Running the Books

by Avi Steinberg

  Once the inmate had presented him with the shank, he couldn’t pretend to not know about it: the choice was either to play along or to report the inmate. This itself was a form of blackmail. There could be no neutrality. Miller tried to compromise and deal with the situation quietly. This turned out to be a miscalculation.

  When the inmate was brought in for questioning, he tried to curry favor with SID by offering them a juicy morsel: a staff member’s name. Indeed that’s likely why he’d strong-armed Miller into throwing out the weapon to begin with, something that he probably could have done himself: he needed some leverage for the interrogation he knew was coming. Miller’s name was that leverage. And to make matters considerably worse for Miller, SID searched the trash bin. It was empty. The shank, it appeared, had been retrieved by another inmate and transferred back to the inmate population. The entire sequence may well have been orchestrated.

  Soon thereafter, Miller had been summoned for questioning. That’s when I’d witnessed Charlie telling him to go to SID. Word around the prison was that SID shook him down hard, reduced him to tears. But he repeatedly denied knowledge of the shank. Somehow—possibly by reminding him that he himself could do time for what he had done—SID had squeezed Miller hard enough that he confessed everything. Officers escorted Miller, red-faced and humiliated, from the facility. There is a protocol for officers’ escorting staff out in this fashion. These incidents occasionally happen. A full investigation would follow.

  I listened to the story with a sense of awe and dread. Poor Miller! His situation was a staff person’s nightmare. A clear example of how being surrounded by criminals can easily turn you into one yourself, even with the best of intentions. And even if you typically made good decisions. What happened to him might have happened to any of us—who knows how we’d react if an inmate with a knife threatened us with blackmail or worse. My friend’s phrase, Miller was named, made me shudder.

  A few days later, I was waiting for the front door to roll open, en route to a mandatory meeting for all non-uniformed staff. We were going to be collectively chastised for the Miller affair and rallied to the mission at hand. Eddie Grimes, the officer stationed at the front gate—a student of Zen Buddhism who always kept a book of Eastern thought at his post—dropped a piece of wisdom on me. As I waited for the heavy prison door to roll open, I asked Eddie for some insight from his studies. He thought for a moment and dangled a pen vertically between two fingers.

  “The master teaches,” Eddie said, “hold the pen with great care but hold the weapon with even greater care, for the weapon protects the pen.”

  It was a statement that captured the essence of the officers’ relationship to people like me. And it was a refutation of the cliché that the pen is mightier than the sword. Of course, in prison, where pens are turned into knives, this expression already holds a peculiar resonance.

  At the meeting, we were told to, “Give the inmates nothing. Nothing.” Forest and I were depressed by this formulation of the policy. We were, after all, in the business of doing exactly that: giving the inmates stuff. We were also told that we had no confidentiality whatsoever with the inmates and that our loyalty was to the sheriff and the sheriff alone.

  “Your ID card,” said Quinn, the assistant deputy, “has two names on it, yours and the sheriff’s. Those are your priorities here. Got it?”

  Snitching was serious business. When you entered the prison, you would be asked to name people. How you named those people made you either a con or a cop. There was no third option, no neutrality.

  Back in the library things were returning to normal. The inmates needled me for information. Among their population, rumors were rampant:

  “I heard this wasn’t the first time that teacher guy did this.”

  “I heard he knew the guy from the outs.”

  “I heard that the teacher guy was selling drugs to guys in 3-3 and was scared that dude was gonna rat him out.”

  Teddy, the ideologue, took a strong position on the issue.

  “I respect that teacher,” Teddy said, as he helped Fat Kat enter new books into the library’s computer database.

  “ ’Course you do!” said Pitts. “It takes a fool to respect a fool.”

  “Nah, man,” Teddy said, “he was trying to help a friend. And even when the dude ratted him out, he kept strong, proud. Your name, man, that’s all you got.”

  “That might be all you got,” said Pitts, “but that teacher guy had a job until he decided to be a damn fool.”

  As usual, Pitts got the last word. The conversation died there. After a few minutes of quiet, Teddy spoke again. This time he addressed me.

