Over the Edge

by Jonathan Kellerman

  'No problem. Gives me a little respite from paper work.'

  He chewed the candy and swallowed it, took another from the roll. The ensuing silence was punctuated by a loud scream, followed by several more. Several hard thumps vibrated the wall behind us - the slatted bench being pushed repeatedly against the plaster. More screams, a blizzard of running footsteps, the whisper of a scuffle, and all was calm. Montez had sat through it without moving a muscle.

  'Back to lockup for Mark,' he said.

  'The blond kid?'

  'Yup. Comes up for trial next week. Seemed to be calming down. You never know.'

  'What did he do?'

  'Ate a lot of PCP and tried to decapitate his girlfriend.'

  'A guy like that doesn't get locked in a cell?'

  'He came in too disturbed and too pretty to be put on cellblock, too healthy for the infirmary. We have a thirty-five-room inpatient unit - isolation rooms for prisoners too iffy for general custody - and we stuck him there, but when he started to get lucid, we moved him out to make room for someone crazier and put him on the ward. Ward patients get to move around under supervision. He started to look a little "spacey this morning, so they cuffed him. Obviously he's' slipping again - pretty typical for a duster. He belongs back in isolation, but we've got no vacancies, so he'll have to go to a cellblock with twenty-four-hour lockup. If an empty room comes up, he'll be moved back here.'

  'Sounds like juggling,' I said.

  'With live grenades. But don't take that to mean it's a shlocky system. The public wants bad guys caught and put

  away, but no one wants to pay for a place to put 'em. Considering the situation, this is probably the best-run system in the country. You've got enough violent offenders to populate a small city, and despite that, things go smoothly. Take initial processing, for example. When a guy comes in, we've got to find out if he's a member of a street gang or a prison gang to know where to put him. Some gangs coexist; others will rip each other apart on sight. Until recently we didn't even have a computer, but screw-up’s were rare. If they weren't, there'd be blood in the halls, and last I checked, things still looked pretty yellow.'

  'And blue.' I smiled.

  'Right. School colors. Probably some urban planner's idea of what soothes the savage breast.' The phone rang. He picked it up, talked about moving Cochran from 7100 to 4500, made inquiries about a leg abscess on Lopez and Boutillier's need for twenty-four-hour nursing, put the receiver down, and stood up.

  'If you're ready, we can check out the campus. Then I'll take you to see your client.'

  He took me to the inpatient unit first - thirty-five isolation rooms set aside for inmates with profound psychiatric problems. Five were marked COED and had been set aside for women, but men occupied three of them. Visual access was provided through a mesh window in the door of each room. A scrap of paper identifying the prisoner was taped below the window. Some of the papers bore coded messages as well.

  The codes, explained Montez, referred to inmate characteriztics that demanded staff vigilance: suicidal tendencies, drug addiction, unpredictability, mental retardation, assaultiveness, medical abnormalities, and physical handicaps - as in the case of die toothless double amputee in the first room I viewed, who stood on his knee stumps and stared at the floor. The code said he was unusually explosive.

  The social worker encouraged me to look at the prisoners, and I did, despite some unease at being intrusive. The rooms were tiny - six-by-four. Each one contained a bed and a steel commode and nothing else. Most of the inmates lay on the beds wrapped in jumbled sheets. A few slept; others stared desolately into space. In one of the coed rooms I saw a black woman squatting on the commode. Before I could look away, our eyes met, and she grinned defiantly, spread her legs, stretched, and stroked her labia while licking her lips. A glance into another cell revealed a three-hundred-pound white man festooned with tattoos standing catatonically rigid, hands held over his head, eyes glazed over. Next door to him, a coal-colored youth with sculpted musculature and a shaved bullet head paced and worked his mouth nonstop. Soundproofing silenced the message, but I read his lips: Fuckyoufuckmefuckyoufuckme, over and over, like a catechism.

  When I told him I'd seen enough, Montez took me off the unit and back to the elevator. While we waited, I asked him why Jamey wasn't in one of the inpatient rooms.

  'He's been judged too dangerous. They put him on the High Power unit, which I'll explain later.'

  The elevator came, and we boarded. Montez punched a number and rode slouching against the door.

  'What do you think so far?' he asked.

  'Strong stuff.'

  'What you just saw was the Hilton. Every lawyer wants his client in one of those rooms, and inmates are always faking craziness to get there because it's safe - no one gets cut or raped - which isn't the case on cellblock.'

  'Seven thousand applicants for thirty-five spaces,' I reflected. 'A seller's market.'

  'You bet. More exclusive than Harvard.'

  As we neared the hub of the jail, the silence that had characterized the isolation unit was replaced by a low, insectile hum. Montez had used the word campus, and strangely enough, the academic analogy seemed superficially fitting - wide, bright corridors teeming with young people and bustling with activity, the energy level reminiscent of a university during registration week.

  But the walls of this college were grungy and permeated with a stale, masculine stench, and there was nothing bright-eyed about its students. We walked past scores of stone-faced men, enduring a gauntlet of cold, radar stares.

