Kingpin

by Richard Stratton

  In the law library—my retreat and intelligence domain—I find case law that says in precise legalese exactly that. The lower court is not permitted to punish a successful appellant more severely upon his having overturned a case on appeal, as to do that would have a dampening effect on a defendant’s right to appeal. Of course, makes perfect sense. Who would want to appeal a judgment if they thought they could get in even deeper shit if they won? Very good reasoning. This is why I have come to love the law. It really does make sense—sometimes. It is the lawmakers who are full of shit. Politicians. Scumbags. Life with no parole for smuggling pot. They are out of their fucking minds. They must be smoking crack.

  Scribbling away on yellow legal pads, I make my notes and draft the brief, then turn it over to Fisher’s associate counsel for review. Finally, we submit the brief to the court. Judge Griesa sets a new date for resentencing. Days and nights at the former rock ’n’ roll jail as I await my day in court are lived in a state of focused anticipation. I believe in the weight and veracity of my argument.

  NORMAN MAILER COMES to visit. He has startling news. Biff, my co-defendant and failed rat, after doing a little over four years in prison, was paroled. He came home, and then he killed himself.

  “I knew he was depressed,” Mailer says. “He was living out in Amagansett. Alone. He looked great. Never better. He worked out in the gym every day. He actually went to the gym on the morning he decided to end it, said good-bye to everyone there, and went home and … checked out.”

  I don’t know what to say. Mailer and Biff were close. “How—?”

  “Well, you know Biff. Nothing messy. He wanted to leave a good-looking corpse. He put a vacuum cleaner hose on the exhaust of his car and asphyxiated himself.”

  Some people go to prison, do the time. And then they kill themselves.

  WHEN WE ARRIVE in the courtroom on the day, Judge Griesa’s clerk tells us his Honor wishes to confer with the parties in chambers before we appear.

  “I’ve read the briefs … from both sides,” Judge Griesa begins. He’s in an easy chair beside his desk. Fisher, Stuart Little, the judge’s clerk, and I sit around like so many members in an exclusive men’s club chatting about the state of the union. “And I see where Mr. Stratton, you have appeared before the parole board, and that you were granted parole on the original sentence imposed in the district of Maine.”

  “Yes, that’s right, your Honor.”

  “My reading of the law and of the facts in this case would lead me to believe that the remedy here is to run the two sentences concurrently instead of consecutively. Is that correct?”

  Fisher answers. “Yes, judge. That is our belief as well.”

  “And you have been incarcerated how long, Mr. Stratton?”

  “Not quite seven years, your Honor.”

  “I see,” Griesa says and nods judiciously. “And if the two sentences are run concurrently, the ten-year sentence will become the controlling term. Is that your understanding?” he asks of us all.

  Stuart Little answers. “It would be, yes, not only because Mr. Stratton has already been paroled on the fifteen-year sentence but also since the sentence in this court, as it is non-paroleable, takes precedence. Further, it will have been imposed well after the original sentence.”

  This sounds a silent alarm in my head. They had better not be thinking that the term imposed here would begin upon imposition and not be retroactive back to the very day I was arrested. No, no, don’t even go there.

  “Well, what I am trying to determine is how much more time Mr. Stratton will be required to serve if I run these two sentences concurrently. Ten years without parole. You’ve served over six years. I suppose that is something the bureau will determine. But I want to make certain that the sentence and the term of incarceration are commensurate with the seriousness of the offence.”

  He looks at Stuart Little. “What is the government’s position?”

  Stuart Little speaks. “Your Honor, the government would not oppose your combining Mr. Stratton’s two sentences. Quite frankly, I am tired of litigating this case. Mr. Stratton has several other pleadings pending. If Mr. Stratton will agree to withdraw the other petitions he has filed, the government will consent to your suggestion of running the two sentences together. My guess is that Mr. Stratton will still have some time left to serve.”

  “Mr. Fisher?” Griesa inquires. “What are your thoughts on this?”

  “Judge, I think you need to ask Mr. Stratton.”

