectly well how to pretend innocence, but when saddled with the real thing I was at a loss. All right; so what would I do to display innocence if I were in fact guilty? I would stand here silent, in order to avoid being accused of protesting too much. So that’s what I did.

  Innocent, I pretended to be guilty in order to remember how to pretend to be innocent. There ought to be a simpler way to get through life.

  Warden Gadmore lifted his head. He brooded at me. I met his gaze steadfastly, with all the false innocence I could muster, and at last he sighed and said, “All right, Kunt.”

  I did not correct him.

  “I don’t say I believe you or disbelieve you,” he said, clearly disbelieving me. “I’ll tell you this: any man can make a mistake. Any man can take a little while to adapt to the changed circumstances here.”

  I wanted to scream that I hadn’t done it, I was really and truly innocent, this time I wasn’t kidding. I stood there, silent.

  He said, “So we won’t say any more about this. And we’ll assume, Kunt, that it won’t happen again.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. And I was thinking. Don’t pull anything in this office. Don’t do it. I thought of a stunt involving the wastebasket, and I pushed it from my mind. Don’t do it.

  “Because if it does happen again,” he said, “it won’t go so easy on you.”

  “No, sir,” I said. Calmly, not protesting too much, I added, “But, sir, I honestly and truly—”

  “That’s all, Kunt,” he said.

  I swallowed. Do nothing, I told myself. “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Stoon and I left the warden’s office together. I did nothing, for which I was profoundly grateful.

  Stoon accompanied me down the corridor, our shoes squeaking companionably together on the floor. He shook his head and said, “You really are a killer, Kunt.”

  “I didn’t do it, you know,” I said. “This time, I’m really innocent.”

  “Everybody here is innocent,” he said. That old wheeze. “Go on out and talk to the boys,” he suggested. “There isn’t a guilty man in this pen.”

  What was the use of talking?

  Stoon and I separated at the exit, and as I crossed the yard two thoughts suddenly dropped on my head like a barbell out of an upstairs window.

  THOUGHT A: If I had managed to be more offensively guilty in the warden’s office, he would have taken me off privileges, and I would have ceased to be a member of the tunnel club, and I would no longer have a bank robbery looming up in my future.

  THOUGHT B: Joe Maslocki and the others would want to know what the warden had wanted to talk to me about. The truth would necessarily bring out my past history as a practical joker. It wouldn’t take long after that for the boys to realize who they had to thank for the succession of dribble glasses, sticky door knobs and exploding cigarettes they’d been experiencing over the last few weeks. What they would do to me then I wanted even less than I wanted to become a bank robber.

  As to Thought A, I felt a great ambivalence about my involvement with that tunnel. I loved being able to get out of prison, I loved being able to enter a world in which I was known as Harry Kent, and I loved the freedom from Joy Boys and other internal prison menaces. On the other hand, there was that goddam bank robbery looming up. If I had a good solid chance to get away from the gym and the tunnel—as I’d almost just had, if I’d thought of it in time—would I take it to avoid the robbery, or avoid it to take the advantages? I really didn’t know, and the question was giving me a headache.

  As to Thought B, I had no ambivalence at all. As soon as I thought of a convincing lie about my meeting with the warden, I would tell it to everybody I saw. And I would redouble my efforts to stop all this booby-trapping. I’d been looking forward to prison curing me of that bad habit, but so far it hadn’t helped much. I had managed to avoid doing anything in the warden’s office just now, but that had been pretty much of an extreme case. But hopeful, just the same. And I would lie.

  In fact, here came the opportunity. Jerry Bogentrodder and Max Nolan were strolling across the yard toward me, and Jerry called, “Hey, Harry, you know the warden wants to see you?”

  “I just came from there,” I said.

  The three of us strolled together. Jerry said, “Any problem?”

  “No,” I said. I wondered what I would say next, and listened hopefully. “It was about my blood type,” I said. I thought, What the hell does that mean?

  Max Nolan looked puzzled. Even his droopy moustache looked puzzled. He said, “Blood type?”

  I’d had to start off by lying to a college graduate. “There was some question in my records,” I said. I’m insane, I thought. Beavering on, I said, “If I was some special kind of negative, they wanted to know if I’d volunteer.”

  “Oh,” Max said.

  “I’m a different type,” I said.

