Help I Am Being Held Prisoner

by Donald E. Westlake

  What I was actually thinking over was my own life. Warden Gadmore had either been very shrewd or very lucky in rubbing me up against Andy Butler; in listening to him, talking with him, watching the way he interacted with the people around him I became truly aware for the first time of the possibility of a life passed in cooperation and amicability with other human beings, rather than a life passed as a sort of running gun battle or ongoing guerrilla operation.

  He was so nice. Niceness always sounds bland, but by golly it was a pleasure to be around. In books and movies the devil always gets the best lines, and in truth Andy didn’t have anything memorably witty to say, but whenever he spoke the people around him smiled, and how can you do better than that? He made people cheerful by his presence, and he didn’t try to sell them anything once he had them softened up.

  And he was a perfect Santa Claus. He looked the part, from the round cheeks to the round belly, from the white hair to the red nose, and when he delivered his lines, in a deeper resonant voice than his usual speaking style, ‘ho ho ho’ seemed to ripple through every sound.

  We talked a bit on Friday afternoon, during the pauses and delays of the dress rehearsal, and I told him I felt maybe I’d been doing things somewhat inaccurately all my life. “I used to be like that,” he said, nodding, grinning at some memory. “My right hand never knew what my left hand was doing. The first time I ever planted a little garden I pulled everything up again before it was half-grown.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged, and gave me a broad sunny smile. “That was my sense of humor around that time,” he said.

  I didn’t get it, but on the other hand my own sense of humor would probably baffle a lot of people, so I didn’t push the point.

  This was my first experience with the world of the theater, and I found it interesting and bewildering. An incredible amount of running, screaming, arguing, weeping, jumping, chaos and frenzy seemed to be required in the backstage area before one small quiet moment could be presented out front. And even when the show was on, with the wise men in procession, for instance, there was still whispering, rustling, rushing about, finger-pointing and hair-tearing taking place just out of sight of the audience—to such an extent that a returning wise man lifted his own voice once he’d exited to ask how anybody expected him to maintain a performance out there with all of this clatter going on. I didn’t hear him get a useful answer.

  The show itself was a series of tableaux on The Meanings of Christmas with here and there a nod to Chanukah for the benefit of Jewish prisoners, plus an occasional bewildering reference to Islam for the sake of any Black Muslims so frivolous as to have attended. Actually they weren’t really tableaux, as one of the shepherds that watched by night explained to me when his stint was over. “In a tableau,” he said, “you just stand there and don’t move.” He demonstrated, with a pose that seemed more pin-up than shepherd. “Sort of like a living painting,” he said. “And usually there’s a narrator or somebody to read something out loud that tells the audience what it’s all about. What we’re doing is sort of moving tableaux; we walk on and off, and go through our little movements, like when I pointed at the star in the east—did you see that part?—but we don’t say anything. Except for Santa Claus, of course.”

  Of course. To fill in the silence otherwise there was a traditional narrator, reading a commentary on The Meanings of Christmas that had been jointly written by three staff members of the prison newspaper, the Stonevelt Ripple. The narrator was a onetime Mafia bigwig who had a beautiful operatic baritone. When he rolled out with, “And they come from out of Egypt,” you could see it. Besides seeing it in the tableau, I mean.

  The show was actually pretty interesting, at least from backstage. A lot of work had been put into the costumes and the sets, and everybody took it all very seriously. I thought the fellow doing Mary was an absolute knockout, if maybe just a little too flouncy, and Joseph had just the right nebbishy feeling I’ve always thought appropriate to that exemplar of passive inactivity.

