by Seth Morgan
Watching his whiskers swirl down the drain was like watching four months of his life washed away: each separate hair could almost have been a day. Joe wished the suffering of those days might be so easily whisked away, leaving his memory as virginal and smooth as the face he stroked before the mirror.
He returned to the dorm with his gear. Halfway down the aisle between the bunks when his mouth fell open and he froze in his tracks.
His bunk was moving! Wildly, he looked around, but he was alone. Midafternoon on a weekday, and the worker dorm was empty. He looked back at the bunk. Now Bunk Twelve was groaning! Moving above the waxed floor in an undulant fashion, doing a kind of slow hula, and mooing like a sick calf! With a start he noticed the blankets he’d tucked in making up the bunk were hanging to the floor. Was there an earthquake, a localized tremor right beneath Bunk Twelve? It was shaking! He stood transfixed watching his bunk gyrate faster and faster to the accompaniment of grunts and groans building in pitch and acceleration to a crescendo that rigidified the slack amazement on his face into a mask of revulsion.
The grunts and groans at last exploded and died in a wet rattling, and the bunk was still. A moment later a balding, middleaged convict rolled out from beneath it. He stood pulling up his trousers, and brushed past Joe on his way out of the dorm without so much as a look.
Joe’s eyes stayed fixed on the bunk. So that’s what the dorm tender meant warning Joe that he’d been assigned the trick bunk. Of course—it was the furthest from the door, least visible to passing guards, best suited for the quickie clandestine cigaret date.
With a squeal, the second convict slid out, this one unmistakably the one just married on the Yard, the strict Catholic called Magdalena. Lying flat on her back, she wriggled up her jeans, then pushed herself upright on one slender arm and greased Joe up and down with penciled crib puta eyes, husking: “You new, eh buster? You wan stir it up a little? Half n half five packs, short time onny two.”
Joe stood rooted to the spot. Her T-shirt neck was deliberately stretched, baring brown shoulders in a decollete effect. He stared at the loosely hammocked breasts. Then a sudden fume of feces mixed with petroleum jelly jolted his senses like ammonia salts. Clumsily he spun and stumbled from the dorm, her gurgling laughter dripping like spittle down his back.
BUTTERFINGERS
“What the fuck you mean you havent been able to follow Tarzon?” the baby voice was pitched at tantrum decibels.
Quick Cicero swung the big Mercedes around a stalled bus and reached to adjust the rearview. He wanted to monitor his boss’s temper. But all he could see was a jiggly morass of talced blubber. The Man in the Moon’s face would fit in that little mirror before Baby Jewels’s. What Quick needed was one of those convex jobs like truckers use.
“It’s like he knows we gonna try n tail him. He uses a coupla state police cars for screens. But now with the election just a few months off, the Governor and Attorney General need every state unit for their campaigns. No way SFPD is going to cover him, even if they could keep up with that crazy motherfucker … No,” Quick shoved out his lower lip to nod with a confident grimace, “he’s naked now, boss. I’m on his spic ass … And another thing, I got a date with the younger zip brother this evening.”
“That’s good news indeed.” Baby Jewels settled back with a wheeze as pressurized as a leaking tractor tire. Shortly he began drumming his fingers, dangerously blinking his rings, reminding Quick in the rearview of gumballing police lights. The baby voice lilted with wheezy coquetry: “We’ve fallen behind, Quick. Now we must play catchup. You know how to play catchup, dont you?”
Hands clasped behind his back, Captain Reilly rocked on his heels, scowling out his office window. The flagpole at the center of the Admin lawn was naked. It was the third time he’d come on watch this month and the colors weren’t flying. The younger officers couldn’t comprehend his vexation. Whether or not the colors were raised with the sun every day seemed of small consequence to them. They couldn’t understand what it had to do with institutional security. They didn’t see that something is done the same every day because it’s supposed to be. They couldn’t grasp that when basic procedures weren’t followed, a general breakdown in order followed. It might be gradual, a slow erosion of attention to detail, a rotting of security consciousness; but, however trivial and slight the individual lapses might seem, their cumulative result was always cataclysmic.
