The Border: A Novel

by Don Winslow

  Early thirties, maybe, not bad-looking. Red hair, freckles, a skinny nose, skinny mouth and a bowling pin figure. Little tits on top, a big ass on the bottom.

  Being a CO was the best job she could get.

  Paid better than Costco.

  And came with health insurance.

  Crystal put up with a lot of shit in V-Ville. The Mexican guards gave her a hard time because they thought a Latina should have the job, not a featherwood. And the cons looked at her like they wanted to fuck her.

  Eddie, he didn’t do that.

  He treated her with respect, talked to her like she was a human being, looked into her eyes like there was something behind them. All the time, of course, thinking about fucking her, but he kept that shaded because he knew women don’t like that.

  Later, yes, but not at first.

  “You know what the most sensitive part of a woman is?” Eddie asked Julio. “Her ears.”

  “I heard that.” Julio stuck out his tongue and licked.

  “No, asshole,” Eddie said. “I mean you talk to her. Then you use your ears—you listen. You want to get her wet, listen to her.”

  That’s how he started with Crystal. Little things at first, like literally, “Hi,” then “How are you?,” then, a week later, “You look nice today, CO Brenner.” She needed some boxes moved, Eddie was there; she needed someplace cleaned up in a hurry, Eddie was there, about the only time he ever picked up a mop.

  One day, passing her in the corridor, she looked upset, her eyes a little puffy.

  “You okay, CO Brenner?” Eddie asked.

  “What?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Move it along, Ruiz.” But she didn’t move. Then she said, “Sometimes this place . . . I don’t know . . . it gets to you.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Sure, you know.”

  “No, I mean tell me about it,” Eddie said. “If someone is giving you a problem . . .”

  Crystal laughed. “What, are you going to straighten it out?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “No, it’s just, you know, the other guards . . . First, I’m a woman, then I’m white . . . No offense, Ruiz.”

  “I know what you mean,” Eddie said. “When I lived in Texas, I was a ‘Mexican,’ when I lived in Mexico, I was a yanqui. Look, I can’t straighten out the COs, but if a con is giving you a problem, talk to me.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I know you do,” she said. “Look. We’d better get going.”

  Eddie smiled. “Fraternization.”

  “Frowned upon.”

  The next day, Eddie went up to another con on his tier. “Ortega, do me a solid.”

  “What do you want?”

  Eddie told him.

  “What’s in it for me?” Ortega asked.

  “A bottle of clear?”

  The next day Crystal saw Eddie in the corridor he was supposedly cleaning. She looked worried.

  “What’s the matter?” Eddie asked.

  Crystal hesitated.

  “Come on, you can tell me.”

  “This con on C Wing, Ortega,” Crystal said. “He’s been giving me a real hard time. Every stand-up count, he’s insolent. Lockdown, he lingers at the door, gives me the eye, mumbles shit under his breath. I don’t want to write him up, but—”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Two days later, Crystal collared Eddie coming out of the dining hall. “What did you do?”

  “I just talked to him,” Eddie said. “It’s all good now?”

  “Yeah. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Eddie said, then pushing it a little, added, “mamacita.”

  The next day, passing her in the corridor, he didn’t say anything but slipped a small piece of paper into her uniform pocket. On it he had written, Thinking about you. It was a big risk; if she turned it in, he’d be back in the hole.

  When she saw him later that day she didn’t say anything either, but slid a piece of paper into his hand. Eddie waited until he was back in his cell to take it out and saw that it read, Thinking about you, too.

  Eddie knew he was in. It wasn’t a matter of if now, it was a matter of where and when.

  He got the answer the next morning when he passed her in the corridor.

  “Chapel,” she whispered. “In back.”

  Eddie got religion.

  He went into the chapel, which was empty that early in the morning, and walked around the back of the altar into a narrow passageway. Crystal was standing there waiting for him. She said exactly what he knew she would say. “We can’t be doing this.”

  And he said exactly what he knew he’d say: “We can’t not be doing this.”