  But the highlight of the show was Andy Butler, who came romping on in his Santa Claus suit and reeled off a list of gifts he said he’d be leaving in people’s stockings later on tonight. They were all local gags, referring to well-known prison personalities, both convict and administrative. The assistant warden charged with unearthing plots and conspiracies among the inmates, for instance, was given a canary, and one of the more notorious Joy Boys was given a subscription to Family Circle. A convicted murderer who’d spent the last ten or twelve years going on death row every time the death penalty was put back on the books and coming off death row every time the death penalty was abolished again was given a lifetime ballpoint pen guaranteed to skip. The audience ate it all up, howling with laughter, and only once did Andy come up with something too obscure for the crowd to appreciate. “And for Peter Corse,” he said that time, “a new set of teeth.” There couldn’t have been more than three of us in the auditorium who knew what that one was all about, and none of us would have thought it funny. In fact, I thought it was touching, Andy in this happy moment remembering his unfortunate friend. I remembered having hidden Peter’s lower plate on him, and winced in misery at the memory. How bad I’d been!

  30

  The next day was Christmas. I started it feeling such gloom and self-abasement that I just about had to reach up to tie my shoelaces.

  And things did not get better. Christmas is a gloomy day in a prison anyway, so apart from having nothing to do and apart from feeling sorry for myself whenever I could pause in disliking myself, everywhere I turned I saw faces looking just as drawn and morose as I felt. Wonderful.

  Then Bob Dombey came around in the afternoon with two Christmas presents for me. His wife Alice, the reader, whom I had not as yet met, was making Christmas dinner for the boys, which of course I wasn’t going to be able to attend, so Bob had smuggled in a piece of fruitcake for me. That made me feel both better and worse. Bob also had a present for me from Alice, and it turned out to be a copy of Mailer’s Armies of the Night. Holy Christ, the woman really was a reader!

  So I spent a part of the day immersed in a writing style that combines the tortuousness of Henry James with the colloquialness of Rocky Graziano, until Max showed up with a message and a present, both from Marian. The message was that she’d be waiting for me when I got out of prison, which I suppose was a pretty funny line under the circumstances, and the present was another book, The Prison Diary of Ho Chi Minh. That was very funny, under the circumstances, and more fun to read than the other. But too short.

  And the best was yet to come. As I was on my way to Christmas dinner in the mess hall—I’d already eaten Alice Dombey’s fruitcake, and was thus grimly aware of what I was missing—Phil joined me, walked along with, me, and said, “You’re not getting off restriction until January fifth.”

  “I know.”

  “Listen, Harry, I hope you don’t mind, but we’re going ahead without you.”

  All I could think about was Alice Dombey’s dinner. “Well, sure,” I said.

  “We’ll still give you your piece,” he said, “just as though you were there.”

  They were going to smuggle a whole dinner in? “You don’t have to do that,” I said.

  “Don’t turn down a good deal, pal,” Phil said. “Nobody can afford to say no to maybe fifty, sixty grand.”

  Fifty, sixty… The robbery! “Oh!” I said. “The bank!”

  “Jesus Christ, keep your voice down!”

  I ducked my head, and looked around the yard. “I thought you meant dinner,” I said.

  “You what?”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’ll hit the bank without me, huh?”

  “Next Thursday. Too bad you can’t be with us, but we don’t want to hold it off any more.”

  “Gee, that’s tough,” I said. “I really wanted to be there.”

  “I know you did. But you’ll get your piece just the same, so don’t worry about it.”

  “That
’s really nice of you guys, Phil,” I said.

  “Ah, what the hell. See you around, Harry.”

  “See you around, Phil.”

  Christmas dinner in the mess hall stunk. I smiled through every mouthful.

  31

  Thursday I was in a complete state of nerves. This afternoon the boys were going to pull the bank job, and now that I was excused from attendance I felt guilty. Can you imagine? Feeling guilty about robbing a bank.

  But what if they were caught? I would always feel that my absence had made that tiny little bit of difference, that one more gun, one more hand, two more eyes, would have added up to success instead of failure. I had lied to those people, conned them, played practical jokes on them, and now I was letting them down when it really mattered. And they were even going to give me my share of the proceeds, just as though I’d come through.

