He couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and thirty pounds, but he wasn’t taking any crap from the likes of me. I had a brief fantasy involving the speed with which my right fist could reach his left cheekbone and how many times he’d bounce before he hit the wall behind him. Then I sat down.
“Welcome back, Pete.”
I recognized the voice before I looked up. Simon Cooper. “How you livin’, Simon?”
“Same old shit, Pete.” He hadn’t changed much in ten years. He was still black, still bald, still fat, and still as powerful as a prize bull. His handshake nearly broke my fingers.
If I was a little more paranoid, I might have understood his assignment to my case as part of a conspiracy, but I knew that cases were given out randomly to any P.O. without a full caseload. Besides, Simon Cooper was one of a rare breed. Sending parolees back to jail didn’t interest him very much. Nor did rehabilitation, in the ordinary sense. He was into crime prevention, and he’d give you a lot of room if he thought you needed it. I ought to know, because he’d been my P.O. the last time I came out.
Cooper had given me plenty of room and I’d fucked him at every turn. They didn’t make you pee in the bottle in 1979, but any experienced P.O. can recognize a nodding junkie. Not that I’d been an addict, but I’d reported stoned on more than one occasion. And that’s when I reported at all. Cooper had babied me through, running me down when I failed to report, easing me into a treatment slot when my habit began to get out of hand. I’d rewarded him by getting myself busted for a felony two months after I came off parole.
I followed him back to a room covered with gray, metal desks and took the required seat by Simon’s desk. It was Friday night and the room was deserted, which meant that he’d waited for me. Most of the functionaries I’ve met in the course of an Institutional life have been scumbags. They begin with the belief that all orphans are criminals and work hard to fulfill their own prophecies. As a white orphan, I’d been adopted before I left the maternity ward, but my parents, Warren and Bonnie Walsh, had returned me to the state when I was nine. They’d claimed I was uncontrollable, which may or may not have been true. I can’t remember any more, but I know they never mentioned the fact that they’d managed to conceive three kids of their own in those nine years. And had no further use for me.
Not that I’m making excuses. Or even looking for an explanation. I gave that up long ago. It’s just that I’ve met a few good people along the way. Civil servants who were in it for more than the check and the pension. I inevitably reacted to them as if they were fathers, wanting desperately to please them. And failing miserably.
Simon Cooper was one of the good ones. He had a fat, benevolent face, a walrus mustache, and huge brown eyes that softened a hardened core. He wouldn’t take any lip from the toughest ex-con, but he would plead your case to the board, even if you’d been violated for committing another crime. Assuming, of course, that he felt you were worth the effort.
“You been away a long time, Pete.” His voice was neutral, but his eyes seemed to reproach me. “Ten years.”
“Shit happens, Simon.” I was sorry that I’d hurt him, but, of course, I wasn’t about to show it.
“You know what it says here, Pete?” He held up my file. “It says ‘career criminal.’ It says ‘sociopath.’ It says ‘high-risk offender.’”
“I don’t remember it ever saying anything else. That’s why the board turned me down three times.”
“It also says I should put my foot on your head and keep it there for the next five years. It says, ‘Intense Supervision.’”
“I wouldn’t blame you, Simon. You gotta do what you gotta do.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I’ve been thinking about you ever since I got the assignment and I’ve decided to follow the recommendations of the board. Things have changed in New York since you went inside. Caseloads are way up and I don’t have time to supervise anymore. None of us do. Now it’s all mechanical: check the urine, check the pay stubs, check the residence. Violate for any fuck-up. The media’s all over us. ‘Soft on criminals’ is what they call us. ‘Bleeding hearts.’ They don’t know a fucking thing about what we do, but every reporter’s an expert.”
“Reality doesn’t sell papers, Simon. We both know that.” I was hoping for a smile, but I didn’t get it.
“You could always talk a good line. That’s probably why I let you play me for a fool.”
“It’s not gonna be like the last time. I can’t go back inside.”
