On the Yard

by Malcolm Braly

  He got up after she was asleep and by the light of a match looked through her purse. She had a little money, two fifty-dollar American Express travelers’ checks, and a Bank-Americard. Her name was Mildred Allain and she lived at 250 Cochilla Street in Chico, California. She carried a membership card in a teachers’ association, and back to back in a plastic envelope were two photos of a younger woman with four children.

  Chilly replaced the wallet, and dressed. He turned to take a last look at Margaret-Mildred. She lay solidly where he had left her, and now that the lipstick was worn from her small mouth, her face appeared round and featureless like a white balloon, shadowed only by the foreshortened ellipses of her lashes against her cheeks. He remembered her saying, just as he moved to mount her, “This is awful ... just awful.” Then she had groaned deep in her throat.

  He saw her once more, briefly, as he was crossing the lobby the next day. She was looking at the magazines racked on the counter of the cigar stand, and there was something in her posture that suggested to Chilly she had seen him first and turned away to avoid an encounter.

  The days that followed never seemed quite real, they had the feel of holiday as if they stood apart in bold red against the working calendar of his life. Everything he attempted with his gun succeeded but the size of the scores he could attempt were sharply limited by the condition that he was working alone. Trying to balance the safety factor between a number of small stings and one large sting was a complex exercise in probability, but he concluded that the greatest danger lay in repeated exposures to the bitch of chance, and he started to look for partners.

  Chilly realized that the underworld, as it is imagined by newspapers, didn’t exist in San Francisco, but there was a loosely cohesive and always shifting sub-world which included a small manpower pool, fed by a trickle of youngsters outgrowing the teen gangs, and another trickle of older men out on parole. Chilly tended to like and trust men who had solid reputations behind the walls, those who were known as good people, and it was two such men that he approached. They knew Chilly in the same way he knew them and if they had any hesitation it generated from the half formed apprehension that Chilly might find it too easy to kill. Not in heat or panic, but as the most logical way to prevent any future identifications. Robbery, at best, was a desperate measure, attractive only to men who had no significant talent for anything else, whose energies, appetites, and ambition still demanded that life show them some chance, some opening no matter how slender, through which they might enlarge themselves. But murder committed during a robbery was also suicide. They were satisfied Chilly was cool enough; in fact, they were afraid he might be too cool, but he persuaded them that in spite of his youth and lack of major experience he knew what he was doing, that he was capable of leading them, and if he ever played the fool or the nut he did it late at night, locked in his own room under the covers.

  The robbery—they hit a high-class night club on the Peninsula—went off with a dreamlike smoothness, each man handling his job with the resolution and the desperate bravery of a commando team taking an objective deep in enemy territory, and it wasn’t until afterwards that the hidden blueprint of failure first suggested itself.

  They took in excess of twenty-seven thousand dollars, and Chilly expected they would sit on the money as agreed, but the other two men, now that the money was a splendid reality, couldn’t find any way they could trust him or each other not to rob the stash while it was cooling. This was what they said, but their real feeling was that they had won this money by exposing themselves to great danger, had passed the trial of a hero, and they didn’t want to postpone the festival. If they hid the money, they tarnished their exploit with sneakiness, or they turned it into a business transaction, and either transformation outraged their hunger for glory. They refused.

  It was a tense moment. The large pile of bills spilled on the white bedspread. His two partners were on one side, Chilly on the other. All of them armed. Their tensions still keyed high.

  “We agreed to wait,” Chilly said formally.

  The other two shifted closer together, intensifying the division. Raquel, the oldest and also the smallest, said, “There’s no reason to wait now. We got away clean.” Clear in his voice was a note of pleading. He was asking Chilly not to make trouble.

  “There’s still every reason to wait that there was when we decided that’s how we’d play it. Nothing’s changed.”

  Caterpillar Collins, a heavy-set young man, a year older than Chilly, thrust his large face forward, a device that had served him well through the years he was earning the nickname Caterpillar—after the tractor in tribute to his abnormal strength. He was fond of saying, “They don’t call me Caterpillar cause I’m round and fuzzy.”

