Keeplock: A Novel of Crime

by Stephen Solomita

  I switched off the motor and leaned back in the seat. “It was routine for them. A bodega robbery, a kid shot—it doesn’t amount to anything. If the old man in the bodega hadn’t given Armando’s name to the cops, most likely the cops wouldn’t have bothered to conduct an investigation. It didn’t get interesting until Armando fell into their hands and gave me up. I was a career criminal, a diagnosed sociopath, and putting me in jail would be a feather in their caps. Not an eagle feather, mind you. More like a pigeon feather. But a feather is a feather and cops make their reputations with good collars. You were just a means to that end.”

  “They tortured me.”

  “I know that. You had two months, between the time they let you go and when you testified, to change your mind. You were so terrified you probably didn’t even speak to a lawyer.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because a lawyer would have told you their threats were all bullshit. The cops could never have convinced the D.A.’s office to prosecute. The courts were full, the jails were overflowing. It was a bluff and that’s all it was, but they got to you because you really were innocent. Too innocent and too frightened to know what was happening.”

  “I hate them.”

  “Didn’t you tell me yesterday that you couldn’t hate?”

  She ignored the comment. “First they took my picture, then my fingerprints. Then the matron ordered me into a private room. When the two detectives—their names were O’Neill and Grimes—followed us inside, I couldn’t believe it.

  “‘Strip down,’ she said. Turn your pockets inside out and put your clothes on the table.’

  “I looked over at the detectives and they stared back at me. Right into my eyes. ‘Better hurry up, miss. We don’t got all night.’

  “I turned to the matron and she said, ‘Strip down, bitch, or I’ll get someone else in here and we’ll do it for you.’

  “Someone began to undo the buttons on my blouse. It wasn’t me, because I wasn’t there. Even though I was aware of everything going on, I wasn’t there.”

  “Ginny, you don’t have to tell me this.” I was beginning to sound like a broken record. The truth was I didn’t want to hear it. It hurt too much and it made me too angry. It brought back too many memories. What I needed was perspective.

  “As I undressed, one of the cops—Grimes, I think—began to chant, ‘Take it off; take it off.’ When I unhooked my bra, he whistled.

  “‘Nice set,’ he said.

  “‘Too small,’ the other one said. ‘The nips’re too small. I like ’em big and brown. The kind that cover half the fuckin’ boob.’

  “I started to unbutton my slacks, but the matron screamed that I should turn out my pockets first. I became confused. I couldn’t understand what she meant. Then she reached into my pockets and did it herself. I stopped again when I had to take down my … my panties. I got my thumbs up to the elastic, but I just couldn’t bring myself to pull them down. The matron had to help me again.

  “After I was naked, I wanted to cover myself with my hands. I could feel my hands floating in front of me, looking for someplace to go.

  “‘Turn around and bend over.’ The matron’s voice was so matter-of-fact. It was like the cops were supposed to be watching. Like it was all routine.

  “I said, ‘I don’t think I can do it with them looking at me. Shouldn’t they be somewhere else? Why do I need to do that?’

  “‘You’ll do it,’ the matron said, ‘one way or the other.’

  “‘What about them?’ I pointed at the two cops.

  “‘The bitch don’t care for our company, Frankie.’

  “‘I like a hairy pussy. That pussy ain’t hairy enough.’

  “‘First the little nips, now the pussy hair. Ain’t you ever satisfied?’

  “‘Face the wall and bend over.’

  “The voices went around and around. I turned without deciding to turn; I bent from the waist without deciding to bend. I felt the matron’s finger in my vagina.

  “‘Man, that hole is biiiig.’

  “‘She must be fuckin’ with some of your people, Grimes.’

  “‘Well, she didn’t get that way from no white boy’

  “‘Asshole looks tight enough, though.’

  “‘Oh, you finally found somethin’ you appreciate.’

  “‘I’d like to work on it with a nightstick.’

  “‘Now you’re gettin’ sick, Frankie. A real man don’t have to do that shit to get off.’