  Peace! Raise the white flag! Surrender. I quit. I will go back to jail and keep my legal filings to myself, or aid other convicts in their cases, but file no more on my own behalf—if you will just let me go. That means withdrawing my attack on the New York conviction on the grounds that Judge Motley stripped me of my defense—an issue the lawyer who wrote my direct appeal neglected to raise. I believe I have a strong argument. But what might I win? Overturn the conviction and go back for a new trial. Then run the risk of getting convicted a second time and having a long, legal sentence imposed. No, that is not a gamble I am willing to take. Take your winnings and leave the table, Dick. Quit the game while you are still ahead. Stuart Little is in no mood to have to try this case all over again, and I’m not either. He is ready to throw in the towel if I agree to stand down and cease and desist my attacks upon the conviction.

  “That’s fine with me, your Honor,” I agree. “I’ll withdraw my other pleadings.”

  “Good,” says the judge. “Let’s go make it official.”

  SO IT IS done. And as we leave the courtroom, Fisher shakes my hand.

  “You did it,” he says. “Good work, Richard. Brilliant. Come see me when you get out. I may have a job for you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT ONANIST—OR, SEX IN JAIL

  FCI Otisville, New York, September 1987

  THIS MORNING I had the most ridiculous and oddly degrading run-in I’ve had yet with Bureau of Punishment staff. I’ve grown accustomed to having my asshole inspected in the many years I have been locked up, told to lift my balls and had my scrotum examined, and I am used to being referred to by number: 02070-036. As well, I am inured to being shunted from prison to prison, jail to jail, cage to cage in shackles and chains like a zoo specimen, I am familiar with sleeping on concrete floors, pissing and shitting in plastic buckets, whiling away hours and days in crowded bullpens. I’m not bitching. It doesn’t bother me. It comes with the experience. It’s jail, and I admit I deserve all this and more because I refuse to obey their asinine laws prohibiting cannabis. But I must endeavor to make sense of this experience in order to understand what goes on in this confined world for my own need to discover meaning in my life and to give me hope to go on living. And to leave a record. Therefore, I tell this story.

  It was six o’clock on a cool, fresh spring day. Dew still glistened on the grass, and the smell of damp concrete was in the air. I felt good to be alive. If only I could let my mind go free and forget where I was. On my way from the housing unit to the gym and recreation yard during the special, ten-minute controlled movement to allow motivated convicts early morning access to the exercise facilities, I must walk past the mess hall where all the cops and staff hang out drinking their morning coffee. I was walking along, minding my own business, feeling fit and frisky for a middle-aged prisoner who worked hard and played harder before coming to jail. After so many months of being confined 24/7 at the MCC, I was enjoying the new day sunshine, the clean morning air, and my refreshed, solitary headspace.

  As I started up the walkway toward the gym, a lieutenant came running out of the mess hall and called out to me—that’s right, a lieutenant, not some lowly hack, a brass, officer type—and he was running like this was some kind of emergency. “Hey, you!” he shouted.

  Ordinarily, I ignore a motherfucker who addresses me like this. Hey, you! Fuck you. Speak to me as a man. Show some respect. But this guy took me by surprise. And the way he was running, looking all flustered,
I was startled and taken aback. “Who, me?” I responded. I was like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver: “You talkin’ to me?”

  It had to be me; there was no one else around. He came up behind me—a tall, lumbering white man going to fat. He looked concerned. I won’t say he was sweating, but he was flushed and a bit winded. I held no contraband and was still too surprised to be annoyed. This is the question he asked me: “Are you wearing underpants?”

  I was baffled and taken aback. “What?”

  What exactly do you say to a cop who stops you at six in the morning and asks if you are wearing underpants? I had no ready reply. I had on a pair of loose, white nylon athletic shorts, a T-shirt, and sneakers, and at first I thought he meant was I wearing only underpants, as from a distance the shorts I had on could have been mistaken for boxer shorts. So I answered, “No. These are regular shorts. Look,” I said and turned around. “They have a pocket.”