  Now he said, “Fuck waiting.” His jaw out. The gesture was childish, but his light blue eyes were not simple.

  “We’ve all spent too much time waiting,” Raquel added.

  “Yeah,” Caterpillar agreed harshly. “Every time I turn around someone’s telling me to wait. Now you, Chilly. I say, I’m not waiting. I want my end.”

  Raquel took a half-step forward, seeming to plane the fist of one hand into the palm of the other—the effect was conciliatory, without menace, his hands busy with each other were not studying his gun.

  “That’s about it, Chilly,” he said. “I know you want to argue, but there’s nothing but aggravation in that. We have a right.” He reached down and picked up a bundle of bills much as he might take a bone from in front of a dangerous dog. He straightened up slowly, cautiously, then when Chilly didn’t move he suddenly smiled and tossed the bundle to Caterpillar. “We’ll take nine big ones apiece and leave you the overlay.” He picked up another bundle. “For expenses.”

  Chilly walked to a chair and sat down. He crossed his legs and lit a cigarette. If they had been somewhere reason-ably isolated, he would have tried to kill them. As it was he smoked calmly, watching them going ahead with the division of the money. He noted a swollen look of foolishness coming into both their faces. They began to talk too loud, to swagger, their eyes grew bright.

  Early the next day Chilly moved from the hotel into an apartment in a quiet section of town. If he had been asked to guess which of his two partners might split on him he would have without hesitation named Caterpillar. He could imagine the spoor of big bills Caterpillar would lay through the bars of the tenderloin. It would only be a matter of time before he attracted the interest of the police through their informers. And while this was precisely what Caterpillar did he somehow managed to elude the percentages.

  Raquel fell into a harsher trap. He had been chippying with heavy even before Chilly contacted him, and when his money grew long he was able to make several large buys and become properly hooked. When the barb was well set, one of his suppliers gave him up to the police as part of a long-term reciprocal agreement, and Raquel, in turn, after three days without his stuff gave up Caterpillar and Chilly in exchange for a fix and a promise of a county jail sentence. The police, pleased to have captured major game on a routine trapline, put out APB’s on Caterpillar and Chilly. They had Caterpillar in days, and Chilly a month later.

  When Chilly stepped into the city prison, Caterpillar came running up to him as if he had completely forgotten how they had parted. “Raquel put us both in the shitter, man,” he said. “He was strung out. Up tight, up tight. They hung him out to dry and he puked us both up.” Caterpillar’s face twisted like a child on the verge of tears. He spun and hit the metal wall, causing it to boom dully. Then he stood quietly staring at his fist, already beginning to swell. “I thought he was good people.”

  “So did I,” Chilly said.

  Though both Chilly and Caterpillar refused to cop out, they were routinely convicted through Raquel’s testimony, who had been tantalized into continuing cooperation with irregular trips to the county hospital for what was logged as “sedation.” Since this was Chilly’s third conviction, and the holding charge was technically a “heinous” c
rime, the judge, a hanging judge with fixed opinions as to the possibility of rehabilitating multiple robbers, applied the habitual criminal statute in spite of Chilly’s age and hit him with the bitch to run consecutive with his term for robbery.

  “Jesus,” Caterpillar said later in an awed tone, “they killed you.”

  “That’s what they’re supposed to do,” Chilly said.

  Chilly was still awake at the twelve o’clock count, and he was still awake an hour later when the boy slid from the top bunk to use the toilet. Then he began to undress in a half-crouch. He stripped to his shorts and folded his clothes on the foot of his bed. Chilly was aware of him moving inches away, the white shorts muted to blue in the dim light, the darker flesh blending into the shadows leaving only its scent, the acrid scent one carries away from county jails where the infrequent showers are lubricated with harsh brown laundry soap. The taut springs of the upper bunk strained as the boy vaulted into it. The webbing sagged, gathered and sagged again as he turned, like a dog settling phantom grass, seeking comfort and sleep.

  Chilly was still awake at the two o’clock count, but by four he was also asleep.

  As soon as he arrived at work the next morning, he asked Lieutenant Olson for a pass to the psych department.

