Inmate 1577

by Alan Jacobson

  They were on the yard, amidst inmates who were lifting weights, smoking, and telling stories. Anglin closed his eyes and craned his neck skyward, the sun fully on his face. “What’s your plan?”

  MacNally spoke in hushed tones, his face canted toward the ground to prevent an officer or a snitch from reading his lips. “Get into an argument with someone. Loud, aggressive. I can sell it pretty good, I think.”

  “Keep going.”

  “If I can make it seem as if it was started by the other guy, and it’s convincing, even if they suspect I was involved, they’d never be able to prove it. By keeping it ‘in-house,’ between me and you, there’s no way for the hacks to prove it was a setup.”

  “They don’t need no proof to throw you in the Hole. Suspicion’s enough for ’em.”

  “If they had proof, it’d be much worse.”

  Anglin bobbed his head, his eyes darting from side to side as he processed what MacNally had told him. Finally, he nodded his approval.

  The following day, MacNally shuffled into the dining hall along with his cellhouse’s complement of inmates. John and Clarence Anglin were already in the kitchen on duty, as they were supposed to be. MacNally figured the best place for him to be was nearby, because when the shouting started, inmates would either stay put or leave their seats, anxious to put distance between themselves and the altercation. Being a witness to even the most minor incident can result in a quick death at the hands of the head inmate’s enforcers.

  Once the commotion had started, Anglin and another inmate could load the box containing Clarence into the truck. It would be heavy, but if the guard watching them was properly distracted, they could get it into the back without the officer realizing that it weighed substantially more than it should.

  MacNally took care to choose an unwitting partner. He asked Clarence who would make a good victim—someone who was not connected to a gang that would take retribution against MacNally for what he was about to do. Clarence selected a fish, a new inmate who hadn’t had the opportunity to make friends or forge alliances: Neil Wallace, a slightly built white-collar criminal who did not appear to have the constitution or stature to defend himself.

  Clarence pointed out Wallace earlier that afternoon, and as they entered the dining hall, MacNally engaged the man in conversation while steering him toward the preselected location, near the kitchen.

  Two minutes after getting their food, MacNally continued his discussion with Wallace before abruptly slamming his fork down. “What the hell did you say, motherfucker?” He jumped up from his seat and leaned across the table. “Go on—say it again.”

  Wallace leaned back, his mouth agape, hands splayed in surrender.

  Feigning an unsatisfactory response, MacNally tossed his bowl of chili into Wallace’s lap. The inmate reflexively sprung up, the shock of MacNally’s unexpected aggression—and the pain of the burning liquid against his skin—registering in the contortion of Wallace’s face. It was the sort of spontaneous reaction that was not possible unless it was a genuine response.

  MacNally reached across the table and slammed a fist into Wallace’s jaw, and the man tipped backward over his bench, arms flailing in the air before he landed hard on his back. He shook his head to get his wits about himself, then tried to scramble away in retreat, his feet sliding against the slick ground.

  But MacNally knew the altercation hadn’t lasted long enough to buy Anglin sufficient time to get Clarence loaded into the truck, so he clambered over the table and threw himself atop Wallace.

  Shouting erupted from across the cavernous room: guards yelling orders to MacNally and Wallace to break it up; at each other to communicate what was going on; and at surrounding inmates to stay put.

  MacNally drew back and punched Wallace repeatedly in the face until two correctional officers approached from opposite sides. While one guard fought his way through, the other grabbed MacNally by the collar of his shirt and yanked him to the side.

  MacNally lunged at his prey—lest there be no question he was sincere—and landed another punch before the guards got a firmer hold. A kick to Wallace’s face served as MacNally’s parting shot as the officers slammed him to the floor, face first. They snapped handcuffs around his wrists while four other guards, who had just arrived, searched him for knives or shivs.

  Wallace rolled along the floor, swiped at his bloody face with a sleeve, then looked up at MacNally, who was on his feet and being hauled away.

