Prison Time Read online

  ‘England!’ His eyebrows leap. ‘Hold on a minute. Do you know a dude called English Shaun?’

  ‘That’s me,’ I say, surprised.

  His face lights up. ‘I’ve just come from supermax. My neighbour was Gangsta Dan. He said you and him worked together on the streets.’

  ‘Kind of,’ I say, reluctant to disclose my relationship with Gangsta Dan, a loose cannon on the rave scene who preyed on Ecstasy dealers.

  ‘He said if I run into you, to give you his address, his love and respect, and to look out for you because you and him were crime partners and you’re a good dude. I can’t believe you’re the first person I meet after getting out of supermax!’ Long Island says, beaming. ‘What a coincidence!’

  ‘That’s cool,’ I say, smiling, relieved by his friendliness.

  ‘How come your shit’s not on the bottom bunk?’

  ‘I prefer the top,’ I say, without disclosing why. Reading on the bottom renders me vulnerable to being attacked, whereas if I’m on the top, facing the door, I can use the height to kick an assailant in the head. ‘Take the bottom. It’s all yours.’

  ‘Where’s your TV?’

  ‘I don’t have one.’

  ‘I’ll get you one.’

  ‘It’s by choice.’

  He stares as if I’m crazy. ‘What?’

  ‘I read all day.’

  Shaking his head, he smiles. ‘I’ve got a book for you.’ He grabs a property box from a cart outside the cell and produces Tender Is the Night. ‘It’s the last book F. Scott Fitzgerald ever wrote.’

  I admire the green cover with a portrait of a well-dressed couple staring in opposite directions. ‘Since reading Hemingway, I’ve wanted to read Fitzgerald.’

  ‘Yeah, those guys were alcoholic hell-raising homies.’

  ‘Well, thanks for this.’

  ‘I’ve got The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, too. It’s my all-time favourite.’

  It’s hard to figure a person out immediately, but someone who enjoys the classics of American literature can’t be all that bad.

  Standing by the narrow window at the end of the cell, Long Island is praising the prose of Ayn Rand when an object flies in and ricochets off the wall like a bullet.

  ‘What the fuck!’ Long Island yells, picking up a battery. ‘Where the fuck did that come from?’

  ‘Bud upstairs. We used to be cellies.’

  Long Island rushes to the door and glares at Bud, standing on the balcony. He asks me, ‘What’s with the battery?’

  While I explain my history with Bud and Ken, Long Island’s brow clenches and his breathing grows louder. ‘That battery could have hit me. I’m gonna have a word with those assholes!’ Long Island darts up the stairs and charges into Bud’s cell. I hear arguing but can’t make out what’s said. After five minutes, he emerges and sneaks into the other side of the building. He returns to our cell with Ken, whose presence makes me jumpy.

  ‘Look, dude, I didn’t mean to fuck your visit up like that,’ Ken says. ‘When I don’t take my meds, I snap sometimes.’

  Surprised, I say, ‘You messed my back up pretty good.’

  ‘I’m sorry, dude. I used to kickbox. I just don’t know my own strength.’

  ‘I appreciate you coming to say this. I accept your apology.’ I shake his hand, relieved, grateful to Long Island. ‘At least you didn’t dangle me off the balcony by the neck.’

  Ken smiles.

  ‘That asshole Bud ain’t gonna fuck with you no more either,’ Long Island says.

  ‘Thanks, celly,’ I say.

  ‘Bud put me up to smashing you,’ Ken says, confirming my suspicion.

  ‘So what you in here for this time?’ Long Island asks Ken.

  ‘Stabbing the missus, but it was an accident.’

  ‘How the fuck did that happen?’ Long Island asks.

  Ken sits on the stool. ‘I’d been up for days on meth, working on my boat. I was on my bed, naked, except for a towel wrapped around me, cleaning my nails, when some of my wife’s friends stopped by for a couple of ounces of meth. It was hidden in my boat and I didn’t really want to get it, so my wife started yelling at me, “If it was your fucking friends, you’d be out there by now!” So I said, “Fuck you, bitch,” and threw my knife at the dresser, but it missed and stuck in the side of her knee through her pants. She pulled it out and there was a little fingernail-size hole gushing blood. A little bit of meat came out, too, so I pushed it back in and we had fun making butterfly stitches. Her friends buying the dope wanted to call the cops, but my wife said she was all right and we partied all night long. That was on 11 April 2003 at Alamo Lake.

