You Got Nothing Coming

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  Wondering when I would be able to breathe.

  Wondering if I was having a heart attack.

  When the violent tremors subsided a bit, I opened my overnight bag and pulled out my shaving kit, where my small pharmacy was located. My hands shook so bad that to get the childproof cap off the Xanax bottle I had to use my teeth.

  Got two blue pills under my tongue. Dr. Shekelman said they work faster if you let them dissolve under the tongue.

  Eventually I went to the living room phone.

  I tried to remember the telephone number for one of my A.A. sponsors. The only number that came to mind was Luther's.

  He picked up after three rings.

  "Jimmy, it's six in the morning— are you drunk?"

  I told him what had happened.

  I don't remember much of the conversation except Luther telling me to call 911. The receiver became too heavy to hold. My eyelids too heavy to keep open. I hung up after telling Luther that I would call the police.

  I woke almost two hours later. Kept my eyes closed. Praying that when I opened them I would be home, safe in my bed in Danville. Delivered intact from this horrible nightmare.

  When I opened my eyes, my pants and shirt were still soaked in blood.

  The Monster was still sprawled bare-chested on his back. The cowboy belt still wrapped tight around his broken neck.

  Not a nightmare. Oh dear God in heaven, please no, no, no, no!

  I had to get the blood off. I was soaked in it. The copper taste filled my mouth.

  Moving like a zombie, I started the Jacuzzi, climbed in, and the water soon bubbled red. I put on fresh clothes and called 911. The police dispatcher kept me on the line, asking questions until the police arrived. I told her everything that had happened.

  The police arrived, took one look at the Monster's bloody and battered face, the cowboy noose around his neck, and put handcuffs on me. Said they were taking me to the hospital. First we just had to make a short stop at the police station.

  Where I waived my rights. Waived my right to remain silent and then waived my right to have an attorney present. I knew that once the detectives heard the whole story, once I told them all about the Monster, once I explained it all, they would understand. They would take the cuffs off and let me go. I didn't need a lawyer.

  They didn't understand.

  They arrested me for murder.

  They initially booked me on charges of "open murder," later amending the charges to "murder in the first degree," with the "use of a deadly weapon." A capital offense. Punishable by lethal injection.

  I used my phone call to reach Freddy Shapiro in New York. My old college friend and attorney said he would be on the next plane. The detectives then drove me in handcuffs to the hospital.

  Then to the jail. To Suicide Watch Cell No. 3.

  I never did get my free pull on the Megabucks machine.

  * * *

  Shapiro and I met in the small conference room the jail provided for attorney visits. The walls were thick glass, and two deputies stood guard outside the door. Attorneys, unlike other visitors, received "contact" visits. They didn't have to talk to their clients separated by a Plexiglas partition and shouting through a defective wall phone.

  A small man lost in a calculatedly cheap suit, Freddy Shapiro still affected what he thought of as the sixties Radical Lawyer Look: two stringy shoulder-length curtains of gray hair descending from both sides of an otherwise bald pate.

  Freddy had been very busy, reviewing the "discovery"— the evidence provided by the district attorney— and putting together my defense. He had also hired a private investigator to check Dwayne Hassleman's background. Freddy opened a folder that grew thicker by the hour.

  "Jimmy, nothing about this guy Hassleman checks out. Nothing he told you anyway. He was never married. He has no ex-wife or kids back in New York. We couldn't even find any record of him ever attending Saint John's in Brooklyn or New York University. Definitely no military service. No employment history that we could find unless you count selling cocaine in Oakland. Apparently he likes to go after people with knives— he was arrested a few years ago for attacking a hotel maid with a knife. She dropped charges."

  Nothing about the Monster could surprise me any longer.

  "Freddy, what about getting me bail?"

  "I'm working on it— they don't have to grant bail in a capital case. But all that's about to change. So are these bogus 'murder' charges. The D.A. likes to overcharge and then plea-bargain down from that. Sort of like charging someone with dumping nuclear waste and ending up fining them twenty-five bucks for littering a candy bar wrapper. I've got a meeting with the judge and the D.A. later today. I'll be presenting them with a dramatically different version of events and evidence than the one the D.A. is using to bargain with. The autopsy report shows this Hassleman was a walking narcotic salad: morphine, cocaine, codeine, barbiturates, methamphetamines. The Excelsior desk clerk says he was acting crazy that night, claiming he was mugged and insisting the hotel compensate him for injuries. When the assistant hotel manager refused to give him any money, he miraculously recovered and demanded a comped trip to a whorehouse. Talk about chutzpah! Nice people you like to hang out with, Jimmy. I'll bet you've already befriended all the psychopaths in jail."

