by Seth Morgan
A crowd of convicts clustered around the handball courts attracted Joe’s attention, and he rose to investigate. Approaching the courts, it appeared some sort of ceremony was taking place. Two men stood together on the court facing a third with his back to the tall concrete backstop, reading aloud from a book. The rest of the convicts stood in a solemn semicircle, heads bowed.
It wasn’t until he reached the crowd’s fringe that Joe noticed that one of the men was wearing a dress. Well, not a dress exactly. A sheet swept over one shoulder and gathered around the waist like a sari. He also spotted Oblivia. Dipping his shoulder through the crowd to her, he felt angry stares like tentacles clinging to his back.
“Oblivia!” he whispered.
“Shhh!” she held a finger to her lips, lips which were newly daubed with orange crayon. Her hair was also freshly bleached and curled, and her workshirt knotted beneath her hormone titties, flashing a belly glistening with baby oil.
“Christ! What have you done to yourself?”
She turned an arch look of affront on Joe. “A girl wants to look her best at a wedding, Barker. Suppose I catch the bouquet?”
“Wedding? I thought this was a prison.”
Oblivia lifted a plucked brow that wondered what difference that made. Over the silence floated liturgical mumbojumbo from the convict with the book. Noting Joe’s stark stare, Oblivia said, “That’s Swami. He’s so spiritual I dont think he knows he’s in the joint. He’s New Age and all, but he’s being a perfect dear doing a Catholic ceremony, otherwise Magdalena couldnt go through with it, her religious upbringing was too strict.”
“Strict,” Joe repeated dully. At a sudden gust of wind the bride turned to flick a strand of hair from large green eyes. She looked like the young Sophia Loren. The strong nose and wide cheeks, the broad compulsive mouth; the sheet’s loose front baring …
“Christ! He’s got tits as big as Bermuda’s.”
“The best money could buy, Barker. Maggie was two weeks from her tuck and roll operation when she fell. She was tricking Arabs in Bel Air for the rest of the money. The courts have ordered that any felon undergoing hormone treatment for a sex change operation at the time of his arrest be allowed to continue such treatment in the pen. They send them here to Coldwater. They got enough hormones in Y-l Clinic to turn the Jolly Green Giant into Tinker Bell.”
“You get free rubbers at the Clinic or do you have to buy them at the Commissary?”
“Why, Barker!” Oblivia gurgled. “Thinkin of comin out? … Relax, I’m just funnin you … No, condoms are contraband, like dope. A rubber’ll cost you two packs of smokes.”
“But AIDS? They turn men into women just to … watch em die?”
“You aint heard there’s a little population problem?”
With a shudder, Joe turned his attention back to the ceremony. The groom was having trouble repeating some words Swami was reading to him. A hunky honcho, he wore his best starched and pressed prison blues, his boneroos, and a blue wool watchcap pulled menacingly low over his eyes. “He plays the male,” Joe guessed idly.
“That’s what he’d like you to think,” Oblivia said in her most tired voice. “Billy Skaggs would like you to believe he just pitches and Maggie catches. But lemme put you wise, it’s all baseball.”
“Then why the big macho act?”
“Billy overplays the hardrock role because he’s angry at being a weenie woman. The Mainline’s swarming with them, punks out for revenge.”
Faintly the words “pronounce you man and wife …” wafted up on the warm air. Swami made a sign of the cross as energetically as a football coach signaling in a play. Simultaneously a flight of pigeons rose from the nearest cellblock’s roof, a pale liquid brushstroke against the chinablue sky. Billy Skaggs and Magdalena grappled in a swooning silverscreen liplock, the wedding guests whooped and cheered; from a boombox balanced unaccountably atop the concrete backstop Elvis wailed the wedding march:
Number fortyseven said to number three
You’re the cutest little jailbird I ever did see
I’d sure be delighted if you’d bunk with me
Cmon and do the jailhouse rock with me …
Joe hadn’t expected prison to be an MGM Big House where Wallace Beery and Jimmy Cagney called the guards “dirty screws” and dug tunnels with their spoons, but neither had he quite expected all of this.
“Recall, recall,” the Yard P.A. scratched the pellucid light. “Return to housing for count.” Joe and Oblivia joined the rest of the wedding party herding their shadows through the Yard gates.
