Rikers High (11 page)

“Get these inmates dressed and take 'em to lunch,” ordered Montenez.

Maybe he didn't
want
to do it, but it was the rules. Montenez had to feed us before a certain time, no matter what.

School was canceled in the afternoon, and Sprung #3 was officially on the burn.

B
ack at the house, the COs took the count. I could hear defeat in the voice of every kid as they counted off. It was like we'd just been whipped in a fight that we didn't even know was coming.

There are always fights in jail, and mostly it's over something that matters to someone. But nobody wanted to be on the burn over Murray's stupid chalk holder.

“I don't even believe one of you guys swiped it,” said Dawson.

“Too bad it don't matter what we think. The captain says it happened,” said Arrigo. “Maybe they'll bring
the chair
out for everybody to sit in.”

Arrigo meant that maybe a kid boofed it.

Corrections has an electronic chair they make you sit in, and it'll buzz if you jammed any metal inside of you. The COs can't make you give it up or go get it themselves. They're not allowed to. They can just isolate you from everybody else. But I couldn't imagine some kid sticking a piece of metal that big up his ass.

Lots of doldiers boof razor blades in case they have to go to war. They wrap them up in wads of toilet paper so they won't cut themselves. The only problem is that if a fight jumps off fast you can't get to your stash right away. You have to shit it out first.

After supper, Johnson didn't put the phones out. He was trying to squeeze us and maybe look like a supercop if the piece turned up on his tour.

“The dayroom's off-limits,” Johnson ordered. “Sit at your beds. I want quiet time till lights-out.”

The only movement was for the bathroom and the house gang cleaning up. It was four hours of just sitting on our beds looking at each other. Only a couple of dudes went to sleep. Most of us were too pissed off for that.

I looked at the face of every inmate on our side. There were thirty-two other black faces, sixteen Spanish ones, and Ritz.

To see us locked up like that, you'd think black and Spanish people were nothing but scum. None of us believed that was true. But it didn't make us feel any better about ourselves either.

Ritz got called out on a visit and he was all smiles. He walked down the rows of beds with his hands curved over his stomach, like a pregnant woman.

“I never know which one of my girls it is,” he whispered. “But it don't matter. It's the same with both of them.”

Ritz wasn't even sure which one was due first. Dudes told him that if he gave both babies the same name he'd never mess up and call out the wrong one. He liked that trick and decided on “Chris” because it worked for a boy or a girl.

Some kids used the time to write letters. You never think much about writing out in the world because you can see people and the phone is always there. But when you're locked up letters become important. You write to people and sometimes they write back. Some dudes get pictures from home of things they missed, like their baby's birthday party. Other kids get pictures of their girls in bathing suits and pass them around to show off.

I watched Sanchez for a while. He was lying down with a pillow over his face. I could tell he wasn't really asleep by the way he was breathing. It would change all the time from fast to slow. You watch lots of kids sleep when you're locked up, and they always breathe steady.

“How can you lie there for so long without moving?” I asked low.

He lifted the pillow off his face and answered, “Man, I'm already part dead.”

Quiet time was hardest for Shaky because he couldn't sit still like everybody else. After seeing him jump around for the first hour, Johnson got smart and sent Shaky to work with the house gang.

Shaky pushed the pail along for one of the dudes who was mopping, talking to kids as he passed their beds.

“Don't nobody carry on with him! I want silence!” barked Johnson.

After that, it was just Shaky talking to himself as he walked.

There weren't any clocks in the house you could look at. All of the COs have wristwatches. Inmates can wear watches, too, as long as the bands aren't metal. And a couple of the kids on our side had them. I never wanted one because it only mattered what time the COs said it was. They could make their watches say anything they wanted. Besides, the only time that
really
counts in jail is days.

Brick was going through his bucket, taking inventory. I saw him juggle with guys in the beds next to his. He even had some dude pass smokes off into the next row for him.

For all his tough talk, Brick didn't act like a killer. He acted like a greedy kid that wanted to be somebody.

Maybe he just needed to learn some manners.

Sanchez told me Brick had been in the Sprungs for almost four months, and that he moved in on kids because he'd been locked up before and knew how the game was played. Then he picked doldiers that were too stupid to run the game for themselves.

Brick was already on probation for robbery and couldn't afford to cop out to a new charge. If he did, he'd get even more time for breaking his promise to the state to stay clean after his last case.

“I got a paid lawyer. A good one,” I'd heard Brick bragging to dudes. “My grandmother had the money to bail me out. But I said
nahhh
. I can live here, no problem. Take that cheddar and buy me the best mouthpiece there is. There ain't a shred of evidence against me a smart lawyer can't knock down.”

Just after lights-out it started to rain. It beat down on top of the bubble like a drum. I ran my fingers over my scar where the skin had gotten tight and hard. You couldn't escape the sound of being inside that drum, nobody could. You could only learn to deal with it.

I
was awake when the Turtles started across the yard the next morning. I saw them through the windows of the emergency doors in the back of the house and I knew what to expect.

They brought crowbars, dogs, and an X-ray machine. There were at least twenty regular COs behind them. That whole outfit settled in front of Sprung #3 for a minute. Then the Turtles came inside first.

Most of the house was still asleep when the Turtles' captain got on a bullhorn.

“Everybody up!” he ordered. “Stand beside your beds with your fingers locked behind your heads.”

“Do it now! Do it now!” hollered one Turtle after another, punching inmates in the kidneys if they didn't move fast enough.

