by Robert Rand
“What’s he talking about?” Sullivan asked his friend.
Rick laughed and said, “You’ll see. It’s actually ‘Bitch Hall’.”
“Shut the fuck up in my hallway!” shouted an overweight and balding guard.
Once again, bedroll in hand, Sullivan Rourk headed off to where he was told to go.
At the last door on the right was Birch Hall. The noise level was deafening. People yelling back and forth along the three tiers of the east and west sides of the cellblock. Smoke lingered in the air from the homemade wicks the inmates kept burning in order to light the hand-rolled cigarettes and occasional joint that would reach the tier. The guard assigned Rick and Sullivan to cells on the second tier and told them to go stand in front of them and he would let them in shortly.
Sullivan followed Rick through one barred gate and up a stairwell. On the second tier, the stairway opened up at the shower. Sullivan stopped dead in his tracks. April had a nice ass, but in the shower was the most beautiful heart-shaped ass Sullivan had ever seen. Long brown hair clung in wet strands at the back and on the thin shoulders of the narrow waisted owner of the world’s prettiest butt. Turning at the waist to see whose eyes were burning a hole in her, the owner of the pretty butt revealed that she also possessed a beautiful set of pert, firm breasts, 36-C, Sullivan thought. He was mesmerized by this nubile nymph. He felt his penis rise within his jeans. Sullivan wanted to wrap this seductress in his arms and kiss her pouty lips. Then she turned to fully face him. Sullivan’s face reddened with embarrassment and shame as he stared at the distinctively male genitals between the perfectly sculpted legs of the transvestite.
“Wanna wash my back?” asked the queen in a sweet voice.
Sullivan swallowed hard and hurried to his cell. There were half a dozen drag queens in the first 10 cells. He tried to ignore their catcalls, jeers and propositions. He was fresh meat to them.
Rick stood half way down the tier, holding his arms wrapped around his stomach as he laughed. “Now you know why it’s called ‘Bitch Hall’, brother!”
“Fuck you!” Sullivan hollered back without much enthusiasm.
The next few days were a test of Sullivan’s sanity. The noise level didn’t drop until nearly 3 a.m., and then started back up following breakfast at 6. Clanging doors, shouts, and worst of all, the pounding, mock drum beats that the majority of blacks seemed to constantly amuse themselves with, as they hollered out rap songs.
Yard time only came twice a week. The main yard consisted of a large asphalt area that held weight benches, pull up bars, a basketball court, half a dozen handball courts and beyond that was the softball field.
As Sullivan and Rick walked the yard, following the crowd in the counter-clockwise rotation allowed, Sullivan somewhat rhetorically asked, “What in the hell do the blacks see in that rap bullshit?”
“It gives no-talent idiots a chance to make big money,” Rick replied
“And what about all this God-damn ‘Poor pitiful me, I’m a victim of racism because I’m black’, then they rap all this ultra-reverse racism? Fuck them!”
“Hey, Sullivan, you, sir, are just beginning to learn to hate, my friend. Give it a few months, you’ll hate spicks, spooks and gooks equally – almost as much as you’ll hate the cops.”
“I’ve never hated anyone, Rick,” Sullivan glanced over at a group of blacks beating on a table and singing something about ‘Fuck the white man’, then he added, “but you’re right, I’m learning.”
About then a fistfight broke out between two blacks. Rick pulled Sullivan by the arm and angled him in a different direction.
An amplified voice gave the urgent command, “Yard down!” as a buzzer, loud and unnerving, filled the air. Rick squatted down, Sullivan followed suit. The two combatants kept pummeling one another as the crowd watched. Prison guards with T-handled batons rushed onto the yard, but kept their distance. Another call for the inmates to stop was screamed over the public address system seconds before a single gunshot was heard and the inmate who appeared to be losing the fight suddenly had all the fight taken out of him…permanently.
Silence followed. Everyone not wearing a CDC uniform was face down on the ground in the instant that came after the gunshot. The birds did not chirp. The flies did not buzz. All sound ceased as the blood of life poured silently from the fallen fighter.