“Christ, Oblivia. It’s bad enough without you crying.”
Captain Reilly’s office in the Admin building faced west and was thus deprived a view of the Yard nuptials. One of Reilly’s obligations was the final approval or disapproval of new guards. In former days, this was a rubberstamp process. Candidates who didn’t come up to Departmental standards had already been weeded out by the rigors of Correctional Academy.
Then the doubling of inmate population within ten years coupled with a skyrocketing turnover rate among correctional personnel created an unprecedented demand for new guards. At first, accelerated academy curricula and minimal training criteria were implemented. But these quickly collapsed under the sheer weight of numbers. By now the Department was one step away from hiring directly off the streets.
That one step was represented by Reilly and the system’s other line captains; their desks were the last checkpoints between the streets and the mainlines. Captain Reilly was CIM Coldwater’s sole guarantor that it wasn’t hiring back its paroled felons into the cellblocks as guards. And recently, even that authority was being abrogated. Last week, his decision to reject the application of a refugee officer of Somoza’s Garda National was overruled by Sacramento; the week before, it was the human cannonball from a bankrupt circus.
“The Department spends 1.6 billion a year,” Mrs. Reilly had noted more than once. “It costs as much to keep a man in prison for a year as it would to send him to Berkeley. Why cant they raise basic pay so you could attract a better class of guards?”
And the Captain would reply: “It’s the same as the Pentagon, honey. All the dough goes to decorating the generals’ jets.”
So, all things considered, this wingnut sitting across his desk today wasn’t all that bad. He had one big plus; he was a hometown boy. That alone excused a plethora of faults in a nepotistic institution. His name was Raymond Savage.
“So, Ray, after you failed the Madera County Sheriff’s exam, what did you do next?”
“Got drunk.”
“I mean after you got drunk.”
“Got laid. At least I think I got laid. I oughta do it the other way around so I could remember.”
That was pretty much the tone of the interview. Savage’s cornyellow hair was brushed straight back and fixed by some grooming gel with the consistency of Verathane. His overbite and folded eyes the color of watered milk bespoke recessive foothill genes. After he was unable to get hired as a mercenary through the classified in Soldier of Fortune, Ray told Captain Reilly, he decided, What the heck, how about prison guard? All his buddies from Coldwater High lugged prison keys.
During Captain Reilly’s explanation of guard responsibilities to attend In-Service Training, Ray Savage spotted the desk nameplate and interrupted. “Is your wife Mrs. Reilly?”
“Of course my wife is Mrs. Reilly.”
“Usta deliver her pizzas from Forget Domani.”
“That’s nice, Ray.”
“Then, when it changed owners and was Pizza Pizazz, I still delivered her pizzas.”
“Ray …”
“She liked em when you worked nights. Usta order extra sausage. Extra hot sausage!”
Captain Reilly took a deep breath and counted to three. This yoyo must eat plant food for breakfast cereal; it was the only explanati
on for the shiteating grin. Better wrap this interview up.
“Ray, in your own words, what is it you hope to get out of a career in corrections … You may take a moment to consider.”
“Dont need it. Action. A-K-S-H-U-N. Ack-SHUN!” Ray convulsively smacked a fist into his palm, jerking halfway out of his chair. “When do I get a gun?”
Captain Reilly explained that guns weren’t used inside the prison, but that as soon as Ray qualified on the range he could put in for tower duty.
“Cant wait!”
“Ray, I’m going to start you on a probationary status. When you’ve passed an exam on the material in this training packet and have two hundred online guard hours in, your appointment will be made permanent …”
Ray gulped, leaving his mouth open.
“You’re hired.”
“Hooray!” Ray grabbed for the badge inside the plastic training packet. He started looking for a place on his Pennzoil windbreaker to pin it.
Captain Reilly told him he had to wait until he was in uniform and pushed a button on his desktop intercom. There was a knock on the door and a big blond inmate entered.
“Ray, this is inmate Sonny Hauser. Hauser will escort you to Personnel Lockers and help get you dressed in.” Reilly turned to the inmate and rolled his eyes. “Sonny, next take him to Control for key issue and then on down to a segregation wing, make it X, and give him a little training on grille gate operation and proper cell unlock procedure.”