  “You’re Jewish, right?” asked Teddy. “Is it okay if I ask?”

  I was curious what line of thought had led Teddy here.

  “Yeah,” I responded. “I grew up Orthodox. Hard-core.”

  Fat Kat’s eyes widened when he heard this; he looked up from the computer keyboard where he had been working. Like Teddy, Fat Kat was Muslim. He, however, was not a convert but a born Muslim, raised by back-to-Africa black activists. A week earlier Fat Kat had told me, with a big smile, about the time his mother dragged him and his siblings to a demonstration in Washington, D.C. Young Kat had stood in front of the White House waving his fist and chanting, “Reagan, Reagan’s gotta go! We support the P-L-O!”

  “I had no idea what I was saying,” he told me. “I was just repeating what they said.”

  We had had a big laugh about it. Now Fat Kat looked at me.

  “You was raised Orthodox? Like with the hats and the hair,” he said pointing to his sideburns, indicating the traditional long sidelocks of the Hasidic sects. I could see that he was trying to imagine me dressed in a black frock coat with matching black hat and curly sidelocks, stroking my beard and walking briskly down Lexington Avenue in New York City. I laughed.

  “Not exactly,” I said, “I was like a plainclothes Hasid.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Hasids!” said Fat Kat with a big smile and a clap. “I remember those guys from the Feds, man,” he said, referring to Federal Prison. I later learned that Fat Kat also knew them well as reliable clients of a sex-for-hire business he once ran in Brooklyn.

  “Those dudes don’t fuck around, right?” Teddy, always the diligent disciple, asked Fat Kat. “Pardon my language,” he said, turning to me.

  “Yeah, they take care of they shit,” replied Kat. “Man those dudes was funny, though. In the Feds, if the Hasids got upset with something, they’d swarm around the warden and start doing this …” He did an impression of a flock of nervous men chattering and furiously wagging index fingers. I recognized the gesture and laughed. Fat Kat was fascinated by Hasidim. I rarely saw him this animated.

  “In the Feds,” he went on, “there was this black dude—I’m talking, straight up black guy—who dressed like them, the Hasids, and rolled with them. And we was just like, ‘Okay, man, if that’s how you gonna do it, that’s cool.’ ”

  Fascination with Hasidim, I understood. But, admiration? That struck me as strange. Blacks and Hasidim, as I understood it, had a relationship of mutual suspicion. And then there was the issue of style.

  “Really?” I said. “Cool?” It wasn’t a word I had ever associated with my Hasidic brethren.

  “Yeah!” said Teddy, who had never met a Hasid in his life. “You ever see them dudes rolling, like four in car, matching beards, man, matching pimpin’ hats, music bumpin’ …”

  Teddy, himself piously bearded, cocked an imaginary hat on his braided head and nodded rhythmically to a nonexistent bass beat. He dissolved into laughter.

  “Yeah,” I said, “when you do it, it’s cool …”

  “Nah, man, I’m serious. I respect those guys,” Teddy said.

  Pitts shook his head, “Here we go again …”

  “They know what they about,” said Teddy. “Isn’t that true, Kat?”

  Fat Kat nodded earnestly. “That’s true,” he said.

  As Teddy began to chide me
for neglecting my Orthodox practice and for not dressing proudly as the Hasid I was meant to be, it occurred to me that Hasidim were, in ways that I had never quite appreciated, the epitome of gangsta. The inmates on the detail respected the Hasidim because, in their minds, Hasidim embodied the ideals of the thug life. Hasidim had a reputation of viewing the world as us-versus-them, and running their businesses and community institutions without any regard for a system of law imposed by outsiders, persecutors of their community. And what’s more, they did it in style. They dressed their own way, talked their own way, walked their own way; they wore distinctive, indeed, completely unique clothing, and they wore it with pride wherever they went.

  But most of all, as Kat explained, based on his own experience in Brooklyn, “You did not fuck around in their neighborhood, unless you had the green light. If they caught you out of line, man, they’d fuck you up. Those dudes guarded their neighborhood by any means necessary.”