‘They murdered that kid’, Sullivan’s mind cried out in dismay. He knew that the guard in the tower had a gun. He knew that the gun had bullets. He even knew that there were to be no warning shots fired, a dozen or more signs along the walls and fences of the yard area said so. But to shoot a kid in the back as he held his arms over his face to protect himself from the guy who was whipping his ass, that is murder. Sullivan whispered these thoughts to his friend, while they lay on the ground waiting for the medical staff to respond.
“This is the real world, bro.” Rick was whispering in return, “Sure, it’s murder. The dude he was fighting will be the one charged. That punk ass cop’ll get a year’s worth of stress duty, working away from inmates and guns. They don’t give a fuck, it’s the fast track to the easy life.”
“No!” April growled as she slapped the roaming hand of her boss.
“What’s wrong, April? Yur man isn’t going to be giving you any for a long time, just letting you know I’m here if you need some.” Stan had been her employer for eight weeks. The firm she had worked for had let her go following Sullivan’s conviction. She was persona non-gratis with the major architectural firms.
“I love my husband and I’ll never cheat on him, so get those thoughts out of your head.”
“Why do you think I came over?”
“For the reason you said on the phone; to discuss the new blueprints.”
“Yeah, well, the blueprints are fine,” Stan Proden said as he pushed his chair back from the drafting table and stood, “except for that stain on the original vellum. It blurs part of the eastern dimensional measurements,” he added, a little miffed by having his advance rebuffed, but back to the business at hand.
“Lisa Ann spit up on it. It’s breast milk and pureed beets, deal with it!” April told her boss.
Stan turned and left without a goodbye. April took out her notebook and, as she did every day, began writing a letter to her husband.
“My Dearest Sullivan,” the letter began in her elegant, flowing script, “How are you? I love and miss you, so does our beautiful daughter. She is getting so big! Last night, she finally slept through the night!!! Maybe the dark circles under my eyes will eventually disappear after all.
“Remember me telling you that Stan wanted me to do some revisions on a set of drawings? Well, I made the revisions, Fed-Ex’d the blueprints and then he calls this morning wanting to come over to discuss the revisions. He just left. And it wasn’t blueprints he wanted to talk about. More like blue balls! He actually thought I would go to bed with him because you aren’t here! I love you. I could never cheat on you!
I’m sending photos of the baby – none of me; I’m too fat still. And I’m sending stamps and a $100 money order, too. It takes so long to get a letter from you! Am I approved to visit you yet? Or do you not want to see me for some reason? Oh, I almost forgot – am I a blond under all this red hair? – Spanky turned himself in yesterday. He ended up with 6 years for the stolen property charge. Vasquez got all the dope and guns dismissed – some technicality with the search warrant. Anyway, Granny said to tell you to keep and eye out for Frank so he can keep an eye on you!
Good Night, Sleep with the Angels.
Love, April”
L.A. Michaels leaned back in his chair and rubbed his tired eyes with the heels of his hands. “Exiled” he muttered under his breath.
“What was that?” asked Special Agent Hudspeth, who was sitting at the next desk, typing out an affidavit in support of an arrest warrant for a bank robbery suspect.
L.A. leaned forward, resting on his jacketed elbows before replying, “I said ‘Exiled’. Can yo
u believe that I’ve been made Special Agent in charge of, get this, ‘Cases of unique interest and public concern’?”
“What the Hell does that mean?” asked Hudspeth, as he turned away form his Smith-Corona and looked at Michaels.
L.A. handed one of the dozens of thick files that had arrived that morning from the northern district field office in Sacramento.
Hudspeth looked at the case name and broke out laughing. Between guffaws, he managed to say, “So, Special Agent Michaels, just when do you expect to place the cuffs on D. B. Cooper?”