He held up my folder again. “Says here that you got yourself a college degree.”
“I had a lotta time, Simon, and not much to do with it.”
“You figure to use that degree to get a job?”
“Maybe a few years down the road. I don’t think my resume would interest IBM right now.”
“Yeah, well that’s realistic. In the meantime you’re gonna flip hamburgers or push a broom. I’ll give you a referral after you settle in.”
“Where am I going?”
He ignored the question. “You report on time, Pete. Miss an appointment and you’re violated. You pee in the bottle on every visit. Come up dirty and you’re violated. You maintain a residence. You get a job and show up for it. Quit your job or change your residence without my permission, you’re violated.”
“Look, Simon, something happened to me inside. Or almost happened to me.” I went on to tell him about Terrentini and, to his credit, he heard me out.
“The first thing, Pete, is that you’re going into a shelter. What they call a Tier II facility. It’s run by a private agency—The Ludlum Foundation. You like that? The Ludlum Foundation? They’ll explain the setup when you get there, but I guarantee it’s a lot better than a six-hundred-bed shelter. You’ll still be associating with other criminals, because we’ve been assigning ex-offenders to The Ludlum Foundation for the last year. The facility is right in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen, which is one of the biggest dope and coke neighborhoods in the city. That’s another problem for you. I expect you did drugs in Cortlandt.”
“Not all the time. I couldn’t afford it. And I stayed clean while I was in the school program. Stayed away from every kind of trouble.”
“You said, ‘Shit happens,’ a little while ago. Now you’re telling me that shit didn’t happen to happen while you were going to school?”
I didn’t have a ready answer to that. I’d managed to avoid a beef during the school year, but caught my share of keeplocks in the summer, when school was out. “Could be somebody was watching out for me. Could be I was just lucky.”
“Well, you better hope that lucky star is still shining up in heaven, because I’m gonna be on your ass until you prove yourself. This ain’t no courtroom, Pete. You’re guilty until you prove yourself innocent.”
I’d been living with that reality for a long time, but since I was mostly guilty, I had nothing to complain about. “We’re goin’ in circles, Simon.”
He drummed on the desk with sausage-thick fingers. “You in a hurry, Pete? You got an appointment?”
“Maybe I ‘matured out.’ Isn’t that how the penologists like to put it? Maybe I’ve had enough. Life is worthless in Cortlandt. Wait a second, let me take that back. Life does have a value in Cortlandt. It’s worth a pack of cigarettes. That’s the fee for a young kid looking to make a rep. An experienced killer will do it for a carton.” I waited for a response, but he continued to stare at me. “I know I fucked you last time, Simon. I walked into your office a criminal and I used your goodwill to advance my career. But I can’t do the time anymore.”
“Are you afraid, Pete?”
I bristled inside. A prisoner never challenges another prisoner’s courage unless he’s looking for a fight. It’s the ultimate disrespect.
“I’m not afraid of dying. It’s more than that.”
His face softened and he sat back in his chair. “You have any idea how ‘high risk’ you are? No family support. No job. No home. Institutional from age nine. L
ong-term drug abuser. You’re gonna have to fly upwind in a hurricane.”
“That’s been my whole life, Simon. That’s what it’s all about.”
“All right. Enough with the lecture. Here’s the referral slip. The address is 707 West 39th. You come back here on Monday at nine o’clock and I’ll try to line you up with a job. As long as you’re not particular.”
“I’m not. I need something to fill up the days.”
“You might wanna think about Narcotics Anonymous. Or something like it.”
“I’m not crazy about the twelve steps. Too much like religion for junkies.”
“Just think it over. It’s easier if you have help.”
“I’ll think about it.”
He got to his feet and stretched. “It’s been a long day. Shit, it’s been a long week. I’m goin’ home.”
“Sorry I kept you late, Simon. The bus broke down near Albany.”
“I know. I called Trailways and checked.” He smiled and shrugged. “That’s the way it’s gonna be, Pete. You still have my home number?”
