Dark Men (8 page)

“When I went to get my meal that afternoon, I saw some of the prisoners snickering at me and my fat lip and my purple cheek but I just ignored them best I could and sat down at one of the tables they had scattered in the cafeteria.

“That’s where Archibald Grant found me, busted lip and busted flat, eating a dry hamburger in the cafeteria at Lewisburg. He asked me my name and he asked me my story and I don’t know why I let everything out, but like I’m doing here, I did for him there. The words just poured out of me like water out of a busted bucket. I told him where I came from, where I’d been and why I was stuck up inside there.

“He looked at me, smiling that half smile of his, the way he does, you know, and didn’t say nothing for a while. Then, he nodded like he’d known my story before I told it and he said I’d been stealing the wrong things. Cars, electronics, wallets, knicks and knacks, this place was full of people who boosted the wrong shit. Boosted it because they didn’t know better. All that crap could only get you a little cash and what was the point in that? Risk versus reward was all upside down. Five thousand dollars worth five years in lockdown? In Federal? With these animals? Hell no. No fucking way.”

Smoke shakes his head vigorously, then swallows hard. He doesn’t look at us, lost in his story, as he continues.

“Archie folded his hands and lowered his voice. He said what he stole, the only thing
worth
stealing, was information. He said there was no greater commodity in the world. He said people laid down their lives for it since the dawn of man and they did it for good reason. Told me he stole information on the outside and he’d been stealing it on the inside, riding out his two-year term in comfort and security until he could resume business on the other side of the wall. Said he got thrown in here on purpose anyway, and though that claim had just the slightest ring of bullshit to it, I bought it like a fifty-cent bottle of beer. Looking back now, I’ll just bet he did get himself thrown in there for whatever reason made sense at the time.”

I remember that time. My old fence Pooley went to visit Archie in that prison, and commented how he couldn’t get to him to put a scare in him, get the information I needed at the time. Maybe Archie was in there to avoid my reach back then. It doesn’t matter . . . I keep my mouth shut and listen to Smoke unfold his story.

“Anyway, I naturally said something along the lines of ‘why you telling me this?’ And he said, ‘nobody ever believed in you, but I see a spark inside you maybe no one else saw before. Maybe it’s buried deep down in there but I can see it.’ Of course I thought he was completely shining me but fuck if those words didn’t sound like honey. Say what you want about Archibald Grant, but he’s got a mouth on him that could sell scissors to a bald man. He told me he knew who waylayed me in the hall outside the chapel and he knew how to take care of that situation so I wouldn’t be bothered again, not even looked at askew the whole time I was behind bars, but I needed to do something for him. ‘Could I do that?’ he asked.

“I didn’t know but I said I’d try. He said ‘good, good.’ Then he nodded to indicate a beefy prison guard standing behind the glass near the exit. ‘See that hack over there what looks like he ate too many dollar specials at the Taco Bell?’”

Smoke stops and laughs to himself. “You know how Archie do.”

I can’t help but smile too, but signal with my hands tumbling over each other for him to get on with it. It doesn’t do either of us any good to think of Archie in the past tense.

“He tells me the guard goes by the name of Nash. Archie says he’s been able to crack the code on most of the hacks but this Nash has been a problem. Says he’s tightlipped and none of the other guards’ll spill on him.

“Now, as you can imagine, most bulls take a handout here or there for favors, but not this Nash. He’s straight as an arrow and there was no chinks in the armor neither. He’s one of those true blue badges you hear about but never expect to see. And those are the dangerous ones. Because nothing can fuck up a connected con’s plans like a hack who won’t play ball. Suddenly, you find yourself transferred to the wrong cellblock, or your pleasantries are confiscated, or you’re eating at the wrong table in the cafeteria or worse. Balance of power is always a precarious thing in life, but in lock-down, it’s hanging by tooth floss, I’ll tell you that.