  “Yeah,” said Teddy. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  That was the main job of a gang, after all. And that’s what the Hasidim were to these men: an exquisitely well-organized gang—a gang with a long and illustrious history, a proven track record.

  Every gang ultimately strives to be a full-blooded tribe. Tribes-people share a common history and fate, expressed through religion. They are loyal to each other and to their families until death. And they would never, ever snitch. A gang wasn’t just a group of guys roaming around wearing matching clothing; they were an attempt at a community. They shared a history, either real or imagined. It’s not an accident that the Latin Kings gang attaches itself to ancient myths and observes their own holidays and fasts. Nor was it an accident that Teddy was attracted to Sunni Islam and to Hasidim.

  I thought back to my Orthodox upbringing and how I was raised to say the line, part of the central prayer of Judaism, “And may the informers have no hope …” I had said this prayer every day, three times a day. When I said it, I meant it. I knew more about gang loyalty than I had realized. Apparently I’d been raised with it.

  I still cringed when I saw someone graffiti “Stop Snitching” into a desk in the library or when Fat Kat went on a tirade against snitches. But I also understood it personally. I understood why Teddy wanted to respect Miller.

  I wondered if, in some small way, I could help shape the library detail into a gang of sorts. In prison, where sharing is literally against the rules and community building is often seen as a threat to order, the library was a place built on the basic tenet of both a gang and of community: sharing resources. People share when they trust each other. And in respecting the library detail—by treating them like men and not prisoners—I hoped to earn their loyalty and to convert them to the cause of the library. And yet, Miller might well have thought the same thing about his students. I could respect the inmate library detail, but I couldn’t let myself be deceived into thinking we were on the same team.

  I never referred to an inmate by his nickname. I was a public servant; I was expected to use an inmate’s official name, his gov. Still, it was hard to resist. The nicknames were so descriptive of personality. When a guy comes into the library every day and speaks in an incomprehensible Mississippi accent, it’s hard not to call him “Country”—especially when that’s what everyone calls him. If a name seemed appropriate for a person, it seemed inappropriate to ignore it. Months after an inmate left the prison, I often couldn’t recall his gov. More often, I remembered his street name. But it was beside the point. In prison, when it came to naming, superior descriptiveness was irrelevant. Names expressed solidarity with a group; they were bound up in one’s affiliation. I was on the sheriff’s payroll and I had to show my solidarity with the law. If I used a street name both the officers and the cons would draw the same conclusion about my allegiances. There was no room for expressions of private relationships that were neutral to the cop-con division. One had to choose sides.

  In a culture like prison, which is about honor and shame, how you use a name matters. Honor systems are obsessed with public appearances, public actions. If you use a nickname, you honor both the individual person and the group that named him. If you use the name, you’re part of the gang.

  And that’s where snitching came in. Snitching was, essentially, an act of unnaming someone, an undoing of a person’s street name. By naming another person to the authorities, one, in fact, re-established that person’s official identity over and against his street identity. Miller had refused to name the inmate and the result was, as my colleague had whispered to me that night in the cafeteria, he was named. His name became another prison commodity to be traded on the black market.

  I decided to be more careful. It wasn’t savvy to let inmates give me a nickname, even a wonderful one like Bookie. Nor, for that matter, was it wise to have my actual name broadcast over the radio by the L-Crew to all of Greater Boston. I had to avoid sending the message that I was somehow on the inmates’ side in the prison war—especially if I also did stupid things like mouth off to Officer De Luca. Even if it wasn’t my intention, I was misaligning myself by doing these things. The next thing I knew, I’d end up like Miller, a well-intentioned chump holding a shank for some inmate. If I allowed inmates to name me, I might eventually allow them to unname me. I couldn’t get drawn in.