  The three of us strolled. Gazing back at the conversation just past, it seemed to me there was a certain believability about it. The damn thing had come out somewhere after all. I was both relieved and quite proud of myself.

  As a result of some long-ago architectural rearrangement within the prison, there was now in the yard a flight of steps that went nowhere. Five wide steps went up to a blank concrete wall. The tunnel group had established those steps as their own territory, which all other cons kept away from. Jerry and Max and I strolled over there through a thin to moderate traffic of milling inmates, and took seats. None of the rest of the group was around. Jerry and Max sat on the top step, and I settled two steps below them.

  With only half the prison population involved in work assignments, the yard was pretty much occupied all day long. Inmates walked around, chatted with one another, shot craps illicitly in corners, made assignations to meet later in the showers, got into fist-fights and less frequently knife-fights, discussed escape plans, described their civilian sex lives to one another, and generally worked off excess energy. Now, while Jerry and Max talked, I sat in the cold sunshine and watched the cons move back and forth. I thought my own thoughts, tied Jerry and Max’s shoelaces together, and thanked my lucky stars the warden hadn’t made a bigger thing about that message in the license plates.

  No! Clenching my teeth, cursing myself under my breath I untied those damn shoelaces again. I thought, I have to stop that. I really do.

  13

  I was letting a tiny bit of air out of every basketball when Eddie Troyn came over and said, “Let’s organize our rendezvous.”

  I looked up at him. His face was as clean and bony as a cow-skull in the desert. The crease in his prison denims was so sharp it made me squint. I said, “What?”

  “We have surveillance detail this afternoon,” he said.

  I knew he talked that way—rendezvous, surveillance—but that didn’t mean I knew what he was talking about. I said, “What surveillance? What rendezvous?”

  He expressed displeased surprise. His eyebrows had some difficulty riding on that bony forehead. “Didn’t Phil tell you?”

  “Nobody told me anything,” I said. I’d been planning to spend this afternoon opening my local bank account, since the check had come from my mother yesterday.

  “Breakdown in communication,” he said severely.

  I tossed the basketball from my lap back into the bin and got to my feet. “What am I supposed to do?” I asked him.

  “Bank surveillance,” he said. “We all take shifts.” My stomach contracted. Bank surveillance. This had to have something to do with the robbery. Trying for an unconcerned facade, I said, “Sure, Eddie. When do you want me? Now?”

  “No, not till they close, at three.”

  Oh, that was all right, then. Not all right, but at least I could still open my checking account today. “Fine,” I
said. “You want to meet at the bank?”

  “You know the luncheonette across the street? I’ll be in a front booth there at three.”

  “Right,” I said.

  He shot a starched work-shirt cuff and frowned at his watch. “I read,” he said slowly, gazing at the watch, “eleven-twenty-three.” Then he looked at me.

  He wanted to synchronize watches! “Oh,” I said, and looked at my watch, and I read eleven-nineteen. “Right,” I said. “I mean, check.”

  “See you at three,” he said, and marched off.

  I looked at the bin of basketballs, but I didn’t feel like fouling up any more of them, so I went on and did productive things until lunch, and then went out and took care of business at the bank.

  I had, of course, my choice between two banks: Western National and Fiduciary Federal. I wasn’t sure which of them I would go to as I walked downtown, and in fact I was leaning toward Western National since I’d been in there once with Phil, but when I got to the banks I remembered it was also Western National where I had pulled my milk box stunt. That bank had been the victim of my first—and so far only—felony, and I felt a certain embarrassment in its presence. So I opened my account at Fiduciary Federal, where they gave me a book of temporary checks and told me my check on the Rye bank should clear in three days.

  Returning to the street, I found myself smiling around at the downtown scene with an air almost proprietary. In some damn way, this was becoming my home town. I was a local boy now, with a Post Office box and a bank account of my very own.

  And my own civilian clothing, at least partly. I was still wearing the borrowed shirt and pants, but out of my ill-gotten gains I’d bought myself a good wool sweater and a heavy leather jacket. Winter was settling in for a long visit in upstate New York, and I meant to be ready for it.

  If only I could be ready for everything else that was going to happen around here. Spending the next hour browsing through the local stores, easing along with the ebb and flow of Christmas shoppers, stopping to look at model railroad displays, I couldn’t stop brooding about the upcoming bank robberies. What was I going to do? What could I do?