Running the Books

by Avi Steinberg

  “You’re late,” he said, as always, half in jest. “What’re you looking at?”

  “Nothing, actually.”

  We walked through the hollow space and back into the lobby.

  Coolidge at the Helm

  Even before the Katrina fund-raising drive, Coolidge had been an exceedingly busy man, always the first in, the last out, of the library. In addition to being one of the great legal minds of his inmate generation, he held various self-appointed positions, complete with homemade titles: Law Coordinator, which he sometimes called Legal Aid or Law Advocate or Law Clerk. Education Counselor, Re-entry Advisor, Baptist Services Coordinator. Coolidge had enough fictional titles to compete with any cooked-up Harvard senior’s résumé.

  All of these (non)positions qualified him for a yet higher (non) position as something of a prison chieftain, the representative of the inmate collective. El Presidente, as some inmates called him in disdain. Coolidge’s political moves were well documented. When he wasn’t drafting legal briefs, he composed various official memos, op-eds, formal queries, letters to the editor, progress reports. On special occasions, he’d put out a press release. If cameras had been permitted in prison, he would have arranged photo ops. Under the circumstances, he contented himself with the written word.

  Though not the best writer, Coolidge always came out swinging. He was the Mark Twain of the memo, attacking even pedantic forms with verve and occasional wit. He’d ask me to edit his latest writings, then proceed to reject every single suggestion I made. When I advised him to spread the ! lightly, he became exclamatory.

  “C’mon now!” he said, throwing up his hands. “I invented the damn exclamation point! I made it a household name! I got it trade-marked, man. I make royalties off it!”

  With his schemes and his exclamation points, Coolidge pestered the courts, parole boards, newspaper editorial boards, noted authors, the prison administration, City Hall, celebrities, the clergy, and pretty much anyone with a mailing address. None of this bothered me. He was bringing in sheets of inmates’ signatures. Money was rolling in to the Katrina fund-raising project. Everything was great.

  My first hint to the contrary arrived, appropriately, by way of a memo. Or, to be more precise, a draft of a memo Coolidge had accidentally left lying around the library. It concerned the Katrina project. His Katrina project.

  In the document, addressed to the prison administration, Coolidge “respectfully requested permission to solicit donations in the units housing the female inmates (the Tower).” I couldn’t help but smile at this modest proposal. Coolidge knew this request was both illegal and laughable. A male inmate requesting to visit the female prison blocks was like an inmate asking to be let out for the night to attend his buddy’s bachelor party.

  As “Program Organizer,” Coolidge continued, he humbly offered his services—with, he conceded, proper “accompaniment of prison staff.” This effort, he argued, would significantly increase the amount of money and the profile of the project, all of which would be great PR for the prison administrators themselves. On a more menacing note, he pointed out that it was imperative that inmates—who were furious at the racial injustice of Katrina—had a “peaceful outlet for their justified anger.” And that failure to include the women might be perceived by many inmates as an attempt to stifle this effort. The implied threat of violence was clear enough.

  Coolidge concluded the memo by stating that he was very proud to have conceived and planned this initiative and would like permission to organize a “media event” upon completion of the project. Again, he would be happy to offer his services and work up a press release. A list of expenses was included.

  It was a thoroughly entertaining proposal, a masterpiece of delusional deadpan. Entertaining enough that I hardly cared that he was taking credit for my idea.

  That Friday, during the morning shift, my office phone rang. I picked up.

  Fire Coolidge.

  It was Patti’s voice.

  Why? I asked.

  Silence.

  That’s the order I got from above, she said finally. Fire him from the library detail. Effective immediately.

  What do I tell him?

  That he’s fired.

  Right, but …

  And that he’s got to go back to his cell immediately.

  And what if he asks why?

  There were noises of displeasure. A sigh, a sniffle, a tapping pen.

  Tell him it’s an order. He’ll find out when he finds out.

  This last comment was directed at me, as well, which I found irritating. But I had a more pressing concern: I’d never fired someone, let alone a violent felon. It was at these moments that I realized I hadn’t undergone any training. That this was my training.

