The Last Act: A Novel

by Brad Parks

  The CO took us down a hallway toward the left wing of the t. I could already guess the top and right wings were designed identically. These were the residential portions of the cottage.

  The hallway emptied into a common area. In the middle were three bunk beds, all empty. With Morgantown below capacity, they weren’t needed. Twelve doors ringed the room.

  A few of the doors had people behind them who were now eyeing me, the new guy. But for the most part, the inmates—including, apparently, Dupree—were elsewhere.

  We walked to the second room on the left, a nine-foot-by-nine-foot space that was short on both comfort and charm. The walls were the same unadorned cinder block found in the hallway. It had a slender window in the far corner that offered a narrow view of the entrance to the building.

  “This one’s yours,” the CO said.

  Shoved against the wall to the left, there was a metal desk with a circular seat welded to it. In front of me were two gray metal lockers, perhaps three feet high, bolted to the wall.

  The one on the right was empty. The one on the left had some personal items on top—a brush, some deodorant, a toothbrush and toothpaste. There was also a picture frame that contained a photograph of a smiling dark-skinned woman and an adorable girl, perhaps eight or nine, whose black hair had been tightly braided into pigtails.

  On the wall to the right was a metal bunk bed. The top bunk was bare, save for a three-inch mattress set atop a web of rickety bedsprings. The bottom bunk looked like it had been made by a West Point cadet: a white fitted sheet pulled tight across the mattress, a white flat sheet whose top portion was folded crisply down atop a white blanket, which had been neatly tucked with hospital corners.

  “You can put your shoes and jacket under the bed,” the CO said. “All your other belongings need to fit in that locker. You can get a lock from the commissary, which I’d recommend. We do regular inspections, and you’re responsible for making sure you don’t have any contraband in there. Don’t cover the window. The room has to be clean every morning. Fail an inspection and you’ll get a point. Get three points, and you’ll end up in the SHU.”

  He pronounced it like “shoe,” and I knew better than to ask what it was. The Special Housing Unit, also known as solitary confinement, had a reputation that preceded it. You spend twenty-three hours a day in a cell by yourself. For an extrovert, no greater punishment could be devised.

  “Dinner starts at five. You’ll go when your unit is called. After that you have free time until eight thirty or so. That’s when you’ll be called back to your unit. Last standing count of the day is at nine. Lights-out is ten. In the morning, your unit manager will be able to tell you what your work assignment is. Any questions?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good,” he said. And then, in his most officious voice, he added, “Welcome to Morgantown.”

  I thought he was going to throw in a salute. But he just turned and departed. Sometime in the next two weeks, I would get a formal daylong orientation program. Otherwise, I was now just another inmate, as righteously deprived of my liberty as anyone else there.

  But, unlike the rest of them—whose primary occupation would be counting the days, months, and years until their release dates—I had a mission.

  * * *

  • • •

  After setting down my things, I poked my head back out of my room. For all I had read about the rigors of prison, for all I had attempted to prepare myself mentally for the challenge, this was my first moment being truly on my own.

  I wobbled out into the common area and continued back up the hallway, toward the main entrance. The bathroom, which had no door, was on my left. I turned into it. It was covered in yellow tile. There were two sinks with mirrors. The shower stall was curtained.

  Out of curiosity, I pulled back the curtain, ready to be horrified by the colonies of mold and fungus. But other than a few decades’ worth of soap scum, it was clean enough. Another bonus: There was only one nozzle, so there would be no communal showering, nor worrying about the possibilities thereof. Another prison trope, evaporated.

  Most of the voices seemed to be coming from past the entrance, down in the body of the t. Hoping to catch sight of Dupree, I exited the bathroom and walked past a guard booth and an administrative office, then into a TV room.

  There were six flat-screens affixed to the walls. None had the sound up. Men were listening to them with headphones, tuning into the sound via radio. There were stickers under each screen dictating the frequency—107.5 for news, 104.5 for music and entertainment, 98.1 for sports, and so on.

  A few heads turned my way as I entered, but then swiveled back just as fast. I had already read that new guys weren’t all that unusual. At a place where there were nine hundred men, many of them serving relatively short stints for nonviolent crimes—eighteen months, two years, whatever—there was a fair amount of churn.

  To my immediate left was a room that appeared to be a kitchen. If you could call it that. Really, it was just a stainless steel sink with an icemaker next to it. In the middle of the room was a charging station for the small MP3 players inmates were allowed to purchase. Beyond that, four tables with four chairs each were bolted to the floor.

  There was no Dupree. I kept moving through the TV room, walking quickly so I didn’t block anyone’s view. The final space was a small room where men were playing cards, sitting at tables identical to the ones in the kitchen.

  Again, they paid me no particular mind. Again, no Dupree.

  Having pushed myself as far as I wanted to go for the moment, I reversed course and returned to my room. There was now a man in there, sifting through the contents of the left-side locker.

  And he was a giant.

  Six foot seven, at least. Three hundred pounds, at least. The room was nine-by-nine, eighty-one feet square. I swear he filled eighty-two of them.