  ‘A week later, on the way back from a trip to LA, we got in a fight. Her kid wanted to go to Taco Bell, but there’s no Taco Bell in Beverly Hills. The kid’s screaming. I’m trying to drive. And my wife attacks me. So I stop, grab her and throw her out of the truck. But she gets back in. Shit just got crazier after that. I’m driving home, my wife’s flipping out and I start hallucinating. The first troll I saw—’

  ‘Troll?’ I ask, astonished.

  ‘Yeah, troll. Look, it’s made my nipples hard just thinking about it.’ Ken points at a nipple and rubs it. ‘The first troll was at the side of the road, putting a chain on a bicycle, going he-he-he-he. It was an evil little bastard, about two-foot tall, wearing a green flannel jacket, with long brown hair. Driving home, the trolls started ripping up those yellow lines painted on the roads. They were trying to trip my truck up. Back in Alamo Lake, there’s trolls everywhere, destroying cars, and I imagine – it seemed real at the time – that our neighbours are screaming and yelling at the trolls. At home, my wife took off. I went looking for her at her dad’s house and he called the cops. I was seeing trolls everywhere.

  ‘I’m driving home past a cop. He looks at me, hits his lights and does a felony stop. “Driver, pull the keys out, put your hands in the air!” – all that shit. I asked him why I was being arrested and he said, “For assault and battery of your wife.” I told him, “She ain’t charging me. That was over a week ago,” and he said, “She doesn’t have to charge you, her dad did.” So I got busted, and she got busted for drugs, and they threatened to take her kid away if she didn’t testify against me, so she did, and I got five years for aggravated assault. I’ve lost two wonderful marriages, thanks to crystal meth.’

  10

  In the chow hall, biting into a peanut-butter sandwich, my teeth connect with something inflexible. Aware that prisoners sometimes get injured by stuff placed in food by their enemies – broken glass, infected syringes, mercury from thermometers – I panic. I drop the bread onto the table. Opening the sandwich, I spot carefully folded paper. I crane my neck both ways to see if the culprit is watching, but the prisoners on either side are busy eating. Unfolding it, I read:

  Englandman, as you know you’re engaged to me so don’t be cheating on me because I’m a jealous guy. I’ve met a couple of cheetos [transsexuals] here in Florence supermax, but all they do is flash their white asses through doors and that ain’t no fun ’cause I can’t get none. I want someone I can make love to. I’m more than sure that I’ll go to Buckeye soon.

  The note ends with a winking smiley face pulling tongues. I recognise the handwriting as belonging to Frankie, a Mexican Mafia hit man I met in the maximum-security Madison Street jail. He first approached my cell as I was applying antifungal ointment to bleeding bedsores on my buttocks, my trousers and boxers down. He peeped through the Plexiglas and disappeared, but a few hours later I received a note, slid under the door, saying he’d seen my ‘sexy booty’ and proposing we have a gay prison marriage. He added, ‘I’m looking forward to shampooing your hairy ass on our honeymoon in San Francisco.’

  I wrote about him on Jon’s Jail Journal on 20 May 2004:

  Frankie, a Mexican Mafia hit man – who charges $50,000 for a contract killing – instigates most of the madness in our pod. He’s a recent arrival from the jail’s infirmary. Last month he was playing cards in a
maximum-security pod when someone stuck an eight-inch shank into the back of his neck. Unfazed, he extracted the shank and was about to return the gesture, but a guard blinded him with pepper spray. Frankie was dragged from the pod with blood gushing from the wound.

  Frankie looks and acts like Joe Pesci. He wears his thick black hair slicked back and his arms are heavily tattooed. He overcompensates for his Napoleonic height with a cocksure manner and the inmates have warmed to his lewd wittiness. During a 17-year sentence, he became a chess heavyweight. On my hour out, I usually play a game with him by holding the board up in front of his cell window. His piercing hazel eyes and fiendish grin animate when he attempts intimidation tactics:

  ‘Eat dat fucking pawn!’

  ‘Let me fucking teach ya something!’

  ‘Eat dat fucking bishop!’

  ‘Watch dis! Check! Trick move! What’d I fucking tell ya!’

  ‘Don’t do it!’

  ‘Move my bitch [Queen] all da way up!’

  ‘Check-fucking-mate! Boo-yah!’

  ‘Nobody fucks wiv da champ!’

