The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison (16 page)

At Trout’s urging, FBI negotiators asked the Cubans to surrender Silverstein as a sign of good faith. It worked. On November 30, the Cubans poured chloral hydrate, stolen from the prison pharmacy, into Silverstein’s morning coffee. When this failed to knock him out, more than a dozen Cubans surprised him and wrestled him to the ground. FBI Agent D. H. Rosario was monitoring radio broadcasts (the Cubans were using portable radios taken from hostages) when he heard an excited Cuban yell, “We got him! Come and get him, now, now, now!” Rosario rushed a team of U.S. marshals to the door that led into the prison yard. The Cubans had used a pair of handcuffs and leg irons taken from guards to restrain Silverstein. After the FBI dragged him away, a Cuban called Rosario on the radio and asked if the FBI would return the shackles. Rosario laughed. Later, he told reporters that the capture of Silverstein was a turning point in the negotiations. Each side had breathed a “sigh of relief” once Silverstein was in chains.

Craig Trout knew exactly where he wanted to put Silverstein. The day after his capture, the prisoner was hustled to Dobbins Air Force Base and taken by private flight to Kansas. A handpicked crew from the Hot House was waiting. Associate Warden Smith had never met Silverstein, but Smith had known Officer Merle Clutts personally and had attended Clutts’s funeral. “As
far as I am concerned, Silverstein is a cold-blooded, bloodthirsty, worthless killer,” Smith said.

Even though he prided himself on being professional and objective, Smith was looking forward to seeing Silverstein’s reaction when he was taken to the special isolation cell that had been prepared for him deep in the bowels of the Hot House. It had been constructed years ago as a concealed holding cell for “hot” prisoners whose location needed to be kept secret, usually because the Mafia had put out a contract on their lives. It was the worst cell in the penitentiary. Its walls and roof were made of one-inch-thick steel. The cell was buried underneath the rotunda in a section of the basement that hadn’t been used for years. It was so isolated that you could not hear any of the familiar sounds of prison life—no human voices, toilets flushing, doors clanging shut, televisions blaring. Nothing.

The cell itself was just as desolate. There was no bed, only a platform of concrete blocks with a thin mattress on top. There was no mirror, only a metal sink, a shower stall, and a toilet without a lid.

There were no windows in the cell, no way of telling whether it was day or night or cold or hot outside, or spring, summer, fall, or winter. The only link to the world was a small black-and-white television set. It was not there out of kindness. Smith had installed the television to make Silverstein obey. If he refused to follow an order, the guards would shut it off.

Because Silverstein was considered a prime escape risk, Smith planned to have two guards sit outside his cell and watch him around the clock. Obviously, they wouldn’t be able to see him unless the lights in his cell were left on. They would burn twenty-four hours a day.

In effect, Silverstein was being put into an empty fluorescent-lit cage. The lights would never be dimmed, the temperature would never change, the only sounds would come from the prisoner himself or the television.

On the night that the legendary killer arrived, Smith
was waiting. Although Silverstein was six foot three inches tall, and weighed two hundred pounds, he did not seem as big as he had been portrayed. He was pale and apparently had been drugged before the flight. He didn’t resist, wasn’t belligerent, and didn’t react to the cell as a horde of officers escorted him down into the Hot House basement. Without muttering a word, Silverstein stepped inside the cage, turned his back on Smith and the others gawking at him, curled up on the floor, and went to sleep.

As soon as Thomas Little moved in with Carl Bowles, the older man asked his new cellmate why he had been sent to the Hot House. Did Little have a secret hiding in his prison record as had Jeffrey Hicks? Putting a first-time bank robber in a maximum-security penitentiary just didn’t make sense. Since 1985 the bureau had used a point system to determine where inmates were sent. The more violence in a criminal’s background, the more points he received. Bowles knew all about the point system. He had received the highest total possible. But when he sat down with a pencil and legal pad and calculated the number Little should have received, Bowles always reached the same conclusion. Either Little was lying about his criminal record or someone in the bureau had made a big mistake.