  When Coolidge came into my office, he knew something was wrong. Even before I uttered a word, he pointed his big gloomy square head at me and made a bid.

  “I don’t need to be a part of the project,” he said. “You can take all the credit and smile for the cameras. I’ll sit on the side. It don’t matter.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” I said. “But there aren’t going to be any cameras.” Before he could say anything else, I just blurted it out.

  “I got a call from the higher-ups,” I said. “They told me to fire you. And they said you have to go back to your cell immediately.”

  Coolidge’s face twisted into a snarl. I tabulated the odds he was going to rip the head off my shoulders. Perhaps it’d hurt for only a second. Perhaps it would be painless. A swift death: Always a good Plan B. But I needed a Plan A. I scanned my office for weapons. I’d pick up my giant computer monitor, crash it on his head, and run. Or use it as a shield. The trick would be in hoisting up the monitor and pulling the cord out of the electrical socket in one deft motion.

  Coolidge assumed a variety of extreme poses in rapid succession. He jumped out of his seat, paced, punched his palm, ran his hand roughly through his hair, slumped back in his chair. Finally, he sunk his face deep into his hands.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. They didn’t tell me why. I figured you’d know.”

  He glared at me. I put a hand on my computer monitor.

  “Please don’t do this,” he said, almost in tears. “I need this. I gotta work on my case or I could go away for a minimum of seven years. Minimum! It could be up to twenty. This isn’t a joke, man. This is my life. I got a right to defend myself.”

  I thought about the promise he’d made to his daughter, to be there when her daughter, his granddaughter, was born. I remembered the inmate Coolidge had taught to read, and how he’d helped me during my first weeks.

  “It’s not my choice,” I said, miserably.

  As he walked out, he said, almost in a whisper, “If you don’t stand up for yourself and your detail, man, everyone’s gonna walk all over you.”

  Later that day, another inmate told me that Coolidge had gone into his cell and wept.

  After a few days, I finally discovered the reason for the sacking: the notorious memos. Coolidge had finally crossed the line. He was sounding more and more like a staff member. The prison administration had become alarmed. The final straw was a letter—in which he wrote “Internal Memo” on the header—requesting an extension of religious programming, complete with extra towels and white bathrobes for the Baptist services that he had (supposedly) planned. The staff minister who was paid to organize Baptist programs was furious that Coolidge had gone over his head. Apparently it hadn’t been the first time.

  I was mostly amused by Coolidge’s memos, annoying as they sometimes were. Coolidge could be a bully and wannabe, but at least he was actually trying to do something. That was more than could be said of other inmates and some of the staff. I couldn’t help but feel that Coolidge was, in effect, being punished for showing initiative.

  I also felt bad for him. It was true, he had been working tirelessly on his case. For the robbery charges, he could do serious time—the law is not lenient
with “career criminals” like him. I saw inmates who were on trial for murder, facing possible life imprisonment, who spent their library time playing chess or watching Ben Stiller movies. Coolidge had made a mess of his life. But at least he had pride enough to give himself a serious defense.

  And I had to admit there was some truth to what he’d said to me as he walked out: I’d been a bit of a dupe. After firing Coolidge, I’d walked over to Patti’s office and made the case to restore Coolidge’s job, on the grounds that his knowledge of the law was a major asset to the library. But this had been rejected without a moment’s deliberation. I didn’t appreciate that the administration would fire a valued employee of mine without my input, without even the courtesy of an explanation. I mean, it was like I was working in a prison.

  But, at the very least, I’d made some headway by raising a couple thousand Katrina dollars—thanks largely to Coolidge’s legwork. At least I could point to that success.

  As I readied my final report for the Katrina project, an inmate handed me a typed note. He said it was from an inmate in his unit. The note claimed that Coolidge had engaged in some funny business during the fund-raising drive, that he had stolen funds and some inmates’ ID information for illicit purposes. That he had strong-armed some inmates into donating money. The note ended by offering to detail these claims—if I were willing to put some money in his prison bank account.