Captain Reilly had picked up a term for the malaise at a recent penology seminar. The speaker, an oldline captain like himself, called it “correctional anomie.” Captain Reilly thought this was something that grew in the ocean until he looked it up and found it was something growing right in the Coldwater Muster Room.
The desk intercom buzzed; he yanked his eyes from the slender white portent of chaos and angrily punched the button. “What?”
“It’s your wife, sir, on one …” came his clerk’s electrific lisp. “And C.O. Savage is waiting to see you.”
“Tell that yoyo to cool his heels, I’ll be with him in a few minutes.” Captain Reilly lowered himself in his chair with a deep, composing breath and pressed the blinking button.
“Darling!” the receiver trilled in his ear. “Who is inmate Oblivia DeHavilland?”
Arthur Gottlieb, the Captain grumbled, and he wasn’t supposed to be using his drag name. He promised to put a stop to it.
“Dont be silly darling. Those central switchboard gals are so dreary. No harm having a hoot.”
Captain Reilly told her men weren’t sent to prison for laughs, though he agreed the central switchboard was a depressing lot. Marsha was always about half right, which meant she was consistently half wrong. There’s a lot to be said for all wrong, the Captain often thought. All these years Marsha never grasped that prison wasn’t some kind of dude ranch with him head wrangler. And the trouble, as usual, was she was half right. Reilly had to admit, when he retold the average day’s happenings over cocktails in the sunroom they did sound comical. In the retelling, the horror mixed with the absurd acquired the farcical dimensions of a Grand Guignol, a ball and chain bouffe. Of course that was the deadly illusion. Behind each jest snickered the secret shiv.
“Mel, I’m just calling to remind you of dinner at Warden and Mrs. Gasse’s home. It’s pot luck, what absolute fun,” she croaked miserably, “and I want to stay ethnically honest so I’m picking up a German potato salad at the deli because you know Mrs. Gasse, whatshername? …”
“Hedwig.”
“That’s the Valkyrie. Well you know how she always whips up those kraut things, cabbage and schnitzel and pancakes and God knows what else. I wouldnt want to be out of step … Have you had your haircut?”
Captain Reilly explained that Chico Del Rio, the staff barber, was in AD SEG. As he spoke he twirled the silver hair where it curled at his neck and flipped up in winglets over his ears.
“Release him, Mel! You look like an aging hipsidoodle.”
“I cant release a man from lockup because I need a haircut.”
He heard her stamp her foot. “But he made you look so distingué, like Stewart Granger. Oh please darling everyone will be there tonight.”
Captain Reilly hung up on the tinny arfing just like her lapdog, Alfie. He focused his eyes on a greasy scrap of paper at the center of his blotter. Forcethree storm clouds blackened his visage as he reread the clogged pica type.
MEMO CDC FORM 1823
TO:Melville Fenton Reilly, Captain
Commander, Second Watch
California Institute of Medicine
Coldwater, California
FROM: Raymond Carl Savage, CO.
Gym Activities Detail, Second Watch
RE:CAL. ADM. 3016, Cal. P.C. Sec. 4600, Cal. P.C. Sec. 4574
AT APPROXIMATELY 1345 HOURS WHILE SUPERVISING “COLDWATER COLD CUTS” PRACTICE IN GYMAZIUM OFFICER OBSERVED VISITTING MUSIC INSTRUCTER,
MR. TIEBOLD TURNER, BEHAVING IN A SUSPICOUS AND FURITIVE MATTER. INSTEED OF “BEET THE DRUM” HE SAID “GEE-SEET GEE-SUM.” ALSO HIS EYES WERE RED AND SPEECH SLURED. OFFICER FERTHER OBSERVED SUBJECT MONROE DELIVER INMATE JOHN “MOONPIE” MONROE, B-42572, IN A SUSPICOUS MATTER THE TRUMPIT WICH HE HAD RETURNED FROM OUTSIDE THE INSTITUTION FOR REPAIR. POSESSING PROBABLY CAUSE, OFFICER SEEZED AND SEARCHED TRUMPIT AND DISCOVERED GREEN LEEFY SUBSTINCE IN FINGER VALVE. OPEN BEING ADVISED OF HIS RIGHTS PERSUANT TO MARIMBA SUBJECT TURNER STATED “I ONLY GIT THE AX FIXED.” SEEMILARLY MIRIMBIZED, MONROE STATED “I DONT NOW NUTTING ABOUT NUTTING.” SUBJECT TURNER REMINDED TO CUSTODY OF MADERA COUNTY SHERIFFS. INMATE MONROE RUMPED TO MAX A HVP AND TRANSPORTED TO AD SEG X-213.