  FOLLOWING THE DINING HALL INCIDENT, MacNally had been sent back to the Hole, a part of the institution with which he was unfortunately becoming familiar.

  It would be his home for the foreseeable future while he awaited a disciplinary hearing to determine what punishment would be meted out. As MacNally stared at Henry’s photo, lost in thought, he heard a noise.

  Voorhees was standing at the bars, a clipboard in his left hand, his jaw tight. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  Voorhees did not answer, but led MacNally into an office off the corridor. The door had barely closed when Voorhees spun on him. “That was a goddamn bullshit stunt you pulled.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Clarence Anglin was caught. Goddamn idiot—thought he could sneak out in a box. A guard saw his brother and another inmate trying to lift the thing, which was supposedly filled with bread. A body weighs a whole lot more than fucking bread. Must’ve thought we’re all stupid or something.”

  MacNally attempted to keep his face from betraying the intense sadness that flooded his thoughts. All that for nothing. He had done his part, though he doubted Anglin would help him now—or even be in a position to do so.

  “Those Anglins aren’t too swift, ’cause if they were, they’da known that when there’s a fight in the dining hall, the rear gate’s immediately shut down. Any vehicles in the institution would be searched by several guards before it’d be let out off the grounds.”

  “Good to know,” MacNally said impassively.

  Voorhees lowered his voice. “Did you know they were gonna do this?”

  MacNally forced a chuckle. “Why would they tell me anything? And why would I help J.W.’s brother escape—what’s in it for me?”

  “Don’t play stupid with me, MacNally.” He was now speaking just above a whisper. “I’m giving you a last chance to work with me. Give me something I can use, and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  “Remember what I told you that first day? Your time here’s gonna be defined by choices. Choices you make—good ones and bad ones.”

  “I remember everything you told me,” MacNally said. “And you also told me you can’t protect me. And you told me I gotta learn con law. And you told me that if I don’t wanna get fucked again, I gotta stand up for myself and grow a set of balls. Do you remember telling me all that?”

  Voorhees’s face burned red. Through a muscular jaw, he said, “That fight was all just a bullshit act to distract the guard and let Anglin get his brother loaded into the truck. Wasn’t it?”

  MacNally looked down at his red and swollen hand. He held it up. “An act? I might’ve broken my hand, and you think it was bullshit?”

  Voorhees refused to let his eyes find the inmate’s hand. “I don’t know if they’re gonna be able to prove it, but I know what you did.” He shook his head. “Fucking broke Wallace’s jaw and sent him to the hospital. Guess I’m the goddamn fool. I thought you were different from all these scumbags here. I even bought that sob story about your kid.”

  At the mention of Henry, MacNally stepped forward—but Voorhees stood his ground, lips tight.

  He felt bad that he had deceived the officer; the man had been straight with him since he had arrived. As much as he was able to, Voorhees had attempted to help MacNally navigate the difficult transition to incarceration in a place like this. He surmised now, in retrospect, and being less green than he was when he arrived, that Voorhees was probably taking sub
stantial risk in striking up a relationship with him. But this place, he was learning, was not a place of friendships—it was a place of survival. You helped those who helped you, and the rest of the population could go to hell—until you required their assistance, and then you became their best buddy and screwed over the guy you had been friends with.

  Deception and subterfuge were the method of operation—and currency—of penitentiary life. If MacNally was ever going to see his son again, he had to choose a side, and as well as Voorhees had treated him, there was a limit to what the guard could do. Anglin was going to help him escape, whereas the “value” of his relationship with Voorhees had already reached a pinnacle and, unless he turned into his snitch, would only diminish going forward.

  “You’re just as fuckin’ bad as the rest of ’em,” Voorhees said.

  “That’s not true. And you know it.” It was once true. Was it still?

  “Apparently, I don’t know nothing.” Voorhees shook his head, his face contorted in contempt.