  He pulled her into him and they kissed. Then he turned her around, pushed her against the wall and pulled her pants down. Unzipped himself, took out his dick, and put it in her. She came before he did, which surprised him. He finished, zipped up, and turned her back around.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  More of the same, was the answer.

  They had quick, sweaty, breathless encounters in the chapel, in storerooms. Furtive glances and smiles in the hallways, notes passed back and forth. It was fun, it was dangerous, and Eddie knew what really got her off—dangerous sex with a dangerous guy. The sex got even better. He taught her a few things they didn’t know about in Barstow.

  Zuniga looked out past the uniformed men walking the yard, playing basketball, lifting weights or just standing around. Past the chain-link fence, the coils of barbed wire, the towers, out onto the empty high desert.

  “What are we doing this for, Eddie?” he asked over the clang of iron on the metal racks. “I’ve spent most of my life in places like this. I’ll never leave this place unless it’s to go to someplace worse. I have millions of dollars, but the richest I can ever get is the two-hundred-ninety-dollar monthly max in my commissary account, which I use to buy noodles, cookies—food for a child, not a man. I have a wife, kids, grandkids I see a few hours a month. Every now and then I fuck some slut of a guard, I remember how her hair smells, but mostly I have the stink of men in my nose. I can order life and death, but I have to jerk myself off. And still, I do business. Why is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  What Eddie did know was he had to find a black guy.

  Caro had asked him for that favor, Eddie had said he’d do it, and you don’t go back on your word to a guy like Rafael Caro because that would get you a blade in the eye on any yard in the US or Mexico.

  And anyway, Caro said they were going to make millions.

  You wouldn’t think finding a black guy in prison would be a problem, but brown don’t socialize with black, and if you do, you better have a good reason.

  Eddie went to Crystal. “I need you to look at some paper for me, baby.”

  “Eddie, if I get caught . . .”

  “Then don’t get caught,” Eddie said. “Come on, a CO looking through the PSIs? What’s the problem?”

  He told her what he needed. It was pretty specific—a black guy out of New York in on a drug conviction but close to the door. It takes her a week, but she comes back with it: Darius Darnell, aka DD. Thirty-six years old, on the back end of a dime for coke slinging. Due out mid-2014.

  Eddie threw a little extra affection into their quickie fuck to express his appreciation. He still had a problem, though—how to get next to a black guy for a serious conversation.

  So it was lucky for Eddie that the riot broke out.

  Which is a time when the races, you know, mix.

  Prison riots don’t just happen.

  The most spontaneous ones require forethought, planning and specific intent. What looks to be a sudden burst of violence, coming from nowhere onto a peaceful yard, is anything but.

  Zuniga planned this one to remind the mayates of their place.

  �
��It has to happen every once in a while,” Zuniga told Eddie. “This time, though, they give us an excuse.”

  The usual stupid shit, Eddie thought. Testosterone shit. A Mexican named Herrera was walking off the yard and got brushed by a black guy. Words were exchanged, which, inevitably, led to racial slurs.

  Eddie had played against a lot of black guys in high school—shit, some of those teams from Houston and Dallas were all black guys, and some of the Tex-Mex guys liked to toss around “nigger” and “mayate,” but Eddie never much went in for that, never seeing the sense of making guys who were generally bigger and faster angrier as well.

  Anyway, the black guy—DuPont, some newbie up from Louisiana—and Herrera started to go at it, the monkeys broke it up, but not until DuPont said he wanted to go “one-on-one” with Herrera.

  At first, Zuniga thought to keep the peace and told Eddie, “You worked with the mayates before, didn’t you?”

  “I sold them some yerba back in the day.”

  “Go talk to Harrison, tell him to have his guy back off.”

  Eddie wandered over to the edge of the yard, near the black basketball court, and stood there with his arms crossed over his chest. It got the attention of the black shot caller, a lifer named Harrison, who sent two of his people over.

  “What you want?”

  “A word,” Eddie said.

