Against the Wind

by J. F. Freedman

  With all the new mandatory sentencing laws that had been legislated over the past few years the over-crowding had gotten progressively worse; one-man cells had gone to two-man, and then to three men. Three men in a ten-by-twelve-foot space twenty hours a day. With the third bunk in there, there wasn’t even room to fart. There had been a dramatic increase in fights; that was inevitable. Within the past year three inmates had been killed by other inmates.

  And while the air-conditioning was down the prison kitchen, which was notorious for cutting corners, served some bad meat that was clearly rotten, you could tell just by looking at it. Over two hundred men came down with severe food poisoning. The prison infirmary couldn’t handle that number of patients, so the sick men had to be treated in their cells. The whole place stank of vomit for days.

  It was a boxcar of powder waiting for a match.

  Three weeks ago the long-awaited prison renovation got underway. A new cellblock was going to be built, three hundred new cells added. It wouldn’t solve the problem completely, but it would buy some time, a few years. A few years is a lifetime for the bureaucracy, that’s all the far down the road they can see. They thought they were solving the problem forever. The prison officials knew that to be false, that as soon as there were three hundred new cells there would be six hundred new prisoners for those cells. But it was a start. They hoped it would help things out.

  Before they started building the new cellblock they first rebuilt the control center in the main cellblock, the nerve center for the entire prison. That was their first priority—they wanted better security, especially if six hundred new cons were coming in. This control center is the place where one guard could automatically lock down the whole prison, or conversely, open it all up. The workmen, from a well-known San Francisco multinational construction company that had successfully (and cost-efficiently, only much later did it come out that the materials were substandard) built many prisons both in the U.S. and abroad, replaced the old, antiquated bars that surrounded it with state-of-the-art safety glass, glass certified to be ten times stronger than metal, that would even withstand an 8.5 earthquake. With this glass in place the guards would have a much better view of the cellblock, the main maximum-security block. There had been blind spots with the bars, a few times in the past prisoners had used those blind spots to start riots. That opportunity would be gone.

  The workmen doing the job, who were heavily guarded at all times, were initially very careful about cleaning up at the end of each day’s work. Not a washer was left behind. As time progressed, however, a certain amount of complacency set in, and they started leaving stuff out, materials and tools they knew they’d be using the next day. The guards didn’t police the workmen’s actions, because that wasn’t their job. Their job was to ensure that the workmen were protected from the inmates, and that’s what they did.

  The week before the riot started, six inmates were temporarily transferred from maximum to medium security. This was necessitated, as the warden would explain later, by court order. A prisoner had petitioned the State Supreme Court about over-crowding in the prison, and the Supreme Court had granted a temporary injunction. There was more room in medium security, so some men were transferred in there.

  Unfortunately, due to a messup in the paperwork, which happens in any organization, some more than others, a few of the names got mixed up. Some men got transferred who shouldn’t have been. They were men who, by the nature of their crimes and their violent, psychotic personalities, had to be locked up all the time. These men were the ones who got together in the medium-security yard, right away, their first day there, and planned it. It was one of those accidents that occasionally happens when a system is understaffed. The men hadn’t thought it out before. They couldn’t have; they had been living in segregation from the general prison community, even within their own cellblocks. But when they got thrown together with all that freedom of movement it came together.

  That’s the way it was: a series of accidents that all came together at the same time. The wrong men were given too much freedom. The prison was being remodeled, so there were tools left around. And the new glass-walled control center had just been finished, but hadn’t been tested for security.

  The prisoners who had easily broken out of the medium-security cellblock stormed the main building, the maximum-security cellblock. The guards, meanwhile, had retreated to the control center and immediately locked down the entire block from their nucleus inside, while at the same time locking themselves safely in. They were in control of the only power to open the cell doors in the entire building (which included the cells on Death Row), and the riotous inmates were outside the center, with no way in.

  It was a standoff. The guards would hold firm, the troops would come in, and the riot would be put down.

  Except that isn’t what happened.

  On their way to the maximum-security unit the inmates who were rioting had broken into the medium-security weapons depot. Someone had failed to lock it down properly, and they were able to bust their way in. They outfitted themselves with an assortment of rifles and shotguns, the most powerful weapons they could get their hands on. So that when they stormed the maximum-security building, they were armed.

  The tools that the workmen had been using when they went home that afternoon had been left outside. The prisoners found them also, and brought them into the maximum-security building as well. High-powered acetylene torches, jackhammers, pneumatic drills. Shit that can cut through or break down anything.

  As mentioned, the new state-of-the-art safety-glass walls that protected the main control center, where all the guards had barricaded themselves, and where all the electronic systems that opened and closed the cell doors were, had not been tested. Certainly not under fire. The pneumatic drills and jackhammers cracked them in under five minutes. The eight guards inside were overpowered and disarmed. And with the flick of a few switches, all the cell doors in the entire prison were thrown open.