  “You going to get your cap unsnapped, hotshot?”

  “Do you think I need it?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not paid to think about things like that.”

  “It would be interesting to determine just what it is you are paid for.”

  Olson was writing out the pass, his pen paused and he looked up coolly. “You push, Oberholster. Do you know that?” When Chilly didn’t answer, he signed his name and held the pass out. “Maybe they’ll be able to tell you why in the psych department.” There was a quality to his smile that Chilly didn’t understand.

  Fat Abbott had a private office, set off from the general clerical pool with plywood panels. He was seated sideways at his desk typing ducats when Chilly came through the door. He immediately held up a heavy palm.

  “I know, I know ...”

  Chilly sat down in a metal folding chair beside the desk. “What happened then?”

  “The captain’s office picked up the hold. They picked up ten. Yours was one of them.”

  “Can you fix it?”

  “They say they need the room.”

  “Shit.”

  Abbott settled back in his padded swivel chair folding his heavy arms over his wide chest. His eyes were all surface, smooth and bright as tan plastic. “I don’t know. They’re always crying for cells, and asking for a review of the psych holds, but this is the first time they’ve just jumped bogart and snatched them. The doc was hot enough to fuck, but three of the ten were my action so he couldn’t say too much.”

  “Can you do anything?”

  “You’d do better to hit on Mendoza, the assignment loot’s clerk. He might be able to get your cell empty, and with it empty I could ease the hold back on. But I can’t move nobody —I don’t have that kind of juice.”

  “That’s the kind of juice I pay for.”

  Fat Abbott opened the bottom desk drawer and removed a carton of cigarettes. He held them towards Chilly.

  “What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “Rub it in your chest.”

  “Put it away.”

  Fat Abbott replaced the carton and swiveled back to face Chilly. He smiled. “That kid in your cell’s got a jacket.”

  “What kind of jacket?”

  “A freak jacket. He’s a righteous little freak. I wondered what kind of freight they’d loaded you with, so I eased into the record room this morning to take a look. He was picked up in drag and they were booking him into the woman’s wing of the county jail before they snapped. Before that he was a broad in Tracy.”

  “I heard that.”

  “It’s straight. A righteous little drag queen.” Fat Abbott smiled again and hugged his chest. “If I were you I wouldn’t be in no hurry to get that out of my cell.”

  “That’s you, Fat.”

  Abbott studied Chilly for a moment, then said, “You don’t have no way to take up slack, do you?”

  “You been reading my jacket too?”

  “They call you a psychopathic personality.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “I don’t know, but you’ve got lots of company. They spread that label around.”

  “Then I don’t feel so bad.”

  Abbott laughed. “It’s hard to picture you feeling anything.”

  “You’re not a psych, are you, Fat? Does it rub off, working around here?”

  “Chilly, you begin with the idea everyone’s simple. Sometime that could be a mistake.”

  “Well, Fat, you might say I’ve made my mistakes. I’m going to sound on Mendoza. If he can move for me, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile our deal stands against future favors. We’ll both be around awhile.”

  Fat Abbott, who was doing life himself, nodded. “That’s a lock. Okay, let’s leave it there for now. There’s a chance the classification committee or the doc himself will order the kid into seg to keep those nuts out there on the big yard from killing each other over her. When they learn that ain’t your action, there’s going to be a lot of suckers hitting and hitting hard. I wouldn’t want to be in the middle of it.”

  “If he’s got a jacket that heavy, I wonder why they let him on the big yard at all?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they’re trying something new. Maybe she just slipped by them. She can’t last. With your protection she might get by. That wouldn’t stop no talk, but it would cancel a whole lot of action.”

  Chilly stood up, slapping the desk as he rose. “No thanks. I have enough trouble trying to keep someone from putting a shank in Society Red. I don’t need another pet. I’ll see you on the yard.”

  “Okay, Chilly.”