  For example, with Jessica. By handing a “gift” from her to her son, I wasn’t really doing anything wrong. Or was I? Perhaps I was even doing something right. It was hard to tell. But I was doing something … with an inmate. This, as I was told during orientation, was how trouble started. The little transgression. I was moving into that gray area, into what I’d been warned against repeatedly by my coworkers, and by many inmates themselves, and now formally by the deputy. I knew what pragmatic union boss Charlie would tell me: keep your nose clean. Even if it goes your way this round, he’d say, next time you’ll get screwed; that’s how it goes here. How many times had I been told, “Keep your distance” and “Don’t get involved”? With Jessica, I was now involved. And every time I convinced myself that it was fine, that I was doing something right, I remembered Miller’s mortified face, drained of all blood, lying to Charlie and probably in denial himself. If these hesitations hadn’t entered my mind, I’d already be in denial.

  The good news: people still had no idea what to make of my name, Avi, itself a nickname for Avraham. This name, which is as common as Tom in Israel and Orthodox enclaves, was exotic in prison. Many people still had trouble saying it. I got called everything: Ari, Javi, Ali, Artie, Avery, Arnie, Alley, Arlo, Albie, Harley, Halley, Arfi, Advil, Alvie, Audi (as in the car), Arby (as in the fast food chain), A.V., Harvey, Harvin, and my personal favorite, which I heard but once: Ally. That name got right to the point.

  I heard many of these names on a daily basis. It got to the point where I was given an incorrect full name, Arvin, and then an incorrect nickname for that name, Arvi. After some annoyance at the constant mangling of my name I’d begun to embrace the situation. It was like having fifteen aliases. My mysterious, protean name gave me a cloak of anonymity in the prison. I couldn’t be easily named nor easily placed. While it hadn’t been wise to give inmates my name for a shout-out, it was after all my Avery persona who saved the day. I knew that at some point, perhaps, I’d have to choose sides. In the meantime, though, my name concealed more than it revealed. In prison, this comes in handy.

  And there were other cloaks one could wear in prison. There were, for example, ways to diplomatically use an inmate’s name without quite calling him by it. Buddha—whose actual name I’ve since forgotten—comes to mind. He and I hadn’t gotten off on the right foot. In fact, we disliked each other immensely. One day, during a lull, I leaned over to Buddha in the library and said to him, “So why’d they call you ‘Buddha’? Is it because you’re a man of peace?”

  Buddha, clearly approving of this riff on his pot-inspired name, smiled widely.

  “Arlo, man, you’re okay,” he said. “You’re an underc
over playa—I like that.”

  Jessica’s Portrait

  It was in this undercover playa persona that I arranged Jessica’s portrait. I didn’t have to look far for an artist. Turned out Brutish’s filthy hands were also quite nimble with the sketching pencil. The portrait session was set for a Wednesday night in the library. I brought in some supplies: cheap and expensive coarse grain paper, colored pencils, charcoal, one of those cool, triangular erasers that is in strict compliance with the standards set forth by the International Ergonomics Association. While we waited for Jessica, Brutish told me that her drawing experience consisted mostly of sketches for tattoos. She specialized in skulls, she said, and was eager to “draw one with skin on it.” Everything was set.

  There was only one problem: Jessica didn’t show up. I began to wonder if she’d changed her mind. A few minutes into the period, I noticed the officer on duty motion to someone outside of the library. Jessica had been loitering in the hall, hiding, too nervous to enter.

  When Jessica walked in, the inmates hanging around the counter, the usuals, gawked at her.

  “Whadaya lookin’ at?” she said, as she installed herself into a little niche at the end of the counter, between the wall and a shelf.

  It was pretty obvious what they were looking at. If Jessica wasn’t quite made over, which would be a rather difficult enterprise in prison, she was dramatically touched up—and in a delightful array of improvised contraband cosmetics. Her hair, which usually fell in sorry knots just past her shoulders, was freshly shampooed, combed up into a cheerfully messy little nest, tied in place by a torn ribbon that looked suspiciously like the material of a prison uniform. Her lips and cheeks were rouged, too heavily, with some blood (which I prayed was her own). The eyebrows were plucked. The eyes outlined and lids shadowed jet black with an unidentified substance, and to Evil Handmaiden proportions. A flower—which, on closer inspection was construction paper and shiny gum wrappers carefully folded, origami-style, into six wide petals, symmetrical as a dahlia—was tucked into her hair. She looked pretty, and a touch loony.