  He was facing away from me, and he was shirtless. There was a tattoo of what appeared to be a family tree etched across his broad back, though it was difficult to make out the names or detail, because it had been scrawled in black ink against skin that was very nearly as dark.

  I had paused in the doorway, mostly because there wasn’t room for me to enter without violating his personal space. He turned when he became aware of me, and I was soon staring at roughly his navel, the height difference between us was so great. A bit of his belly spilled over his belt, but his arms, neck, and chest were solid, more muscle than fat.

  People don’t come this size in the theater world. He was, without any exaggeration, one of the largest human beings I had ever found myself in close quarters with.

  And apparently he was my roommate. I don’t know if this was random or if it was the intake officer’s idea of a joke: Put the tallest guy at the prison with the shortest.

  “Can I help you?” he said in a slow, fathomless voice. His southern accent was much stronger than Pete Goodrich’s, even more pronounced than Amanda’s when she was drinking, so it came out as “Kin ah hep you?”

  “Yeah, hi,” I said. “I’ve been assigned to this room. I’m Tom—”

  I stopped. I had gotten so distracted by his massiveness, I nearly forgot my new name.

  Before he noticed (I think), I corrected myself: “I’m Pete Goodrich.”

  “Frank Thacker,” he said.

  He reached out his hand, which was the size of a hubcap and, when I shook it, at least as hard. I got the sense he wasn’t even trying to squeeze. That was just his grip.

  “Where you from?” I asked.

  “South Carolina,” he said.

  The natural follow-up would have been to ask where I was from, and I was ready with my best “Shepherdstown, West Virginia.” But he just said, “You mind taking the top bunk, sir? They fixed the bottom one special for me.”

  He pointed, and I saw that the crossbeam at the foot of the bed had been
rewelded to a spot about two feet higher than its original position, thus allowing his feet—and, heck, probably half his calves—to protrude off the end of the sleeping surface.

  “Yeah, sure, of course,” I said, mostly because the last place I wanted those three-hundred-and-whatever pounds was sleeping directly above me. The bunks were metal, but they didn’t look that sturdy.

  “I’ll help make your bed in the morning, if you want,” he said. “Don’t want to get no points.”

  “That’d be great, thanks.”

  I had finally worked my way up to where I was looking at his face. It was as broad as the rest of him, with a nose that may have been twice as wide as mine. He shaved his head. Or at least I think he did. It was a little difficult to see that high. His eyes were coffee-colored and not particularly large, especially given the size of the rest of him.

  Maybe it was because so much of the world was beneath him, forcing him to look down all the time, but there was something gloomy about his visage.

  “All right, then,” he said with a nod.

  He turned back toward his locker, extracting a tent-size shirt, which he put on gingerly. He was cognizant of the length of his arms and didn’t want to accidentally strike me. He was surprisingly graceful, given his size.

  I eased past him and sat on top of the desk. Then I pointed to the picture atop his locker.

  “That your daughter?” I asked, in an attempt to start a conversation.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She’s adorable.”

  “Thank you, sir,” he said.

  “How old is she?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. It was possible he was so intent on buttoning his shirt he hadn’t heard me. When he was done dressing, he dipped his head and said, “See you at supper, sir.”

  Then he walked out. He hadn’t exactly been unfriendly. But he was no Rob Masri. We weren’t going to instantly trade life stories.

  Frank Thacker’s secrets were going to stay buried a little deeper.

  * * *

  • • •

  Randolph continued filling up as dinnertime approached. I made my first foray to the phone in the hallway and called Amanda but got no answer. We had already decided that I wouldn’t leave messages for her. Phone minutes were too precious to waste.

  Then I called Danny. I had promised him a check-in. He wanted to know I was successfully in place, so he could brief his SAC.

  It speaks to the inherent loneliness of incarceration that after even just a few hours, it already felt good to be able to talk to someone who knew me before I got there. I burned minutes yammering at him about my ride in, about Masri, about my block-out-the-sun roommate.

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s great,” he said. “Glad you’re the popular girl. Just don’t get so busy making friends you forget to call me if you happen to hear about the location of any prime hunting cabins, okay?”

  I assured him I wouldn’t, then ended the call.

  When I returned to my room, I busied myself by putting my meager belongings in my locker, all while keeping an eye out for Dupree through my narrow window. Then I made my bed and, not knowing what else to do, lay on top of it for a while.

  My gaze went upward. There was no drop ceiling here, just wood planks supported by exposed steel beams. There were probably hipsters from Brooklyn who would have paid extra for it.

  Idly, I wondered how many inmates had whiled away how many hours doing just this—staring up at the ceiling—during the half century of Morgantown’s existence.

  Then I thought about Amanda. I wondered how her meeting with the Van Buren Gallery had gone. I savored our final good-bye just a little bit, both the kiss we had in the morning and the love we made the evening before. I closed my eyes and pictured her naked, her face the picture of concentration as she built toward climax.