Michaels extended his long, chocolate on one side, pink on the other, middle finger and mouthed the words ‘Fuck you’ silently. He wasn’t thrilled to be stuck working the ‘dead files’ of unsolved high publicity cases. The 1974 hijacking and parachute escape by the infamous, and presumed long dead, D. B. Cooper, was the most prominent. He had also been handed a dozen other cases ranging from the only escape from Alcatraz, to a ten year old case file that had eyewitness reports of former African dictator, and current international fugitive, Idi Amein, living in the Coachella Valley and trafficking in heroin to support his life on the lam.
The Bureau didn’t like recovering alcoholics in its ranks. Special Agents of the FBI were supposed to be above the plights of common men, such as alcoholism, job-related stress, spousal abuse or depression. They were the nation’s super-cops. Never mind that the FBI was founded and ruled by a cross-dressing madman; J. Edgar Hoover. But Special Agent Michaels was now tainted beyond his racial views, beyond his ethnicity and beyond his ghetto upbringing. He was a drunk who had brought discredit upon the Bureau in open court, admitted its fallibility and apologized to a criminal.
L.A. Michaels was a pariah and, as such, would be systematically purged from the rank and file of ‘loyal Americans’ who understood that ‘duty’ translated into ‘Protect the image of the Bureau at all cost’.
Realizing this, L.A. did exactly as was expected of him. He inserted a sheet of paper into his typewriter. Precisely two inches below the official letterhead, he began his resignation:
“To the bigoted white racist bastard of a director,
“Your manipulation of assignments affecting minorities within the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been an effective means of keeping the niggers in their place. You should be proud of your discriminatory policies that counterman the dictates of human decency, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and the Affirmative Action mandates set forth by the Congress of the United States of America. You, sir, have succeeded. You want nothing but tokens that will answer to Toby and play step-and-fetch-it-boss, however I am not that nigger.
“Effective immediately, Special Agent L.A. Michaels declares his name to be Kunta Kinte in your Toby society and resigns from your precious family of bigoted idiots.
“L.A. Michaels, Real American.”
He pulled the single sheet of paper from the typewriter and signed it with his Cross pen, the one his mother gave him when he became the first in his family to graduate high school. He grabbed the Polaroid of Taiee and left his desk in disarray as he headed for home. The letter of resignation he unceremoniously deposited into the ‘IN’ box on the receptionist’s desk on his way out the door. Duty done.
He thought to himself as he got into his Volvo, ‘What does a black man with a law degree and no desire to practice law do when he quits his job?’ A big grin spread across L.A.’s face as he answered himself aloud, “Trade in this white-bread cracker-ass car for a mutha-fuckin’ Coupe de Ville!”
Chapter 24
Sullivan Rourk and Rick McClain seemed to be on the buddy plan. From Riverside County Jail to the reception center at Chino, then continuing on to the Correctional Training Facility at Soledad. But that’s where they would be sent their separate ways.
Rick had spent a good deal of his life in various penitentiaries. Between the shit jobs he had refused to work at and the riots that swept up everyone in their path, Rick’s ever increasing custody level made it mandatory that he be housed in a level III, cell styled facility. And as such, he was sent to Soledad – North, Unit II, and was housed on the third tier of Whitney Hall. His barred window overlooked the barren fields and distant row of eucalyptus trees that had long ago been planted as a wind block to deflect the gusts that blew through the region starting at about 2 p.m. every day.
Sullivan hadn’t required the intense restrictions that CDC had warranted for Rick. Inmate Rourk was serving a shorter term of imprisonment, he was college educated, married with child, no documented history of in-custody violence. Inmate Sullivan Rourk, E-01044, was deemed to be a level I custody designation and therefore sent to Soledad’s South facility, which was all dormitory housing.
From day one, Sullivan hated being in the dorm. There was absolutely no privacy. You slept in a room with 120 other men, farting, snoring, coughing, talking, singing, and whatever else. There were only 12 showerheads in the communal shower, so Sullivan didn’t have every swinging dick nearby all the time, but still way too many for his comfort. Worst of all, he quickly found out that, without fail, someone would inevitably start a conversation with him as he sat on the cold stainless steel toilet to shit.