  "Freddy, could you possibly refrain from the editorial comments— I already know I have a seriously flawed character. Look, I'm in deep shit here."

  Freddy waved an impatient hand in the air, as if to swat away my concerns.

  "Nah, you'll be fine. Not to worry. I'm also going to play your phone answering machine tape for them— Hassleman raving and ranting."

  "Which one?"

  Freddy chuckled and read from the folder.

  "Oh, I think the one from his album— Dwayne Hassleman's greatest psycho outbursts. The song begins with… let me see… 'This is war, cocksucker, and you are a dead man!' "

  "Freddy, why haven't they dropped the murder charges yet?"

  "The D.A. says he has two eyewitnesses, the hospital security guards, ready to testify that you threatened to kill Hassleman just hours before you killed him. Bad timing on your part, Jimmy. Also that you smelled like a brewery and almost smashed in the hospital doors."

  "Yeah, but, Freddy, I—"

  "Jimmy, I'm on your side, remember? I'm just telling you what they've got. It's not in the discovery yet, but based on what you told me I suspect the D.A. also has a few soccer moms in the wings. Who will say that you threatened to break this guy's neck. Hmm… now, that was an unfortunate remark. Why couldn't you just shoot him? It would look better— less blood too. Juries don't like looking at pictures with bloody victims. And cowboy belt neckties. Makes them want to punish the defendant."

  The cop rapped on the glass, signaling today's meeting was over.

  "Freddy, can't you at least get me out of this suicide watch cell? It's truly making me suicidal."

  "Just hang in there a few more days. All this will be resolved. The D.A. really does not want to go to trial."

  The cop took me to a small holding cell. I stripped, which was simple— just pulled the white paper suit over my head. I spread cheeks, coughed, and opened my mouth. Showed the cop the back of my hands, the soles of my feet, and behind my ears.

  What really terrified me was just how familiar this humiliating ritual was starting to become. My life was becoming a living nightmare.

  Then things got worse.

  Epilogue

  In the days following my Parole Board denial I am in a daze, a thick fog in which I stumble and then sleep. In my still private cell I sleep around the clock.

  The prison nights are the worst. The nights are when my personal demons like to come trampling into my dreams. I know all their names now— Fear, Loneliness, Despair, and Death, my very own Four Horsemen. I have even learned to distinguish the hoofbeats so I can mentally prepare for the arrival of any particular horseman.

  They especially like to ride in all at once. They somehow
know that they are most powerful, most fearsome in a herd, thundering through the landscape of my nightmares of the Monster.

  I trudge through the days like a blind man wading through hip-deep mud. I am indifferent to Kansas and the Car's loud fantasies about exacting some payback from Stanger and the Dirt.

  I am bone weary, muddy, sluggish, buried deep beneath a dark mountain.

  It is quiet here.

  It is quiet here, down in the abyss.

  * * *

  Belinda died today.

  C.O. Fallon took the dead cat away in a black plastic garbage bag. He promised Chico he wouldn't just toss it in a Dumpster somewhere. Belinda was grandfathered— no more cats.

  Then Chico's day got worse.

  He received another denial from the Pardons Board. His sentence is Life Without, and the Pardons Board is going to make sure it stays Without.

  Now Chico's looking for a chess game to get his mind off his troubles. And listening to his problems has suddenly lifted me at least partially out of my own abyss of self-pity. There's nothing like the incomparable misery of a friend to put one's own concerns into perspective.

  So I have a few more years to do. So what? It's not like I had any grand plans for the new millennium other than becoming a dot-com billionaire. Chico will live out the rest of his life here. He will die here. Alone.

  I shake off some more of the mud from the abyss.

  Chico's chess game is also getting competitive. This time, playing black, I unveil the Hyperaccelerated Dragon Variation— pushing a pawn to G6 on my second move, hoping to sucker him into advancing in the center.

  "I see you laying in the cut, O.G."

  "Seeing and doing something about it are worlds apart."

  We're both sitting, lotus style, on Chico's bunk, Saint Mary's Hospice blankets sheltering our butts from the harsh slab of metal. It's over 110 degrees out in the yard, only slightly less in the cells. The cinder block walls are literally sweating.

  "Yogee, how 'bout I do something about your sideways-talking mouth? Oh, excuse me, Mr. M.B.A. Convict, permit me to rephrase that wolf ticket— how about I respond in an optimal manner relative to your punk-ass pawn play?"