  It was going to be a long six months without her.

  But that and other thoughts were soon interrupted by a tinny, metallic voice that came piped in from somewhere in the common room: “Raddah, propree pra pra daha.”

  Instantly, there was a scurrying of men on the move, of bedsprings creaking and steel-toed shoes scuffling. I sat up. The voice must have said: “Randolph, proceed to the dining hall.”

  I swung my legs off my bunk and made the short drop to the floor. My delay in understanding put me toward the back of a long line of men walking in twos and threes. Some were still dressed in their khakis. Others had changed into commissary-purchased workout clothes: white T-shirts and gray shorts, or one or both halves of a gray sweat suit.

  It was difficult to tell from behind if one of them was Dupree. The only person I could see for sure up ahead was my new roommate, mostly because he was too huge to miss.

  Then I heard, “Hey, Pete Goodrich.”

  Coming up from behind me was Masri.

  “Hey,” I said, like I was greeting an old friend. “You in Randolph?”

  “Seems that way. How’s your stay been so far?”

  “Oh, it’s better than the Ritz-Carlson,” I said. “Only problem is I can’t find the bar.”

  He immediately got this smug little grin and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Then you probably haven’t been looking hard enough.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “You jonesing for a little prison home brew, Goodrich?”

  I must have still looked perplexed, because he took a quick glance around, then lowered his voice more. “I forget, you’re new.”

  “So are you.”

  “To Morgantown, yeah. But not to institutional living. Just because you’re in prison doesn’t mean you have to go without all of life’s comforts. You know that, right? If booze is your thing, that’s pretty easy. There are probably two dozen guys in here who can hook you up. More if you don’t mind the taste of rancid orange juice. You want pot? No problem. There are another dozen guys who can get you that. If it’s coke or heroin or crank, that’s a little harder, but not impossible. You just need to be patient and know who to ask.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I’m still figuring out that last part. But when I do, I’ll let you know. Shouldn’t take long.”

  “Thanks. Though I’m not . . . Drugs aren’t really my thing,” I said. Then, feeling my Pete Goodrich–ness, I added: “When I was a student teacher, I co-taught a unit on drug addiction in health class. Not sure if it had any impact on my students, but it sure scared me straight.”

  He laughed. “I hear you. But if you want some free advice? Find something to get addicted to. It’ll make your time go by quicker.”

  “What d’ya mean?”

  “I’m not into drugs, either,” Masri said. “But you know what my thing is? Caramel M&M’S.”

  “The candy?”

  “Yeah, the candy. It sounds stupid, I know. But when I was on the outside, there was a convenience store down the street from my office, and sometimes I’d sneak out midway through the afternoon and get myself a bag of them when I needed a little pick-me-up. So inside they’ve become my thing. They’re not on the commissary list, so they’re technically contraband. Things taste better when you know you’re not allowed to have them.”

  “I thought they check pretty regularly for contraband,” I said as we neared the dining hall.

  “And they do,” Masri said. “So make sure they don’t find anything. Look, the COs aren’t stupid. They know what’s going on. And they care, but only when they think they’re being watched. The rest of the time, they’re just trying to get to the end of their shifts with a minimum of hassle. It’s all about the appearance of following the rules. So if you’ve got your equivalent of caramel M&M’S, the absolute last place you want to put it is in your locker. Because, yeah, if they find them there, they’ll have to bust you. So find a stash spot. Got it?”

  I thought about the lack of a drop ceiling in my roo
m. It wasn’t about pleasing the hipsters. It was so we couldn’t hide things up there.

  But FCI Morgantown was a big place. There were surely other possibilities.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Got it.”

  “Pretty much everyone here has a hustle. If you find yours, it’ll give you something else to focus on other than how much time you have left. That’s Prison Survival 101.”

  He winked. We had entered the dining hall. Following the herd, I was soon shuffling along a stainless steel serving area, receiving my meal: pork chops, mashed potatoes, green beans, a small carton of milk, all of it steam warmed, FDA approved, and cooked to within half a degree of tasteless.

  Then I sat down next to Rob at a long row that consisted of several rectangular tables stacked end to end. No one seemed concerned about who sat with whom, nor with any segregation. Black and white and brown mixed together. The Aryan Brotherhood couldn’t be bothered with Camp Cupcake.

  There was little conversation. The men ate with their heads down. Taking that as the local custom, I did the same.

  But as I began sawing through a time-toughened pork chop with a plastic knife, I caught a glimpse of a guy sitting one table over.

  A guy with a hangdog look on his face.

  And receded brown hair.

  And a goatee.

  It was, unquestionably, Mitchell Dupree. I had finally found my mark.

  Or, to use Masri’s word, my hustle.

  But I may have been enjoying this next victory a little too much, because I had allowed my eyes to lock on Dupree.

  He looked up. Straight at me. Like he knew someone was watching him.

  CHAPTER 16

  Having witnessed the cost of failure, Herrera adopted a more proactive management style in his new role as director of security for the New Colima cartel.