  I wasn’t about to pay this guy for information. But his claims were disturbing. I recalled my conversation with Coolidge a couple of weeks earlier. Our business had been running swiftly.

  “This isn’t a con, is it?” I’d said. This was meant as a joke.

  “Ah man,” he’d replied. “You serious? I wouldn’t bring that shit in here, man. Into the library? C’mon! Please.”

  I now turned to some of the other guys on the detail. I asked them if the charges were true. None of them answered. They were bound by the convict code of silence. But they didn’t deny it, nor offer up any defense.

  Later that day, a member of the detail walked into my office and told me that he “didn’t know nothing” about what Coolidge had done, but advised me with a knowing sort of nod that it’d be wise to not finalize the transfer of the inmates’ funds. Thus my Katrina donation drive was officially tainted by corruption. All my remorse over firing Coolidge left me in a split second.

  “That’s the way it goes in here, man,” the detail member said, trying to console me. “Can’t trust nobody in here.”

  “Can I trust you?”

  He shook his head, laughed, and walked away.

  “Just trust yourself,” he said over his shoulder. “That’s hard enough around this place.”

  A New Sheriff in Town

  I did trust myself. I think. At least, I was pretty certain I did. I was confident, for example, that I wasn’t anything like Mike De Luca, the daytime officer posted next to the library. He was a short, hot-tempered fellow, who bore more than a passing resemblance to Napoleon, with a hint of Mr. Bean. De Luca liked to sing commercial jingles and to answer trivia questions. Wherever possible, he combined these interests into a round of Name That Tune, a game he played with gladiatorial zeal. De Luca’s emotions were terrifying—but predictable. When the Red Sox had won the night before, he was charming; when they lost, he was Ivan the Terrible. It was that simple. You needed only check the sports page for the De Luca forecast. He held court at his post, usually flanked by a pack of fellow union buddies. The co-cantankerous. A prison gang, one of the oldest around. They called themselves “the Angry Seven.”

  In doing his job keeping order and directing inmate traffic in and around the education wing, De Luca had a tendency to work himself into an eye-bulging mouth-foaming frenzy. This he called his “style.”

  At the end of each period, De Luca would throw open the door and charge into the library. He’d stand there like a trapped fox, eyes darting around. He had no patience for inmates who had ignored his first call of “That’s a wrap!” Arms in full swing at his side, fingers a-flutter, as though itching to punch someone, he’d rush at lingering inmates yelling, Get out, get out, getout out, out, out, right now, ri’ now, ri’ now! His advantage was always in the surprise heavily caffeinated attack. The inmates hated him, but for the most part, he was effective.

  Months later, after he’d been deposed, I overheard him sullenly tell another officer that “the bigwigs don’t like my style but they can’t say I don’t get the job done.” This was true.

  A number of inmates and staff told me that De Luca would not have dared blitz the library during the Amato era. He respected Amato—and in any case, there hadn’t been a need during Amato’s iron reign. De Luca’s rabid incursions pointed to a lack of leadership in the library: Forest and I weren’t commanding enough authority and the inmates were doing as they pleased. De Luca filled the gap with his verbal assaults, leaving Forest and me looking even more powerless, and the library more like a prison block. Coolidge, now just a library patron, routinely mentioned this situation in order to needle me. When I finally told him that I had a different way of running the place than Amato, he raised a lawyerly brow.

  “Yes, Avi, that’s my point,” he said. “And that’s exactly what’s gonna get you in the end. Listen, De Luca ain’t your boss. But you don’t take control, he will be. Yeah, Amato was an asshole but he understood control; you ignore it and you’ll get a hundred De Lucas in here carving the place up for themselves and having a big ol’ barbecue right up on your desk.”