“Archie looks me over, and says, ‘get me
something
.’ ‘What’d’you mean, ‘something’? I ask back, and Archie gets that look in his eye he gets time to time that says ‘I’m smarter than you think I am.’ He looks down his nose at me and says, ‘What have we been talking about? Information, Smoke.’ He’s the first one to call me that by the way cause I had this pack of Parliaments I pulled out and lit up in mid-conversation. That’s the one good thing I’ll say about L-burg . . . you can smoke inside that damn place. What happened to the world where we kicked all the smokers outdoors? Anyway, Archie keeps on, ‘Anything I can use on Nash to get what needs getting. One week. You find me some A-plus information and all your problems inside this box disappear like bad dreams in the morning light. Consider yourself off-limits for a week . . . nobody but nobody gonna be in your business, I
guarantee
that. And don’t forget something, Smoke. I believe in you.’”

Smoke fiddles with his unopened pack, turning the box over and over, occupying his hands. I have a feeling he’d like to pause the tale to step outside and light one up, but telling stories has a way of gaining a foothold on anything else you might want to do, planting its flag until it’s over. He looks up at me.

“So what the fuck was I gonna do? I’m like three days into this shitbox and I’m going to find out information on a hack no one else has been able to procure? A bull with a clean certificate? How the fuck was I gonna do that? But those words were there, Columbus. He said ’em and I’ll be damned if he didn’t mean ’em. ‘I believe in you.’ Those words were like, I don’t know, they had weight, man. You believe that?”

I nod and half of Smoke’s mouth turns upward. His eyes start to shine, but he doesn’t wipe at them.

“First thing I did was spend two days doing nothing but watching Nash. Marking his shift changes, seeing how he conducted himself, who he talked to, who he watched, hell, I even counted how many times he scratched his nuts. But there was nothing there. He just stood behind the glass and watched us with dark eyes.

“Now, he wasn’t always behind the glass and that gave me a bit of hope. The bulls took various shifts, sometimes behind the glass, sometimes in the corridor outside the rec room, sometimes walking the block, and sometimes out in the yard.

“I watched him, I watched him, I watched him, and this cat Nash did not give me a goddamn inch. Believe that. I started thinking maybe he’s a robot, like some android out of a space movie. C-3PO or some shit. Cons would try to talk to him and he’d just ignore their shit and give ’em a stare that stopped ’em cold.

“I was five days into my seven and I hadn’t come up with jack squat. Not a plan, nothing. My mind was racing. Maybe I just make up a story and tell it to Archie, but what would that give me? Seemed like I might as well grab a shovel and start digging my own grave out in the yard. But damn if your mind don’t play tricks on you in the box when you start running out of options. And those words were hanging over me the whole time . . . ‘I believe in you.’ I know it sounds corny as a holiday card, but I wanted that belief to be rewarded, made whole . . . that’s the only way I can describe it. I wanted to justify his belief. This man I barely knew. Had only spoken to once.

“Then I saw an opening. The slimmest opening possible. An opening that would add some years on my sentence and would put the ‘hard’ into ‘hard time’ if I got caught.

“See, one thing I’ve come to learn about this job is you gotta look at things from a different angle. I was trying to shadow Nash and pick up on a mistake or a flaw or some way to get inside with him, but instead, I should’ve been watching where he wasn’t. I didn’t say that right. Let me explain.

“I noticed that the guards went into a locker room just off of A block when they checked in. Various guards would be in and out of there all day, Nash included. When he came in, he’d be wearing a pair of khakis and an oxford shirt, but when he walked out, he’d be wearing a different pair of pants and the blue dress shirt that all hacks wore, you know? It came to me then and there. I had to get inside that locker room and see if there was any clue, any
anything
he left behind in his locker when he went out on shift.

“So there it was. All my eggs in that basket. I only had a day left, and how the hell was I gonna get into that locker room? Prisoners weren’t supposed to be out of A block at all, much less in the bullring.”

Smoke holds up one finger and flashes me a smile. “Except one inmate. One guy, that’s it. Little sawed off son-of-a-bitch named George Yackey. The Yack Attack, my ticket in. This con got the sweet gig of shining the bathrooms, sweeping the floors, picking up the dead bugs off the windowsills in the area called ‘A Extension’ but what the cons called ‘the bullring’ cause that’s where the guards went for break and change. Yack was the only orange jumpsuit allowed back there, twice a day, to clean up the ring and make it look nice.