  “‘Yeah? Well, maybe you got a whanger that could fit that pussy, but I gotta put mine where there’s a little friction.’”

  I expected her to break into tears, but she didn’t, though she came close a few times.

  “How could they do it?” she asked. “How could they do it to someone who was innocent?”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I watched the old lady in the cemetery as she made her way through the gate. She was incredibly dirty, her clothes torn and soiled. Her mouth continued to move, though I couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  “If people knew what went on, they’d have to do something about it,” Ginny said.

  “They don’t know because they don’t want to know. If you’re a criminal, you deserve everything you get. Nobody thinks about what you’ll do when you get out. The public acts as if every conviction was a final solution.”

  “But I wasn’t a criminal,” she insisted.

  “You were my old lady and I was a diagnosed sociopath who’d been in and out of jail since he was eleven years old. In the cops’ eyes, you were guilty enough to put the squeeze on. If it’ll make you feel any better, I don’t think they put you in the cell with the dyke on purpose. The first part, yeah. They were probably hoping you’d break on the spot. The dyke was just the luck of the draw.”

  “What about the knife? She had a knife.”

  “Everybody has a weapon in the Institution. That’s how you survive.”

  “I still hate them. I can’t help it.”

  “Hate is a losing proposition. It doesn’t get you anywhere.” I sounded like a prison counselor, but there wasn’t much else I could say. On one level I was enraged. On another, I was glad. The crimes committed against her had brought her back to me.

  “I don’t think I can eat now. But I feel a little better. Do you want to go to my apartment?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Ginny. I was kinda hoping we could spend the night sitting in the car.”

  She leaned across the seat and kissed me. There was no tenderness. Her kiss was hungry and demanding. Nevertheless …

  The sex, when it came, was equally demanding. Ginny kept urging me to thrust harder. Her legs were wrapped tightly around my hips and her pelvis snapped up each I came down into her. I watched her closed eyes and the determined twist of her mouth. The sweat was dripping from the tips of her hair onto her shoulders. I knew she wasn’t after orgasm. Despite the sudden twists of her head, despite the moaning, despite the fingernails digging into my arms.

  I wanted her to want me, but I knew that wasn’t happening. Sensible people medicate their depression with drugs, but Ginny hadn’t turned to coke or dope or alcohol, I was her medication of choice. In some ways I was further away from her than ever.

  Not that I didn’t enjoy what I was doing. Grimes had been wrong about Ginny. She felt almost virginal, and despite the condom, the heat and the friction forced me to hold myself in check. Ginny needed a long, hard fuck and the only way I could give it to her was to draw away and watch her work. In the end, she pulled me in with her legs and began to grind her pussy against me. Her lips opened into a little sneer and the tips of her front teeth came together. Then I was lost, my own eyes closed, life rushing out of me and into her.

  Or it would have run into her if I hadn’t been wearing that condom. Rubbers aren’t as bad as men say they are, but there is a moment when you’re on your knees, half-hard, the tip of the rubber full of genetic information, that jars your carefully developed self-image.
Instead of pulling your woman into your arms, you have to go to the toilet and flush the thing away.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said. It used to be her line.

  I took enough time in the bathroom to check myself out in the mirror. (Evaluations come after the sex.) What I saw wasn’t too bad, though I would never again have the skin-stretched definition of my youth. I was bulkier, now, and fifteen pounds heavier. Most of it was muscle, but I had the distinct feeling that Ginny could do better.

  Maybe Ginny was thinking the same way. When I came back into the room, she was sitting up in bed with the sheet pulled over her breasts.

  “That’s cheating,” I said. “You’re taking advantage.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I’m standing out here butt naked and you’ve got that sheet pulled up to your neck. I feel like a stripper at a men’s smoker. Throw a ten-dollar bill on the chair and I’ll pick it up with my cheeks.”

  She grinned, then slowly let the sheet drop until it hung on the tips of her nipples.

  “Watch out!” I yelled.