  The inmates who had been confined went on a rampage of their own. They started tearing the place apart, ripping out plumbing, setting fires, doing anything destructive they could think of. They raided the pharmacy, took everything, every psychotropic and other kind of drug they could put their hands on. Within an hour most of the population was stoned, and with that, paranoid to the gills. For protection they made shanks, crude home-made knives that could rip a throat with the flick of a wrist.

  Most of the guards and all the administration personnel had managed to escape; with one exception. Three women, clerical/receptionist types, had been taking an illegal nap. They had sneaked off after lunch and were literally sleeping on the job, in one of the empty recreation rooms where inmates met with their families on weekends, but which sat unused during the week. (It was well-known that occasional sexual encounters took place in these rooms as well, between staff members.) The women had been disoriented when the first alarms went off, and by the time they realized what was happening, it was too late to get back to their office. The first wave of prisoners had spotted them, and nabbed them. Although the initial inclination of most of the men was to rape them all, the leaders cooled it, not out of any sympathy for the women, who in their opinions deserved it, as all women do, but because it would slow them down, and might jeopardize their success. They had to take over the prison first, then they could all fuck their brains out.

  They showed their compassion instead by locking the women up in a windowless room that had almost no ventilation.

  All the cell doors had been opened from the control center with one exception: those in the protective custody wing. In that wing were the cells that housed men who had to be totally segregated from the rest of the prison population, for their own safety. Men who were detested by everyone, whose lives were worthless in the open.

  A few of these men were child molesters, generally considered by inmates to be the lowest kind of sexual degenerate. Primarily, however, these special-custody prisoners were snitches: pr
isoners who had informed on other prisoners, either within the prison itself or earlier, at trials or probation hearings.

  Their cells could be opened only by a system of triple-locks. And the keys weren’t inside the prison proper, they were outside, in the administration areas, and other areas that no prisoner could get to. It was the only way to ensure the protection and safety of those men, because they were marked for certain death otherwise.

  When it first happened, Lone Wolf ran out of his cell, like everyone else. The first thing he wanted was to rendezvous with his three brothers, the second thing was to arm himself as heavily as he could. The third thing, if the first two were successful, was to get the hell out of the way and stay there.

  The four bikers found each other without difficulty. They were in the same unit, although kept as far apart from each other as the boundaries would allow. They joined the rush down to the weapons depot, which was already being over-run. Although very few weapons are kept inside a prison, because of the possibility of something exactly like this, there were a few weapons for emergencies, and as Death Row inmates and one-percenters, they had a certain status within the population’s pecking order, so they were able to cherry-pick from the small selection. They each took a shotgun, and Lone Wolf scored two pistols, because he fancied how he looked wearing them.

  They also took as many rounds of ammunition as were available. They wanted to make sure they had enough protection. Mostly from their jailers, but from their confederates inside as well. Prison riots can wind up like the French Revolution: the inmates, crazy to begin with, crazier with the power they’ve suddenly gotten and the drugs they’re taking, can turn on one another like a snake eating its own tail, and wipe themselves out. Once you start killing, any swinging dick is fair game.

  Thus armed, the bikers retreated to Lone Wolfs cell. There was never a question of whether or not they were going to break out into the free world; no one was going to do that. It was whether you survived or not. The trick to survive was you had to protect your ass.

  So they put their collective asses against the wall of Lone Wolfs cell and watched the passing parade.

  THE PHONE RINGS me out of a dream. I knock over the alarm clock and the telephone before getting the receiver to my mouth.

  “What?” I manage groggily.

  “Are you awake?” It’s Robertson.

  “I am now,” I tell him, annoyed.

  “How soon can you come down to my office?” There’s a tone of urgency in his voice. He’s been riding a tiger by the tail all night long.

  “What for?”

  Mary Lou props herself up on an elbow, looks at me.

  “Who is it?” she asks.

  “Is someone with you?” Robertson asks from the other end of the line.

  “None of your fucking business,” I tell him, cupping the receiver and saying his name to her.

  “What does he want?” she demands.

  “I don’t know yet.” Still cupping the receiver.

  “You don’t owe him anything,” she says fiercely. “It’s the other way around.”

  “I’ll remind him of that when I see him,” I reassure her.

  “When are you seeing him?” Now she’s alarmed; at least concerned. Robertson’s been nothing but bad news for us for a long time now.

  “Now, he says.”

  I uncup the receiver.

  “Why don’t you just tell me over the telephone?” I ask him.

  “Because it’s too damn complicated,” he says. “And there’s other people involved. It’s an emergency, Will. You’ve got an interest in it. We all do.”

  The urgency in his voice is getting shriller. “The governor requested you. Personally.”

  “An hour,” I tell him. “This better be good.”

  “Have you been watching TV?”

  “Last night.”

  “It’s as bad as Attica was,” he says. “Maybe worse.”

  “An hour,” I say. “I’ll be there.” An afterthought comes to me.

  “One thing.”

  “What’s that?” he asks suspiciously.

  “Don’t have Moseby around. I don’t want to see his lying face.”