Little clearly didn’t belong at Leavenworth.

Little insisted that he wasn’t hiding anything. There was only one possible explanation, he said. While he was being held in a Florida county jail awaiting trial, jailers had searched his cell and found that two of the bars were cut.

“They accused me of trying to escape,” he explained.

“Well, did they ever charge you with escape?” Bowles asked.

“No,” Little replied. “They blamed me for it, but they couldn’t prove it.”

With Little in tow, Bowles marched down the tier to see Little’s case manager. Every inmate in Leavenworth was assigned a case manager who was responsible for keeping track of the multitudinous paperwork an inmate’s presence generated. If a convict visited the prison doctor, asked to move to another cell, met with an outside visitor, or even bought a magazine subscription, a note was made in his prison file. Besides compiling all the paperwork, case managers kept tabs on when prisoners were to appear before the parole board or for other periodic reviews. If Little had been accused of trying to escape in Florida, there would be a record of it in his file and his case manager would know about it. And if a mistake had been made, then Little could appeal to him for help.

It was against the rules for one convict to examine another’s records, but Bowles told Little exactly which forms to ask for, and sent him inside the case manager’s cubbyhole office in A cellhouse. A few minutes after Little returned with copies of his records, Bowles knew why the first-time felon had been sent to a maximum-security penitentiary.

“Looky here,” Bowles said, pointing at the paper, “they got you down as an extreme escape risk!”

Little’s permanent police record listed him as being found guilty of attempted escape in Florida. As far as the bureau was concerned, Little had attempted to break out of the county jail, and that offense gave him enough points on the classification scale to merit his being held at the Hot House.

“But I was never even charged with escape,” Little protested.

“This says you were,” said Bowles. “C’mon.”

This time, Bowles led the way into the case manager’s
office, where he explained his discovery. “You can’t classify a guy on what you
think
he might have done,” Bowles complained, “only what you can
prove
he did.”

The case manager was not convinced. No staff members were going to take what Carl Bowles said as the truth. Besides, he pointed out, even if the bureau had screwed up, it had the authority to house a convict anywhere it wished regardless of the number of points that inmate had received. The points were merely a guideline, so the bureau was under no legal obligation to move Little.

“What if we get some written proof that shows Little don’t belong here?” Bowles asked.

The case manager reluctantly agreed to take a look at any evidence that Bowles and Little could find. Until then, Little was going to be treated as an escape risk.

When they got back to their cell, Bowles told Little to write down the names of his attorney, the judge who sentenced him, the prosecuting attorney, the sheriff, even the guards who found the two cut bars. They would write a letter to each and ask for their help. Getting the evidence should be easy, Bowles said; the hard part would be getting someone at the Hot House—either the case manager or a prison counselor—to admit that the bureau had made a mistake.

“If we can get just one staff member to take your side, we can get you out of here,” Bowles promised, “but getting one of these fat-ass bastards to stick out his neck is going to be fucking difficult.”

Later Thomas Little recalled his feelings that morning. “No one in the system gave a damn about me. They all knew I didn’t belong in a maximum-security prison. I stuck out, but none of the staff did anything to help and they all knew what would happen to me. But here is this supposedly mad-dog killer coming to my aid and he figures out how the bureau fucked up my case within a few days and he is writing letters trying to help me. Carl
Bowles was the only person in Leavenworth who really gave a shit about me.”

The two men became inseparable. On most days, they dressed alike in blue low-top sneakers, olive-green army trousers, white T-shirts, and white terry-cloth hats that looked like sailor caps with the rims pulled down. Most guards and inmates assumed Bowles was teaching “his wife” how to dress. Most didn’t bother to learn Little’s name. He was considered an extension of Bowles. Little knew about the whispers.

“I am not a homosexual,” Little said one morning in a rare show of exasperation. “I am not Carl’s kid or punk or wife or anything else, except for one thing: I am Carl’s friend.”