  The cell loot’s clerk wouldn’t touch Chilly’s work. Mendoza was a tall elegant Mexican with graying hair and distant black eyes. He carried himself with extreme coolness and the natural remoteness of his handsome face aided the illusion of poise. He communicated almost exclusively in the set phrases of the hipster, and it was a while before one realized Mendoza was a fool, but when the realization came it was with the force of revelation. Seemingly in an instant, like the shift of an optical illusion, his air of elegance deteriorated into dumb farce.

  “En gee,” Mendoza said, making a cooling out gesture off to his side, like a bishop blessing a midget, “no fucking good. The loot came down on all my action. You dig? If I move I’m dead.”

  Chilly said, “It’s worth ten boxes to me.”

  “Not for no hundred boxes. You can’t smoke on the shelf. I’m sloughed. You dig?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Who knows?” Mendoza’s hand moved at his side again, this time to suggest the deviousness of official mentality. “They get hot on one thing. Next week they’re in a new bag.”

  “When you can move,” Chilly said impatiently, “get in touch with me. This is something I want done.”

  Mendoza blinked solemnly. “Easy over, Chilly. I dig.”

  Chilly turned and walked away. He passed through the garden on the way to his own office, noting that the fountain in the center was plugged again and the standing water turning stagnant. A man from the landscape gardening crew knelt before a rose bush, wrapping the trunk in burlap, and another pushed a lawn mower as if it weighed five hundred pounds. Lieutenant Olson was still at his desk, going through the monthly requisition from the outside warehouse. He took in Chilly’s set face and smiled down at the surface of his desk.

  “Get your business taken care of, hotshot?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good, now maybe you’ve got time to take care of mine.” He threw the requisition over where Chilly could reach it. “How much did you pad it this month?”

  Chilly, who never padded the requisition, said, “No more than usual.”

  “Submit i
t then.” Olson stood up. “I’ll be out at the snack bar.”

  “Okay, Loot.”

  “And, Chilly—don’t take everything so grim. None of us get exactly what we want.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  Chilly worked on through lunch, and then, detailing the porter to answer the phone, he went up to the gym. He paused briefly on the last landing to look out over the bay and then down into the big yard where the domino tables formed hubs of activity like booths at a fair. He stepped into the gym and the tone of the area was immediately set by the sound of showers and the staccato rattle of a ping-pong ball, counterpointed by the deeper thump of a handball. Caterpillar wasn’t on duty in the supply cage, and Chilly had nothing to say to him to make it worth finding him. He stood for a moment looking into the boxing section. In the raised ring a couple of lackluster welters circled and pecked at each other. Another man worked the heavy bag, slapping at it like a bear.

  Chilly heard a distant surge of music and turned to walk through the weight-lifting section. A single iron freak was making dead lifts of what looked close to a thousand pounds. The veins stood out at his temples like blue rubber tubes.

  “Hi, Chilly,” he said, smiling sweetly.

  Chilly nodded and passed on. At the end of the weight-lifting section an iron door led on to a primitive theater where movies were shown as a part of the recreation program. Chilly heaved at the door. It opened to the side in tracks and was difficult for one man to handle. He managed to crack it a foot, slip inside, and close it after him. A group of fifty or sixty men sat in the semi-darkness watching a Standard Oil travelogue. Most of them were seated on metal folding chairs, but a few, the gym regulars, had homemade easy chairs, pieced together out of scrap wood, cotton waste, and old blankets. One of these chairs was understood to belong to Chilly, and as he approached, the man who had been sitting in it stood up quickly and moved to the side.

  “Any good?” Chilly asked.

  “No, same old crap.”

  The same films were rotated over and over again, but Chilly didn’t tire of them. Repetition couldn’t make the exotic landscapes any less strange, because the richness of all their possible realities was only implied and at each reviewing subject to fresh interpretation. The present sequences had been filmed in Equatorial Africa. On the screen tribesmen were dancing beneath huge straw hats—crouching into a deep squat so the great brims trailed in the dust, they whirled and whirled like a cluster of giant lilies broken loose to toss and spin on the current of a stream. Then the scene shifted to another group dance where they pranced in a long line, holding spears, led by a man in a devil mask. Their faces were blank, hypnotized, streaked with dust and sweat.