  She jumped and the sheet fell into her lap. Her breasts were softer than I remembered. Maybe they hung a little lower, too. Memory is too tricky. It tends to get wrapped up in dreams. Ginny had grown into a woman without showing a trace of middle age. The muscles of her arms and shoulders were smoothly toned, flowing into each other like ocean waves.

  “You’ve been working out.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “I’ve been taking ballet lessons.”

  She raised a leg into the air, letting the sheet slide down even further. The long muscles of her thighs jumped to attention. I let my eyes run along the inside of her leg.

  “Looks hairy enough to me,” I said.

  Her eyes clouded for a moment, then she began to laugh. Genuinely laugh. “I always thought I could handle anything. That was my reputation and I thought I could live up to it. In my junior year at Hunter I caught a bad flu. I was carrying seventeen credits and I missed a month of classes. My student adviser told me I should drop most of my courses and make them up in the summer. Instead, I borrowed other students’ notes and finished the semester with a 3.4 grade average. It was expected of me.”

  “Are you trying to say that your jail experience didn’t fit your self-image? It never does, if you’re human. Not the first time.”

  “When I was in the cell with the dyke, I thought about all the things you said. That I should try to hurt her, to gain some kind of respect. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  “You weren’t there long enough.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Yes,” I insisted, “it is. The Institution is like a war zone. It doesn’t matter what a soldier thinks before he goes off to battle. Once you get there, you do what you have to do to survive. After a while, you’d have realized that submission carries a higher price tag than violence. It’s not that violence doesn’t have its price. It’s just that violence is cheaper than submission.”

  She grinned happily. “You’re sure of that, are you?” Her hand closed on my arm and she pulled me down onto the bed. “Sometimes you have to see the other person’s point of view. Like, if you submit willingly, I won’t have to get too violent.”

  An hour later, we were in the shower together. Ginny was soaping my back, letting her slippery fingers run over my ass.

  “Take it easy,” I said. “I have to get back to the shelter.”

  “We haven’t eaten yet.”

  She was disappointed, thinking, maybe, that I was walking out on her again. I wanted to stay with her, of course, to share her bed, to feel her body next to me if I woke up in the middle of the night. But I couldn’t take a chance that Eddie or Condon would decide to call me. I didn’t want Eddie to know I was spending my nights with Ginny, and I didn’t want Condon to know about Ginny at all.

  “Felt like a feast to me. I can still taste it.”

  “You’re a pig. You always were and you always will be.”

  “Oink, oink.”

  She spun me around and stared into my eyes. She was still smiling, but the look was very serious. “A lying pig.”

  “Say that again.”

  “This morning you told me you were taking a cab out to Queens. This afternoon you showed up in a car.”

  DTA—Don’t Trust Anyone. It’s not a joke. The prisons are full of convicts who opened up in a moment of weakness and found their confidant on the witness stand a few months later. The military uses the phrase “need to know.” You never tell your allies and subordinates more than they need to know. The rest you keep for yourself.

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “Give me the soap.” I spun her around and ran the edge of the bar along her spine.

  “You’re in some kind of trouble. Already.”

  “I guess the soap trick isn’t going to work.”

  She turned back to me. This time her eyes ripped into mine. “It’s different this time. I don’t think about ‘forever’ anymore. Not even in my fantasies. I don’t think about changing you either. You can tell me anything and I won’t condemn you. You can trust me.”

  “Yeah?” My reaction was quick and automatic, pure prison reflex. “And if they put you back in a cell with a bull dyke? What happens then? The truth is real simple—you can’t testify about something you don’t know.”

  “I’d die before I’d do that to you again. Do you think I’m the same person I was ten years ago?”

  “If you trust me, you must be pretty close to it.”

  “Trust doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

  But, of course, trust had everything to do with it. I had to trust her or lose her. It was that simple, although I don’t think she understood.

  “Ginny, did you ever hear the phrase, ‘shit happens’?”

  “No, I don’t think so, but I can guess what it means.”

  “How about, ‘shit happens and you have to deal with it’?”