  They’re a swell bunch of fellows, I kept telling myself all day, completely forgetting the many times I’d felt I was one tiny revelation from violent death at their hands. Forgetting, in fact, that I still was only one tiny revelation from violent death at their hands. A swell bunch of fellows, I kept repeating in my head. Gee, I hope they don’t get caught.

  They didn’t. Phil came around to my cell about eight o’clock that night, and he looked disgusted again, as though he’d been smelling more stink bombs. Andy was present sitting on the other bunk, and Phil nodded meaningfully toward him, saying to me, “Hey, Harry, come for a walk.”

  Being now a man without privileges, the extent of the walk I could take was up and down the corridor outside my cell, so that’s what the two of us did. From the look on Phil’s face I knew the news was going to be bad, and the only question was just how bad. Had there been gunfire? Were some of the boys dead? Had they gotten away, but with no money? On the other hand, was the bad news more personal than that; which is to say, had Phil tipped to any of the things about me that I didn’t want him to know.

  I felt very nervous, therefore, when I stepped out into the corridor with him, and the two of us began to stroll up and down. Phil didn’t say anything, and when I sneaked a look at his profile he was looking extremely disgusted. So finally I was the one who broke the silence, saying, “Everything go okay?”

  “No.”

  “Trouble in the bank?” Some sort of lump was in my throat; maybe it was my heart.

  “You could call it trouble,” he said. He stopped and gave me a flat look and said, “They were having a party.”

  “A what?”

  “They can’t have a Christmas party like everybody else,” he said. “Last week, like everybody else. They have to have a New Year’s party instead.”

  “A party,” I said. “In the bank?”

  “All over the fucking bank.” he said. “Three o’clock comes around, they throw the customers out, they lock the door, they break out the booze and the record player and they proceed to have a blast.”

  “Good Christ,” I said. “It’s as bad as the stink bombs.”

  “It’s worse than the fucking stink bombs,” Phil said. “When Joe got there in the typewriter truck, he didn’t notice what was going on. We’re all in the luncheonette waiting for our coffee, we can see what’s happening, but he’s right there on the sidewalk in front of the fucking place and he doesn’t notice anything going on. So he gets the typewriter out of the truck and goes over and knocks on the bank door, and it isn’t till some secretary opens the door wearing the guard’s hat that Joe notices there’s maybe some activity taking place inside the fucking bank.”

  Phil had a really remarkable capacity for expressing disgust. While marveling at that, I said, “So what did he do?”

  “What could he do, the dipshit? He gave her the typewriter. So now we got to cop another fucking typewriter for the next time we try the job.”

  The next time. “Ah,” I said.

  “One good thing,” he said, “you’ll be able to come back into it by then.”

  “Right,” I said. I tried to sound enthusiastic.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I thought you’d like to know.” He looked at his watch. “Listen, I gotta take off, I’m bowling with Max tonight. I’m maybe joining that league of his.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. Next time. They’re going to try again. I’ll be able to come back into it.

  Phil looked back. He still looked disgusted. “Sometimes,” he said, “I think God doesn’t want us to rob that fucking bank.”

  32

  On Wednesday, the fifth of January, Fred Stoon came for me in my cell just after eleven in the morning and escorted me once again to Warden Gadmore’s office. The warden was genial, and declared himself pleased at my development. “You’ve done very well, Künt,” he said. Pronouncing my name right had become an absolute habit with him.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. “I want you to know I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

  “You’re an interesting case,” he said. “I’ll be frank about that. You’re getting along with Andy Butler?”

  “He’s a great man, sir,” I said.

  “In the spring, if you want,” he told me, “I’ll transfer you out of the gym, make you Andy’s assistant in the garden out here.”

  My stomach closed up like a day-blooming flower, but I knew better than to sound anything but delighted. “Thanks a lot, sir,” I said. “I’m sure that would be wonderful.”