“It’s been ten years.”
“Ten years?” He shook his head. “Take my card and put it in your wallet. Carry it all the time. You have a problem, which you will, call me first. Before you do something stupid.”
FIVE
THE LUDLUM FOUNDATION WAS so far west it was almost in the Hudson River. I walked to it through a neighborhood that hadn’t changed very much in ten years. The garment district was still a collection of low-rise manufacturing lofts, still deserted after eight o’clock. I’d been in any number of these lofts at night, though I was neither customer nor worker.
The funny part was that most of the time I’d been there with the help of bosses who wanted their inventories to disappear. Clothing manufacturers sink lots of money, usually borrowed, into new lines, speculating on the future tastes of American women. When those lines turn out to be unpopular, the only option is insurance. The clothing wasn’t worth much, but our piece of the insurance check made the jobs profitable.
I got my first surprise at Eleventh Avenue. Not the whores, who’d been working the southern end of the deuce for a hundred years and were out in force on a Friday night. What stopped me in my tracks was a huge black-glass building that seemed to fly off in all directions. I stood on the corner of 39th and Eleventh, staring at it, wondering what held it up.
“Hi, sugar. You new in town?”
The whore was tall, black, and muscular. Too tall and too muscular to be a woman. She was dressed in a pair of red pantyhose that almost hid the bulge in her crotch, and a red brassiere that almost covered her implants.
“What’s that?” I pointed to the glass building.
“That’s the Javits Convention Center. They built it about five years ago. Where you been?”
“I been upstate.”
“All this time?”
“Yeah. All this time.”
“Then you must be ready to rock and roll, Sugar. Come upstairs with me and I’ll take you ’round the world. Broaden your horizons.”
She put her hand on my arm and I slapped it away out of instinct. “First thing is you don’t touch me without my permission. Second thing is I spent the last ten fucking years avoiding whores like you.”
She was rubbing her arm as I walked off. “You gotta lighten up, sugar,” she called after me. “Smoke a few rocks and you’ll feel better. I can get it for you.”
The Ludlum Foundation was housed in a four-story building that used to be called the Paradise Hotel. I know, because after a successful job we used to grab a few whores and party all night at the Paradise. Snort and fuck until the sun came up or the coke ran out. The Foundation must have taken the hotel over, converting it into some kind of halfway house.
The change, on the outside, wasn’t all that impressive. Same sooty red brick, same sooty windows, same broken steps leading up to a narrow wooden door. I stood across the street for a few minutes, fending off the whores and sucking on a cigarette. The whores I’d gone to the Paradise with had been one thing, but these women (and men) looked ravaged. Even the young ones. The bodies were still okay, especially half-naked under a streetlight, but the faces were drawn, the eyes bulging and red with lack of sleep.
It was time to go inside and get settled, but I stayed where I was, lighting another cigarette, wishing for a family, a home. Macho is the standard fallback for prisoners swept by loneliness, but I had no one to kick or punch. Simon had called The Ludlum Foundation a “Tier II Facility,” but I couldn’t see it as any more than a homeless shelter. Coming out of jail is hard under the best conditions. Living in a shelter, no matter what they call it, in the middle of whore and drug heaven, pounds home the reality of being a loser. I’d spent ten years protecting my honor and, with it, my ego. But, in reality, I was just another homeless asshole, dependent on the state for a mattress and a half-cooked meal.
There was a phone booth on the corner. As if someone had dragged me (as if a Cortlandt C.O., backed by the Squad and their steel batons, had ordered me), I jammed a quarter into the slot and punched out a number I’d sworn never to call. A woman answered on the second ring.
“Hello.”
Her breathless voice seemed faintly familiar. Close enough for me to hope. To take a deep breath and hold it.
“Ginny?”
“Pardon me?”
I let my breath go, called myself a schmuck. “Is Ginny there?”
“You must have the wrong number. There’s nobody here named Ginny. Sorry.”