  The prisoners walked freely, and we were in their midst, unprotected.

  They stood around singly or in small groups, wearing royal blue jump suits. Some walked purposefully, clutching sheafs of paper. Others slumped listlessly in plastic chairs or waited in line for cigarettes and candy. From time to time a uniformed deputy could be seen strolling and surveilling, but the inmates vastly outnumbered the guards, and I could see nothing to prevent the confined from overpowering their keepers and tearing them - and us - to shreds.

  Montez saw the look on my face and nodded.

  'I told you it was a hell of a system. Held together by prayer and spit.'

  We walked on. It was a young man's world. Most of the inmates were under twenty-five. The guards looked scarcely older. A profusion of bulky shoulders and bulging biceps. I knew what that meant: plenty of hard time. Pumping iron was a favorite prison yard pastime.

  The prisoners clustered along racial lines. The majority were black. I saw lots of Rasta dreadlocks, cornrows, and shaved skulls, a plethora of shiny, keloid knife scars on dusky flesh. Second largest in number were the Latinos -smaller but just as husky, sporting bandanna-bound homeboy pompadours, devilish goatees, and vato loco swaggers. Whites were in the minority. For the most part they were biker types - hulking, bearded lugs with hog jowls, earrings, and greasy forearms blued with Iron Cross tattoos.

  Despite their differences they had one thing in common: the eyes. Cold and dead, immobile yet piercing. I'd seen eyes like that recently but couldn't quite remember where.

  Montez took me to a general population cellblock where most of the cells were empty - we'd just seen their occupants - and then to a twenty-four-hour lockup full of wild.

  gaunt men in yellow pajamas who tore at their faces and paced like zoo animals. A single deputy watched balefully from a glass rectangle suspended midway between the two tiers of the block. He saw us and unlocked the door.

  Stepping into the booth, I felt like a diver in a shark cage. Soul music blasted the block from multiple speakers. Even in the booth it was loud. I thought of a recent article in a psych journal about the effects of constant high-volume noise on rats: The rodents had grown initially agitated, then had withdrawn into a passive psychotic-like state. I looked at the pacing men in yellow and wondered for the thousandth time about the relevance of animal research to the human condition.

  A console of electronic equipment lined one wall. Ab
ove it was a rack holding two shotguns. Below, an inmate in a khaki jump suit pushed a mop over the soapy cement floor.

  'Trustee?' I asked.

  'Right. Everything's color-coded. Blue is mainline; khaki means trustee; transport trustees have red armbands; kitchen trustees wear white. These guys in yellow are psych cases. They never leave their cells.'

  'How are they different from the ones on the inpatient ward?'

  'Officially they're supposed to be less disturbed, but it's really arbitrary.'

  The deputy spoke up. He was short and stocky with a tobacco-colored military moustache and a seamed face.

  'If they're really motivated, we punt 'em over to inpatient, right, Patrick?'

  Montez responded to his laughter with a faint smile.

  'What he means,' the social worker explained, 'is they have to do something outrageous - bite off a finger, eat a pound of their own excrement - to get off block.'

  As if on cue, one of the prisoners on the upper tier stripped off his pajamas and began masturbating.

  'No dice, Rufus,' muttered the guard, 'we are not impressed.' He turned to Montez and chatted for a few minutes about movies. The naked prisoner reached orgasm

  and ejaculated through the bars. Nobody paid attention, and he slumped to the floor, panting.

  'Anyway,' said Montez, moving toward the door, 'check it out, Dave, it's not Truffaut, but it's a good piece of cinema.'

  'Will do, Patrick. Where you headed?'

  'Taking the doctor over to High Power.'

  The deputy looked at me with renewed interest.

  'Gonna try to dim cap one of those clowns?' he asked.

  'I don't know yet.'

  'Cadmus,' said Montez.

  The deputy snorted.

  'Fat chance,' he said, and pushed a button that released a pnuematic lock.

  'This,' said Montez, 'is the top of the line as far as bad guys go-'

  We were standing in front of an unmarked locked door monitored by two closed-circuit TV cameras. To the left was the attorney interview room. Lawyers and clients sat opposite one another at a series of partitioned tables. To their rear were several private glass-walled rooms.

  'High Power is reserved for highly publicized cases, high-risk-for-escape types, and real monsters. Shoot the president, blow up a bank with the people in it, or dismember a dozen babies, and you'll end up here. There are a hundred and fifty cells, and there's a waiting list. Surveillance is constant, and the prisoner-guard ratio is high. Security is airtight; we're talking meals slid under the doors, steel doors and entry codes mat change randomly. You can't go in, but I'll have him brought out.'

  He pressed a buzzer, and the TV cameras rotated with a low whine. Several minutes later a giant red-haired deputy opened the door and squinted at us suspiciously. Montez talked to him in a near whisper. The redhead listened and disappeared behind the door without comment.