  “It’s almost like being outside the prison,” he said, turning to smile fondly at the garden, which was now, as the saying goes, covered with a mantle of white. A mantle of pale gray, actually, since the prison incinerator had not as yet been upgraded to match pollution-emission standards.

  “I’m sure it’s—nice, sir,” I said. Damn that hesitation; I could only hope he hadn’t noticed it.

  Apparently he hadn’t. Turning back to me, still with the genial smile on his face, he said, “But that’s for the spring. If you continue as well as you’re doing now, and I’m sure you will.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “For now, you’re back on your regular assignment at the gym.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “That’s all, Künt,” he said. “Good luck.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, and turned for the door. Behind me, the warden said, gently, “And there won’t be any more of those notes, will there?”

  Ung. Turning back, I said, “Warden, honest, that isn’t me.”

  “But there won’t be any more,” he suggested.

  Sincerely, but with terror, I said, “I hope not, sir.”

  “We both hope not, Künt,” he said, and his smile—if this isn’t an absurd statement—had teeth in it.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and left. And walking back across the yard toward the gym, I chewed over these two new worries that I could add to the growing pile of them on my forehead. A promotion from the gym to the garden would just about finish me, wouldn’t it? If I wasn’t finished first by the appearance of another of those goddammed ‘help’ messages. If they weren’t my doing, and they weren’t, then I couldn’t control their appearance or non-appearance. I had no way of knowing if or when another of the damn things would strike.

  Biter bit. The practical joker is placed in a position where he can learn the trepidation and apprehension of the victim. Goody.

  Ho, in one of the poems of his prison diary, says, “So life, you see, is never a very smooth business, and now the present bristles with difficulties.”

  But it’s impossible to fret over difficulties forever, particularly when things are, at least for the moment, going right. I had completely forgotten my cares and woes by the time, four hours later, I entered Marian’s apartment, Marian’s bed and Marian, in that order; I wasn’t worried at all.

  “I thought you might forget me,” Marian said, smirking.

  “Ha ha,” I said.

  33

  Alice Dombey needed culture the way the John Birch Society needs Godless Communism; it defined her existence and furni
shed her with purpose. Plump and matronly and as neat as a zeppelin, she was not at all what I’d expected from the wife of weasely Bob Dombey, not even after the fruitcake and the book. She managed to let me know within an hour of our meeting that she belonged to a dozen book clubs, subscribed to a dozen of the more cultured magazines, saved old copies of the Arts and Leisure section of the Sunday New York Times, had bought the imitation paintings all over her walls at different visits to the Greenwich Village Art Show, drove to places like Albany and Buffalo to browse in their museums, and had ferreted out a Monday Club of like-minded local ladies to join. “It helps us ‘keep up’ with current events,” she told me, smiling in her bubbly way, and the quotation marks fairly hummed in her voice.

  Marian loved her. The two women got along beautifully from the outset, Marian humoring Alice and Alice “allowing for” Marian, as she would undoubtedly herself have phrased it. Each permitted the other to feel superior, and what more could anybody hope for than that? The dinner party we had been invited to, at which I met Alice and at which Marian was introduced to the rest of the tunnel insiders, turned out to be a successful affair all the way around, though I did personally spend a lot of the evening twitching with leftover apprehension. I couldn’t seem to get used to the idea that the boys knew that Marian knew and that it was all right.

  My second day back in the gym I’d learned that one of my fears, about Phil and the others finding out I’d told a girl in town the truth about myself, had already happened, and I’d been wasting my time chewing my nails over that particular indiscretion. Max, immediately on my telling him and swearing him to secrecy, had gone straight to Phil and told him the whole story. He had also given Phil my side of it, the presence of Stoon and the absence of a sensible alternative, and finally he had given Phil an encouraging report about Marian herself. So the group had met and discussed the situation and eventually had decided it wouldn’t be necessary to murder Marian and me after all. “You got a majority in the vote,” Max told me. I said, “It wasn’t unanimous?” and he said, “Don’t worry about the past, Harry.”