cc:Madera County Sheriffs
Superintendent G. Gasse
Search and Investigation
Donner Unit Offices
Inmate File
RAYMOND C. SAVAGE, C.O.
Captain Reilly stabbed the intercom. “Is that yoyo still out there? … Yeah, send him in … And Gottlieb? Use your real name on the outside line at least. Save all that queen stuff for Q Wing.”
Savage entered, snapped to attention and saluted.
“Put your damn hand down, Savage.”
The salute stayed parked beneath the cornyellow crewcut. Savage’s tightly tucked chin squeaked his voice like air through the pinched neck of a balloon. “Officer rules sez we gotta hold the salute till the superior officer returns it.”
Captain Reilly wasn’t about to play tin soldiers with this yahoo. “Put the hand down and sit, hotshot. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir!” Ray Savage took the chair facing the Captain across the desk. Reilly ignored the supercilious gleam in his eye claiming victory in round one.
“Savage, I havent had a chance to talk to you about writing Del Rio a One Thirteen for sexual misconduct. How do you think the rest of the officers feel about you throwing the joint’s only barber in the hole who doesnt make them look like Parris Island gyrenes?”
Savage loosed an incredulous, gasping laugh. “It was my duty, sir. Del Rio was giving those convicts blowjobs! The other guards on the gunrail thought he was crouched at the bars talking to the men in the cells. They were fooled by Del Rio wearing the dozer cap sideways on his head. They actually thought he was smoking the cigar stuck in his ear. What he was smoking was convict bones.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” Captain Reilly asked with an icy smile, “that the other guards werent fooled, that they were turning a blind eye to Del Rio’s activity? Or hadnt you noticed that they all call Del Rio by his drag name, Dolores, after the actress? Blowjobs are good corrections. They pacify General Population.”
The force of his gulp bulged Savage’s eyes; he might have been swallowing a medicinal toad.
“But even the stupidity of Del Rio’s writeup is eclipsed by this piece of shit.” Reilly snapped a blunt forefinger at the disciplinary on his desk. “What do you think is going to become of the Coldwater Cold Cuts now that you’ve socked their leader, Moonpie Monroe, in the Hole?”
Savage shrugged. “Hadnt thought of it. Guess they wont be no more jazz band.”
“That’s right. Does that bother you?”
“Nossir. Never cottoned to jungle music nohow.”
He was actually smirking; his IQ couldn’t exceed the speed limit. Reilly wanted to rip his yellow head off.
“Well, it’s gonna bother the fuck out of the Warden, asshole! Now there’s no one to play at his dinner party tonight.”
Savage found unexpected diversion thumbwrestling with himself.
“What now, sir?”
Captain Reilly leaned back. “Madera will nolle pros Turner’s case, the marijuana will be ‘lost’ at the lab. Not that it matters. I wont be able to get Moonpie released in time for his gig tonight … You, I’m transferring to First Watch Culinary.”
The rookie’s mouth dropped. “The graveyard kitchen shift?”
“Until you learn not to write up the cons we depend on to run this institution. You will write up no one in the kitchens, I dont care if you see them hump out a side of beef.”
“I was only tryin to do my job.”
“I believe you. You just werent trained to know what job. I hope our discussion has helped.”
“You bet, Captain! Is that all, sir?”
“No.” Captain Reilly swiveled his chair and pointed out the window. “See that flagpole? It’s naked! I cant make it understood that not a daylight hour should pass without the stars and stripes flying. So I’m making it your duty. You’re a oneman color detail. See to it you raise the flag at dawn before you go off watch.” He turned and looked solemnly at Savage. “Do you read me, mister?”
