by Aric Davis
“That’s too out-there for me right now,” said Betty. “I’ve got a delusional boyfriend who wants to get married and join the navy, we’re going to go try and have a civilized conversation with a guy who may have murdered one of your family members, and last but not least, there’s Nickel.”
“In this order,” said June. “Meet Duke, dump Jake, see what happens with Nickel. We’re fucking sixteen, Betty. The only important thing we need to do with a boy is not get pregnant. Everything else is just passing the time.” June smiled broadly at Betty. “OK, now I sound like you. That should have been a Betty Martinez original right there, and I just tried to steal it before you could even say it.”
“Very funny,” said Betty, “but unfortunately, I think you’re right. It sounded more annoying coming out of your mouth, though.”
“I was thinking the same thing, only in reverse.”
“Ugh,” grunted Betty. “Now I’m even annoying to myself.”
“Just let it go. We still don’t know exactly what we want to ask Duke, so let’s worry more about that and less about the trivial stuff.”
“If you were having boy trouble I wouldn’t call it trivial.”
“If I was having boy trouble you’d be holding a parade,” said June. “Let’s just be ready for this. I’m superscared to meet Duke in person, even with guards there, and I think it’s only going to get worse the closer we get.”
“June, all you need to do is sit there and look at Duke, and I’ll ask the questions. He’s going to be so freaked out that someone from Mandy’s family is there, someone who happens to be her spitting image, that I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of venom left in him.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Though neither Betty nor June wanted to discuss it further, they were both terrified as Betty pulled off the highway to finish the trip to Jackson State Penitentiary. The iPod was off now, and both girls had tucked their legitimate licenses into the glove box, replaced in their wallets by the fake ones Nickel had given them. Betty pulled past the prison’s main entrance and then turned next to a sign that said “Visitors.” As she spun the wheel she said, “From here on in, no more talking about it.” June nodded. They were in someone else’s world now, and the razor wire–topped fences and the still-distant cement and brick buildings were all the proof of that they needed.
Betty pulled up to a gate in the middle of the road, and then waited as it opened up. There was a sign next to the road that said “5 Miles an Hour, Strictly Enforced” and then one next to it that said “All Guards in This Area Are Armed.” June looked like she wanted to say something, but snapped her mouth closed without a word as Betty pulled up to a checkpoint station between the fences and rolled down a window. Betty set a notebook on her lap with Duke’s info on it, and when the friendly-looking man in the small building asked who they had come to see, Betty replied, “Duke Barnes.”
The man at the checkpoint nodded, neither interested nor impressed with their choice of inmate, and then asked them for their IDs. Feeling trepidation like nothing she had experienced in her life, Betty took June’s wavering fake, stacked it atop her own and handed them to the man. He took the licenses, copied information from them, and handed them back through the open window. Betty handed June her ID and then stuffed her own in her wallet. It was hard to control her breathing, but so far things were going as well as they could.
“You know your license?” the guard asked.
Betty blinked in response, her heart feeling like it was about to blast out of her chest. “What about it? You need to see it again?”
The man blinked at her now, then smiled. “Oh. No. I mean, do you know your car’s license number?”
“Oh!” A manic laugh escaped her. “Um. Do I?”
Now the man laughed. “Well, I don’t know. How about this: just pull up so I can write down your plate number, and I’ll give you a wave when I’m all set.”
“Great!” God, calm down. She needed to keep it together. Everything was going OK. “I’ll go on, then.”
“Sounds like a plan,” the man said with a grin.
You’re not doing anything weird in this guy’s eyes, she assured herself. Most people must be nervous when they come here.
She took the car out of park and pulled forward. Neither she nor June spoke, and when she saw the guard wave in the sideview mirror, she put her foot on the gas and drove through an iron gate that provided the lone break in a razor wire–topped concrete wall.
“Holy shit,” said June.