  They led him over to the weight rack, where Harrison was sitting with a bunch of his homeboys and DuPont, who was still running hot. He’s a big motherfucker, Eddie thought, one of those big black southern motherfuckers like the ones who used to come out of east Texas.

  “Eddie Ruiz,” Eddie said.

  “What do you want?” Harrison asked. He had eyes like the freakin’ ages, Eddie thought. Eyes that know they’re never going to see anything outside this desert shithole.

  “This six o’clock set-to,” Eddie said. “Benny Z thinks it’s a bad idea. Says why don’t we let it go, chalk it up to the heat.”

  “I don’t want to let it go,” DuPont said.

  Harrison looked at him like, Who the fuck asked you what you wanted? But he turned back to Eddie and said, “Your boy called him a nigger.”

  “And he called our guy a beaner,” Eddie said. “It ain’t worth blood being spilled.”

  An expression Eddie has never really understood. He’d never seen blood actually spilled, like it’s chocolate milk or something. He’d seen it run, he’d seen it flow, he’d seen it shoot out the back of someone’s head, but spilled?

  No.

  “He thinks it’s worth blood,” Harrison said, jutting his chin at DuPont.

  “And you care what he thinks?” DuPont is a new boot, Eddie thought, a do-rag cotton picker who probably fucks his own sister in the ass as a form of birth control.

  “The man has his rights,” Harrison said.

  This is true, Eddie thought. A man has a right to be a fucking idiot, which is what DuPont is if he thinks this is really going to be one-on-one. He shrugged, walked back to Zuniga and reported on his conversation.

  “Fucking mayates don’t know their place,” Zuniga said.

  Eddie knew he was pissed because he had lost face. An Eme mesa can’t afford to lose face. If it got out that Benny Z let himself get stood down by a mayate, everyone would start thinking La Eme was getting soft, that they could be taken.

  That couldn’t happen.

  Zuniga was more pissed at Harrison than he was at DuPont, because DuPont didn’t know any better, but Harrison rejecting Zuniga’s peace offer was a piece of studied disrespect, jefe to jefe. If the mesa let that stand, he was done.

  So he started planning the riot.

  Word went to all of La Eme to get out their pedazos and move them to secure hiding places on the yard. Then Zuniga held a strategy meeting with his top guys, among whom Eddie was included.

  Eddie watched DuPont walk up for his one-on-one with Herrera. And he was walking cocky, because he knew the skinny Mexican was no match for him.

  Plus he had ten brothers hiding in the back, ready to jump in.

  Which would have been good, except Herrera had sixty Mexicans.

  With shanks.

  And they weren’t waiting. They charged.

  Shanks came out of shirt fronts, jackets, pant legs; hell, shanks came out of assholes. Eddie had his pedazo, a sweet sharp blade fashioned from tin can lids filched from the kitchen, taped to his leg.

  Sixty crazy beaners ran at full speed, sunshine glinting off the blades raised above their heads. Shit, it could have been the Alamo with black guys instead of peckerwood Texans, and the blacks didn’t even have a wall to shield them.

  They bolted.

  So many black guys were sprinting it looked like the NFL combine, Eddie thought, but there was nowhere for them to run, and the fence, rather than protect them, trapped them. More blacks came running across the yard, but then so did more Mexicans, from three sides, just as planned, and it only took a few seconds before the blacks were backs to the wall. Well, backs to the fence, and it was clear that the COs were going to do exactly shit because the sole uniting factor in Victimville was a shared hatred for the blacks.

  Eddie had heard the saying that love brings people together, but he knew that hate is the stronger bond.

  Hate is the Krazy Glue of social emotions.

  The monkeys went all see-no-evil-hear-no-evil as a wave of Mexicans slammed the blacks against the fence and muchachos started punching, slashing and stabbing.

  Blood was being, as they say, spilled.

  DuPont, being a tall motherfucker and a focus of attention to begin with, was one of the first to go down, because a prison riot is not the best place to be a tall motherfucker and a focus of attention.