“Now understand, the bullring wasn’t near the perimeter or even on the outskirts of the building, so it wasn’t like you had shotguns trained on you or the hacks would think you were trying to escape if they caught you in there. In a lot of ways, it’d be worse for you, ’cause if you were in the ring unauthorized, the guards would assume you were trying to fuck ’em in some way. Steal from ’em or what-not. And here’s a little fact about serving time no one talks about: if you make a legitimate attempt at escape . . . if you get caught climbing the side of a wall, or in a tunnel or gripping the undercarriage of a laundry truck as it drives off the site, the hacks don’t beat the shit out of you. Hell, they’re not even sore. They actually show you a little bit of respect. That’s the truth! Don’t ask me why it’s so . . . best I can figure, they put themselves in the con’s shoes and say, ‘why the hell wouldn’t I want out of this dungeon any way I can? How’m I gonna blame this poor fool for trying?’ Sure, they’ll throw you in solitary for a month and take away privileges for a year, but when you walk down the block, they’ll give you a nod like ‘not bad, you crazy son-of-a-bitch. Not bad.’

“So if I was trying to escape, I might’ve had a bit of lenience if I was busted. But caught in their area? Caught in the ring? Those bulls’ll go to town on your flesh until they catch bone, I guarantee that. That’s lesson time to them. Gotta teach a lesson, right?

“Anyway, I went to Yackey’s cell and I told him I needed a favor from him. I kept my eyes square and my hands spread like this, so he’d know I was in the
askin’
position, not the
tellin’
one, you know? He looked me up and down like I was dirt going down the shower room drain. So I made a play I had no idea would take, a play out of desperation, but what was I gonna do? I said, ‘Yack, let me tell you about your future. In the next day I’m going to be on the inside with Archibald Grant, and if you know what that’s worth, then you should climb on my back now. Do me this favor, and we’ll reap the rewards together. But if you choose to cross me, if you tell me to fuck off and go away, then put your money on the ‘don’t pass’ line and we’ll see what happens.’

“He thought about it for a long minute, maybe the longest of his life, certainly was of mine, and then looked up and asked me what I needed. ‘Five minutes of your time tomorrow,’ was my answer.

“I did my best to clean my jumper and shave my face and trim my hair and do everything I could to blend in, not stand out, not give the bulls a single thing that would call attention to myself if they happened to look my way as I approached the barrier between A Block and the bullring. Five minutes, I told myself. Five minutes, in and out, get something, anything out of Nash’s locker and run like hell back to the block.

“Now every day from two to three, that locker room in the bullring was empty. I clocked this for two straight days and this was the only pattern I could find. It had something to do with the rotation or the way they marked their shifts, but not once did a guard enter that locker room between two and three, and point of fact, the entire ring was empty during that time, save for George Yackey and his mop and bucket.

“At 2:15 on the last day, I walked from A block bathroom over to that barrier. Now, Yack Attack told me he’d meet me there at that time, swipe the card, get me inside, and that was that. But I’ll be damned if he wasn’t there.

“Now I’m standing next to the door and if a bull walks out of the cafeteria or out of the gym, I’m going to be looking like a big orange sign saying ‘this fucking con is up to no good.’ And I’m sweating and under my breath I’m cursing ol’ Yack, this passive-aggressive motherfucker who told me what I wanted to hear but really placed his bet on the other side and the sad thing is he was right to do so. By noon tomorrow, I’d be powerless and he’d still have his sweet gig, so why the hell should he do me any favors?

“I’m stewing for a good couple of minutes, trying to figure out my next chess move, knowing that I need to vacate immediately, get the hell away from this barrier and get back to my cell and figure out what the hell I was gonna do in the next ten hours to get my ass out of this spot, and then I see the door to the locker room open inside the bullring and Yack shuffles out and heads to the barrier and opens the door to let me inside.

“He mutters something about wanting to make sure the coast was clear and for me to get the hell on with it, and if I don’t start moving instead of gawking in the passageway, he’s gonna slam the barrier back in my face.

“I move like a jackrabbit, into the bullring, one, two, three steps and I’m through the locker room door, my heart beating so hard I can feel it in my throat, and there I was feeling as exposed and vulnerable as a naked baby.

“The locker room was pretty much what’d you’d imagine, sort of in the shape of a domino, two rooms really, a half partition in the middle, with rows of lockers along each wall and wooden benches in the center so the bulls could change their socks or whatever needed changing.