  My new neighbour, Yum-Yum, an 18-year-old transsexual, looks like a malnourished teenage girl. Yum-Yum has black curly hair, speaks like a female and has stirred up the love-starved inmates. Frankie is leading the pack. Every day, Frankie has offered Yum-Yum sweets to move into his cell to ‘make ma cell look good’. Frankie complains that his cellmate, Cup Cake, will not participate in ‘sword fights’ (sexual acts). He seems confident that Yum-Yum will be more obliging.

  I pocket the note and scan the area, hoping to spot the sandwich filler. Frankie must have a lot of influence to make a letter materialise when he’s locked-down in a super-maximum prison over 100 miles away. Being around him in lockdown – where we were out of our cells at different times – was one thing, but being around him here – where we’re out at the same time – is another.

  When George – who now insists I call him Jeeves – finishes cleaning my cell, I consult him about Frankie.

  ‘Huh! He calls you Englandman, eh?’ George says, scouring over the letter. ‘I don’t know, Englandman. If he managed to get a letter in here, into your sandwich, without a trace, I’d say he’s pretty serious, buddy. He’s hunting for bear.’ George nods decisively.

  ‘Hunting for bear, Jeeves?’ I say, sitting on the stool.

  ‘And a little British bear, I believe. This is pretty serious stuff,’ he says, waving the letter. ‘What on earth did you say to him?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Perhaps you were practising your Spanish on him and it didn’t turn out very well.’

  ‘I never led him on, Jeeves.’

  ‘Perhaps you said pass the chorizo and that flipped his switch. As one gay man judging another, I believe that if he ends up on this yard, you may need some protection.’

  ‘Protection! For what?’

  ‘Your Hershey highway.’

  ‘Am I detecting jealousy, Jeeves?’ Tilting my head forward, I lift my brows.

  ‘Hell yeah!’ He slaps the letter onto the table. ‘I don’t ever get to see Mr Willy and he gets to ride the Hershey highway. I don’t think so!’

  ‘It’s not like I want to give my anal virginity up to him!’

  ‘I hope not. Wouldn’t you rather have someone lick the willy instead of Frankie cramming his dick in your ass?’

  ‘Neither!’ I say, puckering.

  ‘But you’re gonna end up with one or the other for playing with people’s emotions like you do.’

  ‘I haven’t promised anyone anything.’

  ‘Evidently you have. Getting a message in your sandwich from someone who’s in another prison is pretty fucking serious! This guy knows what he’s doing and he must have plenty of help.’

  ‘He may be kidding?’

  ‘Noooooo,’ he says. ‘This is beyond kidding. It’s … It’s … It’s … love! You may be laughing now, but when his dick is in your ass, you’re gonna be singing a different tune.’

  ‘So how do I get out of this? You’ve got to help me!’

  ‘As soon as you see him, you need to tell him, “I’ve found somebody else. You’re too late.”’

  ‘I’ve found someone else! Are you bloody crazy? What if he doesn’t accept that and it just eggs him on because he thinks I swing both ways?’

  ‘You may want to phone the British Embassy and tell them to mail you a diplomatic pouch with prophylactics.’

  ‘Jeeves, surely there’s another way out?’

  ‘As serious as he is, I doubt it. You need rubbers, so that when his dick is in your ass, you don’t get any diseases or become pregnant. Accept your fate.’

  ‘That’s not very helpful, Jeeves.’

  ‘Accept your fate and don’t encourage him any more.’

  ‘Is that the best you can do?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m off to clean elsewhere now, so tally-ho, Englandman.’

  11

  ‘I’ve got an interesting person for you to write about: Two Tonys. He’s old-school Mafia. Irish Italian,’ Long Island says over a game of chess in the day room. Long Island is proving to be a great cellmate. He knows a lot of people and is always making blog suggestions. He spends most of the time out of the cell, so I have plenty of quiet to read, write and study. With Long Island presently the biggest customer at the illegal tattoo shop Bud runs out of his room, Bud has a vested interest in not causing me any trouble. Long Island has also shown an aptitude for finance. He asked me to teach him about the stock market, so I give him daily classes in the cell, using books and newspapers such as Investor’s Business Daily.

  ‘What’s Two Tonys in for?’ I ask, without taking my eyes off the board.

  ‘Mass murder. He’s never getting out.’

  Startled, I raise my head and stare at Long Island. ‘Wouldn’t that be dangerous, writing about this guy?’