Some kids didn't know what was happening.

I'd got on a pair of pants and sneakers before they even came inside. But most dudes were caught sleeping and had to stand barefoot in their underwear.

The Turtles are always on point, acting like super-COs 24/7. And they're looking for high drama from the word Go.

They get their name from the gear they wear. When there's a riot in the jail, they get dressed in helmets and big chest protectors that cover them from front to back. That way no one can stab them with a banger. When they put everything on, they look just like turtles in their shells.

They wear a darker uniform than the regular COs—one that's almost black, like Darth Vader's. And even when they aren't wearing those shells, kids still call them “Turtles.”

Most dudes knew them from the corridors in the main building.

If your house is on the move and Turtles pass your way, inmates have to play the wall and let them go by first. They even make you put your head down, because you're not allowed to look them in the face.

There's always one Turtle that will make a show of it and start to scream at some kid who's hanging on the wall.

“Are you looking at me, maggot? Put your eyes on me again!” he'll warn.

Two or three Turtles will circle around the kid in case he talks back. But the kid just usually shits a brick in his pants. Then everybody goes back to their house talking about how crazy the Turtles are and how nobody in their right mind would ever want to fight them.

The Turtles stood watch inside the house while a search crew of COs went through everybody's stuff.

COs patted down dudes and emptied their buckets onto the floor. Then they flipped the beds over and made everyone drag their mattresses to the X-ray machine. Most of the mattresses were stink-old. They were so ripped you couldn't tell if a dude had buried a weapon in one or not. So they used the machine to make sure.

All the COs wore rubber gloves while they searched. It was like our shit would give them some sort of disease if it touched their skin. The only things I had in my bucket were a couple of shirts and an extra pair of pants. The COs went through them quick and then made me open my mouth and move my tongue around to see if I was hiding any razor blades.

The search team found a homemade banger in Luis's mattress.

“All right, there's number one,” said a CO, celebrating.

The COs with the X-ray machine saw it clear as day on their monitor. They dug it out of the stuffing and were waving it around in the air like a prize.

The banger was made from a sharpened piece of metal, with tape wrapped around the bottom for a handle.

“This was ripped off the bottom of a chair,” said a CO. “Probably from the school trailer.”

“Hey, genius. I'm glad you picked something up in that school,” a CO taunted Luis.

The Turtles' captain served Luis with a write-up on the spot and then packed his ass up.

Luis would do sixty days in the bing for sure.

It doesn't matter if a weapon is yours or not. If they even find it
near
your shit, you get charged. Lots of times a dude will slide a banger across the floor, just to get rid of it when things get hot. If it winds up under your bed, you're the one that gets screwed.

The dogs sniffed around for drugs, but didn't find any.

Dawson and Arrigo were watching from up front with Captain Montenez. They didn't show much expression at all. The less the search team found, the better those three were going to look.

Brick was standing at his bed stone-faced. If the house got burned for the banger, it would be because of
his
doldier. I wondered if other dudes would get brave and give him lip for that. He was already weaker with Luis out the door.

The search team even tore through the GED books in the house. They were looking for razors hidden between the pages and in the bindings.

“Officer, I need that book,” pleaded a kid who was taking the test soon.

“Stop crying, little boy,” ripped a CO. “We do this so nothing happens to you. We don't want anybody getting cut.”

Those words stung me hard.

I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, “Assholes! If you'd checked the kid that cut me coming back from court, I wouldn't look like this! I'd have one less thing to worry about all my life!”

And I would have been satisfied to say it, even while they were beating me senseless. But I knew better.

For all their tearing shit apart, there was still no sign of Murray's chalk holder. It took them an hour and a half to leave the house a total mess. And it took almost two hours of work to put it all back together after they'd gone.

When Montenez left, Dawson and Arrigo broke out in big smiles.

“One banger 's not so bad,” Arrigo said.

“That's a pretty clean house in anybody's book,” bragged Dawson.

Then they told us the captain burned the house from commissary that afternoon because of Luis's banger. But after that, we were clear.

Now maybe Murray was the only one left who still believed we swiped his stupid chalk holder.

T
hey finally brought us over to the school, and it was almost time for lunch. It should have been the end of Mrs. Daniels's science class, but Demarco was there instead. He knew why we were late and wanted to hear about the search.

“Did they find it?” he asked.

“Nope,” answered one kid.

“Told you we didn't have it,” said another one.

Dudes started to rank on Murray.

“They should lock his ass up here for lying.”

“I'd make him wash my drawers and do the Pogo every night.”

“That four-eyed, crooked-nosed bastard.”

Demarco wouldn't let us talk like that in front of him. He asked dudes to stop, and they pulled back. But kids were really letting loose about how school was just a place for them to get into more trouble for shit they didn't do.

Then Murray walked in to start his history class. Everybody got quiet, and no one would even look at him. We weren't about to do his work.

I heard him starting to write on the board when Demarco shouted, “What?”

“There it is! He's got it!” yelled Jersey.

Murray was using his damn chalk holder. He was writing on the blackboard with it like nothing had ever happened.

“Where did you find it?” demanded Demarco.

But before Demarco got an answer, he had to hold kids back from stepping hard to Murray. Four or five dudes were already out of their seats and raging.

The COs heard the noise and came busting in.

Kids turned right to them, pointing at Murray and his damn chalk holder, like he was an inmate they were ratting out.

I thought Arrigo was going to flip on him right there in front of us.

“Is that the one that got stolen yesterday?” he hollered.