Rourk was assigned to the chow hall as a table wipe. ‘Four years of maintaining a 3.8 GPA in college, not some ‘everyone accepted’ community college, but at a California University, and here I am working as a busboy for $18 a month’, thought Sullivan, ironically, as he ran his damp white towel across the recently vacated table.
The dining hall was divided in half by a center aisle. By custom, as much as preference to gather with ones own kind, the tables east of the aisle were always occupied by whites and southern Mexicans. The western tables were where the blacks and northern Mexicans would take their meals. Racism in the California prison system is not as much a choice that inmates are faced with incorporating into their lifestyle as it is a necessity for maintaining a life to style. There are no loud protests, blacks screaming their indignation at an equally loud group of whites like those depicted on the news from various towns and campuses around the real world. Here, segregation was a self-imposed way of life. Nobody wanted forced integration, nobody wanted to be forced to tolerate another culture or religion. Here, you ran with your own because there was strength in numbers. Liberal do-gooders like the ACLU were always trying to cram their Utopian views down the throats of the prison hierarchy, who would then force-feed it to the inmates, who would then spit it back out.
Sullivan was already bitter and disgusted with the majority of blacks in his dorm. What they considered entertainment, he thought of as disrespectful noise. Why the blacks would find it necessary to yell in conversation with a man two feet away was beyond Sullivan’s comprehension. So when, at the end of the first week as a table wipe, a policy change was instituted, Sullivan rebelled.
“I thought I told you that you worked the west side now,” an obnoxious black correctional officer named Jackson hollered at Rourk.
Sullivan looked up and answered, “You did,” then bent back down to wipe another table.
“Then why ain’t you over there?”
Sullivan straightened up to his full 6 foot 3 inches, squared his wide shoulders and took a single long stride toward the guard. Looking down at the much shorter C.O., he said, “It’s against my religion to work over there.”
The guard took a half step backward; bumping his ass into a table, “Fuck you, religion, what religion?”
“Ku Klux Klan Christian is what fucking religion”, Sullivan, who had never even seen a Klansman, that he knew of, snarled, knowing the comment would catch the C.O. off guard.
Jackson pulled his P-34, T-handled baton and held it along his arm in a protective manner, then pressed the button on the personal security alarm attached to his Sam Brown belt. Blue emergency lights flashed on the outside of the building and the audible alarm shrilled loudly, notifying staff of a potential emergency.
“Get back! Get back, Rourk!” Jackson was screaming.
Within moments all the inmates were on their feet, ready to follow whatever lead was given.
Twenty baton-wielding guards converged on the dining hall, most of them yelling for the inmates to sit on the floor.
Rourk had the power to start a riot against the guards and the thought of doing so more than crossed his mind. But good sense quickly won out. For something as stupid as his own idiotic comment to cause a riot was ludicrous, he realized. Following the officers’ command, Rourk turned around and placed his hands behind his back.
He was handcuffed and immediately taken back to Soledad – Central where he was housed in O-wing, the Administrative Segregation unit, pending adjudication of his CDC – 115, serious rules violation. Though he hadn’t really done anything, he was now deemed a threat to the safety and security of the institution.
As he lay back in his bunk, Sullivan decided that his only regret was not having done it the day he had arrived at the south yard. He was now alone in a single man cell. There were people talking, but it was in normal conversational tones.
“Hey, Wood.” The voice sounded to Sullivan as if it was coming from the vent in the wall above his head. “Hey, Wood that jus come in downstairs” the voice hollered out again.
Sullivan stood up and answered in the vent, “Yeah?”
“What’s yer name and where ya from, Wood?”
“Sullivan Rourk. I’m from Palm Springs. Who am I talking to?” he replied. The voice sounded like it belonged to a white guy, but he couldn’t be sure.
“They call me Whitey. A.B. Whitey. You that fuckin’ bank bomber dude?”
Sullivan had gotten used to the reference, and, in fact, had come to enjoy the modicum of instant respect that was afforded his semi-celebrity status. “Yeah, that’s me.”