  ‘Nah. You’ll see. He’s a good guy. He’s got a lot of respect from everyone. I’ll go get him. He’ll play you at chess.’

  Before I can stop him, Long Island disappears. Play chess! If I beat him, he might want to kill me. If I let him win, he’ll know I let him win and want to kill me for deceiving him.

  Long Island returns, chatting with Two Tonys – a bespectacled man in his 60s of medium build and height with tenacious hazel eyes, slicked hair greying at the sides, a broad bulldog-shaped chin, and the charismatic accent and manner of a mob boss. I catch the tail end of their conversation: ‘They’ve only got me for whacking some of the motherfuckers – the rest they still ain’t found. They were all pieces of shit, though. Just like I told the judge at my trial, “Your Honour, I never killed anyone who didn’t have it coming.”’

  ‘This is Shaun from England,’ Long Island says.

  ‘An Englishman, eh!’ Two Tonys smiles.

  ‘From near Liverpool.’ I shake his hand.

  ‘Oh, the bloody Beatles,’ he says, impersonating an English accent. ‘Shaun wants to play you at chess,’ Long Island says.

  ‘Only if you want to,’ I say, hoping he declines.

  ‘I’m not much good, but I’ll give it a try,’ Two Tonys says.

  I gulp. With downplaying skill the opening gambit of a hustler, I assume he’s either an expert or too honest. Hoping he doesn’t notice my trembling hands, I move a pawn. Before he makes each move, he voices his thoughts, openly debating what to do. I know better than to let him win – his judgement of my character is on the line – so I checkmate him.

  I shake his hand. ‘I won because you kept speaking your mind. It gave me an advantage.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Two Tonys asks.

  ‘You wouldn’t show someone your hand in a game of poker, would you?’ Long Island says.

  ‘Me and my big mouth,’ Two Tonys says, slapping his head.

  We laugh.

  ‘England writes stories for the internet,’ Long Island says.

  ‘What kind of stories?’ Two Tonys asks.

  ‘About prison,’ I reply. ‘What we t
ake for granted is a completely different world to the public. They find it fascinating. If you like, I’ll show you what an English newspaper published.’ I fetch a Guardian article featuring blog excerpts.

  Two Tonys studies it, smiling occasionally. ‘You’ve certainly got a way with words.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, beaming.

  ‘On the road of life, I’ve dealt with a lot of cut-throat motherfuckers,’ Two Tonys says. ‘To stay alive, I become a quick judge of character. I like you, England. You seem like a nice guy. I also think you’ve come into my life for a reason. Would you consider writing my story?’

  ‘I’d be honoured,’ I say, glad of the opportunity to ally myself with someone at the top of the prison hierarchy. Prisoners command respect in accordance with their crimes. Murdering gangsters puts Two Tonys in the highest category. ‘Perhaps we should start by putting some of your stories on the internet.’ I explain how blogging works.

  Two Tonys suggests that we go into Cell 2 for privacy, so he can tell a story.

  I take the stool, so I can write. Long Island sits on the bottom bunk.

  Two Tonys remains standing.

  ‘One spring morning in Tucson, me and Charlie “Batts” Battaglia have a body to bury in the desert. Me being a young guy, I’m in awe of the Batts. He’s the epitome of a gangster, with his hair slicked back, wearing dress slacks, alligator shoes and pinkie rings. If I’m Francis Ford Coppola and I’m making a gangster movie, I want a guy like the Batts in it. We take care of business and set off back to Tucson at about 7.45 a.m. I’m riding shotgun in the Batts’s white Caddy Eldorado. The sunroof ’s down. I’m enjoying the smell of creosote in the air ’cause it’s been raining. The sun’s coming up through the mesquite trees and the Palo Verdes, which are turning a little yellow, and are in the blooming stage. We’re cruising along the roly-poly roads in the Catalina Foothills. The radio’s playing ‘Get up America … we love you’ and all that shit. Earth Wind & Fire’s ‘Fantasy’ comes on. All at once we rise up a steep hill and hit a dip. We see a hen quail going across the road with little chicklets behind her, all of them in a straight line. The Batts has got a big Antony and Cleopatra cigar in his face. He sees the quail family, slams on the fucking brakes and my head almost goes through the windshield ’cause I ain’t wearing no seat belt. I thought somebody had shot the Batts. I’m scared. I’m wondering, What the fuck’s going on? The Caddy is spinning on the gravel, but somehow he regains control and we head for breakfast.