  "I'm resonating. Come on wid it— I'm down wid dat, my little Hispanic meat puppet!"

  We pass a pleasant evening pushing pawns and insulting each other. Chico temporarily forgets about the aching vacancy in his upper bunk. My own mud creature is out of the abyss and climbing the banks of a river in purgatory. The creature reaches the top of the bank, shakes off the remaining mud, and stands tall and clean for the first time since my Parole Board results.

  Kansas pounds on the cell door, then comes in.

  "Aiight, O Fucking Gee! Welcome back to the land of the living! Listen up, dawgs— the Shit's Jumping Off tomorrow, so you might want to stay close to your houses, unless you want to get up in the mix. Y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'? Punk-ass Stanger and some fucking Dirtboys are due some getback."

  We tell Kansas we're down wid dat and he moves on to another cell.

  Chico looks up from another untenable chess position.

  "O.G., the only thing jumping off tomorrow is a lockdown. Probably going to be a shakedown, so if there's anything in your house, you might want to get rid of it tonight."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean Kansas opened his big mouth to too many cons. The Shit Jumps Off on some C.O.— even Stanger— and they'll have us in a lockdown for months, maybe years. Get everybody crossed out. Well, some of us don't like the idea of being put in a cross. Maybe somebody dropped a dime."

  "Chico— some of us?"

  Chico took a deep breath and then concentrated on rolling a supertight cigarette from a can of Bugler. Rolled it slowly, as to buy time to resolve some intensely private conversation in his head.

  "Jimmy, you're still a fish, although you've learned to talk some righteous shit and I love you like a brother. And I trust you, so listen: Lifers have a lot to lose— maybe even the most to lose. When all you have is time, when you got nothing coming, then you don't want to do hard time. You don't want any shit jumping off. And I know you understand what keeping something 'on the D.L.' means, so I won't insult you with the usual know what I'm sayin' nonsense."

  "Yes I do. And I will." I brought my rook down across the board. "Now— do you understand the meaning of checkmate?"

  "Shit! This losing is developing into an annoying trend."

  "Chico, this goes way beyond trend. It's practically a lifestyle."

  "How 'bout I just bitch-slap you and then see how you style?"

  And we laughed and joked and wolfed away the day.

  It's good to have a brother in prison.

  * * *

  On the morning Kansas thought he would coax some shit into jumping, the Dirt have a different thought. I'm doing my laps, kicking dirt, and counting my steps when sirens begin to shriek and the loudspeakers crackle.

  "EMERGENCY COUNT! RETURN TO YOUR CELLS AND LOCK IT DOWN!"

  Black-clad Dirtboys stand with rifles and shotguns on all the roofs to provide encouragement if necessary. Despite today's scorching desert sun, they are in full battle regalia, including bulky black vests and helmets.

  The "emergency count" is a pretext for getting everyone locked down so the Dirt can conduct an Inmate Health and Welfare Inspection. The vibrations from Chico's dropped dime are reverberating throughout the yard, and I can't say I blame my friend.

  Like Eloi to the Morlock slaughter, we stream in from every hot and dusty corner of the yard. When we are all massed in front of cellblock 4, the Bubblecop inside hits the switch and the double steel slider doors hiss open.

  Instead of C.O. Fallon in the pod, this is someone we have never seen before. A smooth-faced rookie— very young and very nervous.

  In minutes we are all in our houses, locked down.

  From my cell window I can see half the cells across the hall, most of them with the pissed-off faces of convicts at the windows. This lockdown is interfering with the morning routines of the Wood Pile and the Yard Rats.

  The new Bubblecop hits the button and the huge crash gates rumble open. Clutching his clipboard like it's a life preserver, he walks quickly down our corridor, pausing briefly before each cell window to conduct his "emergency count."

  When Bubblecop approaches the cells, the faces at the windows disappear as convicts drop to the floor to start shouting and barking under the doors. Then they innocently pop up again, grinning before the cell windows. Convict jack-in-the-box. This is payback for the lockdown. The idea is to screw up the cop's count, make him start all over. Or at least get him totally pissed off.

  That's part of our job description.

  "Hey, See-Oh! See-Oh! Why you got to lock a motherfucker down? Ain't nothing going down up in here." The Bone's face is at the window. Then gone. Replaced now by his cellie Big Bird's gray beard.

  The young Bubblecop continues down the corridor, trying to count heads without making eye contact. The dawgs pick up the scent of his fear and play off it.

  Skell hissing under his door.

  "Hey, rookie! Why don't you bring that pretty little mouth of yours over here? And don't try to tell us you don't smoke that brand!"