  He shook his head and leaned in closer. “You’ve got to go back to your unit and put on some underpants,” he told me.

  “Oh, I get it,” I said. “You mean am I wearing underpants under these shorts? Right? Is that where we’re going with this?”

  Now I was getting angry with myself for allowing this cop to assail my dignity. I thought I had him figured out; he was fucking with me, and I was looking to fuck with his head as much as I could without getting locked up in the Hole. But I knew I had to be careful, as I am newly on record with the Bureau of Punishment as a sex offender. While still housed at MCC after my resentencing, I was caught in a basement classroom in the education department getting a blowjob from a young Indian sociology professor. Nora is her name. Petite, long black hair. Horny and without inhibitions—the ideal woman, my kind of girl, a female who likes sex as much as I do. I had signed up for as many college classes as they would allow me to take during my recent holdover at the rock ’n’ roll jail. There was some consideration that the Bureau of Punishment designation gods might not return me to FCI Petersburg but instead keep me at MCC until the BOP number crunchers could recalculate my sentence. The thinking was that if I had only a few more months to do, I might even finish my bid in New York City.

  Nora the sociology professor from Empire State College and I took an immediate fancy to each other and a hankering for each other’s bodies. It was lust at first sight. One day as class was dismissed, she asked me to hold on a moment. There were only ten convicts in the class, and as soon as they had left the room, Nora asked me in as plain-speaking a manner as one could ever hope for, “How would you like it if I gave you a blowjob?”

  Though surprised, I had the presence of mind to reply almost in kind. It seemed like a great idea and I wanted only to encourage her, so I said, “I would like that very much.”

  “Sit on my desk,” she told me, taking command of the situation. I did, and she unsnapped my blaze-orange jumpsuit. My dick was already stiff as a pool cue. She kneeled before me and quickly, expertly took me in her mouth. All was going swimmingly. I was about to ejaculate when Mr. Wall, the tall, white-haired, and clubfooted head of the education department, opened the classroom door, lumbered in, and caught us. Nora was expelled from the jail. I was put on the next punishment bus out of Manhattan and shipped here to FCI Otisville. But Nora and I have remained in contact. We are in touch by letter and by telephone. I have even managed to have her name added to my visitors list.

  Still, I was and am hyperalert to any kind of police activity in and around my genitals. “Of course, I’ve got on underpants,” I said. I recalled there had been some notice from staff about proper convict dress on the compound since there are several women working here at FCI Otisville. One would suppose the Punishment thinking is they don’t want to see a lot of free-hanging johnsons and risk getting the ladies all lathered up. I can understand that. Sex in jail is oddly omnipresent in its apparent absence. It’s as if everybody is charged up by what they can’t have. The Punishment bureaucrats have been forced by Equal Rights legislation to allow women to work in these joints. There have long been female guards at MCC, and we know where that went. They set up a prostitution ring. Human beings will find a way to fuck. It’s what we do.

  In a lot of the state joints they have conjugal visits. Just outside the prison walls they have trailers nicknamed the “fuck trucks.” A convict’s wife and kids can come visit for the weekend. Seems reasonable and even enlightened. But in the federal punishment system they do not acknowledge the baser human drives or offer any effort toward healing such as trying to help keep families together. It is all about control and subjugation. Degradation and dehumanization. Right down to your asshole and your underpants. It’s as though they want to send you back out onto the streets more damaged and perverse than you were when you entered the Bureau of Punishment.

  “Let me see ’em,” the lieutenant said.

  “You want to see my underpants?” I asked. I wasn’t going to let him off easy.

  He nodded.

  “Take my word for it,” I said. “I’m wearing underpants.”

  He shook his head. “No. I have to see them.”

  They believe nothing we say. I felt like asking, “You want to see my cock, too?” But I knew that would move me over the line, and probably get me a write-up for disobeying a direct order or some such horseshit. So I shrugged, pulled my shorts down to my knees, and revealed a clean pair of white jockey briefs.

  “Okay … okay. Pull your shorts up,” said the lieutenant, looking embarrassed.