  I can feel his reaction over the line, but he maintains his cool. “Your call, Will. If that’s what you want, fine by me. He isn’t germane anyway.”

  Mary Lou makes a grab at my ass as I climb out of bed.

  “Keep it warm for me,” I say.

  “That’s never a problem,” she says. “How long are you going to be?”

  “I don’t know. Sounds like they’re picking brains. It’s my daughter’s vacation with me,” I remind her. “Only two more days. Nothing’s going to mess that up.”

  I GO UP TO Robertson’s office me back way, dodging the reporters who have congregated on the front steps. The media circus is always the worst part of these things; they won’t let situations work themselves out, they have to fan the flames until it’s a major conflagration so they’ll be able to fill thirty minutes of airtime.

  Robertson’s waiting for me in his office, alone. I’m surprised; I thought it would be jammed.

  “Thanks for coming,” he offers. “I really appreciate it. Others will, too.”

  “Ask not what your country can do for you, et cetera,” I tell him modestly.

  “Let’s let bygones be bygones. Is that possible?”

  “Are you shitting me?” Where does he get the cojones to even put that to me? For that I’m missing much-needed sleep, entwined in the bosom of my amour? “That’s too easy, Johnnie. It implies it’s over and it isn’t; not for me, not for them.” Pissant son of a bitch—now that his back’s up against the wall he wants to be buddy-buddy with me again, like nothing’s happened. He can’t have his cake and eat it, too. Not with this puppy.

  He slumps in his chair. “Can’t anyone give me a break?” he asks.

  “You’re talking to the wrong person,” I tell him. “You ought to know that.”

  “I thought I’d give it a try.” He throws it up lamely, waiting for me to block it back in his face.

  “Give it a rest is what you ought to give it.”

  “Yeh. Okay. What the hey, I had to take the shot.”

  He looks like shit. No sleep, no shave, no shower. He pours coffee for both of us. I’ve been down that road, using Taster’s Choice in lieu of amphetamines; he’ll have need of those, too, before this is over.

  His secretary buzzes him on the squawk box.

  “Warden Gates is on his way up, sir.”

  “Send him in as soon as he arrives.”

  “And the governor telephoned from his car. He’ll be here in less than five minutes.”

  That gets my attention. I sit up, sip my java. At least I look presentable, although I don’t feel it. I stood under the cold shower for five minutes and I’m still tired. Mary Lou took a sick day, she’ll take Claudia to the park, until I can catch up with them. It’s the first time my two women’ll be together alone. I hope it works.

  Robertson freshens his coffee, scarfs half a Winchell’s jelly-filled in one bite. Bad stuff—if you’ve got to eat that crap you should stick to the plains or powders.

  I feel like I’ve been set up. This is no accident, the governor and the warden coming while I’m here. The three of them have some load to drop on me. It makes me nervous.

  “Why don’t I come back after you and the brass have finished your business?” I suggest, rising out of my chair. “I’ll take a walk around the block.”

  “Better you should stick around,” Robertson says. “We might have something of interest to you.”

  Like what? My guys are dead, killed in the first wave of casualties, he wants to see my reaction face-to-face? Or conversely: they’re the ringleaders, when this is over (and it will be over, one way or the other) they’ll be summarily executed?

  Why have I been singled out for this appearance before the royal court? There are eight hundred men inside that lockup, where are their lawyers? Why do I h
ave to be signally honored for this bullshit?

  I cram a jelly-filled into my mouth, refill my cup.

  Robertson’s secretary ushers Gates in without announcing him. “No one else except the governor,” Robertson instructs her.

  The warden pours himself some coffee without asking. He’s beat, but he’s taken the time to clean up. He wants to look presentable, show the world he’s not a gorilla. He’s going to be facing reporters for days; the national papers and networks have already sent out correspondents and film crews. Those that aren’t hanging out by the statehouse steps are camped out in front of the prison. I watched the start of the “Today” show this morning, the riot was the first news item out of the box.

  “’Morning, Mr. Alexander,” the warden says, cordially enough, considering the circumstances, “thanks for coming.” He extends his hand. We shake. His hand is dry; he’s under control. That’s comforting to know.

  “What’s the deal?” I ask Robertson, irritated. “If you’re cooking something up I’d like to know. I don’t feed at the public trough, I am not compelled to be here.”

  “We might have need of your special skills,” Robertson says. “Nothing devious, believe me.”

  A premonition envelops me. I sink back in my chair. Whenever someone says ‘believe me’ or ‘trust me’ I immediately look over my shoulder, although I can’t see what harm can come from talking to them. Yet.

  The door opens. The governor comes in, accompanied by one aide, a blonde-on-blonde woman, severe in look and dress, but attractive. You never see a politician with an unattractive woman unless it’s his wife. Although I’m sure he’s been up all night like the others, he appears to be completely fresh. He’s dressed in a polo shirt, khakis, and the requisite cowboy boots, for all the world looking like he’s on his way to his son’s soccer game.