“Yeah,” said Betty. “I need to calm the hell down. That was actually a good sign. I mean, with the licenses. So we just keep smiling and being polite. We’ll be inside soon.”
June said nothing in response. Betty watched her friend and the road in alternating gulps—the prison road was straight and dull, but June looked as though she were looking into the face of God.
Jackson State Penitentiary was not a tall building, but the plain concrete structure rising from the dirt carried the weight of those living inside its walls. Just knowing that it housed thousands of the state’s most-hardened cons would have made even a Chuck E. Cheese’s seem intimidating. Guards could be seen at rooftop positions, and at the center of the largest part of the prison was a large tower that would have looked like part of a capitol building had it been placed elsewhere.
Signs in front of the building indicated they had made it to the right spot for prisoner visitation, so Betty parked and she and June got out and stretched. The air was warmer than it had been at home, but there was still a bit of the bite of Michigan winter in it. Betty and June looked at the concrete building waiting for them, then looked at each other over the roof of the car. Both of them swallowed drily, then began walking to the massive front door of the building.
On their way they passed two state cops leaning on the edge of one of their cruisers, and Betty had to force herself to stop staring at them. The cops looked bored and in no particular rush to go anywhere or do anything, but to Betty they appeared as great white sharks do to a skin diver, menacing and awful in a way that only a predatory animal can. The cops took no notice of the girls as they made their way to the door, and then Betty was tugging at the handle and they were inside.
A stout woman wearing a name tag that said “Helen” was working a desk to the left of the door, and just beyond her was a metal detector staffed by a pair of guards. The guard monitoring the people coming through the line looked alert, but the other, older one charged with telling people where to put their keys and wallets as they walked through the metal detector appeared bored, and perhaps even a bit hungover. Betty had a sickening flash of all three of these people snapping to attention when the girls tried to pass through security, the cops outside yanked from their break and forced to haul the pair of them off to holding cells somewhere.
“You two visiting someone today?”
God, they’d just been standing there in the doorway. “Yes,” said June, and Betty knew instinctively that June was the one holding it together now. “We’re here to see Duke Barnes.”
June slipped her ID from her purse and slid it across the counter, and then Betty was next to her and doing the same thing, feeling all the while like she was on marionette strings. The woman took their licenses wordlessly, and then slid them both forms to be filled out with their names, addresses, and ages, along with a number of boxes to check and questions like, “Do you currently have any State or Federal Warrants?” Betty couldn’t imagine that anything good would happen to a person that checked yes on that particular box.
She and June finished the questionnaires at the same time.
“Don’t worry about filling in the prisoner number,” said Helen. “Lucky for you, Mr. Barnes usually sees at least a couple of guests a week, so I know his by heart.” Helen took their forms one after the other, scribbled a series of numbers and letters on them, stapled them to copies of their driver’s licenses, and then stuffed the two sheets into a massive foli
o labeled with the date. “Now you’re all set, ladies. Assuming there’s nothing you want to bring back to your car. They’ll call a sheriff for a knife with a blade longer than an inch or anything worse, and just about anything else will go in the trash. If you brought phones, now would be a good time to toss them back in the car.”
“No, we’re all set,” said June. “We’ve been reading over the conduct rules on the website, but thank you for telling us.”
“Well, all right then,” said Helen. “You go have yourself a nice time, or at least as nice a time as a couple of young ladies can have in a place like this.” Helen slid their IDs across the counter, the girls replaced them in their wallets, and then they were walking to the metal detector.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The pager buzzes and I grab it, then flip it over and look at the number. Paul. I take the burner purchased for this occasion out of my pocket and dial the number. I’m working quickly, so that I’ll be on the phone before I even have a chance to get nervous, and Paul answers so quickly that it actually works.
“Hey, Nickel,” says Paul. I know he’s trying to get a rise out of me by using my name, but I’m not going to let it work. We’re going to have an in-person soon, maybe even tonight, and I need to be in a good place with him.