  'We'll wait in there,' said the social worker, pointing to the interview room. He guided me past hushed, furtive conferences, which stopped as we walked by, resumed

  when we'd passed. The lawyers looked as shifty-eyed as their clients. One of them, a washed-out-looking man in a polyester suit, sat stoically as the prisoner across from him, a small, balding mulatto with thick glasses, called him a motherfucker and railed on about habeas corpus.

  'Court-appointed,' said Montez. 'A joyful assignment.'

  Several deputies carrying walkie-talkies patrolled the room. Montez waved one over. He was dark, rosy-cheeked, soft-looking, and prematurely bald. The social worker explained the situation to him, and he stared at me, nodded, and unlocked one of the glass rooms before stepping back out of earshot.

  'Any questions?' asked Montez.

  'Just one, but it's a bit personal.'

  'No sweat.'

  'How do you cope with working here full-time?'

  'There's nothing to cope with,' he said evenly. 'I love my work. The paper work gets to be a bit much, but it'd be that way anywhere else and a damned sight more boring. In this place no two days are ever the same. I'm a movie freak, and I get to live pure Fellini. That answer it?'

  'Eloquently. Thanks for the education.'

  'Anytime,'

  We shook hands.

  'Wait here; it'll take awhile,' he said, glancing at the balding deputy. 'Deputy Sonnenschein will take care of you from this point.'

  I stood outside the glass room for several minutes as Sonnenschein strolled the interview area. Finally he approached in an awkward, rolling gait, as if his body were segmented and only loosely connected at the waist. His thumbs were hooked in his belt loops, and his holster flapped against his flank. Under the thinning hair was a curiously childlike moon face, and up close I saw that he was very young.

  'Your patient should be here any minute,' he said. 'It takes time to get through High Power.' He threw a backward glance at the glass room. 'I've gotta search you, so let's go inside.'

  He held the door open and entered after me. Inside were a blue metal table and two matching chairs, bolted to the floor. He asked me to remove my jacket, checked the pockets, ran his hands lightly over my body, returned the garment, inspected my briefcase, and had me sign a logbook. I noticed that Souza had visited at eight that morning. Mainwaring an hour earlier.

  'You can sit down now,' he said.

  I did, and he took the other chair.

  'You're here to try to dim cap him, right?' he asked.

  'I'm going to talk to him and see.'

  'Good luck,' he said.

  I looked at him sharply, searched for sarcasm but found none.

  'What I meant was - ' His walkie-talkie spit and cut him off. He listened to it, then put it to his lips, rattled off a few numbers, and said everything was ready. Rising, he walked to the door, put his hands on his hips, and stood watch.

  'You started to say something,' I reminded him.

  He shook his head.

  'See for yourself. They're bringing him in now.'

  Chapter 8

  AT FIRST I couldn't see him. He was submerged in a phalanx of deputies, all of them huge. The red-haired giant who'd stuck his head out the door to the High Power unit led the way, checking me out and scanning the room. When he gave the okay, the rest of them entered, moving in concert like some massive tan arachnid that parted slowly to reveal the shackled boy in its grasp.

  I wouldn't have recognized him had he passed me on the street. He'd grown to six feet but didn't weigh more than 130 pounds. The yellow pajamas hung loosely on his spindly frame. Puberty had stretched his face from sphere to oval. The features were regular but ascetic, the bones peaking sharply under a thin tent of flesh. His black hair was still long; it hung down over his forehead and fell in greasy clumps upon bony shoulders. His skin was the color of parchment, shadowed with unearthly overtones of grey-green. Black stubble lightly dotted his chin and upper lip. A large, florid pimple blossomed from one hollow cheek. Both eyes were closed. He gave off a sour smell.

  The deputies moved with silent precision. Meaty hands remained clasped around sticklike arms. One pair propelled him to the table. Another sat him down. Wrist and ankle cuffs were secured to the stationary chair. It left him in an awkward position, but he allowed himself to be manipulated with the limp passivity of a marionette.

  When they were through, the redhead came over and introduced himself as Sergeant Koocher.

  'How long will this take, Doctor?' he asked.

  'It's hard to tell before I talk to him.'

  'We'd prefer that you keep it to one hour maximum, and we'll be back to pick him up in sixty minutes. If you need more time, let Deputy Sonnenschein know beforehand. He'll be right outside.'

  Sonnenschein frowned and nodded assent.

  'Any questions?' asked Koocher.

  'No.'

  He signaled to the others, and they left. Sonnenschein was the last to exit. He remained on the other side of the glass, arms folded across his chest, positioned at an angle that allowed him a clear view
of both the glass room and the interview area. I turned from him to the boy on the other side of the table.

  'Hello, Jamey. It's Dr. Delaware.'

  I searched the pallid face for signs of response, found none.

  'I'm here to help you,' I said. 'Is there anything you need?'

  When he didn't answer I let the silence simmer. Nothing. I started to talk, softly, soothingly - about how frightened he must be, how glad I was that he'd reached out to me, how much I wanted to help.

  After twenty minutes he opened his eyes. For an instant 1 was hopeful that I'd broken through. Then 1 looked at him closely, and hope scurried back into its burrow.