  One of the Mexicans swung a sock with a padlock tied inside and caught DuPont in the side of the head. DuPont fell to his knees, which was another bad idea in a riot because the Mexicans started stomping him like they were trying to plant him into the hard-packed dirt. Other blacks tried to fight their way to him, but Eddie saw that wasn’t going to happen.

  The blacks in front punched, slashed, and stabbed back, but the ones in back started climbing the fence. These motherfuckers were so desperate they were throwing themselves on the coils of razor wire that topped the fence, then tried to free themselves from the barbs to drop into the next yard.

  Most got hung up and were stretched out up there screaming, but Eddie saw that one of the few who made it over the top was Darius Darnell, who reached up and helped his cellie, an older guy named Jackson, down the fence.

  Eddie didn’t hesitate.

  He dug his foot into the chain-link fence and climbed.

  Reaching the razor wire, Eddie took a deep breath and then launched himself onto it, slicing his arms and legs. He ripped himself off, screamed, dropped to the ground and started running after the fleeing blacks like he was just crazed with outrage.

  Darius looked like he had some quick to him, but he didn’t use it. He stuck with the older, slower Jackson, which was a balls-to-the-wall, hard-core loyal thing to do because about a dozen other Mexicans followed Eddie’s example, scaled the wall, and chased the blacks along the fence.

  But Eddie took the lesson—Darnell was a stand-up guy.

  Darnell was running for a fenced-off segregation exercise yard, a rectangle about twenty by twenty feet. A CO stood at the open gate, waving him toward it, and Eddie saw he meant to lock Darnell and Jackson safely inside.

  But the others didn’t make it.

  One deliberately fell back to fight a holding action and was swarmed by five vatos. Jackson tried to go back to help him, but Darnell grabbed him by the shirt and shoved him toward the seg yard, yelling, “Move it, man. You can’t do him no good!”

  The CO reached out, grabbed Jackson and pulled him through the gate. Darnell followed him.

  Eddie was just behind, just reached it as the CO, a young Mexican, went to swing it shut.

  Instead, he smiled and said, “Adelante, ’m
ano.”

  Be my guest, brother.

  Eddie stepped in.

  The gate locked behind him and the guard walked away.

  Then Eddie saw six vatos come out into the yard from the inside, smiles on their faces and shanks in their hands.

  Darnell and Jackson were dead mayates.

  One of the vatos told them so. “What happened? Did you think you were safe? We’re going to slice you up.”

  Except Eddie stepped in between. “Suficiente.”

  “Who are you to say when it’s enough?” the lead vato asked Eddie.

  Eddie recognized him as Fernando Cruz, a thick, mean motherfucker close to Zuniga. But not that close, and Eddie could tell he was a little unsure of himself as he said, “You a mayate now, Ruiz?”

  “We’re done. The point has been made.”

  “My point ain’t been made,” Cruz said. “My blade ain’t been wet. Get out of my way, you don’t want me to wet it on you.”

  “You don’t want to shed brown blood,” Ruiz said.

  “You ain’t La Eme. You just a camarada.”

  “I ride in the car, though,” Eddie said. “In the front seat.”

  Reminding Cruz that he and the shot caller do business together.

  “You think because you’re some kind of big chiva slinger you can give me orders?” Cruz asked. “I said step out the way. Or if you want to be a mayate, we can treat you like one.”

  Eddie ripped the shank taped to his leg. It would have hurt like crazy if he weren’t too afraid to feel much of anything.

  He brought the blade up waist high.

  “There are six of us,” Cruz said, “and one of you.”

  “But it’s your throat I’ll slice,” Eddie said.

  “To protect two mayates?” Cruz shook his head. “Benny Z isn’t going to like this.”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “So will I.” But Cruz backed off. Looked around Eddie at Darnell and Jackson and said, “You’re lucky Ruiz here has a thing for black cock. You better fuck him real nice tonight.”

  Eddie thought about opening up Cruz’s face for him but decided against it. Cruz stink-eyed him but took his boys back inside.

  “Why’d you do that?” Darnell asked.