“Hey,” I reply, all business. Get the show on the road.
“So here’s what I’m thinking,” says Paul. “You stop by the house with a bag, me and my boys toke on some smoke for the next day or two, and then maybe we work something out. Sound good?”
“Sure, I just need an address,” I say, but the truth is something else entirely. Paul and I have already been down this road—he’s had my stuff and he knows it’s good. Which gives me a sinking feeling in my gut, like maybe he’s just looking to score for a party, nothing more, but all I can do is hope that he can really come through on this.
Paul rattles off an address and I grab a notepad and pen to write it all down. When he’s done, he says, “So you can bring that by soon? I’m going to have some people over that will be able to help us both make some money, assuming this is the same green you brought by last time.”
“It will be, no problem,” I say, and I mean it. I might not be willing to negotiate on price or broker a bigger deal than he wants, but there’s no question that the product is the same. The same bale I took bud from the last time is where this bag is coming from. I mean, I don’t smoke this stuff, so if no one’s buying, it just accumulates.
“Good, I’m glad to hear it,” says Paul. “I’d hate to be let down.” He pauses, and then says, “One more thing, Nickel. How much did you bring by the last time you let me taste this shit?”
“An eighth.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” says Paul. “We’re going to need more this time. An ounce, actually. Like I said, these guys I’ve got coming over here are serious, serious dudes, and they’re going to want to taste the goods, you know?” An ounce of my pot is worth a few hundred bucks, and Paul is expecting me to give him a weekend of bliss for nothing, likely so he can show off and then never contact me again. It’s just like him using my name on the phone. He’s only doing it because he can, and I’m not exactly making a good case for why he shouldn’t.
“I can bring an ounce by later today,” I say, hating the sound of my voice, and hating myself for giving in even more. I’m acting weak, not like myself, but everything in me wants this sale to go through. Even the parts of me that hate dealing with a guy like Paul at all are insisting that I just shut up and bring him some dope.
“All right, Nickel, we’ll see you in a little bit then,” says Paul, and then the phone clicks dead. I know what he wants, dope in a heartbeat, and even though I resent myself for doing it, I plan to get it to him as fast as possible.
I stuff the burner in my pocket and walk downstairs to the basement, letting myself through the twin doors that lead to the pot. Even with the blowers on, the room smells like a few skunks are having a turf war, but that’s a good thing. I’ve had more than one person call my pot the best they’ve ever had, and I’ve seen the results in person. I might not smoke the stuff—I need my clarity—but I do take a certain amount of pride in providing a good product.
For the longest time, my dealer Gary and I had a great working relationship, but his greed put me in the spot I’m in right now. I’m still not really sure why he wanted to kill the golden goose. I mean, if he’d been thinking, he would have realized he was not born with a green thumb. Yeah, he could make more money without our split, but that was all dependent on him having grass to sell. When I came back from the dead looking for him, the warehouse space we’d been using was on the decline, and Gary looked like he was on the decline himself.
Thinking about Gary doing what he did makes me feel sick, so instead of dwelling on it, I cross the room to a few packaged bales of dope. Next to them lies a bag with about a half pound of some very clean-looking bud. The quality is the same as what’s packaged in the bales; these kinds of pieces typically fall aside during the cleaning phase. Think of them like butcher’s cuts from a cow, the kind you never see unless you know a guy in a bloody white apron.
I weigh the dope with my eyes, then drop a very pretty-looking bag onto a digital scale. I’m shy about an eighth of an ounce, so I toss a few more buds into the Ziploc, and this time the numbers dance and wind up just above an ounce. Perfect. I seal the bag, and then hit the lights and go upstairs, closing the doors behind me. Even through the bag the pot stinks, and since the last thing that I want to do is have a conversation with a cop about why I’m hauling a skunk corpse around town, I head to my laundry room.