  He grabbed for the door, flung it open, and shoved MacNally into the corridor. “Get back to your cell. I’m done with you.”

  43

  Burden steered the Taurus along the winding, tree-canopied Telegraph Hill Boulevard, negotiating the curves until he came to a full stop behind a long line of cars.

  “Shit, I should’ve thought of this,” Friedberg said.

  “Tourists,” Burden said, in explanation for Vail. “They jam up the approach to Coit Tower, it’s like a freaking parking lot.” He swung the car around and did a three-point turn on the two-lane road. Following at a close distance was Clay Allman, mirroring Burden’s maneuvers.

  Burden led them around and brought them up Filbert, an intensely angled street that tested the Taurus’s anemic horses trapped under the hood.

  With the sedan’s engine groaning, Vail said, “Why don’t you let me out? I can probably walk it faster. And it might help you get up the hill.”

  Burden ignored her dig and eventually got them to the base of the Filbert Steps, where he parked the car at a ninety-degree angle to the curb.

  Vail surmised that on a street of such intense incline, the parking brake and transmission weren’t sufficient locks against a runaway vehicle.

  As they unfolded themselves from the Ford, a steady wind blew against them. The air was crisp and the sun was bright, with scattered, yet plump stark white clouds sliding rapidly across the deep blue sky.

  Allman got out of his car and began digging around in his trunk for something.

  Vail craned her neck as high as she could see. Looming above her was an imposing, sand colored, architecturally modern cylindrical structure. Cypress trees surrounded the base, and an American flag fluttered strongly above a California state flag.

  Burden gestured at a green sign twenty feet ahead of them that read, Stairs to Coit Tower. “We’ll walk it. Much faster.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Vail said, taking in the multiple flights of endless stairs staring back at her. An exercise session on an elliptical was one thing, but with her surgically repaired knee only recently beginning to feel fully healed, she didn’t feel like testing it on what surely looked like a million steps.

  “C’mon,” Dixon said. “Time to move beyond that wimpy elliptical stuff. This’ll be a good little workout for you. I stair climb at the gym every day.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Vail said. “But I don’t.”

  Burden and Friedberg had already passed the green sign when Burden swung his head around. “Quit complaining. You’re wasting time.”

  Vail and Dixon followed, with Allman bringing up the rear, heading up the staircase that ran along a wall of townhouses on the right, before turning left and crossing Telegraph Hill Boulevard, where the cars were still at a standstill. They continued up additional flights of steps that were fronted by bricks engraved with what appeared to be donor names.

  Probably some Save Coit Tower movement, and a fundraiser run by vegans and alternative energy nuts. Vail chuckled. A few months ago, I’d have said that aloud.

  They continued along an asphalt-paved, tree-shaded path that led to...more steps.

  “I think this qualifies as a week of workouts,” Vail said.

  Dixon snorted. “Give me a break. Have you even broken a sweat?”

  Vail pulled at her blouse. “Haven’t you?” She instantly realized the answer to her own question. But she could see Burden and Friedberg slowing down, pausing every dozen steps or so before proceeding. “So what is this place?” I don’t really care. But it’ll slow ’em down.

  “It’s a tower,” Friedberg called back to her.

  “No shit, Inspector Sherlock.”

  Friedberg stopped and turned to face her. He took a deep breath and bent over to rest his hands on his knees. “It was built in ’33, a monument funded by a wealthy, eccentric woman named Lillie Coit for the volunteer firemen. They fought fires before the city had a real fire department, which was a big deal back then because all the buildings were made of wood. She actually hopped on their truck and helped put out fires decades before women did that stuff. She’s now the patron saint of the city’s fire department.”

  “Really,” Vail said with admiration. “Sounds like my kind of woman.”

  “I think she lived around here. She left instructions in her will for the tower to beautify the city. The view from the top of Telegraph Hill, where we’re headed, is—well, you’ll see. You get a panorama of the Bay and the city that’s worth cramming yourself into that tiny elevator.”