Little credited Bowles with literally saving his life. “In some ways, Carl and I are identical and in some ways we are so far fucking apart, but Carl and I have talked and talked and talked, probably for a thousand hours, and after I tell him something, he will say to me, ‘You know, I’ve had those feelings before,’ and I will say to him, ‘You had those feelings?’ I mean, he has felt just like I have and he has taught me that it is okay to think like I do, it’s okay to feel like I do, and no one else has ever told me that Everyone else told me my thoughts were wrong or bad or evil. I have never had any real friends, but Carl Bowles listens and he understands.”

I had been warned by guards and convicts not to ask Bowles whether he and Little were homosexual lovers. “Carl is fucking crazy, man,” an inmate warned. “You disrespect him like that and he’ll rip out your throat before you know what’s happening. Ever look in his eyes?—them is dead men’s eyes, no emotion, nothing but blackness.”

But when I finally brought up the rumors, Bowles said, “I wondered if you’d ever get around to that.

“Sex,” Bowles explained, “is easy to get in prison. You don’t have to prey on someone. This morning, an orderly who works in the lieutenant’s office said to me,
‘Hey, Carl, you sure are looking good. I’d like to suck your dick sometime.’ Now, he is a homosexual, a known homosexual who enjoys it. Why would anyone have to be a sexual predator in here when it’s that easy to get?

“See, sex is easy to find, but finding a friend is damn near impossible ’cause no one trusts anyone in here.

“Look, I’ve been in prison for twenty-three fucking years straight,” Bowles continued. “You don’t think I’ve not gotten lonely during that time? You don’t think I don’t need someone as a friend or someone to love me? Everyone is always worried about sex, okay, but there are different kinds of love. Just ’cause you love someone doesn’t mean you want to fuck them. Goddamn, I mean, that’s a perverted way of looking at things. Sex isn’t everything. There is companionship, understanding, consideration, sharing tough times together, having a guy who knows exactly what you are talking about so when he says, ‘Goddamn, that’s fucked up,’ you understand, ’cause you know it is fucked up too. Is that homosexual to have a friend like that? Or is that just being a human being?

“Of course my dick still gets hard,” he said. “Sex drive is natural. Being in prison is what isn’t natural. This whole society in here is perverted. Do you think I don’t know the difference between a man and a woman? Bullshit. Sex with a man is a poor substitute, a poor substitute at best, but look around, do you see any women in here?

“So what do you do? What do you do? It drives you crazy. I’ve tried not to think about it, but there isn’t a day in here when you don’t look at television or look at a magazine and see something arousing. Some guys just try to kill it, pretend their sex drive is dead. Why? Because they are scared of becoming homosexuals. ‘Oh my God, am I turning gay because I want someone to hold, to touch, to love me?’ No one wants to be a homosexual in here because they are usually the weakest mother-fuckers around and are considered as low as a snitch.

“But I’ve never met a motherfucker that is so fucking cold that he doesn’t give a damn about another person. Never. I’ve never met another person who doesn’t need some physical contact with another human being.

“Can you imagine not being able to touch another human being for twenty-three fucking years?

“So what do you do? What do you do? Do you run behind everyone’s back and have some homosexual suck you off while you look around the whole time and don’t enjoy it because you are worried that someone will see you? Or do you jack yourself crazy every night looking at fucking pictures? This is reality, man!
I ain’t had no pussy in twenty-three fucking years
.

“What do you do? I’ll tell you what you do. You recognize that sex is a strong desire, but there are different kinds of love, and if you lower your standard, then you destroy yourself. It’s like food. If you start eating the slop that they throw into the trash compactor and you say, ‘It’s okay, this is still food,’ then you have lowered your standard and it drops you down. You can’t lower your standard, because once you do, all your standards drop. Every one of them. You got to cling to what is pure. You got to cling to what is good. And what is the purest thing? The purest relationship is one of
love
, not one based on sex, and that comes with friendship and caring about another human being and being there for that person just like he is there for you.