  Of course, Coolidge should know. He had done just that, which was his point. Ever since Amato had paid me a visit and warned me not to spare the iron fist, I had noticed some slippage. Both inmates and officers treated the library like a truck stop. Things were getting sloppy. There was occasionally an utter lack of decorum. Materials were disappearing right and left, including a good deal of materials that could be made into weapons. We were discovering a greater volume of graffiti, of notes relating to drug deals, prostitution, and other illicit activities. After each period, there was a lot of trash left behind on the tables and floors. I noticed that some of the beefs from the prison units were playing out within the library space itself. If the place was, at its best, a neighborhood pub, it was, at its worst, a frontier saloon. Something had to be done. The library needed a sheriff.

  As luck would have it, one of the inmates had just returned our well-worn edition of The Prince. His bookmark slipped out. It was a list of the 48 Laws of Power, a distillation of the Machiavelli-inspired 1998 Robert Greene book of the same title. Possibly the most requested book in the library. I read the list of the 48 Laws of Power and flipped through The Prince.

  Hmm, I thought.

  After the rousing success of my creative writing class for women in the tower, I decided to inaugurate my class for men. The class met every Monday and Wednesday in the back-back room of the library. Ten inmates signed up.

  On a Wednesday afternoon, I was standing in front of the circulation desk, waiting for the inmates to file into the classroom. Just then, the front door swung open and one of the inmates, Jason, strode in, looking straight ahead and perturbed. Officer De Luca appeared behind him, arms swinging, according to his style. His head shook as though it were about detonate.

  “ ’Ey, get back here!” he shouted.

  Jason glanced behind him. “I’m here for my class,” he said casually and proceeded to enter the room.

  “Oh no you don’t …” De Luca said. He was almost running now.

  I decided to try to defuse the situation. “It’s okay, Officer, he’s in the class. His name is on the list.”

  Without so much as glancing at me, De Luca said: “No, no, no, no … this guy punked me out, he’s going back up to the unit. Or maybe the hole.”

  This was not what I wanted to hear.

  I hadn’t seen what had happened. Jason probably had said something stupid to him. On the other hand, De Luca’s bellicose “style” no doubt provoked him. I knew Jason well.
He was mild-mannered and perfectly respectful when respected. I also knew that the inmate had every right to be in the library and that by giving him a hard time and now kicking him out, De Luca was pulling a macho power play that had nothing to do with any immediate security concern. And if there was a security situation, it was because De Luca was escalating the situation.

  I could feel myself getting angry. The edges of my ears began to tingle. I was sick of De Luca’s style turning my library into Gitmo. Nor did I appreciate how he’d just blown me aside, without any attempt to give respect—you don’t do that in prison. There were less rational things churning through my head, as well. I was still annoyed that Coolidge had conned and embarrassed me. That my bosses had fired my employee without any regard for my position. I was generally sick of being messed with. And so, as my class of ten inmates and the four members of the inmate library detail stood by, I was suddenly overcome by a spirit, the impulse to go rogue.

  Every piece of prison swag I’d heard suddenly swirled into my head, and was absorbed directly into my bloodstream. The 48 Laws of Power. Law 17—Keep others in suspended terror; cultivate an air of unpredictability. Law 37—Create compelling spectacles. And the boasting of the kite writer: I’m never one that’s lost for words. A bitch like me can’t be stuck on chuck, the boss is lost, for nada. I’m a go-getter, and I go for what I want, and usually, I get what I want. Early! And not only that: The spirit of Don Amato himself descended upon me. My lips curled into a faint sneer, the haughty gaze of the prison’s newest wise guy, the Sheriff Librarian. On the up&up and low low, you go for yourz. Law 28—Enter action with boldness.

  I looked squarely at De Luca.

  “Okay,” I said. “But now you’re punkin’ me out. He’s in my class.”

  De Luca looked at me as though for the first time. It wasn’t a look of anger but of abject confusion, as though I’d just assumed physical form out of thin air. It suddenly occurred to me that he hadn’t ever really noticed me. And now, out of nowhere here I was, some stranger, dressed like a first-week college freshman, talking at him like a tough guy. It must have been a bit puzzling.