Ray snapped up to attention and saluted smartly.
“That’s not necessary, Ray,” Reilly said wearily. He watched the inmate and recruit leave the office and picked up the phone to call his wife.
“Honey … I just hired someone through the front gates any judge would have ruled incompetent to enter the back … Another Savage, yeah. This one’s Raymond. You guessed it, like Bucky Beaver with peroxided hair … What’s so funny? … So he delivered you pizzas for ten years … Upside down?”
TRICK BUNK
The dripping spoon of Mocha Monsoon stalled halfway to Kitty’s mouth. “What kind of note you layin on me? What’s the game?”
“It’s not a con,” Tarzon insisted. His hand snaked toward the cheroot lying dead in the ashtray. Her widened eyes shot daggers pinning it to the table. Not until she looked away did his hand withdraw, reluctantly. “I’m trying to save Joe because if he dies, so do my chances of nailing this monster.”
This scene stinks even without the stogie’s help, she huffed to herself. What did you expect? He’s a cop. It’s like you keep thinking you’re gonna find one different. Your ass.
“How’d you find me?” she switched topics.
“Got your place of employment off an arrest report. Went down to the Blue Note. This girl with … with …” His hands zoomed in and out from his chest.
Kitty narrowed her eyes to take a big fat guess. “Milk trucks for tits?”
Tarzon nodded energetically. “Like waterwings. She told me you took up with Dan Graves.”
Who else but Bermuda was stupid enough to run her mouth to the heat? You could blow in one of that Twinkie’s ears and the other would whistle. Kitty needn’t have bothered asking. Same as she needn’t have bothered trying to remember this cop from that longago night at the Blue Note. From outside she spotted Tarzon through the Chocolarium’s plateglass windows. Who else would wear a shiny black Sears Roebuck suit and sop a paper napkin between his coffee cup and saucer and pollute the lushly confected icecreamery air with one of those cheapass little cigars with white plastic mouthpieces?
The creep.
Though meeting in Ghirardelli Square was her own bright idea, that she had to confess. She should have suggested some bowling alley bar. Some dive named the Eleventh Frame, where Orkin exterminators and satellitedish installers made passes at hairdressers in stretch pants named Sonja. Tarzon would fit right in; they’d take him for a pet undertaker.
“You havent answered my question,” he said sharply.
Kitty flinched at the sudden flash of gunmetal in his eyes.
“Why dont you ask Joe?” she parried.
“I did. He denies having it.”
“Shitfire, that’s good enough for me.” Kitty decided to soak the taxpayers for another sundae, a Banana Boomerang this time. Hurriedly she killed the Mocha Monsoon and signaled for the waitress.
“He’s lying. He believes he can do his time then cash it in and live richly ever after.”
“Good for him.”
“No, dead for him. Believe me when I tell you this. The person he robbed is very resourceful. No way can Joe Speaker survive this term without being found out.”
“I still dont get the point in askin me. I didnt see that boy after the night you cut him loose.”
“I thought maybe you hadnt. He was moving too fast. He had to find Rooski before I did …”
“I guess you aced him there.”
Tarzon took a deep breath and said, “If Joe helps me, I can get this killer behind bars forever. Maybe I can get him in the chamber. In exchange, I’d set Joe free. You two could be back together … If I arranged it, would you speak with him in prison?”
Kitty pushed a spoon of ice cream in and out of her mouth, lips shaving the softening mound smaller and smaller. Noting his eyes fastened on this oral occupation, she noisily sucked the spoon clean and laughed deep in her throat, a gamin croak.
“No,” she said. “I wont talk to him unless he calls and asks me to. If he’s holding his tragic mud, he’s got reasons.”
“If you dont help, when this monster finds Joe, it’ll be too late. I cant protect him inside.”
Kitty’s wandering eye spotted through the window a bird perched on the terrace rail. She heard its moist whistle. It fluttered to a sheetmetal rain gutter and sang; flew on and sang. The eye strayed back and homed in hard with its companion on the lean blueshadowed face. “You heard of the whore with the heart of gold? Well, you’re lookin at her, hoss. Sure it’s been dipped in plenty shit, but it aint no less gold. You can give up tryin to get to Joe through me.”