  “Just so you know,” Vail said, looking up at the massive structure. “Using ‘tiny’ and ‘elevator’ in the same sentence is about as appealing to me as using ‘serial’ and ‘killer’ together. Nothing good comes of it.”

  Burden turned and continued up the steps.

  Vail opened her mouth to ask another question—to give herself one more moment to breathe—but nothing came to mind. The one time I want him to give me a freaking dissertation and he’s actually brief. Can’t catch a break.

  They reached the base of the tower and Burden led the way around the front. To the east, the Bay was stunningly clear, the wind having blown away all fog and clouds, highlighting the expansive Bay Bridge, not unlike the view she had from her hotel room.

  A steamboat sat moored in the foreground at a pier, a large sign atop the vessel reading San Francisco Belle. Vail thought of Robby, and how fun it would be to get a room on the ship, then cruise around the harbor. The last trip they’d taken had turned into a disaster. A wave of superstition suddenly enveloped her, as if uttering the word “vacation” would cause things to blow up into a serial killer nightmare.

  She stopped and took a deep, cleansing breath of the cool sea air. To her left, the north and west areas of the Bay, a dense bank of fog obscured all that lay before them.

  “Nothing quite like it, huh, Agent Vail?” Allman asked.

  She had to admit that the panorama before her was exquisite. “Virginia’s pretty special in its own right.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But...” Allman gestured with a sweeping motion of his hand. “This is like paradise.

  Paradise. I probably wouldn’t use that term while a serial killer ran wild through the city.

  Burden led them around a circular path that brought them to the front entrance of Coit Tower. He stopped at the top of a small staircase, then led them down toward a circular parking lot—and the reason for the traffic jam.

  “I thought it was typical tourist traffic,” Friedberg said. “Apparently, it was us.”

  An SFPD cruiser sat at the lot’s mouth, its lights swirling silently. Two cops were outside the car and standing near a large statue that rested in the center of the paved rotunda.

  “Not us,” Vail said. “Him.” She gestured at the front of the statue, where a male body was strapped. Erect. Serene.

  And dead.

  44

  February 19, 1960

  Leavenworth

>   MacNally was sentenced to ninety days in segregation, a fair punishment, he had to admit, given that he had assaulted an innocent man and had been strongly suspected in aiding the attempted escape of another inmate. Although none of that could be proven, he had to give the warden and his executive staff credit for their even-handed treatment of him.

  Segregation gave him time alone with his thoughts, which were focused on reuniting with Henry. He realized he had graduated to thinking like a convict, a shift in attitude necessary for survival at an institution like Leavenworth. As Voorhees had told him, and as he had come to learn, the rules of society did not apply inside prison. There was an entirely different set of laws that governed inmate behavior behind penitentiary walls.

  In the outside world, if you had a problem with someone, you’d report it to the police. In the slammer, you couldn’t run to the correctional officers—because, like Voorhees had said, they’re off-duty sixteen hours a day. You had to settle it yourself.

  If someone hit you, you had better hit them back. Even harder than they had hit you. You had to convince them you were the baddest, meanest son of a bitch that existed in your cellhouse so they wouldn’t bother you again. They had to know—or believe—that if they bothered you, you were going to make them pay twice as hard. The goal was to make them think it was not worth starting up with you.

  And part of that was developing a rep, the power to invoke the fear he had sought to establish since his rape at the hands of Gormack and Wharton. Between his shower attack and the dining hall charade, which had been witnessed by dozens of inmates, word of what he’d done had wormed its way through the institution like a virus, cementing his reputation as an aggressive, loose cannon. For now, he was safe.

  UPON RELEASE FROM SEGREGATION, MACNALLY picked up his new bedroll kit and returned to his cell to find that he and Anglin had inherited a new cellmate. The man was asleep, curled into a ball under the blanket.