  “This wasn’t my idea,” he went on as though he hoped to redeem himself in my eyes. “The associate warden told me to come out here and check to see if you’re wearing underpants.”

  I smiled at him. “Really?” I said and pulled up my shorts. “The associate warden. I’m flattered. Does he want a date?”

  The lieutenant stammered, “Go on, you’re dismissed.” And he turned and walked away.

  THIS SEEMINGLY MILD invasion of my dignity has lodged in my gullet like a bone and upset me more so than it should. For this is a world where one must surrender any vestige of privacy and pride. Still, it rankles deep inside that I have allowed myself to be reduced to the point where I will readily submit to a random underpants check. Is this what it has come to? Who I have become? Of course it is. I have been brought to face my conceit: that I could take on these federales and expect to win. Stratton versus the United States government indeed. I have been forced to recognize my hubris for what it is—a fatal flaw and my downfall.

  So I look for the lesson and recognize that in submission there is power. In the close and personal land of diapers and underpants there also lives the seed of creation. And if, like Onan, I must spill my seed upon barren ground, then let me find my inspiration and my pleasure in pissing on their rules and regulations.

  THE FORMER WARDEN at this prison, FCI Otisville, was recently named director of the entire Federal Bureau of Punishment. Whoopy-do. I had angled to get redesignated here; Otisville is close to New York City and to my parents’ home in Massachusetts. It’s a fairly new facility with large, two-man cells and a big recreation yard. But that was before they turned Otisville into a holdover stop. Now, because there is a witness protection WITSEC unit here—one whole, closely-guarded unit filled with important rats—security is unusually tight, much like at a maximum-security penitentiary. I’m ready to go back to the relative comfort of FCI Petersburg to complete my sentence. But the BOP bureaucrats can’t seem to figure out what to do with me. So I sit here in limbo, like in that Jimmy Cliff song from The Harder They Come.

  THE OTHER DAY a guy on my tier died of heart attack. We were all locked down because of heavy fog. They are afraid to let us out on the compound when there is fog in the air for fear we might disappear like spirits in the mist. We heard the guy’s death go down— raucous, impossibly drawn out, and bitterly painful for all. His cellmate banged on the door and yelled for the unit cop, who ignored him. There was no question the guy was freaking out; his cellie was in cardiac arrest. No
one came to his aid, and when they finally opened the cells and let us out, the guy was dead. His cellmate was shipped out immediately to try to avoid any repercussions to Punishment staff.

  They will spot-check to make sure you are wearing underpants but pay you no mind if you’re dying.

  I GOT A letter from Nora last week to say she’s coming to visit. Can you imagine how stupid these Punishment people are? They caught me with a civilian contract employee in flagrante delicto, in blazing offense—I, in my blaze-orange jumpsuit, Nora on her knees before me with my stiff cock in her mouth. I did manage to cover the offending member, and Nora jumped to her feet, but there was no question what we were up to when Wall walked in and busted us. They fired Nora immediately. But now, lo and behold, no one catches it when I ask to have her name put on my visiting list! And they consent. When I got to the line on the visitor’s application form where I was supposed to tell how I knew Nora, of course I lied. I wrote that she had been a friend on the street from before I became a prisoner. I could hardly admit that we became intimate during forced coitus interruptus as part of my ongoing prison sex education.

  Today is the day. In anticipation of Nora’s visit, I cut out the pockets of my jumpsuit. Naturally, I wear underwear; I don’t want to go through that again. But I choose a pair of loose-fitting boxer shorts with an open fly. This setup is what seasoned cons refer to as “the mouse in the pocket” trick for reasons that will become clear. I may be jumping the gun here, but I have faith in this woman, good Nora from Bombay. I know from experience she’s one of those rare and prized females who enjoy to provoke and to partake in sexual desire under dangerous circumstances. Her letters seethe with eroticism. She’s not driving all the way up here from New York City to gaze in my eyes and hold my hand. This is as much of a sex adventure for her as it is for me.