Tarzon began blinking too fast and brightly for Kitty’s taste. “I’m not trying to get to him, I’m trying to save his ass. He’s not just throwing away his freedom, he’s forfeiting his life. It’s almost as if he knows it, wants it. As if he’s letting the circumstances abet his own suicide …”
“You belong on a talk show.”
Tarzon shook his head, brushing the crack aside. “Just give me a hint about the hiding place. I swear he’ll never know we’ve spoken … Most couples have secret places. My wife and I used to, where we’d leave notes and presents and go together when things were bad … There were cherry blossom petals pasted to the Porsche’s fenders and shell chips in its tire treads. Can you think where they might have come from?”
“I’d say cherry blossoms and shell chips are about as meaningful in San Francisco as cow chips and cactus burrs would be where I come from … Say, why you shakin? You gotta try and not take your work so personal. What I gotta try is a Strawberry Serenade … Waitress!”
Tarzon dropped his stare to his twisting hands. Kitty heard a knuckle crack. Then he reached inside his jacket, shrugging black shoulders together like trying to close a book, and withdrew a yellowed Chronicle folded to the last page of the entertainment section, where the dog shows and sheriff’s auctions and porno theaters advertised. Slapping the paper on the glass table, he stabbed with his finger at a promotional photo of two broads kicking and pulling each other’s hair.
“Do you know this girl?” he asked in a thick voice.
Kitty cocked her head, squinting in the silver slants of light stippled with the shadows of hanging ferns. “Inga, She-Wolf of the SS? …” She checked the date at the top of the page. “This paper’s six months old, hoss. Now she’s Natasha, She-Bear of the KGB.”
“No!” The finger ja
bbed angrily. “This one.”
“Belly Blast,” she read aloud. Kitty vaguely knew this chicana, they’d met once coming and going through a connection’s kitchen. It was said the wrestling was only a warmup for the real action filmed in an Embarcadero warehouse; info Kitty wasn’t about to share with the Man. “No,” she said, “that one I never seen or heard of.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice coiling like a bullwhip.
Kitty ducked her head and drew back her thick mane like a curtain to smile. “Well sakes alive,” she exclaimed, stretching out her Texas drawl. “So that’s what’s so personal. Here I thought you were trying to help my boy out and all you’ve been after’s a date.” She arched her brow, aiming one askance down her nose at the paper. “Roughhousin trip your trigger?” Seeing the blood drain from his lips, she smiled with false solicitude, “Hey, Lieutenant. I dont mind. Whatever floats yer boat, hoss.”
“Keep on fuckin with me,” he said, “and maybe I’ll just let Mr. Dan Graves know how many B cases are on your sheet, let him know where you come from …”
Kitty curled her lip. The down and dirty hole card was only further proof that a cop is a cop is a cop. As if she needed it.
“Where do you think he found me, creep?” she seethed. “Where do you think he went looking? The same places your kind of pervert oughta look for scumbags like Belly Blast. In the sewer.”
Tarzon shot to his feet. “Crosseyed bitch!”
He stormed from the Chocolarium. Kitty cursed seeing he’d left her the check.
The creep.
Joe stood shaving in the showerroom at the head of the dormitory block. He was ducated to the Handicrafts Department for the following morning and wanted to put on his best, if bent, face. Clerking for Hobby, other cons in his dorm had told him, conferred a license to hustle. Drugs were smuggled into the institution secreted in hobby supplies, hidden in handicraft items returned by visitors for modification through the Admin Building store, in the hip pockets of guards needing a leathertooled belt for junior or a cherrywood jewelry box for the little woman. All contraband traffic required the clerk’s cooperation, he had only to quantify his cut. Joe wished Earl was around to thank for encouraging him to take the typing tests at Vacaville which qualified him for this juice job. But the old bird had gone straight from R&R to the Hospital Wing, where his gallstones were removed, and from there to V Block, the socalled Hole in the Wall Wing, where the old cons housed together, a sort of penitentiary retirement community. Joe had passed him on the Mainline once, but Earl was too busy to stop and talk. With a bolt of fabric stolen from Occupational Therapy over his arm, he was rushing to Q Wing where one of the queens had promised to hem him cell curtains. This was Earl’s third stretch at Coldwater, it was just like reopening a household after a vacation.