One thing that you need to have if you’re going to be transporting dope in quantity is a masking agent. I’m not sure who invented dryer sheets, but somebody owes them a couple of beers. Dryer sheets smell so much like laundry that the mind goes there immediately, even if it should be obvious that no one at Lollapalooza is going to be taking a break between sets to get their darks done. I toss a couple sheets into a backpack, drop the dope on top of them, and then throw in three more sheets for good measure. Satisfied with the smell, I throw the backpack over my shoulder, head for the garage, and jump on my bike. I close the garage with the clicker and then ride to the gas station under the drooping sun, the same place where I had the girls leave their cars.
I leave my bike leaned up against a pole, and then do my trick with the lock and chain. Once the bike is secure, I pull another burner from my pocket and call Lou. I doubt he’d care even if he knew about the ounce in my bag, but I know that despite the fact he drove me to Rhino’s gym with a bullet in my arm once, he wouldn’t drive me crosstown with a few pounds of dope in a duffel bag.
That will be a situation to deal with when I get to it, though. For now all that matters is getting to Paul’s house and making everybody happy. Once I get an offer of cash on the table, then everything else can happen. For now, I just sit on the curb and wait for Lou. Like it always does, thinking about Lou brings back memories of Arrow.
Pretty girls get a pass in this world, but they also wear a target. I’d love to have that advantage, but I like the anonymity even more. That was the best part about Arrow. She could run the distraction while I came from behind with the garrote. Thinking about Arrow makes me think of Betty, and then I’m wondering how she’s doing at the prison. I’ve been so busy with the dope that I almost forgot, but once I remember it’s all I can think about, Betty and June and Duke Barnes. I hope Betty can get something out of him, and not just for the case. I want today to go well for both of us, and I want her to call me. I want to talk to her again, and I’d love to say I don’t know why, but I do. I want this to go well, and I want to help her, and with that in mind I stand as Lou pulls into the gas station.
I get in, throw a pair of twenties over the seat and mumble an address. Lou grunts, hits the gas, and we go. Betty will have to wait, because she’s at the prison and I have to deal with a deeply unbalanced egomaniac. In that regard, I
guess Betty and I are doing the same thing, but at least Duke will have bracelets on.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Everything had gone perfectly so far, and now the girls sat in the room with the rest of the visitors, waiting for Duke’s name to be called. None of the people here to see friends and loved ones looked all that happy to be where they were. Babies and small children cried out from frustration and boredom, wives and girlfriends sat around looking sad in clothes that were either ill fitting or fit for prostitution, and a pair of older people looked scared and miserable. Everyone in the room jumped as the doors on the sides of the room opened, and when either the wrong name was called or one of them returned from visitation, all the heads would droop back down to return to the seemingly endless wait.
Betty heard “Barnes” called and felt as though the words were pulling her from a deep sleep, but then she felt June yanking at her arm and the two of them stood. All around them the room was already returning to disinterest as they approached the bored-looking guard by the door on the left.
When they got to them he said, “IDs, please.” After a quick verification to make sure they hadn’t switched with someone else in the waiting room, the girls found themselves following the guard to Duke.
Betty felt like she could throw up as the guard closed the door after them, but it faded to a kind of low-grade, sustained panic. Circular tables filled the room, about half of them seating men in orange jumpsuits and cheap plastic shoes and their visiting family members and friends. No one except for Betty, June, and the guard was standing, nor were they touching one another. Instead of leading them to a round table of their own, the guard ushered them to the far side of the room and one of a line of small tables bisected by glass partitions. Their side of the table had a pair of phone handsets; past the scratched glass, another handset waited for Duke.
“Go ahead and take a seat,” the guard said. “Mr. Barnes will be out in a few minutes. Do not stand while Mr. Barnes is at the table, do not touch the glass, and only communicate through the handsets. He knows these rules as well, so if he acts confused about them, he is trying to play you. You can be arrested for a violation of any one of these rules, so do not break them.”