“Yes sir!” Savage’s eyes were bright with the sound of faroff bugles. “Should I raise Old Glory now?”
“No, it’s closer to dusk than dawn. And you’re off for two days. Start Monday.”
“Yes, sir!” Ray Savage snapped out of the chair to attention and smartly saluted. This time Reilly returned it. Savage aboutfaced and sprang out the door.
Captain Reilly shook his handsome head, staring at the closed door. He could think of no inmate who could present the same clear and present danger to institutional security as an ignorant, untrained guard. Yet that’s all they’d been hiring lately, and it was playing hell with Custody morale. Remembering the term he’d picked up at the seminar, he growled aloud, “Goddam enema’s what it is.”
Archie Sing always came the same way to Chinatown Park, across the causeway connecting it to the Chinatown Hilton. The damp spring breeze tugged his pantlegs and sang soothingly in his ears over the bicker and bustle of rushhour traffic. Behind the steep tiled roofs and gilded tiered pagodas of Chinatown, day’s last warm winy afterglow drained down the western sky. The red paper lanterns hung in the park trees lit all at once and Archie saw Firecracker sitting where he always did, at the last checkerboard pedestal. The angle at which the old Chinaman’s porkpie hat sat atop his pigtails signaled that the fist in his overcoat pocket was fat with cash from that day’s drug sales.
Archie didn’t notice the stumblebum wearing sneakers bound with duct tape, leaning back with his elbows atop the causeway parapet. Not until he was staring at the shield and hearing: “You’re wanted for questioning.”
Gripping Archie under the arm, the undercover cop frogmarched him to the end of the causeway and down the steep stairs to Kearny Street. He saw Firecracker start halfway up from his seat and knew that his brother would be alerted and have his bail up before he reached the booking desk.
The undercover cop flung Archie on the hood of the unmarked beige Plymouth and cuffed him without shaking him down. He threw him in the backseat and climbed in front behind the wheel. Next to him sat a silent man with scarred brows and ears twisted like ginger roots.
The Plymouth pulled out into traffic and headed up Kearny. When it failed to make the first turn heading back toward the Hall of Justice, instead turning left onto Columbus, Archie said evenly, “I want to see my lawyer.”
“Which brother are you?” asked the driver.
“I’m Archie … This aint the way to the Hall. I want to see my lawyer.”
“Fuck you,” said the driver, pressing his taped sneaker to the pedal. The Plymouth shot right on Grant and started winding up Telegraph Hill.
The parking lot at the base of Coit Tower was ringed as usual with cars admiring the panorama. Teenagers sat on hoods, drinking beer and listening through open doors and windows to thumpity rockenroll, fathers fed quarters into the binocular meters and held their children up for a look, lovers exchanged murmurs in hopes of igniting passions half so grand as the view. Even were the snubnose not snuggled in Archie’s ear, no one would have heard him cry out as he was trundled out of the Plymouth.
The art deco megalith was closed, but the one with the taped sneake
rs had a key to a side door. They rode the elevator up to the cupola in silence. Then they were alone high in the night with the lit city hills spread around like a jeweled gown wantonly discarded.
The one with taped sneakers asked, “Who did you ricepropelled motherfuckers give the guns and masks to?”
Archie waited a beat, then said again: “I want the advice of counsel.”
Archie saw the one with ginger ears flinch. He was knocked cold before he ever felt the fists.
He came to swinging by the scruff of his neck over the railing. The city lights swung dizzily, like the view from a Ferris wheel bucket. He heard the voice ask once more: “Who did you give the guns and masks to?”
Archie tried to speak, but the neck of his shirt was gathered in the same grasp holding his jacket, shutting off his windpipe.
“Once more, you gook punk. Who got the guns and mask to rob the theater while you and your puke brother set up alibis to cover your asses for the Golden Boar massacre?”
Archie could only snarl. He gagged and tried again and managed a growl. Then his arms flew up and he was freefalling through black air gemmed with lights, yelling: Jo-whoaaah …”