And why should there be? Why, if I hadn’t once heard from Ginny Michkin in ten years, should I expect here to be out here waiting for me to finally call? The apartment we’d shared must have enclosed as many painful memories as my prison cell. The only difference was that she’d been able to move out.
“Is this 555-8473?” I felt like a fool even as I asked the question.
“Yes, it is, but there’s no Ginny living here.”
“Sorry.”
I hung up the phone, ground out my cigarette butt, and walked across the street, up the steps, and into The Ludlum Foundation. The guard at the security desk, a black man, was dressed in designer jeans and a leather vest over a New York Mets t-shirt. His hair was shaved on the sides and rose six inches to form a flat shelf on top. He was obviously one of the residents.
“Hey,” he said, “check this shit out. We got ourselves a slice of white bread for a change. What happened, white bread, they run out of niggers where you come from?”
He was well over six feet tall and thickly muscled, but even though I was barely five foot eight, I felt no fear whatever. Size has no importance unless you plan to fight with your hands. I didn’t plan to fight at all.
A short Spanish guy wearing a white t-shirt with a Puerto Rican flag on the front laughed uproariously. He was sitting off to one side of the desk, reading a comic book. Apparently, I was more amusing than Archie Andrews, because he put it down and leaned back to enjoy the game.
There’s no sense in showing your hand before the cards are dealt. I was willing to play the fool if playing the fool would get me through. I put my referral slip on the desk and calmly watched the guard slap it onto the floor.
“Don’t throw that shit in my face, motherfucker,” he shouted. “When I want your shit, I’ll ask for it.” He turned to his buddy. “White bread come in here and think he gon’ run all over us. Jus’ like he been doin’ for four hundred years.”
“Now, Calvin, don’t lose your temper.” The voice came from the hallway behind us. The middle-aged white man who followed it into the small foyer wore carefully pressed slacks and a white shirt under a tweed jacket. He had straw-colored hair and a thick, neatly trimmed beard. “Welcome, brother, welcome,” he said to me. “I’m Arthur McDonald, Director of The Ludlum Foundation. Don’t let Calvin put you off. He has a warm heart beneath that rough exterior. Don’t you, Calvin?”
“Hot motherfucker,” Calvin replied, setting off his buddy again.
“That’s enough.”
Arthur McDonald’s voice sharpened and Calvin straightened in the chair. He stared up at me, grinning, but I refused to meet his eyes. I’d been through this in every foster home, every jail.
“I’m Peter Frangello,” I said, handing him my referral slip.
“Yes, yes. I spoke to Simon Cooper this afternoon. Come into the office. We’ll do the paperwork and get you squared away.”
“See ya later, white bread.”
I followed Arthur McDonald past a series of small offices to the back of the building. His own office was enormous, twenty feet deep and running the width of the building. I don’t know much about furniture, but the blond desk and matching cabinets, the signed photographs on the walls, and the thick cream carpeting hadn’t come out of a Goodwill thrift shop. Old McDonald was doing all right.
“We have some rules, here.” Everything about him, including his voice, was mild. “We sleep in teams, four to a room. Each team is responsible for one aspect of caring for the Foundation. For instance, your team has the garbage detail. You collect it from the bedrooms, the offices, and the kitchen. Then you bag it and get it out front in time for Tuesday and Thursday pickup. Teaching responsibility is one of the ways we prepare the homeless for independence. I hope that’s not a problem for you.”
“No problem at all.” I’d worked for thirty-five cents an hour in Cortlandt. Now I’d work for nothing.
“Good, good. The rest of it’s simple enough. No drugs. No fighting. Be inside by ten o’clock, midnight on the weekends. Meals are served at seven, one, and six, but you don’t have to eat here if you don’t want to. How does that sound?”
“Still no problem. Mr. Cooper’s got a job lined up for me, so I don’t expect to be here too long.”
“That’s very interesting, Peter. May I call you Peter? We’re not very formal here.”
“One big happy family?”
Keeplock: A Novel of Crime Page 3