  “Tell me what you have to tell me, Pete. You don’t have to beat around the bush. And you don’t have to lie, either.”

  So I told her. I began with Terrentini, with the sound his flesh made as it cooked, and took her through my reception at The Ludlum Foundation, my reaction to it, and the unexpected appearance of Condon and Rico. I told her about Eddie and the boys, detailing the heist and Eddie’s plan for the cop sitting on Fifty-sixth Avenue.

  I was nearly dressed by the time I wrapped it up. “So what I am is a rat,” I said. “I’m letting someone else do my time. Take him, not me. I can bullshit myself with excuses like I’m not willing to commit deliberate murder. Or, if I don’t bring the cops into it, Eddie is more likely to kill me than not. You’re smiling, but it’s not a joke. It’s like chopping off your arm.”

  “I’m smiling because it looks like I might get you after all.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I DREAMED THAT NIGHT. And the night after and the night after that. It wasn’t fair. I was walking away from murder. I was walking away from the life. I was sacrificing my honor in order to avoid the very thing the dream threw in my face.

  On the fourth night, my psyche showed a little creativity. Instead of the jeweler, I shot Ginny or Simon or Eddie. Even Morasso put his ugly face in front of the .45 I waved so proudly. And now the jewelry was real instead of phony. I was thanking them, even as I killed them.

  Every time I woke up, I vowed not to go back to sleep. Sleep wasn’t helping me anyway; I started each day more tired than the last. But I fell back, despite my determination, and just before dawn on the fourth day, I slid into an entirely different dream.

  I’m walking down a hallway in one of the projects. I know I’m in the projects, because the doors are smaller and the ceiling is much lower than in ordinary apartment buildings. I can touch both walls of the narrow hallway with my elbows as I walk.

  At the far end of the hall, fifty feet away, the sun is shining through a filthy window. The dirt diffuses the light as if the window was aglow wit
h the rays of a rectangular sun.

  I feel good. No particular anxiety, though I know I’m going to see my mom for the first time. It’s taken me years to locate her, but now that I have, I feel confident. All those damned conflicts I’ve been carrying around are about to be resolved forever.

  The door to 5C is exactly the same shade of flaking green as all the others. Somehow I expected it to be different, like the gates of paradise, but it’s just another door in a long hallway. No angel with flaming sword. No St. Peter with his long list of questions.

  I grind out my cigarette on the gray concrete floor and ring the bell. It opens immediately and Ginny’s face appears.

  “You’re late,” she says.

  “Story of my life. We got a problem?”

  She steps back to let me in and I see that she’s wearing a nurse’s uniform. Then the stink hits me. Piss and antiseptic, sharp and sour at the same time. Two distinct odors that refuse to blend.

  “Where’s my mom?”

  “The old bitch is in the bedroom. Waiting for her dope.”

  I’m standing next to a hospital bed. There’s no transition. I was there and now I’m here.

  “Is that my mom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d she get like this?”

  “She couldn’t wait anymore.”

  This close to the bed, I can smell the musty odor of death. My mom is rotting away.

  “Too bad, cuz.”

  Eddie is next to the bed, pushing an IV needle into a stick-thin arm. “This way she gets it steady.” He jerks his chin toward the bottle hanging from the IV pole. It’s enormous, as big as one of those blue plastic bottles you find in office water coolers.

  I move closer. The print on the label is so small I can barely read it.

  WHAT SHE NEEDS, MOTHERFUCKER

  “Enough is enough,” I shout. “If you don’t fix her up, I’m takin’ off.”

  “What could I say, cuz. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.”

  My days began to take on a routine. Eddie in the morning and the cops at night. Ginny was the fixed point. The days revolved around her. I told her everything that happened and she took it in without flinching. We seemed to spend all our time in bed, folded into each other. I had a key to her apartment and I was usually waiting for her when she came home from work. I’d have the evening planned, dinner out or a movie, but we always ended up in bed, surrounded by containers of Chinese takeout.